There was a private test at the Barcelona circuit on the days following the Le Mans Grand Prix and three teams participated in it - Ducati, Honda and Aprilia. Marquez ended up top of the timesheets, but what they had to say about the new track layout was interesting.
Last year, Luis Salom lost his life in a strange crash at turn thirteen, a high-speed corner with not enough runoff on the outside. Modifications to increase runoff there are near impossible, which led to the decision that the bikes will now use the F1 track layout, with the chicane instead of the high-speed turn 13. It caught a lot of the riders out, most of them running wide, but their reactions make it amply clear that they aren't happy with the new layout. Most reactions were things we can't repeat in polite company, with the most gentle one being "It's not fun to ride," by Aleix Espargaro. His teammate Sam Lowes maintained that MotoGP would be okay, but Moto2 and especially Moto3, where everyone has near-identical pace and don't really need to brake into corners, could have a bunch of riders crash out if a lot of them tried to get through at the same time.
One of the things that made the Catalan Grand Prix so exciting were the high-speed turns 13 and 14, and now they've been neutered. Will it still make for entertaining racing? We won't have long to find out.
