MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

At the beginning of 2023, former Suzuki technical manager Ken Kawauchi moved to Honda. This news surprised many people around the world, because it is very unusual for Japanese company workers who are in a responsible position to move to their competitors.

In 2023, Honda went through the toughest season in their MotoGP history. The result of that painful year was that they qualified for concessions as a manufacturer for the forthcoming 2024 season, so they joined the shakedown test before the official three-day test at the Sepang International Circuit. After this shakedown test, we spoke with Ken-san for a one-on-one interview to ask about Honda's struggle in the previous year and their expectations for 2024.

Q: How would you describe your first season in HRC?

KK: Although I moved from one Japanese company to another Japanese one, everything was different, including colleagues, the way of working, the working environment and scale, everything. While I had to learn a lot of things, we could not achieve good results, so honestly speaking, it was a very tough season for me.

Q: From your point of view as a technical manager who is in charge of managing the on-site technical things, what was the reason for this struggle?

KK: I think there was no simple answer for it. One of the reasons was, for sure, our bike was not as competitive as our rival manufacturers. Maybe we could have done things with a better approach. It was the combination of many things that caused those results.

At the launch of the Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 team of Pedro Acosta and Augusto Fernandez, journalists were given a chance to talk to Pit Beirer, Motorsport Director of the Pierer Mobility Group, the umbrella organization which runs KTM, GASGAS, Husqvarna, and the other brands run out of KTM's Austrian headquarters.

Beirer was keen to talk about his hopes for the team and its riders, but he also gave an insight into the current state of MotoGP, and the new rules which are to be introduced from 2027 onward, as well as how the new concessions system will work for KTM.

I asked Beirer how he felt about where MotoGP is at the moment. Beirer was very positive overall, though he said KTM had concerns with the increasing pressure from 22 rounds and sprint races. "The championship I feel is great, otherwise we would not be here, and we enjoy it a lot," Beirer told us. "The sprint races came on board, it doubled the amount of races, but we really love it, because we think we give this extra to the public and the spectators to the race so early, and everybody at home watches racing on Saturday rather than a qualifying practice."

Ducati has had a good run the past couple of seasons. The riders, teams, and manufacturers championship in 2022, then the riders and manufacturers championship in 2023, plus the top three places in the riders championship. At the end of the 2022 season, we wondered how Ducati could improve on the Desmosedici GP22, but they found a way with the GP23.

So after a remarkable 2023 season, we are faced with the same question again. How can Ducati do much better than last year? And does the GP23 even have any weaknesses that need to be addressed?

At the Campioni in Pista event, Ducati's launch of the MotoGP, WorldSBK, and this year, also MXGP efforts, I spoke to Davide Barana, Ducati Corse's Technical Director, to ask him about where Ducati goes from here. We discussed the areas Ducati is working on for 2024, the importance of aerodynamics, and how the Bologna factory feels about the fact that rival factories keep poaching their engineers.

But I started off asking about how you go about trying to improve a motorcycle that looks to be pretty close to perfect in every area already. Did Ducati have a particular weakness that needed working on? "The bike doesn't show a really clear point of weakness. But instead we think we have to improve in every single sector of the bike," Barana said.

At the Sepang test, I interviewed Cristian Gabarrini, crew chief to Pecco Bagnaia. Bagnaia and Gabarrini were preparing to defend the Italian's first title in MotoGP, and Ducati's first MotoGP crown since Casey Stoner's back in 2007. A championship in which Gabarrini had also played a major role, as Stoner's crew chief. What I wanted to ask Gabarrini was how he was going to approach this defense of the MotoGP crown.

In Valencia, ahead of the final MotoGP event of the 2023 season, I got the chance to follow up on that interview, and ask Gabarrini how this season had played out. When I spoke to him on Thursday, the title was still in play, though Bagnaia went into the last weekend with a useful, though not insurmountable lead of 21 points. Bagnaia started the weekend as favorite, and would make good on his status, becoming the first Ducati rider to ever successfully defend a title with a victory in the last race of the year.

In many ways, that final weekend was emblematic for Bagnaia's entire season. The factory Ducati rider lost 7 points on Saturday, finishing fifth in the sprint race which was won by title rival Jorge Martin. But Bagnaia emerged victorious by a calm and considered race on the Sunday, by looking after his tires and having something extra at the end of race to hold off challenges by Fabio Di Giannantonio and Johann Zarco.

It has been a tough year for Joan Mir. The 2020 world champion joined the Repsol Honda squad with high hopes, after Suzuki had decided to pull out of MotoGP at the end of the 2022 season. Testing was promising, at least when compared to the other Hondas. At the Sepang test, he was a tenth behind his teammate, six-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez. At the final test in Portimão, he was a tenth of a second faster than Marquez, and best Honda.

The fact that the Repsol Hondas were seven or eight tenths off the Ducatis at the head of the test was a concern, as was the fact that they were floating around just outside the top ten. There was hope, but 2023 was clearly going to be an uphill battle.

