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Moto3: Sky VR46 Fires Romano Fenati

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As expected, Romano Fenati has been formally released from his contract with the Sky VR46 team. The Italian was suspended from the team after an incident at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. That was a temporary measure, but it has now been made permanent.

Fenati was released for behavioral issues. The Italian had been abusive towards members of the team, and had not behaved in a professional manner.

The incident in Austria was just the latest in a long line of breaches of behavioral conduct, which included confirmed reports of verbal abuse and unconfirmed and unsubstantiated reports of physical conflict.

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MotoGP

Moto3: Romano Fenati Benched for Bad Behavior

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Romano Fenati will not be on the starting grid at the Austrian round of MotoGP on Sunday. The Italian has been suspended by his team for “repeated behavior not in line with the disciplinary rules of a team.”

Though the team has not made a statement on the exact reason for suspending Fenati, there are reports of repeated bad behavior by Fenati in the team.

Motorsport states that Fenati became abusive towards his crew during qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, and this was the final straw.

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MotoGP

The Importance of Suzuki’s Rider/Crew Chief Relationship

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It is hard to overstate just how important the relationship between a motorcycle racer and his crew chief is. A rider must have complete confidence that his crew chief both understands what he needs from a motorcycle to go fast, and is capable of giving it to him.

A crew chief must be able to interpret the sometimes confusing and mixed signals from his rider, filter out the non-essential information, identify priorities from that which will offer the greatest gains, and assign the work to the rest of the crew in the garage.

There has to be complete trust between the two, or neither rider nor bike will achieve their full potential.

This was made all too apparent when I interviewed Ecstar Suzuki rider Aleix Espargaro and his crew chief Tom O’Kane for a story I wrote recently for the Dutch publication MOTOR Magazine, due out later this month.

One part of the interview which did not make it into the magazine was the relationship between Espargaro and O’Kane, and how they first started working together. However, it is a story which offers a fascinating insight into how a rider and their crew chief work together.

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Racing

Team Orders: Is Motorcycle Racing a Team Sport?

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In a few hours time, we will know who will be the 2014 World Superbike champion. Tom Sykes leads Sylvain Guintoli by 12 points going into the final two races at Qatar. With 50 points up for grabs, the title race is still completely open, and in a series as close as World Superbikes has been this year, anything could happen.

What both Sykes and Guintoli need are help from their teammates. Guintoli most of all: if the Frenchman is to be champion, he will need someone, such as his Aprilia teammate Marco Melandri, to get in between him and the Kawasaki of Sykes.

Sykes, on the other hand, can wrap up the title by winning both races, or at least finishing ahead of Guintoli. If he can’t finish ahead of the Frenchman, then he will hope that his teammate Loris Baz can assist.

As loyal teammates, surely Melandri and Baz will be happy to help? That was only partially the case at the last round in Magny-Cours. In race one, Melandri theatrically waved Guintoli past and into the lead, making it patently obvious that victory was Melandri’s to dispense as he saw fit, and he was prepared to allow his teammate to win this time.

Further back, Baz did the same same for Sykes, though without making quite as much of a song and dance about it as Melandri did.

Race two was a different affair. Once again, Melandri led, and could grant victory to Guintoli if he wanted to. He chose not to, taking the win – despite his pit board making the feelings of his team very clear indeed, for the second race in a row – and taking 5 precious points from Guintoli.

If Melandri had obeyed team orders and moved over, then Guintoli would have trailed Sykes by 7 points instead of 12. That would put Guintoli’s destiny in his own hands: win both races, and it would not matter what Sykes did.

Now, Guintoli needs help, he needs someone between him and the Englishman. Will his teammate come to his rescue this time? Will the Aprilia WSBK team issue team orders again, commanding Melandri to serve the cause of Guintoli’s championship challenge? At the core of this is a much bigger question: Is motorcycle racing a team sport?

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MotoGP

Paul Bird Motorsport Announces Michael Laverty & Broc Parkes for Its 2014 MotoGP Team

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One of the two final missing pieces of the 2014 MotoGP line up has been filled in. Today, the Paul Bird Motorsport team announced it would be back in MotoGP next season, with a two-rider team and additional help from Aprilia.

The two riders will be Michael Laverty, who rode for Paul Bird’s PBM team in 2013, and Broc Parkes, who has spent most of his career racing in World Supersport and World Superbikes.

Though the press release issued stated that the team will be racing ‘PBM Aprilias’, it is still uncertain exactly what Laverty and Parkes will be riding.

