If there isn’t long to go until the start of the 2023 MotoGP season, we might be wishing it was longer by the time the first race has been and gone, if the fears of a Ducati walkover are to be realised. The grid will look largely the same as 2022, with no fewer than eight Ducati GP22/23 bikes on the grid and, if pre-season testing is to be believed, the Hondas Yamahas, KTMs and Aprilias will be trailing in their wake.
We’ve said it before: that little can be accurately deduced from testing, with all the teams trying out this and that before settling on a final specification, so that no team is really showing their full pace, either over one lap or full race distance. But the problem is that Ducati has eight bikes’ worth of data to draw on and as many different riders’ feedback and that is something that everyone else can only dream about.
It’s not even as if Ducati has six average riders to back up the factory pairing of Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini. Out of the eight, all of them are capable of winning or being able to challenge for the win and it would be a fool who would think otherwise, especially with the machinery they all have at their disposal. The only hope is that all the Ducati riders will take points off each other and, perhaps, allow another rider to sneak through and snatch the title.
Is this an untenable situation? Will it be the death of MotoGP? Will other manufacturers ‘do a Suzuki’ and leave in the face of such odds? That, of course, is impossible to say. It is also impossible to imagine Dorna, the rights holder of MotoGP, saying to Ducati, “four bikes only in 2024: no more”. The grid, without Suzuki, is already looking depleted and it doesn’t look likely that any of the other manufacturers will step up to the plate and replace the four lost Ducatis. So, it’s up to the others to take the fight to Ducati as best they can, despite the lack of data and feedback.
The other problem is that the Ducati is just getting better and better. Its traditional strengths of braking stability and corner exit speed have always been good and now it is adding corner entry and mid-corner performance to the mix and all that taken together is pretty much how you win races. Oh, and let’s not forget the Ducati’s devastating top speed, which it can reach easier because of its corner exit speed, which will be higher because of its speed through the corner… Oh, dear!
The factory is not infallible and its rivals have not given up and stopped working as hard as they know how but they do need to stop making mistakes, otherwise, Ducati will be far ahead after race one, let alone the last race. Honda seems to be in a bit of a pickle but that could also be them sorting out their armoury and discarding what they thought won’t work before we get to the business of actually racing. They have to make sure they have got all their work done if they are not to hand Ducati more of an advantage by being uncompetitive for the first few races.
Even more ominous for Ducati’s rivals is that they – Ducati – claim to be 100% ready this year. This time last year, they weren’t fully ready but Bagnaia still overhauled a 91-point deficit to Quartararo when the GP22 came on song. It’s already on song in 2023 and the season hasn’t started yet!
Elsewhere art Portimao, Yamaha won the prize for the most ridiculous and ugly rear wing yet seen on a racing motorcycle. Even the mechanics were heard to express the hope that it didn’t work so they wouldn’t have to despoil the YZR-M1 for too long. Luckily it didn’t work and Yamaha had to look backwards to 2022 settings to get Quartararo close to Ducati in overall lap times. Increasingly, however, the Yamaha is looking very lonely with the last remaining inline four-cylinder engine on the grid, fighting a rearguard action against the V4s.
It’s not like it’s much more hopeful for the other non-Ducati teams. Brad Binder dragged a good lap time out of the KTM, while Miller is feeling ever more comfortable on the second factory KTM. The Aprilias seem to be fast and everyone is heading down the rabbit hole that is aerodynamics, likely to the detriment of close racing. That the same thing happened in Formula 1 many years ago and still hasn’t been addressed properly isn’t good news for MotoGP and it is likely things are going to get worse before they get better.
Dorna needs to grow a set of balls and start telling the teams what they can and can’t do. As much as it would be against the ethos of prototype racing, things need to be reined in before they get much worse.
And on that rather depressing note, let’s look forward to a good season of racing, as unlikely as that might sound possible right now.
