The 'weird' Barcelona twist looming over MotoGP's title decider

The MotoGP season finale being moved from the flood-affected Valencia to a repeat venue in Barcelona should have made for a more straightforward title showdown than originally scheduled.

The chasing Pecco Bagnaia and the points-leading Jorge Martin were the runaway leaders in May's Catalan Grand Prix at the track - which, even if Martin was defeated in May, should play massively into his hands this time by as he just needs a solid weekend of points-scoring.

Unfortunately for him, however, the Barcelona track MotoGP encountered on Friday to start the weekend was not the same track the grid is familiar with - and a bigger departure than anticipated.

Though tyre supplier Michelin has been roundly praised for the expanded compound allocation, front and rear, it is offering this weekend to mitigate the uncertainties and particularly the impacts of the cold weather, riders were virtually unanimous in their puzzlement at how it felt to ride on Friday.

Barcelona is already a notoriously low-grip track, and it proved one again on Friday, but with a twist.

"It's weird," acknowledged KTM rider Brad Binder. "Because I honestly thought, okay, we've got softer compounds here, the laptime's going to be insane. And it was so clear this morning the first few laps felt like s***. So slow. 

"But anyway, it's weird. It's different. The thing that I didn't really expect was that there was going to be such low grip still. I thought maybe a cooler track [equals] better grip but it wasn't quite the case."

"I was expecting decent grip because generally here in Barcelona the biggest issue we have is overheating on the rear tyre, especially on the right-hand side," agreed team-mate Jack Miller.

"You think it's going to be better [in November] but it wasn't. 

"The other thing is, you've always kind of got to hold some margin in Turn 2 and Turn 5, but today was extra, especially when you see boys- poor ol' [Ducati tester Michele] Pirro got slapped down on his first flyer, right in front of me, and that made me tip in an awful lot careful-er. 

"All day it's been like that. It started getting a little bit warmer - but not warm enough, that's for certain.

"The fastest laptime set in opening practice was a 1m40.501s, nine tenths slower than from the equivalent session in May. The afternoon session, led by Bagnaia's 1m38.918s, was around three and a half tenths off the May equivalent.

"Surprised," said Tech3 Gas Gas rider Augusto Fernandez.

"Especially the feeling - the lack of feedback, of everything, in my case it was strange. Struggling a lot. "The crash [in second practice], I could crash... any other time or at any other moment, or every corner. Because the feeling was the same in all the corners. No feedback."

"White lines, kerbs... sometimes a bit too slippery," said Trackhouse Aprilia rider Miguel Oliveira. "It feels like you can't trust the front too much."The track clocked in at 14°C in the morning and at 20°C in the afternoon - compared to 25°C and 43°C for the corresponding session in May.

Some felt these temperatures were on the limit for modern MotoGP, though others weren't so convinced.

"When it's super hot, it's a really slow track. When it's super cold, also," summed up Gresini Ducati's Alex Marquez. 

"I think the conditions that we have in May here were really good. The laptimes were really fast. 

"I think it's not like when we were coming here in July or something like this, that was super hot. 

"For that reason I think they [the laptimes] are more slow".

But Fabio Quartararo didn't feel that "it's really related to the temperature".

"This afternoon I think the temperature was quite nice," he insisted. "But it's true that the grip was less than May. That was pretty strange. "Usually from Friday to Saturday, the track improves quite a lot."

Quartararo admitted he didn't really have an explanation - but one of his peers offered up a theory.

"I think there was a car race maybe last weekend? Something like this?" asked Luca Marini.

Indeed, the previous weekend Barcelona had played host to a multi-discipline car racing meet - featuring single-seater championships Eurocup-3 and Spanish Formula 4, as well as the Porsche Sprint Challenge Iberica series.

"The track looks a little bit weird. I can't say that it's worse - but it's a little bit strange. The edge grip feels worse. But in a different way," Marini continued.

"I almost crashed two-three times, with the rear, eh? Like a highside. This normally doesn't happen. A little bit of a weird feeling - that you just have less control of the rear tyre, and sometimes you lose [it] like crazy."

Is it tyre build-up, then? Oliveira felt that was unlikely: "If there was car racing here, the track was super well-cleaned up! You couldn't see much rubber from the cars. Also, they do super wide lines outside. So, I guess no influence."

But there are other ways that car racing and its byproducts can impact a track.