From a race that we knew would be unusual thanks to the external conditions, we move on to a race that is guaranteed to be unique because we’ve never raced there before. The Mandalika street circuit plays host to the MotoGP grid for the first time this weekend, a full 25 years since the last time we had a race in Indonesia. The circuit itself is practically brand new, with only two major racing events taking place here since the tracks completion, being the World Superbike round last season and an official MotoGP test held around 5 weeks ago. You’re unlikely to ever see a track on the MotoGP calendar as fresh as this one.
The track itself has a lot going for it. The location is picturesque, with the track itself facing out towards the ocean and surrounded with palm trees and coconuts in abundance. Social media is already ablaze with pictures of riders enjoying the relaxed beach atmosphere, and I’m certain there will be plenty of sunburns up and down pitlane over the course of the weekend. Additionally, the Indonesian fans are incredibly passionate about MotoGP. All of the responses from fans online have been overwhelming and positive, and it’s expected that there will be a massive turnout all weekend as the local fans get a real taste of MotoGP racing in person.
In terms of track layout, there’s a lot of potential here. Riders will tear down the front straight into a sequence of two right and two left corners, ripe with overtaking opportunities. They then enter the second sector which is technically five or six individual corners, but the reality is that riders will simply keep the gas pinned throughout and flex the top speed capacity of their MotoGP machines here. This fast and flowing sector is followed by a winding infield sector, followed by several slower corners that lead into the start-finish straight to complete the lap. It really is a track that has everything – a long straight, flowing cornering, and some tight areas ripe for doing battle with your fellow riders.
So, who has the natural advantage here? On paper, it’s hard to discern. The fast sectors one and two should naturally favour the horsepower monsters Ducati, but the later sectors will require some mastery in cornering, something the Yamahas and Suzukis are more well known for. The track layout actually reminds me a lot of Austria, which historically would indicate a Ducati stronghold, but we saw in the two races held there last season that other manufacturers are much closer to the pace than ever before. This is one of the difficulties of predicting MotoGP at the moment. All six manufacturers are competitive enough to fight for a podium at basically any track, making it nigh impossible to pick a winner before the race kicks off.
There’s another factor to the track that could play a part in the outcome of the weekend, and it’s something that we learnt in pre-season testing here. When riders arrived in Mandalika a month or so ago, they found that poor weather and track conditions had led to the surface being coated in dirt and grime, and featuring a number of bumpy sections that made grip almost impossible to find. The solution at the time was to simply send the riders out on fresh tires and make them run a decent number of laps out until a full layer of rubber had been laid down, which would allow future sessions to have more grip available. It was a fine solution, despite the comedy of professional riders having cleaning duties, but it wasn’t a permanent one. The circuit officials have worked hard since then to resurface some of the worse sections of the track, but it isn’t a great look heading into your first ever time hosting a MotoGP weekend.
Speaking of the pre-season tests, they actually help quite a bit in discerning who should be strong this weekend. I know I constantly advocate against the use of testing data as conclusive evidence for race results, but since this is the first time we’ve raced at Mandalika there really isn’t any better information to work with. While the raw times themselves aren’t particularly helpful in this regard – almost the entirety of the field was split by a single second, which is about as close as you can get – there are plenty of things that can be discerned from what we saw at the test.
The first and most obvious one is that Honda look fast here. All four riders were able to find consistently quick times over all three days of testing, and Marc and Pol ended the test as two of the quickest men of the weekend. For Pol Espargaro in particular, this kind of consistent speed will be a breath of fresh air heading into this race and the season in general given his struggles with the unruly 2021 Honda. We know that this year’s model is more user friendly than ever before – even Marc Marquez has described it as the best Honda in years – and Pol himself is coming here on the back of a podium finish in Qatar. Should he bag another solid finish here, he could put his name down early as one to watch for the championship.
Two other factories that looked strong here in testing were Aprilia and Suzuki. Aprilia were a shock to the system across both tests in 2022, looking just as fast as their competition and carrying quite a bit of confidence in their riders. Despite this, they had mixed results in the desert last time out, with Aleix Espargaro taking a strong 4th place but Vinales only having enough for 12th in the end. In a similar vein, Suzuki were one of the biggest talking points after the Mandalika test but failed to convert that into strong results in Qatar, finishing 6th and 7th but never really looking to have the same pace as the guys out front. Both of these factory teams will hope for a better result in Mandalika to put them back into the limelight.
If there’s a factory that needs a reset button after the first round, it’s Ducati. Despite having won the race with satellite rider Enea Bastianini, the manufacturer was arguably the biggest loser of the opening round thanks to the results of their factory bikes. Three of the five GP22 bikes didn’t even see the chequered flag, and those that did finished much lower down the order than what would have been anticipated. The issue appears to be that Ducati were pushing their riders too hard to test new parts rather than working on their race set-up. Without any consistency with the bikes they had underneath them, the riders weren’t able to find anything comfortable for the race itself, which led to the punishing results we witnessed. They’ll need to listen to their riders a lot more if they want a better chance at success in this second round.
A brand new track in a country that loves the sport, plenty of talking points from the race before, and a championship that couldn’t be more wide open. I couldn’t imagine a better setting for the second round of the 2022 MotoGP season, and I look forward to seeing what the riders can produce over the course of the weekend.
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