The stop-and-go nature of Le Mans brought out the wings – in particular a new set from Honda, very similar to the pointed loop favoured by Yamaha, and in the same way sailing close to the wind. The deliberately vague regulations forbid sharp edges, but these units are very similar to last year’s banned winglets.
They were especially favoured by Marquez, who said: “We have decided to play our Joker”; a reference to the fact that they have now used their single allowable update for the season.
“With this fairing and the one we were already using, I think we will have something to suit every circuit this year,” he said.
The advantage here was to tame the tendency to wheelie; and his generally anti-wing team-mate Dani Pedrosa confirmed that “you have to fight the bike less on the straight”. In general, the big new wings improved the balance of the bike.
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- Wings on Marquez’s bike, French MotoGP 2018
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- Wings on Pedrosa’s bike, French MotoGP 2018
Both riders had tested them at Mugello in the break after the Spanish GP, where, Pedrosa said, “we wanted to see what the effect would be on top speed.”
Pressed for details, he gave a mysterious smile, then said: “The numbers are one thing, the feeling is another. But on the long Italian straight, usually the fastest of the year, “we understood that the fairing is not so useful at Mugello”.
Unusually, Cal Crutchlow was also using the earlier sandwich-sided Honda fairing at Le Mans, but was non-committal as to whether he would race it. “This is a wheelie circuit, so I wanted to test it. There are positives and negatives, but there are also other strategies, like with electronics. I don’t know if I’ll use it tomorrow,” he said.