It is an unfortunate fact of life that during the months it is warm enough to race at Motegi, there is a very good chance of absolutely torrential rain (see last year, when the GP was red flagged after just 12 laps), and during the months it is dry it is too cold to race. The paradox of a racetrack on an island situated next to a vast ocean. (See also: Phillip Island.)
MotoGP has known torrential rain at Motegi back when it was run during the northern hemisphere spring, and now it is run in October. So rain is likely to fall at some point this weekend, though the forecast at this point in time is for it to fall mostly on Saturday. Whether that is just overnight, or during the sprint race we will see when the time comes.
Rain isn’t the only issue at Motegi. Situated up in the hills between the coastal town of Mito and the central valley containing Utsunomiya, fog can be an issue too. When conditions are just right (or just wrong, depending on your point of view), the fog can linger over the circuit, preventing the medevac helicopters from flying, as well as the TV helicopters responsible for the overhead shots.
Those are just the price of racing in Japan, though. Just as racing in Sepang means battling the tropical heat, or Silverstone means cold mornings and occasional strong winds, and Phillip Island means, well, pretty much anything can happen. The track itself – the Twin Ring Motegi circuit at the Mobilityland complex owned by Honda – is a track that can produce outstanding racing. A series of short and long straights and some very hard braking means that there are chances to overtake, if your bike does the right thing.
The first section of the track most resembles Le Mans. A run up to Turn 1, the first in a long double right hander at Turns 1 and 2. Turn 1 is the first place you can attempt to pass, but you risk overdoing it and ending in the gravel.
Didn’t make it through at Turn 1? No matter. Get drive out of Turn 2 and on to the next long double turn, the two lefts at Turn 3 and 4. Again, the run to Turn 3 is long enough to attempt to outbrake a rider ahead, but again, if you don’t make it through, there’s another chance coming.
Out of Turn 4 and up to Turn 5, and much tighter right turn this time. Out of Turn 5 you plunge into the darkness, heading under the Ring of the oval track which gives the circuit its name. From there, a series of corners named for their geometric shapes. The 130R, a right-handed corner of, you guessed it, 130°, and so fast and flowing.
Out of Turn 6, 130R, down to your next opportunity to pass, albeit a riskier one. Turns 7 and 8, the S Curve (you’ll never guess what it looks like) take you left and then right before the short run down to the V Curve, a tight hairpin at Turn 9. The exit of this corner is nasty, the walls are close, but you need to get a good run out to the two most important corners of the track.
Braking workout
First, there’s the Hairpin Curve, Turn 10. It is exactly that, and if you can get into and out of Turn 10 ahead of your rivals, you stand a chance of holding them off. For a while at least, for Turn 10 takes you on to the back straight, or Downhill Straight as it’s known.
The top speed at the track is not especially high – just over 317 km/h, set by Enea Bastianini in 2022 – but you are accelerating hard from a very low gear, and heading downhill. What you’re heading toward is one of the toughest braking sections on the calendar. Riders are hard on the brakes for 5 seconds, with a brake pressure of nearly 5 Bar, according to Brembo.
This corner, together with the other hard braking corners are why the Grand Prix Commission mandated the use of 340mm brake discs at the circuit some years ago. Nobody uses them any more, of course, everyone having moved on to the 355mm discs which this generation of MotoGP machines need to get themselves stopped.
Last chance
Turn 11, or the 90° Corner as it is erroneously named (it is clearly tighter than 90°) is not the final chance to pass, but it is the best chance of blowing the race. With the end of the straight tipping downhill, it is easy to lock the front a little too much and outbrake yourself, and finding yourself in the gravel. Upright, if you’re lucky. Race over, if you’re not.
The very last chance to try to make a pass is in the aptly named Victory Corner, the hard right after the two flowing lefts of Turns 12 and 13. If you missed out at Turn 11, you can try again to line up a pass through Turn 12, blinking as you emerge from the other tunnel under the track, then Turn 13 before diving underneath at the final corner.
You had better make it stick, however. The run to the finish line is long enough to mount some form of return, and so vigilance and acceleration are needed to nail down the win.
