MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The start of a new season is an optimistic time. With no points on the board, everything is possible, and fans, teams, and riders can dream of glory. Even factories and riders coming off a miserable preseason of testing can believe that progress is possible, that they can catch the bikes that led the tests at Sepang and Qatar. Hope fills the breast of every rider and every fan.

Such hope always dies, of course. Sometimes quickly, sometimes agonizingly slowly, as a few riders and bikes emerge first as candidates, then as favorites for the title. The objective is always to make that hope last as long as possible. Preferably, to the moment you turn that hope into triumph, and are crowned champion.

Ahead of the 2024 MotoGP season, there seems less reason for optimism if you are not on a Ducati. And even if you are, the room for optimism is limited unless your name is Pecco Bagnaia. There hasn't been a season with such a clear-cut favorite since Marc Marquez' Repsol Honda heydays, or Valentino Rossi's prime on the Honda RC211V. Bagnaia is the man to beat.

Who can beat Ducati in 2024? Apart from another Ducati, that is? If anyone is going to be causing Ducati Corse boss Gigi Dall'Igna headaches, it will be another European factory. Both Aprilia and KTM made solid steps forward over the winter and produced more competitive machines. The next part lies in the hands of the riders.

Aprilia - all in on aero

For once, it wasn't Ducati surprising onlookers with their latest aerodynamic innovations at the Sepang test. Where Ducati were working on evolutions of a package that was already working well, the real excitement was over in the Aprilia garage.

The Noale factory had brought a completely new aero package for the 2024 RS-GP. A new front wing - slightly narrower, but with a larger surface area, wrapping back on itself - a modified side fairing, and most visibly, a 'Batman' tail section, with fins either side looking like a throwback to late 1950s Cadillacs.

Who can beat Ducati to the 2024 MotoGP crown? If anyone can, it will be another European manufacturer. Aprilia have been close the past couple of years, but last year, KTM looked capable of toppling Ducati, with Brad Binder finishing fourth in the championship. Especially in the second half of the season, after KTM introduced their carbon fiber chassis, the RC16 looked very strong.

That pattern has continued throughout preseason testing. All four KTMs (the two factory bikes of Binder and Jack Miller, and the rebadged GASGAS machines of Augusto Fernandez and Pedro Acosta) have been equipped with the carbon fiber frame, and the plastic covers used to disguise the frame (and match the original livery design) have been dropped. The carbon fiber chassis is a big step forward, in every area, and comes with very few downsides.

We have looked at the factory which is favorite to win the 2024 MotoGP title, and the two factories which could possibly try to break Ducati's stranglehold on the championship. In the final part of this 2024 MotoGP season preview, we must now turn our attention to the two factories which do not stand a chance of winning a title. For both Yamaha and Honda, 2024 is a year of rebuilding.

It is harsh to write a manufacturer off before a wheel has turned in anger, but it is realistic. Fabio Quartararo was the highest ranked rider on a bike from a Japanese manufacturer in 2023, and he finished tenth, with just over a third of the points of champion Pecco Bagnaia. Yamaha and Honda finished fourth and fifth in the manufacturers standings, well behind third-placed Aprilia.

The factory Repsol Honda team finished ninth in the team standings, 27 points ahead of the last placed Tech3 GASGAS team. Repsol Honda were fielding two MotoGP world champions. Tech3 had a rookie and a rider who suffered such a serious crash at the first event of the year that he missed half a season, and was replaced by a test rider.

The Lusail International Circuit pays a very large amount of money to host the opening round of the MotoGP championship. On the one hand, this is a good thing, as that money filters down to the teams and keeps the circus going. Qatar is a wide, safe circuit with a lot of runoff, that gives riders a lot of room to make the kind of mistakes you always see at the start of a MotoGP season, when adrenaline levels reach their annual peak. And since being rebuilt for F1, the facility is spectacular.

There's a massive downside to Qatar being the first round. Leaving aside the question of sportswashing an autocratic regime, Qatar's insistence on being both the first round of the season, and a night race, causes all sorts of problems with conditions. While daytime temperatures are (usually) tolerable in early March, holding a race in the early evening means the riders have very little time on the bike in race conditions, as what would be morning sessions at other tracks are held in the heat of the afternoon.

A race is in the books and points are on the board, and the 2024 MotoGP season is underway. Even if you're not a fan of the sprint races - and there are reasons not to like them - you can console yourself with the thought that we have some really hard data to go on.

Did we learn anything? We learned a lot. First of all that having to do a fast lap in practice, then a fast lap in qualifying (or two, if you are like Jack Miller and Raul Fernandez, and make it out of Q1 into Q2), and then a sprint race is very demanding on nerves and body. Laying down a qualifying lap is a battle of nerves, pushing as hard as you can and dancing on the razor's edge of disaster, taking risks in the fast corners, where crashing hurts, rather than the slow corners when you're working on setup.

Qualifying was more exciting than the race. The sprint was a tense affair, but once the leaders sorted themselves out there was little overtaking. The gaps opened and closed, but not many people got past, though there was a pass for the podium, and on the penultimate lap as well.

On the one hand, the first race of the 2024 MotoGP season confounded expectations. On the other, it went exactly as you might expect. In fact, where normally the first race of the season is a bit of an anomaly, the Qatar Grand Prix looked like it could be representative for the entire 2024 MotoGP season.

That is partly because there was a test here two weeks ago, and everyone has their bikes pretty much dialed in. But it is also a result of the sprint races. With half race distance on a Saturday afternoon, teams have a good idea of what needs fixing, and get a second chance at perfecting their setup. And because it is the second year of sprint races, teams have a year of data to go on.

The podium of Pecco Bagnaia, Brad Binder, and Jorge Martin feels like an approximation of what the championship might look like by the end of the season. Throw in Marc Marquez in fourth, and a lesson in tire management for Pedro Acosta, and this felt like a template for the rest of the season.

This was not a classic race by any measure. But it was very informative, if it wasn't exciting. So to start, a few observations from the Qatar Grand Prix.

Delayed Start

The opening round of the 2024 MotoGP season at Qatar was a sobering affair for the Japanese manufacturers in MotoGP. Though testing had shown that they were still behind the European factories, the race weekend confronted them with the harsh reality, that they have dropped further behind Ducati and KTM, especially, and they have a lot of catching up to do.

The odd thing was there was a sense of optimism around the Japanese factories throughout preseason. Even at the end of the first race weekend, where they found themselves trailing the European factories, riders were sounding positive notes. The general consensus was this: Yes, we are behind, but at least there are signs of progress.

Looking at the raw numbers, however, things don't look good. Comparing the races from November last year and March this year, a fairly clear pattern appears. Firstly, that Honda have either stood still or made very slight inroads into their deficit. And secondly, that Yamaha have gone backward.

It is hard to think of a greater contrast between tracks than between Qatar, which hosted the opening round of the 2024 MotoGP season, and Portimão, which is home to the second round of 2024. Starting with the obvious: Qatar is a night race, Portimão is a day race, which changes everything. The track conditions are much closer between morning and afternoon at Portimão, than during the heat of the day for early practice at Qatar, and the cooler evening when the racing happens.

Then, the even more obvious. Qatar is as flat as a pancake. Portimão has earned the nickname Rollercoaster, for its wild sequence of elevation changes. Take the section from Turn 9, the aptly named Craig Jones corner, to Turn 12. Riders plunge down the hill from Turn 8, bottom out the suspension at Turn 9, trying as hard as they can to get the bike to change direction, then climb 12 meters - roughly four storeys - up through the double right hander of Turns 10 and 11, before dropping down another 16 meters - a little over five storeys - to Turn 12.