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Friday MotoGP Test Summary at Qatar: Whether Losing A Day Of Testing Matters

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They say a picture paints a thousand words, but the photo above, taken by Cormac Ryan Meenan for the Repsol Honda press release, actually needs several dozen just to explain what is going on.

No, it’s not raining. No, the Honda RC213V has not dropped a rod, blown a valve, or had an oil pipe come lose (Hondas only ever suffer ‘electrical problems’, of course).

That yellow cloud Pol Espargaro is trailing in his wake is sand, strewn all over the track by the strong winds and sandstorm that also played havoc with F1 in nearby Bahrain.

The strong winds and sand rendered the final day of the test completely useless. At one point, the entire session was red flagged due to the conditions. But even when the track was open, few were keen to ride.

Only 9 of the 29 riders present even took to the track, clocking up a grand total of 56 laps between them. And that included in and out laps. That is pretty much the average of what each rider was putting in on Thursday.

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Thursday MotoGP Test Summary at Qatar: Why Ducati & Yamaha Are Strong, And KTM Is Struggling

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There was a palpable sense of excitement after the record-setting laps by Jack Miller and Fabio Quartararo yesterday. Would more records be broken on Thursday?

They wouldn’t. Though both Maverick Viñales and Franco Morbidelli got under Marc Márquez’ original lap record at the track (a record which still stands, incidentally, given that records are only set on race weekends and not at tests), they still ended up several hundredths short of Miller’s blistering time from Wednesday.

And with the wind expected to pick up on Friday the prospect of a lap of 1’52 is growing ever more distant. Conditions will not be as absolutely perfect as they were on Wednesday again any time soon.

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Extra Qatar MotoGP Test Scheduled to Replace Sepang Test

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The cancellation of the MotoGP test at Sepang – a result of the state of emergency imposed by the Malaysian government in response to rising numbers of cases of COVID-19 in the country – threw a spanner in the works for the MotoGP teams preparing for the start of the 2021 season.

Losing days of testing meant less time for the MotoGP rookies to acclimatize to the new class, and less track time to gather data for the coming season.

To address this issue, Dorna and IRTA announced that there will be an additional test in Qatar at the beginning of March. In addition to the original test scheduled for March 10th – 12th, there will be three more days of testing a five days earlier.

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Sepang MotoGP Test Canceled – Early Part of 2021 Calendar Still Subject to Change

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The MotoGP Test at Sepang, due to be held from 19th – 21st of February, has been canceled, Dorna announced today.

The King of Malaysia, at the request of the Malaysian government, has declared a state of emergency in Malaysia, which is due to last until August 1st.

The state of emergency has been declared in an attempt to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to spread around the world.

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Sunday MotoGP Summary at the Qatar Test: Happy Yamahas, How Ducati’s Squatting Device Helps, And Honda’s Tribulations

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The second day of the final preseason test of 2020 showed pretty much the same pattern as the first day: Maverick Viñales didn’t finish the day on top of the timesheets, but the Monster Energy Yamaha rider clearly has the best pace, capable of running consistent low 1’54s, a tenth or two faster than anyone else.

Fabio Quartararo posted the fastest single lap on Sunday, and he and Alex Rins were the only riders getting anywhere near to Viñales’ pace.

As a benchmark, Quartararo posted 14 laps in the 1’54s, Viñales 13 laps, Rins 11 laps. Joan Mir was the only other consistent contender, with 6 laps in the 1’54s, and a solid race pace in the low 1’50s, high 1’54s. The Yamahas and Suzukis are looking very strong indeed at Qatar.

That was borne out by Maverick Viñales’ media debrief. Once, those were glum affairs, in which Viñales would sullenly respond with nearly monosyllabic answers. His mood has improved since last year, especially since his results became more competitive in the second half of the season.

This year, he is positively upbeat: he used the word ‘happy’ ten times in three-and-a-half minutes speaking to reporters. Two years ago, the only time Viñales used the word ‘happy’ was when he preceded it with the words ‘we can’t be’.

Danilo Petrucci certainly believes that Viñales is the man to beat. “Maverick has been really, really fast, also in Sepang,” the Ducati Factory rider told reporters.

“I think at the moment, he is the rider in the best shape, absolutely, both in the single lap and race pace. He can ride in high 1’54, and I think nobody is able to do that.”

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Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Qatar Test: A Fast Yamaha, Ducati’s Holeshot Squatter, & Aprilia Aggro

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If there is one thing that we learned from the Sepang test, it is that the field is even closer this year. In Malaysia, 18 riders finished within a second of one another. That pattern has continued at Qatar, Pol Espargaro in fourteenth just 0.987 second behind the fastest man, Alex Rins.

