MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Last night, someone asked me what the 2023 MotoGP championship would like like without the sprint races. Although it is a meaningless hypothetical - we have sprint races and they count toward the championship, whether we like it or not - I decided to take a deeper look at the points, to see if there was anything of interest to learn. With 17 races already in the books, there are enough samples to begin to be meaningful.

I have been collating these numbers anyway for my friend and fellow journalist Peter McLaren, so I had the points splits by sprint race and Sunday grand prix race to hand. The next step is to try to ask the right questions about the way the points are split between sprints and GPs.

To start, here is the current state of the championship, with separate totals for the sprint races, GPs, and the overall championship:

In part 1 of this interview with Corrado Cecchinelli, Dorna's Director of Technology, we talked about how his objective for the MotoGP rules package due to come in from the 2027 season was to improve the safety and increase the sustainability of MotoGP by looking at ways to limit performance without restricting the ability for engineers to explore innovative solutions too much, and to create an environment in which R&D in racing transfers more directly to road bikes.

The aim is to make the racing safer without forcing the tracks to make expensive, and sometimes impossible, safety upgrades, and to reduce the risk of crashing at excessively high speeds. The other important aim is to allow ordinary motorcyclists to benefit from the lessons learned by manufacturers in MotoGP.

The Sepang round of MotoGP is one of the most peculiar of the season. The main reason for that is because it is, to borrow a phrase from the late and unlamented Donald Rumsfeld, a "known unknown". It is a known quantity, because pretty much everyone has already done around 150 laps of the circuit in 2023, at the preseason test back in February.

But it is also an unknown quantity, because that preseason test was in February, and an awful lot has happened in between. We've had aero updates and ride-height updates and new frames and swingarms and triple clamps. Even the engines are different, the final versions homologated at Portimão before the first race. Settings have been changed, weight shifted backward, forward, up and down. Forks have been kicked out and pulled in, slid down through the triple clamps and lifted back up again. There is barely a part on the bikes which is unchanged since the February test.

The riders, too, have changed. Some are also returning with new parts, Luca Marini and Marco Bezzecchi coming back to Sepang with extra metalwork holding their collarbones together which they had broken prior to the previous triple header. But all are returning with a lot more experience of this year's bikes, and with a year of racing under their belts. They are pretty much as dialed into racing as it gets.

Tropical downpours

As the MotoGP title battle hots up, it is the small things which could end up making the difference. After Buriram, Pecco Bagnaia flew back to Italy to continue training at the ranch, and to prepare. Jorge Martin stayed out in Bali, to stay acclimatized to the tropical heat, and to avoid jet lag. "I decided to stay here because normally I struggle with jet lag, so I thought it would be a good option to stay here and get used to the conditions and train in the heat," he told the press conference.

These are the margins by which close championships are lost and won. But it is wrong to say that Martin's approach is better than Bagnaia's, or vice versa. The right approach will be the one taken by the rider who ends up claiming the 2023 MotoGP crown. As so much of motorcycle racing happens between the rider's ears, the right approach is whatever works at the time. Unfortunately, you only find out what works after the season is done. Hindsight is always 20/20.

There was a downside to staying in Indonesia, Martin admitted. "I think this week off I had too much time to think about everything," the Pramac Ducati rider said. "I prefer to race straight away because I had the feeling." The fear is always that you lose the momentum you had in a week off.

Rider reshuffle

With tension rising as the MotoGP championship enters its final phase, Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia are having to find ways of dealing with the pressure. Getting back on track was what worked for Martin, as it allowed him to stop worrying and start riding again.

"I felt this morning I was riding a bit blocked. You know the first two or three laps," the Pramac Ducati rider said. "But then as soon as I continued riding, I felt that I enjoy, I was confident and I was in P1 at the end of the season. So was OK. But for sure first laps were a bit difficult."

You wouldn't be able to tell that from the timesheets. Martin was fastest in the morning session of practice, and looked to be on course to be fastest in the afternoon as well, but Alex Marquez had other plans, firing in a lap of 1'57.823 at the end of the session. Quite the improvement for the Gresini Ducati rider, as last year, he struggled to get under the two minute mark. His best time on the LCR Honda in 2022 came in FP3, with a lap of 1'59.934, an improvement of over two seconds.

