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As expected, Jorge Lorenzo’s announcement for the upcoming seasons was made today at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, ahead of the Indianapolis GP. The agreement sees the two-time MotoGP World Champion remaining with the Movistar Yamaha Factory team for the 2015 and 2016 season.

In the past months, the Spaniard had been jockeying back and forth with Yamaha Racing regarding his contract, with Lorenzo said to be keen on only a one-year deal.

However with a string of poor results so far this season, Lorenzo is fifth in the Championship, and certainly not in the bargaining position he had hoped for going into the summer break. Thus, the Mallorcan finds himself with a two-year deal.

With MotoGP about to get back on track after the short summer break, bike fans will start to gather at Indianapolis. Although the action revolves around the three Grand Prix classes on track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, there is plenty more to be doing in and around the track and downtown Indianapolis.

The highlights on Friday are the Riders for Health auction, where memorabilia and work by some of the top MotoGP photographers go on sale, to support MotoGP’s adopted charity, and the Indy Mile, at the State Fairground.

Saturday’s highlights include the Cycle World Q&A session, where you get to put your questions to the US magazine’s staff writers, including motorcycle genius Kevin Cameron, and a farewell Q&A session with Colin Edwards at his final home Grand Prix. The weekend naturally culminates with the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix on Sunday.

With the announcement that Cal Crutchlow is to move to the LCR Honda team for 2015, making space for Andrea Iannone to move up to the Factory Ducati team, the beginnings of a MotoGP grid are starting to emerge for 2015.

Both Repsol Honda seats are confirmed, as are both Factory Ducati riders and Valentino Rossi at Movistar Yamaha, with Jorge Lorenzo expected to announce a deal with Yamaha very soon. In the satellite teams, only Pol Espargaro is confirmed at Monster Tech 3 Yamaha, as is Crutchlow at CWM-LCR Honda.

With those names in place, we can start to draw up a list of who will be where, and who could be where for 2015. We have broken that list into three separate tables, based on the certainty of their deals: riders with confirmed contracts; riders and teams with deals that are expected to be confirmed very soon; and deals which are likely to happen, but are still not certain.

After his seat in the IODA Racing team fell through due to a lack of funds, Leon Camier is to race in MotoGP in 2014 after all. The Englishman is to replace Nicky Hayden on the Drive M7 Aspar Honda RCV1000R for both the Indianapolis and Brno rounds of MotoGP.

Hayden had surgery last week to remove a row of bones in his right hand, including the scaphoid he injured in a crash in 2011. On Tuesday, Hayden was examined for the first time after surgery, and although his recovery is going well, he will require an extended period of rehabilitation before he is ready to return to race.

As a result, Hayden will be forced to skip both the Indianapolis and Brno rounds of MotoGP, in the hope of returning to action at Silverstone at the end of August.

For 2014, Indianapolis Motor Speedway has reconfigured its infield track for its hosting of the Indianapolis GP for the MotoGP Championship — this much you should already know. I won’t rehash details, but the three-bullet primer to the changes afoot is that the track is slightly longer, has improved passing zones in three reworked areas (highlighted in yellow), and will be made of one consistent asphalt layer.

Talking to MotoGP.com this weekend at the Indianapolis GP, Kenny Roberts Sr. admitted to the website that he is working on putting together a new GP program for the 2014 or 2015 season — though was quick to caution against the project’s full-fruition.

“We’re working on it. And we’re working on something quite big – it’s going to happen or it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to be almost there. When we come back we’ll come back in a big way! And if you don’t see me, you’ll know we didn’t get it done,” said King Kenny.

Somebody appears to have neglected to inform Marc Marquez of the laws of physics. Though the track is less slippery than it was last year, and so a little faster, where Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo upped their pace by three tenths of a second, dipping under last year’s pole record, Marc Marquez positively obliterated it.

The Spanish rookie put in one of the best laps every seen on a MotoGP bike, and stripped nearly nine tenths of a second off the pole record, held by his teammate Dani Pedrosa. He sits half a second ahead of reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo, and a fraction more ahead of Pedrosa.

That gap bears repeating. Half a second in a single lap is a world apart in MotoGP: If they both started at the same time, Marc Marquez would have crossed the line 22 meters ahead of Jorge Lorenzo after that first lap, or roughly 11 bike lengths.

Despite the posturing ahead of this year’s Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix, which seemed to suggest that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would exercise an option to forgo hosting the 2014 MotoGP Championship, Dorna and IMS have come to an accord on keeping the Indianapolis GP for next season, with a date in mid-August still to be announced.

Keeping three American races on the calendar for at least the immediate future, IMS also announced that it was working with MotoGP on a “long-term future” to keep the premier class coming back to Indianapolis, which bodes well for the US keeping its dominant role in hosting the MotoGP Championship.