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UPDATE: Rossi Tests Fitness at Misano, Ahead of Schedule

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Valentino Rossi’s test to see if he is fit enough to compete at Aragon was brought forward a day. The poor weather expected for Tuesday and Wednesday forced Rossi to take to the track at Misano on Monday afternoon, according to reports from well-informed local paper Rimini Today.

The Italian paper reports that Rossi did four laps of Misano, before being forced to pull in due to the rain. Conditions were far from ideal, however, the track still having some damp patches from the poor weather the area has suffered.

Yamaha Racing states that Rossi rode a Yamaha YZF-R1M at the track, and Rimini Today suggests that The Doctor rode four laps on the machine.

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MotoGP

Valentino Rossi Testing at Misano – Back for Aragon?

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Michael van der Mark may be flying to Aragon to replace Valentino Rossi at the fourth Spanish round, but it is still not 100% certain that the Dutch Yamaha WorldSBK rider will get to make his MotoGP debut aboard Rossi’s Movistar Yamaha M1.

According to reports in various Italian media, Valentino Rossi is to test his fitness on a Yamaha R6 at Misano this week.

Just 18 days after breaking the tibia and fibula of his right leg, and having surgery to insert titanium pins into the bones to fix them, Rossi will attempt to ride an R6 to gauge whether it will be worth his while flying to Spain for the Aragon round of MotoGP. 

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The Curious Case of Female Spectators in MotoGP

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Last week during International Women's Day, my colleague Tammy Gorali - the first female commentator ever in the MotoGP paddock, I should point out - tweeted some timely statistics about female attendance at MotoGP races.

In short, here tweets showed that over the past four years, the number of female spectators has declined an astonishing 19%. That's no small drop, and the timeliness of that revelation should be noted.

On its face, this tweet showed that MotoGP was seemingly hemorrhaging female fans. But, the reality isn't as clearcut, and this is also where things get weird.

Intrigued by Gorali's info, I dug into the numbers a bit further to see what was behind this startling statistic. What I found was that if you pulled the scope back further by just one more year, then over the past five years female attendance at MotoGP races has actually increased by 33%.

If your brain is hurting right now, that's ok, but it is difficult to understand how the number of women attending MotoGP races declined by 19% over the past four years, but increased somehow also increased 33% over the last five?

Keep on reading, and I will try and shed some light on this curious case of female MotoGP attendance.

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Paddock Pass Podcast #39 – Aragon

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Some illness amongst our crew is the reason this show is getting to you a bit late, but never fear, Episode 39 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is here.

Re-capping the Aragon GP,  David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Steve English talk about the racing events in Spain, and place a friendly wager about how the rest of the season is going to shape up in the MotoGP paddock.

Turning to more serious discussion though, the guys also examine the FIM’s concussion protocol, as it was center stage in Aragon after Danilo Petrucci’s heavy crash, and perhaps hasty return to riding a motorcycle.

The attention then turns to the World Superbike paddock, with a talk about the recent round at Magny-Cours, and how the production-class racers are faring so far this season, and what is in store for next year. We also have a short interview with rider Chaz Davies about the progress of the Ducati squad.

We think this show is well worth the wait, so we hope you like it.

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

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Sunday MotoGP Summary at Aragon: How Championships Are Won & Lost

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Momentum. That’s what the last race before the Australasian triple header is all about. Momentum heading towards the end of the championship. Coming out on top and carrying it forward to Motegi, Phillip Island, and Sepang is vital.

The deal may get done on one of the flyaways, but Aragon is the place where the riders put their chips on the table.

All three races on Sunday had a huge impact on the MotoGP championship. In the first race of the day, a title was settled. In the second race of the day, the championship was blown even further open.

The final race of the day saw another brick hammered into the wall of Marc Márquez’s third MotoGP title, and further cemented his legacy. It was a good day’s racing.

There are a lot of ways to win titles, but the way the 2016 Moto3 championship was settled was about as fitting as it could be. At the end of a classic Moto3 race, where a strong group battled for control until the final four laps, four men broke away from the pack.

That group consisted of Brad Binder, the two men who could still mathematically challenge Binder for the 2016 title, Enea Bastianini and Jorge Navarro, and rookie revelation Fabio Di Giannantonio.

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Saturday MotoGP Summary at Aragon: Marquez’s Revenge

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Motorcycle racing is the cruelest form of addiction. What racers need to feed their habit is to win, but winning is hard, one of the hardest things of all. To do so, you have to go beyond yourself, push beyond your limits, exceed what you thought was possible.

That creates a paradox: if you want to win a championship, sometimes you have to accept you can’t win a race. Too much of that servility, though, and ambition will chafe at the bit. The temptation to have a go is hard to resist, with the risk of ending in gravelly ignominy.

That has been the fate of Marc Márquez so far this season. Wins have been few this season, just three in thirteen races. Even podiums have eluded him, Márquez ending off the box in three of the last four races. There is only so much a young man bursting with ambition can take.

That ambition looks set to burst forth at Aragon. If Misano was a track which Marc Márquez had marked down as a place he could risk losing a lot of points, he had comforted himself with the thought that Aragon followed.

Aragon is a Honda track, a Márquez track even. It is a track where he has won. But also a track where he has crashed trying to win.

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