Mir could not have imagined just how tough it would be. In Argentina, the second round of the season, he crashed in the sprint race, forcing to miss the Sunday GP with dizziness and vertebra problems. At Mugello, he crash on Friday afternoon and broke a finger in his right hand, causing him to miss the Mugello-Sachsenring-Assen triple header. At Valencia, he crashed on Friday morning, suffering problems with his neck, and was ruled out of the rest of the weekend, only returning for the test.

In the first two parts of this interview with MotoGP Director of Technology Corrado Cecchinelli, we talked about the proposals for changes to the engine specifications to help reduce the speeds of MotoGP bikes, and Cecchinelli explained the perils of having aerodynamics play too big a role in the sport. Those areas will only be decided for the 2027 season however, when the next rules package comes in.

At the moment, we are still in the proposal stage, with Dorna and the manufacturers negotiating a package that will improve safety, with an eye on cost reduction and sustainability. A final set of rules is unlikely to be agreed between Dorna, the FIM, and the MSMA before the end of 2024.

One rule has already been agreed between all three parties, however. From 2024, the MotoGP bikes will have to use fuel that has been sourced from non-fossil sources. In 2024, that proportion will be 40%, with a switch to 100% non-fossil fuels from 2027.

The past few years have seen a massive change in the way MotoGP machines perform, and more significantly, how they achieve that performance. Ducati's early experiments with aerodynamics in 2010 went from a curiosity to wings and other aero add-ons becoming ubiquitous, and an integral part of motorcycle design. The Bologna factory repeated the feat with the holeshot device, which morphed into ride-height devices, forcing the other manufacturers all to copy Ducati and try to catch up.

All of these changes have had an immense impact on the racing. Top speeds have gone through the roof. At Mugello in 2015, Andrea Iannone was the fastest through the speed trap with a top speed of 350.8 km/h. This year, in the sprint race, Brad Binder hit an astonishing 366.1 km/h in the sprint race. That's an increase of 15.3 km/h or 4.4%.

But it isn't just top speeds: the combination of aerodynamics and ride-height devices have made passing more and more difficult, with riders taking ever greater risks to try to make a move. The first corner has taken on an oversize importance, with pile-ups at the start an increasingly frequent occurrence.

Where once the Japanese manufacturers dominated grand prix racing's premier class, right now, both Yamaha and Honda find themselves in the MotoGP doldrums. The man charged with turning Yamaha's fortunes around is Yamaha Motor Racing Managing Director Lin Jarvis.

In the first part of the interview I conducted with him at Silverstone, Jarvis explained why Yamaha had decided to sign Alex Rins instead of Franco Morbidelli for 2024, and why the Japanese factories are struggling. In this second part, we discuss Yamaha's plans for a satellite team, what they need to do to attract one, and the criteria they would apply. Jarvis also explains why he thinks concessions would be good for Yamaha, and exactly which concessions would help them find their competitive edge again.

It has been a turbulent time for the Japanese manufacturers. Yamaha and Honda have dominated MotoGP for years, but now they find themselves struggling to score points, far removed from their former competitive selves. Monster Energy Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo went from winning the MotoGP crown in 2021, to finishing runner up to Pecco Bagnaia last year, to languishing down in eleventh place in the championship, 149 points behind the leader Bagnaia.

At least Yamaha are in better shape than Honda. The 2023 Yamaha M1 is not a bad bike, it is just slow, with aggressive power delivery. Quartararo managed a podium in Austin, and another in the sprint race in Assen, showing that in the right conditions, the bike still has a chance to be competitive.

That is not going to be enough to allow Quartararo to compete for a championship over a full season, however. To achieve that, much bigger changes are needed, both in terms of engineering and the entire development process.

The person charged with overseeing the European side of that process is Yamaha Motor Racing's Managing Director Lin Jarvis. He is the counterpart to Takahiro Sumi, who leads Yamaha's Motorsports Development Division, and Kazutoshi Seki, who is MotoGP Group Leader and the YZR-M1 Project Leader. Improving the synergy between the European and Japanese parts of Yamaha's MotoGP project is going to be key to making progress.

On the first weekend of August, the Suzuka 8 Hours Race was held at Suzuka Circuit in Mie Prefecture, within an hour's drive from Nagoya, the third biggest city in Japan. This year saw the 44th edition, and Honda is the most successful manufacturer in its history: 29 victories.

This number of victories is overwhelming. Since the Suzuka 8 Hours is regarded as one of the most important races for Honda, a string HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) top management came to Suzuka one after another, with HRC President Koji Watanabe also arriving at the racetrack on Saturday morning. In Sunday’s race, their factory team, Team HRC with Japan Post, dominated all through the eight hours and achieved victory for the second year in a row. It was such a beautiful summer night, and everything went silky smooth for them in the 8 Hours race.

Everything is the complete opposite in MotoGP, however. In the premier world championship for motorcycle racing, Honda has been suffering something they have never experienced before.

As of Round 9, the British GP, Honda has taken only one podium from twenty seven opportunities. In the riders’ standings, the highest place for any of Honda's four riders is 14th, and in the manufacturers' championship, Honda lies in 4th place, with their accumulated points less than one third of Ducati's. In the team standings, Honda’s factory squad Repsol Honda Team is placed the lowest of all, 11th. This must be the most critical situation in their racing history.