Grand Prix Zero: The unofficial jocular name for the official IRTA tests at Jerez. The joke, after the idiosyncratic tendency of computer programmers to start counting at zero instead of one, is that the only “official” preseason test has grown so much in popularity, importance, and status that it has become a de facto Grand Prix, albeit a rather strange one. For the meeting has a qualifying practice, but not a race; its highlight is on a Sunday, but it finishes on Monday; it has a paying audience, television coverage, even a prize, in the form of an expensive BMW sports car, but the 40 minutes of action which the weekend centers around is arguably the least important part of the entire event, where bikes which are still in the midst of development are pitted against each other as if in a race.

If truth be told, the 40 minute shootout for the BMW Z4 is an irrelevance: It bears no relation to the racing, and tells us nothing about where the teams stand or what the season will bring. At last year’s event, Valentino Rossi drove the BMW away, snatching the bike from the grasp of Dani Pedrosa and Colin Edwards, with the then reigning world champion Nicky Hayden in 4th, and Kawasaki’s Randy de Puniet coming home in 5th place. Casey Stoner, the man who went on to dominate the year and win 10 of the 18 races, only managed to set the 6th fastest time during the official qualifying practice, nearly half a second off Rossi’s vehicle-winning pace. As a clue to how the season was to pan out, the 2007 IRTA test was next to useless.

The Racing Aperitif

But loyal MotoGP fans won’t let that spoil the fun. For the fact also remains that for most fans, the IRTA test is the first chance they get to see and hear the bikes in the flesh, or at least on their TV screens, which is the next best thing. As many as 40,000 bike-mad Spaniards turn up for the test in Jerez, by some estimates more than 10 times the turnout at the Qatar MotoGP race, and for the most part, the networks which broadcast the MotoGP races show at least some coverage of the qualifying practice session. For the IRTA test is not so much a feast of racing, more a matter of cocktails and canapés, or perhaps more fittingly, Amontillado sherry and tapas: The Jerez test is not the first course of the MotoGP season, but an appetizer, something to whet our appetites for the season of racing which is to come.

Despite the irrelevance of the shootout, and the largely ceremonial nature of the meeting, the IRTA test genuinely has something at stake. The official nature of the IRTA test means that for the first time this season, there are timesheets available to the public, allowing fans and followers to see the underlying story behind the testing. From the moment the bikes turn a wheel at the first postseason test at Valencia, test times are being questioned and called into doubt, with teams usually just releasing a single time for each rider, disregarding the scores of laps they may have put in that day. Speculation is rife about who was sandbagging, who was on which tires, and with some riders always absent, what would have happened if rider X had been present. At Jerez, there’s no place to hide: All of the teams are present, and Dorna provides timesheets for every session, showing every lap ridden by each rider, the length of the runs they made, the total number of laps they run, and even the sector times for each part of the track. For once, MotoGP followers have actual times they can dissect, and the speculation which inevitably goes on, however far-fetched, has its origin in fact, in genuine hard data.

Janus Jerez

So Jerez is a tale of two sessions: one official media frenzy, where the teams put on a show for the paying customers, and go all out to set a fast lap round the circuit, aided by an almost unlimited supply of qualifying tires; and another series of more normal testing sessions, with riders actually concentrating on improving the bike, and getting it ready for the start of the season, now only a few short weeks away.

And two sessions means two possible winners, a Sprint Champion and a Best In Show. The 40 minute qualifying session on Sunday, which will net the winner a shiny four-wheeled toy, though the least important, will be the most entertaining. So far this season, whenever he’s been present and in good enough shape to put his mind to it, it has been Casey Stoner who has set the fastest lap on qualifying tires everywhere, and Sunday should be no different. Stoner and the Ducati are still the very picture of symbiotic harmony, the young world champion fast in every session at every circuit from the moment he first rolls his Ducati out onto the track. And at every track, it becomes ever clearer just how much of this is down to Stoner: if anything, the other Ducati riders are even further behind than they were last year, with Marco Melandri seemingly set upon the collision course with catastrophe that Loris Capirossi sailed before him, Ducati’s newest signing struggling to get to grips with Ducati’s ferocious power and dominant electronics just as his predecessor did in 2007.

