MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

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 was a lot to chew over at the Barcelona round of MotoGP, and Misano is nearly upon us. So here's a few more things that we learned in Barcelona that matter: Maverick Viñales becoming the first rider to break the new tire pressure regulations; Honda's continuing problems; Fabio Quartararo going back to the future; and what the Misano test might bring, and what it definitely won't bring, and what that might mean for the future of Marc Marquez.

There were a number of records broken at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, including the first ever Aprilia 1-2 in MotoGP. But there was also a less commendable record set: Maverick Viñales because the first MotoGP rider to be punished under the new tire pressure regulations. The factory Aprilia rider was found to have completed less than 50% of the race with this front tire pressure above the minimum set by Michelin, nominally 1.88 bar. As it was his first transgression, he received a formal warning. The next time he is found to have broken the tire pressure rules, he will be handed a 3-second penalty.

Dorna and the FIM announced at the end of the summer break that from Silverstone onward, they woulds start to enforce the minimum tire pressures mandated by Michelin. That enforcement would be delayed at the first round after the summer, the British Grand Prix, as both the sprint race on Saturday and the Sunday grand prix were classed as wet races. The sprint race started on a wet track, the grand prix started as a dry race, but the rain flag was shown, making it formally wet.

The agreement with Michelin was that minimum tire pressures would not be enforced in case of rain, as the conditions changed the stress on the tires and the load put into them considerably. So tire pressures were not checked at Silverstone.

Last weekend's Austrian Grand Prix was a different kettle of fish. Spielberg was caught in the heatwave which has gripped southern Europe, and the weekend was dry bar a few Alpine storms, which thankfully left the races pretty much untouched. The Red Bull Ring is also one of the tracks which most stresses the front tire, with a lot of exceptionally heavy braking, a lot of it uphill.

Punishment coming?

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.

MotoGP's silly season is simmering just below the surface, that much was plain from Thursday at the Red Bull Ring. Rumors continued to fly around the paddock about who would be riding what, when, and where it might be announced. Some of those rumors even had some basis in fact. But a lot were still down to the feverish imaginations of press and fans.

The most concrete news of all seemed to come from Augusto Fernandez. The GasGas Tech3 rider confirmed that KTM have taken up the option for the second year of his one-plus-one deal, and so the Spaniard will definitely be riding for the Pierer Mobility Group, KTM's parent company. Though he didn't reveal any other details, he did say that he expected news to come out soon. Given KTM's penchant for revealing news at their home grand prix, it seems fair to expect an announcement in the next couple of days. Possibly even by Friday or Saturday.

The safest bet is that Fernandez will be staying put in the GasGas team. The team are impressed by the young Spaniard, especially with his work ethic and approach, and he has been a good ambassador for the GasGas brand, which is aimed at a young Iberian audience.

That will still leave KTM with the Gordian knot of fitting five riders onto what are currently four MotoGP grid slots for 2024. KTM are still pushing to expand their presence from four to six bikes for next year, but and have meetings planned with Dorna to make their case again this weekend.

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.

I hardly need remind you at this juncture just how bad things are for the Japanese MotoGP manufacturers at the moment. Honda is fourth in the manufacturers standings, just ahead of Yamaha, while both are nearly 70 points behind Aprilia, the factory in third, and 230 points behind leader Ducati.

Repsol Honda is dead last in the team standings, Monster Energy Yamaha at least ahead of most of the satellite teams. Best rider on a Japanese bike is Fabio Quartararo in eleventh, just ahead of Franco Morbidelli in twelfth. Takaaki Nakagami is best Honda rider, way down in seventeenth.

Six time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez has just 15 points, one ahead of Raul Fernandez, universally seen as a disappointment in his second year in MotoGP, and two points ahead of KTM test rider Dani Pedrosa, who scored all his points in just one round at Jerez.