As comparison, the KTM rider was the last rider within a second of the fastest man after the first day of this test in 2019, but then, there were just eight riders ahead of him, rather than thirteen. And there was a gap of nearly four tenths of a second between the riders in second and third last year. Not so in 2020.

But if the single lap times were close, the race pace was a lot less so. Maverick Viñales towered over the rest in terms of consistent pace, with only the Suzukis of Alex Rins and Joan Mir getting anywhere near the pace of the Monster Energy Yamaha rider.

Viñales laid down a real benchmark, with ten of his 47 laps in the 1’54s, which is under the race lap record. That included a run of ten laps, seven of which were 1’54s, five of which were consecutive. That is a rather terrifying race pace for the Spaniard to lay down, just two weeks ahead of the first race.

Viñales has a reputation for being the winter testing champion, frequently topping the timesheets, yet never quite able to convert that into a consistent championship challenge once the season gets underway.

But there is reason to think things are a little different this time: not only is the Yamaha M1 a good bit faster than it was last year, but Viñales himself has a different attitude.

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MotoGP Preview of the Qatar Test: Last Chance to Get Things Right

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From the humid heat of Malaysia to the cool desert night air, MotoGP enters the final test before the season kicks off in two weeks. The Qatar MotoGP test is something of an oddity, and hard to quantify.

It comes too late to make any major changes to the bike, yet plays a crucial role in exposing vital weaknesses in the factories’ MotoGP machines. It is a place where you won’t see any major updates being rolled out, but it is also the test where factories are looking to catch each other out.

With just two weeks to go to the start of the season, it is too late for anyone to understand and copy any brilliant new ideas before the start of the season.

The main purpose of the Qatar test is to verify engine configurations. All six factories rolled out new engines, updated over the winter break, at Sepang, but the Malaysian circuit is deceptive.

Hot tropical air, a big, wide track with very few tight, low-gear corners means that it is hard to tell whether additional power has pushed the engine over the fine line between aggressive and uncontrollable.

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MotoGP Introduces “Long Lap” Penalty for Exceeding Track Limits

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The Grand Prix Commission has approved the long lap penalty trialed by the MotoGP riders during the Qatar test last weekend.

From the first race in Qatar, riders who exceed track limits, or are deemed to have unfairly gained time, will be punished with being forced to take a trip through a lane placed on the outside of a slow corner, handing them a penalty in the order of approximately three seconds.

The penalty is to be used instead of forcing the rider to drop a position, although both penalties will remain available for the FIM Stewards Panel to impose as they see fit. 

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Monday’s MotoGP Notes from the Qatar Preseason Test

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The good news is that the next time the MotoGP assembles inside a racing circuit, nobody will be able to use “it’s only testing” as an excuse. From now on, everything counts.

The bad news is that strong winds and low temperatures made the last day of testing a treacherous affair, disrupting testing plans, and causing a spate of crashes. (Which, in turn, disrupted testing plans even further.)

The really good news is that it looks like we are in for another immensely competitive season, with fifteen riders ending the test within a single second, and the list of realistic candidates for the title weighing in at around seven: the Honda, Ducati, and Yamaha factory riders, plus Alex Rins at Suzuki. Winning will be tough, but finishing on the podium if you can’t win will be the key to taking the title.

But first, there was one last day of testing to do. The wind proved to be a real problem, testing plans being reshuffled because riding was difficult, especially in the late afternoon and early evening, when the wind was at its strongest. The wind blew sand onto the track, which didn’t help grip, and the cool temperatures made that even worse.

The track temperature dropped below 20°C around 8pm, the time the race is scheduled to start in just under two weeks, and rider after rider went down. Among the fallers: Bradley Smith, Johann Zarco, Alex Rins, Cal Crutchlow, Takaaki Nakagami, Marc Márquez, Miguel Oliveira, Tito Rabat, Jorge Lorenzo, Pecco Bagnaia. And that is probably not a complete list.

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What We Learned from a Preseason of MotoGP Tests

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The phony war is finally over. The last MotoGP test has finished, with riders completing their final day of testing at Qatar. The next time the MotoGP grid assembles, it will be for something of real value: race wins, and world championship points.

Did the last day of the test offer any clear indications as to what might happen in two weeks’ time? Plenty, though they were as confusing as all of testing has been this year.

Johann Zarco managed to be both blisteringly fast and worryingly slow simultaneously. Danilo Petrucci managed to do exactly the same, though in a diametrically opposite manner.

Valentino Rossi managed to impress both in terms of race pace and a single fast lap, but he was still worried whether his pace would last race distance.

Maverick Viñales was terrible for the first six hours of the test, then brilliant in the last forty minutes, after basically wasting a day and a half.

Underneath the surface drama, the two biggest winners of the preseason just got on with their work. Their headline times were great but not breathtaking, but the race pace of Andrea Dovizioso and Marc Márquez was impressive.

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