Fabio Quartararo has been hand a three-second penalty after the conclusion of the Catalunya Grand Prix at Barcelona, for riding with his leathers open.
The Frenchman’s leathers came open in the first half of Lap 21, after which he discarded his chest protector, and he went on to finish the remaining laps with the leathers completely open, the wind having forced the zip open completely.
Episode 202 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the on-track action from the Spanish GP, as well as the fallout after the checkered flag waved.
On the mics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, David Emmett, and Adam Wheeler, as the trio discusses the MotoGP action from Jerez.
Episode 199 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the on-track action from the Portuguese GP, as well as the fallout after the checkered flag waved.
On the mics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, as the trio discusses the MotoGP action from Portimão.
Can the 2021 MotoGP season match the weirdness and wildness of 2020? The circumstances are different, but the path that led to Qatar 2021 has laid the groundwork for another fascinating year.
2021 sees two trends colliding to create (we hope) a perfect storm. There is the long-term strategy set out after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 by Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta, with support and backing from the many bright minds in Dorna and IRTA.
Yamaha has been punished for an infringement of the MotoGP technical rules at the opening race of the 2020 MotoGP season at Jerez, and at the same time, their riders have dodged a bullet.
After the infringement was finally uncovered, the FIM Stewards decided to deduct points from Yamaha in the manufacturers championship, and the Monster Energy Yamaha and Petronas Yamaha SRT teams have had points taken away in the teams championship.
But crucially for the 2020 MotoGP riders championship, no penalty was given to Fabio Quartararo, Maverick Viñales, or Franco Morbidelli. That means that the standings in what everyone regards as the most important championship, the riders championship, are unchanged.
He came. He tried. But in the end, it proved impossible. Even for a man whose ambition and competitive drive burns as fiercely as Marc Márquez’.
After riding with fewer problems than he feared on Saturday morning, the fracture in his right arm started to swell in the afternoon, and made riding impossible.
Marc Márquez was forced to face the limits of human endurance and willpower, and accept that racing on Sunday would not be.
Saturday afternoon was the first time that the media had had a chance to actually speak to Márquez since his crash last Sunday.
He hadn’t spoken to the media after the race – for the obvious reason that he was injured and needed medical attention – nor had he spoken to us on his return to the track.
His mind was focused laser-like on Saturday morning, when he would get a chance to ride – skipping Friday was part of the deal he made with HRC before they would even allow him to get on a bike – and he wanted no distractions.
But on Saturday afternoon, after his body had forced him to throw in the towel, Márquez finally told us exactly what happened a week ago, when he crashed out of the race, and kicked off the roller coaster ride which ended with him pulling into his garage after a single lap during Q1.
Fabio Quartararo and Sergio Garcia have both been handed penalties for using unauthorized machines to practice on track. The pair have been punished by being forced to miss the first 20 minutes of FP1 when action resumes on Friday.
The two were punished for separate incidents, Garcia for riding at Aragon in June, Quartararo for riding at Paul Ricard in the same month.
One of the many good things about being a MotoGP rider is that you get offered a lot of free stuff.
Take a careful look at the social media feed of any rider and you will see stickers and logos on display, discretely or blatantly, on all sorts of items: caps, sunglasses, t-shirts, jeans, jackets, bicycles, underwear, motorcycles, leathers, MX gear, helmets.
You name it, and some brand or other will have given it to a rider to show off on their social media.
There can be a downside to this, however. Just ask Andrea Iannone – the Italian’s protestations of innocence after testing positive for drostanolone, an anabolic steroid used to achieve a chiseled physique were undermined by the fact that he posted so many pictures on Instagram wearing nothing more than the underwear from the company paying him to do so, with the kind of muscle definition that makes you wonder.
The price of getting free stuff is having to show it off to the world via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Precisely this deal appears to have caught out Fabio Quartararo.
Though he was not named in the FIM press release announcing that two riders would face a hearing at Jerez for breaching the practice rules, which governs which bikes riders can use when riding at a track outside of officially sanctioned Grand Prix tests, it quickly emerged that Quartararo was one of the riders involved, the other being Sergio Garcia.
Episode 135 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and as you might expect from the title of the show, this one covers just one single rider: Fabio Quartararo.
In order to deep-dive on the Frenchman, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and David Emmett on the microphones.
But, we also have a number of interviews with paddock insiders and those around Quartararo, to help talk about his rise in the grand prix paddock.
On Sunday, at 6pm, the desert night will erupt in a cacophony of sound, as Grand Prix motorcycle racing gets underway for the start of the 2020 season.
But it won’t be the vicious bellow of MotoGP machines that will shatter the desert silence; instead, the more modest howl (118 dB compared to 130 dB of the MotoGP bikes) of the Triumph triple-engined Moto2 machines will scream away from the lights and around the floodlit track.
It wasn’t meant to be that way, of course. The Moto2 machines were supposed to race an hour and forty minutes earlier, their original start time planned for 4:20pm local time.
Now, it will be the Moto3 riders starting their race at that time, and not the 3pm slot originally scheduled. The MotoGP machines will be sitting in packing crates, waiting to be shipped to the next race.
As I write this, it is not entirely clear where that will be. It might be Austin, Texas, unless the US authorities impose further restrictions.
It might be Termas De Rio Honda, in Argentina, unless the Argentinian government changes its mind about allowing entry from Italy, or Japan, or anywhere else. It might even be Jerez, if international air travel is subject to sudden and extreme restrictions.
Episode 127 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one covers this weeks’ whirlwind round of news from the Yamaha MotoGP team and its rider lineup for the 2020 season and beyond.
For these topics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and David Emmett on the mics, as the trio discusses the announcements that Yamaha has made, and what the ramifications are for the grand prix paddock.