Episode 202 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the on-track action from the Spanish GP, as well as the fallout after the checkered flag waved.
On the mics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, David Emmett, and Adam Wheeler, as the trio discusses the MotoGP action from Jerez.
Saturday was a tough day at the office for the Grand Prix paddock. Conditions were treacherous precisely because they were so deceptive.
The sun was shining, and if you measured the asphalt temperature in the sun, it looked pretty good. But there was a cold wind blowing across the track which would cool tires and catch you unawares.
Which is precisely what it did, riders crashing in droves in all three classes on Saturday. There were 27 fallers on Saturday, more than any other Saturday at Jerez in the past five years.
It is a truism to point out that it is just Friday, and too early to be getting excited about who is where on the timesheets. But the reason it is a truism is because (the clue is in the name) it’s true.
Friday is just the first day of the weekend, and not everybody is up to speed right away. Things change over a weekend, especially once the engineers have had an evening to examine the data.
The weather and the track changes too. The tail end of storm Lola has just passed over Jerez de la Frontera, and temperatures are slowly returning to normal after an unseasonally cold and wet period.
The mercury is creeping higher once again, and with every degree of temperature and every ray of direct Andalusian sunlight, track temperatures are increasing, bringing more grip.
In addition, every bike that laps the track lays down a little rubber, creating more and more grip. And there are a lot of bikes turning laps at Jerez: in addition to the usual three Grand Prix classes of Moto3, Moto2, and MotoGP, there are also the Red Bull Rookies and MotoE.
The MotoE bikes, in particular, help the MotoGP teams. Like MotoGP, MotoE uses Michelin tires, and the big, heavy machines lay down a lot of Michelin rubber which helps create grip for everyone, and especially MotoGP.
Normality returns, at last. MotoGP is finally back at a track where the schedule follows the same pattern as the rest of the year, at a circuit which everyone in MotoGP – riders, teams, manufacturers, tire makers, equipment manufacturers – knows like the back of their hands, and at its normal slot in the calendar, late April and early May.
After Qatar and Portimão, two tracks which held so many unknowns, we are very firmly back in known territory.
It is hard to overstate just how well everyone knows the circuit. From CEV to Red Bull Rookies to Grand Prix to WorldSBK, and even BSB and CIV, the Circuito de Jerez Angel Nieto is used to race, to test, on track days and practice days.
Riders have hundreds of laps at the circuit under their belts before they even reach the Grand Prix paddock.
Call it braking news (sorry, sorry) as Italian brake manufacturer Brembo has just acquired the entirety of Spanish brake company J.Juan for a reported €70 million ($85 million) in cash.
The move is said to center around Brembo’s desire to invest more in the motorcycle sector of its business, where J.Juan has made an increasing number of inroads with OEM and aftermarket fitment.
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.
Monday sees the start of three days of activity at the Jerez ciruit, as first the MotoE teams, and then the MotoGP test teams get to work at the Andalusian circuit.
Alongside the full MotoE grid – it is an official MotoE test – the test teams of Aprilia, Honda, KTM, and Yamaha will be present at the track.
The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed back the start of the WorldSBK season even further. After the Assen SBK round, which had been due to kick off the 2021 WorldSBK season, was postponed until July, Estoril had taken over as season opener.
Now, however, the number of Covid-19 cases and the prevalence of the Brazilian variant in Portugal has meant that travel restrictions imposed to combat the virus make holding the Estoril round on the proposed dates extremely uncertain.
As a result, the Estoril round has also been postponed until later in the year. At the current point in time, a new date for the Portuguese round has not been set, but the most likely timing for the race is around July or August.
Episode 173 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one comes to us from Valencia, Spain, as we cover the second race at this Spanish circuit, for the Valencia GP.
On the mics, we have a grand prix duo, David Emmett, and Neil Morrison, as they discuss the race weekend’s events, and what they mean for the 2020 MotoGP Championship.
It was supposed to be a steady, stable weekend with consistent weather for all three days of the Valencia MotoGP round. But it’s 2020, so of course, that didn’t happen.
After a solid day of dry weather on Friday, conditions turned on Saturday. Not by a lot, but just enough to render chasing a quick time in practice and qualifying a treacherous business, with light rain coming and going throughout.
After the track dried in FP3, it never really rained hard enough to need wet tires. But there was just enough rain at times to make grip supremely treacherous, and to force riders to take bigger risks than they might have wanted.
“Well, for sure I think we are not the fastest, but it’s only Friday.” A common enough refrain after FP2, with another day of practice and qualifying to go before the race on Sunday. But when it is championship leader Joan Mir saying it, on the weekend he could wrap up the title, is it a sign of trouble?
So far, Mir has been remarkably calm and composed under pressure. He has impressed even nine-time world champion and MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi. “Nobody bet on Mir at the beginning of the season, but already in the last races of last season he did a big improvement and also in the winter test he was strong,” Rossi told us on Friday evening.