to attack Miller into turn five
to sit a barely believable sec-
ond. Pramac Ducati duo Jorge
Martin and Johann Zarco, and
Miguel Oliveira (Red Bull KTM)
had also avoided the carnage to
make up a lead octet.
Bagnaia's crew immediately
made their rider aware of Quar-
tararo's ill fortune. Little did they
know a marshal had crashed
a scooter returning to the pits
with the Frenchman onboard.
And the Yamaha man would
have been forgiven for thinking
his day couldn't get any worse
when teammate Miller slotted
into second at the start of lap
three. Enjoying protection from
behind, the contest appeared
to be heading only one way as
Bagnaia effortlessly built up a
7/10th advantage by the sixth
lap.
Yet the Aragon track surface
is the oldest on the calendar.
Never resurfaced since laid
in 2009, riders were wary of
a significant drop in rear tire
performance on asphalt with
next to no grip and stressed the
need to manage the throttle at
the track's notorious long lefts.
Thus, Bagnaia didn't get car-
ried away. That gave Bastianini
a chance to recover after his
first-lap contretemps, with sharp
moves coming on Binder for
third at the beginning of lap four,
then Miller at turn 15 on lap six.
The Australian's afternoon soon
got worse, with Binder repassing
VOLUME 59 ISSUE 38 SEPTEMBER 20, 2022 P59
Practice. P1 will last for 45 minutes,
P2, 60 minutes. Places in Q1 and
Q2 will be determined by times
across Friday only. FP3 will start on
Saturday, and last 30 minutes be-
fore qualifying—Q1 and Q2 remain—
which will take place just after. The
sprint race will not be counted as
grand prix victories in the official
statistics and machines will be
limited to an allowed usage of 12
liters of fuel. Sunday warmup will be
reduced to 10 minutes. Riders will
then meet fans before the main race
kicks off. "In my opinion it is nice to
make our sport easier to understand
for everybody because the easiest
sports are the most interesting for
all the people, like football [soccer]:
everybody can take a ball," said
Luca Marini. "In MotoGP nobody
can take a MotoGP! Just let the
people understand how it works and
to make the riders close to them is a
good way."
Briefly...
(Left) Nothing but bad luck for points leader Fabio Quartararo who
got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and went down and
out on the first lap. (Below) Aleix Espargaro (41) leads Brad Binder
(33) and Jack Miller en route to another podium.
