Winners
Pecco Bagnaia
After the summer break of 2022 Bagnaia’s life changed. On the one hand his insurance premiums went through the roof but on the other the Italian stopped crashing everything.
His lack of falls, coupled with Ducati ordering their other riders not to beat him, gave party-boy Pecco a new sense of confidence – confidence that saw him claw back a 90-point deficit to take the 2022 crown.
Worryingly for his rivals the Italian dominated the two-day test being fastest on both days and displaying a superior beard line. After the test Bagnaia claimed that he couldn’t see any other manufacturers but Aprilia and Ducati winning every race…
Worse still for the sober-loving fans Pecco’s new team-mate, Enea ‘the Bastard’ Bastianini, was nowhere near the pace of his champagne quaffing rival. Bastianini is seen as the only fly-in-the-pesto that could stop Bagnaia charging to another title.
Yamaha
“Yamaha find doing nothing is better than trying”
On the first day of the test the Yamaha crew had faces like they’d put wigs on microwaved wax figures of bulldogs. Quartararararo was so off the pace that the engineers had to check they weren’t mixing the times up with Morbidelli’s.
But salvation came on the afternoon of the second and final day when the team had given up trying to fix the problem. Yamaha, who are skilled in changing nothing and then being out of ideas, were at such a loss that they decided that ‘nothing was better than something’ and reverted back to all the bits from last year’s bike. The only thing that was kept was the 2023 engine – which has been improved to almost 33bhp thanks to reverse engineering a Lexmoto scooter.
Quartarararo was instantly faster putting a cheeky smile back on to his until then flaccid beret. Better still the Yamaha was no longer the slowest through speed-traps displacing the empty crisp packet that had blown down the start finish straight and inadvertently set off the timing beam.
Ducati
“Making average riders great again”
All the Ducati riders believe that the GP23 Desmosedici is a step up from the already dominant 2022 bike. All the none-Ducati riders agree with them.
Any bike that can allow Luca Marini and Alex Marquez to finish 2nd and 4th respectively on a MotoGP timesheet has to be something special. And the Ducati looks so ‘special’ this season that there’s the ever present worry that the two remaining Jap teams will shut shop and pull their beansprouts out of the championship to preserve what little honour they have left.
On the final day the seven Ducati riders testing finished in the top eight. Only Quartararararo on his ‘pride of yesteryear’ Yamaha was able to break the stranglehold.
Losers
KTM
Just like their compatriot Hitler KTM started MotoGP looking promising but now are beginning to look really bad. To compound the problem KTM have the two most popular riders in MotoGP – Brad Binder and Jack Miller – so the team can expect a social media backlash once their favourite riders start limping around at the back. With the ghost of Rossi now a dim and distant memory it’s fair to say that at least 65% of all comments on any official MotoGP social media post are of disgruntled Brad Binder fans claiming he’s the best rider on the grid and that on a Ducati he’d be world champion. Most of the others are about what a great guy Jack is.
This won’t help KTM.
But as bad as the Factory KTM riders were in this test their sister team GasGas (renamed last year from KTM to avoid any unwanted lingering association with Raul Fernandez) were even worse. Pol Espargaro and noob Augusto Fernandez were footed to the arse end of the timesheets like it were a Bradley Smith appreciation society.
It’s probably going to be a long season for the Wiener Schnitzel boys.
Marc Marquez
In the Marquez household Marc has always been the number one matador. Marc’s the one that gets first dibs on the juiciest cut of donkey steak and he’s the one that gets final say on what they’re watching on Netflix. But this may be all about to change…
The ‘new’ 2023 Honda has already been dubbed as ‘the Lorenzo’ given it’s overweight and universally hated by everyone who comes in contact with it. All the Honda riders were struggling to come to terms with the monstrosity they’ve been contracted to ride with all four unable to break into the top 12.
If this wasn’t bad enough for Marc, who usually at this point would claim his shoulder was hurting and he needed four months off, the successful brother also had the humiliation of seeing his lesser-skilled brother Alex on the Ducati finish 4th fastest on the first day and 7th on the second.
This was bad news for Marc. And more so for Honda. If Alex finishes above Marc in the championship and takes the top seat at the Marquez table for Donkey paella then expect Marc to wave goodbye to the evil HRC corporation and head over to the now even more evil Ducati camp
Portugal gravel
Last season, before tipsy Bagnaia crashed into a ditch in Ibiza, a majority of his sober crashes were done on track. When he did so in Portugal the beard-clad Italian took a handful of gravel back to the pitbox with him.
Initially most presumed he was saving the rocks to throw at Uccio – should the cholesterol rich lump of faecal treacle turn up in the canteen again. But in fact Pecco was annoyed with the over-inflated size of the gravel stones and was taking them back to show race control (who kept them to throw at Uccio in case he turned up again and started eating the advertisement hoardings)
On one-hand the larger rock sizes meant far less got stuck in Sam Lowes’ earholes given his usual weekend of barrel-rolling horseplay. However Bagnaia claimed the gravel stones were now too big and painful and that someone like the gargoyle Loris Capirossi could get lost behind one for over a week.
Well the Portugal gravel was once again in the firing line – this time with fellow gnocchi-mauler Fabio Di Giannantonio. Fabio, in a classic attempt to deflect away the knowledge that he’s looking to be the slowest Ducati rider, blamed the size of the rocks for his concussion that ruled him out of the second day.
Of course the concussion was the size of the gravel’s fault – and nothing to do with him falling off. Giannantonio, who’s name I can not spell so need to Google it every time, compared the Portimao circuit to being like Monaco – but without the glamour. What a cheeky imp he is. Hopefully he’ll take that beef over to World Superbikes next season.