The MotoGP world championship returns to Argentina after an absence of two seasons due to the pandemic, in what will be the third competition of the 2022 tour that will take place between Saturday and Sunday at the Termas de Río Hondo circuit.
Source: AFP
Due to the delay in the departure of the cargo planes from Indonesia, where the second date was held two weeks ago, the organization postponed the free rehearsals from Friday to Saturday and the qualifying tests on Saturday will be delayed by two hours compared to the original program. announced in a statement on Thursday.
Sunday’s races will continue as scheduled, from 2:00 p.m., at the Termas de Río Hondo circuit, 1,200 km north of Buenos Aires.
The thousands of fans who usually fill the stands at the Argentine MotoGP will miss this time the already retired Valentino Rossi and the Spaniard Marc Márquez, a three-time winner at the Argentine track but absent this weekend due to an eye injury.
Márquez, 29, was ejected at turn 7 of the Mandalika circuit, in Indonesia, after losing control of the rear of his motorcycle at the end of the ‘warm-up’, for which he suffered a concussion that accentuated his diplopia problem (doubling of vision).
A six-time MotoGP champion between 2013 and 2019, Márquez had started the year in Qatar with fifth place, and in Indonesia he had to start from 14th place on the grid, having suffered another crash in Saturday’s qualifying session until that the accident marginalized him from the competitions.
His replacement will be the German Stefan Bradl, official Repsol Honda test rider who competed three times in Argentina in MotoGP and scored points in all the races.
“I’ve already done some testing this year so I’m familiar with the new Honda, but of course coming to a MotoGP weekend is a different situation. I have good memories of Argentina: I was fifth there in 2014 and seventh when I last ran in Termas, in 2016”, recalled the German driver.
The Termas de Río Hondo circuit will test the skills of the contenders for the crown in a complex layout of 4.8 kilometers and 14 curves, for a total of 25 laps and 120 kilometers of travel.
– Quartararo, the favorite –
In the absence of Márquez, and in the first steps of a fight for the title in the premier class that is presumed very open, Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) arrives as one of the favorites, while the runner-up Francesco ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia (Ducati) hopes to recover after a meager start with fifteenth place and retirement.
After two races, the contest is led by the Italian Enea Bastianini (30 points), winner in Qatar, followed by Brad Binder (28), the current world champion Fabio Quartararo (27) and the Portuguese Miguel Oliveira (25), of the KTM team, who climbed to the top of the podium in Indonesia.
Since the GP returned to Argentina in 2014 and moved from Buenos Aires to Termas de Río Hondo, the top winners of the Argentine Grand Prix have been Marc Márquez, with three victories in 2014, 2016 and 2019, and also won Valentino Rossi ( 2015), Maverick Viñales (2017) and Cal Crutchlow (2018).
MotoGP this year foresees a record calendar of 21 races around the world.