Mental Warfare

But Stoner won’t have it all his own way at Jerez. Two men look capable of raining on his parade, and both will want to score an important psychological victory before battle commences for real at Qatar in March. The first of those combatants is the master of PsyOps himself, Valentino Rossi. Now that the Italian has Bridgestones under his Yamaha M1, he has one less excuse for not taking the fight to Stoner. And with recent press statements freshly in mind, The Doctor looks set to return to the tactics which worked so successfully for him with Sete Gibernau and Max Biaggi. Rossi’s mind games are back, and are sure to be a prominent feature of the 2008 season. His subtle combination of mental pressure, sniping remarks and on-track stalking have broken former champions, but so far, the stoic Stoner has remained completely unmoved. After losing two titles in a row, Valentino Rossi is utterly fixed on getting what he regards as “his” crown back again this year, and taking the Z4 home on Sunday would be the first strike against Stoner’s mental armor.

Stoner’s other rival is one he has known for a long time. Dani Pedrosa has been racing against Casey Stoner for many years, both having come up through Alberto Puig’s racing program in Spain. Pedrosa was always seen as the most talented of the pair, yet it was Stoner who was first to win a MotoGP title and beat Valentino Rossi, against the run of expectation. After all, the 800 cc MotoGP bikes seemed almost designed to fit the pocket-sized Pedrosa, and riding a Honda after a change in the rules has in the past been a guarantee of success. Not in 2007, though, and as a consequence, HRC are sworn to avenge their disastrous season last year. The 2008 Honda RC212V is almost an entirely new bike, with a new engine and new chassis, and whenever Pedrosa has ridden the bike, he’s been blisteringly fast.

Under normal circumstances, Pedrosa, at a Spanish track and under the full glare of the Spanish media, would be the odds-on favorite to set the fastest time during Sunday’s qualifying session. Sadly for the Spaniard, though, these are not normal circumstances. Pedrosa is still recovering from a broken bone in his hand, an injury he sustained in a crash at the first test of the year at Sepang, which has required surgery to help heal. Jerez will be the first time the Spaniard has ridden for 4 weeks, and doubts will surely remain about his ability to sustain the pressures of an all-out qualifying session, with the physical stresses and strains that involves. On the plus side for Pedrosa, it’s only 40 minutes long, and he can rest before and afterwards. Pedrosa, like Rossi, needs to land the first blow of the season, and there could be no better place to do it than Jerez.

As for the meaningful part of the test, the two and three quarter days of proper development and testing, the only question is how close Valentino Rossi can get to Casey Stoner. Pedrosa is unlikely to be able to put in a full schedule of testing and will be wary of aggravating his hand injury so close to the season. Of the other riders, Kawasaki’s John Hopkins is also recovering, from a groin injury in the American’s case, and the Kawasaki is short of development time, putting a damper on their hopes for the season; the Suzukis seem to be at least as good as last year, but still just a fraction behind the Honda, Yamaha and Ducati; and the intensity of competition between Stoner, Rossi and Pedrosa has forced a gap between them and the rest of the field.

The New Boys

To spice up the contest for mid-pack domination, 2008 sees the advent of 4 new faces, 3 of whom are world champions. Where last year, the Rookie of the Year title went to the only man eligible, in 2008 there are 4 candidates, promising a very hard-fought battle. The Spanish 250 world champion and Valentino Rossi’s Fiat Yamaha team mate, Jorge Lorenzo, is the current front runner for top rookie, but he faces very stiff competition from both Andrea Dovizioso, the man he beat the last two years running, and World Superbike champion James Toseland, on the Tech 3 Yamaha. Dovizioso is out for revenge, having suffered on vastly inferior equipment last year, and the Italian must be happy to be facing his arch rival on a Honda RC212V, probably a better machine than the current Yamaha M1, although Lorenzo has factory support while Dovizioso is only on a satellite team.

Toseland, meanwhile, has to represent the world of WSBK racing, often sneered at in the MotoGP paddock as being second rate, and not a suitable avenue for entry into the premier class of racing. Troy Bayliss’ amazing victory in the final race of 2006, where he trounced the MotoGP regulars on the Ducati Desmosedici 990 after winning the World Superbike title, wedged the door ajar for JT to slip through onto a satellite Yamaha. Now it’s down to Toseland to prove his mettle, and make his mark in the MotoGP. Given his machinery, and his methodical approach, he is unlikely to set the world alight from the start, but with hard work and a little luck, he could start a few things smoldering.

And so, after the long dark night of winter, the first rays of dawn are alighting on the MotoGP horizon. The IRTA test at Jerez is not a real race, or a meaningful meeting, but it is light at the end of the tunnel. It may not provide the answer to the MotoGP fans’ every question, but it does mean that an answer to those questions is in sight, and the wait is nearly over. The official IRTA test may only be a phony war, but for the army of MotoGP followers, a phony war is better than nothing.

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