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The 2019 Moto2 Championship is rapidly approaching, and next year’s season sees the introduction of a new spec-engine platform. Using a 765cc three-cylinder engine from Triumph, Moto2 competitors have begun testing their new chassis designs for the British triple.

Out in Aragon, we get our first glimpse of the front-running race bike providers: Kalex, KTM, and NTS, as well as Triumph’s own test mule, which uses a Daytona 675 chassis.

Shaking down their machines ahead of the start of next season, bike manufacturers focused on learning the new race engine and its accompanying spec-ECU.

The Kalex was ridden by Moto2 racer Alex Marquez and test rider Jesko Raffin; on the KTM was Julian Simon (2009 125cc World Champion and Moto2 runner-up) and test rider Ricky Cardús; and on the NTS was Moto2/MotoGP veteran Alex de Angelis.

The 2018 season will be the last year that Honda powers the Moto2 World Championship, with the intermediate grand prix series set to use Triumph’s 765cc three-cylinder engine from 2019 onward.

This should be cause for quite a shakeup in Moto2, with the British brand making a stronger effort in recent time to be part of the racing scene. That effort will be ancillary though, because the real magic in the Moto2 class comes from the various chassis-builders.

As such today, we get to see the first completed Moto2 machine for 2019, and it shouldn’t surprise us to see that it is a Kalex.

If you want to go racing in the Moto2 World Championship, then you better grab yourself a chassis from the German engineering brand. This is because the “Kalex Cup” – as some have come to call it – sees a grid replete with Kalex-framed machines each racing Sunday.

Some of this is a nod to the fine work that Kalex produces, I have yet to see anyone with a wholly negative view of the company’s work. But, a portion of the brand’s dominance is surely due to the conservative nature of motorcycle racing teams.

That is to say that while the Kalex chassis is certainly very good, that does not mean that other worthy alternative do not exist. Racing doesn’t always improve the breed, you see. We digress.

Still, making a racing chassis is no small undertaking, and Kalex is one of the best in the business. Certainly a large part of it is science, but there is a certain art to the process as well.

Thankfully, Kalex has put together a short video showing how they make their Moto2 chassis. It’s pretty interesting to watch.

Suter is to withdraw from the 2018 Moto2 World Championship. The Swiss chassis manufacturer was only able to attract a single team for the 2018 season, and have decided that it makes no commercial sense to continue its participation.

The Dynavolt Intact Team, which will field riders Xavi Vierge and Marcel Schrotter for 2018, will make the switch to Kalex instead. Though the decision still comes as something of a surprise, it is entirely understandable.

KTM is to enter the Moto2 class. The Ajo team is to expand its current Moto2 operation to two riders, with Brad Binder and Miguel Oliveira (not Tom Lüthi, as we had previously reported) taking the place of the departing Johann Zarco.

The team is also to switch from Kalex to KTM, as part of KTM’s project to provide a career path for young riders from the FIM CEV Moto3 championship through all three Grand Prix classes to MotoGP.

The names of the riders involved should come as no surprise. Brad Binder is a race or two away at most from becoming the 2016 Moto3 world champion, and Miguel Oliveira came very close to winning the Moto3 title in 2015, as Binder’s teammate in the Red Bull KTM Ajo Moto3 team.

Both riders are highly rated both by KTM and by team boss Aki Ajo.

Just because it’s the off-season, doesn’t mean that the Paddock Pass Podcast has a dearth of topics to cover. As such, Episode 13 comes to you from Barcelona, where the guys were on-hand for the third meeting of the Superprestigio event.

This special race, hosted by Marc Marquez, once again showed some close racing from riders across a variety of disciplines and nationalities. If you happened to miss the Superfinal, or your live feed died on you mid-race, you can watch/re-watch it on FansChoive.tv now.

In addition to all the happenings in Spain, the crew also wraps-up some updates from the MotoGP and Moto2 paddocks, namely the progress of KTM’s factory MotoGP team and the departure of Suter Racing from the Moto2 series.

