Who starts the 2015 MotoGP season as favorite for the championship? The final test at Qatar will give us a much clearer picture of where the factories and riders stand than the last two tests in Sepang.
That is in part due to the fact that the factories have had time between the Sepang tests and now to work on further refining their bikes ready for the start of 2015.
But the Qatar test is also a little more representative for the rest of the season than Sepang is. The Malaysian circuit may have a good mix of fast and slow corners, but the tropical heat makes it tough on riders, tough on tires, and the track can lose a lot of grip as the temperatures rise.
Qatar may not have the fast corners that Sepang has, but much lower track temps make the circuit a lot less greasy than Sepang.
It helps if the track is clean, though. Sat on the edge of a desert peninsula, dust and sand all too often blows across the circuit, playing havoc with grip levels.
Reports from the recent Kawasaki H2 launch at the circuit suggest the track is not too dusty, and having hordes of journalists circulating on a bike with a nice fat rear tire should have swept most of the dust from the circuit.
The other danger is the chance of dew forming on the track, a problem as the night draws on. The problem is that the dew on the track is impossible to see, meaning riders find themselves tumbling through the gravel wondering what just happened.
Testing at least offers some way of avoiding the track once the dew settles, but the trick is not to get caught out in the first place.
A clean and dry track is what Yamaha will be hoping for. The first impression of the new fully seamless gearbox was positive, but that leaves the Movistar Yamaha riders with work to do. The behavior of the bike has changed, more stable in braking, but getting the best out of that needs a lot of work on set up.
The balance of the bike and suspension will be where the gains are to be made, and that is where Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi will be concentrating. Electronics, too, could help there, Yamaha’s engineers always having something new to test.
Race simulations will be vital. One of the key areas where Yamaha still lags behind is in managing tire wear at the end of a race. Under better conditions than Sepang, both Rossi and Lorenzo will be hoping to improve this aspect. It is these details which will make the difference between beating the Hondas and coming up just short.
At Sepang, Jorge Lorenzo trialled a new handlebar-mounted rear brake lever, to allow him to use the rear brake in left handers, when his foot is jammed under the fairing with little room for movement. The lever was finger rather than thumb operated, but Lorenzo rejected the idea. It is unlikely to be seen at Qatar, though clearly, this remains an avenue which Yamaha will continue to explore in the future.
With riding styles becoming more radical, and seamless gearboxes rendering clutch levers superfluous after the start, the handlebar-mounted rear brake will enter MotoGP once the factories have figured out the details.
For Honda, their task is a lot simpler. After having decided on which chassis to use at the first Sepang test, Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa worked on setup at Sepang 2. In Qatar, they will turn their attention to race setup, and the final details of preparing for the start of the season.
As ever, HRC are ahead of the game, the bike well-sorted, their riders ready to take on the year. The downside to this, if you can call it that, is that most of the big steps in performance have already been achieved.
What remains is refining details, and the smaller gains that can bring. Honda would not be Honda if they did not have a trick or two up their sleeves, but they are unlikely to be producing those tricks at Qatar.
Qatar will provide a good measure of the relative strengths of the Yamaha and the Honda. Qatar favors Yamaha more than Sepang did, with more flowing corners and more grip from the track.
Lorenzo and Rossi can exploit their corner speed more, without losing as much in braking stability as at Sepang. The race simulations the four factory riders are likely to run should be very telling.
For Ducati, work continues on the Desmosedici GP15. It proved to be most of what the riders expected at Sepang 2, the bike turning with little effort, finally freed of the understeer that has plagued all previous incarnations of the bike.
But motorcycle design is all about compromise, and the changes made to rid the bike of understeer have raised problems elsewhere, most notably in braking for corner entry and in stability mid corner.
That is the next objective for both Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone, but with such a completely new bike, there is a lot of margin for improvement. The factory Ducati team has not even settled on such basics as a base weight distribution, so new is the bike.
Though Ducati chief Gigi Dall’Igna has said no decision has been made on whether the riders will start the season on the GP15 or the GP14.3, both riders are adamant that they want to do what they can to fix the GP15.
There may be a GP14.3 sat in the corner of a factory Ducati garage, but the odds are very small that either Iannone or Dovizioso will actually use them, unless forced to by crash damage.
The Ducati has changed massively, and with it, so has the attitude of the riders. At the Ducati launch, before he had even ridden the bike, Andrea Dovizioso said the new bike had given him enormous motivation.
“If I think about winning the race, now I have the feeling that it is not impossible, where before it was. That makes a big difference if just in your mind you can see that it is possible,” he said.
A picture posted on Twitter by Ducati racing boss Paolo Ciabatti illustrates the change in Dovizioso all too clearly. On the back of Dovizioso’s new leathers, it says Desmo Dovi. That would have been unthinkable a year ago.
Suzuki, too, have work to do, and once again, their main focus will be on trying to extract more power from the bike.
