It’s not yet two days since the 2022 MotoGP season came to an end with Pecco Bagnaia’s coronation at Valencia on Sunday. But there is, as they say, no rest for the wicked, and the 2023 season kicks off almost right away with the whole grid lining up again on Tuesday for the only day of testing remaining this year at the Ricardo Tormo circuit.
Interesting not just because it’s the first day that many ‘new’ bikes will reappear (with a few breaking cover, of course, at Misano back in September), it also marks quite a few changes in colours as a number of riders switch teams for next year.
With both those factors in play, it means that we’re set for an interesting day of action and, with the season coming to an end significantly earlier than usual, good conditions at the Spanish track should allow for a clear day of running to understand some of the pertinent questions – explored below – to be asked before the series takes a well-deserved winter break.
What the 2023 Yamaha is really like
Given its potential for title-disruption next year, this is perhaps the most pertinent question of all. We’ve already had a look at Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli’s new weapon at Misano, and the initial signs back then were promising indeed – but that happened on a beautifully prepared track in ideal conditions, and they’ll be hoping that both cooler temperatures and a day off on Monday to dismantle the circuit will have broken up some of Sunday’s rubber.
We’ll get our first indication of the new bike’s form the minute we see the speedtrap figures, of course. Yamaha doesn’t need to have found much more, just enough to prevent its bikes from getting blitzed on the straights – the same step that Suzuki so successfully made for this year.
The second element will be all about character, and to better understand that it’ll take both a careful watching of body language and an examination of rider comments at the end of the day. Does the bike still feel like a Yamaha? Does it still run smoothly through the long, fast corners? The potential will be gauged somewhere in between the balance of those two elements.
Oliveira’s and Fernandez’s Aprilia debuts
Over the course of 2022, both Miguel Oliveira and Raul Fernandez at various points looked frustrated and overlooked by their shared employer KTM, despite two wins in wet conditions for Oliveira and a solid if uneventful rookie season for last year’s Moto2 runner-up Fernandez.
But they start a brand new adventure on Tuesday as they join Aprilia’s first ever satellite team, RNF. And, given the strength of the 2022 RS-GPs that they’ll inherit from Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales, you’ve got to think that they’re going to have some fun. Of course, the process of adapting riding styles will take some work, but moving from V4 to V4 will make that easier.
And while Razlan Razali’s team will have a whole new manufacturer to learn as it too moves from Yamaha to Aprilia, we should get our first signs of whether it’s possible for Oliveira in particular to use well-developed second-hand machinery to kick off his 2023 season in much the same way as Enea Bastianini was predicted to in 2022 on Pecco Bagnaia’s hand-me-down Ducati.
What Miller thinks of the KTM
Given how fast he was on occasion in 2022 on the Ducati, Jack Miller’s move to KTM is really the perfect benchmark test for the brand. We know that Brad Binder can ride the wheels off the RC16 on a Sunday, as he again demonstrated in the race at Valencia, but KTM’s other three riders had more problems with the bike this year, and we should get a fair assessment of it from the normally outspoken Australian.
Beyond that, he’s also likely to be on a machine that’s different from the one vacated by Oliveira, if Binder’s different frame on Sunday is anything to go by. So while his new team-mate might be concentrating on learning what he’s doing, there is of course plenty more going on in the garage to keep an eye on as well.
And while Miller’s initial feedback will be the most anticipated, it’ll perhaps be more interesting to hear the assessment of the returning Pol Espargaro, as he gauges the bike’s development in the two years he’s been at Honda.
Of course, he also has a rookie (in fact, the only rookie) team-mate to keep an eye on, as newly-crowned Moto2 world champion Augusto Fernandez gets his first taste of his new ride on Tuesday as well.
Can Marc Marquez win again on the latest Honda?
We’ll know on Tuesday whether or not Marc Marquez can be a title contender on next year’s Honda. It’s as simple as that. The six-time world champion’s recovery has gone well since returning at the Misano test, he’s getting fitter by the day, and he even looks capable of both his miraculous saves and his superhuman ability to overcome any inherent flaws that the bike might have, assuming they’re not massive problems such as the ones current RC213V has.
But in that last part comes the real crunch for him. The bike, as it is right now, is a bodge job of the worst of all worlds. Lacking the rear traction and acceleration it was supposed to address, it hasn’t recovered the front feeling that was traded in the search of it either.
That search was supposed to make life easier for riders who aren’t Marc Marquez, but the result was a machine that no-one could ride. It might not be what the others want to hear, but maybe the best case at this point is at least trying to have one rider who is fast – and we’ll know if that’s been achieved when a fit Marquez gets to ride the new machine.
Suzuki duo trade GSX-RRs for RC213Vs
Tuesday’s test is going to be a bit like going from a photograph to it’s negative for the former Suzuki team-mates Joan Mir and Alex Rins, as they trade in their comfortable, friendly and smooth GSX-RRs for the barely-caged wild animal that is the current Honda RC213V. Their initial responses to a totally different bike will potentially be indicative of how they will fare.
No-one is expecting miracles, of course. Both have only ever ridden Suzukis in MotoGP, and the switch from inline-four to V4 is not going to be a fast one: just look at Maverick Vinales’ transition from Yamaha to Aprilia. But with Mir’s late-braking style in particular well-suited to the Honda (at least in theory), they’ll hopefully show some indication on Tuesday.
Of course, there’s also the potential for their debuts to be marked by the same factor that has marked most Hondas this year: crashes. If the pair do struggle, then there might be a painful few years ahead of them…
Will Alex Marquez be faster at Ducati?
This, really, is less a question with a yes or no answer and more a matter of time. Given everything we know about the current Honda, and how much of a disaster it is, it seems foolish to expect anything other than a rapid improvement in form from Alex Marquez the minute he steps onto his new Gresini Ducati (most likely to be a 2022-spec machine inherited from Pramac Racing).
With that in mind, the real question then becomes just how fast he can go on it. Considering that Marquez is no slouch, and that he’s previously taken that very difficult Honda to two podiums as a rookie, there is absolutely no reason why he cannot end Tuesday’s test as the really big surprise of the day.
The latest updates from Ducati’s mad scientist
Look, no-one knows what to expect anymore from Ducati engineering genius Gigi Dall’Igna. The man who has given us new ways of doing things so advanced and successful that they’ve become de rigueur for his rivals (wings, fins, ride-height devices and physical launch-control systems) always has something new to roll out. And even though it’s half-suspected that some of them are just designed to mess with his rival engineers, that doesn’t mean you can take your eyes off what Ducati is doing.
However, this year might be a little different. Ducati is undoubtedly now running the best bike on the grid, so it’s hard to see its newly crowned champion Bagnaia asking Dall’Igna to reinvent the wheel, and the GP23 is more likely to be the most moderate evolution not revolution in Ducati’s MotoGP history.
In fact, the really big story out of its box might instead be watching Bagnaia’s new team-mate Enea Bastianini, a guy who has a big job ahead of him next year. Losing his comfortable spot at Gresini where he never had to worry about development, he’s about to find a significantly bigger workload ahead of him, and it’ll be interesting to see how he copes with the step up to factory colours.
