At three in the morning this Friday (peninsular time) it will start at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia lMotoGP 2023 preseason. The 22 official riders on the grid come together in a three-day test that is important for champion brands such as Yamaha and Honda to try to get closer to the almost perfect machine that Ducati built for the second part of the previous campaign and that allowed Pecco Bagnaia to become world champion by recovering the deficit of 91 points and achieving number 1 that he will take to all tracks of the World Cup in 2023.
Tests are done gradually so that the pilots can perfect their mounts and send its engineers what they need to be fast, so every minute on the track is very important in an important campaign for the reinvention that the MotoGP competition faces with that sprint race that will be added to the conventional race every Saturday to Sunday and that pure and hard training sessions will be concentrated on Friday.
2023 is also a time of many team and brand changes, a campaign in which Suzuki has effectively said goodbye, leaving the championship with five brands: Ducati, Yamaha, Honda, KTM and Aprilia and only 11 teams and 22 riders. officials. Yamaha has also lost its client team RNF to join the Aprilia ranks and Noale will contribute four bikes to the grid, leaving Iwata with just two units.
As for the official riders, the two Monster Energy Yamaha riders Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli, the Aprilia Racing Team Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales, the Prima Pramac Ducati Jorge Martín and Johann Zarco and the Mooney VR46 Ducati Luca keep the same color Marini and Marco Bezzecchi.
On Ducati Lenovo, champion Pecco Bagnaia is the first rider since 2012 (Casey Stoner on Repsol Honda) to agree to take the number 1 for his bike in the title defense campaign and receives a new partner from his countryman Enea Bastianini, the great revelation of 2022 with his four wins and his third in the championship since Ducati’s satellite team, Gresini Racing.
Eight pilots changed brands
The two riders left without a harness after Suzuki’s scare went to Honda. Joan Mir, the 2020 MotoGP champion, will be Marc Márquez’s new teammate at Repsol Honda and Álex Rins, third in the 2020 World Championship, joins the LCR Honda ranks with Taka Nakagami.
Another six riders change teams and brands are Àlex Márquez, from LCR Honda to Gresini Racing Ducati, ex-KTM Miguel Oliveira and Raúl Fernández who joined Aprilia’s new satellite team, the RNF Team, the two rider from the ‘new’ GasGas Factory Racing Tech3 (actually it’s just a name change as their bikes are identical to the Factory team’s KTM), Pol Espargaró who returned to KTM after two years at Honda and the only rookie in the category, Augusto Fernández. Jack Miller, who has previous MotoGP wins with Honda and Ducati, now wants to make history for the Red Bull KTM Factory Team by also winning for Matighoffen.
There are many changes in the pilot-technical chief duo
And where there is more news is in the seat next to the pilot in the box. Only Marc Márquez (Santi Hernández), Fabio Quartararo (Diego Gubellini), Pecco Bagnaia (Cristian Gabarrini), Aleix Espargaró (Antonio Jiménez), Jorge Martín (Daniele Romagnoli), Marco Bezzecchi (Matteo Flamigni), Luca Marini (David Muñoz) , Brad Binder (Andrés Madrid), Franco Morbidelli (Patrick Primmer) and Jack Miller, who brought Cristian Pupulin from Ducati to KTM, remain loyal to their last technical boss. In the other 12 cases there were new duos.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
