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As the paddock packed up after the Jerez test on Monday, held after the Spanish GP at the circuit, the bombshell news emerged that Suzuki is to withdraw from MotoGP at the end of the current season.

Motorsport.com‘s Oriol Puigdemont was the first to break the news, which I have since had confirmed by multiple sources in the MotoGP paddock.

The team was told on Monday morning, before the test, with an official announcement expected on Tuesday.

It is a slightly different run up to the start of winter testing for the 2022 season.

For the past few decades, testing for the following season began a couple of days after the end of the current season, riders taking to the track on the Tuesday at Valencia after the final race.

Dorna, the FIM, and IRTA had already decided to make a change before COVID-19 struck in 2020, but the global pandemic meant there was no testing at all at the end of last year.

So this year is the start of the new normal. The season ends at Valencia, everyone gets a few days off, and then the paddock heads south to Jerez for two days of testing.

Four months after getting off the Ducati, with no contracts signed for 2021, Andrea Dovizioso is riding again.

The Italian has spent the past three days testing the Aprilia RS-GP at a private test at Jerez, sharing the track with Yamaha, KTM, and Honda, in between the sessions for the MotoE class.

On Wednesday afternoon, the final day of Dovizioso’s test with Aprilia, the Italian spoke to the media about the test, his motivation for testing the RS-GP, his plans for the immediate future, and what he thought of the test so far.

He was very cagey in his responses, not wanting to give away too much, but reading between the lines he still had plenty to say.

He did not want to enter into detail about how the bike felt, insisting that the first thing he had to do was to find the right riding position before he could be comfortable trying to push the bike to its limit.

The 2020 WorldSBK Championship has the promises to be one of the best in recent history, as there are more than a few contenders for the throne lining up on the grid this season.

Of course, there is five-time champion Jonathan Rea, who has been a juggernaut onboard the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10RR.

Rea will have the target on his back for 2020, that much is for certain, and the Kawasaki Racing Team has shown that they are well-honed operation, and certainly capable of adding metal to Rea’s trophy room.

Testing resumes today at Jerez for the WorldSBK class. At least, it will if the track dries out enough to make conditions usable. Heavy overnight rain has soaked the track, and more rain is expected over the next two days.

The WorldSBK field will be hoping for dry track time for a lot of reasons, not least because it will be the first time that the Honda CBR1000RR-R will be seen at a public test.

The fallout of qualifying in Sepang is having serious consequences for Marc Marquez. The Repsol Honda rider had a huge highside during Q2, when he was trying to follow Fabio Quartararo.

It was plain to see that Marquez banged up his knees and ankles in the crash, but it now appears he also dislocated his right shoulder in the fall. 

The injury was serious enough to warrant a full medical examination, and the possibility of surgery to fix the shoulder. At the Jerez test, Marc Marquez told Israeli journalist and TV commentator Tammy Gorali that he would be having his right shoulder examined in Barcelona on Wednesday. 

Episode 101 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison and David Emmett on the microphones, as we discuss the happenings at the Spanish GP at Jerez.

As usual, the guys cover the on track action at the race, as well as the goings on behind the scenes in the paddock.

Special attention is given to Marc Marquez’s victory at Jerez, as well as the meltdown of Fabio Quartararo, who became the youngest MotoGP pole-sitter ever, and looked to have a promising race ahead of him.

The day after the Spanish round of MotoGP, the riders were back on track, busting out lap after lap with a lot of work to be done. After 25 laps on Sunday in the punishing heat, almost the entire grid did another three race distances or more on the Monday.

Everyone rode, with the exception of Andrea Iannone, who was still suffering with an extremely painful ankle after a crash on Saturday, and Stefan Bradl, who had handed his test bike over to Marc Márquez to turn some laps on.

Conditions were ideal, the track all rubbered in after Sunday’s race and the track temperature in the mid-40s, perfect for Jerez. That was both a good thing and a bad thing: riders who wanting to work on something specific, such as corner entry or mid-corner speed, could take full advantage of the grip to understand the finer details of what they were working.