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Here's my advice for the next time someone starts telling you MotoGP racing isn't like it was in the good ol' days: Don't engage. Let them walk away muttering to themselves. They're nuts.
Valentino Rossi die-hards who buy yellow smoke bombs by the crate may say there's no appeal now that he's retired and maybe some old-timer will tell you there's nothing like the glory days when Agostini was winning every race by a 30-second margin, but I'm here to tell you these are the good ol' days and the even better new days, all rolled into one. No longer are only two or three teams capable of winning a race. No longer is the winner determined by who gets a special tire flown in from the factory in the wee hours of Sunday morning. In 2020, a record-tying nine different riders won MotoGP races and in 2021 there were eight winners. The racing is closer and more unpredictable than ever.
That means the 2022 MotoGP season should be a good one. And it all starts this weekend in the desert with the Grand Prix of Qatar.
Predicting the 2022 MotoGP champ: Good luck
Fabio Quartararo won the 2021 MotoGP championship on a Monster Energy Yamaha YZR-M1 but the Ducati Desmosedici is widely considered the bike to beat.
In addition to the factory Ducati Lenovo Team with Pecco Bagnaia and Jack Miller, three other teams, including Valentino Rossi's VR46 Racing Team, will be running Ducatis this year. One third of the 24-rider grid will be riding Desmosedicis — twice as many Ducatis as Hondas or Yamahas.
One of those Ducati riders is Pecco Bagnaia, who finished second last year behind Quartararo and has already signed a two-year extension of his deal with the Ducati team through 2024. It's tempting to tap Bagnaia as a favorite for 2022 because of his strong finish last year. But picking a winner is a tough task in such a competitive field. Pre-season testing is never that reliable an indicator of who will finish on top at the end of the season, as some riders are testing parts while others are chasing a headline time. But this year's testing results are even murkier. At the end of the final test session at the new Pertamina Mandalika Circuit in Indonesia, 19 riders were within one second of the fastest lap time.
That's what I mean about these being the best of times. A fraction of a second off the pace on race day and you can finish out of the points.
The test at Mandalika was also less revealing because it's a new track, so riders had to work on determining a setup, instead of chasing lap times. Also, the track was so dirty at the beginning of the test that officials had to require all riders to turn a certain number of laps just to get the racing line clean enough for real testing. Also, some of the aggregate in the asphalt was breaking loose. Portions of the track will be resurfaced before the race, which is less than three weeks away.
Ducati has led development of aerodynamic aids and in testing this year was trying out a ride-height-altering device for the front end, as well as the rear devices other teams have. (It appears the ride-height devices are the next technological battleground in MotoGP.) The Desmosedici has been the most powerful bike in recent years, too. But despite the Ducati's strengths, one thing we did learn at Mandalika, and at the previous test at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia, is that it's not the only new race bike to be considered. It's time to remember Honda.
There have been times in grand prix motorcycle racing when the Repsol Honda team seemed invincible, able to outspend and overwhelm the rest of the field. Not in recent years. Instead, it seemed that Honda Racing Corporation had developed itself into a corner, building a race bike that was powerful but so difficult to ride only one man, Marc Márquez, could master it. And then Márquez got hurt. In 2021, Repsol Honda finished fourth in the constructor championship, a deep fall from its dominating history.
It looks like Honda is back strong in 2022, however. HRC has pulled off what the riders and engineers say is one of its biggest design changes in years, one that has taken place over the disrupted schedules of the past two years.
"It's a different bike, the concept it's completely different," said Márquez's race engineer Santi Hernández. "Engine, the bike itself, aerodynamics."
Now, Márquez is no longer the only person who is fast on the RC213V. In fact, Pol Espargaró set the fastest time at the final test at Mandalika. Alex Márquez and Taka Nakagami also showed they could put in very competitive lap times during race-simulation runs.
Marc Márquez is still not quite at 100 percent full fitness, but he pronounced himself very satisfied with the race bike. Espargaró, who only finished on the podium once in 2021, looks like a man much relieved.
"It's nice to get the fastest time but what's more important is our pace and feeling with the bike," said Espargaró. "I'm able to ride how I want."
Over at Yamaha, Quartararo was second-fastest at Mandalika and his teammate, Franco Morbidelli, hampered last year by injuries, was also in the top five. Aprilia has clearly made some strides with the RS-GP, with Aleix Espargaró setting the third-fastest time. Alex Rins was the fastest Team Suzuki ECSTAR rider and Red Bull KTM rider Brad Binder had the best pace on a KTM. All six manufacturers had at least one rider in the top nine at the Mandalika test. That's the kind of parity that makes these the best of times.
