Can Yamaha's new star topple Marquez?

It won't rank highly among the sporting miracles of 2016, but to predict this time last year that Marc Marquez would waltz his way to a third MotoGP championship would have been bold.

After winning the title as a rookie in 2013 and doubling up the following year, Marquez was given a particularly tough Honda to master in '15. And while he extracted plenty of speed out of it, he crashed the troubled RC213V on plenty of occasions too.

His fortunes improved after reverting to a 2014 chassis mid-season, but there was bad news for Honda on the horizon for 2016: the move from factory-developed electronics to a control, toned-down ECU. If Honda was having trouble getting its engine under control with its own electronics, how would it go with a simplified unit that was designed to reduce the influence of the software?

Honda had been a staunch opponent of the change, threatening to quit several times in the years before it was introduced, but eventually it had no choice but to adapt.

Testing at the end of 2015 and early '16 was telling, as riders also got up to speed with Michelin's return as tyre supplier. Honda was struggling and frustrated. You would have never written Marquez off, but winning the championship looked a tall order, especially against Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, who had fought for the '15 title and then seemed to adapt to the changes with ease.

But here we are talking about Marquez as a three-time MotoGP champion. The Spaniard, who's just turned 24, was mesmerising last year. As expected, and evident pre-season, the Honda lacked acceleration, but the Japanese manufacturer made a breakthrough late in the final pre-season test in Qatar and gave him just about enough to work with.

Marquez, for his part, toned back a riding style that could have been described at times as overzealous, reeling back the risks and learning to accept points when they were on offer, rather than throwing away results in the impossible or improbable pursuit of a win. Witness settling for second behind Jack Miller at Assen.

He did all of this as rivals threw away points, but Marquez would have won the championship anyway - their wobbles simply meant that he wrapped it up with three races to spare rather than two, one or perhaps at the finale. Some feat in a chaotic year that had nine different winners.

Given the progress it has made in the past 12 months, and only a relatively minor regulation change with the winglet ban, things should look rosier for Honda on the eve of the 2017 season. And they do, even if some of the same frustrations and limitations linger.

Focusing on its engine rather than the chassis, Honda has opted to revamp its powerplant's configuration, headlined by a change in firing order from 'screamer' to 'big bang' to refine how the power is delivered through the rear tyre.

The engine it started testing late last year did not wow Marquez, nor other Honda riders, including Dani Pedrosa and Cal Crutchlow, who tried it. Honda had another go over the winter, and tested a newer version pre-season.

This looked to offer more potential, even if engineers did not have it successfully mated to the ECU initially. That led to Honda taking the unusual step of scheduling a private session at Jerez between the official Phillip Island and Qatar runouts.

Sure, Marquez dislocated his shoulder - his right one, the good one - on that February Saturday at Jerez, but otherwise it has been a much better start to the year for Honda and its world champion than in 2016.

The Qatar test was more of a struggle than the first two, and he crashed five times over the three days, but part of Marquez's 2016 success was that he didn't crash when it mattered. On the whole, he has been quick in testing, both on single laps and over longer runs.

Team-mate Pedrosa and LCR satellite rider Crutchlow, both race winners last year, have also looked stronger than they did 12 months earlier. The pre-season picture is never clear, but does at least look clearer for Honda than it did heading to the Qatar opener in 2016.

"The pressure to fight for the title is there," Marquez concedes. "This is something that we need to accept and we need to fight for the championship again.

"I always say it depends on the tools you have. If you have a good tool, you can attack from the beginning. If you don't feel comfortable you need to wait a little bit."

This year, you would be bold to bet against Marquez winning another championship. But in true Honda style it probably won't be all smooth sailing.

IN THE BLUE CORNER

If you're watching MotoGP this year, you're likely to be watching a title fight between Marquez and Maverick Vinales.

Two years younger than Marquez, Vinales has impressed with every step. But in 2016 he emerged as a bona fide star of MotoGP. In his second season with Suzuki, which gave him a shot as a rookie for its return in '15, Vinales flew, other than when limited in warmer conditions or the wet by the GSX-RR's frustrating habit of losing rear grip.

Even before Yamaha locked him in to replace the Ducati-bound Lorenzo, Vinales was firmly in the spotlight. He was rapid in pre-season testing, qualified on the front row for the Qatar opener and kept his cool while weighing up staying with Suzuki or joining Yamaha.

