MotoGP 2021: Results of the Malaysian Grand Prix, Sepang (41 photos)

Malaysian Grand Prix 2018

2018 Malaysian motorcycle Grand

was the eighteenth round of the 2021 MotoGP season.
It was held at the Sepang International Circuit in Sepang on November 4, 2021. Marc Marquez rides a wheelie to celebrate winning the MotoGP race.

Classification [edit]

MotoGP[edit]

• Jordi Torres broke his finger during training and withdrew from the competition.
• Jorge Lorenzo withdrew from Friday's practice with a wrist injury sustained at the Thai Grand Prix and was replaced by Michele Pirro.

Moto2[edit]

Moto3[edit]

MotoGP: Malaysian Grand Prix - Fire, Water and Asphalt Burst

The Ducati Team came to Sepang to continue its amazing winning streak. Sepang was the first track where the new Ducati pilots gained the upper hand, consolidated the result and confidently moved forward. Was this due to the severe weather conditions in Malaysia that plagued the 2021 and 2021 weekends?

MOTOGONKI.RU, October 31, 2021 - Andrea Dovizioso became the 9th MotoGP winner of 2021, winning Ducati's first Grand Prix since Casey Stoner left the factory garage in 2010. It was undoubtedly a triumph - the first real breakthrough. But they could have taken a double!

Party Gold

But Dovizioso's comfortable victory and the podium finish of the Yamaha Factory team-mates are also associated with the mistakes made by their rivals - Marquez and Crutchlow, who fell in the final stage of the race, as well as Dovi's Ducati Team team-mate Andrea Iannone.

It can be debated what led to Marquez's crash: his relaxed state after taking the title at Motegi, an error in the bike's setup, or an unexpected choice made before leaving the pit lane. Many people focus on Mark's choice of carbon brakes in the rain race. Until the very last minute, the motorcycle stood in the Repsol Honda garage without any disks at all - there was a discussion going on. At the last moment, Marquez asked to change the rotors to carbon. As he explained later, he was confident that this would give him more chances in the battle with Ducati and Yamaha and, in general, he was right: the Brembo carbon wheels worked perfectly, the reason for the lowside braking at turn 11 was a driver error.

Marquez: I'm fine, guys!

It wasn't the brakes that mattered. Moreover, Mark performed many times in the rain on carbon fiber and did not experience any problems! By winning the rainy San Marino Grand Prix in 2021, he put an end to the debate about Brembo's ability to weld a moisture-resistant polymer. Plus, all sorts of brake cases that prevent water drops from getting on them...

But it was precisely the ability to brake clearly and measuredly almost in stoppies, even in rainy racing conditions, that became the key feature for the Ducati Desmosedici - the main feature that Dovi learned to use so well!

Andrea Dovizioso has been the leader of all rain sessions in Sepang since 2021

Preparations for the 2021 Grand Prix also took place in very difficult conditions, when from session to session, even during sessions, the conditions and degree of humidity changed: it was raining, then dry, then raining again. And Dovizioso led every wet session.

It was only on Saturday, when the sun had completely dried and warmed the Sepang asphalt, that Marquez took a step forward in FP4. He expected to take pole position and some prize the next day. But even on a dry track, Dovi, Zarco and Pedrosa fought for pole position, and it was Pedrosa who won this battle, ahead of the Frenchman by 0.017 seconds. And Marquez ended up on the 3rd line.

In the morning it rained again - the race started on a completely wet track. Marquez made an impressive leap from the start, breaking into the leading group, he even got ahead of Dovizioso, and a long battle ensued between them. If you remember, at that moment there were no guarantees that the title would remain with Honda!

Twice, almost crashing right under the wheels of the Ducati, Mark slowed down when there were no less than 15 laps left to the finish - and finished 18 seconds behind Dovi. Andrea, on the contrary, improved after that, passed Lorenzo, then Zarco - and won.

Ducati Factory riders 1-2 on the podium at Sepang 2021

The second part of the story about Sepang: rain is not as bad as unbearable heat with almost 90 percent humidity!