Ruling class
Who is good in braking and acceleration, with an extra smattering of turning? The Ducati Desmosedici GP24 has established itself as clearly the best bike on the grid. But it’s not just the bike. “So beside the bike, they are also strong riders,” Marco Bezzecchi pointed out at Motegi on Thursday. “So Jorge and Pecco, they are in incredible shape. But also Enea and Frankie, Enea is showing a lot and Frankie is coming better and better. So I think that they have something more.”
Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia are indeed in incredible shape. The pair now have an almost unassailable lead over Bastianini and Marc Márquez in third and fourth place, though neither of them were quite willing to admit that. “It’s still five races, so for sure I think it’s still a chance for them. They can do it for sure, 100%. If somebody can do it, it’s them,” Martin insisted. “But I feel it’s quite difficult at the moment. So I feel it’s more about Pecco and me.”
Pecco Bagnaia concurred, unsurprisingly. “It’s true that until mathematically it will be impossible for Enea and Marc to be champions we have to consider them. We know perfectly better than anybody else, me and Jorge, how easy to have a mistake, to have a crash this season. So it’s something that can change quickly, so I will consider them until mathematically it will be impossible.” the Ducati Lenovo rider said. “But it’s also true that from half of the season we are the two that are always leading the races, always leading the sessions. So I think until Valencia it will be like this.”
Then there were two
For Marc Márquez, it is clear that his title challenge is over. “It looks like the championship is game over for us. Especially because we were there in already, in a big disadvantage in terms of points, but with the zero of Indonesia, then the difference is too much.”
Márquez understands that the arithmetic is against them. Márquez is 78 points behind Martin, Bastianini 75 points. Effectively, that means for Márquez or Bastianini to stand a chance, Martin and Bagnaia would have to not score a single podium for the rest of the season, both on Saturday and Sunday.
Jorge Martin has been on the podium in either the sprint race or Sunday GP at every round this season, and he has been on the podium on both days at eight of those rounds. Pecco Bagnaia has missed out on a podium on both days at Portimão, Austin, and Aragon, and been on the podium on Saturday and Sunday six times this year, including winning the double three times compared to Martin’s one.
In short, while Enea Bastianini and Marc Márquez are still mathematically in with a chance of the 2024 title, the chances of it happening are vanishingly small. That chance can safely be ignored.
New goals
Which is what Márquez is doing, by shifting his goals for the rest of the season. “We will keep our target that is try to find that consistency that we were able to do since Austria,” the Gresini Ducati rider said. “We achieved that consistency in the results and yeah, next target also is try to improve our weak points, which is the qualifying practice.”
Motegi is a track where the GP24 has an advantage, however. There is a lot of hard braking, and a lot of hard acceleration. The relief for the Ducati GP23 riders is that nearly all of the braking is in a straight line, so the rear should push the front less on turn in. But we are back to Michelin’s standard tires, rather than the heat resistant ones used at Mandalika and Buriram which level the playing field a little.
Fabio Di Giannantonio explained where the GP24 as the advantage over the GP23. “It’s like the GP24 can brake much harder. The bike turns better. So you are in a better position to accelerate, to use the throttle, also to save the tires,” the VR46 rider told reporters. “And also the top speed is much better. So there’s many, many areas that are much better than our bike at the moment. Honestly when I’m on my bike and I see the other one, the other bike is just another league.”
2023 redux
So it looks like being Jorge Martin vs Pecco Bagnaia again. Martin doing the double last year meant nothing, he insisted. “Now we start from zero. I don’t care a lot about last season, last season for sure was good, but it was a different situation. I was coming behind trying to attack and I won the Sprint and the Sunday race. But I think this time will be different. It will be tough.”
Bagnaia is also feeling more confident compared to last week at Mandalika. “Motegi is a track that I like, a track that suits better to my riding style compared with Mandalika,” he told the press conference. “We have a lot of braking points and acceleration so I think is more similar to Austria. That is a track that I’m feeling good.”
