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The Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Cheste, a short drive past an endless array of industrial estates heading west out of Valencia, is fairly unloved in the MotoGP paddock.

Unfairly, perhaps: the race is (barring pandemics and other disasters) the last of the season, and comes after the flyaways, a period in which much of the paddock has spent 8 weeks away from home.

The various titles are usually already wrapped up, so the last round feels very much like going through the motions.

With barely a moment to catch its collective breath, the MotoGP paddock alights at Buriram, in the east of Thailand.

The heavy rain which lashed the paddock in Motegi has followed them across the South China Sea, with heavy rain and flooding in many parts of Thailand.

Some who chose to drive rather than fly from Bangkok to Buriram reported flooded roads at several points along the way, and fields around the track are also flooded.

Nor is the rain done with MotoGP just yet. Thursday’s media duties took place in heavy rain, marshals and circuit workers doing their best to rid the track of the worst of its surface water.

We are entering the four most important weekends of the season. Important for a lot of reasons: there are five races to go and just 17 points separate the championship leaders.

But above all, important because we are heading to three tracks where MotoGP hasn’t been since 2019, and Sepang, where MotoGP has only tested in 2020 and 2022. We are heading into the unknown, just as the championship is coming to a head.

So much has changed since MotoGP was on its last Pacific tour. Valentino Rossi was still in the Monster Energy Yamaha team. A young rookie called Fabio Quartararo was making a massive impression on fans.

Andrea Dovizioso was doing his best to win a championship for Ducati, against an unstoppable Marc Marquez. Marquez was having perhaps the best season in grand prix racing since Giacomo Agostini crushed the opposition in the late 1960s on the MV Agusta.

2019 saw the ride-height devices first start to make an appearance, Jack Miller using the system in Thailand. It was the last year of the old Michelin rear casing, the new tire introduced in 2020 effectively killing off Andrea Dovizioso’s career.

With seven races left in the 2022 MotoGP season, we are approaching the final stretch. There are 175 points left to play for, and Fabio Quartararo has a lead of 32 points over Aleix Espargaro.

That means that Espargaro still has his fate in his own hands: he can become 2022 MotoGP champion by the simple expedient of winning every MotoGP race left, and if Quartararo finishes second in all seven races, the Aprilia rider would take his first championship by a slim margin of 3 points.

There is a bittersweet irony to motorcycle racing. On the one hand, we want the racing to be as safe as it can possibly be.

On the other, the element of risk, the thrill of watching a rider wrestle a motorcycle at very high speed on the edge of adhesion, teetering on the brink of disaster, is part of the appeal. Racing a motorcycle is difficult, and because the rider sits aboard the bike, in full view, it is obvious even to the most casual observer just how difficult it is.

Which brings me to the Red Bull Ring. The circuit at Spielberg is simple, and incredibly dangerous, because the bikes spend so much time either pulling hard in high gear, or braking hard into tight corners.

With the summer break over, MotoGP is set to resume at Silverstone. Was a five-week break a long time? “It was short!” Pol Espargaro insisted.

He would say that, though, having ended the first half of the season with a cracked rib and a couple of disastrous weekends.

“I think it was the first time I enjoyed a break so much, because I was mentally and physically quite injured, and I needed to stop, to take a deep breath.”

The rest of the field were not quite as emphatic as Espargaro, but they all said that having a proper break, rather than just three weeks instead of two between races, made a difference. They returned refreshed, motivated, and genuinely keen to get back on a MotoGP bike.

There is a MotoGP race at Le Mans this weekend, but to be honest, it is hard to concentrate on the race. A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks, which has shaken up MotoGP to a degree we hadn’t expected even as late as two weeks ago.

Suzuki’s withdrawal blows the MotoGP silly season right open, with not just rider seats up in the air, but grid slots and bikes too.

Then there’s the controversy over tire pressures being routinely under the minimum allowed, and whether that is even an issue or not, given the MSMA have agreed not to do anything about it.

Traditionally, we say that the MotoGP season only starts properly once it reaches European soil.

The overseas races which kick off the year are always held in rather unusual circumstances, or unique tracks, and with so little preseason testing, the bikes still have so many bugs and details to iron out before they really start to show what they are capable of.

The start of 2022 has been even less useful than other years. A day and a half of testing in Sepang before the rain came. A new track at Mandalika, which needed a day to clean and then started coming part.

