Acosta and Viñales make MotoGP history at COTA

“I was trying to push in the correct corners,” he continued. “I pushed in Turn 10, on the entry, not the exit, to keep the right temperature in the rear tyre and also in the three rights, where I used the front a lot to avoid overheating the rear.”

It’s no surprise that Aprilia’s ground-effect design has been, more or less, been copied by Ducati, KTM and Honda, which suggests the RS-GP now has the best aero on the grid.

Viñales’ COTA success puts him in the pantheon with a special gang of riders – alongside Mike Hailwood, Eddie Lawson, Loris Capirossi and Mamola – the others who have won MotoGP/500cc races with three different marques.

Hailwood was the first, winning his first 500c GP in 1961, with Norton, then with MV Agusta, from 1961 to 1965, and with Honda in 1966 to 1967.

By the way, Hailwood’s 1961 Senior TT victory also made him the youngest premier-class winner, an accolade he held for two decades.

Why? Because the Briton started younger than anyone else started racing back in the 1950s, long before minibikes became a thing. His father Stan ‘The Wallet’ Hailwood was the millionaire founder of a chain of motorcycle shops, so he had his mechanics build his son a one-off miniature machine powered by a 100cc Royal Enfield engine. No wonder he was already winning British titles in his teens.

Next came Mamola, who won his first GPs as a factory Suzuki rider (which took the youngest-ever record from Hailwood) from 1980 to 1982, then as a Honda rider, from 1984 to 1986, and finally as a Team Roberts Yamaha rider, in 1986 and 1987.

Lawson started out winning with Yamaha, from 1984 to 1988, then Honda, in 1989, and with Cagiva, at the Hungaroring in 1992, when he gambled with slick tyres on a drying track, giving the Italian marque its first victory.

Capirossi’s first premier-class win was his unlikeliest success. He was running third on the final lap of the 1996 Australian GP at Eastern Creek when Alex Crivillé clattered into leader Mick Doohan, taking them both out. He followed that with one win on Honda’s NSR500, after a frantic battle at the 2000 Italian GP with Max Biaggi and Valentino Rossi, which had both Italians crash out. And he completed the set with his historic 2003 Catalan GP success with Ducati, also the Italian marque’s first success.

And what of Ducati at COTA? This was the first time the Bologna factory had been beaten by two rival brands since Suzuki left in 2022 and the first time it had ever been beaten by both Aprilia and KTM.

Why? Bad vibrations, of course. The Desmosedici has been infected by the dreaded chatter since the start of this season because it doesn’t like Michelin’s latest rear-slick compounds.

“We had a lot of vibrations,” said Jorge Martin after taking third in the COTA sprint. “I was close to crashing in a lot of corners, so together with Ducati we need to understand how to improve, because we are losing the opportunity to make better results.”

The more grip Ducati has, the worse the chatter, hence Martin’s struggles with the soft rear in the sprint. Surprisingly both the Pramac rider and world champ Pecco Bagnaia also went with the soft in the main race. They finished fourth and fifth.

“The bike was moving a lot at the front and I was feeling some vibrations at the rear, so I had to ride defensively,” said Bagnaia on Sunday. “It was hard, but we need to stay calm, understand the situation and try to finish every race in the best possible position. When the right time comes, we will attack.”

Márquez also complained of chatter after the sprint. Did the problem play a part in his Sunday crash? No, his problem was with his front brake. A lot of riders had issues braking into the Turn 11 hairpin during the weekend, because bikes get lively through the bumpy, high-speed Turn 11, which can knock the brake pads away from the discs.