MotoGP testing: the revolution is over

MotoGP

MotoGP is so tight now that technical revolutions don’t work anymore, it’s all tiny evolutions, which is what we saw during yesterday’s one-day post-season test at Valencia

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Finally Ducati copies someone else! At Valencia Bagnaia tried a ground-effect fairing lower, as used by Aprilia last season – the narrower upper fairing is also new

Oxley

The great Gil Scott-Heron sang that ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and he was right. Tuesday’s one-day post-season MotoGP test session at Valencia was televised but there will be no revolution in technology for the 2023 world championship.

This is because the racing is so ridiculously close now. If we consider that Alex Rins’ race-winning time on Sunday was 100% of performance, then second-placed Brad Binder had 99.98% of that performance and even tenth-placed Franco Morbidelli had 99.45%.

Every MotoGP bike is so good now, so advanced, that there’s really no way to find a half-second improvement. Instead engineers are left chipping away at tenths and hundredths, which comes not from wholesale redesign but from digging deeper and deeper into the data and refining, refining, refining, trying to eke more grip out of the tyres than your rivals.

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Miller’s switch from Ducati to KTM was highly anticipated. New team-mate Brad Binder said, “He wasn’t too unhappy by any means”

Dorna

The only easily visible machine changes yesterday were factories copying each other: world champions Ducati tried an Aprilia-style ground-effect lower fairing and so did KTM, while Yamaha tried looped upper wings, already used by Ducati and KTM.

Copying each other is nothing new in racing. Remember that from 1987 to 2001 all factory MotoGP bike were 500cc V4 two-strokes, with their twin exhausts from the rear bank of cylinders exiting through the back of the seat and the twin exhausts from the front bank of cylinders exiting to the right, under a banana-shaped swingarm designed to improve ground clearance. If you’d painted all of those bikes black, you would’ve struggled to tell the difference.

Thus there no was surprise when 2022 MotoGP king Pecco Bagnaia announced, following the Valencia tests, that Ducati’s plan for 2023 is “evolution, not revolution”. The 25-year-old Italian won the title despite a difficult start to 2022, caused by significant changes to the Desmosedici last winter. Ducati doesn’t want to repeat that mistake.

Even Honda, which had a horrible 2022, doesn’t believe that a wholesale redesign of its RC213V is the answer, because that’s what the company did last winter and it didn’t work. Off-season testing time is now so limited, due to the ever-expanding championship (a record 21 rounds and 42 races in 2023!) that engineers simply don’t have the time to develop a whole new motorcycle like they used to.

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All the bikes are literally within 1% of each other on performance, so it’s just tweak, tweak, tweak.

Listen to KTM hero Brad Binder, who tried lots of different parts and settings on Tuesday, but most of the changes were so tiny that he could barely tell the difference. Because that’s how it is when the engineers are chasing hundredths rather than tenths.

“It’s hard to say, because when you change aero stuff, you change everything [geometry etc], so you don’t know what does what,” said the South African, who evaluated all kinds of changes to the RC16. “I tried everything as a package [KTM’s new modular approach], so what [each change] was doing I have no idea, that’s the engineers’ job – they’ve got to optimise everything and bring us a better bike at Sepang.

“They tell me nothing. I get on the bike, I ride it and I tell them what I think, but I don’t know what’s what. I think they get more unfiltered information that way, so it’s probably better in the long run.”

Thus MotoGP is becoming more like car racing – the only way forward is for the data engineers to dig deep into the zeroes and ones to find out what gives a hundredth here and a thousandth there. And then apply those changes for February’s Sepang tests.

Lap times at a one-day test are largely irrelevant, but there were a few noteworthy performances. VR46 Ducati rider Luca Marini was fastest – a great way to end his year and confirm his growing stature. Miguel Oliveira was the quickest rider making a bike swap, from KTM’s demanding RC16 to Aprilia’s sweeter RS-GP.

Jack Miller, Joan Mir and Alex Rins made the opposite journey, from the easy-riding Ducati and Suzuki to the harder-to-handle KTM and Honda. They ended the day 17th, 18th and 20th.

 

Aprilia

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Miguel Oliveira was arguably the star of the show at the tests – fourth fastest on his first Aprilia ride, behind Luca Marini, Maverick Viñales and Marco Bezzecchi

Dorna

Aprilia arguably had the best day at the tests, taking three of the top five positions, thanks to KTM refugee and RNF arrival Miguel Oliveira, who was fourth, three-tenths off the best time, just behind Maverick Viñales and a fraction ahead of Aleix Espargaró, after just 75 laps aboard an RS-GP.

Oliveira is more of a thinker than a fighter, so he works better flowing with an RS-GP than taking the bull by the horns with an RC16. Don’t be surprised if the 27-year-old Portuguese starts beating Aprilia’s factory riders next year.

At some of last season’s races, Aprilia had the best bike on the grid – high performance plus a friendly character. The Noale factory’s challenge for 2023 is to make that happen more often, with more top-speed and better grip.

“We are looking for more pure power,” said factory number one Espargaró. “Plus more rear grip, so we can use more engine-braking into the corners and the same thing in acceleration, more grip.”

Aprilia’s other big challenge for 2022 (which shouldn’t be underestimated) is to upgrade its logistics to supply four riders instead of two, something it’s never done in the four-stroke MotoGP era.

 

Ducati

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Marini will have a GP22 in 2023 but that could be an advantage, because he’ll have a fully developed bike

VR46

Ducati is in a strange, but luxurious, position. For the first time in its history the factory won the riders’/constructors’/teams’ MotoGP titles and took five of the top ten positions in the world championship. A remarkable performance, never mind the fact Ducati had eight on the grid.

