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The winter is over and in the Qatar desert, the artificial lighting has been switched on. The time for experiments, tests and homework is past and in a few days mistakes will be paid for at a high price, whereas successes will lead to points and wreaths.
In the three tests around the world, there was one constant: Maverick Viñales. The others, some more and some less, all had their ups and downs. Not the Spaniard, cold and calculating like that movie character fighter pilot that gave him his name.
Will it be true glory? We will have to wait and see, but in the meantime, we can see who received passing marks after the Qatar tests and who deserves to have their knuckles rapped.
If Maverick Viñales had gone any higher, he would have reached a new galaxy that NASA has yet to discover. Since climbing aboard the M1 in Valencia, everything has seemed to come easily to him. He is very fast, consistent and he makes no mistakes. He smiles and says there is still room for improvement, making his rivals shake in their boots. They were just winter tests, but what tests they were!
The floodlights on the Losail track removed the matt film that had stuck to the Ducati on Phillip Island. Qatar is friendly soil, but nothing is a given. Dovizioso managed the tests in the best possible way, Lorenzo took giant steps forward and the old GP16 machines also performed well with Bautista and Redding. Even Petrucci’s pace was not too shabby. Then, Dall’Igna’s staff surprised everyone with a futuristic fairing that the English have already dubbed the ‘hammer-head’. May the rivals by the nails?
In Moto2 he had not been too terribly convincing, but in MotoGP he seems to have found his niche. The Yamaha may be an easy bike, but for a rookie it is never a simple task to consistently keep up with the bigs in the premier class: Jonas Folger managed to do just that and he deserves a round of applause. On team Tech3 everything seems to be working well and Johann Zarco also cut a fine figure. We will need to keep an eye on him.
A hundredth more and hundredth less, Aleix Espargarò was consistently close to the class leaders on an Aprilia that is coming into its own. In Noale they were also able to elegantly interpret the new winglet-free regulation and the RS-GP is fast. The Spaniard is a specialist at breakneck laps and we will wait to see what happens in the races, but let’s give them a bit of encouragement.
Waiting for the miracle sang Leonard Cohen, and Valentino is thinking of making his own cover version. The Doctor joked - but not too much - about his troubles, because the new M1 is still a mystery to him and his team. Over the winter he alternated between sprints and crashes, a sign that the feeling is not yet perfect. Rossi and his team, however, have experience on their side and on race weekends they are capable of transforming.
We all fall down, 5 times in Qatar, 3 on the last day alone. Marquez has always used the tests to find his bike’s limits, but perhaps this time he went a bit too far. After all, the new Honda did not seem to be at the same level as it had been on other tracks, but at Losail that is nothing new. By now, Marc knows how to manage his strengths, so maybe he will put on his accountant’s hat for the first race while waiting for better days.
It was reasonable to expect something more from Iannone’s Suzuki which instead, never finished a test in the top 10. The GSX-RR is still not the perfect bike and it especially struggles when racing the clock. In the race it may be a different story, but the winter did not chase away all the doubts.
In a MotoGP baptism of fire, it is difficult not to be scalded, and at Losail it was KTM suffering some burns. Lots of changes arrive continuously from Austria and that shows that they are doing things the right way and professionally, but it takes time. They have all the relevant mitigating circumstances, but the road to the top is steep and short on footholds.
