MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Two Saturdays, two sprint races, and five riders down. MotoGP's sprint races continue their trend of being thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. They produce compelling racing, but the riders are constantly skirting disaster.

And sometimes failing to skirt it: Joan Mir crashed on the first lap, and was taken to hospital for scans on his ankle. MotoGP medical expert Dr Charte told Spanish broadcaster DAZN that Mir had suffered a concussion, and so could miss the grand prix on Sunday. He is due to be evaluated again on Sunday morning, but if he does miss the race, that would bring the grid down to 17. Very threadbare indeed.

Still, there is no argument that the sprint races are exciting. Even the riders think so, though their attitude to the excitement varies with their appetite for risk. And their willingness to fight, and to defend aggressively.

Cutthroat business

Like Friday at Portimão, the first day of the Argentinean round of MotoGP confounded expectations. In Portugal, we all believed that the two days of testing which had happened two weeks previously would mean a smooth and uneventful Friday. Instead we had a power cut and a huge accident for Pol Espargaro which has left him ruled out of action until Mugello at the earliest, causing two red flags.

At the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit, the expectation was that the first day would be difficult. A dirty track, the threat of rain, and the first weekend of the new schedule (revised to make space for sprint races) at a track where the riders hadn't tested and the teams had gigabytes of data. Going into a weekend blind could have been a recipe for disaster. But in fact, Friday went swimmingly.

Even the weather cooperated, mostly. Black clouds lingered threateningly for most of the day, but after the overnight rain, proceedings were only briefly interrupted between the first practice sessions for Moto3 and Moto2. There was only the wind to contend with, a strong wind creating problems in several places around the track.

Blowy out there

The first weekend of MotoGP sprint races proved so packed with action and controversy that it is hard to know where to begin. Add in the vagaries of MotoGP life – travel to and from circuits and airports and other commitments – and it is hard to give the opening round at Portimão the full detail it deserves.

So in note form, a few very quick thoughts on the race on Sunday, and how it played out. I will expand on some of these in the next couple of days.

Dream start for Bagnaia

After taking victory in the sprint race on Saturday, Pecco Bagnaia dominated the grand prix on Sunday. It took him one lap to take the lead, and once he did, he controlled the race completely. Maverick Viñales – an impressive ride from the Aprilia man – pushed Bagnaia hard for the first half of the race, but the Ducati rider inched away from him in the second half of the race, before extending the gap in the last few laps. You never had the sense that victory was under threat.

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

Two rounds into the WorldSBK season and it already feels that the back is broken on the season. After the shortest winter in memory, some team personnel said that they had just a few days off over Christmas, it’s been a hectic time for the paddock. This week will be a rare chance to catch their breath but with tests in Aragon, Montmelo and Assen on the schedule for teams it’s clear that there’s still plenty of work to be done!

After a hard winter, Indonesia should have been a reward for much of the paddock. With the track sitting on the stunning coastline of Lombok it’s a perfect holiday destination. Good weather, nice hotels, white sand and local cuisine makes for a perfect destination. Unfortunately, that postcard image didn’t quite work out for most teams. Food poisoning seemed to affect half the paddock and the weekend became a test of endurance on and off track.

It’s been a long, hard winter and this was the culmination of that for many...

Toprak wins again

Yamaha know the challenge they are facing in 2023; a horde of fast Ducati’s that can be competitive everywhere. For Toprak Razgatlioglu that means he has to be perfect week in and week out. Australia was far from that objective for the Turkish star, and with Alvaro Bautista having claimed five wins from six races it was critical that Toprak would win at least one race in Indonesia.

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

A hat-trick of wins for Alvaro Bautista, two Sunday podiums for Michael Ruben Rinaldi and even a double race win in the Supersport class meant that Australia was absolutely perfect for Ducati. With his likely title rivals faltering it was even better for Bautista. Steve English looks back on Round 1 of the Superbike World Championship

Perfect weekend for Bautista and Ducati

Stop the presses: Ducati are a juggernaut! It’s hardly news that Ducati, winners of both MotoGP and WorldSBK titles in 2022, are strong. It was perhaps a little bit startling to see just how strong they were in Phillip Island for the opening round of the Superbike season though. With four bikes inside the top five, they were able to take advantage of Kawasaki’s stuttering start to the campaign and a crash for Toprak Razgatlioglu but even so it was a perfect start to the campaign for them.

With Axel Bassani and Philipp Oettl finishing fourth and fifth in Sunday’s 22 lap finale it was clear just how good the Panigale V4R was working in Australia. It was also likely that Alvaro Bautista would claim a hat-trick of race wins at Round 1 and that Michael Ruben Rinaldi would make progress and be strong, but Bassani and Oettl’s Sundays were very newsworthy.

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

Going into the final MotoGP race of the year at Valencia, we were all expecting Ducati to dominate. After all, they had utterly dominated the 2022 season. Ducati had won 12 of the 19 races so far (7 by Pecco Bagnaia), had at least one rider on the podium for 25 consecutive races, taken 15 pole positions, and had at least one rider on the front row for 39 races. In 2021, Ducati had locked out both the front row of the grid, and the podium at at Valencia.

After qualifying, Ducati had increased their pole tally to 16 in 2022 and extended their streak of consecutive front row starts to 40. Jorge Martin started from pole, and Jack Miller qualified third. But that something had changed was clear from the rest of the grid. Marc Marquez was second on the Repsol Honda – a fit Marquez can use his genius to pull a fast lap out of the bag, but the Honda is in no shape to sustain that over race distance – while the second row consisted of Fabio Quartararo on the Yamaha, Alex Rins on the Suzuki, and Maverick Viñales on the Aprilia. Valencia was not looking like being a Ducati whitewash (redwash?) again.