We are at round 20 of the longest MotoGP season in history. For the last three seasons, round 20 was the last race, and riders, teams, journalists, fans even were all exhausted. In 2025, we still have two more rounds to go after this. So the feeling in the MotoGP paddock is rather jaded. 22 races is starting to take its toll.
So many races may be great for fans – well, those that can keep track at least – but it is getting to be grueling for everyone who does this for a living. Still, it is better than having to work a real job. Though the number of times you start to question that is likely to increase until a couple of days after the Valencia test, at which point I, at least, will start pining for the Sepang preseason tests.
Which brings us to round 20. We are back at the Sepang International Circuit, where the season kicked off back in February. It is a circuit that pretty much everyone on the grid knows almost like the back of their hand, everyone having tested here at the start of every year, as well as racing.
I say pretty much everyone, because there’s a couple of riders who have less experience on a MotoGP machine around Sepang. Rookies Ai Ogura, Fermin Aldeguer, and Somkiat Chantra all had their first taste of the track at the shakedown test, before joining the official test at the start of February this year. But Fabio Di Giannantonio only got one day of testing at Sepang, before breaking his collarbone doing a wheelie at the end of the first day of the test.
Phillip Island winner Raul Fernandez has missed even more track time at Sepang. Not only did he skip the last two days of the 2025 Sepang test after breaking a metacarpal in a big crash on the first day, he also managed to injure himself in a crash at the 2024 test. He totaled just 45 laps at Sepang in two years.
The perils of testing
Injuries at Sepang are not a particular concern – setting aside the tragic death of Marco Simoncelli here in 2011 – but crashing at the test happens. Riders are eager to get back on the bike after a long winter layoff, are pushing to test new parts, and on the first day, are often using up the tires they don’t really want when they get serious on the last two days. So mistakes are easy to make.
The reason MotoGP tests at Sepang? Because it is in the tropics, meaning that you can be sure of getting a decent amount of track time in the dry, even if it tends to rain at the end of the afternoon. Because it is conveniently located next to the major aviation hub of Kuala Lumpur International Airport. And because the layout has pretty much everything you could ask of it.
Want long straights? Sepang has two of them. The first, the front straight, is the longest, at nearly a kilometer. It is so long and so fast that they had to call in leading Italian circuit designer Dromo Studios to alter the final corner, to make it slower. Even then, the bikes are hitting nearly 340 km/h before it is time to get very hard on the brakes for Turn 1.
Shifting down through the gears, all the way down to second, you tip the bike in to the very tight right hander, turning back on itself, cutting the apex early and giving it a dab of throttle ready to flick the bike left for Turn 2. Turn 1 is an ideal place to pass, were it not for the fact that you can leave the door open for a counterattack.
Out of Turn 2 you get on the gas hard. But not too hard, as Turn 2 is a place you can find yourself getting spat into the air if the left side of the tire has cooled a little too much, as Jorge Martin found to his cost at the test back in February, the first crash in what would become a whole sequence that would destroy his season and sap his confidence.
Safely out of Turn 2 you let the bike rev out before short shifting up into fourth and entering the endless Turn 3, one of the most spectacular corners on the circuit. You are on the right side of the tire for a long time, sliding the rear just enough to help the bike turn without chewing it up and leaving you with no tire at the end of the race.
Exit Turn 3 and face the choice between holding it on the limiter or shifting up into fifth for a fraction of a second before getting hard on the brakes again and tipping the bike right into Turn 4. It is another ideal place to pass, and again, a place where you can leave the door open if you do pass.
Out of Turn 4 and you drop down a hill, the track dropping out from under you as you load the front and hope it holds on as you shift up into third and hold the bike over left at 160 km/h. Through the long left of Turn 5 and then right again into Turn 6, before getting hard on the gas again for the short squirt down to Turn 7.
You try to turn the two right handers at Turn 7 and 8 into a single sweeping corner, carrying as much speed as you dare before accelerating out of Turn 8, shifting up a gear and heading toward another tricky and troublesome corner. The tight left of Turn 9 is another ideal passing place, and also a notorious point to lose the front and crash out of the race if you hit the bump wrong.
Down into first for the slowest corner on the track, then feed in some throttle, short shifting into third and throw the bike on its right side for Turn 10. You are on the right side of the tire for a long time again, before dabbing the brakes and dropping down into second, then throwing the bike right again for Turn 11.
Out of Turn 11 and you are hard on the gas once again, shifting up a gear as you head toward the left of Turn 12. Here, it is all about carrying speed, through Turn 12 and again through the long right of Turn 13, which starts to tighten up toward the tight right leading onto the back straight. This is the corner where history was made ten years ago, when Valentino Rossi ran Marc Márquez off track and ignited a war that rumbles on to this day.