He claimed his maiden MotoGP podium at Le Mans, but a level of frustration kicked in from there, even though he was a regular top-six finisher in the dry. His former Suzuki boss Davide Brivio says he "has a champion mind. He just wants to win the championship. It's very clear to him - he works for his target."

Then came a September day made for Vinales and Suzuki, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where he broke through to win in style. He grabbed two more podiums before the season was out and wound up fourth in the points. Impressively, he only fell in a race once all year, as other riders struggled to feel the limit of the Michelin front tyre.

Since throwing his leg over Yamaha's M1 for the first time at Valencia last November, in the official post-season test, Vinales has looked at home. He topped those two days, a private session for himself, Rossi and Tech3 Yamaha rookies Jonas Folger and Johann Zarco at Sepang a week later, and then swept the three official pre-season tests of 2017 at Sepang, Phillip Island and Losail.

His sort of mishmash aggressive-yet-smooth style allows him to extract plenty of corner speed, enjoying the Yamaha's compliant nature and better rear grip and acceleration compared to the Suzuki. Lorenzo and Rossi did, though, find Yamaha was outdeveloped with the new ECU last year, and the front end of the M1 was not entirely compatible with the Michelin front in cooler conditions.

Still, Vinales on the bike looks about as good a match as you could have, and even Yamaha team director Massimo Meregalli concedes "we couldn't expect he would be so fast so quick".

"Last year when I was following the Yamaha I knew the bike was really fast," Vinales says. "When I got on the Yamaha I just tried to ride like I know how to do, and the bike was really good. I was really fast; I was quite surprised that I could go so fast, just in a few days."

Vinales' arrival is basically Rossi's worst nightmare. The pair have a good relationship, despite being split by 16 years, have never clashed on-track and seem to enjoy each other's company.

Their boss Lin Jarvis says Vinales' work ethic and curiosity actually even play to Rossi's nature of wanting to share, like he does with the young riders in the VR46 Academy coming through the ranks in Moto3 and Moto2.

But Rossi's smiles will have faded whenever he has looked at the timesheets this winter and seen Vinales at the top - seemingly doing it easily - while he has been slogging away further down the order. Rossi hasn't been far down, but there has been a noticeable gap as he chases corner-entry confidence.

And that's where it will hurt. If, even for a split second, Rossi thought life and his bid for an eighth premier-class title and perfect 10th across the three divisions was going to get easier when Lorenzo left, the arrival of Vinales is just about the worst-case scenario. Other than having to work with arch-rival Marquez...

Now 38, Rossi's quest for self-improvement and successful efforts to rekindle some of his very best days have been superhuman. In 2016 he won a pair of early-season races, and took three pole positions, his most in a season since the year of his last title, '09. A championship bid looked on, before some unforced errors mid-season and an unfortunate engine failure at Mugello.

Whether you consider that a missed opportunity or not, Rossi re-elevated his game in 2016. His reward? A genuine freak arriving to share the garage with him. That Vinales will win a MotoGP championship seems a given, that it could be in his very first year with Yamaha is by no means out of the question.

Rossi will be more than in the mix, but Marquez versus Vinales is both a likely and massively tantalising prospect. Some mind games have already started - this could be the dawn of the next rivalry that defines an era of MotoGP.

IN THE RED CORNER

Every step or misstep Lorenzo makes this year will be scrutinised. That comes with the territory of making a big-dollar move from a team with which he has won three championships to a manufacturer that has only won one.

Lorenzo has, in fact, won more MotoGP races since entering the premier class in 2008 (44) than Ducati has (33) since doing the same five years earlier. Ducati has been in the relative wilderness since Casey Stoner, who won its only title in '07, returned to Honda in '11. Rossi came and went, unsuccessfully, and it took until last year's Austrian Grand Prix for it to win a race for the first time since Stoner's final victory in red in October '10.

Ducati signed Lorenzo before breaking that nearly-six-year drought, having decided that it needed a gun rider to come in and take it to the next level. As good as Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso are - both grand prix winners - few would stick them in the absolute top bracket of MotoGP riders.

