Last week, MotoGP returned from its summer break and it surpassed the halfway point of its 2019 season. Ten races have been completed and nine remain, including a race this weekend from Austria. With that in mind it is time to look back and see how the season is progressing with around three months to go until the finale.
Where Are We Now?
Marc Márquez won his sixth race of the season last week at Brno and with his other results being three runner-up finishes and a retirement, Márquez leads the championship with 210 points, 63 points clear of Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso, who has not won since the season opener at Losail. Danilo Petrucci is third in the championship on 129 points but his only victory this season was at Mugello. Álex Rins won at Austin, giving Suzuki its first victory since 2016 but Rins is fourth on 114 points and Dutch TT winner Maverick Viñales rounds out the top five on 91 points.
It's Márquez's to Lose?
Absolutely.
There are nine races to go, Márquez's championship lead is 63 points over Dovizioso. If Dovizioso wins the final nine races and Márquez finishes second in all nine races, Márquez wins the title with 390 points to 372 points. Dovizioso isn't going to win every race but Márquez very well could finish first or second in the nine remaining races.
What has made this Márquez's season is that no one has stepped up and made it a two-horse race. Márquez is the only repeat winner through ten races. Dovizioso has had a respectable season. He has only one victory but he has five podium finishes and he has finished in the top five in every race but Barcelona, where he was taken out. Most seasons that would have him second in the championship but within shouting distance for the championship lead. His first half would have set him up for a championship push in the second half but with Márquez being the only dominant force, Dovizioso is going to need Márquez to miss multiple races to have a shot at the title.
What About the Other Race Winners?
This has kind of been the Márquez/Dovizioso show with a rotating guest on the podium each week.
Outside of those two, no other rider has more than three podium finishes this season. Valentino Rossi had a pair of runner-up finishes in the first three races. Rins had a pair of podium finishes, Petrucci had three consecutive podium finishes, Viñales and Fabio Quartararo each had a pair of podium finishes, Jack Miller has two podium finishes and Cal Crutchlow's podium finishes have come spread out over the course of the season.
There is nothing that points to Petrucci, Rins or Viñales being set up for a championship push.
Who Has Been the Breakout Rider?
Fabio Quartararo.
While no other rider but Márquez has multiple victories, Quartararo has three pole positions this season and two of those have let to podium finishes and on top of that he has two fastest laps. He is the top rookie on 76 points and he is ninth in the championship.
I think Jack Miller deserves a mention considering he is seventh in the championship with two podium finishes. It has been three years since Miller won the Dutch TT in sloppy wet conditions, this is his fifth year on the MotoGP grid and he is sitting in prime position for his best championship finish.
Where is Valentino Rossi?
Sixth in the championship, one point behind his teammate Viñales but without a victory.
We are two years removed from Rossi's most recent victory at the Dutch TT and in this era of Márquez dominance it is hard to look at two runner-up finishes and say this is a good season for Rossi. Rossi was third in the championship last year but he did not win a race and he did not finish on the podium in the final nine races.
Yamaha's bike has been spotty. There have been times when the Yamahas have struggled for pace, there have been times when Quartararo is the best of the lot and there have been races where the Yamahas have gone to the front despite starting at the back.
Rossi has started in the top five on four occasions and he has started outside the top ten on five occasions. Despite all this, he is only one point off Viñales. I am not sure Rossi will win a race but if it is a case where either Márquez wins or someone new comes out on top then maybe Rossi wins at Austria this weekend or Silverstone or Misano. I am not going to be expecting it but I will not rule it out.
Where is Jorge Lorenzo?
Injured with a broken vertebra that occurred at practice Assen and Lorenzo will miss Austria this weekend, his fourth consecutive race missed.
Even before the injured, the results were not encouraging for Lorenzo. In his first seven starts, his best finish was 11th. He has scored 19 points this season. He has started in the top ten only twice this season and in the one race where it seemed like things were starting to turn around he took himself, Viñales, Rossi and Dovizioso all out on lap two at Barcelona while all four were fighting in the top five.
The last three years have been head scratching for Lorenzo.
Is the Honda Bike Not as Good as Márquez is Making It?
This first came to mind after Brno and looking at the championship, Márquez is dominating but the next Honda rider is Cal Crutchlow in eighth. There are three Ducatis, two Yamahas and a Suzuki between Márquez and Crutchlow and Crutchlow is only two points ahead of Quartararo, who rides a Yamaha. Crutchlow very well could be ninth in the championship.
