MotoGP doesn't offer much in the way of stop-in-your-tracks 'Hey! what's that?!' anymore. New air scoops? New wings? Oh! be still my rapidly-beating heart. The days of Honda showing up with a 6-cylinder engine or Kawasaki using a set of forks with an eccentric axle adjuster or Yamaha debuting nikasil-lined titanium exhaust are well and truly behind us. Carbon fiber hard parts? Mick Doohan had carbon fiber fork tubes in 1995.

Today MotoGP bikes are for the most part locked down like a two-wheeled supermax prison. Or as one veteran tuner said after looking over a '24 Honda RC213 "It's all wires!"

That being said, lapping at a mid 1:56 at Sepang is hauling the freight.

KTM's MotoGP bike, though, at the recent Sepang test, offered some mild eye-candy for us hardware freaks. Their bike rolled with a set of silver cylinders locked on top of each fork leg.

What are they?

Keep in mind that KTM is the only MotoGP team/manufacturer to use White Power (WP) suspension. Thus, on top of everything else they have to do in-house they have to develop their own suspension, whereas Yamaha/Ducati/Honda/Aprilia pretty much drop off all their suspension problems off at Ohlins and go on with their day.

What are these odd devices atop the forks?
What they probably are: accumulators as seen in 1970s AMA MX racing. They probably have a positive pressure in them to give the fork some support in low velocity movements. For example when the fork is deep in the stroke and it gets a sudden hit, the canister releases that pressure momentarily and opens up the extra volume in the canister.