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Cal Crutchlow

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The old guard of MotoGP are making something of a comeback after the summer break. Two familiar names and now test riders are to make a brief return to racing, in Austria and beyond.

Only one of those riders – Dani Pedrosa – has been officially confirmed as a wildcard at the first race at the Red Bull Ring – but Cal Crutchlow is widely expected to replace Franco Morbidelli for the next three rounds.

Episode 222 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the MotoGP action from the Catalan GP at Barcelona.

On the mics, we have Steve English, David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, as they check in during the MotoGP summer break to look back on the grand prix season thus far, and where the series is heading for the second-half of 2021.

Andrea Dovizioso’s future is becoming increasingly clear, and his choices are going to have a knock on effect for the test rider market.

According to a report from Motorsport.com‘s Oriol Puigdemont, Dovizioso has decided to take a sabbatical and spend a year racing motocross, in the hope of making a return to MotoGP in 2022.

It was a busy day at the Dexeus clinic in Barcelona, as both Marc Marquez and Cal Crutchlow went under the knife to fix injuries picked up at the opening round of the season at Jerez.

Marquez broke his right humerus in a fast crash at Turn 3 during the race, while Crutchlow fractured his left scaphoid in a crash during warm up. Surgery was successful for both riders, with no complications reported.

It was a busy day for MotoGP rider announcements, this Monday. Three riders were confirmed in teams, with a fourth confirmed as leaving. The announcements were hardly a shock, but there was room for the odd raised eyebrow or two.

At Honda, there was the expected reshuffling to make room for Pol Espargaro in the Repsol Honda squad, the Spaniard offered a two-year deal alongside Marc Marquez. This bumped Alex Márquez down to the LCR Honda team, with a two-year contract as compensation.

Alex Márquez may have lost his ride in the factory team before a wheel has turned in the 2020 MotoGP season, but at least he is now assured of three seasons in the premier class to prove himself.

If there was a surprise in the announcements, it was that Cal Crutchlow was being released to make room for Alex Márquez.

The Englishman has been a valuable asset in the development of the Honda RC213V, his feedback highly rated, and he is a firm favorite in the LCR squad, bringing a lot of media exposure to the satellite team.

As the MotoGP Championship gears up for its first race of the 2020 season this coming weekend, we get a bevy of announcements from Jerez, Spain.

The first item is that Franco Morbidelli will be continuing with the Petronas Yamaha squad, signing a two-year contract with the satellite Yamaha team. This surprised no one.

More surprising was the silence about the future of Valentino Rossi, as the Italian is expected to announce his move to the Petronas Yamaha garage this week. However, The Doctor may have held his tongue because of the news that was coming from the Honda contingency.

Confirming the paddock rumors, HRC announced that it had signed Pol Espargaro to the Repsol Honda squad on a two-year deal, thus displacing Alex Marquez from the factory-backed team before the Spaniard had turned a single racing wheel with the Japanese manufacturer.

Episode 152 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees Neil Morrison and Steve English catching us up once again on the rider market movements in the MotoGP paddock, as well as some news from the WorldSBK Championship.

As such, the show looks at some turns in the grand prix silly season, starting with the possibility that Andrea Dovizioso might sit out the 2021 season.

There is also talk that Cal Crutchlow could end up in the Aprilia squad, especially if Andrea Iannone’s doping appeal doesn’t go his way. Lastly, there is the rumor that Jorge Lorenzo could return to racing, with the Ducati Corse team.

Who is the greatest MotoGP rider of the past decade? Followers of the sport will all have their own answers to this question, based on their own criteria. One way of trying to answer the question objectively is by using numbers to quantify performance.

Sure, the numbers may overlook certain factors. But going over the numbers from 180 races held over the space of 10 years helps eliminate outliers, and separate the signal from the noise.

To qualify for consideration, you have to win races. The 180 races held between 2010 and 2019 have seen 13 different winners: Cal Crutchlow, Andrea Dovizioso, Andrea Iannone, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Márquez, Jack Miller, Dani Pedrosa, Danilo Petrucci, Alex Rins, Valentino Rossi, Ben Spies, Casey Stoner, and Maverick Viñales.

Of that group, Iannone, Miller, Petrucci, and Spies have all won only a single race, ruling them out of contention. Alex Rins has won two races, but the Suzuki rider has only been active for three seasons, meaning he made little impact over the full decade.

That left eight riders who have won multiple races this decade: Crutchlow, Dovizioso, Lorenzo, Márquez, Pedrosa, Rossi, Stoner, and Viñales.

Of those eight, Andrea Dovizioso is the only rider to have started in all 180 races (he actually started 181 races, but the 2011 race in Sepang was red-flagged after Marco Simoncelli’s tragic death, and would have started in Silverstone last year, had the race not been canceled due to the weather).

Two other riders have started every MotoGP race held while they were in the class: Marc Márquez has competed in all 127 races held since 2013, and Maverick Viñales has started all 91 races held since 2015.