Lorenzo had not finished in the top ten this season and had not started in the top five. Stefan Bradl has replaced Lorenzo the last two races and he will be back for Austria and Bradl's finishes have been tenth in Germany and 15th at Brno. Takaaki Nakagami is 11th in the championship on 57 points, four behind KTM factory ride Pol Espargaró, with Nakagami's best finish being fifth at Mugello and his only finishes outside the top ten being 14th at Germany and retirements at France and Netherlands.
Crutchlow does have two podium finishes this season and he has been in the second round of qualifying in nine of ten races. He has held his own while not coming close to Márquez's level of success.
Crutchlow's success seems to cancel out any thoughts that Márquez's dominance is coming solely because of Márquez's ability. Think about it this way: remove Márquez and Honda, in theory, is the third best bike and Márquez is the lone reason Honda is on top. I don't buy that. I think it is just a case of Lorenzo didn't meshed with the bike in the partial season he has had, Márquez has been on another level and Crutchlow's results on a privateer bike have been sufficient.
What About the Rest of the Field?
Umm... KTM seems to be finding something. It is encouraging that Pol Espargaró is tenth in the championship and he has five top ten finishes and KTM had five top ten finishes all of 2018. Johann Zarco hasn't been close to Espargaró but Zarco has had encouraging signs, such as starting third at Brno. Things are looking up for KTM.
Quartararo has been out performing his Petronas Yamaha SRT teammate Franco Morbidelli and that is a slight surprise. Morbidelli's results are better than last year but coming into 2019 because Morbidelli won the Moto2 championship and Quartararo's best championship finish in Moto2 and Moto3 was tenth, I am not sure we would have been comfortable saying Quartararo would have a comfortable margin over this teammate in the championship. If you had said in March Quartararo would be in the top ten of the championship after ten races I would have guessed Morbidelli would be in the top ten as well.
Aprilla had 64 points all of last year and through ten races the team has 52 points with Aleix Espargaró leading Andrea Iannone but surprisingly it is Espargaró who has three retirements while Iannone has retired only once.
Joan Mír is a distant second to Quartararo among the rookies and Miguel Oliveira and Francesco Bagnaia are both struggling to get results.
What Has It Been Like Being a MotoGP Fan in the United States in 2019?
Terrible.
We are pushing a year since I have been able to see MotoGP on television. Around this time last year, beIN Sports had a massive carrier fee disagreement with Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. At the end of August 2018, beIN Sports was dropped from Comcast, Verizon Fios and Directv and I don't know who has the channel now. None of these cable properties have seemed to budged and worked out an agreement with beIN Sports, meaning MotoGP is basically myth to me.
The best I can do is following races along on Motorsports.com's live text feed and that feels like something I would do 15 years ago when that was the best you could do with dialup internet.
MotoGP doesn't help because it makes it really difficult to even see highlights. It would be nice if MotoGP had official highlights and not snippets of action with SLOMO shots over dramatic music. A ten-minute cutdown of the race would be nice, unfortunately all of that seems to be behind a paywall.
Granted, MotoGP is available if I wanted to pay for the streaming service and it is arguably a great deal but things start to add up. I forgot what it was at the start of the season but if it was $120 for the entire, add to it $50 for IndyCar's NBC Gold pass and then a cable subscription it adds up and there are other expenses more pertinent. You can't have everything and as much as I would love to watch MotoGP, dropping an extra $120 even for the entire year is tough to justify. I am sure it would give me everything I wanted but at some point you have to say no.
Before last year, beIN Sports was doing a great job with MotoGP. BeIN Sports' biggest issue is it was always on a higher tier and few people could see it but in terms of what it put out, it was pretty much an uninterrupted five hours of motorcycle racing from 4:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. ET. You got Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP live and that was most race weekends. There were the times when some races were missed because of soccer commitments because beIN Sports also has the rights to La Liga and Ligue 1 in the United States but at least the MotoGP race would be live unless Real Madrid, Barcelona or Paris Saint-Germain were playing.