The schedule has been expanded to 21 MotoGP races this year, which will also stretch and stress the teams and their employees, who spend most of the year away from home. There has been talk of the strain put on families of team members and mechanics, and even Aleix Espargaró said, in the Instagram post below, that it gets harder every year to spend more time away from his young family. The demands of MotoGP on all who are part of it only grow greater.
"MotoGP Unlimited" aims to reach new fans, entertain loyal ones
In the four-wheel world, Formula One reported that television audiences were bigger everywhere in 2021 and in the United States viewership was up 58 percent year over year. Much of that is credited to the "Drive to Survive" documentary series on Netflix. It's become accepted wisdom that if you want to expand the audience for racing, you have to ensure the racers aren't faceless robots hidden behind helmets. There are real stories of joy and struggle and suffering in the paddock every race weekend, at all levels, and those human stories have the ability to draw in people who aren't there just to see the racing machines.
I've already written about "Pressure to Rise," the overhauled series on MotoAmerica Superbike. Now MotoGP is following the "Drive to Survive" formula with a series called "MotoGP Unlimited" on Amazon Prime Video Sport that will tell the behind-the-scenes stories of the 2021 season.
Here's the question, though. The series debuts March 14, after this weekend's opening round of the 2022 season. New fans tuning in via Amazon will be watching last year's news. By comparison, you could see "Pressure to Rise" episodes during the MotoAmerica season, while the championship was still unfolding.
"MotoGP Unlimited" has the potential to expose many new people to the sport. But with this year's live MotoGP races behind paywalls in some parts of the world, will those new viewers convert to fans of what's happening now, or just watch what happened last year?
Speaking of watching the races, doing so for free in the United States has gotten harder. beIN Sports used to broadcast Moto3, Moto2, and MotoGP races live, but NBC currently holds the rights and only shows MotoGP races. Last year, they were broadcast on NBCSN, which has since been shut down. This year, most of the races will be shown on same-day tape delay on one of the NBC channels.
The paid option is the MotoGP Videopass, which costs €139.99 (about $158 U.S.) for the season and gives you access to all the practice and qualifying sessions, races and other content.
Moto2: Three U.S. amigos and the fast Spaniard
While there are still no U.S. riders in the MotoGP class or in Moto3, three U.S. racers will compete in Moto2 this year. Joe Roberts returns to the Italtrans Racing Team. He has been on the podium and won a pole position but is still looking for his first Moto2 victory. The American Racing Team will have two American riders in 2022, as last year's MotoAmerica Supersport Champion Sean Dylan Kelly joins five-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Cameron Beaubier.
Kelly is now facing the same challenge Beaubier confronted last year, switching to the stiffer Kalex chassis of the race-only Moto2 machine from a Supersport bike based on a street Suzuki GSX-R600.
"It's called 'testing' for a reason!" said Kelly, who had two crashes at the Moto2 preseason test at Portimão in Portugal as he learned the limits of the race bike. "The Moto2 bike is so different from what I’ve been racing for three years and because of how these Grand Prix chassis are, this stage was about riding the motorcycle differently and completely changing what I've been doing for those last three years."
With a best result of a fifth-place finish in 2021, Beaubier is looking for a breakthrough. In the hypercompetitive Moto2 series, switching from a production-based Superbike with extensive electronics to a Moto2 machine and riding tracks he hadn't seen since he was a teenager racing a 125 cc two-stroke, Beaubier finished 15th in the standings in his rookie Moto2 season. For European racing media, that wasn't a surprising result, but many of the people who had watched Beaubier race in person in the United States were surprised he didn't do better. The difference, I believe, shows both the potential Beaubier has, which is recognized by those who have most closely followed his career, and the difficulty of the Moto2 series, which the European media know is not the kind of series where someone can stroll in and find instant success.
One teenager may be about to test that perception, however. The talk of the Moto2 test at Portimão was Pedro Acosta, who won the Moto3 championship last year in his rookie season. Could he do the same in the even more competitive Moto2 field? After the Red Bull KTM Ajo team rider set the fastest time of the test, some are actually expecting him to get his second title in two years and then move on to MotoGP as soon as next year. That's how high the expectations are.
Will this season bring a surprise MotoGP champion, like Joan Mir in 2020 or will Marc Márquez and the revised Honda return to the dominance we saw before he was injured at the beginning of the 2020 season? For most of the riders on the MotoGP grid, this is the year contracts expire. With fresh talent always rising through the ranks, some riders, for lack of a fraction of a second a lap in pace, will languish down in the standings and lose their rides. Others will cement their place in the premier class. The stories will begin unfolding this weekend.
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