MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

You can read a lot into what we saw at the Sepang MotoGP test. But it wasn't just about how the physical parts the now five MotoGP manufacturers brought to the test. The parts they brought, and how they tested them, revealed a lot about their approach to testing. And consequently, also about where they see themselves in their respective development processes. A few highlights and insights, with photos from Tom Morsellino, Cormac Ryan Meenan, and shoddy phone pictures by me.

Let's start with Ducati. It is hard to escape the impression that Ducati learned a very hard lesson at the start of the 2022 season, where they were testing parts all the way through practice for the opening round at Qatar. Though there were plenty of new parts at Sepang for the factory-backed riders to try – a new engine, new swingarms, new chassis, new aero – the approach to testing was far more conservative. A few highlights.

A hat-trick of wins for Alvaro Bautista, two Sunday podiums for Michael Ruben Rinaldi and even a double race win in the Supersport class meant that Australia was absolutely perfect for Ducati. With his likely title rivals faltering it was even better for Bautista. Steve English looks back on Round 1 of the Superbike World Championship

Perfect weekend for Bautista and Ducati

Stop the presses: Ducati are a juggernaut! It’s hardly news that Ducati, winners of both MotoGP and WorldSBK titles in 2022, are strong. It was perhaps a little bit startling to see just how strong they were in Phillip Island for the opening round of the Superbike season though. With four bikes inside the top five, they were able to take advantage of Kawasaki’s stuttering start to the campaign and a crash for Toprak Razgatlioglu but even so it was a perfect start to the campaign for them.

With Axel Bassani and Philipp Oettl finishing fourth and fifth in Sunday’s 22 lap finale it was clear just how good the Panigale V4R was working in Australia. It was also likely that Alvaro Bautista would claim a hat-trick of race wins at Round 1 and that Michael Ruben Rinaldi would make progress and be strong, but Bassani and Oettl’s Sundays were very newsworthy.

There was a great deal of excitement when this unusual prototype bike (my shoddy phone camera photo) was spotted in the Repsol Honda garage at the Sepang test. Was Honda the latest factory to try out a ground-effect fairing? The obvious answer was yes, but this misses the point entirely. This bike spoke volumes about what HRC was up to at Sepang. And it had very little to do with aerodynamics. Or at least, it had very little to do with ground effect.

The changes at HRC – former Suzuki engineer Ken Kawauchi replacing Takeo Yokoyama as Technical Director – have see Honda go back to basics. At Sepang, Honda sent Marc Marquez out to ride the Honda RC213V with just a plain fairing, no aerodynamic wings fitted at all. "The new technical manager arrived in HRC, and he wants to understand many things about the concept," Marquez explained. "I was not asking about why this, why that. I was just riding."

Look beyond the ground-effect fairing on the strange prototype, and this bike too looks more like HRC going back to basics. To understand what Honda are up to, let's go through a few photos and parts, one by one.

Aerodynamics was a main focus for most of the teams (and coincidentally, also the easiest thing to spot), and almost all the manufacturers rolled out some interesting parts. Aprilia have taken a leading role recently, picking up after Ducati and in some aspects, overtaking them. At Sepang, they rolled out a new front wing, pictured here (my phone photo) on Maverick Viñales' bike.

As you can see, the front wing now is now a triplane and not a biplane, with three wings instead of two. If you compare it with the photo of the standard front wing (below, picture by Cormac Ryan Meenan), you can see that the upper wing has been split in two to create something similar to the original, while an extra wing has been added below, curving up before reaching the fairing.

Two days of riding before the 2023 MotoGP season will start. Two days to test, and two weeks to analyze all the data collected and finalize the MotoGP bikes ready to open their 2023 campaigns. The MotoGP factories have a lot of work to do, and very little time to do it. So what is on the testing agenda for the Portimão test, which starts on Saturday and ends on Sunday?

One of the biggest things that all of the teams – factory and satellite – have to test is the new weekend format. With hot conditions and track time lost to the weather at Sepang, the riders didn't really get a chance to try a sprint race simulation. Some teams will be doing just the sprint race simulation, most will be aiming to try both.

"The plan is to use this test to prepare for the first race of the year," GasGas Tech3 rider Pol Espargaro explained. "In the first race especially this year where Saturday is going to be the Sprint race and everything is going to be so new that you need to go into it with everything ready."

Preparing for the new format

Part of that is getting used to the feeling of a bike set up for a Sprint race, which will be different to the normal full-length grand prix race. "The bike is going to feel different," Espargaro said. "I mean the fuel capacity inside the tank is going to be different because you don't need to put as much fuel in the tank. So with half of the weight on the full tank, for sure, you're going to feel the big difference."

The two-day MotoGP test at Portimão is clearly going to be a test of two halves. Today, Saturday, was the last day of concentrating on new parts, while Sunday is to be the day the teams focus on preparing for the first race of the season, which happens here in two weeks time.

That is how it works for the factories and teams who have everything sorted. But not everyone has everything sorted, as was all too obvious from Saturday. The paddock falls into three groups: The Fast (Aprilia and Ducati), The Lost (KTM and Honda), and The Inbetweeners (Yamaha).

