MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

If Friday was the warm up for the new schedule, Saturday was when it hit home hardest. The familiar pattern – FP3 in the morning, including a mad dash for a spot in Q2 in the final 15 minutes, then FP4 in the early afternoon followed immediately by qualifying – was gone. In its place, a lot of confused journalists (well, at least one, myself), suddenly confused by the fact that it was not yet 11am and MotoGP was already starting Q1.

Moto2 and Moto3 had a more normal pattern – they kicked off a little earlier in the morning, and qualifying was a little later in the afternoon than last year – but after qualifying for the Moto2 class, it was time for the first ever MotoGP sprint race. That turned into a genuine barn burner, in both senses of the phrase. It was exciting. It was something new. And it was really rather scary.

The day held a lot of surprises. Lap records tumbled in all three classes: by just under a tenth of a second in Moto2, half a second in Moto3, and by a whopping 1.5 seconds in MotoGP. Bikes and riders we had written off stunned the fans. Riders we had hyped up disappeared were utterly faceless. There is no substitute for racing to uncover the reality.

The first day of MotoGP's new era did not proceed entirely to plan. There were a lot of reasons for that, some the fault of Dorna, some completely out of their hands. But we will get to that in a minute. First, an institutional failure.

As the MotoGP riders entered the final and hectic 15 minutes of what we must now call P2 – the second timed practice, which in effect determines who will pass directly into Q2, and who will have to hope to defeat 10 other riders in Q1 for one of the two spots which will take you into Q2 – the combination of low grip, falling temperatures, and sheer unbelievable pace the riders were setting came back to bite a couple of the MotoGP riders.

Two men fell within a couple of seconds of each other, in almost the same spot, in almost the same way. Pol Espargaro fell first, his rear letting go over the crest at Turn 10, before spitting him off the bike. Miguel Oliveira fell a few seconds later, a little way ahead of Espargaro, the rear of his Aprilia letting to in a similar way, and catapulting the Portuguese rider high into the air, before he came down hard enough to knock all of the wind out of his sails.

Cause of the crash

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.

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.)

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

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."

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.

It would have been at Estoril, in 2011. Casey Stoner had left Ducati at the end of the previous year and joined Honda, and was immediately fast. During a press debrief, technical journalist Neil Spalding asked Stoner a simple question.

"Long and low, or short and high?"

Stoner did not hesitate.

"Short and high."

I was reminded of this brief exchange at the Sepang MotoGP test. In the context of 2011, Stoner's answer made perfect sense. After spending four seasons wrestling with the long and low Ducati, the bike getting less competitive every year, it was a revelation for Stoner to get on the RC212V, the 800cc Honda. He could now brake, load the front as much as he wanted, pitch the bike into the turn and then fire it out again. No more battling with the front end of the Ducati.

Why was short and high better? Because it allowed for better weight transfer under braking, allowing riders to load the front tire before entering the corner. As the riders braked, the forks would bury the front wheel into the tarmac, the rear wheel lifting, putting the entire weight of the bike onto the front tire.

Especially beneficial in the Bridgestone era, with a solid front tire that would give unlimited grip as long as you loaded it sufficiently.

Three days and 60% into MotoGP preseason testing, and what have we learned? I will be taking a much longer look at the test in a series of articles over the coming days, but here are a few quick thoughts at the end of a very long weekend.

The top of the timesheets is a relatively good reflection of the coming Sprint race era of MotoGP: seven Ducatis in the top ten, plus two Aprilias, the first non-Italian bike Marc Marquez in tenth. But the timesheets don't tell the whole story. Occasional rain and damp track conditions disrupted testing sufficiently to force teams to upend their test programs. Some riders dropped plans for race simulations, others dropped plans for fast laps.

On the other hand, the timesheets do give a sense of the relative strengths of the factories, and where they are. So here's a rapid rundown of where each factory stands after three days at Sepang.

Ducati

The thing that should worry any riders with ideas of challenging for the 2023 MotoGP crown is that the 2022 champion is looking eminently relaxed at Sepang. Ducati's approach to the winter tests is the polar opposite of 2022. Last year, they were throwing parts at the riders all the way through practice for the first race, leaving them bewildered, confused, and frustrated, and leaving them struggling for the first five races before they wrapped their heads around that year's bike.

Wet weather is bad news for everybody when testing is so severely restricted. Well, not quite everybody. For those who have a bike which already has a year’s worth of setup data to support it, there is an upside. With practice reduced to make room for the sprint race on Saturday, there is little time to work on setup, so any rider who has a strong base setup is at an advantage. They have a starting point to work from, whatever happens during practice.

That is very much not the case for factory teams who have brought a lot of parts to test and who are looking for a direction. A damp morning and heavy rain in the afternoon scuppered plans for Honda, and made life harder at KTM. Things planned for today have been moved to tomorrow, and low priority items scrapped from the list.

One thing that affects everybody is the race simulation. Many riders were scheduled to do not one but two race simulations: a sprint race simulation on Saturday, followed by a full race simulation on Sunday. But losing the best part of 5 hours of practice to the conditions means they are going to have to choose.