Jorge Lorenzo won the opening round of the 2016 MotoGP season in his special fashion, nailing the start and then ever so slowly increasing the pressure to win. After the start, Lorenzo was passed on the main straight by the tremendous top speed of the factory Ducatis of Iannone and Dovizioso. Iannone fell on lap 6 and Lorenzo’s steady pressure on Dovi succeeded on lap 8, after which he led to the end. His lead, however, remained only a fraction of second, lap after lap, until near the end he showed (or discovered?) the cards he was holding to win by just over two seconds from Dovi, Marc Marquez, and Valentino Rossi, who had been the lead group all the way. Near the end, on lap 20, he set his fastest time, .8 seconds faster than any of his rivals, to wave the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. As Lorenzo rode into the parc ferme, he stood up on the pegs and with the fingers of one hand made the gesture of zipping his lips. When asked about this, he said, “One image is better than 1000 words. Today, I spoke on the track.” “We are there, in first position, without struggling and suffering, and riding in the perfect way. For me, over all laps, this race has been one of the best in my whole career,” he added. He attributed the win to a last-minute decision to go against majority opinion and run the softer rear tire. 
“We made the decision to put on the soft rear tire because with the hard one we couldn’t be so fast. The harder compound should become better and better, but I think what happened was the opposite. The softer tire should get worse and worse, but it was faster and faster, so this little difference was the difference between me and Dovizioso and Marquez. I was sliding so much, but at the same time I was very smooth and concentrated and made no mistakes.” Before the race, Lorenzo had said of the Michelin rear that, “It works in a different [way] than the Bridgestone and you have to slide a little bit more and ride the bike…with the precision of the throttle.” Incidentally, this is not the first time a Michelin tire has behaved oppositely to expectation. Rubber compounding is not an exact science! Although all of the top four (who had pulled away from the rest early) made their fastest laps late in the race, Andrea Dovizioso said that, “At the end the tire was completely destroyed, like Jorge’s.” The important thing is that these tires remained fast, usable, and controllable. Dovi continued, “I think we did the race seven seconds faster than we did last year, so they did a great job.” 
During practice there was speculation that (1) the Ducatis might be fast but their speed would, as so many times before, not last, and (2) that Marquez, in trying to make up for the new Honda’s lack of acceleration and top speed (6- to 10-mph off the top Ducs), was having to postpone braking until only desperate wheel-up braking could prevent running wide. Pundits hailed this return to his “all-action riding style,” but Marquez noted that he’d gained the confidence to ride in his usual way—on the limit. Of course, he added, “It is not the safest way.” “My style is always to push 100 percent and to try to brake late. Still we are losing on acceleration, so for that reason I must push a lot on the brake point. It is not the safest way…but I must ride like this if I want to stay, at the moment, in the level of Jorge, Viñales, Rossi, and the Ducati riders.” Underlining his ability is this basic truth of racing; the most dangerous thing a rider can do is try to win on a bike that’s not fast enough. This explains why Marquez, able to come so close to the top in practices and qualifying, did not have the margin to attack in the race. Of this he said, “During the race [I had] two mentalities; one was ‘you must finish the race’, and the other one was ‘Marquez, come back and attack!’” 
The question of whether the Ducati could finish as fast as it started was answered by Dovi’s ride into second. Marquez made two attempts on second, once on lap 19, and once at the end, when he ran wide and allowed Dovi to come under him for second. He looks like himself on the bike now, yet lacks the margin to attack. Why would the Hondas be slow? An easy answer would be that in trying to correct the excess aggressiveness of the 2015 engine, they “built a Yamaha.” That is, sacrificed top speed and acceleration to gain driveability. Remember what Rossi’s original crew chief, Jeremy Burgess, proposed, that being, “Which would you rather have—a gain of ten feet at the end of one straightaway? Or the same gain off each of 10 or 12 corners?” Now the Hondas, formerly with strong performance off small corners, are out-accelerated easily by the Ducatis. Times through track segment four (mainly straights with acceleration off joining corners) were a Ducati monopoly in early practice, but Lorenzo and Marquez forced their way up in those standings by higher corner speeds. It will be interesting to see how the Hondas fare at COTA (two races away), on its series of small corners. Honda has been strong there in the past, and disadvantaged on more flowing courses like Qatar. 
Maverick Viñales was among the top men in practice, and was expected to spar for a top position, but at the start was shunted back to 7th and spent his race trying to get past Dani Pedrosa (who had been less successful than Marquez in finding speed this year). Valentino Rossi summed up his day by saying, “At the end it was a great race, the pace was very fast from the beginning to the end, but unfortunately I stayed behind and I didn’t have enough speed to try and attack. I was there but I was never in the real fight.” Michelin, the new tire provider for MotoGP, has come a distance since pre-season tests when their fronts gave, “a closing feeling” (Marquez’s words) and there were many falls. That early 1002 tire was followed by a #34 construction in a soft ‘K’ compound, which riders liked at Sepang, since it provided a larger footprint at high lean angle. Then a new #36 construction appeared at the Phillip Island test, which riders liked even better, and when the 36 K tire seemed soft, a slightly harder ‘E’ compound was produced. At Qatar, each rider was issued four of the 36K, three 34Ks, and three harder 36Es. Through practice there was much conserving of the most-wanted types, hoarded for use in qualifying and the race. Bottom line is that the Yamahas are refined, the Hondas have lost power and acceleration, and the Ducatis look like winning some races this season. Suzuki? Riders praised the power of the 2016 engine, but Viñales’ chart-topping practice laps must now be backed up by race-long speed. Honda have now reversed their engine rotation in the interest of faster direction-changing (as they did in 1987 to the NSR500 two-stroke). This may somewhat reduce braking stability but its effects have so far not been discussed by riders. Now to Argentina (on April 3), to see how all of this plays out again.
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