In Lorenzo, Ducati has taken away one of its last-remaining unknowns. The fast-but-erratic Iannone has made way, landing at Suzuki to replace Vinales, and in comes a proven quantity. It's time to see just how much progress Ducati has made since technical maestro Gigi Dall'Igna, who worked with a much younger Lorenzo in 125cc and 250cc, arrived to lead the programme in late 2013.

The early signs, though, are that Ducati is perhaps a little bit further from its goal than any one rider can fix. The bike stops very well, its engine leads the way, and Ducati made the best of the now-banned winglets and last year's new control electronics to deliver that potent power. But as Iannone succinctly put it late last year, the Desmosedici still lacks something "inside the corners".

Lorenzo worked his way into things nicely at Valencia last November, his only two days of 2016 Ducati running, less than 48 hours after leaving Yamaha with one last victory. He spoke glowingly of the Ducati at the team's '17 launch in January, essentially his first chance to talk about it given that his Yamaha contract ran to December 31, calling the bike an "incredible surprise", highlighting its stability and raw power.

Ten days later, pre-season testing started at Sepang. Lorenzo laboured to the 17th-fastest time on day one, the best part of two seconds off the pace set by Stoner, the Australian having rejoined Ducati as a star test rider last year. It was almost as though the Valencia test was a gimme, and his learning curve was really only now starting.

"At Valencia everything was easier, because I rode more or less the way that I've ridden for the past nine years and the times were there," Lorenzo said in Malaysia. "Here, however, riding the same way it was much harder to go quick. This bike is basically ridden the opposite way, so until I learn how to extract the best from the bike it will be hard to be among the quickest."

Extracting the best from the Ducati is still a work in progress. Lorenzo finished those three days at Sepang in 10th place, recovering from the initial "shock". He was eighth at Phillip Island, conceding during that test that "something is still not right", before showing more promise to be fourth in Qatar.

Team-mate Dovizioso, second in Qatar, is perhaps a better barometer for Ducati, having been in red since 2013. The Italian said last month that it is in a "much better position" than last year, but "still we didn't improve enough the negative points. We did a great job, but it's not enough."

Ducati's fortunes will unfold long after this weekend's race in Qatar. The Losail circuit has always been a happy hunting ground for Ducati and Lorenzo, separately. So they may start well together, and even look good in Argentina and at Austin. The big test will come in May, when the championship visits Jerez, a traditionally unhappy venue for Ducati.

Whether they fly or flail, we're going to be talking about Lorenzo and Ducati a lot over the next eight months.

WHAT ELSE TO WATCH OUT FOR?

KTM'S ARRIVAL

That Pol Espargaro likened arriving at MotoGP's first 2017 test at Sepang and seeing the raft of development parts he had to try to a Christmas morning says a lot about the ferocity with which KTM is entering MotoGP.

The famous Austrian manufacturer becomes the sixth on the grid this year, after an extensive 2016 testing programme led by Mika Kallio, who also raced at the Valencia season finale as a wildcard.

Espargaro and Bradley Smith both join KTM's new programme from the Tech3 satellite Yamaha squad, and have had plenty to test in recent months. Both have spoken about the scale of KTM's investment and the professionalism of the team, strengths that will help develop its RC16.

KTM's race debut - overlooking its short-lived role supplying engines to Kenny Roberts' team in 2005 - highlighted a lack of rear grip, but it's sticking to its own path. MotoGP manufacturers favour aluminium frames, but KTM is using its traditional steel trellis, and working with regular partner WP on suspension.

That has proven successful in other arenas, including winning three of the past five Moto3 titles, but KTM knows it's playing catch-up in MotoGP against Honda and Yamaha - and even Ducati, Suzuki and Aprilia. It's also entering Moto2 for the first time this year, biting plenty off and committing to a big chew.

Espargaro and Smith have said that the bike requires a more-physical riding style than the Yamahas they have been on in recent years, as they have worked to develop the package. Gains on the timesheets have been slow and steady - finishing the Qatar test at the foot of the order, more than two seconds adrift - and Smith concedes it will be difficult to score points regularly this year.

Smith in particular needs a big season, having struggled to come to grips with Michelin's front tyre during the 2016 campaign and being comprehensively outperformed by Espargaro, even before he injured his knee in an Endurance World Championship event.

The Briton finished sixth in the championship in 2015, and was only 15th before he missed his first race last year, while Espargaro wound up eighth. However big the potential of the KTM, and serious the resources thrown at the programme, both riders are starting a campaign more about hard work than glory.