The race at Qatar was moved earlier, putting practice into a much hotter part of the day compared to the race. Freight delays to Argentina, which meant that Friday was canceled and two days of practice and qualifying were compressed into the Saturday. And Austin, the nearest thing to normality, remains a strange and unique circuit.

So heading to Europe, and tracks which are infinitely familiar to teams and riders, should see a return to normality, right?

That would be true if we were returning to Jerez, on the cards for next week, where most motorcycle racers have spent entire percentage points of their life circulating. But before we head to Jerez, we race at Portimão.

A spectacular circuit in a charming setting in a fantastic location, but again, unlike most circuits in Europe, a track where MotoGP has only visited three times before. Once at the end of 2020, and twice in 2021, the Portuguese track stepping into the gap left by the Covid-19 pandemic.

(Worth noting, perhaps, that youth is an advantage here, as the track has had a regular slot on the calendar of the FIM CEV championship in recent years, meaning that recent graduates of that series have ridden there a lot more often than the MotoGP veterans).

Racing Is a Rollercoaster

It is not just the fact that the teams have so little data on the track that make it unusual. The track is a genuine rollercoaster, full of elevation changes and off-camber corners where you are rarely braking or turning in a straight line.

The only level part of the track is the front straight, and that starts with a small rise, and ends in a dip down to Turn 1.

The end of the straight is usually a good place to try to pass, and with MotoGP bikes reaching top speeds of over 350 km/h, there should be plenty of opportunities.

But that dip into Turn 1 makes it a tricky affair, braking over the crest and down the hill means it is easy to run wide, ruining all the hard work you just put in to make a pass. Turn 3, the tight right hander, is the next opportunity, before the rollercoaster begins.

The bikes climb up the hill and then over the crest and down toward Turn 5, a wide, sweeping left-hand hairpin. Another good place to overtake, but the track going downhill and the corner being off camber makes it easy to run wide again, or worse, wash the front and crash out.

Out of 5 the riders start climbing up the hill again, and the wild ride through Turns 8, 9, and 10, the track dipping and climbing along the hillside.

Turn 9 is a favorite. “It’s the best corner, in my opinion,” Luca Marini says. “Fourth gear, 60% of throttle, more than 200 km/h, it’s good.”

Sweeping & Flowing

From Turn 11, the bikes fire down the hill once again through the fast and challenging left of Turn 12, before another chance to pass at the tight left of Turn 13, and climbing up over the crest of Turn 14.

Then follows one of the grandest sections of motorcycle racing, the long fast sweep downhill through the final corner, a place where passing is possible, but risky, before heading round back onto the straight again, rising up over the crest at the start to fire past the finish line and barrel down towards Turn 1.

It is a fast straight, but that fast sweep of Turn 15 makes it possible to carry a lot of speed out of the final corner and onto the straight. That in turn means that bikes down in horsepower can reduce some of the damage they might sustain at other tracks.

The straight is long enough for horsepower to matter, but the gap is smaller than at circuits with similar straights starting from lower speeds.

Despite the long straight and the hairpins, this is a track which flows. That is almost counterintuitive, when you look at the track on paper.

“I remember being in the pre-event press conference and I talked to Miguel Oliveira who said you need to flow on this track – because he was the last winner – and it’s true,” says Marc Marquez. “If you find the flow then everything is easier. But if you fight against the bike, everything becomes more and more difficult here.”

Brad Binder backs that up. “It has more flow than you expect,” the South African told us. “If you kill the speed too much here with all the elevation it is not easy to take good advantage and accelerate hard. You just need to keep the average up, if that makes sense. It’s a bit of a special place.”

That flow is what makes riders love it. “I like the layout, I like the up and downs, some bumps, different corners, strange corners,” Marc Marquez enthused.

“It’s a track that you need to flow really well. Last year I struggled a bit to understand also the banking on some corners, the up and downs.” It is the mixture, the complexities which make Portimão both interesting and challenging.

Winners, Not Favorites

So who has a record of success at the Portimão circuit? The two MotoGP riders with the best win record – two apiece – at the circuit have only a single point between them in the 2022 championship.

But, that is hardly a fair comparison: Remy Gardner and Raul Fernandez are rookies in MotoGP this year, and having problems finding their feet on the KTM, a bike which is far from easy to set up or master this year.

A KTM has won here already, of course, Miguel Oliveira taking a famous victory at the first time MotoGP visited his home country. Oliveira did not fare as well the next time MotoGP visited, however. He crashed in both races in 2021, scoring no points.

