MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

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.

There was a great deal of excitement when this unusual prototype bike (my shoddy phone camera photo) was spotted in the Repsol Honda garage at the Sepang test. Was Honda the latest factory to try out a ground-effect fairing? The obvious answer was yes, but this misses the point entirely. This bike spoke volumes about what HRC was up to at Sepang. And it had very little to do with aerodynamics. Or at least, it had very little to do with ground effect.

The changes at HRC – former Suzuki engineer Ken Kawauchi replacing Takeo Yokoyama as Technical Director – have see Honda go back to basics. At Sepang, Honda sent Marc Marquez out to ride the Honda RC213V with just a plain fairing, no aerodynamic wings fitted at all. "The new technical manager arrived in HRC, and he wants to understand many things about the concept," Marquez explained. "I was not asking about why this, why that. I was just riding."

Look beyond the ground-effect fairing on the strange prototype, and this bike too looks more like HRC going back to basics. To understand what Honda are up to, let's go through a few photos and parts, one by one.

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.

After the first morning of running, and having spent a couple of hours walking up and down pit lane, here are the first things I spotted on the 2023 bikes.

But perhaps I should start with the riders. The testing rule of thumb is that factory riders who stayed with the same factory got to go out on the 2022 bike first, while the new arrivals were handed the new bikes straight off the bat.

Though it seems odd, it makes sense once you see the logic of it: experience riders need to be reminded of how the old bikes felt before starting to test new parts, so they can tell whether something is an improvement or not. The new riders have no frame of reference, and so nothing to compare new parts with. Might as well focus on getting them up to speed straight away.

So it was that Jack Miller and Joan Mir were sent out on black carbon-fiber stealthed prototypes, while Marc Marquez and Brad Binder took their old bikes out for a spin first. Fabio Quartararo followed suit, as did Pecco Bagnaia, Aleix Espargaro, and Maverick Viñales.

Here’s a quick rundown of what everyone has been testing, both from what they told us after the day had finished and from what I saw down in pit lane.

Honda

The rumors of former Suzuki boss Ken Kawauchi moving to Honda raised many eyebrows in the MotoGP paddock. Engineers switching factories may be commonplace for European manufacturers, but it is almost unheard of, and unthinkable for Japanese factories. As Japan's leading MotoGP journalist, Akira Nishimura his his insight into what the news that Kawauchi is moving to HRC for the 2023 season means.

Ken Kawauchi, Suzuki's long-time technical boss, will become HRC's new technical manager for the 2023 season following the Hamamatsu company's withdrawal from MotoGP. Below is my brief insight into this bombshell news.

It was January 10 when I first heard about Kawauchi-san’ joining HRC. I was chatting with a fellow European journalist by text when the subject came up. I understood it was likely to happen, because I remembered a casual exchange with Kawauchi-san during our season review interview last December.

After the interview, I stopped the recorder, and we left the interview room. Then, I joked to him, “why don’t you move to, say, KTM, after your company’s withdrawal from MotoGP? I believe they will hire you with a very high salary.”

Over the next week or so, I will be taking a deep dive into what I saw at the test, with the help of photos from Niki Kovács and having talked a few things over with Peter Bom. But examining all of the photos and thinking about what I saw has been an intensive affair, as I tried to figure out what was going on.

But we'll start off with Honda. For a lot of reasons. Not just because Marc Marquez expressed disappointment at what HRC had brought to the test, but also because two new riders switched to Honda, including the 2020 MotoGP champion Joan Mir and the winner of the Valencia MotoGP race Alex Rins.

I gave my first impressions from the test on Tuesday evening after the test, but the trouble with working quickly is that you don't notice what you have missed. There are so many small changes that you don't really have time to absorb them all. And sometimes, there are so many eye-catching changes that you miss out on other big changes, which is certainly the case with Honda.