Assen MotoGP: when the going gets weird

“I was terrified of crashing again,” he said.

And then, if he wasn’t already worried enough, the usual Assen rain arrived, two thirds of the way through the race. Not enough water on the asphalt to reduce lap times but enough for Bagnaia to remove his tear-off, because rain gets between the tear-off and the visor, impairing vision.

That lost him half a second to stellar Marco Bezzecchi who revels in those tricky conditions. “When the rain came I liked it and shifted up a gear,” said Bezzecchi, the VR46 Ducati team’s first MotoGP podium finisher.

No doubt Bagnaia was doubly lucky that the first two riders in the championship had had their Dutch TT hopes dashed so early. Espargaró was convinced that he and his Aprilia RS-GP had the pace to fight Bagnaia and his Ducati Desmosedici.

“For sure Aleix could’ve fought with me,” agreed Bagnaia.

Espargaró’s comeback was old-school: shit or bust, rostrum or hospital, from eight seconds down on Bagnaia on lap five to 2.5 seconds down at the chequered flag.

“I had nothing to lose,” said Espargaró. “After Fabio pushed me out I saw P15 on my board, so my race was done. I thought, ‘Nothing will change in the championship if you score two or three points, so you need to go for more than ten. And if you crash, you crash.’”

But how could Espargaró pass so many riders at a time when overtaking is so difficult in MotoGP, due to front-tyre pressure problems? Because Assen is cold and very fast, so there are no front-tyre issues. He was also helped greatly by Aprilia’s new ground-effect fairing, which he raced for the first time.

The crowning glory of his race came at the last chicane on the last lap, when he passed Jack Miller and Brad Binder, another three vital points in one go.

“Marco’s in love with racing, he’s in love with the bike and he’s in love with the team”

Bezzecchi’s ride was also astonishing. Assen is probably the most complicated track of them all and yet the 23-year-old MotoGP rookie, who had never made the top three at Assen in Moto2 or Moto3, finished runner-up after just one dry day of practice.

The young VR46 rider has been gaining pace all year. Second on the grid and fifth in the race at Mugello, after leading the early laps, was his previous best weekend.

Crew chief Matteo Flamigni, Valentino Rossi’s data engineer for 18 seasons, is mightily impressed.

“Marco started this year very calm, trying to understand MotoGP,” he said. “He is clever and the thing I like the most is that he arrived at a certain point and since then he keeps improving, he never goes up and down, step by step always better and better. So today is the result of his hard work over the last five months. Now he better understands the bike, the tyres, the brakes and the electronics, working with the engine-brake and the torque delivery.

“He was very quick learning how to save the tyres and the edge of the tyres, by picking up the bike quickly. And he’s very fast in fast sections, like here and at Mugello.

“Marco is passionate – he’s in love with motorcycle racing, he’s in love with the bike and he’s in love with the team. He’s a very nice guy.”

Maverick Viñales’ first podium with Aprilia – exactly a year after his relationship with Yamaha was collapsing – was also important, even if he profited from Quartararo’s faux pas.

Perhaps moving from a Japanese team to a Latin team really has helped the Spaniard’s head, which always seemed so all over place during his four and a half years with Yamaha.

“It’s fantastic,” he beamed. “I am the happiest man in the world and maybe at the tracks I like, like Silverstone and Misano, I can fight for victory.”

Viñales’ ecstasy was well-deserved. But just as important had been his behaviour when he pulled into pitlane the previous Sunday, after his shapeshifter had malfunctioned during the race. In the old days Viñales would have stormed into his garage, angrily shaking his head. On this occasion he climbed off the bike, fist-bumped all his crew, then walked calmly into his garage.

Even if the Assen race wasn’t a classic of multi-rider battles for the podium, there was so much going on that many failed to notice something very significant taking place.

There were no Japanese motorcycles in the top seven at Assen for the first time since 1969 when the top ten was all Italian and British machinery: MV Agusta, Matchless, Metisse, Aermacchi, Linto, Norton, Seeley and Paton. (By the way, Giacomo Agostini won that race by two minutes and 35 seconds and the only riders he didn’t lap were those in second and third.)

In case you need further evidence that this was a long, long time ago, The Beatles were number one, petrol cost 35p a gallon (that’s 13p a litre) and a pint of beer 18p.

The world never stops changing.

The previous weekend at Sachsenring there wasn’t a single Honda points scorer for the first time since the 1981 British GP at Silverstone, where Freddie Spencer ran fifth aboard the 22,000rpm, oval-piston NR500 until the engine expired.

On Sunday at Assen there were no Yamahas in the points since (funnily enough) Assen in 1985, when reigning champ Eddie Lawson crashed out of the rain-lashed race.

Next year there will be six Japanese machines and 16 European bikes on the MotoGP grid, with no Suzukis, two Yamahas and four Hondas.

The last few seasons of MotoGP have not been easy for the Japanese factories. The global pandemic has played havoc with supply lines, freight, staff travel and so on, affecting the Japanese much more when the championship has been played out mostly in Europe.

On the other hand the Japanese factory teams need to consider other factors. By nature the European factories are less conservative and have shorter chains of command, so they can push forward harder and faster, which makes a huge difference when MotoGP is so tightly fought.

The battle between riders and factories resumes at Silverstone in early August. And as always anything could happen.