MotoGP at Jerez for an official Monday test day: schedule, updates, and a focus on the five manufacturers

Tomorrow brings a unique official MotoGP test day: after the GP, they’re back on track at Jerez.

With the Spanish GP just wrapped up, it’s time to think about a day of testing. Tomorrow, in fact, MotoGP will remain at Jerez for a Monday of trials: all eyes on the new items, and there will certainly be no shortage of what we already saw over the race weekend—some details can be seen in the cover photo. Manufacturers will be on track with both factory riders and test riders (then on Tuesday it will be the turn of Moto3). The day will be split into two sessions: on track from 10:00 to 13:00, with a second session from 13:20 to 18:00. There’s also an update regarding delayed starts, which we’ll explain below.

It will be a key opportunity for Ducati which, despite celebrating with Alex Marquez and Fabio Di Giannantonio, must reckon with the double DNF in the factory team, Marc Marquez due to a crash and Pecco Bagnaia due to a technical issue. Will they find solutions to bounce back quickly? Aprilia files away a GP of two halves, with a disastrous Sprint and a much better Sunday race. KTM’s best performer this GP was Enea Bastianini, the only Tech3 rider due to Vinales’ physical issues, which means there are a few too many problems in the factory squad. At Honda, Johann Zarco in 7th salvaged the weekend tally, and as for Yamaha, the situation is well known by now and the problems are evident with all four riders, both in the factory team and the Pramac squad. We’ll see what the five manufacturers bring to tomorrow’s one-off test day.

This update was already applied at the just-finished Spanish GP, officially confirmed on April 25, during the race weekend. Under the previous system, when riders were on the grid and a start delay was announced, the countdown was paused and then resumed at 3 minutes to go, the moment when teams must stop working on the bikes. However, this didn’t give the teams enough time to understand when to halt their activities.

Hence the update: with the new system, once a delayed start is declared on the grid, the countdown before the warm-up lap resumes from 5 (no longer 3) minutes. This way, teams will have sufficient time to determine when to stop.