MotoGP preseason testing at Pertamina Mandalika International Circuit may have only just concluded but the work is far from over.

Last week’s three days on track in Indonesia allowed the MotoGP paddock to analyse and voice their opinions of the championship’s newest venue, and did they!

While the feedback regarding track safety in terms of run off areas and overall layout proved positive, despite building work still being undertaken for the inaugural race event, concerns were raised over track conditions. Namely a degrading surface proving more noticeable by Sunday’s conclusion and the treacherous conditions faced on Friday’s opener, requiring a red flag situation and major clean up operation.

2021 MotoGP Champion Fabio Quartararo was amongst the critics on Sunday evening, explaining “they need to resurface turn one because it's a total disaster! From turn one to turn seven there is a lot of, lets say the tarmac is going away. In three days you can see the amount of ground that is coming lower and lower.”

Images on social media highlighted the damage the degradation was causing as riders flicked up rocks from the surface. “I’ve been behind Franco [Morbidelli] and I received an amount of small gravel on the neck and on the visor that was a lot, and I was only behind Franco!” Quartararo continued. “So imagine if you're behind three, four, five riders during many laps.”

"The worst part is turn one and the last corner,” LCR Honda’s Alex Marquez agreed. “It's like different tarmac. I was behind somebody, and it's like unbelievable. It felt like it was a gun or something,” he explained indicating the marks left on his throat.

Friday’s decision by race direction to use the riders to clean up track conditions after tropical storms left the green circuit caked in mud - even offering an extra set of tyres to assist the process without impeding individual test programmes - proved controversial.

“It was mandatory to ride 20 laps before 3 o’clock," Jorge Martin confirmed of the officials decision. "It wasn’t the most logical way but it was the fastest. Finally, it wasn’t bad. It was really dangerous at the beginning.”

“The track was not safe enough to ride,” Aleix Espargaro stated after the initial action. “Not at all. We are quite used to arrive at a circuit that has a lot of dust. I remember Qatar on Thursdays, it’s okay, but today wasn’t a matter of a bit of dust. Today the track was unrideable. It was completely unsafe.

“The decision they took, the teams with Dorna, to force us to ride all together just to clean the track, I didn’t like it at all. I was very angry. Obviously, it works. If you put 24 bikes on the track lap-by-lap it cleans it but it’s not the solution. I’m not here to clean any track,” he continued, openly angry of the day’s events.

"Every rider didn't really want to ride because I went out before the meeting and I can't explain how bad it was,” WithU Yamaha’s Andrea Dovizoso explained. “They had already tried to clean before my outing, at turns one and two, and I didn't see any difference between those corners and the others.”

"We didn't have any other chance to ride and so we cleaned the track like this. Everybody was scared. It was clear how dirty the track was. The conditions were unrideable at the beginning.”

"It's filthy and so sketchy off line and easy to wash the front or the rear, especially at the beginning,” Brad Binder agreed on Friday evening. "It was really hard to learn the track because you were not really on the perfect line. You couldn’t go in deep and couldn’t always trust it braking into turns.”

With riders so vocal on conditions and officials in place to witness, the FIM, which oversees track homologation, reports it has been in communication with the Indonesia Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) regarding necessary improvements. The defined measures are to be implemented a minimum of seven days before the inaugural Pertamina Grand Prix of Indonesia, scheduled for March 20th.

Circuit owner ITDC has agreed with the FIM’s assessment and requests with resurfacing set to cover the section before turn 17 until after turn five. The venue will also prepare for the Grand Prix by employing world leading technology to ensure the entirety of the surface meets MotoGP standards.