The gap during testing seems to be closing, but that didn’ t stop a certain Marc Marquez throwing that data to the wolves on race day last outing, so we can’ t read too much into it just yet. What is interesting, is the upsurge in the number of riders sporting tuned mass dampers( sometimes referred to as‘ salad boxes’) on various parts of their bikes. Not a new concept, a tuned mass damper works in a similar fashion to any other damper, as in reducing the effect of movement or vibration, using mass, springs and fluid valving, to reduce the effect( yup, mini suspension). This helps with such things as chatter, so can be used in the front section or rear, depending on where the rider is experiencing problems. Naturally, they are now getting super-sophisticated and last week has seen different sizes for different frequencies, but they seem to be helping the likes of KTM. KTM have all the straight-line speed in the world but the riders are struggling turning in under brakes, or at least they were … Yamaha are also using them to good effect and with all makes playing with new aero for both cooling and downforce, the latest round of testing has seen a significant ramping-up of the sheer number of new parts being tested. Carbon-fibre versus alloy swingarms were tested back-to-back, as were rear aero versus zero-aero, so maybe the bookies could start bets on what the bikes will look like even before the lights go out. With next year being the last before reduced aero as well as engine size, it appears the teams are combing through pretty much every idea from the past few years and trying to extract whatever they can from items that will not fall foul of the regulation changes when they hit.