What an exciting weekend it was in Valencia. Francesco Bagnaia was on winning form yet again to win the final round of the 2021 MotoGP™ season at Valencia in the Gran Premio Motul de la Comunitat Valenciana. He battled throughout the race with rookie Jorge Martin (Pramac Racing) who took second place, with Jack Miller (Ducati Lenovo Team) crossing the line in third place, making it Ducati’s first ever premier class top three finish.
During the course of the race, Bagnaia set a new circuit race lap record of 1’31.042, breaking the previous record set by Marc Marquez in 2019 and broke the previous race duration record with a time of 41’15.481, beating the previous fastest race time by more than five seconds.
Friday started on an unexpected wet note with FP1 taking place under heavy rain and cool temperatures, in the process robbing the teams and riders of one valuable dry set-up session. However, the rain in Spain thankfully went back to the plain in the afternoon, and FP2 was dry but still cool which gave the Michelin Power Slicks their first outing of the weekend. Despite the cool conditions, the riders were pushing hard for a place in the top ten and the top three riders were separated by less than seven-hundredths of a second.
The sunny weather that we are more accustomed to in Valencia returned for Saturday and in FP3 once they had got a feel for the grip levels of the track on the different tyre options, the riders started putting in fast lap times in the final 10 minutes of the session to try to book place directly in Q2. The accessible performance of the tyres was highlighted by the fact that 0.296 seconds covered the top 10 riders.
In a dramatic Q2 session it was a fight that saw the second front row lock-out of the season for Ducati, with Martin taking pole position with a lap time of 1’ 29.936 on his Hard front and Soft rear Michelin Power Slicks, ahead of Bagnaia and Miller in second and third places respectively.
Commenting after this, the final race of the 2021 season, Piero Taramasso, Michelin Two-Wheel Motorsport Manager, said: “Yet again this was a very good weekend for us from a tyre perspective. The close lap times set during the sessions on both Friday and Saturday show that the allocation worked very well for all riders and constructors, and this in turn helped to create close and exciting battles on track such as those we saw in FP3 and Q2.
“The race was a good end to the season, and I’d like to say well done to Ducati for their history-making top three finish. I’m sure the spectators appreciated the gripping show on track today, which like the rest of this season was facilitated by the high grip levels and very consistent performance of our tyres which was shown by the new race lap record, and the fast lap times from start to finish.
“Finally, I’d just like to say congratulations to Valentino Rossi on his 10th place finish in his last ever MotoGP race. Grazie Vale. Ciao!”
