Boris on Portimao II | The Fat Lady hasn’t finished singing just yet…

2021 MotoGP – Round 17
Grande Prémio Brembo do Algarve

The Championship has been won. Does that now mean everyone’s just gonna cruise to the end of the season?

You new here? MotoGP racers are vicious, single-minded killers. They can’t help themselves. It’s how they’re wired. 

Fabulous may be the 2021 World Champion, but that does not mean he’s not going to try and rub everyone’s nose in it for the remaining two races. And it does not mean the rest of them will just sit back and let their noses be rubbed.

Certainly not Pecco Bagnaia. 

Once again, Pecco led from start to finish, making Portimao his bitch in a display of dominance that delivered Ducati the Constructor’s Championship for 2021.

We also got to see the former World Champion, Joan Mir, utterly outclassed and out-raced yet again – a result which Suzuki will certainly be considering as it moves forward into the 2022 season. Mir can certainly not blame a bad qualifying for his inability to challenge Pecco. He did start third on the grid.

Pecco? Well, he was enjoying his fifth consecutive pole position, just ahead of Jack Miller, who fought briefly with Martin, and then devoted the rest of the curtailed race to wrestling with a suddenly competitive Alex Marquez.

Had me wondering if Alberto Puig doesn’t beat Marc’s younger brother with a motivational lash whenever Marc isn’t there to keep HRC’s hopes alive. Journeyman Bradl was roped in to ride Marc’s bike this round – and possibly for the rest of the season, and it would be counterproductive to beat the German.

So where was Marc? Seems he had a bit of an oopsie a few days ago. He was training on the dirt with World Endurance Champion, Josep Garcia, and hit his head. Apparently. Honda says he had a “mild concussion”. Apparently. And since he was still feeling a “little unwell” (apparently), he would not be racing in Portimao.

Nothing else is known, and because everyone loves a conspiracy (me included), rumours flew that either his concussion is worse than anyone’s letting on, or he’s done something to his glass-like shoulders, or he’s been hauled off to have surgery on those shoulders so he has lots of time to come good for 2022. Or all of the above.

Honda isn’t saying, and trying to get information out of Puig is like asking a lizard questions about eating flies – and pit-lane reporter, Simon Crafar knows better.

The weather was fine all weekend, albeit somewhat cool. It is late autumn, after all. Still, the usual suspects were at the top of the Practice timesheets. 

In FP1 it was Fabulous, Pecco, and Miller. In FP2, it was the same. In FP3, Pecco was a touch faster than Fabulous, and Mir just nudged Jack out for third.

Fabulous qualified rather poorly for a change. He was in seventh behind Pol, Zarco, and Martin. So it is possible that since the ball was now sitting on his trophy cabinet, he didn’t need to keep his eye on it all the time. I was kinda hoping that would change on race day.

Pecco, on the other hand, was all business. Fabulous might be World Champion, but Pecco was still hearing the fat lady singing. When Miller broke the lap record in Q2, Pecco broke it again.

When the lights went off, so did Pecco. Miller beat him into Turn One, just as Martin beat Mir to the corner, but that was all re-sorted by Turn Three – and it was Pecco, Miller, Mir, and Martin leading the pack.

Petrucci sorted himself out in Turn Four and went into the gravel, just as Mir snatched second from Jack.

And then it all just became this grinding high-speed chess game. Baganaia lapping like a metronome in the mind to high 1.39s and everyone playing follow-the-leader.

To give him credit, Mir certainly tried. He kept Pecco as honest as he could for most of the race. But there was just no catching the Italian. His lead grew steadily and he ended up winning by almost two-and-a-half seconds.

The only real action was around third place. Miller was actually reliving his Moto3 youth by dicing with Alex Marquez for a good part of the race. Alex had pasted Martin early in the race and set off in pursuit of Jack. 

Aleix Espargaro ended his suffering early in the race and moved the gravel in Turn One, before retiring to the showers. Fabulous was languishing back in sixth, chasing Martin as hard as he felt he must to keep up appearances.

And that worked OK until Zarco relegated him to seventh, and up the front I was wondering if Alex Marquez would be able to catch Mir, who had clearly given up on catching Pecco. 

He was only 1.3 seconds behind the Suzuki rider, but lapping a touch quicker. And he was the only rider out there on a hard rear. Miller was still in fourth just behind him, and working very hard.

Eight laps from the end, Fabulous decided Zarco had been in front of him long enough and went past his countryman. Jack also had a crack at Alex into Turn One, but couldn’t make it stick. And Zarco took his sixth place back from Fabulous on the next lap, so everything went back to the way it was.

And then it was different. Zarco went past Martin. Then Fabulous went past Martin. Then Miller went past Marquez. Then Fabulous crashed. Turn Five took him down – the first time this year, Fabulous DNFd. 

Five laps from the end, it looked like Jack had broken Alex Marquez, but sometimes, Marquez Junior is hard to break. He was closing hard on our bloke again, his tyre choice possibly paying off.

Four laps from the end, Lecuona took out Miguel Oliveira in Turn 13, and the race was red flagged. Given it was way past 75 per cent race-distance, the results were taken from the lap prior to the crash, and Bagnaia, Mir, and Miller were the podium.

And so we come to the final race of the 2021 season next week in Valencia. The fat lady still has a verse left in her, I reckon.

Portimao II MotoGP Race Results

MotoGP Championship Standings

Constructor Standings

Team Standings

2021 FIM MotoGP World Championship calendar

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