The preseason is done. The bikes are in the garages, the aero sets selected, Honda have chosen the engine they’ll be racing (realistically, they did that at Sepang), and everyone has tried to find a base setup to start the season, and especially the weekend with. Some have even succeeded.
If Saturday was the last realistic chance to work on development, Sunday was the day to put everything together and do a time attack and attempt a race simulation, either long or short. That gives us a rough guide to who is competitive and who isn’t. But it is only a rough guide. As Marco Bezzecchi pointed out: “During testing, at the end it’s difficult to get a clear comparison, because everyone makes a different job, you never know what they are trying, you never know which tire they are using.” The error bars are large enough to allow for plenty of surprises.
Then again, you might think that Marco Bezzecchi wants you to think that, given that it was Bezzecchi who set the fastest time of the test, just under Pecco Bagnaia’s 2024 outright lap record, and then posted a blistering 20-lap race simulation that was as fast as a lot of other riders’ sprint simulations.
