Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/262687
A strange smell lingered after the MotoGP warriors had left Sepang. Something to do with too much asparagus? Actually, no – the taste of gall is more bitter than that. Hence the pinched-up expressions, and noses put out of joint. They belonged to almost ev- erybody except Aleix Espargaro, who set the fourth-best time on one of the new B-team "Open" bikes. And of course Dorna's Grand Poobah Carmelo Ezpele- ta. If he wanted to put a rocket up the factories (aka Honda), he's done so… with more than a little help from Yamaha. It was only the first test, but the consistent speed of the older Spanish Espargaro brother was more than enough to unsettle not only the top riders, but also his other would-be rivals in the new-this-year B-team. Last year Espargaro stood head and shoul- ders above his CRT rivals. At these tests he was equally lofty compared with the Open Class. Plenty of talent, clearly. But some other things too… Marc Marquez dominated throughout. As if he wouldn't. Val- entino Rossi was also very fast – a little more surprising, sug- gesting his change of crew chief might be the anti-ageing tonic the 35-year-old needed. Also Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, as you'd expect. But right up among them, B- teamster Espargaro. The toothy Spaniard was fast throughout: just over a second adrift in sev- enth on day one, up to fifth the next, and fourth behind Mar- quez, Rossi and Lorenzo on day three. Now he was less than half a second adrift. Among the usual "I wasn't go- ing for a time" comments (as if), some worried faces. His mount is entered by pri- vate team Forward Racing, as an FTR Yamaha: one of the new generation of production-racer Open bikes. It's a bit of a misno- mer, however: the proposed FTR chassis is still under construc- tion: his bike was a 2013 factory M1 in all but one crucial respect: computer software. He was run- ning the one-size-fits-all control stuff, where the factory bikes can write their own. Hmmm – it's clear that the lev- el of said software is not as low as some had feared. If the fast guys were feeling troubled, how about the other Open riders? The best of them, almost two seconds off pole, was down in 13th place. And it was a former World Champion Nicky Hayden. He was of course on a Honda - one of four RC213V replicas nominally in the same category as the Yamaha. The RCV1000R lacks the factory bike's pneu- matic valves, and something else besides. Grunt. Speed out of the corners. And the ability to mount a realistic challenge. This is obviously bad news for the customers, and for Honda. HRC vice-president Shuhei Na- kamoto was distinctly peeved. Yamaha were not operating, he BY MICHAEL SCOTT CN III IN THE PADDOCK ESPARGARO'S SYNDROME P110