Bezzecchi Disaster in Brazil: What Happened to the Aprilia Rider?

Disappointing Bezzecchi in MotoGP pre-qualifying in Brazil: something didn’t work and solutions need to be found. Getting through Q1 won’t be easy.

The particular conditions at the Autodromo Internacional de Goiania–Ayrton Senna track produced a few surprises in Friday’s MotoGP Practice sessions. One of them involves Marco Bezzecchi, 20th on the timesheets and therefore not directly qualified for Q2. Considering that Jorge Martin and Ai Ogura are in the top 10, it’s hard to say there’s a general Aprilia problem. Both he and Raul Fernandez (21st) failed to be sufficiently competitive, and there’s a lot of work to do in their respective garages to turn the situation around for the rest of the weekend.

In FP1 he managed the third-fastest time on rain tires, but in the afternoon on slicks the rider from Rimini wasn’t able to be as effective as others: “The morning wasn’t bad,” he told Motosan. “I felt good and was quite fast. Then in the afternoon, especially on the first run, we had some problems that we still need to understand. The engineers are working on it, and we’ll analyze the situation together.”

Bezzecchi doesn’t know exactly what happened, what didn’t work from a technical standpoint. He couldn’t be competitive enough despite trying his best: “The problem was at the beginning—” he explains “—when the track was in optimal condition. I wasn’t fast enough, while the others were, so I lost the rhythm. In the end I tried something different, I took a risk with slicks, but the rain intensified and it was impossible to improve.”

Starting from Q1 could be a chance to gain more experience on the Goiania track and perhaps have an edge for both Q2 and the Sprint: “Why not?” Bezzecchi replies. “I hope I can make it through, it’s very important. For now that’s the goal, we’ll see what happens.”