The penultimate corner is slow, slow enough that you can try to make pass on the entrance, if you are carrying enough speed through Turn 13. Drop down a gear and scrub nearly 100 km/h off your speed, taking you down to 80 km/h. Then pick the bike up as quickly as you can to blast down the back straight toward the final corner.
It’s a trap
As you hit 330 km/h and near the final section of grandstand, you are hard on the brakes once again, the carbon discs cooking in the tropical heat. It is your last chance to try to make a pass, but also an awful one. When Dromo were asked to redesign the last corner to make the track slower, they did something evil: they set the camber of the track to give the riders two choices, both of them equally bad.
You can take the wide outside line where the track is flatter, but it’s a long way around, and you leave a vast expanse of space on the inside. Or you can cut inside and square the corner off, but that means cutting across a camber which gets steeper the tighter you go. The harder you cut, the more pressure you put on the front tire, and the steeper the camber the less grip you have. Stay wide and you have all the grip you could wish for as you watch three or four riders sweep underneath you.
Just how bad both those choices are is reflected in the crash statistics. Turn 15 is the place where most crashes happen. But it is also the point with the most at stake. Get this corner right, and you have a shot at crossing the line first.
Who does this layout suit most? You need a bike that accelerates hard, and can brake hard, but you also need a bike that is gentle on tires and can hold a tight line. It suits a surprisingly wide set of bikes, which is one of the reasons MotoGP chooses to test here.
Time passes
Which also means that most riders and teams will at least have some kind of reference at Sepang. But it’s not a case of just sticking the settings found at the test and you’re done. The bikes have all changed so much in the eight months since the test that recalibration is in order.
More so for some than for others. The Honda is almost a different bike to the one that turned up at the February test. The Aprilia has had a few upgrades but is quite similar. KTM have gone from four different bikes to one that works for pretty much everyone. Ducati have gone backward, in the sense that the engine they brought to the Sepang test has been discarded, and Pecco Bagnaia has been wandering in the wilderness since the start of the season, only occasionally finding his form. And the Yamaha now is a very different bike to the one they started with in February.
If you had to draw up a shortlist of favorites, the names at the top would be Alex Márquez and Marco Bezzecchi. Bezzecchi is coming off two sprint wins and a Sunday podium at Mandalika and Phillip Island, and is clearly in a groove. The Aprilia RS-GP has shown itself to be a versatile bike, with strong corner speed and strong acceleration. Aprilia have spent the year addressing the biggest weakness found at the start of the year, stability in braking, and here too big steps have been made. Bezzecchi is usually pretty good at Sepang, and in his current form, that could well translate into a very strong result.
Gunning for second
First, he will have to beat Alex Márquez. The Gresini Ducati is coming off a couple of weekends where he hasn’t been been able to fight where he feels he belongs. This is one of his strongest tracks, however, winning the sprint race and finishing second in 2023. He only needs 15 points from the remaining three rounds to secure second in the championship, so he feels free to race.
“I will not think about the championship any more, because I think we have a really good advantage,” Alex Márquez said at Sepang. “I want to close it, but I will risk. If I have the feeling, if I have the level that we had here in the preseason I will risk and I want to win.”
Who could stop Alex Márquez? “Especially the Aprilia with Bezzecchi, I think also some Ducatis, like Diggia, Fermin, also Pecco can be really fast here,” Márquez said. Fabio Di Giannantonio missed most of the test as well as the race here last year, after having surgery on his shoulder, so the Pertamina VR46 Ducati rider will have some work to do.
Márquez’ Gresini teammate Fermin Aldeguer arrives here with a win under his belt and comes to a track he has ridden a MotoGP bike before. And as he is on a Ducati GP24, his bike hasn’t changed much since then. He has a win here in Moto2, but missed the race last year. He is definitely one to watch.
Mystery man
Then there’s Pecco Bagnaia. The Ducati Lenovo rider was second fastest overall at the test in February. He started the season reasonably well, at least until the summer break. Since then, his form has been unpredictable, with a double win and pole at Motegi, but also crashing out of last place at Mandalika.
What can he do in Sepang? Much will depend on how he feels on the bike on Friday. “I’m really looking forward to start a weekend here,” Bagnaia said. “First of all, because it’s a track that I really enjoy riding. The layout here is incredible, so I just would like to enjoy the weekend. And to enjoy the weekend, I would like to start with a good feeling on the bike. In the test here, I was super competitive. I finished the test in second place. And the feeling was good.”
What he needs is a stable weekend so he can work on the bike, his setting, and his confidence. Though you can always guarantee some dry weather at Sepang, you can’t always count on when. And the forecast is for rain on Friday afternoon, right as Bagnaia will be aiming to get through to Q2. And then rain again on Saturday afternoon around race time as well.
At least Bagnaia will be able to use the 355mm discs at one of the hardest braking circuits on the calendar. Will that be enough? We find out tomorrow.
