MotoGP’s shortened winter testing programme concludes with two days at Portimao this weekend, ahead of the same venue hosting the season-opener for the first time a fortnight later.
The initial 2023 test a month ago at Sepang set up an intriguing picture – Ducati looking as strong as expected, but was Aprilia or Yamaha going to be its main rival? Honda certainly didn’t look like it was going to be…
“Maybe if there was a race [right after the Sepang test], the first five bikes would be Ducatis” was VR46 rider Luca Marini’s ominous summary – but the Desmosedici clearly loves the Malaysian venue.
Will Portimao be the same story, or will there be a final pre-season twist?
Here are the questions we’re looking to have answered when the field gets back on track this weekend.
WHAT PACKAGE WILL HONDA SETTLE ON?
Honda ended 2022 with a disgruntled Marc Marquez saying there was a lot riding on the quality of the package his team brought to the first 2023 test, because what it had come up with so far wasn’t going to be good enough to fight for the championship.
Honda duly bought four different packages to Sepang last month, but after trying all of them Marquez concluded that he was better off going back to more or less the specification he hadn’t been that impressed with at Valencia last November.
There was also a bizarre interlude when Honda removed all the wings from Marquez and test rider Stefan Bradl’s bikes. The explanation for it going ‘zero aero’ and then putting it all back on step by step was that it would help new ex-Suzuki technical boss Ken Kawauchi understand Honda’s aero better.
Given an aerodynamic package is supposed to work holistically, it was hard to see that approach as anything other than desperation from a team struggling for answers.
It all felt reminiscent of the scrambled 2020 pre-season in which Marquez jumped back onto an old aero spec at the very last minute, having concluded that none of the new parts were going to work. There’s just two days left now for Honda to come up with its least worst option to commit to for a 2023 season that may well decide whether it can keep hold of Marquez. But in those two days we are also likely to get a better picture of where Marquez actually is pace-wise, given how busy he was at Sepang.
Amid all this, new recruit Joan Mir seems to be taking to Honda life relatively well. But it’s hard to see him winning in Repsol colours any time soon.
DOES YAMAHA FACE A REAL QUALIFYING CRISIS?
Fabio Quartararo’s prayers appeared to have been answered as Yamaha’s 2023 bike showed improved engine performance from the outset, bar a blip in a late-2022 test caused by incorrect settings.
But before he could get too delighted at gains in the area where Yamaha was at the biggest disadvantage to Ducati last year (and many other years before that), a new problem emerged.
When Quartararo tried to do some qualifying simulations right at the end of the Sepang test, the single-lap pace just wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel much wrong with the bike’s handling, it just wasn’t producing remotely competitive times in qualifying trim.
With qualifying deciding the grid for both the sprint and main races now, and 50% less distance to make up ground from a bad starting spot in the sprint, a single-lap-pace struggle in 2023 will be very costly.
Yamaha’s engine gains are a definite positive, but they don’t seem big enough to make up for potentially bad qualifying positions, so it’ll be vital for Quartararo’s title hopes to see if that problem carries over to Portimao, and if so, whether it can be resolved before the race weekend.
IS BASTIANINI SETTLING IN?
Enea Bastianini gave Ducati’s eventual champion Pecco Bagnaia a very hard time in 2022 even though he was on Gresini’s older-spec bike.
So now Bastianini’s on the latest factory bike alongside Bagnaia, his equipment deficit has been removed, he’s no longer an underdog, and he’ll be even harder to beat, right?
Maybe not immediately. The flipside of that switch is that Bastianini is moving from the comfort zone of the very well-sorted 2021 Desmosedici to a 2023 bike that has had a few changes and isn’t quite dialled in yet. Not to the extent of the 2022 version’s early issues, but Bagnaia’s experience of that bike gives him a stepping stone that means he’s relatively comfortable with the throttle response of the more-powerful-again 2023 Ducati whereas it’s taking a little longer for Bastianini to get used to.
How long does he need? At Sepang he didn’t look like he’d be taking the fight to Bagnaia straight away. More of the same at Portimao will strengthen the chances of a successful Bagnaia title defence. But if it feels this weekend like Bastianini’s found his feet on the 2023 Ducati, the chances of an intra-team championship fight shoot back up.
IS APRILIA SECOND-BEST BIKE? AND HOW CLOSE IS IT TO DUCATI?
The results sheets throughout test one suggested Aprilia would be the manufacturer taking the fight to Ducati, though that might have been slightly skewed by the Yamaha single-lap-pace concerns that may turn out to have been a Sepang anomaly.
There’s enough evidence to suggest that Aprilia’s 2022 long-shot title bid wasn’t an anomaly, though, and that it’s now sustainably among the frontrunners.
Lead rider Aleix Espargaro reckons every element – power, aero, handling – has improved this winter. He’s just not sure if it’s improved enough given Ducati won’t have stood still. But he’s also holding out hope for the definitive version of Aprilia’s 2023 engine, set to arrive in the Portimao test.
It still feels novel for an Aprilia rider to be talking in terms of final improvements to get the bike on terms with the very best, given how long this firm was propping up the timesheets. But there’s no reason for Aprilia not to go into 2023 eyeing a title bid – if it’s made enough of a step.
WILL OLIVEIRA STAR AT HOME?
Miguel Oliveira is the Portuguese crowd’s hero, so his test form will be eagerly watched to see if it sets him up for starring in his home race when the season begins.
It would be a very, very, very, very big ask to expect him to repeat his commanding 2020 home victory given he’s making his debut with an RNF team that’s making its own debut with (old-spec) Aprilia machinery after parting with Yamaha. Then again, dominating on a Tech3 KTM in 2020 wasn’t exactly a predictable performance.
Oliveira looked at Valencia last winter like he’d instantly taken to the Aprilia. The picture looked a little bit complicated at Sepang. Not ‘this is going wrong’ complicated, just the level of complicated you’d expect for a bike/team switch, especially by someone who’s only ridden one manufacturer’s bike in MotoGP up to now.
It’s not just the Portimao home crowd that’s curious to see whether swapping KTM for Aprilia means Oliveira stops swinging wildly from unstoppable to anonymous and starts producing his (brilliant) best form consistently.
WHERE DOES KTM/GAS GAS FIT IN?
Not for the first time, KTM was the toughest brand to judge in the Sepang test. It looked OK and relatively trouble-free, but is OK good enough? Probably not given the quality of the opposition.
Pol Espargaro is certainly delighted to be back in the fold – albeit running under sister brand Gas Gas’s name at Tech3 – and Jack Miller’s transition from Ducati has got off to a reasonable start.
We just need to see at Portimao whether KTM’s relatively quiet winter is a sign of its progress stalling and that it will go on being an occasional winner but nothing more, or the under-the-radar prelude to the real breakthrough year it now needs.
