Analysis

We are past the mathematical midway mark of the 2022 MotoGP season, and we are on the brink of the de facto midway mark. This weekend's race at Assen is the last before the long summer break – longer than originally planned, and a welcome break for pretty much everyone in the paddock. "I'm not going to touch a motorbike for two weeks!" Remy Gardner told us.

At least we are going into the summer break on a high. The Dutch TT Circuit at Assen is still one of the greatest motorcycling circuits in the world, despite the trackectomy which happened in 2005 and the old North Loop was removed. The fast, sweeping section was removed to sell the land and buoy up the circuit's ailing finances, and replaced with a little crochet hook of tarmac. But the rest of the circuit remained, the Southern Loop as glorious as ever.

After braking for the first corner and sweeping through the sequence of right handers that take them through to the Strubben hairpin, the riders fire out of Strubben and down the Veenslang, the snaking straight which leads to the first fast right-left combination and prime over taking spot. Through the Ruskenhoek and onto the Stekkenwal, then another short, snaking straight down to De Bult. A fast left, and then onto one of the best sequences of turns on the MotoGP calendar.

A crescendo of corners

As a parade of MotoGP riders traipsed into the media center at the Sachsenring, we had time to reflect upon the fact that it is a good thing we did not have access to strong drink. For if we had decided to play the "30-lap drinking game" – taking a drink every time a rider says "tomorrow is going to be a long race", half of the MotoGP media would be spending Saturday night having their stomach pumped. Each rider we spoke to used it at least once, and some did so multiple times within the space of a couple of minutes.

What conclusions can we draw from this? That 30 laps are a lot around the Sachsenring's tight and tortuous ribbon of asphalt, where the bikes are spending most of their time on the left side of the tire. Especially in the middle of a heatwave, where temperatures are more like Sepang than Assen, despite the Sachsenring being situated in the temperate north of Europe, rather than the sweltering heat of the tropics. The Sachsenring was sweltering on Saturday, and will swelter even more come Sunday.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Sachsenring is a tight and twisty track. Slow, tortuous, and difficult. "It's like a riding on a Supermoto track!" Raul Fernandez said after his first experience riding a MotoGP bike around the German circuit. What had felt like a short straight between Turns 7 and 8 on a Moto2 bike was an entirely different experience on a MotoGP machine. "In MotoGP it's like super fast. It's like not a straight, like a corner."

As is usually the case, the conventional wisdom has only a passing acquaintance with the reality of the situation. Yes, the Sachsenring is tight and twisty. But as Tech3's Fernandez points out, it is also much faster than it seems. Jerez has a lower top speed, for example. And Jerez, Le Mans, Valencia all have slower average speeds.

Is the 2022 Yamaha M1 a good MotoGP bike? It is a simple question with a simple answer: it depends. If Fabio Quartararo is riding it, it is good enough to have won two races, get on the podium in three others, and lead the 2022 MotoGP championship by 22 points.

But if anyone other than Fabio Quartararo is riding it, it is not quite so good. The best result by the trio of Franco Morbidelli, Andrea Dovizioso, and Darryn Binder is a seventh place, by Morbidelli at Mandalika. That seventh place is one of only two top tens for the other Yamahas, Darryn Binder being the other at the same race.

Together, Morbidelli, Dovizioso, and Binder have scored a grand total of 40 points. Fabio Quartararo has 147, over three times as many. And he has never finished behind any of the other Yamahas throughout the season. In fact, the closest any other Yamaha rider has gotten to Quartararo is Franco Morbidelli's eleventh place, two places behind his teammate, at the season opener at Qatar. Since then, Quartararo and the other Yamaha riders have been operating on different planets.

Facing the future