MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Pedro Acosta gave us a reminder of why we say that the season starts for real once the paddock returns to Jerez. "The problem here is that everybody is so fast," the GASGAS Tech3 rider said on Friday. "Because since the CEV they were doing many laps here, like hell. Imagine how many laps in winter tests or with Panigales or whatever. Everything is so close, so close. I am sixth but the gap until tenth is less than one tenth, for this it is quite difficult." Acosta's time of 1'36.439 puts him exactly one tenth of a second ahead of Alex Marquez in tenth, and a time of 1'36.539.

Here, the paddock is back on terra firma, at a track they know well and understand. At Jerez they have a baseline, and a starting point to work. And that makes the job of finding an advantage that much more difficult. The top 16 are all within a second of each other, with little to choose between them.

Things could have been closer still, if it weren't for the crashes that happened in the last part of timed practice. First Jack Miller crashed with 13 minutes to go, then Red Bull KTM teammate Brad Binder hit the gravel in the last three minutes, causing a bunch of flying laps to be canceled due to yellow flags.

That didn't stop first Maverick Viñales, and then Pecco Bagnaia getting under the lap record set by Bagnaia here back in 2022. Viñales is still clearly on form, and is strong here. He has nothing but praise for this year's Aprilia RS-GP.

"I feel like this since Valencia last year, where I could ride the bike at the maximum," Viñales told us on Friday evening. "For me, if I'm able to ride the bike at the maximum, I'm happy. It doesn't matter the result, I'm happy. And today I could ride it in a really good way. I think there is things to improve, but I feel with potential, you know, I feel with a lot of potential."

Given his performance last time out in Austin, we had been expecting Viñales to be quick. A bit more of a surprise was to see Pecco Bagnaia back at the front, after the problems the factory Ducati rider has had in the first part of the year. Bagnaia's fast lap was impressive, but his race pace is just as strong, running low 1'37s with used tires in the first part of afternoon practice.

Things had gotten off to a bumpy start for Bagnaia, after a clutch problem saw him come straight back in after his first run. But once he got that ironed out, he went to work. "We used a different strategy compared to a normal Friday. We used this Friday as a test and it was very useful. We tested more things than normal and I'm very happy," Bagnaia said.

What they tested was a big change on the bike, he explained. He would not reveal what, and there was nothing obviously visible on the bike, but the change had made him a lot more comfortable, Bagnaia explained. "It was a work just to have a better feeling. When you have a better feeling then you can do something that helps you to be more in a good position from the exit of the corners, and that can help."

At the root of Bagnaia's issues is dealing with Michelin's new compound rear tires. Those tires have given a big bump in performance, which explains why so many records have fallen so far this year, and by such a big margin. But the increased grip is producing problems with chatter and vibration, and making life hard for the riders.

Bagnaia doesn't believe this was what Michelin had expected. "The lap times we are doing this year are incredible," the factory Ducati rider said. ""So maybe they were not expecting this kind of performance because the grip is absolutely much higher. But maybe they were thinking to be in the same lap time, but with more support."

What was happening, though, was that riders were using the additional support to go faster. "The tire construction is different, it gives you more grip," Bagnaia explained. "But if you force on the tire, you can start to vibrate."

And that was causing issues for a lot of riders, or rather, Bagnaia said, a lot of riders, with the notable exception of Pedro Acosta. "I think, the moment you can understand this kind of tire, you can do a step. One thing that Pedro Acosta has done very good, because he started already with this tire, and he developed his riding style on a MotoGP with this kind of tire. So he didn't have I think any issue in that area and the way he pushes on the tires is impressive. So that is something for me to understand."

As a rookie, Pedro Acosta comes to MotoGP without any preconceptions of what a MotoGP tire should feel like. That gives him an advantage, though it takes an immense and generational talent to actually use that advantage and turn it into results.

Acosta's maturity was also on display at Jerez. He understood that he needed to be through to Q2 if he wants a shot at a decent result, but he also understood that he was not in a position to make that time on his own. So he found the rear wheel of Pecco Bagnaia, and allowed himself to be towed directly into Q2. And the only KTM rider to make it directly through.

"I am still not ready to make the laps by my own on Friday afternoon," Acosta was honest enough to admit. The issue was a lack of experience. "How many laps did I make today? Less than 40. For this reason, Friday afternoon it is quite difficult for me to push alone. On Saturday I am a bit more ready." The new schedule left him precious little time to understand how to ride a MotoGP bike at each new track. "It’s tough already to learn a track with a MotoGP bike, but then imagine after just 30 laps to push and make time attacks."

