MotoGP Bharat Day One takeaway: Beware the first turn

A (first) turn for the worse: Riders were apprehensive of the circuit safety, but it was the technical and physical nature of the track that surprised them
The key takeaway from the first day that Moto GP bikes were in action in India was the high number of run-offs that took place on the first turn.

Much was made of the riders’ previous apprehensions about the safety of the track – in particular, the proximity of the barriers to the high-speed corners – but once the bikes hit the track for the first time here at the Buddh International Circuit (BIC), it was the technical and physical nature of the circuit that took the riders by surprise.

Primary among those technical difficulties, as a consensus among all the riders, was the very small margin for error on Turn 1, where they struggled for grip and continuously went wide onto the gravel in their search for the perfect braking zone and timing. Missing the racing line even by a fraction, according to the riders, could end the race.

“Some parts of the track are very difficult, like corner one,” reigning champion and series leader Francesco Bagnaia told the media on Friday. “You have just one (racing) line and you can brake only at one point. If you miss the line or the point even by one metre, you are going wide. So it’s quite intense.”

“That (Turn 1) is difficult, so difficult it is hard to explain,” Raul Fernandez said. “You will think that you have the chance to go hard and brake later, and you miss it by a fraction, and you’re wide. Generally, we just have no grip,” he added.

VR46-sweep

The VR46 Ducati lineup made it a clean sweep at practice, Marco Bezzecchi topped the first, and Luca Marini put in the fastest lap of the second session. Marini was one of the many riders to go wide at Turn 1 early in the second session, while the most serious incident happened in the morning laps, with LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami having a nasty tumble after his bike got dug between the asphalt run-off and gravel also at Turn 1.

The first turn is the one to watch throughout this weekend, as riders will go into it aggressively on two separate starts – in the sprint on Saturday, and full race on Sunday – which may have the potential to cause a few incidents. “We need to ask for very strong penalties,” Aprilia rider Maverick Vinales said. “It’s very easy to make a mistake there at the race start.”