The timesheet would also appear to tell the same story, but the headline lap times are not as significant as they look. The number of riders who sat down and went for an outright lap time was limited, and some, such as Marc Marquez, didn't bother at all.

But even those who were fast were not necessarily chasing a quick lap time. Maverick Viñales was third fastest overall, and he did his best lap time on the first lap of a 10-lap run. Likewise sixth-placed Miguel Oliveira, who set his best time in the middle of a nine-lap run. But this rather proves the point: Viñales is on a 2023 Aprilia, Oliveira on a 2022 Aprilia, and they were both quick. Aprilia are in really good shape.

Ready to roll

So the final test of the 2023 preseason has finished. In reality, of course, testing finished on Saturday – Sunday was the first day of practice for the first round of the 2023 MotoGP season at Portimão. It's just that there are eleven days between the eight-hour FP1 session we just had and the 45 minute session officially titled FP1 on Friday March 24th.

That is an exaggeration, but only a slight one. There were a few things being tested – mostly factories finalizing aerodynamics, as well as the odd experiment – but for the most part, the teams were using the day to prepare for the first race of the season in just under two weeks time. Almost everyone did a sprint race simulation, and pretty much everyone tried to set a fast time. So the timesheets may not tell us everything, but they are actually meaningful, at last.

But first, about those experiments. Yamaha finally rolled out the F1-style rear wing on the tail of Fabio Quartararo's Yamaha M1, much to the revulsion of a sizable part of the fan base on social media. (Though notably, a younger section of fans were in favor of such innovation.)

Two rounds into the WorldSBK season and it already feels that the back is broken on the season. After the shortest winter in memory, some team personnel said that they had just a few days off over Christmas, it’s been a hectic time for the paddock. This week will be a rare chance to catch their breath but with tests in Aragon, Montmelo and Assen on the schedule for teams it’s clear that there’s still plenty of work to be done!

After a hard winter, Indonesia should have been a reward for much of the paddock. With the track sitting on the stunning coastline of Lombok it’s a perfect holiday destination. Good weather, nice hotels, white sand and local cuisine makes for a perfect destination. Unfortunately, that postcard image didn’t quite work out for most teams. Food poisoning seemed to affect half the paddock and the weekend became a test of endurance on and off track.

It’s been a long, hard winter and this was the culmination of that for many...

Toprak wins again

Yamaha know the challenge they are facing in 2023; a horde of fast Ducati’s that can be competitive everywhere. For Toprak Razgatlioglu that means he has to be perfect week in and week out. Australia was far from that objective for the Turkish star, and with Alvaro Bautista having claimed five wins from six races it was critical that Toprak would win at least one race in Indonesia.

The MotoGP championship faces one of the biggest shakeups in recent years in 2023. The biggest change is of course the introduction of sprint races (or "Sprints", as Dorna is trying to insist on calling them). That change, allied with a calendar expanded to 21 rounds, has a lot of knock-on effects in the championship.

All of this is likely to confuse regular fans who have committed the former schedule to memory. And it will confuse new fans, who are still struggling to work out what happens when during a MotoGP weekend.

To help you keep track of the new schedule and the sprint races, here's your handy FAQ for the most important changes to MotoGP for the 2023.

What The Actual Sprint?

What is this "sprint race" you speak of?

Sprint races are a new, shorter race added to the schedule. Only the MotoGP class will have sprint races, Moto2 and Moto3 will have just the one main race on Sunday, as last year. Dorna wants you not to call them "sprint races", but to refer to them as "Sprints". This request is almost certain to fall on deaf ears, especially as the FIM sporting regulations refers to them as "Sprint races".

When does the sprint race happen?

Saturday, 3pm local time. Sprint races will have a big impact on the schedule. I'll explain more later though.

How long is a sprint race?

Writing MotoGP season previews used to be a relatively simple affair: discuss the four or five riders who had a realistic chance of winning the championship, compare the strengths and weaknesses of the Yamaha vs the Honda, and ask whether Ducati have done enough this year to catch up. A few notes on the remainder of the grid, and you were done.

Previewing the 2023 MotoGP season is potentially a much more time-consuming affair. All 22 riders on the 2023 grid have grand prix victories to their name in one class or another. All five MotoGP factories had bikes on the podium last year, and only Honda didn't score a win. There are 13 world champions lining up in MotoGP in 2023. To say the grid is stacked with talent is an understatement.

Potential champions this year? Obviously Pecco Bagnaia has a good chance of defending. But Yamaha have given Fabio Quartararo the extra speed he was missing to be able to challenge. Enea Bastianini could well surprise and upset his factory Ducati teammate. Aprilia have refined the RS-GP to a point where Aleix Espargaro is a serious candidate, and there is no doubting the talent of his teammate Maverick Viñales either. Jorge Martin has a better bike and a point to prove, and sprint races will play right into his hands. Miguel Oliveira is very much in the same boat. And it would be foolish to write Marc Marquez off, whatever the state of the Honda at the moment.