Engine size will be the first change to be announced, because engines take time to design, so we’re expecting to hear at Jerez that the capacity limit will be reduced from 1000cc to 850cc, a 15% drop.

Older fans may react to this change with horror, remembering the 800cc MotoGP bikes that created so many boring races between 2007 and 2011.

The 800s replaced MotoGP’s original 990s in 2007, because the bigger engines, which made around 250 horsepower, were considered too powerful. However, the smaller engines were peakier and had less torque, which made the 800s one-line corner-speed bikes, so overtaking became very difficult, hence the move to 1000cc in 2012. Today’s 1000s make at least 300 horsepower.

I’m told that Dorna and the manufacturers have been working hard on the details – bore-and-stroke limits and so on – to ensure that the 850s don’t work like the hated 800s.

The 800s gave us many grimly processional races (I once yawned so hard I nearly broke my jaw) but they weren’t slow. Despite a 19% reduction in capacity, which reduced power output to around 220, the bikes smashed both lap and race records at their very first race, the 2008 Qatar GP.

So, is engine capacity really the best way to reduce speeds? Nearly all accidents happen in corners, not on straights, but the 800s broke lap records, because while they were slower on the straights, they were faster through the corners!

This blog often repeats the truism that tyres are the most important parts of a racing motorcycle.

“If you have ten horsepower less than the other guys you can still win the race,” said Valentino Rossi some years ago. “But if you have the wrong tyres you are f**ked.”

If it’s tyres that ultimately make bikes go faster, tyres can also make bikes slower, so it follows that the best way to slow the bikes is by limiting grip. That way you reduce not only speeds through the corners – which is the main objective – you also reduce corner-exit speeds and thus straight-line speeds as well.

The British Superbike championship is already going down this road.

Like MotoGP, BSB is a spec tyre championship, using the same Pirelli slicks used in World Superbike.

Unlike MotoGP, BSB takes place mostly at old-school racetracks – like Brands Hatch, Cadwell, Oulton Park and so on – where lack of run-off is already a real problem.

This is why BSB has removed Pirelli’s stickiest rear slick from the championship’s 2024 tyre allocation, to reduce corner speeds. The SCX super-soft isn’t only a qualifying tyre, it’s also used in races, which typically last 25 to 30 minutes.

Less grippy tyres don’t make racing more dangerous – riders will crash however much grip you give them! – but less grip ensures that riders will be travelling slower when they do fall, reducing the chances of them reaching trackside barriers.

“We don’t need to go any faster, so we’re peeling it back a bit,” says BSB race director Stuart Higgs. “We’re doing several things, like reducing the rev ceiling again, but the critical thing is the tyres. We don’t need banzai tyres for laps, we need something that’s predictable and durable. We don’t need super, super, super edge grip, because when it lets go we’re f**ked.

“As the tyres get better and the riders corner faster they start having accidents in different parts of the corner. When you design the run-off for a corner, you account for head-on situations, you account for mid-corner crashes and then the run-off tapers back at the end of the corner. But if the corner exit is getting further and further around the corner and the riders are getting faster and faster, at some point the two points are going to meet, where the barrier comes back parallel to the track.

“The SCX has been used almost universally used in races, but now we’re moving to the SC0, because we’ve got to peel things back, we’re not chasing lap records.”

Although MotoGP is working on peeling things back via engine size, aero and so on, it has yet to address the tyre situation.

Last year I spoke to Dorna executives about reducing speeds through tyres. Their rhetorical reply went like this, “Are we actually going to go down a route where we say to Michelin, we want worse tyres?”.

Obviously the tyres don’t need to be worse, they just need to offer less extreme performance, ideally by increasing feel and feedback at the expense of ultimate grip.

The perfect time to do this would be 2027. Obviously, Michelin doesn’t want to create tyres that reduce corner speeds right now, because lap times would be slower and that would be on Michelin alone.

But if different tyres are created as part of the whole raft of changes for 2027, that won’t be an issue.

“Yes, we can decrease extreme grip and make the tyres more progressive,” says Michelin’s two-wheel motor sport manager Piero Taramasso. “If Dorna think we need to do something then we are ready to do something, but at the moment they are working on engine, aero and so on. Maybe tomorrow they will ask us.

“Also, there is another way to do the same thing – use narrower wheel rims.”

Narrower rims change the profile of mounted tyres and reduce tyre footprint, which is another way of reducing corner speeds.

The 2027 technical regulations will also reduce downforce aero and may ban ride-height and holeshot devices; not only to reduce corner speeds but also to make the racing better. We don’t yet know when these rules will be announced, so we must live in hope.

Of course, if reducing injuries is MotoGP’s main motive for a major rewrite of the technical rules, the people in charge should be aware that there’s a much easier way to reduce the number of riders getting hurt.

Last year’s new weekend format – created to fit sprints into the schedule – resulted in a mind-boggling 265% increase in riders missing GP races through injury. And 43% of those injuries were sustained in sprint crashes.