It cannot be said that Toprak Razgatlioglu is lacking courage. At the age of 29, he has decided to make the leap to MotoGP, in the last year of the 1,000cc class with Michelin tyres and on a completely new bike, the Yamaha M1 V4. The Turkish rider knew that it wasn't going to be an easy task, and he's learning this the hard way. Toprak immediately won over the MotoGP paddock with his smile and kindness. During the press conferences in Sepang, he didn't chicken out and admitted what his problems were. "Changing my riding style is difficult, but I need to do it," he summarized after the Malaysian tests.
Admitting your weaknesses is the first step to improving, and Razgatlioglu, looking at his times, did not hide his disappointment: "I'm a bit demotivated. I was hoping to get down to a minute and 57," he said. He was a good three-tenths of a second off the pace. On the last day of testing at Sepang, he set his best time at 1'58.326, almost two seconds off Alex Marquez's best time.
For a three-time world champion, seeing your name at the bottom of the standings must be a very bitter pill to swallow, but it would have been difficult to imagine that it wouldn't happen. Toprak has no shortage of talent, but he needs time to get rid of all those 'bad habits' he has picked up after years and years spent in production-derived series. If we also consider that the gaps in MotoGP have been getting smaller and smaller in recent seasons, it all comes down to the wire.
At the end of the last day of testing at Sepang - where not all riders gave 100% in the time attack - the top 11 were within just over 9 tenths of a second, and in the Grand Prix the situation is bound to get worse. To stay up front, you need a competitive bike and experience, two things that Razgatlioglu simply doesn't have at the moment.
The M1 V4 is a work in progress, a bike still in the prototype stage. In Malaysia, the Iwata riders had to find a starting point, sorting through many parts to test and approve, if not reject, them. Even the new engine is not yet up to the standard of the best competition. All this doesn't make life easy for a rookie.
In addition, Toprak is using a setup that is too similar to what he was used to in SBK. "My M1 feels like a touring bike," he joked. It didn't take an expert eye to notice: all the riders use very low handlebars, while the Turkish rider's were very high. "It helps me when braking," he explained, but he also realized that it limited him in other areas. On the straights, his position wasn't aerodynamically optimal, and the handlebars in that position are not an advantage in corners either, preventing him from leaning his body out of the bike during cornering, as required by the MotoGP riding style. In the early days, the seat was in such an unusual position that the engineers had to remove all the aerodynamic appendages, otherwise the bike would have been outside the height limits set by the regulations.
The result is that Razgatlioglu brakes hard (one of his strengths in SBK), but he can't carry speed into corners, which is what MotoGP bikes require. When he tries to do a flying lap, things get worse, because the automatic reflexes he has carried over from production-derived bikes come back. So he becomes stiff in the saddle and the stopwatch bears the consequences. As if that weren't enough, he is unfamiliar with Michelin tyres, which have characteristics that are the opposite of Pirelli tyres, especially when it comes to the rear.
There's nothing strange about this; it's a normal adaptation process that takes time. The problem is that Toprak is used to winning, and it's not easy for him to find himself in that position. We talked about it with Gino Borsoi, Pramac team manager: "Despite the gaps, which don't interest us at the moment, every time he gets on the track, he understands something new. It takes time, but we're going in the right direction. He has talent, we just need to polish it."
The team is one of Toprak's advantages. Pramac has a wealth of experience and is among the best - if not the best - satellite teams, and Alberto 'Pigiamino' Giribuola, the chief engineer, is one of the most respected technicians in the paddock. The only thing Razgatlioglu doesn't need right now is to rush. If it's meant to be, it will happen, but it's unlikely to happen before the summer.