2026 SACHSENRING MOTOGP REPORT



This rather quiet race was won by Marc Marquez, as usual talking about his less than 100% condition, then discovering in the race that he feels confident and able, lap times are promising, so let’s do it. After him came Assen winner Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia), Raul Fernandez (Ogura’s teammate), Pedro Acosta (factory KTM) and Jorge Martin (factory Aprilia).

Some familiar names were missing at Sunday’s finish—Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR 46 Duc) and Alex Marquez (Gresini Duc) DNF, while Marco Bezzecchi (factory Aprilia) crashed heavily out of Q2 and was unable to continue.

A race can be a snooze to look at, yet contain hidden drama. Riders in Saturday’s Sprint held the same order from lap one to lap seven! Marc Marquez, as usual, deprecated his chances of winning on Sunday. “I’m the fastest on a single lap, but not in race pace—I need to improve a few things. Tomorrow I’ll find out where I stand.”

Marquez qualified on pole and set a new lap record. Yet two weeks ago, at Assen, he finished a conservative 7th, saying “It’s too fast, {there are} changes of direction, and {it’s} too narrow. With a small mistake you can pay a very expensive {price}.”

Risk management.

Also consider this. Back in the 1970s Cook Neilson (the man who made CYCLE magazine what it was) asked Kenny Roberts about up-and-coming hot rider Mike Baldwin.

“Is he for real?”

Kenny answered, “Well, of the three things it takes to win races, he has one.”

“And what’s that,” Neilson asked.

“He’s fast.”

In MotoGP today everyone in the top ten is fast. But Marquez won Sachsenring. Early in his career, Ben Spies was focused on being #1 in qualifying. A consortium of advisors was set the task of switching his interest to winning races. It wasn’t easy. Fast qualifying means nothing if you can’t go the distance at a winning pace.



In MotoGP it often takes newcomers two or more seasons to understand that if they’re not fast on Friday, they are likely to be off-pace in qualifying, resulting in the handicap of downfield starting positions for Sprint and race. Ai Ogura, who has previously shown impressive lap times mainly late on Sundays, managed his race at Assen in a more balanced form—and won it.

Jorge Martin, the current championship leader said, “I struggle a lot of Fridays to put everything together, and I’m always late to Sunday, and I need to understand this to fight the second half of the season.”

Ducatis were 1-2-3 in the Sprint. Where were the Aprilias, recently so dominant? First of all, lower speeds at Sachsenring handicap the aero that Aprilia do so well. Downforce is roughly proportional to the square of speed, so it’s a sensitive relationship.

Second, despite much talk of there no longer being “corner-speed” tracks and “point-and-shoot” tracks, Sachsenring is the place that magnifies the difference. In qualifying, it was 1-2-3 Ducati. On Sunday, Ducati riders Alex Marquez and Fabio DI Giannantonio were out early, whereas in the Sprint they had been second and third. Ducatis still go best on Sachsenring-like tracks, and the Aprilias go best where there are long, fast corners that handicap bikes engineered for point-and-shoot.



Before announcing that “Ducati have struck back!” remember that tracks favoring Aprilia are coming up.

Why the aspect of procession at Sachsenring this weekend?

Di Gia had this to say after the Sprint: “Once you go behind a rider, just the front tire gets hot, and with all the corners and the angle, it’s really difficult to keep the pace and then try to overtake. You can do it, but it’s pretty risky.

“…I tried to have a little space in the middle of the race {to cool} the front tire but it was not enough. In the end it was just too risky to overtake Alex.

“There was no {opportunity}. You can even change your trajectory (through a corner) to preserve the rear tire but you end up destroying the front one.

“When you get close to him, all you feel is the front moving constantly.

This results from the hot slipstream of the bike ahead—front tire temperature rises and it can no longer definitively grip but instead it creeps under load, suggesting it could give up at any moment.



To prevent this, the rider eager to pass must back away or move to one side in search of cooler air.

“Even if you are faster you can’t really keep the pace. So you need some room.

“This track is really difficult to overtake.”

Instead of the hoped-for passing that is alleged to put spectators in seats, both races were mainly spaced-out riders holding position.

