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Honda went into the Indonesian Grand Prix widely seen as potential front runners. Pol Espargaro had been fastest in the test at Mandalika a month previously, Marc Marquez had been quickest on the second day of the test, Honda riders had set a consistently fast pace, looking better than their single-lap speed.

What’s more, Espargaro was coming off a podium at the season opener at Qatar, the race where Marc Marquez had finished fifth.

To say the Indonesian Grand Prix ended badly for Honda is an understatement. Pol Espargaro was fastest Honda once again, but the Repsol rider crossed the line way down in 12th, 33 seconds behind the winner, Miguel Oliveira.

Espargaro was one of only two Honda riders to finish in the points, crossing the line just ahead of Alex Marquez on the LCR Honda in 13th. Takaaki Nakagami could only struggle to a 19th place, 49 seconds behind the winner.

That wasn’t the really bad news, however. The worst blow for Honda was the fact that Marc Marquez manage to miss the race, and perhaps endanger his chances of the 2022 title, or worse. Much worse.

The first Indonesian GP in 25 years has been a complicated affair. A new track, in the middle of a construction site where a new resort is being built. A track which was resurfaced after the test uncovered issues with the asphalt.

The blistering tropical heat, capable of raising track temperatures to well over 60°. The swapping out of the rear tire used at the test for an older, safer tire used in Austria and Buriram to prevent the tire from blistering if track temperatures get that high.

And the intense rains which leave the track wet for a long time, have eaten into setup time, and keep washing dirt onto the surface.

We say it pretty much every Friday of a MotoGP weekend: it’s hard to draw conclusions from the first day of practice.

The first day of practice is usually spent trying out different setups and then assessing which tires are the best compromise between performance and durability for the race, so just glancing at the timesheets doesn’t tell you as much as you would like.

The first day of practice at Mandalika is even more complicated to unravel. First, there is the fact that it rained heavily on Friday morning, leaving the track damp at the start before drying out.

Then there’s the fact that nearly half the track has been resurfaced, the work finished not long before MotoGP arrived.

Finally, Michelin changed the construction of the rear tire from the one used at the test, in response to the heat at the track, the new surface, and the data from the test.

Episode 263 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees once again getting into some on-track action, as MotoGP made a stop in Indonesia, testing at the Mandalika street circuit.

To discuss the tropical topics, we have the usual crew of Steve EnglishDavid Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler on the mics, as they trade insights on our first glimpse of the MotoGP bikes on the island track.

It was a good day for attention-grabbing headlines at Mandalika. Pol Espargaro ended the day with a scorching lap which took him under the WorldSBK Superpole by four tenths of a second.

There were six different manufacturers in the top six. The lead on the first day changed hands time after time in the last couple of hours.

But the headlines don’t really mean very much. Times were dropping because the track started off filthy and only really started to clean up in the last hour or so of the day.

The world’s fourth most-populous country is set to mandate that new motorcycle sales be only electric by 2040, so says Arifin Tasrif, Indonesia’s Minister for Energy & Mineral Resources.

The move comes as Indonesia aims to reduce its notable air pollution, and is part of a larger plan that will see on new-car sales reduced to only electrics by 2050, with the government planning incentives to make citizens switch from internal combustion engines.

I guess this was bound to happen once we saw the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R become a real thing, as we are starting to hear murmurings that Yamaha may follow suit with a four-cylinder variant of its 250cc sport bike offering.

The rumor comes to us from Indonesia, with local site Iwanbanaran the first to report the story. Since then, the rumor has done the rounds in Europe, and now is making its way to North America.