MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

With just two days of testing during the MotoGP season, track time outside of race weekends is like gold dust. Just over halfway through the season, teams and riders find themselves with a lot of questions needing urgent answers. Factory engineers have their own agendas, with prototypes and new ideas to collect data on in preparation for the first post-season test at Valencia, to give themselves enough time to get bikes and engines ready for 2024.

Michelin, too, have things they want testing. New compounds for 2024, and very early work on the 2025 front tire which is meant to solve the current woes with tire pressure caused by ride-height devices and aero. That tire is reserved for test riders, however. The MotoGP regulars won't get their hands on it until Valencia or Sepang at the earliest.

So there was an awful lot to test on Monday at Misano. A new engine, chassis and aero for Yamaha, a new bike (sans engine) for Honda, carbon-fiber frames for KTM and Aprilia, and experiments with suspension and setup and bike geometry to work through.

Nearly 80,000 fans (technically, 71,000 paying spectators and 8,000 people in the VIP Village and paddock, some of whom might even have been fans) crammed into the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli on Sunday to see a feast of Italian racing. They got what they came for: three Italian bikes on the podium, eight Italian bikes in the top ten, two Italians on the podium.

The only thing they missed out on was an Italian winner. In Moto3, it was the Colombian David Alonso who won a fierce final lap battle to take victory. In Moto2, the Spaniard Pedro Acosta controlled the race pretty much from the start. And MotoGP, Jorge Martin led a replica of Saturday's sprint race podium, the Pramac Ducati rider making it two Spanish wins on the day. Local fans had to make do with hearing Il Canto degli Italiani twice on Saturday, when Mattia Casadei and Nicholas Spinelli took victory in the two MotoE races, and Casadei was crowned MotoE world champion.

There are days when you are reminded that racing is not quite as important as we like to think it is. Saturday was one of those days. The news that Mike Trimby, IRTA CEO, had died on Friday night affected everyone in the paddock. To say that Trimby was a giant of the sport is an understatement. The only person who has had a greater impact on the shape of MotoGP and motorcycle racing in its current guise is Carmelo Ezpeleta.

And arguably, Trimby did more to make motorcycle racing safer than Ezpeleta, because he was elected by the riders as a safety representative, and went on to form IRTA, which had the political clout to improve safety because they had the power of collective bargaining. And Trimby had the moral courage to use that power to force race promoters and circuit owners to make drastic changes to make the racing safer. There are riders alive today who probably wouldn't have been if Mike Trimby hadn't taken the stance that he had.

There was a lot to chew over at the Barcelona round of MotoGP, and Misano is nearly upon us. So here's a few more things that we learned in Barcelona that matter: Maverick Viñales becoming the first rider to break the new tire pressure regulations; Honda's continuing problems; Fabio Quartararo going back to the future; and what the Misano test might bring, and what it definitely won't bring, and what that might mean for the future of Marc Marquez.

There were a number of records broken at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, including the first ever Aprilia 1-2 in MotoGP. But there was also a less commendable record set: Maverick Viñales because the first MotoGP rider to be punished under the new tire pressure regulations. The factory Aprilia rider was found to have completed less than 50% of the race with this front tire pressure above the minimum set by Michelin, nominally 1.88 bar. As it was his first transgression, he received a formal warning. The next time he is found to have broken the tire pressure rules, he will be handed a 3-second penalty.

Normally, MotoGP teams keep garage doors firmly shut when the fairings of their bikes need to be removed, unless forced to do otherwise. For example, the teams have to keep their garage doors open throughout a MotoGP session, for as long as the pit lane is open. The factories used to slide large screens in front of the bikes to get around this, but Dorna and IRTA have banned this, allowing screens only to be used for bikes which have been crashed.

If a factory team wants to take the fairings off their bike, they have to use sheets and covers to hide the bikes innards from prying eyes, rather than screens. An injunction not all factories stick to: some will still put up screens, consequences be damned.

So it is very rare to get a shot of a bike with its fairing off. MotoMatters.com contributors Niki Kovács and Cormac Ryan Meenan have both managed on occasion to get a snap of a fully undressed bike. But in Austria, Cormac managed to get a selection of shots of the KTM RC16 without its fairing on, from both sides. Here's what the bike looks like, with some comments on what we can see.

Sometimes after a race, I feel like there is a lot to write about. This is not one of those days, because it was not one of those races. In previous years, the Red Bull Ring has always delivered when it came to racing. But with conditions as close to perfect as possible – the only complaint you could have is that it was perhaps a little too hot – the weather wildcard was taken from the pack, and the race turned into a measure of rider and machine. And as it's the Red Bull Ring, where the key to speed is braking and acceleration, mostly machine.

So the race we got is a pretty fair reflection of the current state of MotoGP. The strongest rider/bike/team package dominated. The second strongest rider-bike package finished second. And the best of the satellite riders headed up a gaggle of last year's Ducatis. The Aprilias, who should have done better, got bogged down at the start, the launch off the line still very much the RS-GP's kryptonite. And the Japanese bikes spent their race battling to get into the top ten.