November 17 will mark the final round of the 2019 MotoGP World Championship. All three main Championships have been settled at the top, though bridesmaid places have not. The other World Championship still open is the MotoE Championship. But truth be told, nobody really cares :\ (at least not yet).
Valencia seems to have a deal with MotoGP’s CEO, Carmelo, similar to Qatar’s; where each are guaranteed the final and first round of the Championship respectively. Valencia also marks the first official test of the 2020 season. It will be interesting to see what Honda, Ducati and Yamaha bring out. Honda has to develop an easier-to-use bike. Although Marquez won the rider’s championship with 3 races to go, and is on track to scoring the most points in a season, and could very well be the main contributor to winning the team’s championship, the bike has been nowhere without him. Unless your last name is Marquez, the Honda, in 2019 trim, has been a disaster to ride. You can say whatever you want about Lorenzo, but the guy won on a Ducati, something Rossi never did, and except for Marquez, he’s the most successful Spanish MotoGP rider ever. Like him or not, Lorenzo is not finishing at the back of the grid because he’s slow.
If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed some success from a certain Mr. Zarco. And rightly, you would have wondered how he’d been so successful in so little time. The answer is the bike he is riding. He’s riding Nakagami’s 2018 Honda. The 2018 is easier to ride, though it lacks the straight-line speed the 2019 enjoys. At the expense of ride-ability, for everyone but Marquez, Honda opted for more power. The power served Marc well. Where in the past he’d struggle with the Ducatis on a straight, this was no longer the case in 2019. In some cases, the Honda was even faster than the Ducati. For this reason, it will be interesting to see if HRC have a revised engine at the Valencia test. Or if they will place all of their eggs on the Marquez basket again. Few could blame Honda if they did. Honda is a large ship. Steering it in the desired direction takes a long time. This will be even more true when the discussion about an easier-to-ride bike emerges in one of their engineering meetings and it’s countered with “didn’t we win?“
Ducati will also be testing their 2020 bike, though I don’t expect a revolution for the riders. Yamaha, like Honda, should be one to watch. While the bike has not lost any of its handling capabilities, for which it is famous, it has lost top-speed. So much so, that on straights, the Suzukis seem like Ducatis when they go past them. Rossi, unless he sees potential on the new bike, and can get good results on it next year, will likely be out of the factory team in 2021. At least the official factory team, as I see no reason for VR46 to not start a MotoGP team where he is one of the riders on bikes similar to the Petronas setup (as close to factory as it gets). Of course, this will depend on how Rossi feels about racing at the top level for another season; his 25th in 2021. Of course, he’d need to maneuver an open spot in the MotoGP grid, though he is Rossi, and if someone can do it, it’s him.
So while the season is over, and we’re mostly tuning in to watch a parade of bikes going around a track, with no Championships on the line. The test thereafter will be what most of us are looking forward to watching and analyzing.