If you notice a new voice on the show, it’s because Steve English is back on the mics with us. We are very happy to have Steve working with us again, and we think his exceptional insights will be enjoyed by all racing enthusiasts.

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on FacebookTwitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

Suter will not be competing in the Moto2 championship in 2016. In an official statement on their Facebook page, the Swiss engineering firm announced that it would not be applying for a constructor’s license for Moto2 in 2016.

Instead, Suter will be concentrating its efforts on working with Mahindra on their Moto3 machine, and supplying a range of parts for various teams and factories in the series.

The withdrawal from Moto2 was an inevitable consequence of the steady decline in the number of bikes Suter was producing for the class.

For anyone on a budget, Misano is one of the cheaper MotoGP rounds to attend. Ticket prices aside, the area has a large amount of tourist accommodations, and the race takes place right at the tail end of the tourist season, when hotel prices are starting to drop.

Buses run to and from the circuit from Riccione, making transport to and the track affordable. Misano is a great circuit to go to if you are trying to keep costs to a minimum.

Misano may be a cheap weekend for fans, but it certainly wasn’t cheap for the teams in all three classes in MotoGP. The rain-drenched conditions on Friday saw riders crashing left, right, and center, in Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP. They racked up a grand total of 62 crashes in all three classes, in just a single day.

Given that crash damage on Grand Prix machinery tends to start at a minimum of around a thousand euros, going up arithmetically with the severity of the crash and the class the bike is racing in, a conservative estimate of the grand total for repairs on the first day of practice would be enough to pay for a ride in Moto3. Or possibly even on a MotoGP Open class bike.

The cause of those 62 crashes? The water certainly didn’t help. Rain fell through the night and all day, leaving the track soaked and standing water on some part of the track. But it wasn’t just the water, the surface of the track itself was very poor, and rubber left on the track made braking on the racing line a treacherous affair, riders in all three classes going down as the front locked up.

The fact that Bridgestone had started the MotoGP riders off on the harder of the two wet tire options didn’t help either. It was an understandable choice: in previous years, when riders have used the softer wet tire, they have ended up being destroyed at Misano.

This year’s silly season – the endless speculation about who will end up riding where next year – has not so far lived up to the expectations from the start of the year. With all four factory Honda and Yamaha riders out of contract at the end of 2014, real fireworks were expected in the battle to secure signatures.

That bidding war never unfolded, and with Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa back with Repsol Honda, Valentino Rossi already signed up to Movistar Yamaha, and Jorge Lorenzo looks likely to finalize his deal – a two-year contract with some kind of option to depart after a year – before the season resumes again in Indianapolis.

But the silly season has been far from a disappointment. Over the past couple of weeks, the jostling for the remaining seats in MotoGP has really taken off, with the promise of wholesale changes taking place up and down the grid. With the exception of Pol Espargaro, who is expected to remain at Tech 3 for the second year of his two-year contract with Yamaha, just about every other seat on the grid could see a new occupant.

The arrival of Suzuki and, it now appears, Aprilia offers four new factory seats to vie for, opening up new opportunities for the current crop of riders. The upgrading of Honda’s RCV1000R makes the production Honda a more attractive proposition. And there looks set to be an influx of young talent into the class. The 2015 MotoGP grid could look very different, once you look past the top four.

The 2015 MotoGP grid is shaping up to look even stronger than this season. There are increasing signs that the weaker teams on the grid are set to disappear, with the strongest teams in Moto2 moving up to take their place. In addition, there is a chance that some of the stronger existing MotoGP teams could expand their participation as well.

It is an open secret that the Marc VDS Racing team is weighing up a switch to MotoGP. Team boss Michael Bartholemy has had initial talks with the team owner Marc van der Straten about adding a MotoGP entry to their line up, but they are still a long way from making a decision.

Bartholemy told us that a decision on their participation would come at Assen at the earliest, but admitted that it was still a very serious option.