What makes a championship exciting? When there isn't a clear winner. When the balance of power swings back and forth, and you never know who is going to get the upper hand until the end.

By Barcelona, the 2023 MotoGP championship didn't look to have any of that. Pecco Bagnaia seemed to have everything comfortably in hand, with no clear challenger consistently taking points off him. Seven rounds later, that has been turned around completely. With 3 GP wins, 5 sprint wins, and another podium, the Pramac Ducati rider had cut the gap to just 13 points coming into Sepang.

Martin was coming of a double victory in Thailand, and had momentum going his way. On Friday he was comfortably fast, cruising through to Q2 directly. He clearly had the speed to take a shot at pole, and try to disappear from the start in the sprint race.

Ducati's announcement in August last year that they would be moving Enea Bastianini up to the factory Ducati Lenovo team was met with glee among followers of the sport. Bastianini had already served up some fantastic performances at the start of 2022, winning the season opener at Qatar on the Gresini squad's debut with Ducati, and followed it up with a series of fierce battles with his future factory teammate Pecco Bagnaia. We were expecting fireworks once Bastianini moved into the Ducati Lenovo garage.

That did not happen. A serious shoulder injury in MotoGP's first ever sprint race put him out for the first half of the season, and then a mistake in Barcelona meant he fractured his ankle and his wrist. Then we heard talk of Enea Bastianini being replaced in the factory team by Jorge Martin, as the Pramac Ducati rider drove the 2023 title fight ever closer. If Martin wins the title, was Bastianini's factory seat still tenable?

The fact that the Japanese manufacturers have struggled this year has reopened the discussion over the way that concessions for manufacturers work. Introduced in 2014 to help Ducati, and anticipating the introduction of spec ECU hardware and software in 2016, the system allowed new entrants to the class and manufacturers who were struggling extra freedom to develop their engines and extra testing days.

The success of those concessions is self-evident. Suzuki entered the championship in 2016, and won a title in 2020. KTM entered in 2017, won their first race in 2020, and Brad Binder has been in contention for the title for most of the 2023 season. Aprilia went from modified street bike in the CRT class to race winner and championship contender in 2022.

Ducati, of course, have been the biggest beneficiary of concessions. Indeed, it was Gigi Dall'Igna's threat to enter Ducati as an Open Class team – the successor to the CRT Teams of 2012 – that forced Dorna and the other factories (at that point, Honda and Yamaha) into designing the system of concessions. Ducati went from backmarkers are the loss of Casey Stoner to race winners in 2016, world champions in 2022, to the utterly dominant force that they are now in 2023.

Tables turned

It is brand new Lusail International Circuit which welcomes MotoGP back to Qatar this weekend. The old buildings have been torn down and completely replaced, and the track completely resurfaced. (I will spare you the lecture on working conditions in Qatar this year, but merely point you to this story about the aftermath of the FIFA World Cup.)

The new buildings are a massive upgrade, for which MotoGP has F1 to thank. The huts in the paddock which served as team offices have been replaced by more permanent structures, and facilities have been hugely improved throughout the paddock and outside it.

The track was also resurfaced, a necessary change. But the experience of F1 at Qatar was that the track was incredibly abrasive, and the Misano 200 kerbs, with the 50mm drop at the far edge kerb, was creating a lot of vibration on the tires, not helped by the fact that the kerbs selected where wider than the normal size fitted.

Known unknowns

We knew that Qatar was going to be difficult before we came. A completely rebuilt paddock and a completely resurfaced track were always going to leave plenty of dust around in the aftermath, especially in the desert, where there is always sand blowing around. Throw in an overnight rainstorm for good measure, and you have a recipe for a very difficult track surface to cope with.

The first session for Moto3 was 4 seconds slower than the same session last year, the dust clearly a problem. Moto2 was already a lot closer, and MotoGP was 1.5 seconds off the times from 2022. But when Alex Marquez crashed, the dust being thrown up by his bike and his leathers as he slid across the asphalt showed just how dirty the track was.

The evening sessions were much better. Fermín Aldeguer broke the Moto2 lap record in the second session of practice, and Maverick Viñales did the same in MotoGP, though Viñales' time would be canceled because of yellow flags. Much more about that later on.