Quartararo tested a more powerful Yamaha engine, which he may race next week at Le Mans, Aprilia evaluated new seat aero, Honda tried MotoGP's first chassis parts incorporating ground-effect elements and Ducati worked on the problem that's hampering its factory riders
Ducati is still ahead, but not everything is great for Márquez and Bagnaia
Fabio Quartararo‘s gravity-defying ride to second place at Jerez last Sunday almost certainly wouldn’t have been possible without Yamaha‘s latest YZR-M1 engine. And at Le Mans next week the 2021 MotoGP king may have an even more powerful spec, which he tried for the first time during Monday’s post-Spanish GP tests.
“The feeling is pretty good but we need more work to get the full benefit – we are talking about having it for Le Mans,” said Quartararo. “The most important thing is that we still have the same machine agility.” (He’s probably talking about engine inertia and crankshaft mass here.)
Yamaha has learned in recent months that speed of development is everything – that sometimes you have to move forward with upgrades even if you’re not 100% sure about them, which didn’t use to be the Japanese way.
Interestingly, Quartararo and factory team-mate Alex Rins stopped testing three hours early at Jerez. While some teams kept going until the 18:00 finish they packed up at 15:00. Not because they’re lazy but because the track was getting too grippy. Lap times during Monday tests are always super-fast because the track is fully rubbered in from three days of action. But how can a track be too grippy?
First, rider feedback means nothing because the grip level is fully out of the ordinary. Second, it confuses riders, who will struggle to feel good when the next race weekend gets underway.
“It’s not good because you arrive at the next track and you feel that the grip is super-bad,” added Quartararo.
Aprilia’s new seat aero has Ducati-style fins, with a small lateral section and strange sidepods. Will they race it? Yellow nitrogen cylinder charges the RS-GP’s pneumatic valve springs
Mat Oxley
Aprilia: Trying to find stability
Aprilia has had a grim start to 2025, which was supposed to be the Noale company’s year: its RS-GP has the potential to challenge Ducati, especially with the reigning champion on board. But that hasn’t happened, because Jorge Martín has had the unluckiest start to a title defence in the championship’s eight decades and the RS-GP has yet to fulfil its potential.
The RS-GP’s biggest issue is how it uses Michelin’s current rear slick. The bike can generate a lot of grip from the tyre but not in a consistent manner, so it goes through a kind of grip-slip-grip-slip-grip cycle while braking into corners and a grip-spin-grip-spin-grip cycle while accelerating out of corners.
Honda usually copies aero leads, rather than take the lead itself. This carbon-fibre swingarm changes that – it’s MotoGP’s first incorporating ground-effect elements
Mat Oxley
This makes the bike unstable – and unstable bikes aren’t fast. Even worse, the RS-GP’s transition between grip and slip/spin is aggressive, so the bike gets snappy, which makes life even worse for the rider. On the way into corners, he struggles to maintain control, so his corner entry will most likely be imperfect, which destroys the entire corner. And he won’t be able to use the throttle in the best way during the exit phase, because the grip/spin cycle has the suspension pumping up and down.
Aprilia’s solution? An aerodynamics upgrade designed to increase the load on the rear tyre. It’s strange that Aprilia has lagged behind in this area, because it was the first MotoGP manufacturer to use seat aero in anger, during the 2022 Italian GP. That first seat wing was tiny but Aprilia’s chief engineer Romano Albesiano (who majored in aerodynamics at university) told me at that time, “You wouldn’t believe how much difference it makes”.
Who knows if this latest design will do the job? The aero’s lateral surface is very small (compared to KTM‘s RC16 and Honda‘s RC213V) and what exactly do the sidepods do? Might they create downforce by catching the air coming off the rider’s back while he’s sat up braking?
KTM brings new fairing
KTM worked mostly, of course, on fixing its biggest problem: chatter and vibration from the rear tyre. Chatter and vibration are elusive and unpredictable. They appear and disappear as if by magic. Some years ago the usual story was that chatter was caused by high grip, now it’s low grip. Weird.
