Starts the MotoGP World Championship and the panorama looks wonderful. The lights of Losail shine and on the track the impression lived in Mandalika, the new Indonesian circuit that closed the pre-season tests by bottling the 21 drivers in less than a second after three days at full capacity. Not only that, the six manufacturers that make up the championship left separated by half a second. Same scenario that was experienced yesterday in qualifying, where the first pole of the season was taken George Martin (Ducati), with Marquez’s Honda third and with the top ten classified in half a second. Only the Yamaha’s Quartararo y Morbidelli they stayed away
from the top positions.
Dorna, the Spanish organizer of the World Cup, has spent years pursuing the equality that reigns in the category today, and curiously, the arrival of the pandemic helped his plan. In 2019, the last World Cup lived normally, Márquez swept winning 12 of the 19 races held. He barely left the crumbs to his competitors. But even at that time what made the difference was the talent of the Spanish rider, since the traditional duopoly between Honda and Yamaha was already threatened by the thriving Ducati y Suzuki.
A year later the revolution came. Márquez injured his shoulder in the first race and the World Championship went crazy. The absence of a reference led many drivers to begin to feel that they could win the championship, although no one managed to take the reins. That atypical course ended with nine different winners, KTM’s first victory since appearing in the contest in 2016 and the title of Joan Mir uploaded to the Suzuki, the first in the queen class since 2000. The trend did not change last year. There were eight different winners and Aprilia was on the podium for the first time. “What was seen in Indonesia is that the differences between the different bikes continue to shrink,” Italian Gino Borsoi, sports director of the motorcycle, explains to ABC. Aspar Team. «The category already looks like what Moto3 has always been, with more than 15 riders separated by a few tenths. I don’t remember so much equality in that category, so it will be a very fun and interesting World Cup.”
few people better than Borsoi to analyze the reasons for this equality, forged in dozens and dozens of meetings between the promoter and the teams in pursuit of the show. “Today the bikes are quite similar. Tires and electronics have been unified… and we have a stable regulation, which favors the teams working in a clear direction. There are still ways to find things different from others, but with less margin.
Dorna’s commitment to uniformity had the complicity of the big brands, which allowed the new manufacturers that have joined the World Cup to have a series of concessions that favored their development: «KTM had those privileges and now Aprilia benefits. They have a greater number of engines per season, freedom to carry out private tests and more possibility to develop the bike. But as soon as they get a series of good results and they are considered to be up to the task, they lose those concessions.
A boost was also given to the so-called satellite teams, private teams that pay for the official material. Until not long ago they used to have the bikes from the previous year, but that has changed. “Now their bikes are almost identical. Manufacturers care that they have good results, even ahead of the official ones. And, in addition, it allows them to better monitor the potential of the pilots. They already know how they would do it with an identical motorcycle with the colors of the brand.
pool of pilots
But not everything is in the mechanics and technical impositions. From Dorna they also value the quality of the current piloting. After the withdrawal of Valentino Rossi, practically the entire MotoGP grid made the leap to the World Championship from the different promotion cups organized by them, especially the Red Bull Rookie Cup or the Spanish Speed Championship. «For years all the champions of the lower categories have known that they will have their chance in MotoGP. All the youngsters who have shone in recent years are now there, there is no rider who is there for other reasons. They are all phenomena, which results in competitiveness. A few years ago, if one of the favorites had a bad day, he knew that he could still save the weekend with a podium finish. Today, if a driver has a bad day, he knows that he is going to go below 15th place. That is a big difference », concludes Borsoi.
This gradual professionalization has its endorsement in the statistics of the championship itself. In the year 2000, even with the old 500cc bikes, the average difference on the grid was around 5 seconds. When the modern MotoGP machines came in, that distance was reduced until it fluctuated between 3 and 4 seconds. In 2021 the average grid difference was just 1.7 seconds. Equality is also transferred to the races, where among many other things, the figure of the doubled driver has disappeared, which came to account for 35% of the total number of participants in the nineties. «It’s going to be a crazy year. The times are tighter than ever and everything is super competitive, ”said the South African from KTM at the presentation of the grand prize Brad Binder, where the majority of pilots praised the current system. “The competition is getting tighter. One second covers almost the entire grill. This is fantastic, the bikes are more or less equal and the competition is real », he also assured Maverick Viñales.
“Every year the motorcycles change more and we are more and more together,” he tells ABC Pol Espargaró, Repsol Honda team rider. «In the Sepang test, a circuit of almost two minutes of lap, we were the top ten in just three tenths with very different bikes and engines. The MotoGP elite is at its peak and forces us riders to always be at our best.” And to the fans, enjoy it.