If someone is to challenge the supremacy of Martin and Bagnaia at Motegi, it will most likely be Enea Bastianini. But Bastianini has a spotty record at Motegi, having only raced here once, finishing ninth in 2022. Last year, he was still injured, and was replaced by Michele Pirro. Bastianini is on a roll – despite crashing out at Mandalika – and feeling confident. “I missed the race here last year, but it’s a good track and I think for Ducati it will be good. It is important to learn in the first session to be much faster for the second. I am ready. It is one of my favorite tracks,” he said.
Austria rising
But if resistance is going to come from anywhere, it is going to be from KTM. The RC16’s forte is stop-and-go tracks, and the bike was strong here last year. Brad Binder finished second and Jack Miller finished fourth in the sprint, while the soaking wet conditions that caused the race on Sunday to be red flagged made for something of a crapshoot.
Pedro Acosta arrives at Mandalika full of hope. “It’s true that normally this track is suiting well to our bike,” the Tech3 GASGAS rider said. “Last season Brad and Jack were quite competitive. The previous season Brad was also on the podium. We hope that with the improvement we made in the past couple of races, and also the way of working that now we are using, we are able to be even closer than in Mandalika.” Acosta finished second in Mandalika.
“The thing is here that you have hard, long braking and our bike works pretty good on the brakes to be honest so that’s good for us,” Brad Binder said. Red Bull KTM teammate Jack Miller urged caution, however. “You say it’s stop-start, but then you know got those fast flowing corners through the center,” the Australian pointed out. “The stop-start stuff doesn’t make me nervous. It’s that stuff in the middle that will make me nervous. But until we roll out tomorrow and understand where we stand we’ll have to wait and see but fingers crossed. It’s generally a track I’ve liked my whole career and done well at in the past.”
Map reading
Of the other factories, Aprilia is likely to be closest. The issue is that it is in braking that the RS-GP suffers most, and there is a lot of hard braking here. “That’s a challenge for Aprilia, but we have been doing step forward in the hard braking so we’ll see,” Maverick Viñales said. “Obviously Japan is a hard track for us because everything is stop-and-go but I am aiming to do another great performance.”
For Aprilia, it will also be important not to repeat the mistakes of last year. Motegi is one of the hardest tracks on the calendar for fuel, with all that hard braking and acceleration. Riders need to use a special fuel-saving engine map for the sighting lap, and last year, engineers forgot to switch to a normal map for Aleix Espargaro’s bike on the grid. Managing fuel will be important for Aprilia, and for all of the bikes.
Lowered sights
For both Yamaha and Honda, they face the same problem. While both Japanese manufacturers have made big steps forward in competitiveness, improving turning and braking, they both share the same weakness. Acceleration is where they are lacking, and at a track like Motegi, they are going to suffer.
Expectations are modest, though higher for Yamaha than for Honda. “We improved the braking, the edge grip a little bit on the braking,” Fabio Quartararo told the press conference. “Not in acceleration. But I think with that much braking I hope that being in the top ten from Friday can change your weekend completely. So I hope and I expect to be there on Friday.”
Q2 was the target for Luca Marini, but he was more realistic about his chances of achieving that. “About the practice, for sure try to go through to Q2 in the first ten positions after Friday,” the Repsol Honda rider said. “But I think this will be a little bit difficult. So stay in the top 15 is always a good target for now, not good but realistic.”
New blood
Motegi was also the first chance that journalists got to ask KTM riders about the factory swapping Francesco Guidotti for Aki Ajo in the role of team manager. Both Pedro Acosta and Brad Binder were extremely positive about the change. Understandably, given that Ajo led them both to world championships.
“Super happy about that,” Acosta said. “I think there’s no one around this paddock that can be more prepared to take a target like this, to fight for a MotoGP title. He’s a special character for sure, but a character that was helping me a lot and I was really liking how direct he was. I think we are going to make a good match together.”
“Obviously I have a very long relationship with him and he picked me up in 2015 when I joined his team,” Binder said. “He’s a cool dude and we’ve had a lot of great times together. He’s an awesome guy and I’m really looking forward to working with him again.”