Orange, crushed
Perhaps Sepang is a track where the KTMs can shine. Pedro Acosta has had to watch both Raul Fernandez and Fermin Aldeguer beat him to becoming a MotoGP winner, even though Acosta is widely rated as a much better rider. But the bike is still fundamentally flawed, and is chewing through tires too quickly.
The problem, Pol Espargaro explained, is that they can’t control the spinning of the rear tire enough. “There are different ways of spinning,” the KTM test rider, filling in for Maverick Viñales said. “There is the lateral one, the longitudinal one, the one that moves forward and the one that moves like to the side. And there are also another tunings that you can do with the TC that also affects it. And one of them is really annoying us and it’s really killing our tire.”
Acosta still points to Portimão as his best chance of getting a first win, but he believes, rightly, that he is riding better than ever. That is helping him make his case to KTM to fix the bike, and especially the way the bike turns and uses its tire. Acosta is laying the blame firmly at the door of KTM Racing, and it is hard to see where he is wrong.
“Our bike is not turning a lot, it’s not super grippy in the edge, we have some problems that maybe are creating a bigger one. The problem that you are not able to really see until it comes,” Acosta said on Thursday. “Now they are trying to be super precise, trying to understand where the problem is coming from. And I’m quite happy that they realized also. Even if maybe we were having less chance to make a good result. But this is also important to realize that we have a problem.”
Not angry, disappointed
Acosta is not the only dissatisfied voice at Sepang. Yamaha have brought Augusto Fernandez to Sepang, to race the V4 as a wildcard again. And Fabio Quartararo is continuing to make unhappy noises in the media, as a way of putting pressure on Yamaha to give him a competitive bike.
“At the moment, it’s always nice for Yamaha to test the V4. But when I tried the bike, it’s always completely different,” the 2021 world champion said. He is downbeat because of the long run of poor results, he explained. “I’m not really enjoying right now,” Quartararo said, adding that it was only the one-lap pace of the Yamaha that gave him any pleasure.
Quartararo wasn’t going to be paying too much attention to Augusto Fernandez and the V4, he insisted. “My full interest will be on the Valencia test,” he said. “This will be one of most important tests, because from November to February you can change things but you can’t really try. It will be really important, Valencia.”
What did he expect to find at Valencia? “I need a fast bike. I need to feel that it’s a winning bike and that I need to fight for top three and top five in every single session, every single Sprint, and every single GP,” Quartararo said. “It’s really clear from my side. It’s going to be difficult. It’s what I need. I spent many years struggling but now I want a winning bike.”
Expectations vs reality
The Monster Energy Yamaha rider conceded that the bike at Valencia would not be the finished item. “I think the two most important things are Valencia and Sepang. For Valencia I know the bike will still not be completely ready. February here, the bike will almost be the one we’ll race. I think it’s going to be super important to have what I want in the Sepang test.”
A lot of Quartararo’s disappointment came at the test in Misano. Augusto Fernandez understood his disappointment, but pointed out that the bike is still at a very early stage of development. “You have to accept that it’s not ready, and you have to really focus on feelings, and you have to really focus on it’s a bike that we’re still developing,” the Yamaha test rider said. “I understand 100% Fabio’s thoughts. He’s ready to win, so he needs to win. And we need to give him the bike to win. And maybe he was expecting the bike already to be ready for it, but we know it’s not.”
The tone of both Pedro Acosta and Fabio Quartararo is a reminder that we are rapidly approaching the start of silly season for 2027. With almost everyone’s contract up at the end of next year, riders are looking for a competitive ride. Both Acosta and Quartararo know they can win if they are on the right bike. And they are giving fair warning that, though they are willing to stay loyal to their current employers, that is contingent on their employers giving them a bike they can win on.
Happy Hondas
Perhaps the most optimistic of the arrivals at Sepang are the Hondas. The RC213V has improved in leaps and bounds through the season, and is now a pretty strong package. The bike gives its riders enormous confidence in its front end, and the latest engine upgrade is putting the bike on a par with the other MotoGP machines.
Luca Marini was very much looking forward to comparing the data here with the February test. “For us, this will be very interesting on Friday to understand comparing the data with the test, in which part we improved and which part we still need to work,” the Honda HRC Castrol rider said. “I think the bike is pretty different compared to the beginning of the season, but different in a good way. Everything is better and there is still a lot of margin to improve.”
Can a Honda surprise a few people here? Back in February, Johann Zarco finished seventh and Joan Mir eighth. The RC213V HRC have brought here is a far superior machine to the one from February. So Honda are very much a dark horse.
Could a Honda be among the favorites? That is not as far fetched a question as it might have been even six months ago. The thing is that the field looks to be pretty wide open at Sepang, with so many riders and bikes capable of surprising. So the answer to that question is perhaps, why not? After all, almost everyone else is…
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