on TV or PlayStation. Old hands
know that, especially with Phillip
Island, they are in for a treat.
At the other flyaway tracks, not
quite so much perhaps, but they
all pose interesting puzzles any-
way, from stop-and-go Motegi
and Buriram to stop-and-flow
Sepang.
There are also what you might
call class-circuit rookies: riders
who have never ridden these
tracks in their current class. In
MotoGP, these include not only
the true rookies—Darryn Binder,
Gardner, Di Giannantonio, Bez-
zecchi and Fernandez—but also
four-times 2022 winner Bastiani-
ni, bruiser Jorge Martin, Sunday
charger Brad Binder and the
improvingly solid Luca Marini, as
well as Alex Marquez.
These will have to remember
their way around the tracks on
their Moto2 bikes, and then
forget all about gear settings,
braking points and corner lines
to adapt to MotoGP.
Even for the old hands, how-
ever, there is still plenty to get
used to. Restrictive tech regs
notwithstanding, the bikes have
changed very significantly since
2019. Much of the old data will
no longer be exactly relevant.
This is thanks to the usual evo-
lutionary development, despite
a couple of years of engine
M
otoGP's return to the
flyaways has been a
breath of fresh air. For
the fans in Asia and Australia,
obviously, but also for the GP
circus. After a couple of seasons
of restriction and over-familiarity,
where they even sometimes
raced at the same circuit two
weekends in a row, it's the joy of
the unexpected.
Four tracks are back after
two years away: Motegi, Buri-
ram, Phillip Island and Sepang.
Tracks not unfamiliar to the old
hands, though there are plenty
of Moto3 and even Moto2 run-
ners who have never seen any
of these circuits before, except
P128
CN
III IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
T A L E S
OF THE
UNEXPECTED