But the KTM is struggling in 2022. There is nothing particularly wrong with the RC16, but it is coming up short in a few different places. The biggest problem?

“We are kinda saying the acceleration,” Remy Gardner said. “The turning. The braking is not bad, that’s kind of what the KTM has always liked, good hard braking.”

Braking and entry was not the problem, it was more on the way out of corners where problems manifested, the Australian said. “A bit of everything mid-corner to exit is what the comments are from everyone.” The rookie has slightly more problems than the more experienced KTM riders. Me, more from mid-corner on the edge and picking up.

But the risk was that KTM were measuring themselves against the more formidable targets, Gardner said. “We are trying to compare with Ducatis here that are rocketships out of the corners. There is a bit of difference there. Mid-turn as well, there is a bit missing there but trying to fix it without losing everything else is the issue. It’s always a compromise.”

Grip & Drive

Corner exit is currently the problem for the Yamahas, the bike lacking grip to get drive out of the turns. That may not be quite as much of an issue for the Yamahas as it will be at other tracks, Fabio Quartararo explained, the Frenchman already having won here this time last year.

“It’s a track that is not bad,” the reigning world champion explained. “There are only a few corners with initial grip. The last corner, when we have the rear really loaded, the first touch is maybe a little slide but when we have full throttle the grip is really good. I think this can be quite a good track for us.”

Quartararo quickly amended that, pointing out that a lot depends on qualifying and where the Yamahas start on the grid.

“It can be really good or really bad. In the first year I was top four at the beginning and could overtake, so that was good but the second races I was behind the Ducatis and could not make my pace and it was a disaster so it depends a lot on qualifying and how the race goes,” the Frenchman told us.

Solving the problem of qualifying was simple. “My plan is to push like hell to qualify the best,” Quartararo said. “I don’t have another plan better than this. To push myself to the limit. I did this in Austin but I made a little mistake.”

“It is the only way to really challenge the other brands. Indonesia was better for us and I pushed myself to the limit and we did it. This is really tough because all the manufacturers have made a big step. It is not that I am getting worse but that I am right on the limit.”

Minor Problems, Major Consequences

Andrea Dovizioso, newcomer to Yamaha and admittedly struggling to adapt to the M1, feels that the Yamaha is not that far behind its rivals, but it does have a clear disadvantage: a lack of rear grip.

That lack of rear grip was not down to track surface or tire choice, but was a defect of the bike itself. “That characteristic, you have everywhere,” the RNF WithU Yamaha rider said. “In some situations you feel it a lot, in some situations a bit less, but it’s everywhere.”

Looking back at his solitary year on a Yamaha, riding the Tech3 satellite machine in 2012, a bike he scored 6 podiums on, he could see that the fundamental character of the bike was not the issue. “If I compare to 2012, the DNA of the bike is very very similar, it didn’t change,” Dovizioso said.

“The Yamaha now is not bad. I think it has the same really positive things but the negative are a bit bigger, plus I think some competitors work a lot and they become a bit more competitive.”

The combination of all these factors had caused even the reigning world champion to have problems. “That mix created this situation, because even Fabio who last year did a crazy championship is struggling,” Dovizioso explained.

Quartararo pointed out that the bike does not lack speed, but once other riders got in front, it was hard to put up a fight. “If you look at the pace, we are always fast because we are alone and nobody is with you, but in the race people pass you and you are blocked,” The Monster Energy Yamaha rider said.

“You cannot make your own riding style. The only rider I could make it with was Marc because he brakes super-super-late and I could make my pace normally. As soon as you have someone in front, like in Argentina, they all ride like a ‘V’ and if we don’t make it a round we are slow.”

The Yamaha has to use its corner speed, and if a bike – especially a Ducati – is ahead, then the conflicting lines took away the M1’s only weapon, exposing its weakness.

Quiet Consistency

On paper, the Yamaha and the Suzuki look very similar, and yet where the M1 is struggling, the GSX-RR is going from strength to strength. Suzuki have found more power – not the 30 horsepower which Jack Miller claims, but just enough throughout the torque curve to propel the bike a good deal faster at every stage of the corner and onto the straight.

There is a quiet optimism surrounding Suzuki. Both Joan Mir and Alex Rins have been consistent, their results getting better almost every round. If they went into Austin with doubts about whether they could be competitive, they were much more confident at Portimão, Joan Mir told us.

