Marco Bezzecchi led a VR46 Ducati 1-2 on the sole day of MotoGP testing at Jerez the Monday after the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.
The VR46 team didn’t have the strongest of weekends at Jerez, but – aided by a lack of development work needing to be undertaken given both its riders are on 2022-spec Ducatis this year – was likely able to focus more on short-term performance than factory counterparts.
The result was a 1m36.574s for Bezzecchi, who’d lost his championship lead at Jerez, with team-mate Luca Marini a tenth off.
Fabio Quartararo was an improved third for Yamaha, logging a much better lap than he had at any point during the weekend – in which he never went below 1m37s.
Quartararo acknowledged afterwards that he had focused on eking out performance with low fuel on fresh tyres, which has been his and Yamaha’s Achilles’ heel so far in 2023. He also tried a new exhaust that team-mate Franco Morbidelli had sampled during the race weekend – as well as new aero, which he was not too impressed with, and a different chassis version that has so far yielded an inconclusive verdict.
He was also among those trialling a race control-to-bike radio system for safety purposes, and was left reasonably optimistic about its possible future uses.
Gresini Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio was fourth, in a similar situation to the VR46 duo, while Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales – who was seen doing many a practice start (like several others) – was the only other rider going below 1m37s.
Spanish GP winner and points leader Pecco Bagnaia was sixth, having largely focused on set-up. He did also try a different, longer-travel front fork arrangement, which he described as promising but “filtering” his front feeling too much. He reckoned it would only be refined enough to be race-able in 2024.
After KTM’s superb weekend, Brad Binder led its contingent again in the test, this time in eighth place. The lead Honda, again, was LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami in 12th.
Full results from the #JerezTest ⏱️ pic.twitter.com/uxOzPn9yyH
— LCR Team (@lcr_team) May 1, 2023
Honda brought in the long-awaited Kalex chassis for the test, for test rider Stefan Bradl to put through its paces, but Bradl was among several Honda riders to hit the deck.
Also crashing where Alex Rins, who fell twice during the race weekend, and Joan Mir, who had had four falls between Friday and Sunday.
Mir sampled the Kalex chassis like Bradl, and had a technical failure while running it.
With Miguel Oliveira ruled out of the test – and potentially facing another spell on the sidelines given his latest diagnosis – RNF Aprilia enlisted Aprilia tester Lorenzo Savadori for the day. He was 22nd and last, albeit just 1.984s off the pace.
