The mystery of the final MotoGP prototype seat has been solved: after months of negotiations, Alvaro Bautista has finally retained the Honda RC213V ride with the San Carlo Gresini Honda team. The Spaniard will remain with the Italian team for another season.

The contract extension has come at a cost, however: Bautista has had to take a drastic cut in his salary to stay with the team. According to the Spanish website Motocuatro.com, Bautista’s wage has been slashed to five figures, with the amount of 90,000 euros being passed down the paddock grapevine.

The Twin Ring Motegi circuit is to be home to the Japanese round of MotoGP until at least 2018. Dorna today announced that a contract had been signed with the circuit for it to host the Japanese Grand Prix from 2014 to 2018. Motegi has been on the calendar since 1999, first running the Pacific Grand Prix before taking over the Japanese Grand Prix when Suzuka was axed from the calendar following Daijiro Kato’s death.

There had been some doubt about the future of the circuit in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Motegi is just over 120km away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant which was badly damaged by the tsunami, and caused a massive leak of radiation.

The press conference room at the Motegi circuit was a busy place on Thursday. The assembled press filed in twice during the afternoon, once to hear the head of Dorna talk about the long-term future of both motorcycle racing world championship series, and then again to hear five world champions talk about this weekend’s racing. There was much to digest.

What Carmelo Ezpeleta had to say about Dorna’s takeover of the World Superbike series has been covered elsewhere, though the irony of Ezpeleta hosting a press conference to talk about what was essentially an end run around HRC’s threats of a withdrawal at a facility owned and operated by Honda was not lost on everyone. The significance of the occasion was clear to all, and the groundwork has been laid for the future of both WSBK and MotoGP, though many fear the outcome.

An hour later, a much lighter mood prevailed when the riders filed in for the usual pre-event press conference. The long term was forgotten for a while, as everyone concentrated on two items: the return of Casey Stoner, and the impact of the Australian’s return on the championship. Will Stoner help Dani Pedrosa in his battle with Jorge Lorenzo for the 2012 MotoGP title? And is he fit enough and fast enough to be able to help if he wanted to?

The repercussions of Bridgepoint’s decision to hand control of the World Superbike series to Dorna are just starting to become clear, as each of the protagonists get to explain their side of the story. After Paolo Flammini spoke to the media at the final World Superbike round of the year at Magny-Cours, at Motegi, it was the turn of Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta to face the press.

He did so an hour before the traditional pre-event press conference, giving a statement and answering questions from assembled journalists on the implications of the move (a full transcript of the press conference is available on the official MotoGP.com website). Ezpeleta did his best to first of all quell any fears among the legions of World Superbike fans that Dorna intended implementing any major changes for the coming season, ensuring the assembled media that all would go ahead for 2013 as planned.

“For next year things will continue as they are, and both MotoGP and WSBK will continue the same way, with exactly the same system of organization and with the same technical rules,” Ezpeleta told the press. “For 2013 the regulations will be the ones that have been approved between the FIM and Infront Motor Sports,” he said in response to questions, “In 2013 it will be exactly as proposed by the different parties involved, there will not be any changes for 2013.”

Beyond 2013 is a different matter, however. Ezpeleta made it clear that his goal was to harmonize the regulations between the MotoGP and World Superbike series, each maintaining their separate identities, but cutting costs and increasing the spectacle in both. “From now, together with the FIM, the manufacturers, the circuits and with the teams, we will try to accommodate these difficult economic times to set up two championships that are able to continue and to grow together,” Ezpeleta said. “This is the main aim of both championships – reducing costs and increasing the show.”

This may very well turn out to be the biggest week in MotoGP since the decision to replace the two stroke 500s with large capacity four stroke machines. This week, Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta is set to have meetings with each of the MSMA members at Motegi, to hammer out once and for all the technical basis for the 2014 season.

If they succeed, the ground will be laid for a set of technical regulations which can remain stable for the long term, the goal being at least five years. If they fail, then one or more manufacturers could leave the series, reducing the number of factory bikes on the grid and potentially removing two of MotoGP’s top riders from the grid. There is much at stake.

So much, in fact, that neither side looks prepared to back down. On the one side is Dorna, who see the costs of the championship spiraling out of control thanks to the increasing sophistication of the electronics, and the racing growing ever more clinical as fewer and fewer riders are capable of mastering the machines these electronics control.

On the other side are the factories, for whom MotoGP, with its fuel-limited format, provides an ideal laboratory for developing electronic control systems which filter through into their consumer products and serves as a training ground for their best engineers.

Dorna demands a spec ECU to control costs; the factories, amalgamated in the MSMA, demand the ability to develop software strategies through the use of unrestricted electronics. The two perspectives are irreconcilable, at the most fundamental level.

Casey Stoner is to rejoin the MotoGP paddock at Motegi. In a posting on his Repsol blog, Stoner confirmed that he will fly to Japan with the intention of trying to race. “I’ve been resting, having some physio and following doctor’s orders to recover. The good news is that I feel I can race in Motegi and will be rejoining my team next week and I can’t wait to get back on track,” the reigning World Champion wrote in his Repsol blog.

Never underestimate the power of denial. When we first published photos of the Japanese-spec Ducati 1199 Panigale, the immediate reaction from readers was that the machine had to be a hoax. Oh no dear Ducatisti, Japan’s v-twin abomination of Italy’s latest superbike is very real.

With Japanese journalists now getting a chance to swing a leg over the machine, we get our first glimpse of the bike in motion. Noticeably quieter than our American-spec version, we still don’t understand the need for such a butchering of Ducati’s design. But then again, we’re bloggers, not engineers.

Featuring a single right-hand-side-mounted exhaust that taps into the under-slung units we are more familiar with, the Japanese-spec Ducati 1199 Panigale also features an enlarged plastic clutch cover, and a re-worked engine map (the S model also features the base model’s wheels). Check the video out after the jump. If any of our Japanese speakers hear something interesting in the video, post it up in the comments.

We have to feel sorry for our Japanese readers today, as a crime against motorcycling has occurred in the Japanese motorcycle market. The bike of 2012, and arguably one of the more beautiful designs to come out of Bologna (don’t worry 916 fans, we still like the Tamburini classic more), it turns out that the Ducati 1199 Panigale was a touch too loud for the Japanese market, and modifications had to be made before it is released to the island nation next month. Some extra baffle, maybe some tuning to the ECU, and no big deal right? Well…no, not quite.

Honda’s Q2 report is out (the report is technically Honda’s Q1 fiscal report), and Big Red is showing some positive gains in 2012 thus far. With unit sales up 12% in Q2 2012 over Q2 2011, Honda is also posting a tidy revenue increase of 42% (¥2,435.9 billion, or $31 billion), while net income is also up 315% to ¥131.7 billion ($405 million). Honda doesn’t breakout its consolidated financial report into regional figures, though it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to note that these gains are likely being made primarily in Southeast Asia, and other developing markets.

Closer to home though, things are still on the up-and-up. Honda America reports 59,000 units sold in Q2 2012, up 28% from the 46,000 units it sold during the same time period last year. It should be noted of course that when reading reports from this past quarter that Q2 2011 was weighed-down heavily by the effects of the Tōhoku earthquake and following tsunami.

In Japan, Honda has a nice spec-series brewing that features the new Honda CBR250R sport bike. Naturally for the cup race there needs to be a racing version of the CBR250R, and HRC has happily obliged. Nothing too fancy, after all this is supposed to be an entry-level series, but the HRC CBR250R racer features race bodywork sans lights and signals, as well as a fully-adjustable ECU that has come pre-loaded with various HRC fuel and ignition maps.