Winners and losers from MotoGP’s British GP

Silverstone produced a second dramatic, strategic grand prix in as many race weekends – novelty winner included! The unique, high-speed British venue and the chilly, windy weather threw down a number of challenges to the MotoGP field, with some responding better than others. Here’s who impressed, and who didn’t.

Winner: Marco Bezzecchi

Marco Bezzecchi, Aprilia Racing

Photo by: Adrian Dennis / AFP via Getty Images

While this win clearly had much to do with tyre choice and management, those paying close attention will tell you it didn’t come entirely out of the blue. Aprilia’s (currently) solo factory rider came into the British GP weekend on the back of an encouraging improvement in France, where he had achieved a season-best seventh place in qualifying.

Despite qualifying only 11th at Silverstone, Bezzecchi’s sprint on Saturday flagged him as one to watch in the grand prix. He had fallen almost to the back of the field on lap one, but still raced through to fourth on a day when others were struggling with tyre life. The fact that he also set fourth-fastest lap time suggested he could be fast as well as smooth. It boded well for a day when taking care of rubber was going to be even more critical – and perhaps gave him the nudge to choose the fast-but-fragile soft front on Sunday.

His ride in the grand prix was a fine display of patience mixed with speed. He started fine but did not shoot to the front quite so fast as Jack Miller or Johann Zarco. Yet errors ahead of him put him in the mix soon enough, and he started picking rivals off in earnest on lap three. By lap six he was second, which became first when Quartararo’s bike failed him six laps later. From there he finished the job in difficult circumstances to take his fourth win.

Loser: Francesco Bagnaia

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Every time it looks like Bagnaia has taken a step forward, it seems he manages to trot back a couple. Things started well at Silverstone when he qualified on the front row and, more significantly, ahead of Marc Marquez for the first time this season.

But as soon as the lights went green for the sprint on Saturday, he had the familiar sight of his team-mate’s GP25 ahead of him once again. While Marc enjoyed a straightforward run to second place, Bagnaia’s rear tyre let go towards the end of the race and it was all he could do to hang on to sixth place. Interestingly, he still laid blame for the issue at the root of all evils, his front end. The rear wear, he said, was the result of him having to compensate for the front’s ongoing unwillingness to communicate with him.

Bagnaia had a bad first start to the grand prix as his front wheel popped into the air. When he got a second chance, though, he took it, very briefly leading the race. He wasn’t on the right tyre in the opening phase, but Marc was in the same boat and spent a couple of laps behind Bagnaia. On lap three, however, Pecco’s nemesis shoved past him.

Marc immediately offered an invitation by running wide at Copse, but Pecco copied him in an oddly synchronised factory Ducati misadventure. That put them down to ninth and 10th, but they wouldn’t be in each other’s company for long. Marquez found his rhythm and recovered to the podium, while Bagnaia found only the gravel trap at Luffield.

The emotions he let out after the lap four crash suggested a new low in the double world champion’s troubled season. Having taken his medicine stoically thus far in 2023, this time he made no attempt to hide his utter despair as he sank to his knees.

Winner: The soft Michelin front tyres

Michelin Tyres

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

This was a juicy weekend in the tyre department, to the point where you only needed a passing interest in rubber compounds to know that this was shaping up to be a race that could spring a surprise. Silverstone offered cold temperatures on the one hand whilst still threatening wear on the other. For Sunday, you could either choose the soft front for good feedback, decent grip and a quick rise to working temperature, or you could pick the medium front to be sure your tyre wouldn’t fall off a cliff at the end of the day.

Fabio Quartararo, Bezzecchi and Johann Zarco all showed that the soft was the right option. Had Quartararo not been struck by technical heartbreak, that compound would have swept the podium. Jack Miller also had a good race to seventh on the soft front, though he could perhaps have done better given he ran second early on.

While the soft front Michelin was a clear winner on the day, what made the race so interesting was that nobody knew this beforehand. Nor, indeed, was it entirely certain until the finish line was in sight. There is much to be said for weekends when the best tyre is not obvious.

Loser: Fermin Aldeguer

Fermin Aldeguer, Gresini Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Silverstone was a rude tumble back to earth for the youngster who had picked up his first couple of podiums at the French Grand Prix two weeks earlier.

The Gresini Ducati rider continued his impressive qualifying form by booking himself into fifth on the grid. But the races saw a return of the same untidiness that had kept him out of the top three until Le Mans.

Fermin Aldeguer held his grid position tidily enough at the start of the sprint, only to copy Marc Marquez’s mistake at Village on lap two. This dropped him to the lower reaches of the top 10, but there was more drama to come when he tried to pass Pedro Acosta on the last lap. The rookie ended up the loser in the ensuing contact and wound up 14th.

Amusingly, the incident induced Acosta, the man who was a rookie only last year, to tut about rookies having a thing or two to learn!

Come Sunday, Aldeguer was once again doing reasonably well early in the race. Running the medium front tyre, he was eighth approaching Copse on the opening lap – then ran off the road at the quick right-hander. He dropped to 15th but recovered well enough to be classified eighth after Luca Marini’s tyre pressure penalty.

In Aldeguer’s defence, he erred on both days at the same spots that caught out Marc Marquez. In the chill and gusts served up by Silverstone, the scrappy races must go down as an understandable blip in the 20-year-old’s first MotoGP season.

Winner: Fabio Quartararo

Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Being included on the right side of this list will be scant consolation for the man driven to tears by his bad luck on Sunday. But it would be remiss not to record Quartararo’s outstanding work this weekend. Once again the Frenchman offered an indication that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Marc Marquez.

If his poles at Jerez and Le Mans were impressive, they weren’t completely beyond the realms of imagination on those circuits. But at fast Silverstone? On a bike fully 10km/h off the pace through the speed traps? Wow.

Not only did the Frenchman bring up the rear of the Q2 dozen in terms of top speed, he did his best lap all on his lonesome, without the benefit of a tow. Consider that his team-mate Alex Rins, who got into Ducati slipstreams and was several km/h faster past the speed gun than Fabio on his flier, could qualify only 12th. That is some going through the corners by the man from Nice.

While the sprint again confirmed that he cannot yet flatter the bike to such an extent in a ‘normal’ race, Sunday showed that if the chance to gamble presents itself, Quartararo knows how to take advantage. He did everything right by hitting the front and building up a lead big enough to withstand even a late drop in tyre performance. That his ride-height device robbed him was cruelty personified.

Loser: Maverick Vinales

Maverick Vinales, Red Bull KTM Tech 3

Photo by: KTM Images

Ever since the Americas Grand Prix, Vinales had been the strongest, most consistent and most optimistic of the four riders in the KTM brigade. He even stood on the podium in Qatar. But his good run came to an end at Silverstone, a weekend he euphemistically described as “quite challenging”.

That assessment went for the entire crew as much as it did for Maverick, as the Austrian marque seriously struggled at the Northamptonshire track.

The trouble for Vinales began long before the racing, and much of it was mechanical. He sprang a surprise on Friday by failing to qualify directly for Q2, but there was a technical issue involved. Then, when Q1 came around the next day, his KTM broke down and he was robbed of the all-important second run. He thus ended up 18th on the grid, condemned to start in the kind of territory he hadn’t seen since the first two weekends of the year.

Predictably, Vinales couldn’t progress dramatically in the sprint, which he finished 13th. Sunday offered a chance to gamble with the soft front tyre, but he didn’t follow factory rider Pedro Acosta’s lead by doing so. He was ultimately classified 11th and, like most of the KTM riders, couldn’t wait to get back to the European mainland and more favourable circuits.