MotoGP testing: the revolution is over

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.