We might as well get this out of the way straight off the bat; Balaton Park in Hungary is just not the best track for MotoGP bikes or necessarily conducive to exciting racing. It’s too tight and twisty, and the bikes seem to be hardly able to get out of their own way. After the speed glories of Mugello, it’s a bit like a glorified go-kart track, but it’s on the calendar and the circus is going there whether we like it or not, and, at least, it’s a different challenge for the teams.
Mind you, the racing this time around wasn’t bereft of excitement and interest, perhaps because of the nature of the track, which brought more teams and riders into the mix than normal. Or that could simply have been through Jorge Martin’s clottish and cack-handed braking manoeuvre at the start of the GP on Sunday; taking out three-quarters of the Aprilia contingency and four of the expected front-runners will have that effect.
One thing that we did find out – as if we needed reminding – is that you write off Marc Marquez at your peril. Since his last surgery, he has been saying that it will take time for him to be fully fit again, that we mustn’t expect too much from him until the Czech GP at the earliest. And then he goes and achieves the treble in Hungary; pole position, Sprint and GP wins. OK, so maybe the slow nature of the track helped, as did the anti-clockwise direction, but championships have been won from as far back as Marquez is from points leader Bezzecchi, and, if the Aprilias can’t learn to play nice, then no one should bet against Marquez being there to pick up the pieces.
As mentioned, the nature of the track layout brought some new players into Q2, including Jack Miller (Yamaha) and Diogo Moreira (Honda). In the latter, there are all the hallmarks of another Pedro Acosta; a young and precocious talent, with no respect for the status quo and who, early indications suggest, will be on every team manager’s shortlist, and on a factory bike sooner rather than later.
Let’s not forget he’s riding a Honda that might be showing signs of improvement, but which is still several steps behind the Ducatis and Aprilias (and Acosta’s KTM!). In the last couple of races, he’s been running easily in the top half of the field, and it was no different in the Hungary Sprint; starting 11th, running sixth by lap two and finishing the race in seventh; the other Hondas finished 12th and 15th. And one of those is a former World Champion! Moreira then went on to finish sixth in the GP.
Acosta could do nothing about Marquez but still ran a solid second throughout and crossed the line in that position. What is he doing on the KTM that the other KTM riders can’t do? Enea Bastiannini seems to be second-best of the KTM runners, but Binder and Viñales are mired in the throes of lacklustre performances.
Is there something going on behind the scenes at KTM? Are Acosta and, to a lesser extent, Bastiannini getting the pick of the latest parts and tech, leaving Binder and Viñales with used or older parts and tech? What is fairly obvious is that Acosta certainly is the focus of the team right now, even if it is assumed he is defecting to Ducati for 2027. On the strength of his performances, you’d have to say that that is the right strategy for KTM, but is he only performing thus because of the best parts and tech?
What would have been even more galling for Binder and Viñales would have been being beaten to the line in the GP by Alex Marquez’s stand-in and current World Superbike rider, Iker Lecuona.
The start of the Grand Prix was a carbon copy of the Sprint, with Marquez taking the hole shot from Acosta, but that’s where the similarities come to a crashing halt, if you’ll pardon the pun. Jorge Martin thoroughly cocking up his braking is one thing, but taking out your team mate, a satellite Aprilia, and two Ducatis is quite another. For Martin, his closest title rival not gaining any points advantage from Martin’s non-finish would be some consolation, but a double long-lap penalty at the next race negates that advantage.
Whilst the dust was settling from that, Acosta was taking advantage of his decision to start on the soft rear tyre – while everyone around him was on the medium – and took the lead from Marquez and quickly stretched out a 1.5-second lead. But somehow, we couldn’t get worried; Michelin had assured the teams that the soft rear would last the race without a drop-off in performance, but there was just something predatory about Marquez’s presence in second place on the medium rear. This was confirmed as Marquez closed right up on Acosta and the pair engaged in a tussle for a couple of laps before Marquez made a pass stick, and that, to all intents and purposes, was that, the Spaniard taking his 100th MotoGP victory, which coincidentally was also Ducati’s 100th MotoGP victory!
Behind those two and Bagnaia running a lonely but secure third, there was a great battle for fourth. Miller had been a beneficiary of the chaos up ahead at the start and was running fourth. Right with him, however, were Marini, Moreira, Mir, Ogura and Lecuona, all of whom got past Miller at one stage or another. As is becoming usual, Mir crashed out, while Ogura used his late-race pace and scythed his way through the lot of them to lie fifth, two seconds behind Marini, a gap that was quickly closed, the Aprilia passing the Honda on the penultimate lap. That made the top ten, at the finish, Ducati, KTM, Ducati, Aprilia, Honda, Honda, Ducati, Yamaha, KTM, KTM, Binder taking that last spot. Unsuitable the Balaton Park track might be, but it does throw up interesting results!
An emphatically successful weekend it might have been for Marquez – his second treble in succession at this circuit – but the man himself was quick to manage expectations;
“The comeback is still not finished because we won, but it’s a left circuit. There were only three right corners with hard braking points, so this helped me to breathe. I feel like I’m still far from my performance, from the way I want to ride. However, I’m still fast. Let’s see if we can continue, but now it’s time to enjoy this victory. The championship is super long, but at the moment, we are not in shape,” he said. “I don’t feel that I’m ready to fight, honestly speaking. This weekend, yes, but at Mugello we were 10 seconds behind the leader. So, let’s see. It depends a lot on Brno and Assen, and then on the summer break. I still have to reach my new 100%. And from that point I will understand.”
As for Martin’s issue that caused the crash, Jack Miller put the blame squarely on the front suspension locking devices used at the start of the races. Approaching the start line after the warm-up lap, you’ll see the riders braking sharply in order to lock the forks into a compressed state. This works with the rear suspension lowering device to prevent wheelies and aid faster acceleration.
When the riders brake for the first corner, weight is transferred to the front of the bike, and the fork lock unclips, so the suspension can work as normal through and out of the corner and for the rest of the race.
Miller’s point is that the need to unlock the forks necessitates unnaturally heavy braking, which is fine at a track such as Mugello, where the speed approaching the first corner is high, and so the braking forces are high. But, at Balaton Park, where speed into the first corner is much lower at the start, normal braking forces might not be sufficient to unlock the device, so the rider is forced to brake harder than necessary, which can upset the bike, as happened with Martin.
It all points to the sense in the 2027-on rule banning start devices and also suspension-lowering devices, as used throughout a race when exiting corners. As Miller said, if no one has them, then everyone is in the same boat.
Two weeks until the next race, in the Czech Republic, then Assen a week after that and Germany two weeks after that, before the month-long summer break. The title race is definitely getting interesting now, but who will head into the break with the advantage? Clever money is on Bezzecchi and Aprilia, but, as Hungary demonstrated, the first person you have to beat – or avoid on track is your team mate!