Acosta's view is entirely pragmatic, and one that Marc Marquez endorsed. The Gresini Ducati rider no longer needs a tow, unlike he did last year, and now finds himself giving a wheel to others. "It's racing," Marquez said when asked about being followed by Pecco Bagnaia during part of the session before joking that he still owed Bagnaia for all the times he used him for a tow last year.

"But still, this is good for me," Marquez pointed out. "When somebody uses your slipstream, it means you are fast. As I did last year. Last year I was using his slipstream many times because he was the fastest. So now he uses my slipstream."

Marquez had been much faster than Bagnaia in the third sector, so perhaps that was why Bagnaia had followed him through there. "Maybe he learned about T3, but now maybe in the sprint race, if I have the chance to follow him to learn the T4. This can be also a big solution," Marquez joked. "But this is something natural in racing. Sometimes they will follow you, sometimes you will follow them."

The fact that Marquez is fast means his adaptation to the Ducati is very nearly complete. "The good thing is that we can stop talking about adaptation," Marquez told us. "Adaptation is already finished. Now it's time to work on the small details. My adaptation to the bike, I feel like I am already inside the bike. As I showed today in FP1, I go out and I'm immediately fast. But it's true that every race, we have small problems, or something here, something there, still we don't put everything together in one weekend. So let's see if we can do in this one or the next ones, and achieve that first podium. This will be a good target in the next two races."

He had rid himself of his Honda reflexes when he entered the heat of battle, Marquez explained. But his riding style was still very much based on the Honda, and the first half of the adaptation process was already done. He had adapted to the Ducati, now, he and his team needed to adapt the Ducati to his riding style as far as possible.

While Marquez is fast on the Gresini Ducati, he is fractionally off the race pace of Pecco Bagnaia, Maverick Viñales, and Jorge Martin. Martin's pace is once again fearsome, despite the fact the Pramac Ducati rider ended the session in fifth. He had had some problems in the morning, which meant he wasn't quite ready to push very hard for a fast lap with a new soft tire.

The best news for Martin was the absence of chatter, though he didn't have an immediate explanation for its disappearance. "I think it’s a combination of everything but I think it’s maybe the track, or the temperature. I don’t really know," the Pramac Ducati rider said. "For us it’s difficult to understand why this is happening. We were expecting some vibrations in some corners but finally we didn’t have. So, I am happy about that. the strange thing is it was zero vibration, and working perfectly. Let’s hope for the same for tomorrow and Sunday and then we’ll think about it for the next race."

Both Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio suggested that chatter usually started they had racked up a lot of laps on the tires. "This is an issue that we have when we do a lot of laps on tires," the Pertamina Enduro VR46 rider said. "So today honestly I felt a little bit, so I think it will be an issue that maybe can come again on the races, sprint race or main race."

We also saw a return to the front of Di Giannantonio's teammate, Marco Bezzecchi. The Italian has struggled so far with the Ducati GP23, but he was slowly starting to get his head around it, he explained. "Here with the condition of the track and everything as soon as I started riding I felt better in the area I wasn’t improving since the mid-test, which was mid-corner," Bezzecchi said. "I was struggling everywhere and step by step I was improving in braking, in entry, in the exit and everywhere except the apex. Here finally I felt a small step there and this really gave me a similar sensation to last year."

The issue, the VR46 rider explained, was that it was not coming naturally, so he was still lacking in race pace and consistency. He was still having to think about how to ride, rather than just letting it flow.

Things for the Yamahas and Hondas remain critical. The issue is the same for both factories: the bike won't turn, or hold a line in the fast corners. Which is ironic, because that has always been the strength of the Hondas and the Yamahas, though the two bikes did so in different ways. But the more aggressive engines chosen by both Yamaha and Honda have a clear downside: they want to keep going, and so run wide in the fast corners. The bad news is that this will take work to fix. But the good news is that thanks to concessions, they can bring different engine specifications during the season.

There is no doubt that both Honda and Yamaha are working on their problems, and the bike that rolled out of Stefan Bradl's garage was a clear example. It was radically different to the bikes being used by Luca Marini and Joan Mir, with a different frame, a much larger and longer fairing, different side pods, different upper wings, and a very large downwash duct section on the lower part of the fairing.

You can't fault Honda for trying. The question is whether they are trying in the right direction.

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