Jack Miller felt some sympathy for Francesco Guidotti, who he had also worked with at Pramac. He felt Guidotti had been left to manage with his hands tied. “I think Francesco has tried to step into a role there, but I don’t feel like he’s given the best tools to do what needed to be done,” Miller explained. “And that’s partly on his side, obviously protecting himself and his role, but I don’t feel like he’s been able to do what needed to be done.”
Learning to listen
Aki Ajo has an advantage over Guidotti in that respect, Miller pointed out. “Aki doesn’t need the job, he doesn’t really give a ****. He wants to win. That’s about it. So I think he’s coming in with that mentality that, he knows what he wants and that’s it. It’s his way or the highway, which he has that sort of pull and that power.”
“So I understand it from both sides, and I know Aki has turned down the role on multiple occasions, but I think now seems like the right time. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to see,” Miller said. Ajo is Miller’s personal manager, and so he was sad to miss out on working with him in the team. “I’m sad about it because working with Aki is something special. Something that I hold dearly to myself.
We’ve worked together for the last 10 years, so to work with him again in that sort of a role would be fantastic, but it wasn’t to be.”
Above all, though, Miller was worried what this would mean for him now that he was off to race a Yamaha in the new factory-backed Pramac team. “What makes me more worried is that we’re working against him and I know how capable he can be as a team manager’s point of view. So I think he’ll be a good bullet in their chamber, let’s say.”
Honda reshuffle
The other change that was confirmed at Motegi was Honda’s decision to move Ken Kawauchi to the test team. Kawauchi has been missing from the Repsol Honda garage for several races, and is now focused on Honda’s test program.
As Motorsport.com’s Oriol Puigdemont sets out, this is part of a larger reorganization within HRC as they seek to become competitive again. HRC Vice President Tetsuhiro Kuwata was replaced earlier this year by Taichi Honda, and this time last year, Shin Sato replaced Shinichi Kokubu as technical director.
How much difference these changes will make, at both KTM and Honda, remains to be seen. At KTM, the feeling is that the team manager does not have enough freedom to make the necessary changes to be competitive, with KTM’s sporting director Pit Beirer, but especially CEO Stefan Pierer taking a very direct and controlling approach. KTM is behind on its project to compete for a MotoGP title, and the changes in team management and engineering are aimed at fixing that.
Culture, not staff
Similarly, for Honda, the issue is not so much one of personnel as of culture. Where Yamaha has made changes to allow much more direct involvement of their European operation in Gerno di Lesmo, nearly Milan, with input from engineer Luca Marmorini and performance engineer Max Bartolini, Honda has kept its focus in HRC and Japan.
The biggest change is in approach, with Yamaha having already tried 7 engines and 4 different chassis in 2024, an aggressive and risk-taking approach. Honda have improved in this area, with an extensive testing program and investment in aero. But they have also shown an unwillingness to take outside advice, as the short sojourn of Kalex brain Alex Baumgärtel as chassis consultant with HRC demonstrated. Baumgärtel departed reportedly because he felt he wasn’t able to make a difference, his input going into a black box at HRC with no sign of what was done with it.
Clearly, HRC is getting stronger. The Honda RC213V is now a much more rounded motorcycle, which does a lot of things very well while suffering really only one major weakness, a lack of grip. That is a huge step forward from the beginning of the season, when Honda seemed lost, with a bike that didn’t really work for anyone.
“At the beginning we explored a lot, we tried many things, and then also every time we had updates, we put them on the bike,” Luca Marini explained at Motegi. “While now, we arrive with a very good balance. I like the bike. And the balance, the behavior for me is everything correct. Now we just miss performance.”
That is something of an understatement. Progress is good, but Honda’s competitors are also not standing still. Ducati has made huge steps forward throughout the season, and the KTM is a much more competitive package with the new chassis brought to Mandalika. So Honda senior management will have to watch while the competition comes to the track they own and dominates. Perhaps it will provide extra stimulus to make the real changes needed to be competitive again.
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