A wing-less experiment carried out by Raul Fernandez and his Trackhouse Aprilia team in Australia offered a glimpse of an alternate MotoGP - one many (but not all) would prefer.
Fernandez, who is the sole rider in Aprilia's full-time roster who will still be part of that roster in 2025 and thus has been carrying out a lot of development work in cooperation with Aprilia technicians, swapped from a conventional aero layout to a bike with no wings during the Phillip Island weekend.
He made the change for Sunday, with warm-up marking the first time that he rode a MotoGP bike without front wings - having made his series debut in 2022.
Normally, removing the wings would not be permitted by the rules as to run a certain aero configuration on the front of the bike you have to homologate it - and none of the teams would waste one of two (or three in the case of 'Rank D' factories Yamaha and Honda) homologation slots on a wingless configuration.
However, the MotoGP regulations permit the removal of items from the homologated aero body without breaching homologation "at certain circuits, for safety reasons", at the discretion of race direction. Phillip Island, with its high winds, is currently the only track where this applies.
The experiment
Fernandez finished 10th in the grand prix - compared to sixth in the sprint, where he ran a conventional aero set-up - but was much more competitive relative to the winner when accounting for the race distance.
"It was a nice surprise," he said.
"We understood a lot of things on the bike, that now we're struggling a lot [with]. It was very nice, a good test for the future.
"I did just five laps in the morning with no wings, and went directly to the race. First lap I was 17th, because our starts aren't the best, but after that the pace was really good, really competitive."
He felt he had "more or less" the performance to have been in the mix for fourth place with a better start.
And he also said it was not a physical ride at all.
"Always I feel like I arrive very tired at the end of the race, after the weekend, after the long race I feel super tired.
"But in the last race I ended the race and I told the team 'I can do another race if you want'.
"It's amazing. And that's something that we maybe need to work on more for the future."
Fernandez's Aprilia peers’ views on the experiment were mixed.
Test rider Lorenzo Savadori said he'd run wing-less in private testing, and found Fernandez's Phillip Island performance curious and informative, but made it clear: "In a normal track of course I prefer a lot the wings."
Maverick Vinales took a similar stance, saying that a wing-less set-up if permitted could maybe be a consideration for somewhere like Assen and that in hindsight he would've considered running like Fernandez at Phillip Island.
"Obviously you need time - maybe three practices - to reset the electronics [settings], because it's not the same,” Vinales said.
“The only thing I'm a little bit concerned about is the front tyre - now we're riding really hard compounds because of the [load generated by the] aero. I don't know, when we take out [the aero], if these compounds are going to work. But Raul said it worked really good, so I don't know.
"It would be more rider technique - so, for me it would be better. More safe? Depends on the situation."
And Vinales’ works team-mate Aleix Espargaro, for his part, seemed generally confused as to what gain there could be to running without aero by choice under the current formula.
The way forward?
The bigger question at the centre here, though, is not whether running without aero can make Aprilia more competitive - that seems like a pretty clear 'no' at most tracks - but whether curbing it through regulations would make modern MotoGP better.
It is a popular viewpoint, with aero serving to both speed up the bikes - arguably beyond the capacity of the current tyre technology, as Vinales hinted above - and to make 'dirty air' more of a thing to the detriment of racing.
Its impacts will only be exacerbated with further development. Honda rider Luca Marini said earlier in the season that aero is key "from here to infinity in MotoGP" - and while the 2027 regulations include significant changes, both mandating narrower aero dimensions and widening the scope of the homologation system, there is no consensus that it will be enough to offset the rate of development.
Equally, though there is no consensus that MotoGP is better without aero - certainly not among those on the grid. Some like Marc Marquez and Jack Miller have been vocal about wanting to see it curbed massively, but others see benefits.
"As a rider, at the moment the MotoGP bike is just fantastic," said Fabio Di Giannantonio earlier this year.
"I would never go back. Honestly. I think a MotoGP bike has to be a prototype, a full prototype, and it has to be the maximum expression of motorcycle engineering. Honestly, I go crazy when I see all the new aero things, all the new devices, all the power that we have.
"Because at the end we're riding a Formula 1 with two wheels. But it has to be like this, from my point of view."
And its impact on rider safety is an uncertain one - increased speeds are bad, but increased stability on corner entry is a positive that at least some MotoGP riders would prefer not to give up.
The Phillip Island crash
The argument of corner entry stability is undercut by the accidents aero can contribute to, however - and its effects have come back into the spotlight after Marco Bezzecchi crashed into Vinales in the Phillip Island sprint.
A luckless incident late on 💥
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) October 19, 2024
Thankfully, Maverick has been declared fit and Bez has no fractures but he has gone to the hospital in Melbourne for a full check up
The incident is also still under investigation by the Stewards #AustralianGP 🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/6z8hsHSmTu
The role aerodynamics played in the crash were cited by the FIM stewards in mitigating Bezzecchi's penalty - and two-time MotoGP champion Casey Stoner went as far as to highlight it as the primary culprit in the big accident.
"Now it's true that with the aero, when you have some moment like that, it's even worse," acknowledged Alex Marquez.
"It's not easy to try to avoid this crash," said Pecco Bagnaia. "You try to manage the situation the best way possible, if you feel a rider is overtaking you you try to manage it a bit.
"It happened to me in Qatar last season - when Diggia overtook me and I arrived in his slipstream, when we started to brake I got sucked the same [as Bezzecchi at Phillip Island]."
But Espargaro felt it was incorrect to pin the blame on aero for what he perceived as a major misjudgment on Bezzecchi's part - and the elder Marquez, an argent aero critic, concurred after reviewing a replay.
"Yeah, I gave my opinion about that after the race - but I made a mistake," said Marquez. "I spoke without checking well the image. I said at the time that it was a racing incident, but [actually] for me it wasn't, it was a mistake of Bezzecchi. Already in the middle of the straight Vinales was in front.
"It's like when Jorge Martin overtook me [on Sunday] - in the middle of the straight was already parallel, before arriving in the braking point. Then you need to anticipate.
"You can say 'aerodynamics' but I believe that that [Bezzecchi] action, without aerodynamics, it finishes in the same way."
