MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

When MotoGP fans dream of the glamorous life of a MotoGP rider, there are a few details they gloss over. Yes, there's the thrill of riding the fastest, most specialized racing motorcycles on the fact of the planet, at the best racetracks in the world. But along with the thrills come the spills, and with the spills comes the pain.

Despite the incredible advances made in protective gear – helmets, leathers, airbags, protectors - once the MotoGP season starts, a rider is never free of pain. Usually just small niggles or injuries, bruises, cuts, scrapes, rashes, minor fractures, pulled muscles, arm pump, cramp, stretched ligaments or tendons. Sometimes bigger issues, as collarbones, wrists, ankles, and hips heal.

And then there are the really big injuries. Think of the two miserable years Marc Marquez went through after crashing at Jerez in 2020 and breaking his humerus. With infection, nerve pain, and bone that was healing rotated by 30°, Marquez was in pain pretty much all the time, on and off the bike.

Assen is two weeks behind us, and there are still lessons to be learned, albeit extremely belatedly (for which you have my sincere apologies). In part 1 of my Assen review, I looked at just how strong Ducati has become and how Race Direction views track limits. Since then, there have been reports that Dorna is looking at ways for reappraising the way concessions are calculated, to give Honda and Yamaha a chance to catch up as the European manufacturers disappear into the horizon. So it makes sense to start with a look back at Honda's difficult weekend at Assen.

If the Sachsenring had raised doubts about Marc Marquez' long term future with Honda, Assen kicked those doubts into high gear. Marquez' Honda RC213V spat him off during morning warm up in Germany, breaking a bone in his left thumb and cracking a rib. That had shaken Marquez up, mainly because the crash had happened without warning.

We feared rain, but it did not come. Instead, Friday brought spectacular weather, Mugello bathing in the warm sunshine which leads press release writers to wax poetical about circuits nestling in the Tuscan hills. The action was spectacular too, both good and bad. In addition to a frantic and thrilling final 10 minutes of Practice 2 for the MotoGP class, there were some terrifying crashes.

Rory Skinner gave a masterclass in destroying a Kalex Moto2 machine, bringing out the red flags while the marshals removed the debris from the track. Syarifuddin Azman had a huge highside in Moto3, which left him hanging in the air for long enough to write the first chapter of his autobiography. Aleix Espargaro chucked his Aprilia in the gravel in Practice 1, Fabio Di Giannantonio tried a very ill-timed pass on Alex Rins into San Donato at the end of P2, and Joan Mir got flicked off at Biondetti 2 to bring his day, and indeed weekend, to an early end.

If you had made your MotoGP fantasy picks for the Le Mans grand prix on Friday evening, as I did, you would have been all in on Jack Miller and KTM. The Australian was fastest in both the morning and afternoon sessions, and his pace looked good too. Teammate Brad Binder was third in the morning, seventh in the afternoon, and on pace for another strong result.

Or so it seemed. Qualifying went reasonably for Miller, the Red Bull KTM rider ending up in fourth, just behind polesitter Pecco Bagnaia. Brad Binder had a tougher time, struggling with the front tire locking, and ending up in tenth on the grid.

In the sprint race on Saturday, Binder made up for his poor qualifying by getting one of his trademark rocketship starts and steaming through to finish second, behind an unleashed Jorge Martin. Miller chose the medium front, on the advice of KTM and Michelin, and ended up losing the front at Musée, always a tricky spot when the left-hand side of the tire isn't quite up to temperature. But both riders had shown real potential.