Honestly, I am wishing MotoGP were something ESPN+ scooped up because I think that would push me over the line to get ESPN+. ESPN+ is already showing Formula Three and Porsche Supercup, there is a ton of soccer on ESPN+, during hockey season there is always a game or two a night available nationally, if it added MotoGP then I think that would be do it and I would have to get it.
The problem is MotoGP is not Formula One. The American audience is not the size of Formula One or IndyCar or IMSA. It cannot demand that much, meaning if a beIN Sports wants to pay an outrageous fee then it will go to beIN Sports, even if only 10,000 people are watching. If ESPN were to pick it up, most races would only be available on ESPN+. Maybe the Austin race would be broadcasted on ESPNNEWS but it would not be like Formula One where everything is spread over ESPN2 and ESPNU and the occasional race is on ESPN and maybe even ABC. MotoGP would not get on ABC and it might get a race on ESPN but of 19 races, I would guess at most five would make it on a cable network and the rest would only be available via streaming.
As for other American sports entities, I don't think NBC Sports is interested because MotoGP already has a streaming service and NBC Sports has really been pushing things to its NBC Sports Gold streaming service. Premier League takes up most of NBCSN's weekend mornings, meaning MotoGP would only be available via streaming or tape-delay.
MotoGP was once on Fox but Fox has moved away from motorsports other than NASCAR. Its Formula E coverage was poor. There were some races that could not be seen until they aired tape-delayed the following day. Say what you want about NBC Sports but the IMSA races are at least streamed live if they cannot be aired live on NBC Sports, such as Road America last week and Watkins Glen earlier in the summer.
CBS Sports Network is out there and has motorsports properties such as DTM, Supercars and FIM Motocross but nothing is shown live and that is a shame because nothing is on live at 8:00 a.m. ET on Sundays but CBS Sports will still show cheerleading for two years ago tape-delayed. On top of that, it does not have a great streaming service even if you are already a subscriber.
Outside of those options, no one off the wall is going to get MotoGP. Maybe Motor Trend, the artist formerly known as Velocity, but Motor Trend has to do a better job. It only showed the first hour and the last hour live of every FIA World Endurance Championship race outside of Le Mans and I think Sebring. That is nice but why so little live coverage? Why are you treating it like a race from the 1970s and you can't give flag-to-flag live coverage? Why does it feel like I am watching it on Wide World of Sports except instead of getting weightlifting, curling, beach volleyball and badminton in-between the race action we are getting a bunch of car shows that all start to look the same after a while?
No offense, but when your weekend content is mostly re-runs there is no reason to have a three-year-old episode of Classic Car Garage or Flatbed Monthly or whatever it airs taking priority during the middle of a race. Motor Trend mind as well do what beIN Sports did and just show everything live from 4:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. ET. There is nothing on Motor Trend that would get noticeably better ratings at that time on a Sunday than live racing.
I got to remain optimistic but MotoGP's deal with beIN Sports cannot end soon enough. Same with World Superbike but right now we are focused on MotoGP.
What Should We Look For in the Second Half?
More Márquez dominance. This is going to be the first time MotoGP has contested a 19-race season, barring no races are cancelled again (looking at you Silverstone) and Márquez's best points per race was 20.111 in 2014, the year he won the first ten races and 13 of 18 races. He is currently averaging 21 points per race with nine to go. I kind of want to see if he beats that 2014 record.
Meanwhile, his brother Álex Márquez is having a breakout Moto2 season, having won five of the last six races and holding the championship lead with 161 points, 34 points ahead of former MotoGP rider Thomas Lüthi. Through ten race weekends only Qatar, the United States and the Dutch TT did not have a Márquez brother win a race. Álex's streak has Petronas Yamaha SRT interested in signing him for Moto2 in 2020 with a shot at MotoGP in the future.
Unlike MotoGP, where Marc Márquez is the only rider with multiple victories, Lorenzo Baldassarri won three of the first four Moto2 races but he has not been on the podium since that third victory of the season and that has him sixth in the championship. This Moto2 season is heavily in Márquez's favor.
Can anyone make it interesting for either of the Márquez brothers over the final nine races? I have no doubts Marc Márquez is going to win his eighth world championship, his fourth consecutive MotoGP title and his sixth MotoGP title in seven seasons if he stays healthy but even if health is in Álex Márquez's favor, I still find myself hesitant to crown him Moto2 champion in August. It will be up to someone to chase him down but it will also be up to Álex not to unravel.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
