Monday sees the start of three days of activity at the Jerez ciruit, as first the MotoE teams, and then the MotoGP test teams get to work at the Andalusian circuit.
Alongside the full MotoE grid – it is an official MotoE test – the test teams of Aprilia, Honda, KTM, and Yamaha will be present at the track.
It might be an exaggeration to call today’s news that Andrea Dovizioso is to test the Aprilia RS-GP MotoGP bike at Jerez from April 12th to 14th a bombshell, but it certainly raised a few eyebrows.
The Italian had previously turned down the offer of a full-time ride with the Noale factory for 2021, despite Aprilia extensively courting his services. So for Aprilia to offer a test ride is no surprise. For Dovizioso to accept is certainly interesting.
They say a picture paints a thousand words, but the photo above, taken by Cormac Ryan Meenan for the Repsol Honda press release, actually needs several dozen just to explain what is going on.
No, it’s not raining. No, the Honda RC213V has not dropped a rod, blown a valve, or had an oil pipe come lose (Hondas only ever suffer ‘electrical problems’, of course).
That yellow cloud Pol Espargaro is trailing in his wake is sand, strewn all over the track by the strong winds and sandstorm that also played havoc with F1 in nearby Bahrain.
The strong winds and sand rendered the final day of the test completely useless. At one point, the entire session was red flagged due to the conditions. But even when the track was open, few were keen to ride.
Only 9 of the 29 riders present even took to the track, clocking up a grand total of 56 laps between them. And that included in and out laps. That is pretty much the average of what each rider was putting in on Thursday.
There was a palpable sense of excitement after the record-setting laps by Jack Miller and Fabio Quartararo yesterday. Would more records be broken on Thursday?
They wouldn’t. Though both Maverick Viñales and Franco Morbidelli got under Marc Márquez’ original lap record at the track (a record which still stands, incidentally, given that records are only set on race weekends and not at tests), they still ended up several hundredths short of Miller’s blistering time from Wednesday.
And with the wind expected to pick up on Friday the prospect of a lap of 1’52 is growing ever more distant. Conditions will not be as absolutely perfect as they were on Wednesday again any time soon.
Records were smashed on Wednesday, and it didn’t mean a thing, other than that MotoGP riders can be pretty quick on a motorbike. But that we already knew.
First, Fabio Quartararo took over a tenth off the outright circuit record set by Marc Márquez during FP2 at the 2019 MotoGP round, the Monster Energy Yamaha rider posting a 1’53.263 to Márquez’ 1’53.380.
Then, on his last lap of the day, Jack Miller powered his Ducati to a lap of 1’53.183, just shy of two tenths faster than Márquez’ best lap.
Earlier in the day, Johann Zarco had broken Marc Márquez’ top speed record, being clocked through the speed trap at the end of the straight at 352.9 km/h, 0.9 km/h better than the Repsol Honda during the 2019 race.
Does this mean that Jack Miller will beat Fabio Quartararo after the Frenchman starts from pole, by exploiting the speed of his Ducati GP21 down the front straight? I mean, it could happen.
It’s definitely one of the many possible ways the season opener plays out when MotoGP 2021 gets underway on March 28th. But what happened on Wednesday, March 10th is not a reliable indication of anything.
Episode 189 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one gets us into the MotoGP test at the Losail International Circuit in Qatar.
On the mics to discuss the Qatar test, we have Steve English, David Emmett, and Adam Wheeler, who dive into the on-track action under the desert lights.
It has been a long winter. Longer than normal. Under normal circumstances, MotoGP bikes would have been on track in Sepang a month ago. But as we have learned the very hard way, these are anything but normal circumstances.
The Covid-19 pandemic has demanded the very utmost of human endurance and organizational ingenuity to try to have even the slightest semblance of normality.
But on Friday it starts, at last. The first official MotoGP test of the year kicks off with the shakedown test for the test riders, and an extra day of riding for the three true MotoGP rookies, Luca Marini, Enea Bastianini, and Jorge Martin.
The entire MotoGP grid will join for two days of action on Saturday and Sunday, and the prelude to the 2021 MotoGP season will be well and truly underway.
Entire MotoGP grid? Not quite. Marc Márquez will not be present at the test, the Repsol Honda rider still in the midst of the rehabilitation process from the broken right arm he suffered 8 months ago at Jerez.
He will not participate in either of the MotoGP tests. And it seems extremely unlikely he will participate in the first two races in Qatar either. But he will race this year, and his return will probably be sooner rather than later.
Rain forced the WorldSBK teams assembled at Jerez to abandon the test planned for the past two days.
Though, the weather was better on Thursday than it had been on Wednesday, the track took a long time to dry out, and with only 8 days of testing for the season, the teams decided to call off the test instead.
The cancellation of the MotoGP test at Sepang – a result of the state of emergency imposed by the Malaysian government in response to rising numbers of cases of COVID-19 in the country – threw a spanner in the works for the MotoGP teams preparing for the start of the 2021 season.
Losing days of testing meant less time for the MotoGP rookies to acclimatize to the new class, and less track time to gather data for the coming season.
To address this issue, Dorna and IRTA announced that there will be an additional test in Qatar at the beginning of March. In addition to the original test scheduled for March 10th – 12th, there will be three more days of testing a five days earlier.
The MotoGP Test at Sepang, due to be held from 19th – 21st of February, has been canceled, Dorna announced today.
The King of Malaysia, at the request of the Malaysian government, has declared a state of emergency in Malaysia, which is due to last until August 1st.
The state of emergency has been declared in an attempt to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to spread around the world.
MotoGP is set to make its debut at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimao in November, as the last race of the 2020 season, and as a brand new track on the calendar, the teams, factories, and riders have no data on the circuit.
To help them prepare for the race, Dorna has organized a test at the circuit ahead of the race.
The timing of the test is a little unfortunate. The test is due to take place on October 7th and 8th, directly before the French Grand Prix at Le Mans.