Four rookies will kick off the 2021 season in Qatar this month (although Aprilias Lorenzo Savadori already has three races under his belt from last year), with a day of running at Losail before the official test, allowing them to do their first laps on one MotoGP to experience bike.
Ordinarily, the duo Luca Marini and Enea Bastianini of Jorge Martin and Avintia would have already had two days of running by the end of last season, but the COVID-19 pandemic has canceled the traditional two-day test at the end of Jerez.
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The reigning Moto2 world champion Bastianini (below) joined the test riders for a shakedown on the track in Qatar on Friday and was the fastest of the new year with 1: 58.051 minutes on his GP19 Ducati and finished fourth overall with 35 laps.
Team mate Marini was eighth fastest with 1: 58.376 minutes, but had various technical problems with his two motorcycles that limited his run to 33 laps.
“The first day was a bit tricky because we had some problems, different problems on both bikes,” said Marini on Friday evening.
“I lost so much time at the beginning [of the session]. In addition, the performance was not 100% in the first few laps due to a problem. So the first time [at full throttle] wasn’t a shock. When I got back to the garage everyone asked me how it felt, and [I said] it was normal.
“Everyone was shocked by my reaction, [they had] no words. Then we fixed every problem and in the end I was able to do a couple of good laps and feel all the power. It was great. The general feeling of riding a bike is good.
“We still have to work a bit on my position on the bike, I don’t feel so comfortable with the seat, with the tank, with the handlebars. We still have to work a bit on these details because I’m not in my natural position on the bike in the middle of the curve. “
Pramacs Martin had the toughest day of rookie riders, crashing his factory Ducati on the last lap of his 31-lap schedule at Turn 3. He finished tenth overall with 1: 58.875 minutes, but the Spaniard was happy with his overall performance – although he admitted that the seamless manual transmission surprised him.
“What surprised me most was the transmission,” he says. “It’s amazing how you can change gears and you don’t even notice you’re changing gears.
“It’s crazy on the straight, you don’t even feel [it]. The tone is [like it’s] always in the same gear, and it’s more power and more power, even when I put it in sixth gear, I felt like a poke in the ass!
“Also, the brakes were so good because when you get to 339 km / h and you’re going through the brakes, it’s crazy and you can stop so well.”
Friday’s race was heavily influenced by strong winds on the Losail track, but that didn’t stop Honda test driver Stefan Bradl (below) from doing 60 laps on the RC213V. The German was the fastest with 1: 55.614 minutes, which is about seven tenths less than the fastest race record in Qatar from 2016.
The day was also notable for Cal Crutchlow’s first appearance as a Yamaha test rider after retiring from full-time racing towards the end of the 2020 season. The three-time MotoGP race winner shared three M1s with Japanese test riders Kohta Nozane and Katsuyuki Nakasuga – entered on the timesheets as Yamaha Tests 1, 2 and 3.
Two of Yamaha’s test bikes completed the top three, although it’s not clear who set the best times on each machine.
The tests start on Saturday with the first of two days of this weekend, followed by the last three days that start on Wednesday.