In the Sprint, Jorge Martin did his bit for the God of Passing by passing both Francesco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo on the first lap. “Today I saw the opportunity because they were fighting, so they were slower, and I overtook both of them.” This is an important point; when two riders “duke it out,” that take attention from racing to devote it to each other—and are more vulnerable to attack.

The other high point was Ogura’s passing of Raul Fernandez in Sunday’s race. “I think today we could manage the front tire very well and keep our pace until the end.

“I could see Raul start to struggle. I had a better front feeling, I guess.”

Much of the above results from trying to race betwixt two extremes: If the front tire becomes too hot, its footprint shrinks and its grip drops, leading to locking while braking, or slips when turning.

But if the tire pressure falls too low, office workers poring over printouts of what fraction of the race was a given tire’s pressure below “The Michelin Limit” will impose penalties.

Veteran rider Cal Crutchlow, subbing for LCR Honda rider Johann Zarco, spoke directly. “…the rules are a joke. And that’s why we can’t race and we can’t pass. Because of that rule you have to slow down {to pull back out of someone’s hot slipstream}. You have to speed up {to generate front tire heat to boost its pressure into the Michelin zone}. You have to…just let us manage ourselves.



Marc Marquez on Friday crashed in FP1 at a new bump in turn 3. He said, “…whenever there’s a new one I’m always the one who hits it. I made the mistake of not analyzing the crashes in the Moto2 session closely enough, because two or three riders had gone down at that spot.”

One similar occasion sticks with me. At Laguna’s turn five, a Superbike rider was hitting an exit ripple there every lap, and every lap his tires stepped out, forcing him to close throttle a bit and gather things up. When a bump appears on “the correct line,” use your imagination! The late Gary Nixon, on the other hand, made it his business to be able to go fast on multiple lines in corners.

Some suggest that KTM’s recent difficulties—engines going into rev-limiting safety mode—are the result of pressure loss from the pneumatic valve system that all MotoGP bikes save Ducati use. There is conceptually nothing mysterious about pneumatic springs—they depend upon the compressibility of a gas rather than on metal springs. In long-distance auto races where such systems are used there is an engine-driven compressor to maintain system pressure. But in 45-minute MotoGP events there is only a small pressure bottle, charged shortly before going to the grid for the start.

Because there are rules prohibiting interior engine maintenance or adjustment, improved parts have to wait for next season. Meanwhile, if leakage is the problem, a larger pressure bottle is the temporary fix.

Marc Marquez is the most experienced rider in MotoGP. In his very first races he displayed greater management of tire drop than did established champions. Do we think he has learned nothing since then?

Think of the riders who report lack of grip from their tires—sometimes as early as lap one. Is this bad luck? Or is it lack of thoughtful review of personal experience?

Kenny said, “Of the three things it takes to win races, he has one. He’s fast.” What are the other two?

Marquez admits that he’s not at 100%, but evidently, somewhere in those ‘other two’ are understandings that are lacking in those who are merely fast.

At the end of the month-long summer break MotoGP resumes at Silverstone, August 7th to 9th.

ENDSJim L asks: Are MotoGP teams using the rear ride height device to keep the rear wheel in contact with the ground during braking? And if so, how is it activated?

Kevin's Answer:

Rules forbid use of external power such as electric or hydraulic. Therefore it appears to be something like the old Nivomat constant ride-height system—it used suspension motion to pump fluid into an accumulator, from which it could be used to vary ride height. The front seems to still be a crude affair using a sort of latch to hold the front down for the start. After that, especially hard braking could compress the front suspension enough to release it.

Just as with a dragster, the low CG reduces weight transfer, but during both accel & decel, The low setting can reduce initial braking for this reason - there is not enough grip with a cooled tire to avoid front tire locking, but as the tire tread temp rises during hard braking, tread grip increases. This is why, during tire testing, the techs are interested in both initial braking and max braking. To brake overall in such conditions, some rear brake has to be used because there isn't enough initial load on the front to "Razgat" the rear tire off the ground.

It is still strange to see a team with a bike engineered for one basic riding style, hiring a rider with the other style, then wondering why things don't go well. Jerry Burgess used to hold forth that a bike should be engineered to be rideable by any good rider, but that's no longer possible. And you can't change one into the other on the clickers or with altered ride height settings.