“Before starting the race in Austin I said to you that I have doubts about that track. Here we can make it good and I have no doubt that we will be competitive. If the weather respects us and it’s not a crazy weekend, I think that we know how to be strong at this track.”

The performance of the Suzuki in 2021, when the shortcomings of the GSX-RR were far more apparent, were what gave Mir confidence. “Last year we were really fast and the bike is not the same as last year so we have more potential on this bike and I’m sure we will be faster.”

Qualifying, another weakness from last year, was less of a concern at Portimão. “Last year I was fighting for pole position, I made the first row for the first time, so we have to follow that line that allowed us to fight for that position in qualifying. So I’m also confident about that.”

The difference between last year’s and this year’s bike was not huge. “It’s not that we improved a lot the bike, we just made some steps, we improved the [ride-height] device, we improved the engine and the bike is faster everywhere! So every time I start to understand the real potential of this new bike and every race we are better. So let’s see what we can do this year.”

It is hard to fault that optimism. The one thing which has been missing this season has been any sense of a pattern, of consistency in the results.

Yet Joan Mir has finished sixth, sixth, fourth, and fourth in the first four races, and Alex Rins has gone from seventh at Qatar to fifth at Mandalika to third in Argentina and second at Austin.

No one else has managed that, the Suzuki looking good everywhere, no matter the track. It is hard not to feel that the Suzukis are on the verge of taking control of the championship.

Rough Edges

That is less the case with Ducati, despite the fact that Pecco Bagnaia won the last time we came to Portimão, and was joined on the podium by Jack Miller. The GP22 is still something of a rough diamond, with a particular area in need of polishing.

That was made evident in Texas for Pecco Bagnaia. “For sure Austin helped us a lot to think of our bike and to think about me,” the Lenovo Ducati rider said. It is still clear that I’m still missing something on braking and entry. Austin was difficult for me but Argentina not. There my strong point was on braking and entry and it was like last year. Austin I was fast and strong in practice, it was just the race.”

Bagnaia’s weakness was in the last part of braking, he explained. The final phase of braking, with the bike leaned over and turning in already, just as he was releasing the brake ahead of the apex. That lack of feeling, of understanding what the front tire was doing, meant he had to brake earlier to scrub the same speed off.

Things were starting to come together for Bagnaia’s factory Ducati Lenovo teammate, however. “Starting to really gel with my bike, understanding it more and more every weekend,” Jack Miller said, fresh off his podium in Texas.

“You know what we need to do, where we need to work on that kind of thing but all in all just happy, going through the motions trying to do the same thing we did in Austin which was just put together a solid weekend and I think that gives you the confidence.”

Old bike, new rider

The real leader of Ducati at the moment was Enea Bastianini, however. Is the fact that Bastianini was on the GP21, and had a mountain of data to fall back on, an advantage, we asked multiple Ducati riders. “It’s Enea, not the bike,” they all replied.

Does this mean we should take Bastianini seriously or the championship? “Yes!” Fabio Quartararo was emphatic. “Really seriously, because last year he was super-fast but the qualifying was bad, I would say.”

“This year he is qualifying good and he is super-fast on the pace. He is the only Ducati rider to ride ‘this’ way. He is on the soft front tire and for sure his bike is moving a lot but he likes it. It’s a different riding style to the others but we must take it seriously because the way he rides is amazing.”

Quartararo is impressed with the Gresini Ducati rider’s consistency. “He has been strong in all the races,” the Frenchman told us. “In Argentina he struggled but he wins two and in the others he could have finished on the podium. For me he is the leader of Ducati.”

Quartararo would not be drawn too much on the role the bike played, but he admitted that at the start of a season, the previous year’s bike had the benefit of experience, whereas the new bike still needed tweaking to fulfill its potential.

“Sometimes it is normal that the new bike takes a bit more time, and in the first half of the season the 21 is going better and the 22 will catch up later.” That didn’t mean that the Bastianini should be underestimated, however. “I have no idea but at the moment it is more Bastianini doing the difference than the bike.”

Champing at the Bit

If there is a dark horse at Portimão, it is the Honda. And especially the Honda of Marc Marquez. After a sensor issue caused the six-time MotoGP champion problems at the start of the race, Marquez battled his way through the field to finish an impressive sixth.

With an extra week to prepare and work on his fitness, Marquez was raring to go at Portimão, he said. “In Austin I controlled myself a lot to survive for my physical condition, and this helped me a lot for Sunday’s race,” Marquez said.

