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The news has been rumored for several weeks, but now it is finally official, as Jack Miller will move from the satellite Pramac Ducati team, and join the factory Ducati Corse MotoGP team for the 2021 season.

The news almost certainly means the departure of Danilo Petrucci from the team, though it remains to be seen if Ducati will also retain the services of Andrea Dovizioso for next season, as the Italian is said to be scouting other offers.

Good bets would be placed on Dovizioso remaining in the squad through next season though, which means Miller can count on the veteran Ducati as a teammate for the 2021 championship.

With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic hopefully behind us, the gears of the motorcycle world are starting to grind again. Riders are training once again, and their thoughts are turning to the future. 

It is also clear that riders, teams, and factories are starting to think about 2021. This summer had promised to unleash a Silly Season of unrivaled scale, with all riders bar Tito Rabat out of contract at the end of 2020.

Another piece has slotted into place for the 2021 MotoGP season, and like the last announcement – Alex Rins at Suzuki Ecstar MotoGP – it is far from a surprise. Today, Suzuki announced it has extended its deal with Joan Mir for another two years, for the 2021 and the 2022 seasons.

The deal had been long coming. Talks had been ongoing for a while, to such an extent that Joan Mir dropped a very heavy hint that the deal was done in an Instagram Live question and answer session, saying that he “wasn’t allowed to say anything” but that he would have news soon.

Marc Marquez has signed an almost unprecedented new contract extension with HRC, which will see him remain in the factory Honda team for four more years after his current contract expires at the end of the 2020 season. That means Marquez will be a factory Honda rider until the end of 2024.

Marquez’s contract renewal had been widely anticipated, although the length of it is unexpected. It is a sign of the commitment of Marquez and Honda have to each other, and a clear indication of the reigning world champion’s objectives and intentions. Marquez races to win, individual races, but especially titles. He clearly sees Honda as his best bet for achieving that.

It had promised to be a spectacular Silly Season in MotoGP this year. With all 22 rider contracts up for renewal at the end of this season, several long months of hard bargaining was expected, resulting in a major shakeup of the grid. Few seats were expected to be left untouched.

Yamaha dealt the first body blow to any major grid shakeup, moving quickly to extend Maverick Viñales’ contract through 2022, then moving rookie sensation Fabio Quartararo to race alongside him in the Monster Energy Yamaha team.

Valentino Rossi was promised full factory support from Yamaha in a satellite team if he decided to continue racing after 2020 instead of retiring.

Yamaha’s hand had been forced by Ducati. The Italian factory had made an aggressive play for both Viñales and Quartararo, and Yamaha had brought the decision on their future plans forward to early January.

Yamaha decided to go with youth over experience, and Ducati was left empty-handed.

Yamaha’s MotoGP program continues to dominate the headlines this week, first by signing Maverick Viñales to an astounding three-year contract, and then by booting Valentino Rossi from the factory team in order to make way for Fabio Quartararo.

Now, the Japanese motorcycle maker is making another big announcement, though this one has been brewing for a bit: Jorge Lorenzo will take on the role as Yamaha’s MotoGP test rider.

Today starts with the bombshell news story that Fabio Quartararo has been signed to the Monster Yamaha MotoGP team, just a day after Maverick Viñales inked a three-year deal with the factory squad.

Combined, this news is a huge moment for the MotoGP paddock, as it signals the end of Valentino Rossi’s factory riding position, and possibly his motorcycle racing career.

To stymie that headline, Yamaha was sure to publish a second press release on Quartararo’s news, to explain that Yamaha and Rossi were taking time to evaluate their future together.

The first penny has dropped in the long march toward the 2021 MotoGP grid. Yamaha has announced that they have signed Maverick Viñales to a two-year deal, for the 2021 and 2022 season.

The move marks a clear decision, both on the part of Yamaha and the part of Viñales. The Spaniard had offers on the table from two other manufacturers, with Ducati especially keen to sign Viñales for 2021.

But, assurances given to Viñales about his role in developing the Yamaha M1 helped him make his decision. Viñales is to determine the future direction of Yamaha, based on the strength of his performance in the second half of 2020.

As the MotoGP field prepares to spend the holiday season at home with friends and family – or in Andrea Iannone’s case, with his lawyers – the impending pressure of MotoGP Silly Season will be pushed to the back of their collective minds.

But with the contracts of the entire MotoGP grid plus the leading Moto2 riders up at the end of the 2020 season, that state of quietude will not last long. Silly Season has been temporarily suspended for holiday season, but it will soon burst forth in a frenzy of speculation, rumor, and signings.

So how will the Silly Season for the 2021 MotoGP grid play out? Given the number of changes likely, it will be a complex jigsaw puzzle indeed, with a few key players at the heart of the process.

And as a confounding factor, teams and factories will want to avoid the current tangle they find themselves in. The era of the entire grid being on two-year contracts is as good as over.

There are a number of reasons for no longer automatically offering two-year deals to everyone on the grid. Neither the team managers nor the rider managers I spoke to over the course of 2019 were thrilled at the prospect of another contract cycle like we have seen for the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

And the way the year has played out has given them plenty of reasons to avoid the same mistakes for 2021.

The Johann Zarco Saga appears to be drawing to a close. The long journey, which started when he announced he would be leaving KTM at the end of 2019, looks to have taken him to Ducati.

In an interview for the French magazine Moto Revue, the Frenchman told journalist Michel Turco that he will be racing a Ducati Desmosedici GP19 with the Avintia Racing team in 2020 (since the publishing of this story, Avintia has now confirmed its signing of Johann Zarco for next season – JB).

Zarco’s statements bring to a close a long and confusing chapter in MotoGP. Zarco was summarily dismissed from the Red Bull KTM team on full pay after the race in Misano, the Austrian manufacturer wanting rid of a disruptive factor in the factory team.