Prima Pramac won the MotoGP Australian GP with Johann Zarco and moved closer to clinching the team title, extending their lead in the championship.

With the French rider’s win and Jorge Martín’s fifth-place finish, Pramac scored 36 points at Phillip Island, bringing their total to 526. The team has now a gap of 85 points to Mooney VR46 Racing Team. However, anything can still happen since a maximum of 264 points can be awarded until the end of the season.

Ducati remains in third place as the top factory team, trailing the VR46 by 23 points and the leader by 108 points. The Red Bull KTM is in third place, with Aprilia in fourth, 50 and 63 points behind Ducati, respectively. GasGas Tech3 and Repsol Honda have not yet reached the 100-point mark, sitting in tenth and eleventh places.

Regarding the constructors’ championship, there are no major changes. Ducati, already crowned champions, now has a total of 552 points, compared to KTM’s 296. The Austrians have slightly widened their lead over Aprilia, which remains less than the value of a win in a main race. Yamaha has pulled away from Honda in the battle for fourth place, holding a four-point advantage.

Constructor and team championships:

O conteúdo Prima Pramac closes in on the team title once again aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

Aleix Espargaró had a race to forget at the MotoGP Australian GP. He finished eighth, more than nine seconds behind the winner, to his great disappointment. However, he doesn’t place blame on the changed schedule.

Due to forecasts of bad weather on Sunday, the main race was rescheduled for Saturday, which meant that the riders didn’t have as many opportunities to prepare for it. There was no sprint race or warm-up before as usual.

Despite the difficulties on the Aprilia, Espargaró emphasized that there was plenty of preparation time, when asked if the schedule had an impact: ‘No, no, no excuses. We had plenty of time on Friday with very nice conditions, also the FP2. Nothing would change if we raced on Sunday’.

O conteúdo Aleix Espargaró rejects blaming the schedule change for the lack of competitiveness aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

In the MotoGP race in India last September, Francesco Bagnaia made a mistake and suffered a crash when he was in second place ahead of Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati). This allowed the Spanish rider to significantly close the gap to the championship lead held by the Ducati man. His crew chief, Cristian Gabarrini, believes it was a crucial incident.

The engineer told La Gazzetta dello Sport that if Bagnaia hadn’t crashed in India, the current situation would be much more encouraging for the reigning champion and not as much for Martín: ‘The crash in India weighed heavily on us; Pecco had caught him, overtaken him, and left him behind, and the other had exploded. Without the crash, we would be talking about something else; there would still be a significant advantage, and Martín would have a lower crest. This is the reality’.

Gabarrini clarified that he likes Martín’s attitude: ‘I like Martín, the way he is, always combative, aggressive, and positive. But it’s natural for him to push things in his favor and try to put pressure on Pecco’.

O conteúdo ‘Without Francesco Bagnaia’s crash in India, Jorge Martín would have a lower crest’ – Cristian Gabarrini aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

For the first time in his career, Marc Márquez will ride a motorcycle other than a Honda in MotoGP – he joins Gresini aboard a Ducati in 2024. After several years of dominance, the last few seasons have been challenging, not only for the Japanese manufacturer but also for the rider himself, with the performances and results way below the expectations.

In the team change he will make next year, Casey Stoner believes that #93 may finally see the reason behind all the troubless. The former rider told Crash.net:

– Honda have been struggling for a couple of years. It’s easy to sit on the outside and say «the team haven’t been doing a good job». But it’s not actually the team. It goes way further above than that. We’re not sure how much effort they’re putting into the racing. I know there were a few position changes in Japan and it seems to be affecting the team. The two Japanese manufacturers seem to be a step or two behind. […]. It’s puzzling that the Japanese manufacturers are equally behind the Europeans. Marc is going to give himself a shot to understand whether it’s him or the bike.

O conteúdo ‘Marc Márquez is going to give himself a shot to understand whether it’s him or the bike’ – Casey Stoner aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

Álex Rins competed in the MotoGP Indonesian GP and was in action in Australia on Friday, but the pain caused by loose screws in his injured leg led to his premature withdrawal. The Thai GP is already next weekend, and the rider is uncertain.

This also poses some troubles for LCR Honda. The team will have to find a substitute for Rins in the coming days when two of those who occasionally filled in for him are unavailable: Iker Lecuona has the World Superbike round in Jerez, and Stefan Bradl told the site SPEEDWEEK.com that he’s testing at the same circuit and can’t go to Buriram.

So, if Rins is absent, there may be an even less regular rider in the Thai round. Last season, Tetsuta Nagashima acted as a substitute for the injured Takaaki Nakagami in Buriram, in addition to being a wildcard in Japan.

