MotoGP’s wheels that flex for more grip

“Your performance depends on the front tyre allocation and how you stress the front tyre and what kind of drop [in tyre performance] you get, so now we’ve homologated our second aero package, which is a bit less radical, so when we encounter these kinds of problems we can better adjust to them.”

Risse refused to go into details about KTM’s new aero. The obvious difference is the removal of the sidepods. The new upper wings look very similar to the previous wings, so it’s likely KTM has made minor adjustments to angles and so on.

“A small difference makes a big difference – you can affect the total outcome without changing much,” added Risse.

“You have to see everything in the context of tyre allocation and set-up. We used the whole weekend at Mugello to explore the set-up for this. I don’t think we’ve finally arrived at the point where you can say this is the perfect set-up.

“We really believed that this latest aero philosophy would work better and finally we found a set-up that worked well but you saw that we struggled during the weekend. You have to invest a lot of time, and you will not see the results straight away so it’s work in process. The good thing is that we now have an alternative for certain tyres and tyre allocations.”

“What do wings really bring to the show?” Miguel Oliveira

KTM rider Brad Binder had an astonishing race at Mugello, from his usual lowly grid position. The 26-year-old South African has always been more of a racer than a qualifier, so after starting from 18th he somehow fought his way through to seventh at the end of the first lap, completing the race in the same position, only four seconds behind winner Pecco Bagnaia.

Team-mate Oliveira, who finished second at Mugello last year, came home ninth ninth, a further seven seconds back.

“We took off the side pods to make the bike more agile and less critical on the brakes and the bike seems to work a bit better,” said Oliveira.

“But now we find that the setting is so different, so we need to adjust it a bit more. We will keep both aero options, so we will see which works better at every track.”

Oliveira had a huge scare on Friday morning in FP1, when he ran onto the grass at 200mph before Turn One after Aleix Espargaro had drafted past him. The 27-year-old attributed the incident to the turbulence and dirty air created by MotoGP’s current downforce aerodynamics.

Oliveira believes that limiting downforce aero designs wouldn’t fix the problem.

“I think if you limit it you’ll end up with the same situations because some factories have more knowledge than others, so if you limit the aero the guys with more experience will still have more. I think we either go with full aero or without, to zero.”

But would it be possible to race 226mph motorcycles with no front downforce, because the bikes are just about trying to take off at that speed?

“Yes, we raced for many years without wings,” Oliveira answered. “You’d use less power, you’d have to manage the situation more and you’d have to be more of a rider, so I think it’s a good solution.”

Risse agrees that banning all downforce aero is the right way to go.

“We would absolutely rather race without the wings,” he said. “But when this aero door is open and when it’s legal to do these things then you have to do them.

“I think aero has affected MotoGP development quite a lot, aside from the pure aerodynamics, because you have very different problems with it. For example you can use very different engine performance, so the whole path that MotoGP has taken has been dictated by it. At KTM we don’t think it’s good for the sport and we still don’t think it’s particularly safe to go this way. We would be happy if downforce aero was stopped but we are not the only ones to make the decision.”

Honda’s new RC213V chassis

Honda had its first major chassis upgrade at Mugello, with Marc Márquez racing the latest chassis before flying to the USA for a fourth operation on his two-year-old right-arm injury.

The only easily visible difference between the old and new frame and swingarm is the swingarm pivot point. It would seem that Honda is playing with chassis stiffness to make the TC213V turn better. The new design may also allow mechanics to change pivot height more quickly, so they can make adjustments during practice sessions, because the all-new 2022 RC213V is still in the early stages of its development.

Turning is always important in MotoGP, because the quicker the rider can turn the motorcycle in the middle of the corner the sooner he can pick up the bike and open the throttle.

“As soon as you improve in one area you lose in another” Marc Márquez

“We are trying to understand the way to turn better, but it’s always true that as soon as you improve in one area you lose in another,” said Marquez at Mugello.

“We are trying to understand the way to turn better, the way to understand the front tyre better and the way to turn in a shorter time. In MotoGP if you take a long time to turn the bike you cannot use the power, so you lose tenths.”

The new chassis was one reason why Marquez decided to continue riding over the weekend, after taking the decision on Friday to undergo surgery.

“I worked a lot during the weekend for Honda, giving my input for the future,” he added.

Honda’s 2022 RC213V is the company’s first full MotoGP redesign in a decade or so and the company’s difficulties with the machine highlight the problems of trying radical technical changes at a time when MotoGP’s current trend is to add more races and reduce testing.

This year’s pre-season testing programme was the shortest in many, many decades: two days at Sepang (the second afternoon in the rain) and three days at Mandalika, where the track was in such poor condition that the data and info gathered wasn’t of much of use. This doesn’t encourage manufacturers to make anything but minor changes to their motorcycles, year by year.