Four rounds into the 2022 MotoGP season and the list of bikes that have won races are slightly surreal: a year-old Ducati, a KTM and an Aprilia.
The 2022 Yamahas, Ducatis, Suzukis and Hondas… zero wins between them. After one-fifth of the season.
One of those surprise underdog winners – the 2021 Ducati of Enea Bastianini and Gresini – carried its form through the Grand Prix of the Americas at Austin last weekend and won again.
But for the teams that won in Indonesia and Argentina over the preceding weeks, MotoGP’s 2022 US visit was simply terrible.
There wasn’t a single Aprilia or KTM in Q2, and Maverick Vinales’ 10th place was as good as it got for either marque in the race.
Not that this was a huge shock. KTM’s made something of an artform out of wild inconsistency since its 2020 breakthrough and Miguel Oliveira’s Mandalika win surely wouldn’t have happened in the dry.
And while Aleix Espargaro remains an improbable third in the riders’ championship, Aprilia’s Termas de Rio Hondo victory was never likely to become a routine performance level just yet.
It didn’t help that Espargaro hates the Circuit of the Americas. Eleventh place, chasing Johann Zarco’s Pramac Ducati and team-mate Vinales, may have been a far cry from Argentina just seven days earlier, but it was a big improvement on Espargaro’s five crashes from the 2021 Austin weekend.
“I know it will not sound like a very intelligent comment,” began Espargaro when asked by The Race what Austin had told him about where Aprilia still needs to improve, but from the first lap of free practice one to the last lap today, I want to forget everything.
“I want to remove everything, the changes the applied to the bike, and let’s go to a normal track.
“This track is not normal. The up-and-downs, the bumps, everything. It doesn’t suit our bike, it doesn’t suit myself, and we are lucky that it’s the only circuit in the calendar like that.”
Adding that he “didn’t have grip at all” in the race, Espargaro even suggested that to finish as high as 11th at Austin and under 13 seconds from the winner “means that we have chances to fight for the top five of the championship” given how bad he expected the result in America to be.
In his eyes, Aprilia needs a “more normal track with round corners, not where you have to completely stop the bike to zero and re-accelerate, our bike doesn’t suit this type of corner”.
But he also admitted his grip problem in the race might’ve been because he was using a rear tyre that had been pre-heated before qualifying and then disconnected because Espargaro was so sure he’d get the extra rear tyre allocated to Q2 qualifiers. Instead, he crashed in Q1 and missed the cut.
“It was the first time that we did this ever and I will not repeat it, because maybe this was the problem and it was completely my fault,” he conceded.
Just behind Espargaro at the flag was the KTM of Brad Binder, who was leagues apart from his three stablemates Oliveira, Raul Fernandez and Remy Gardner all weekend. He finished six places and nearly 20s ahead of his Mandalika winning factory team-mate, and it could’ve been better still had he not run wide in a brush with Zarco.
Binder’s feedback on where COTA was hurting KTM had similar themes to Espargaro’s thoughts on the Aprilia there.
“The problem is our bike has some really strong points but this track, it limits our strong points and it makes it more difficult for us in more of the track than we would like,” said Binder.
“Whenever we come from really slow corners onto long straights, we lose a little bit. And our bike seems to be a little bit better in a little bit more flowing stuff, really.
“I think our new base lends itself to a different type of track than here.”
Tech3 rider Gardner said Austin not only exacerbated KTM’s weak points but caused a snowball effect that was particularly bad for maintaining race pace – especially for him and fellow rookie Fernandez.
“It’s just the same problems kind of as always but it’s an extra long track with corners that need a very precise bike, let’s say, and you really have to kind of manhandle this bike around,” Gardner explained.
“It’s hard to get it all connected together in such a long lap, and to do it for the whole race… for me at least, it wasn’t going to happen.
“But I tried, I was fighting and I was trying, but mistake after mistake was not helping either.
“I’m hoping they can take something away from here, how to improve the package that we have.
“They’ve got four riders giving their best, they’ve got two amazing riders in the factory team, one of them not in the points, and we’re finishing also at the end of the pack, giving our 200% every corner.
“Hopefully they’ve got good data from that and hopefully they can try and think of a way to move forward. For sure it’s not the easiest track for KTM, seeing the past. But, yeah…”
