#data stuff

Hey, if it weren't for Marc Márquez this might be known as the track of Alex Rins.

Best at COTA: Marc. Barring only 2022, Marc has either crashed out or won every single race in which he's participated since 2013. Notably though, he has not actually won a full race since 2021, though he's won a sprint. (Results shown below are recorded in points scored, not position! A red 0 is a crash DNF)

Worst at COTA: Luca Marini. It's not a catastrophic record but it is the worst of the current riders who have finished more than 3 races. He DID get on the podium with a P2 in 2023, but the rest of his record is pretty mid. (Again, results recorded in points! the next highest score is a P6 -- 10 points)

Best After Marc: Alex Rins has an inexplicable and deep passion for Austin, Texas. He's won it four times, once each in Moto3 and Moto2 and twice in MotoGP, suggesting it's not solely the bike he's on, and averages a P2?????? I don't know how to explain how uncommon an average that high is. He's not one of the riders for whom I have a list of his averages at each track, but I think we can safely assume that this is his favorite in terms of performance.

Also go well here: Maverick, which could be funny if he really is in the process of breaking up with jlo. Interestingly Enea rounds out the top five.

Pecco is ranked 6th best at COTA but won last year and actually has a better sprint record here than his full race record (for what good three datapoints can give anyone).

Joan Mir has crashed out the last three years running. Please stop that Joan.

COTA head-to-head by teammates:

Aprilia: Advantage Martín (average P4) over Bezzechi (av. P6)

Ducati: Advantage Marc, who may however by cursed (av. P1) over Pecco (av. P5)

Honda: Advantage Mir (av. P8) over Marini (P10). Frankly they're both kinda bad here.

KTM: Tentative advantage Acosta* over Binder (av. P8). Binder isn't particularly good here but he at least has finished a race at this track more than 3 times. Pedro has crashed out twice and podiumed twice, including a P2 in MotoGP.

Yamaha: Advantage Rins (av. P2) over Quartararo (av. P7)

Trackhouse: No advantage. Tied at P7 average. I was going to use sprints as a tiebreaker but Ogura has only started one, but Fernandez on the other hand has a total crap sprint record.

Gresini: Tentative advantage Àlex* (av. P7) only because his femur isn't broken and he's finished more than two (2) races here unlike Fermín (2 crash DNFs, a P7, and a P3).

VR46: Advantage Di Giannantonio (av. P6) over Morbidelli (av. P9).

LCR Honda: default advantage to Zarco*; Moreira has only finished 3 races here: crash DNF, P4, P14, and a zero-points finish.

Tech3: Verrry slim advantage to Viñales (av. P4) over Bastianini (av. also P4). Averages are calculated by average points score; both are in the P4 range, but Maverick's average points score is a bit higher. Both do well here.

Pramac: Default advantage to Miller (av. P5) over Razgatlıoğlu, who has never raced here on a MotoGP bike, though he did do some Red Bull Rookie Cup races at COTA.

*Involve a little more personal value judgement on my part.

Full COTA results (by points! Not position!) under cut:

Yes okay Marc is a sleep paralysis demon here, which is especially funny because it means Pedro Acosta, also ridiculously good at Sachsenring, gets cucked by fate and luck yet again. The breakdown:

Top lover: Marc we all know it's Marc!! But this is actually tied with Aragon for only his third-best track :)

Top lover who is not Marc: Pedro Acosta! Averages a solid P2 here, though of course he has a much shorter career and his best results are all in Moto2 and Moto3; in MotoGP he's had a P7 and last year he was one of half the grid with crash DNFs.

Track hater: Raúl Fernández. He's the only rider who is notably bad here and he averages a P11. It might also be difficult for Diogo, but he's only finished three races here, so hard to tell.

same chart twice to make it small, sorry lol:

With Fermín out with the second Gresini spine injury of the year (STOP), Àlex (first spine injury) is bumped up into the top six riders at Sachsenring. Bez notably a bit mid. Since Luca and Maverick are possibly fighting for a job their respective places are noteworthy, but frankly Maverick wasn't hitting his averages relatively healthy last year. This year, his numbers unfortunately haven't meant much.

Toprak report: I factored in Toprak's Red Bull Rookie Cup results at Sachsenring; this aren't really meant to be taken seriously, especially since they were in 2013-2014, but I was tired of leaving him blank. The last time he raced this track was DNFing in the European Superstock 1000 Championship over ten years ago, but his (ancient) Rookie Cup results were good. This is nice because all the other Yamaha riders have averages outside the top six here.

with apologies I just largely ignored sprints this week. sprints: they happen.

Currently Martín is leading the championship. I would like this to stop, but it's not crazy likely that it'll happen here where Martín is better than everyone but Marc in the leading group. If all of the top six riders in the championship finish at their average position (and ignoring sprints), Bez could get back within 11 points of Martín, and the championship order wouldn't change (though Marc would be projected to narrow his gap again). This isn't meant as a genuine prediction (for one thing, Bez and Ogura can't both finish P7).

Finally, teammate head-to-head:

Ducati: Marc is the stronger rider, averaging P2 to Pecco's P5. Marc additionally doesn't have a brand new baby at home. Pecco you need better parental leave; this is how feminism is a win for everyone.

