Rain, wind and exotic animals in the escapes. Weeks after losing Phillip Island, perhaps the wildest of all the circuits on the calendar, a twist of fate. The start of the Brazilian GP went relatively normally, but there were many headaches, especially for the organization and the team leaders.
The first had to rush to clean the route, flooded on several occasions over the last few days. Race Direction delayed all scheduled sessions by an hour, and until the last moment the tanker trucks were shooting pressurized water on the reddish asphalt, stained by the clay soil of the area that invaded large parts of the renovated route. The seconds doubled this Friday as meteorologists on the ground, the different apps on their phones burning while they constantly updated the information available to understand the evolution of the rain and wind conditions.
of the storms made all the pilots set out to set their best time as soon as practice began after a first wet free practice session. Everyone sought to take advantage of the mostly dry track, with always uncomfortable wet patches, and Johann Zarco, the oldest driver on the grid and winner at Le Mans last year in similar conditions, stood out above the rest. The 35-year-old Frenchman from Honda set a 1.21.257 which is still estimated to be five seconds slower than the expected top time under normal conditions and with the sun shining.
Half an hour before the end of practice, the bikes stopped roaring because of another downpour. It was impossible to improve times on wet asphalt, although some in trouble like Marco Bezzecchi tried. The forecasts are not promising for Saturday, as the National Institute of Meteorology of Brazil (INMET) sent an orange alert for heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 100 km/h in the Goiás region, where the circuit is located. Half an hour before the start of the ‘sprint’ (7:00 p.m., DAZN), water is expected to once again become the protagonist of the weekend.
The rain ruined Marco Bezzecchi, winner of the first grand prix of the season in Thailand and 19th this Friday with the Aprilia, a result that will force him to go through the Q1 sieve to try to aspire to pole position this Saturday. Raúl Fernández, third in Buriram, also fell to the bottom of the classification and will have to grit his teeth tomorrow. Marc Márquez, Ducati world champion, showed his excellent ability to adapt with second place of the day, and surprised Turkish rookie Toprak Razgatlioglu, three-time Superbike world champion, with his Yamaha.
The drivers, on a fast and fluid track, although not too technical, said they were having fun despite the logical tension caused by the rain. “With the conditions that exist, the risk is high. We have to improvise,” warned Márquez. “The circuit is fun, beastly, but it is very complicated because it does not dry, and this will be very important throughout the weekend,” said Jorge Martín, fourth in the table ahead of the leader of the competition, Pedro Acosta from Murcia. “It has caught us all a bit unexpectedly that it has taken so long for the track to dry, that some areas have dried and others are still very wet. This will play an important role tomorrow and on Sunday. It will be a tough race. Above all because of the mental exhaustion of doing so many laps, passing so many times over the same place,” analyzed the KTM talent from Murcia.
Some team managers criticized the last minute work on the circuit early in the morning. “On a new track, the typical problems of the first year always appear, but MotoGP cannot allow these situations,” said Davide Brivio, head of the Aprilia Trackhouse with almost three decades of world championship experience. The mud in the loopholes and the patches of clay on top of the route did not, however, cause any additional danger.
