Purists of the bearded variety continue to whine on about the ever-increasing role electronics, laptops and data have to play in the pursuit of tin trophies in racing. They aren’t going to like it in 2018 as this year, more than any other, data will be the king.

Development of the premier-class racebikes is now so close that in testing, the top ten and sometimes 15 were covered by just one second. It is closer than it has ever been and a far cry from the ‘golden era’ of two-strokes when Mighty Mick was winning by a week or more.

Races this season could be won and lost by fractions. Dorna may need to add a decimal place to its timing setup to differentiate qualifying times. But the consensus among mechanics and crew chiefs is the championship will be won and lost by those who understand their data best and adapt fastest.

One such crew chief, who doesn’t want to be named for fear of a kicking in the bar at some point, has his money on Ducati purely because of the amount of data their eight bikes will generate and the number of people wearing Bologna shirts who are able to interpret it.

The smartest guys aren’t necessarily in the factory setups and with eight bikes lapping a circuit, plus an open data policy between teams, Ducati will be in the best position to push their two superstars to the front of the tin-cup queue as they will be able to compare and contrast all eight bikes to find optimum electronic parameters in each and every sector of every lap.

A required hundredth of a second may be found by all of those people instead of the two or three in the other factories.

Honda have two works bikes and two satellite bikes with factory riders on, although one is a rookie. Which is all well and good if the data policy is open but if the Repsol and LCR data guys aren’t seeing each others figures - and sharing isn’t a Honda trait - then they may as well be riding for different manufacturers.

The same goes for Yamaha, who have only three useful riders this year. You would hope the two Movistar riders are sharing data with each other and with Tech3. All is not well in the works M1 camp and it may not be long before some perceived frostiness between the stars becomes open hostility - it has happened before, let’s not forget, with the wall-to-wall wall.

Yamaha have seemingly also had the most trouble adapting to the Marelli ECU and are the least able to make changes when their bike isn’t doing what their riders want it to from one day to the next.

Ducati would seem to be in the best position but the smart money goes on Marquez taking a Doohan-equalling fifth world title in 2018. However,  as has been proved in the past, sometimes the smart money knows fuck all.