“It’s been tough and not the smoothest of seasons, with injuries, but at the last couple of rounds we’ve made forward steps with my riding. The biggest thing for me is bike time — there’s so much more to come from me than from changing the bike week in, week out, so I just need to keep chipping away and staying on the bike.
“I was fully aware how tough Moto2 would be. My goal has always been to be in the GP paddock and I know it doesn’t happen overnight: Jake [Dixon] has been here five years now and Sam [Lowes] has been here nine. It doesn’t just happen in your first season – time is the key and you just need to be patient.”
Fellow Brit Scott Ogden is in his second season in Moto3. Like Skinner, he found some good speed with the Pirellis on Monday.
“It was interesting,” says the 19-year-old, who rides a Honda NSF250RW for Michael Laverty’s VisionTrack Racing Team. “Pirelli gave us a hard and a medium rear to try and the initial feeling was that they give a lot of grip, especially the rear, but with the front it’s difficult to feel the limit – you don’t know how much you can push with the front tyre – there wasn’t much movement from it and there was a little bit of chatter. I’d say the front is a bit of a step back, but the rear is so good and had so much grip that the lap times were half a second to a second faster.”
Ogden loves the Pirelli rear and wants more feel from the Pirelli front for 2024
VisionTrack Racing Team
Pirelli’s Moto3 rear slick is based on one of its tyres from the superbike paddock, while the front is all-new, so the tyre will require more work before the next tests.
“They only gave us two bog-standard compounds, so I’m sure they’ll play with that and make another step. The two rears they gave us weren’t far apart, whereas with the two Dunlops we get there’s more of a difference in lap times, so everyone seems to run the same tyres. Maybe with the Pirellis there’ll be more difference in choices and combinations.”
Pirelli’s Moto3 slicks also drop off more than the Dunlops, just like its Moto2 tyres.
“Everyone starting afresh with new tyres might be a bit of a leveller”
“I think that will make for more exciting races, because in Moto3 at the moment you can go 100% from lap one to the last lap,” Ogden adds. “Whereas if you have to manage the tyres or the tyres drop off a lot and you have to ride a bit differently at the end of races it’ll make for much more exciting races.”
This may have a secondary and important beneficial effect. If different riders choose different times to really go for it, the massive packs that currently ride around lap after lap, making many Moto3 races scary to watch, may become less of a problem.
Ogden is having a challenging second GP season, showing his talent when he can, because his Honda isn’t as competitive as the dominant KTM (which also runs with GASGAS and Husqvarna badges). So far this season he’s scored points four times, including an excellent fifth place in the soaking Argentine GP.
“It’s difficult when one manufacturer is quite a lot better than the other. I feel like the team and I are doing the best job we can right now, but it’s not where we want to be, though we’re slowly getting back to where we should be.
Ogden working with his VisionTrack crew
VisionTrack Racing Team
“The big groups don’t make it easy because it’s difficult for me to do my lap times, whereas when there’s more room I can use my own lines and use the corner speed the Honda likes to carry. There’s been a lot of sessions when I’ve been in the top ten, so I just need to adapt in races.”
Both Moto2 and Moto3 are crazy-competitive because the riders are tomorrow’s MotoGP stars, but Ogden thinks the switch in tyre brand may shake things up a bit.