Reliability problems at the end of 2014 meant the winter was spent working on that aspect, rather than increasing horsepower, but now that the bike will hold together, Suzuki have turned their attention to speed.
The factory is bringing the latest set of software upgrades to help in that respect, and work will continue on finding a good race set up as well.
Aleix Espargaro is still struggling from the aftermath of a knee injury, but that gets stronger every day. He will need it to be strong, as Suzuki has several race simulations on the cards for him.
As for teammate Maverick Viñales, he continues his rapid adaptation to the MotoGP category. He has made the switch very well so far, and must continue on that path. Like Espargaro, his main focus will be finding a race setup.
There is much more work to do at Aprilia. The Italian factory is still well behind schedule, after the 2015 chassis which they brought to the Sepang tests turned out not to work.
Both Alvaro Bautista and Marco Melandri preferred the hybrid chassis they first rode at Valencia, and work at Qatar will be focused on that.
There is a lot to do: at the Milan launch of Aprilia’s racing program, Bautista said that they were still working on finding the right seat and fuel tank location. Those are fairly basic aspects which they still need to get right.
Bautista’s role is clear, to continue to work on developing the Aprilia RS-GP and provide direction for the bike. For Marco Melandri, work will continue on trying to get comfortable, and adapt himself to the Bridgestone tires.
Perhaps some time on the bike at a different track, in different conditions will help him find what he needs. It does at least appear that he has now accepted his role as development rider, rather than competing for podiums and wins as he was in World Superbikes. He still faces an uphill challenge.
While the satellite riders do not have any development work to do, they face their own set of challenges. Their job is to adapt to their bikes and find the best race set up to start the season with, and for all of them there is work to do.
The job has been easiest so far for the Tech 3 Yamaha riders, as they have faced the least amount of change. Bradley Smith struggled at the first Sepang test, still recovering from a badly sprained knee sustained during motocross training.
Sepang 2 was better, the Englishman quickly up to speed. Things were reversed for his teammate, Pol Espargaro impressively fast at Sepang 1, but struggling with technical issues at the second test, which left him down on the timesheets and behind on his schedule.
The Qatar test is where the two men refine their set up and get ready for the race in two weeks’ time.
The Honda satellite riders have a little more work to do. Cal Crutchlow has adapted best of the two British riders so far, after finding himself in trouble at the Valencia test.
Crutchlow was slow on the CWM LCR Honda at the first Sepang test, but found his feet at the second test. He looks in much better shape now, posting fast times and a reasonable race pace. Qatar will be a better yardstick, and a track where Crutchlow has been fast in the past.
By contrast, Scott Redding still has a lot of work ahead of him. The Englishman has struggled to find his feet aboard the RC213V, the bike being much more difficult to ride than the RCV1000R he rode in 2014.
Redding is working things out slowly, making steady progress each test. But he faces plenty of challenges ahead. At least conditions at Qatar should make it a little easier, and a new track means more options to learn. Redding is behind on where he expected to be this season; his job at Qatar is to close the gap as much as possible.
It is not just the Honda RC213V which is proving to be harder to ride than expected. The new Open class RC213V-RS is proving to be a tough nut to crack as well.
The bike may be fast, but it needs a lot of work on electronics to find the optimum set up, especially for engine braking. The limited resources of the Open class teams means that is not easy: the electronics systems may be simplified, and their interfaces may be user-friendly, but there are still endless parameters which can be adjusted.
Making the right tweaks needs data, time, and resources, three things which are always in short supply in the private teams. All of the Open class Honda riders will be hoping for some more help from HRC, and with the Repsol Honda team close to being ready to race, they may just get the assistance they need.
Progress will be best measured by Nicky Hayden, the experienced American already knowing the the tracks, the tires, and the class.
Hayden finds himself not much closer to the front than he was last year on the much slower RCV1000R, a situation he will be hoping to remedy at Qatar.
Meanwhile, Karel Abraham’s Cardion AB team have now switched to Showa and Nissin, meaning they face extra hurdles in terms of set up.
For newcomers Jack Miller and Eugene Laverty, their task is to continue to adapt to MotoGP. That is perhaps a little easier for Jack Miller, as a factory-backed rider, and with Cristian Gabarrini as his crew chief, he has all the help he needs.
But Miller must deal with the new demands of a MotoGP bike, something he was not entirely prepared for at the first Sepang tests. Laverty, on the other hand, does not have the support which Miller enjoys, but he does have the benefit of much more experience. His task is to put that experience to good use.
With just two weeks to go to the opening race of the 2015 MotoGP season, the Qatar test will be crucial for the teams.
There is much still to be done, and a different track and different conditions exposes new and unsuspected weaknesses. It is the final chance to get things ready for the new season. It is nearly time to race.
Photo: © 2013 Scott Jones / Photo.GP – All Rights Reserved
This article was originally published on MotoMatters, and is republished here on Asphalt & Rubber with permission by the author.
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