MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

When the 2023 MotoGP season is over, the Motegi round is likely to be seen as one of the turning points. Either because this is the place where Pecco Bagnaia and his team fixed their problems with the Ducati GP23 and stopped Jorge Martin's momentum in its tracks, or because he couldn't, and Martin would go on to sweep the title.

It is still too early to say which of those two versions of events will transpire, and the sprint race at Motegi did little to clarify the picture. Jorge Martin was unstoppable, shattering the pole record, beating the race lap record by over a second (though the sprint races don't count toward setting race lap records), and leading from start to finish, after shaking off a brief challenge from Brad Binder. But Pecco Bagnaia looked a lot better than he has done in recent races, finishing third and limiting the damage to Martin.

As the most populous nation in the world, and one that is absolutely mad for motorcycles, India deserved a motorcycling grand prix. And as a successful economy, it had the capacity to organize one. On Sunday, it got a proper MotoGP spectacle. The racing for the win in all three categories wasn't particularly exciting – three races, three runaway victories – but there was spectacle and sensation up and down the field. Surprises, and championships blown wide open. What more could you want?

Initial fears of disaster proved to be overblown. The track was as safe as most European tracks, with some room for improvement. The asphalt could do with being repaved, but the same is true for half a dozen circuits on the calendar. The facilities were generally outstanding, the crowds were decent for a first race with little promotion (making it happen mattered more than packing the grandstands to the rafters) and incredibly passionate. The standard of marshalling left something to be desired, though it was not outright dangerous, just not up to world championship standard.

The proof of any pudding is in the eating. And the proof of any MotoGP event is when the rubber hits the road for real: when the racing starts. The Grand Prix of India has been through a real rollercoaster in the past few months, from doubts that the circuit would be ready a few months ago, to worries that the track wasn't safe enough a couple of weeks ago, to the circuit being embraced by the riders yesterday after they finally got a taste of the Buddh International Circuit on a MotoGP bike.

But practice is practice, and only racing is for real, and the first ever grand prix motorcycle race to be held at BIC exposed a few weaknesses in the circuit's preparation. And it once again exposed the rather worrying state of MotoGP in 2023. There was a long delay due to the rain, the sprint race starting at 5pm, 90 minutes after the originally scheduled start. And there was yet another first-corner pile up, with another rider forced to miss Sunday's race due to injuries sustained in the crash.

With just two days of testing during the MotoGP season, track time outside of race weekends is like gold dust. Just over halfway through the season, teams and riders find themselves with a lot of questions needing urgent answers. Factory engineers have their own agendas, with prototypes and new ideas to collect data on in preparation for the first post-season test at Valencia, to give themselves enough time to get bikes and engines ready for 2024.

Michelin, too, have things they want testing. New compounds for 2024, and very early work on the 2025 front tire which is meant to solve the current woes with tire pressure caused by ride-height devices and aero. That tire is reserved for test riders, however. The MotoGP regulars won't get their hands on it until Valencia or Sepang at the earliest.

So there was an awful lot to test on Monday at Misano. A new engine, chassis and aero for Yamaha, a new bike (sans engine) for Honda, carbon-fiber frames for KTM and Aprilia, and experiments with suspension and setup and bike geometry to work through.

There are days when you are reminded that racing is not quite as important as we like to think it is. Saturday was one of those days. The news that Mike Trimby, IRTA CEO, had died on Friday night affected everyone in the paddock. To say that Trimby was a giant of the sport is an understatement. The only person who has had a greater impact on the shape of MotoGP and motorcycle racing in its current guise is Carmelo Ezpeleta.

And arguably, Trimby did more to make motorcycle racing safer than Ezpeleta, because he was elected by the riders as a safety representative, and went on to form IRTA, which had the political clout to improve safety because they had the power of collective bargaining. And Trimby had the moral courage to use that power to force race promoters and circuit owners to make drastic changes to make the racing safer. There are riders alive today who probably wouldn't have been if Mike Trimby hadn't taken the stance that he had.

Normally, MotoGP teams keep garage doors firmly shut when the fairings of their bikes need to be removed, unless forced to do otherwise. For example, the teams have to keep their garage doors open throughout a MotoGP session, for as long as the pit lane is open. The factories used to slide large screens in front of the bikes to get around this, but Dorna and IRTA have banned this, allowing screens only to be used for bikes which have been crashed.

If a factory team wants to take the fairings off their bike, they have to use sheets and covers to hide the bikes innards from prying eyes, rather than screens. An injunction not all factories stick to: some will still put up screens, consequences be damned.

So it is very rare to get a shot of a bike with its fairing off. MotoMatters.com contributors Niki Kovács and Cormac Ryan Meenan have both managed on occasion to get a snap of a fully undressed bike. But in Austria, Cormac managed to get a selection of shots of the KTM RC16 without its fairing on, from both sides. Here's what the bike looks like, with some comments on what we can see.

Sometimes after a race, I feel like there is a lot to write about. This is not one of those days, because it was not one of those races. In previous years, the Red Bull Ring has always delivered when it came to racing. But with conditions as close to perfect as possible – the only complaint you could have is that it was perhaps a little too hot – the weather wildcard was taken from the pack, and the race turned into a measure of rider and machine. And as it's the Red Bull Ring, where the key to speed is braking and acceleration, mostly machine.

So the race we got is a pretty fair reflection of the current state of MotoGP. The strongest rider/bike/team package dominated. The second strongest rider-bike package finished second. And the best of the satellite riders headed up a gaggle of last year's Ducatis. The Aprilias, who should have done better, got bogged down at the start, the launch off the line still very much the RS-GP's kryptonite. And the Japanese bikes spent their race battling to get into the top ten.

As I wrote in my preview for the Austrian Grand Prix on Thursday, something always happens at the Red Bull Ring. It is impossible to have a race here without some kind of unexpected drama unfolding. Although, if it always happens, is it still unexpected?

This Saturday's drama revolved around Jorge Martin and the first corner. A massive pile up there at the start of the sprint race saw Marco Bezzecchi, Miguel Oliveira, and Johann Zarco crash out. Martin got the blame, and was handed a Long Lap Penalty to be served on Sunday.

Was Martin really to blame? Yes and no. A little bit perhaps, though others played a role too. Mostly, though, the causes of the Turn 1 incident run much deeper, and are more troubling than the question of whether a particular rider's approach to the first corner was overly ambitious or not. And they highlight some of the underlying problems with MotoGP.

I am not a fan of the Red Bull Ring at Spielberg. It is an overly simplistic circuit – a bunch of straights with an omega in the middle to prevent it from being a basic trapezoid layout, stuck up against a hillside. Because it is basically three long straights and an extended left hander, speeds reached are high, and there is very little runoff. Add in a couple of blind crests where riders have a tendency to crash – the exit of Turn 1, the exit of Turn 3 – and you have a recipe for disaster.

That recipe came terrifyingly close to completion at Turn 3 in 2020. Johann Zarco clipped the front wheel of Franco Morbidelli's Yamaha on the way up the hill toward Turn 3. The bikes were traveling at such a speed that both Zarco's Ducati and Morbidelli's M1 shot across the track at Turn 3, Morbidelli's bike passing in between the Yamahas of Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi, Zarco's Ducati flying just over the head of Maverick Viñales.