O conteúdo Álex Rins may miss the Thai GP… and finding a replacement won’t be easy aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

When everything seemed to indicate that Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati) could win the MotoGP Australian GP, it was his teammate Johann Zarco who secured the victory. In the battle, there was also Francesco Bagnaia, competing with a medium rear tire instead of the soft one that the Spanish rider unsuccessfully risked. Even so, he achieved the best result among those who made that choice.

In the Italian’s view, Martín was the only rider who stuck with the soft tire since the practice sessions, but he emphasized that race performance is different: ‘I think he was the only one with the possibility to race with the soft because yesterday he did many laps and he was quite fast. I think the maximum amount were 19 with stop and start. During all the race it’s always a different story and when I saw that the gap he took at the start wasn’t good enough to remain with a bit of margin in the last laps I was considering it’.

Focused on proper tire management, Bagnaia believes he adopted the right strategy and attributed merit to Zarco’s victory: ‘In a moment, during the race, I was just trying to be very careful with the rear tyre because I knew that was the correct choice and I knew that as I soon as Brad [Binder] and Fabio [Di Giannantonio] started to fight we would catch them easier, without pushing. So I think this was the correct choice, the correct strategy, and I just missed a bit to be close to Johann [Zarco] in the last lap. But he was in a better situation with the traction, he was working very well with the rear tyre, so he was deserving the victory more than me’.

O conteúdo ‘Jorge Martín was the only one with the possibility to race with the soft tyre’ – Francesco Bagnaia aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

Before the sprint race was canceled, the warm-up for the MotoGP Australian GP took place in the rain, and Maverick Viñales was the fastest. The Aprilia rider had good sensations with his bike – so much so that he had something to figure out.

The Spanish rider explained that he had a level of traction in the rain that he didn’t have when it was dry at Phillip Island – something that didn’t happen for the first time in 2023:

– I was looking good, the other Aprilias not that much. But honestly I was with a really good feeling. It’s something we must understand, because on wet I found the traction I don’t have on dry. So we need to understand and we need to study because it’s important. In Japan, eventhough I crashed and I changed the bike, I was one the fastests on track without having the motivation to push. We need to understand, honestly I’m curiously to really go deep in the wet data because we have something we are missing on the dry. Honestly in the warm-up I felt really good.

O conteúdo ‘On wet I found the traction I don’t have on dry’ – Maverick Viñales aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

After two years, Fabio Di Giannantonio will be leaving the Gresini team at the end of this MotoGP season. His spot will be taken by Marc Márquez, and even though he is sad about the outcome, he recognizes that Márquez is no ordinary rider.

In an interview with TNT Sports, the Italian rider stated that he was very sad because he had truly put his all into the team. He said: ‘It’s a little sad for me because I really wanted to reach the main goal with this team. But on the other hand, it’s Marc Márquez. We are professionals, and it can happen, it’s normal because it’s Márquez’.

However, Di Giannantonio also expressed some dissatisfaction with how the Gresini team managed the situation: ‘I also didn’t like how the team handled the situation, honestly. They could have had more trust in me and Franky and our work. They could have waited a bit longer. Marc is coming; he’s the best, an eight-time champion, so it’s fine, it is what it is’.

O conteúdo Fabio Di Giannantonio replaced by Marc Márquez: ‘I didn’like how the team handled the situation’ aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

Johann Zarco was confirmed as a rider for LCR Honda in MotoGP in 2024 some time ago. With Marc Márquez’s departure from Repsol Honda, the factory team of the manufacturer, the current Prima Pramac rider was promptly speculated as an option for that position. However, he is not receptive to the idea.

Speaking to Sky Sport, the Frenchman admitted that he didn’t particularly like the proposal from Honda, preferring to play it safe and focus on LCR Honda:

– When my manager came to me and talked about two races, in Indonesia and Australia, either with Lucio [Cecchinello, LCR team director] or with Honda, we saw that Honda and also Alberto [Puig, Repsol Honda team director] offered me things I didn’t like. So, I prefer to fully commit to Lucio to change things and work in that direction. Having that factory team, but when we’re not 100 percent sure about things, the project scared me.

O conteúdo Honda’s factory team project ‘scared’ Johann Zarco aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

Due to the bad weather, the MotoGP Australian GP was limited to the main race, but this didn’t stop significant changes in the championship standings.

Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) solidified his lead with a second-place finish at Phillip Island. He is now 27 points ahead of Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati), who was leading until the last lap but finished in fifth place. Marco Bezzecchi (Mooney VR46 Racing Team/Ducati) is in third place, now 73 points behind the leader.

Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM) is fourth, and with his first victory, Johann Zarco (Prima Pramac/Ducati) moved up to fifth, swapping places with Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia). Fabio Quartararo remains in tenth place as the best Yamaha rider, while Marc Márquez (Repsol Honda) is in 16th place as the strongest rider for the “golden wing” manufacturer.

World Championship rider standings:

O conteúdo Francesco Bagnaia leaves Australia with a gap of more than one race win in the World Championship aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.