Humidity does not have much effect on the motorcycle, but it does cause a lot of inconvenience for the pilot. Sweating increases, moisture leaves the body rapidly (as you know, a MotoGP pilot can lose up to 2.5 liters of fluid during a race). In this case, the blood thickens, attention becomes dull, concentration disappears, the brain begins to “dull”, hence the mistakes.

And here’s what Alex Rinsa’s (Team Ecstar Suzuki) boss Marcel Casot says about the heat: “If we compare the difficulty of the conditions in Sepang, I would say that the sun complicates the work many times more than the clouds! The heat affects the asphalt and tires so much that at some moments the electronics do not have time to work out the reduction in grip. Secondly, engine performance drops, and you have to add power - remove the limit on speed and traction. This is directly related to the first point - reducing the grip: more torque - more rubber consumption. We have to find a balance, which takes a lot of time and effort.”

In 2021, Iannone and Rins did not shine in Sepang. How is it this time?

Last Sunday Andrea Iannone brought Suzuki his 7th cup since the beginning of the season, Rins finished 5th in Australia. Suzuki pilots climbed to the podium regularly this year: the first series - Argentina, Texas, Spain, then there was Assen, a pause, and a new series - Aragon, Japan, Australia. Seven tracks in three different formats. Particularly successful for Suzuki were smooth, high-speed tracks, like Assen and Phillip Island, Argentina; but stop-n-go routes are no longer alien to them - Motegi and Jerez, for example.

Although Sepang and Phillip Island are similar in many respects (the same long arcs of turns, fast straights and a smooth ride throughout most of the circuit), the Malaysian Grand Prix will follow a different scenario. Whether the race is wet or dry, the Suzuki pilots - on paper - should lose the advantages they had on the cool, but still completely dry Australian asphalt.

Start of the 2021 Malaysian Grand Prix - Joan Zarco leads!

We can assume that Yamaha, Honda and Ducati will once again be at the head of the field.

In Sepang, all the factories are playing with power, trying to harness more horses to their cart. Sepang is where Honda Racing unleashes the full potential of the RC213V engine, which produces up to 280 hp. But Ducati has an even larger herd. Suzuki GSX-RR has only 250. In the rain everything happens smoother, and the level of factory motorcycles is more or less equal - this is a matter of banal safety, so Suzuki will have a new chance to confirm the correctness of the chosen path for the World Championship.

It will be interesting to compare the progress that Suzuki has made over the year! The 2021 race in Sepang ended in horror for the factory team drivers - Rins slipped and Iannone finished outside the points zone in 17th.

Moto Grand Prix teams reacted with some distrust to the decision of Sepang and Dromo

One more small nuance.

The new Sepang International Circuit asphalt, laid in 2016, was not ideal. Well, besides the fact that several incidents occurred at the Formula 1 stage due to the not very careful laying of utilities by the Malays, during the rain sessions of MotoGP a feature of the new surface was revealed - “sweating” after rain and subsequent warming up. There was a similar problem with Monza at World Superbike: the water after the rain did not go away and evaporate, but when well heated, it rose back through the pores, forming wet spots on the surface. Considering that morning steam and moisture settling in the evening hours in Sepang are the norm, this simply could not be tolerated!

The black stripe on the asphalt is not the insertion of a new piece, these are traces of the sealing polymer

The MotoGP Safety Commission double-checked everything at the IRTA tests in February 2021 and ordered Sepang to redo the work. The Italian contractor, Dromo, found a solution to avoid re-laying the asphalt: they applied a special sealing polymer to critical turns, which simply clogged the pores of the pavement. Moisture now flows into the drainage without lingering on the surface. However, before the 2021 MotoGP race, the pilots noted that small puddles had formed in some places because of this. But... this cannot be compared with Silverstone!

Michelin is confident that their rain tires are performing just fine today on all the tracks where they have been tested, and Sepang is among the first. So even if the race is rainy, only the pilots themselves will be able to throw up surprises, making some unpredictable mistakes. But if, after two days of rainy practices, the Malaysian Grand Prix takes place on a dry track, it will be fire!

So what's up with the weather? Details: Malaysian Grand Prix schedule and weekend weather forecast.

Championship position after the race[edit]

• in bold
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Moto3[edit]