After the secrecy of MotoGP’s ‘shakedown’ test earlier this week, the upcoming three days of fully-fledged running at Sepang mark the public start of the 2023 season.
It won’t be the actual debut of the 2023 bikes – with MotoGP’s testing schedule, teams had their new-season prototypes up and running by the post-race Valencia test last November at the latest.
But they’ve had nearly three months to work on them since, and with engine specifications soon to be frozen for the season, and in some cases riders’ futures at teams hinging on what’s been changed since Valencia, the laptimes and comments from the paddock across Friday to Sunday are going to be very revealing.
Here are eight things to watch out for.
IS YAMAHA’S ENGINE DEFINITIVELY BETTER?
Fabio Quartararo is the latest in a long line of Yamaha riders to plead for a stronger engine. Last year’s Misano test hinted he’d get his wish. Then an unfathomable loss of speed in the Valencia test rang alarm bells.
The Valencia confusion seems to have been down to an engine set-up error rather than Yamaha’s engine development having found a way to go backwards again.
With Sepang’s long straights, we’ll quickly know whether what happened at Valencia was an errant blip or actually representative of Yamaha’s engine potential.
In truth, we’re already partway to the answer. The unofficial data that came out from the three-day shakedown suggested that the M1’s top-end power is very much there.
HAS DUCATI REALLY LEARNED FROM 2022?
Ducati began 2022 fresh from dominating late-2021 and as a clear title favourite.
Then it had to openly apologise to lead rider Pecco Bagnaia for a disastrous start to the season, after he hit out at how much development experimentation he’d had to do over testing and the opening race weekend, given he could’ve just carried his 2021 package into the new season and picked up where he’d left off (as Gresini’s Enea Bastianini pretty much did on Bagnaia’s old bike). The last-minute change of engine specification for the works Ducatis – which returned to an older spec – was another example of changes Bagnaia didn’t want to have to deal with at that point.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter in the slightest – Bagnaia and Ducati still swept the championship titles. But they had to mount a record-breaking comeback to do so.
To think it could go too long with essentially its 2022 package would be complacent on Ducati’s part. It needs to keep developing, and technical chief Gigi Dall’Igna is too restless for that to not be the case.
But it had enough performance margin over its rivals last year that it can afford to focus on evolution not revolution for now.
Expect to see Bagnaia pounding round on a familiar-feeling bike this week. Be alarmed if he isn’t.
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR MORBIDELLI AT YAMAHA?
Franco Morbidelli’s first full season as a works Yamaha rider was one of the worst performances by any factory rider in MotoGP. Nineteenth in a championship in which team-mate Quartararo nearly won the title, and won three races while Morbidelli never finished higher than seventh.
A bizarre and unsolvable lack of affinity with the current Yamaha M1? A sign Morbidelli’s 2021 knee injury was basically a career-breaker?
Morbidelli’s always put it down to needing style/set-up adjustments to find the feeling he was missing. He regularly suggested in late-2022 that he was getting there on that front, even though he never put together a full weekend-long performance that proved it.
He was, however, conspicuously happy with Yamaha’s latest chassis in the Valencia test.
Having a 2023 contract protected Morbidelli into this season. With Jorge Martin potentially on the market and Toprak Razgatlioglu still on Yamaha’s books in World Superbikes, obvious alternatives exist for 2024 and Morbidelli won’t have time for many false starts. He’s got to show at this test that he’ll be more competitive this season or swift moves to line up his replacement will surely ensue.
HAS HONDA DONE ENOUGH TO CALM MARQUEZ?
Marc Marquez was quietly seething about the initial shape of the 2023 Honda. He picked his words carefully, but the gist was that Honda had changed plenty of things and none of them were really improvements.
He made clear a lot more was needed to have any hope of the 2023 title, and that Honda had to do something about that in time for the Sepang test.
Behind on aero development and struggling for years now to make a rider-friendly bike, Honda went into the winter with a big list of problems to solve and few things it could count on as performance strengths.
With increasing suggestions that Marquez is ready to look for a new employer, his body language and the implied meanings of his comments on the new Honda are going to be studied harder than ever this week.
HAVE OTHERS COPIED APRILIA’S AERO IDEAS?
In its first season as a MotoGP title threat, Aprilia made some bold aero steps as it pioneered a ground effect side fairing and a ‘rear wing’ on the seat unit.
It didn’t really get chance to finetune and exploit them as its season tailed off in a way that was little surprise given Aprilia is still relatively early in its MotoGP expansion and development into being a true top team.
But rivals have now had all winter to finetune their own versions of these innovations. If it turns out they offer big gains and the likes of Ducati have managed to get more out of them than Aprilia did in 2022, then it’s just done its rivals a favour by making breakthroughs it failed to make the most of and opening the door for others to instead.
IS KTM GOING TO FINALLY FINETUNE WHAT IT’S GOT?
KTM has been guilty of constantly throwing new development ideas at its bike and having to work to find new base settings around them, rather than refining and perfecting promising parts.
It suggested it was going to adjust that strategy last year, then let slip that it ran eight or nine different frames during the 2022 season – significantly adding to race riders’ in-weekend workloads. In that context, KTM’s fluctuating form is little surprise.
Will it focus on ending testing with something its race team can just get on with working on and exploiting for a decent chunk of the season ahead, rather than complicating its own task again?
It’s made a point of bringing in outside rider expertise, having ended up in the potentially counterproductive situation last year of having four riders who’d only ever ridden KTMs in MotoGP. A great endorsement of the strength of its rider development programme, but perhaps not the best for maximising performance.
Jack Miller (fresh from Ducati, but also with Honda knowledge) and Pol Espargaro (long-time KTM hero, fresh from Honda but also with past Yamaha knowledge) will change that.
IS HONDA LISTENING TO MIR AND RINS?
Marquez has gone from being clearly Honda’s only hope to having another past champion in the same garage and a multiple race-winner nearby, as Suzuki refugees Joan Mir and Alex Rins land at Repsol and LCR respectively.
The indications from Valencia were that their initial impressions and laptimes proved how big Honda’s problems were.
They’ve come from a recent race-winning bike and a team that had plenty going for it in most areas except budget. Honda is almost the exact opposite.
The odd situation around Mir’s crew chief choice (Honda refused to bring Frankie Carchedi over from Suzuki with him, placed Ramon Aurin with him for the Valencia test then swiftly moved Aurin to a new test-team role) didn’t bode well for Honda prioritising Mir’s needs or wanting to make his transition as smooth as possible. That means how his relationship with new crew chief Giacomo Guidotti begins is going to be key.
IS GAS GAS STARTING OFF AS A KTM EQUAL?
Rebranded satellite KTM team Tech3 now represents sister brand Gas Gas in a switch that’s been billed as putting it on an equal level with the works KTMs.
Given recent Tech3 riders’ complaints at the equipment disparity they faced and how slowly upgrades reached them, it will soon be obvious if the parity philosophy is actually being maintained.
In Espargaro, the KTM/Gas Gas programme has one of its most valuable rider voices rider for its new-to-MotoGP brand. He’ll surely make it known if Gas Gas isn’t really an equal sibling.
