Can "shining" Suzuki end Ducati's MotoGP Red Bull Ring reign?

Since the Red Bull Ring returned to the MotoGP calendar in 2016, it has widely been accepted that Ducati is the Lord of the Ring, with its so-far unbeaten MotoGP run vindicating those claims.

Long straights and hard-braking are the areas where the Desmosedici excels, and the Red Bull Ring has those in abundance. The super-fast Honda in the hands of Marc Marquez has offered up a challenge to Ducati in recent years, but the red bikes have always come out on top.

In the continued absence of reigning world champion Marquez, it wasn't widely anticipated that anything other than a 'Bologna bullet' would take to the top step in the Austrian Grand Prix, and very likely the follow-up Styrian Grand Prix.

But KTM put itself into the mix, with Pol Espargaro looking set to win last week's race had it not been red-flagged for the monster accident involving Franco Morbidelli that was triggered by Johann Zarco. The RC16 has decent power and excellent drive grip, but a lack of his preferred medium tyres dashed Espargaro's hopes at the restart and it was Andrea Dovizioso who ensured the cycle continued for Ducati.

But another, somewhat surprising threat made its presence felt during the Austrian GP.

Suzuki has come into 2020 with a strong package, building on the solid foundations laid with the 2019 GSX-RR that won twice in the hands of Alex Rins. Throughout testing, the 2020 bike looked like a proper championship weapon. But it hadn't been able to show its potential so far.

A fractured and dislocated right arm for Rins ruled him out of the Spanish GP at Jerez and led him to suffer like hell in the repeat fixture, the Andalusian GP, to finish 10th. Team-mate Joan Mir stacked it in the season-opener, rued an average qualifying in the second Jerez race having shown strong pace on his run to fifth, and was the unfortunate collateral damage at Brno to Tech3 rider Iker Lecuona's crash in the early stages.

Rins' heroic fight to fourth at Brno, only just missing the podium, was the first real sign of what the 2020 GSX-RR could be capable of - and that was in the hands of someone not at 100% fitness.

Improving his qualifying, Mir was able to transform sixth on the grid to second after the red flag for his maiden podium, while Rins crashed as he took the lead.

The Suzuki has never been the outright most powerful bike, and though it has opened the stable doors a little wider this year, Mir and Rins were still around 7-8km/h down on the Ducati through the Red Bull Ring speed trap. And yet, at a renowned horsepower circuit, one of the least powerful bikes on the grid almost ended the dominance of the championship's most powerful machine.

"We can accelerate much more from the middle of the straight to the end, but if you lose some kilometres [per hour] in the first part of the acceleration, it takes a lot of metres to gain on the Suzuki" Andrea Dovizioso

The reason for that is simple. Although Suzuki's inline four-cylinder engine may not have the blood-and-guts power of the V4 Ducati, Honda and KTMs for example, the GSX-RR is able to utilise all of its strong points of braking, cornering and traction to compliment each other to create arguably the most complete package on the grid.

"I think they are really good on the brakes, very similar to us, much better in the middle of the corners," Dovizioso explains when asked by Autosport why the Suzuki is strong in Austria. "The acceleration is not as good as ours, but they are able to exit with more speed.

"When you exit with more speed, you are able to not use too much the rear tyre, you don't have to pick up [the bike] and use the power because you make the speed in the middle of the corners. So I think they use a bit less the tyres, which is the reason why Rins and Mir are really good at the end of the race."

The Suzuki's sweet-handling chassis also makes it a weapon in sector three, which comprises Turns 5, 6 and 7 - Ducati's weakest point around the Red Bull Ring. It was at Turn 6 where Rins was able to line up his doomed move for the lead on Dovizioso. But Suzuki riders also don't need to rely on being strong in this sector, as Dovizioso elaborates.

"We can accelerate much more from the middle of the straight to the end, but if you lose some kilometres [per hour] in the first part of the acceleration, it takes a lot of metres to gain on the Suzuki because you are losing the speed," he says.

"This means you start to gain in the middle of the straight, not before. Also, their acceleration is better because we're not able to accelerate like that. They are able to be consistent and fast, but more consistent than everybody I think in this moment."

KTM's Espargaro showed the strongest race run in FP2 for the Styrian GP, running six laps in the 1m24.2s to 1m24.6s bracket on a fresh medium rear, with that pace sitting at 1m24.7s and 1m24.8s on a second run of six laps on the same tyre.

But the Suzuki consistency Dovizioso eluded to showed in quite striking fashion on Mir's bike in FP2. His second run in the hot afternoon session - when track temperatures touched 50 degrees - featured three laps: a 1m25.056s, a 1m24.920s, and a 1m24.860s. The medium tyre he used already had 22 laps on it. For his final run, he managed three more laps: 1m25.238s, 1m25.095s, 1m25.144s. With 27 laps on that tyre for that run, Mir exceeded the 28-lap race distance. For comparison, the tyre Espargaro had fitted for his second run in FP2 had nine laps on it to begin with.

Rins spent his afternoon trying the medium and the soft compound rear tyres, with his pace in the low-to-mid 1m24s like Friday pacesetter Espargaro on both.

"They've been quite constant today, I think they are one of the fastest for Sunday," Espargaro said when Autosport asked about the pace of the Suzukis.

"Also they have speed, they have traction, they have turning. The bike seems very good already from Qatar test, but they couldn't show yet their full performance of the bike. But they are shining here."

When MotoGP returned to Austria in 2016, the top Suzuki was Maverick Vinales in sixth - some 14 seconds from the victory. Fast-forward four years and it now has - as Fabio Quartararo believes - one of the perfect bikes for this track.

Saturday will be Suzuki's true test, as the Austrian GP showed the full benefits of qualifying on the front two rows for Mir.

With Mir and Rins third and fourth in FP2 conditions likely to be found on Saturday afternoon, and sixth and seventh on combined times, the step forward both made in qualifying last week looks to have stuck.

Friday at the Styrian GP has shown that both Mir and Rins have the best weapon in its arsenal to end the red reign at the Red Bull Ring.