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Racing

This is LCR Honda

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For the amount of media that LCR Honda generates, you would think that Lucio Cecchinello’s small satellite Honda MotoGP team is much larger than it is in actuality.

This is because Cecchinello and his crew take a different tack from the rest of the MotoGP paddock when it comes to marketing strategies — the most notable of which is the team’s revolving door livery, which lines up specific brands for races in specific markets.

A team of passionate enthusiasts, LCR Honda also has a knack for producing engaging media pieces, which can be as lurid as the Playboy sponsorship debut of LCR Honda in 2009 (NSFW), or as simple as the video shown after the jump.

For all the superlatives about MotoGP being the “premier class” of motorcycle racing, it is rare that the artwork that is performed on the track is of the same caliber as to what the teams show in their communications. This however is not the case with LCR Honda.

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Trackside Tuesday: Dani Pedrosa’s Misano Nightmare

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It is a tribute to the skill of MotoGP mechanics how easily we can forget that motorbike racing truly is a team sport. Though the rider is the most visible member of the team, the one who captures the hearts of fans and the one whose talents are most likely to inspire us, without top level support from a team, the rider is helpless. On the rare occasion that the team fails their rider, only then are we likely to recognize how good a job they do the rest of the time.

Dani Pedrosa’s nightmare in Misano was a painful example of this. On pole position, 13 points behind Jorge Lorenzo, having finished every race so far this season, and with his best chance ever finally to win a premiere class title, Pedrosa was forced to start from the back of the grid after his team couldn’t free the front tire warmer and had to move his bike from the grid to pit lane. From outside HRC, we don’t know exactly what happened.

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BMW Consolidates 2013 World Superbike Effort

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In an effort to reduce costs and focus resources, BMW Motorrad announced today that it would be consolidating its World Superbike racing program for the 2013 Championship. Folding the factory BMW Motorrad team into the current BMW Italia squad, the Italain arm of the German company will run the WSBK program, developing the chassis, finding sponsors, and handling all race-related items, while Munich will develop the WSBK-spec BMW S1000RR’s powertrain and electronics package.

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KTM Fielding Three-Rider Factory Moto3 Team

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It would be safe to say that KTM is making a serious commitment to the new Moto3 racing format, which replaces the two-stroke 125GP class in 2012 GP racing. Not only is the Austrian firm developing its own Moto3 race bike from scratch, but KTM is also helping engineering firm Kalex develop a Moto3 platform which uses KTM’s purpose-built Moto3 motor for its power plant.

Announcing that it will also field a factory team in the inaugural Moto3 season, KTM has named three riders for its factory squad. Signing Sandro Cortese, Danny Kent, and Arthur Sissis, KTM is making its debut back into entry-level GP racing a big one. The Austrian company last raced in 125GP in 2009, and with its departure, left the series to be dominated by the Piaggio Group’s Aprilia and Derbi-badged machines.

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Official: Jeremy Burgess to Join Rossi at Ducati

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Ever since it was confirmed that Valentino Rossi would be heading to Ducati for the 2011 & 2012 seasons, speculation began to swell about whether famed Crew Chief Jeremy Burgess would join the Italian rider at his new squad. The man behind Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan, and of course Rossi, Burgess’ talents in the pit box are confirmed by the number of race victories and series championships he’s been a part of in GP racing. With many believing Rossi could not be successful on the Ducati without Burgess by his side, the Australian crew chief’s decision to follow Rossi to Ducati is an integral piece to the team’s success in the coming years, especially as Ducati prepares a new 1000cc machine for the rule changes scheduled in 2012.

With speculation rife that Burgess might stay at Yamaha (presumably to help Rookie of the Year Ben Spies), or even retire at the end of this season (Rossi said at Laguna Seca he wasn’t sure if Burgess would continue after this season), Burgess’ move to Ducati was anything but a sure thing. However this weekend at his home venue of Phillip Island and during the Australian GP, Burgess officially announced his intention to SportRider magazine that he would be following Rossi to Ducati, and continuing the pair’s successful history together.

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Tardozzi Fired from BMW WSBK Team – Mechanics May Strike at Magny-Cours

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According to our good friends at , Davide Tardozzi has just been handed his pink slip from the BMW World Superbike Team. The Italian manager has been instrumental in helping BMW get its house in order, but Tardozzi and the rest of BMW’s non-German crew are being purged from the team regardless. Tardozzi had apparently been banned from the BMW garage, as World Superbike heads to Magny-Cours this weekend, but the team’s mechanics are expected to work through the end of the season. Apparently not pleased with the idea of being replaced, the non-German mechanics are rumored to be planning a strike for Magny-Cours.

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