LIKE WINGLETS, BUT NOT

The good news, if you disliked MotoGP winglets, is that they are gone in 2017. The bad news, though, is that manufacturers are set to try replacements that could look even worse.

Following a manufacturer impasse, with Ducati on one side wanting to keep them and Honda leading others wanting to get rid of them, the Grand Prix Commission stepped in and banned winglets for this year.

The downforce they generated was handy, hence why every team adopted winglets, especially to help keep the front wheel planted under acceleration with the less-refined ECUs introduced last year.

Predictions the aerodynamic battleground would simply move have proven correct, despite the very sensible regulations put in place. Other than newcomer KTM, manufacturers are limited to two homologated fairings, which must be approved by technical director Danny Aldridge.

Teams have been experimenting with concealed winglets, Yamaha, Honda and Suzuki testing bulges within the front bodywork, while Aprilia and (especially) Ducati have opted for more extreme reshapes.

WILL THE ROOKIES SHINE?

Tito Rabat claimed rookie of the year honours in 2016. It would have been impossible for him to not win it, as he was the only full-season rookie.

This year, MotoGP has a bumper crop, with four riders stepping up from Moto2, led by two-time champion Johann Zarco. Zarco is joined by Jonas Folger in an all-rookie line-up at Tech3 Yamaha, while fellow race winners Alex Rins and Sam Lowes get factory chances with Suzuki and Aprilia.

Folger has led the way in winter, with fourth in the Phillip Island test and then eighth in Qatar. Zarco, as is his way, is building up to it a bit more steadily and left Qatar 10th, but both seem to be enjoying the rider-friendly Yamaha M1.

Last year, Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro rode 2015 Yamahas, designed to be fitted with Bridgestones, which did not help with Michelin's return as tyre supplier. Folger and Zarco have no such troubles this year, as they look to shine.

Rins has also shown flashes of speed, more on him below, while Lowes has generally been at the foot of the rookie order in testing.

Joining fellow Brits Cal Crutchlow, Smith and Scott Redding in the premier class, Lowes has spent a lot of his time learning the way on Aprilia's 2016 bike. He got within 1.837s of the pace set by Vinales in Qatar, and 0.716s of his realistic benchmark over the next two years, team-mate Aleix Espargaro, who has done the bulk of the work on the 2017 Aprilia.

WHAT NOW FOR SUZUZKI?

Forget Ducati ending a winless run that was approaching six years, Suzuki was the big improver in MotoGP in 2016.

After showing signs of promise in its comeback season in 2015, mostly in qualifying, the Japanese manufacturer took a major step forward, aided largely by significant engine gains and adopting a seamless gearbox.

That gave Vinales - in particular, given Aleix Espargaro's struggles - a very sharp GSX-RR to use to take the fight to Yamaha, Honda and Ducati. He qualified on the front row in Qatar 12 months ago, just 0.095 seconds off pole, and should have claimed his maiden podium in the second race in Argentina if not for what was ultimately the only crash of his sophomore campaign.

A breakthrough podium came at Le Mans, where he decided to accept Yamaha's offer to become Jorge Lorenzo's replacement. Vinales added three more podiums to his tally before the year was out, including Suzuki's first MotoGP win since 2007 at Silverstone, and he leaves massive shoes to fill.

Andrea Iannone steps into those shoes, squeezed out of Ducati to accommodate Lorenzo. At his best, Iannone is blisteringly quick. At his worst, he is on a first-name basis with marshals who have to pick his bike(s) out of the gravel.

If Davide Brivio can help tame MotoGP's enigma, it will lessen the loss of Vinales. Iannone has looked good in testing and qualifying on the front row in Qatar this weekend would not be a shock. Evolution has been the message from Suzuki this winter, and the Italian will hope it has made progress with the rear-grip issues that limited its potential in hot weather and the wet last year.

Rookie Rins has grown into MotoGP nicely in recent months. The Spaniard threatened to blow Moto2 apart at times last year, but ended up compiling a mixed, injury-affected campaign.

He crashed during his first day with Suzuki at Valencia last November, which cost him valuable late-2016 mileage, but has shown more-than glimpses of pace in testing so far this year, including setting the sixth-fastest time of the Phillip Island running.