So where do you advance from there? Carefully. Very carefully.

Newly-crowned champ Bagnaia tried various updates in the tests, including a revised engine spec and new aero. But both had their positives and negatives, which is the usual way at this level: improve the motorcycle in one area and it detracts from another.

Bagnaia liked a new, smoother engine spec. He also liked a new narrower upper fairing, designed to waste less of the rider’s energy in turning the bike. A similar unit helped him last season but this latest upper is so minimal that it causes rider buffeting at high speeds.

The lower unit was significant, because it’s Ducati copying Aprilia’s ground-effect fairing introduced at Assen, which increases grip but causes less drag than Ducati’s current diffusers.

New team-mate Enea Bastianini was as chilled and unworried as ever. He liked Ducati’s latest bike, quickly got used to his new crew chief and having an army of factory engineers surrounding him. Finally he declared that life is “better in red”.

Even happier was new Gresini Ducati rider Alex Márquez, who found himself an indie Duke rider after three years with Repsol and LCR Honda. “My natural style comes easier with this bike, which works with so many different styles,” grinned the former Moto2 and Moto3 world champ.

 

Honda

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Suzuki’s 2020 MotoGP champ Joan Mir has a lot to learn, switching from the sweet inline-four GSX-RR to Honda’s fire-breathing RC213V

Dorna

Honda has been mostly in a hole since its six-time world champion Marc Márquez tumbled through a Jerez gravel trap at the season-opening 2020 Spanish GP.

The hole seems deep – but not deeper than that in which Honda found itself in during 1979, 1980 and 1981 – but because MotoGP lap times are so close, the hole is in fact quite shallow. But that doesn’t make it any easier to climb out of.

Honda’s main problem seems to be finding the very narrow window of traction balance between the front and rear tyres. Their engineers improve front grip at the expense of rear grip and vice-versa, so Márquez never has the right compromise between corner-entry, mid-corner and corner-exit performance.

Márquez was only six-tenths off in the tests, despite not using soft tyres for a time attack, and yet he was downbeat.

“We tried a proto bike with new aero, the same engine, with small modifications and a different chassis,” he said. “We have a bit more feeling in the front but then we lose in other areas. You always expect more but it wasn’t there. Most important is that we know Honda are working more for February than now. I expect a big step in the Malaysia tests.”

HRC must crunch the numbers and make the RC213V work better in time for Sepang if Márquez is to have any chance of regaining the title he had made his own until he got hurt.

New Repsol team-mate Joan Mir didn’t look happy during the tests, while new LCR rider Alex Rins seemed more confident. Both had come from a sweet-handling inline-four to a handful of a V4.

 

KTM

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Binder tried KTM’s new Aprilia-style ground-effect lower fairing in the tests

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KTM ended 2022 on a high, after a season which delivered two wins (in the rain) but also its fair share of disappointment. Binder’s charge at Valencia on Sunday was remarkable. Another few laps and he most likely would have passed Alex Rins for the win.

One of the secrets of the South African’s speed was a newly revised frame that gave him less corner-entry performance but more drive grip, the RC16’s biggest issue last season.

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On Tuesday Binder tried another version of the same frame and was back to where he had started. “The newer version is super-good in entry but I was struggling on the gas, trying to get it hooked up, so it was the opposite!” he said. “We need a combo.”

Binder also tried a new Aprilia-style ground-effect fairing but perhaps Valencia, with its mostly slow corners, wasn’t the best place to try it.

“It’s hard to say what it does because when you change aero stuff you change everything, so you don’t know what does what,” he added. “Now it’s the engineers’ job to see what’s doing what, optimise everything and bring a better bike to Sepang.”

Binder will have three new RC16 riders alongside him in 2023: team-mate Miller, former KTM rider Pol Espargaró and Moto2 world champ Augusto Fernandez.

Miller, according to usual contractual obligations, wasn’t allowed to speak to the media about his first day on an RC16.

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KTM’s Italian job – Francesco Guidotti, Fabiano Sterlacchini and now Alberto Giribuola have all joined from Ducati. Miller also brought his Ducati crew chief Cristhian Pupulin with him for 2023

Oxley

 

Yamaha

Yamaha’s 2023 prototype YZR-M1 wore huge closed-loop Ducati/KTM-style upper wings to create more front downforce for fewer wheelies, better braking stability and improved turning. But to run that kind of downforce you need a lot of horsepower to negate the extra drag.

Hence Yamaha’s year-long toil for more horsepower with ex-Ferrari Formula 1 engine designer Luca Marmorini. Yamaha’s test team had evaluated more powerful engine specs at Motegi, Jerez and elsewhere, so everything was looking good for the Valencia tests.

But yesterday 2021 champ Fabio Quartararo said that extra power had gone mysteriously missing, even though his top-speed gap to the leaders reduced from 7.6km/h (4.7mph) on Sunday to 4.7km/h (2.9mph) in the tests.

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Yamaha’s new looped upper wings look familiar…

Oxley

The other idea of running more downforce is to change the dynamics of the whole bike. For some while Yamaha engineers have been using the M1’s aero to make changes to geometry and suspension to shift load to the rear tyre to aid that initial corner-exit throttle opening.

Also, Yamaha has been reimagining the YZR-M1’s chassis characteristics, trying to transform the bike from a flowing, corner-speed inline-four, which is great on an empty racetrack, to a more point-and-squirt bike, which can fight better with V4s in races. Quartararo did try another revised chassis on Tuesday but noticed no real difference. Once again, it’s down to the data engineers to figure out what works best.

Next year Quartararo and team-mate Franco Morbidelli will have the only inline-fours on the grid, while there will be 20 V4s.