Preparations for the new season have resumed at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimão which, in exactly two weeks’ time, from 24 to 26 March, will host the Portuguese Grand Prix, the inaugural round of the 2023 MotoGP World Championship.
Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 March, the MotoGP riders will in fact be engaged in the last two days of pre-season testing on the Portuguese track. For Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini, the two 8-hour sessions available will be important for completing the development work on their Desmosedici GPs in the 2023 configuration that began last February in the Sepang test, but they will also be essential for starting the work on fine-tuning the their bikes in view of the first race weekend.
Starting this year, the weekend schedule will include the addition of a sprint race on Saturday afternoons at all Grands Prix, which will require teams and drivers to adopt a different strategy than a traditional race . Bagnaia and Bastianini will therefore also have to work on this different approach to the race weekend during the two days of testing.
Enea Bastianini, Ducati Team
Photo by: MotoGP
“We are very close to the first race of the season and therefore this test will be really important. In Sepang we managed to do a good job and bring the new bike to the same level as last year’s. We are close to being 100% and I am sure that here we will be able to complete our work” said Bagnaia.
“Portimão is a very different track from Sepang and, obviously, the climatic conditions are too. It will therefore be essential to try again the different fairings tested in Malaysia in order to have other data to analyze before making a final decision. Finally, we will also have to work on the race weekend and especially on the sprint race. It will be two intense days, but I’m ready and excited to get back to work” he added.
“I’m happy to get back on track this weekend and get back to work to prepare for the new season. There are now practically two weeks left until the first race and I can’t wait! Although we managed to complete a large part of our program at Sepang, here too we they will wait for two very intense days,” Bastianini said.
“It will be important to repeat some of the tests done in Malaysia to have different data to be able to compare. In addition, we will need to start working on setting up the bike for the race and simulate a sprint race to understand how we will have to deal with this novelty that awaits us this year. We hope to find good weather on both days,” he concluded.
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Enea Bastianini, Ducati Team
Photo by: MotoGP