KTM’s narrower top fairing – not as tiny as the bikini fairing they tried last November – may help with high-speed agility
Mat Oxley
Factory rider Brad Binder reckons his crew did make some progress during the Jerez tests fixing the Scarlet Pimpernel of MotoGP technology, by working with different chassis stiffness. No details, of course, so it could be forks, swingarm, wheel rims or the frame itself. Binder did have another go with KTM’s tuned mass damper, which only Enea Bastianini has been using at recent races.
KTM also had another go with a narrower top fairing. Not as tiny as the bikini fairing it tried at Barcelona last November but smaller than usual. Does this allow the rider to better use his body to help control the bike at speed? Perhaps.
Honda: Trying to take aero lead
Honda also had an aero upgrade and a new engine spec, which is what its full-time MotoGP riders have been begging for, because they think it may be the last piece of the jigsaw that will have them fighting for the podiums.
There’s a running messaging joke going on between Honda’s new tech chief Albesiano and factory rider Joan Mir, who is sometimes the fastest RC213V rider, until he ends up in the gravel, usually because he’s over-compensating for a lack of top speed.
Albesiano: “Joan, please be more calm!”.
Mir: “Romano, please give me a faster engine!”
Honda’s new chief test rider Aleix Espargaro – who made his Honda race debut at Jerez – used the new engine all weekend and was the second fastest RC213V rider through the top-speed trap on Jerez’s back straight, even though he would’ve been exiting the preceding Turn 5 slower than the others.
“It’s not a revolution, but it’s a small step, but we need to be sure it will be faster if we race with it,” said Mir. “It’s improved in all areas – a little more linear, a little more power.”
Honda’s latest RC213V engine delivers more linear torque and more peak power. Easy to identify because the spec goes with this slash-cut pipe
Mat Oxley
Espargaro’s Jerez performance is worth a mention, because some fans assumed Aprilia’s former MotoGP race winner would return to give factory stars Mir and Luca Marini a riding lesson.
Espargaro qualified 19th, finished the sprint in 18th and the GP in 14th (before he was hit with a tyre penalty). Mir was ninth, ninth and, of course, a DNF, after sliding out of an impressive sixth on Sunday. The more circumspect Marini was 16th, 13th and tenth.
This goes to show you that even the riders in the lower reaches of the points are going a gazillion miles an hour.
Ducati fastest, but crashes are still a problem
Finally, we come to Ducati.
It would be more than daft to suggest that MotoGP’s powerhouse is in trouble, but the Bologna brand does find itself in a strange place. Its 2024 Desmosedici is the best motorcycle on the grid, while its latest-spec factory machine has its star riders – Marc Márquez and Pecco Bagnaia – teetering on the brink with front-grip problems.
There was hardly a dry eye in the house when Alex Márquez swept to his first MotoGP victory at sold-out Jerez on Sunday, but there were plenty of worried faces in the factory Ducati garage. Why so?
By
Mat Oxley
Why? We don’t exactly know, of course. But we can come up with a pretty good theory.
Everyone knows that last year Bagnaia and world champion Martín were breaking lap records by huge margins, thanks to the mega grip of Michelin’s latest rear slick. But the tyre (it’s the same this year) is so grippy that it can take load – and therefore grip – away from the front tyre entering corners, causing riders to lose control without warning and crash. That’s why Bagnaia and Martin crashed so much last season.
The GP25 chassis was supposed to fix this issue, but Márquez and Bagnaia rejected it. The differences between the two chassis are small but somehow the factory Desmosedici now suffers from the rear-push problem AND is more susceptible to front-tyre pressure issues.
That’s a bad combination. It’s also the reason Márquez crashed at Jerez and the reason Bagnaia just doesn’t feel confident with the current bike. And it explains why Gigi Dall’Igna’s face wore a bigger than usual frown during Monday’s tests.
These are obviously tricky problems to fix, without obvious solutions. The next two races may be less problematic, thanks to the track layouts and expected weather at the next two GPs: Le Mans and Silverstone.
Oh, you want to know who was fastest at the end of the tests?
Márquez the elder, obviously, by almost four tenths. But, like he says, “We have the speed. We need to avoid the mistakes”.
I have a recommendation for Ducati. You know those motivational stickers that some riders have on their triple clamps, like “Push”?
Márquez needs a sticker that says, “To finish first, first you must finish”.