“Here I’m better and the weather will also be a small help, the rain, because you don’t force a lot.” Rain is expected on Friday and part of Saturday, reducing the physical intensity of a weekend.

Marquez’ mindset was now set on podium places again. “Now I feel ready. It’s true that this season my best position is top five, so I cannot think to go from top five to win a race. There are steps in between. Now I need to do that next step, to finish on the podium maybe, or another top five.”

It was too early to be setting objectives, however, Marquez warned. “But with this unpredictable MotoGP you cannot approach a weekend with a clear target, you need to understand during the weekend where you are.”

How the Honda Has Changed

Will the new Honda suit the Portimão layout better? “We’ll see,” Pol Espargaro said. “The new bike is not very different from how we finished with the bike from last year. For sure, the chassis, the engine, everything is a little bit different. But the concept of this bike is the one we liked from last year.”

Yes, the bike was new, but it was built on the foundations of the 2021 Honda RC213V, Espargaro said. “OK, Honda brings a completely new bike, but it’s not coming from zero.”

“It’s not like it’s coming from one crazy engineer who says ‘we’re going to do that’. It’s the work of all the team from last year, even also the test team, and then we discover that with the bike last year with the weight in this place and changes the bike works.”

Espargaro expanded on what had changed since last year. They had spent the latter half of 2021 moving as much weight further back as possible, but had run into the limits of the existing design.

For 2022, a lot of components had been rehoused further back, and this had given them more grip and a better bike balance.

Moving Weight

“Last year we were struggling a lot with the weight of the bike, how the weight was transferring into the tire,” Espargaro explained. “So we discovered that by doing something on the bike and the rider with the weight we were getting more grip and more turning. But then we were suffering a little bit more with the front.”

The 2022 bike was a consequence of that work. “The bike of this year is thinking about that. We moved a lot of systems of the bike that were in front to the rear so we generate a different compromise with the weight balance. If you put the put on the scales it would be different for sure. We discovered last year that by doing that we were better.”

The improvement was visible in photos, Espargaro pointed out. “You can check by the pictures of myself riding, last year I was riding with more tension, not out of the bike like I normally do, because I was worried about the rear. This year I’m much more out of the bike, I can trust a little bit more the rear.”

Can the Honda pull it off? The weather – rain expected for most of Friday and part of Saturday – will make working on setup hard. FP4 and qualifying could be the first bit of dry track time the teams get, so the weekend is likely to favor the teams and riders with the best base setup.

That may play into the hands of Enea Bastianini, and also of Suzuki. But it is hard to escape the feeling that Marc Marquez has a point to prove, especially after the debacle at Austin. Portimão is one of the few tracks where Marquez has not won. Sunday will show if he is ready to remedy that.

Photo: MotoGP

Despite the fact that almost the entire MotoGP grid started the year without a contract for 2023 and beyond, it has been extremely quiet on the contract front so far this year.

The only new contract announced was the unsurprising news that Pecco Bagnaia is to stay in the factory Ducati team for the next two seasons, with that contract announced between the Mandalika test and the season opener at Qatar.

The general feeling seems to be one of wanting to wait and see. An informal poll of team managers at the Sepang test suggest that they expected to wait until Mugello at the earliest to start thinking about next year.

At the moment, it seems likely that major moves will not be made until after the summer break.

It has been a rough start to the 2022 MotoGP season. Qatar started relatively smoothly, but things started going downhill from there.

The Indonesian round at Mandalika barely scraped through, the newly resurfaced track already coming up in the final corner as the new asphalt had not had time to bed in.

Then two broken cargo aircraft suffered technical problems and left part of the freight stranded in Mombasa, Africa on its way to Argentina.

A hastily rescheduled two-day event at the Termas de Rio Honda followed, which came off surprisingly well. Then with a short turnaround getting the freight from Argentina to Texas, there was another problem with cargo planes breaking down, and freight arriving late.

Fortunately for the GP of the Americas at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, the delay was merely stressful rather than problematic.

The Grand Prix of Argentina continues its proud tradition of weirdness, with Friday skipped and a day and a half of practice and qualifying crammed into Saturday.

The missing cargo, the result of not one but two planes breaking down between Mandalika and Termas de Rio Hondo, meant that Friday was canceled and the work of preparing for practice started around 2am on Saturday morning, as bikes and equipment were delivered up and down pit lane.

But, MotoGP as a whole pulled it off: apart from the weird schedule, practice and qualifying happened, and history was made.