As the MotoGP Sepang test comes to an end, I wanted to take a closer look at how did each rider do in long runs during the 3 day test, and here I share the results in form of some charts.
Info: Long runs are considered stints with at least 5 laps excluding the pit exit and pit entry laps. Also, during the stint, outliers are excluded, that’s why some stints may be recorded with 4 or 3 laps, so those should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Day 1: Acosta, Acosta and Acosta
Prior to the 3 day test at Sepang, the rookies and test riders (plus manufacturers with concessions) had another 3 days of testing in the Shakedown, and as things went well for Acosta there, he continued with the hard work at day 1 of the official test, putting together the 3 best long runs of the day as everyone was starting to get warmed up.
Being the first day of official testing results must be taken with a pinch of salt as pretty much every rider and team was checking if things were working as expected, and as so (and less rubber on track), long run pace was much slower than the following 2 days.
Day 2: Ducatis start to show
As it was the logical step, more people started to do more serious long runs (+7 laps), with the Marquez brothers and Acosta (again) doing some fairly competitive runs, although Acosta’s one was one with very few laps and not that consistant (0.5 of standard deviation). The Honda guys started showing some promising pace with actually good (and consistent) long runs given the amount of rubber on track and experience that they had on day 2.
World Champion Pecco Bagnaia finally put in a good stint together, while Michele Pirro stepping in the shoes of an injured Morbidelli also did some good work. It is remarkable also how close were the 3 Aprilias on the long stints, with a quarter of a tenth covering Oliveira, Viñales and Espargaró.
Day 3: Sprint simulations everywhere
With the big day, day 3 of the Sepang Test, of course came the record-breaking fast laps under 1 minute and 57 seconds but also came in most of the serious sprint simulations (still weird to call a sprint simulation a long run). And continuing with his impressive form from the end of 2023, Di Giannantonio put together the bets long run of the day, although he managed to do so in the afternoon when the track temperature was lower than when the rest of the grid did their simulations. Following the VR46 rider came Viñales, Bastianini and Martin, all covered in less than a tenth (from 1’58.308 to 1’58.390)
The next best long run was achieved by Aleix Espargaro with a 1’58.499, and followed by him both Marquez brothers, Brad Binder, Pedro Acosta (!!) and Pecco Bagnaia all within 1 tenth of a second. Truly remarkable pre-season by the rookie Acosta whose long run was only 0.006 slower on avergae than the firt KTM rider Brad Binder.
More than half a second off found themselves Joan Mir, Luca Marini and Miguel Oliveira, and although on paper it’s not such a big difference specially speaking about Sepang as it is a very long track, their long stints were not amongst the 10 fastest ones.
One factory name that has not been mentioned in this analysis is Yamaha. This is simple because of their lack of long runs to analyze, specialy from Fabio Quartararo whose longest run in the 3 day test was a 4 lap run. I am very happy that the new concessions system was implemented because if it wasn’t for that, with the same testing time as Ducati or KTM, there would be no way in this world where Yamaha could recover from their downfall in the last 2 years.
Yamaha has recorded only 8 long runs in the whole 3 day test, which for comparison is less than Ducati’s number of long runs in the last day of testing(10), Of course Yamaha had the Shakedown to gather information on long runs when rivals like Ducati couldn’t but still surprises me the low amount of stints that Yamaha tried having into account that they had only 3 riders in this test.