Gresini: Àlex wins by default because his broken spine is more healed than Fermín's broken spine. Someone buy Nadia a drink.

VR46: Diggia (P6) is narrowly stronger than Franky (P7). Fairly well-matched here.

Aprilia: Martín is the stronger rider at Sachsenring, averaging P4 to Bez's P7. If no one slaps anyone else this weekend it's a win.

Trackhouse: Ai Ogura (P7) is stronger than Raúl (P11), though neither are outstanding here.

KTM: Pedro Acosta (P2) is stronger than Brad Binder (P4), though both are pretty good here.

Tech3: Maverick (P6) is stronger than Enea (P8), but is injured and actively fighting his current employer on tv

Honda: Mir (P4) is mathematically stronger than Marini (P8). However, Mir hasn't actually scored a point here since 2021 and his average is getting inflated by two podiums in the lower classes. Luca is very steady here across all classes, if mid, with one podium in Moto2.

Castrol: Advantage to Diogo by default because I didn't calculate Cal's stats and Zarco is still recovering. Diogo though has only finished three races here and they're a really uneven spread: out of the points (P16+), a P7, and a P4. He crashed last year.

Yamaha: No advantage, Fabio and Rins both average P7 here

Pramac: No idea man. Miller also averages a P7, and Toprak is Toprak.

Full results (listed by points) below cut, plus a bunch of charts ranking riders within each manufacturer:

Kings of the slip n' slide: only Marc Marquez and Raul Fernandez did better than their personal average at both a wet quali and a deluge-themed sprint. They are respectively the best and worst at Jerez of all current riders; lmao etc.

Luca Marini scored his first sprint point at Jerez of his career

Jack Miller was in some kind of torture nexus that never really made it onscreen; double long lap?? crashed and rejoined?? yamaha??

The Aprilias were bloodthirsty again. Jorge Martin's Aprilia lit his brake disks on fire almost immediately, and Bez did fine until he crashed out, tried to hold on to the handlebars to keep the engine running per the new rules, and got pinned under his wife-bike. Word on the street (reddit) is currently that he said he was okay.

Bez also allegedly had his start fucked up by a tear-off. Princess and the pea meets nervous dog sprint start :((( wife bike was angered and afraid....

Franky podium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like last year in iirc le mans, Marc managed to save his race lead by crashing out at the best possible moment, pulling, to quote twitter, a cheating homunculus move, and won that shit.

Pecco was getting passed by Diogo Moreira at one point but ended up on the podium. Again he is moving in mysterious ways this weekend.

*as noted after quali, I'm comparing sprint results to average full race results here, which is not like ideal. But im just having fun if im honest, and there are so few datapoints for sprints that there's no point trying to figure out someone's sprint average at any given track. you can compare to previous sprint results listed here

for comedy purposes, the full race direction incident record:

Zarco is actually good here in the dry too! However due to the english language commentary I'm tired of hearing about him.

This is Àlex Márquez's best track overall. It's not Marc's absolute best (COTA), but I think it's also in his top 3.

Jorge Martín has only ever crashed out, scored zero points, or (twice) podiumed here. In the past 11 years and including sprints (two additional wins). how.

Jack Miller: the real France Lover? Ignore the fact that he's crashed out here the past 3 years in a row.

Speaking of. Joan Mir has crashed out of Le Mans for the past FIVE YEARS running. We need to break the curse.

Luca Marini is significantly worse at Le Mans than anyone else. His highest finish was a P9 in 2022, though he got a random P4 in a 2023 sprint. Haterism at work.

I don't have time to do a teammate head-to-head but if Jorge finishes the race and Bez still beats him I expect you all to fucking clap. Also factory Honda is Joan (cursed) and Luca (#francehater). Good luck. Punch each other all the way down.

Full data under cut:

pecco getting rained on in ocean dot jpg. i havent got it saved just picture it.

as we all know im weirdly obsessed with who runs best at which track, a relatively small factor in motogp competition. however i cannot be stopped. welcome to year 2. Now with bigger and worse chart, featuring sprint races!

these are their english-lang wiki article photos; i did not select sad enea on purpose

Pecco, Marc, and Jorge all average a P3 at Buriram and have never DNFed a race here, but Pecco has the highest overall average points haul. Marc has an edge on Pecco in sprints; Jorge conceivably is the best at sprints here, though he's only started two. Marc was ofc last year's winner, but Pecco has podiumed every year but 2019 in the real main race and this is Pecco's best-performance track overall. He's also known as a slow starter, so I'm really not sure it's an advantage.

Eight riders tend to average in the top 6 here, including Luca and Maverick, though Maverick's sprint record at Buriram is catastrophic, and Luca's is also recently not that great; his only two race podiums came in Moto2, plus a sprint podium back in 2023.

At the bottom, we've got Enea, Rins, and Franky. Notably it's also a pretty bad track for Bez, who only finishes at an average of a P9. His highest finish was a P6 last year, and he's never podiumed; it's Bez's 4th-worst track across the season. This is also Franky's worst-perfomance track overall, so if anyone starts calling him washed after Buriram I reserve the right to throw hands.