MotoGP’s three day pre-test shakedown at Sepang has hinted that Honda’s end of season form from the final races of 2025 may well continue into 2026 as it works to bring the RC213V back to winning ways.
Test rider Aleix Espargaro ended up under two tenths of a second from 2025’s Malaysian Grand Prix pole position time.
The fastest of his 51 laps on the final day was a 1m57.173s, not far from the 1m57.001s that put Pecco Bagnaia’s Ducati first on the grid last October.
Espargaro has been spending his pre-season so far concentrating on Honda’s 2026 plans, while fellow test rider Taka Nakagami has split the duties for the manufacturer’s 2027 machine. The Japanese racer wasn’t present at Sepang for the shakedown, instead testing at the Malaysian circuit over Christmas.
Joining Espargaro at the top of the timesheets on the final day of the test was brother Pol, ending up only 0.126s behind him on KTM’s 2026 prototype after a busy test for the Austrian factory in which Dani Pedrosa and Mika Kallio were also on track.
Fabio Quartararo was third on Yamaha’s new V4 machine, a radically different package that may have arrived as too little too late for the team to retain the services of the 2021 world champion if this week’s reports linking him to a 2027 Honda move are accurate. If Quartararo is making that move, Espargaro’s pace will be reassuring.
Behind Quartararo, fellow Yamaha racers Alex Rins and Jack Miller weren’t far behind in what should come as a good sign for the team’s new project, with rookie Toprak Razgatlioglu half a second back on Miller and fractionally slower than his fellow MotoGP newcomer, reigning Moto2 world champion Diogo Moreira on the Honda.
Track action at Sepang will now pause for two days to allow teams to regroup, before getting underway again on Tuesday with the first full and official outing of 2026.
Best shakedown times
1 Aleix Espargaro (Honda) 1m57.173s
2 Pol Espargaro (KTM) +0.126s
3 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) +0.517s
4 Alex Rins (Yamaha) +0.719s
5 Jack Miller (Yamaha) +0.921s
6 Diogo Moreira (Honda) +1.165s
7 Dani Pedrosa (KTM) +1.291s
8 Toprak Razgatlioglu (Yamaha) +1.292s
9 Michele Pirro (Ducati) +1.726s
10 Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia) +1.775s
11 Mika Kallio (KTM) +2.634s
12 Augusto Fernandez (Yamaha) +2.989s
