MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The first weekend of MotoGP sprint races proved so packed with action and controversy that it is hard to know where to begin. Add in the vagaries of MotoGP life – travel to and from circuits and airports and other commitments – and it is hard to give the opening round at Portimão the full detail it deserves.

So in note form, a few very quick thoughts on the race on Sunday, and how it played out. I will expand on some of these in the next couple of days.

Dream start for Bagnaia

After taking victory in the sprint race on Saturday, Pecco Bagnaia dominated the grand prix on Sunday. It took him one lap to take the lead, and once he did, he controlled the race completely. Maverick Viñales – an impressive ride from the Aprilia man – pushed Bagnaia hard for the first half of the race, but the Ducati rider inched away from him in the second half of the race, before extending the gap in the last few laps. You never had the sense that victory was under threat.

If Friday was the warm up for the new schedule, Saturday was when it hit home hardest. The familiar pattern – FP3 in the morning, including a mad dash for a spot in Q2 in the final 15 minutes, then FP4 in the early afternoon followed immediately by qualifying – was gone. In its place, a lot of confused journalists (well, at least one, myself), suddenly confused by the fact that it was not yet 11am and MotoGP was already starting Q1.

Moto2 and Moto3 had a more normal pattern – they kicked off a little earlier in the morning, and qualifying was a little later in the afternoon than last year – but after qualifying for the Moto2 class, it was time for the first ever MotoGP sprint race. That turned into a genuine barn burner, in both senses of the phrase. It was exciting. It was something new. And it was really rather scary.

The day held a lot of surprises. Lap records tumbled in all three classes: by just under a tenth of a second in Moto2, half a second in Moto3, and by a whopping 1.5 seconds in MotoGP. Bikes and riders we had written off stunned the fans. Riders we had hyped up disappeared were utterly faceless. There is no substitute for racing to uncover the reality.

The first day of MotoGP's new era did not proceed entirely to plan. There were a lot of reasons for that, some the fault of Dorna, some completely out of their hands. But we will get to that in a minute. First, an institutional failure.

As the MotoGP riders entered the final and hectic 15 minutes of what we must now call P2 – the second timed practice, which in effect determines who will pass directly into Q2, and who will have to hope to defeat 10 other riders in Q1 for one of the two spots which will take you into Q2 – the combination of low grip, falling temperatures, and sheer unbelievable pace the riders were setting came back to bite a couple of the MotoGP riders.

Two men fell within a couple of seconds of each other, in almost the same spot, in almost the same way. Pol Espargaro fell first, his rear letting go over the crest at Turn 10, before spitting him off the bike. Miguel Oliveira fell a few seconds later, a little way ahead of Espargaro, the rear of his Aprilia letting to in a similar way, and catapulting the Portuguese rider high into the air, before he came down hard enough to knock all of the wind out of his sails.

Cause of the crash

Writing MotoGP season previews used to be a relatively simple affair: discuss the four or five riders who had a realistic chance of winning the championship, compare the strengths and weaknesses of the Yamaha vs the Honda, and ask whether Ducati have done enough this year to catch up. A few notes on the remainder of the grid, and you were done.

Previewing the 2023 MotoGP season is potentially a much more time-consuming affair. All 22 riders on the 2023 grid have grand prix victories to their name in one class or another. All five MotoGP factories had bikes on the podium last year, and only Honda didn't score a win. There are 13 world champions lining up in MotoGP in 2023. To say the grid is stacked with talent is an understatement.

Potential champions this year? Obviously Pecco Bagnaia has a good chance of defending. But Yamaha have given Fabio Quartararo the extra speed he was missing to be able to challenge. Enea Bastianini could well surprise and upset his factory Ducati teammate. Aprilia have refined the RS-GP to a point where Aleix Espargaro is a serious candidate, and there is no doubting the talent of his teammate Maverick Viñales either. Jorge Martin has a better bike and a point to prove, and sprint races will play right into his hands. Miguel Oliveira is very much in the same boat. And it would be foolish to write Marc Marquez off, whatever the state of the Honda at the moment.

The MotoGP championship faces one of the biggest shakeups in recent years in 2023. The biggest change is of course the introduction of sprint races (or "Sprints", as Dorna is trying to insist on calling them). That change, allied with a calendar expanded to 21 rounds, has a lot of knock-on effects in the championship.

All of this is likely to confuse regular fans who have committed the former schedule to memory. And it will confuse new fans, who are still struggling to work out what happens when during a MotoGP weekend.

To help you keep track of the new schedule and the sprint races, here's your handy FAQ for the most important changes to MotoGP for the 2023.

What The Actual Sprint?

What is this "sprint race" you speak of?

Sprint races are a new, shorter race added to the schedule. Only the MotoGP class will have sprint races, Moto2 and Moto3 will have just the one main race on Sunday, as last year. Dorna wants you not to call them "sprint races", but to refer to them as "Sprints". This request is almost certain to fall on deaf ears, especially as the FIM sporting regulations refers to them as "Sprint races".

When does the sprint race happen?

Saturday, 3pm local time. Sprint races will have a big impact on the schedule. I'll explain more later though.

How long is a sprint race?

Two rounds into the WorldSBK season and it already feels that the back is broken on the season. After the shortest winter in memory, some team personnel said that they had just a few days off over Christmas, it’s been a hectic time for the paddock. This week will be a rare chance to catch their breath but with tests in Aragon, Montmelo and Assen on the schedule for teams it’s clear that there’s still plenty of work to be done!

After a hard winter, Indonesia should have been a reward for much of the paddock. With the track sitting on the stunning coastline of Lombok it’s a perfect holiday destination. Good weather, nice hotels, white sand and local cuisine makes for a perfect destination. Unfortunately, that postcard image didn’t quite work out for most teams. Food poisoning seemed to affect half the paddock and the weekend became a test of endurance on and off track.

It’s been a long, hard winter and this was the culmination of that for many...

Toprak wins again

Yamaha know the challenge they are facing in 2023; a horde of fast Ducati’s that can be competitive everywhere. For Toprak Razgatlioglu that means he has to be perfect week in and week out. Australia was far from that objective for the Turkish star, and with Alvaro Bautista having claimed five wins from six races it was critical that Toprak would win at least one race in Indonesia.

So the final test of the 2023 preseason has finished. In reality, of course, testing finished on Saturday – Sunday was the first day of practice for the first round of the 2023 MotoGP season at Portimão. It's just that there are eleven days between the eight-hour FP1 session we just had and the 45 minute session officially titled FP1 on Friday March 24th.

That is an exaggeration, but only a slight one. There were a few things being tested – mostly factories finalizing aerodynamics, as well as the odd experiment – but for the most part, the teams were using the day to prepare for the first race of the season in just under two weeks time. Almost everyone did a sprint race simulation, and pretty much everyone tried to set a fast time. So the timesheets may not tell us everything, but they are actually meaningful, at last.

But first, about those experiments. Yamaha finally rolled out the F1-style rear wing on the tail of Fabio Quartararo's Yamaha M1, much to the revulsion of a sizable part of the fan base on social media. (Though notably, a younger section of fans were in favor of such innovation.)