Chaz Davies scored sixth place on his GoEleven Ducati in race one in Portugal but after losing almost his entire P2 on Friday to a technical issue he was less perturbed by this as he could be.
Especially after winning so convincingly in the final round of 2020, at Estoril, in his last race as a factory Aruba Ducati rider, Davies fell foul of the same yellow flag infringment as Alex Lowes.
“Pretty difficult to be happy with P6, but considering everything, I probably shouldn’t be as disappointed as what I am,” Davies told bikesportnews.copm after race onene.
“We missed all of FP2 yesterday with a technical error, and that basically felt like a data gathering practice session because obviously the track changes a lot in the hot conditions like it was then, like it was yesterday in FP2, and we didn’t have any data for that. So I was playing a lot with the buttons.
We had some presets for the race just in case to try and adapt. That, we would normally obviously be able to do last night and then have something a little bit more refined. We didn’t have that and we really needed it. So, I was kind of figuring things out as we went after the unfortunate encounter with the yellow flag in Superpole. It is what it is. Just one of those days.”
Davies was another involved in the Superpole yellow flag after Rabat ran off into T1 just as many riders had taken on board a Q tyre. He and some of his peers had already flagged up potential issues with the new system.
“We spoke about it last week in Aragon,” said Davies, “They said these are the rules for this year. One of the biggest changes is that if you pass on a yellow flag on any lap, that lap is cancelled. So, everybody’s instant response is, “Yeah, okay, but what about if it happens in qualifying with a Q tyre?” Then obviously it comes up, “What about if somebody does a good lap and runs on, on purpose and throws the yellow flag out if they go first?” I’m not saying for any second that that’s what happened, but it’s a real possibility.
Whether it was intentional or not today, that’s exactly what happened. We’re only at the second race, so they need to come up with something a bit better to cater for qualifying tyres, because we’re the only championship that is running the Qs at the minute. It’s something that I think they want to keep, but something has got to give somewhere because you can’t disturb somebody’s weekend like that unfairly. I’ve been super penalised by this regulation, and it’s upset all my weekend.”
And not just his Saturday, as now Davies has to start from his 15th position after the controversial Superpole for the ten lap print race too.
“And tomorrow, of course,” said Davies. “Starting the Superpole race it’s really hard to pass around here, so the objective is to get into the top nine or whatever it is to move forward on the grid and start the last race a bit further up. It’s a knockout effect for all the weekend. This was discussed last weekend. I think it’s probably a good thing it’s happened so early in the season because now the powers that be that can change these things, they’ve got an obvious example in front of them. Something has got to happen.”
Control of who calls a yellow flag, Davies was not 100% sure of, but it seems logical it would be the corner marshals. “I guess it’s up to the marshal. They’re all trained and whatnot. It’s just the regular in qualifying tyres. It’s just incompatible. MotoGP doesn’t have a qualifying tyre. They have a soft tyre which you can do a few laps with, a few hot laps.
Even if you do get to the yellow flag sector, you can roll a yellow flag situation. You can roll out of it, and you know it’s going to be okay for the next one. I did that today. I saw the yellow flag at turn one already before the before the braking point. I was like, there’s no point in pushing because if you push, my lap is going to get deleted anyway. So I just cruised around, but the damage was done. The tyre went off the edge of a cliff.
It didn’t work. There might be some track where it works, but here the Q just is a one-lap. It has to be that first lap. It’s no good just cruising through that.”
Warmer weather at Estoril compared to the first weekend at Motorland a few days ago made a difference for Davies too.
“Temperatures always change the feeling a bit. Like I said, we missed FP2 yesterday to set up the bike a little bit better. So it’s just a combination of a few things. Because the best data we have is from last year, we’re probably going to look at that a little bit more in depth tonight, because we have changed the bike quite a bit over the winter. I think when you’re on the back foot a little bit like we are, you need to rely on data that has clearly worked before and understand which could be better or what could be worse.”
