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With barely a moment to catch its collective breath, the MotoGP paddock alights at Buriram, in the east of Thailand.

The heavy rain which lashed the paddock in Motegi has followed them across the South China Sea, with heavy rain and flooding in many parts of Thailand.

Some who chose to drive rather than fly from Bangkok to Buriram reported flooded roads at several points along the way, and fields around the track are also flooded.

Nor is the rain done with MotoGP just yet. Thursday’s media duties took place in heavy rain, marshals and circuit workers doing their best to rid the track of the worst of its surface water.

Just hours after the Brno circuit announced that it would not be hosting World Championship motorcycle racing, another MotoGP round bites the dust.

In this case, though, it is merely a postponement for a year, with the Thai government announcing that the Buriram round of MotoGP will not take place in 2021, but that the five year contract has been shifted along a year.

According to a story in the Bangkok Post. the Thai government has reached an agreement with Dorna to skip the race in 2021, but to extend their contract to host MotoGP to cover the period from 2022 to 2026.

It was less than 24 hours ago we reported to you the news that the MotoGP race for the Qatar GP would be canceled because of travel restrictions related to the coronavirus, and that possibly other rounds of the world championship could be affected.

And now, we get word (now confirmed by the FIM) that the Thai GP round at Buriram will be postponed will be postponed as well, with MotoGP hoping to reschedule the round at a future date. Currently, the rumor is for the Thai GP to take place in October, but that has yet to be confirmed by a statement from Dorna.

The move comes from concerns from the Thai government, as Thailand continues to battle with infection not only within its borders, but also within the borders of its surrounding neighbors. Eager to stem-the-tide, a large gathering with possibly infected persons seems like a less-than-optimal idea.

There was a flurry excitement in the MotoGP media after the Chinese round of the F1 series in Shanghai was postponed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, as the coronavirus has been officially named.

The excitement concerned the MotoGP race in Thailand, at the Buriram circuit, due to take place on March 22nd. Would the second race of the season be able to go ahead?

The answer to that question is the same now as it was nearly a month ago: yes, the Thai GP in Buriram will go ahead as planned, unless the situation changes, and governments issue official warnings against traveling to Thailand.

Episode 119 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison and David Emmett on the mics once again, as they discusses the Thai GP at Buriram.

Of course, the show has to start with the new MotoGP World Champion, Marc Marquez, who had a dominant season in 2019, and sees his sixth MotoGP title coming earlier in age than any other rider in history.

Looking back through Marquez’s season, it is impossible also not to talk about what has been happening in the Repsol Honda team, as well as HRC.

Doing the math ahead of the Thai GP, it would be hard to see how Marc Marquez would come out of Buriram not the 2019 MotoGP World Champion, as the Spaniard only needed to finish two points ahead of Andrea Dovizioso to clinch the title.

The problem though is that Marc Marquez is not known for taking the easy points, and instead we witnessed a masterful race from the Repsol Honda rider, as he battled his way to the front of the race.

The result was Marc Marquez taking the MotoGP World Championship title in dominating form – a fitting end to his 2019 season.

Looked at objectively, motorcycle racing is a pointless exercise. Sure, it has some benefits. The engineering involved helps make motorcycles better, safer, and more efficient.

The determination of riders to return to action as quickly as possible makes them willing guinea pigs for medical science to try out new ideas for faster and better recovery from injury.

But in the grand scheme of things, being able to ride a motorcycle around a track faster than anyone else is fairly meaningless.

Unsurprisingly, that is not how the actual competitors see it. For motorcycle racers, being able to go around a track faster than anyone else is the most important thing in the world.

To paraphrase former Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly, it is not a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that. That is precisely how riders end up as willing guinea pigs for medical science.

“I mean the championship is, we can say, over,” Andrea Dovizioso told the pre-event press conference on Thursday in Buriram.

With five races to go and a total of 125 points at stake, Marc Márquez leads Dovizioso by 98 points. Mathematically, the title is still open, but you would be not be wise to bet against Márquez winning the championship this season.

In FP1, Marc Márquez demonstrated both why he is leading the championship, and how the championship isn’t over until it has been put beyond mathematical doubt.

On his first run of the weekend, the Repsol Honda rider went out and posted a string of laps in the 1’31s, a second or more clear of his rivals. On his second run, he repeated that pace, becoming even more consistent.

On his third run, he exited with new soft tires, front and rear, with the intention of putting in a quick lap to secure a spot in Q2 on Saturday.

It was the same strategy as in Aragon: go out in FP1, and if you feel good on the bike, post a lap good for Q2 at the end, so that you can spend all of FP2 working on race setup in conditions that will most closely resemble the race. With rain forecast for Sunday, it seemed like the right choice.

On paper, the Chang International Circuit at Buriram is a very simple proposition.

A tight corner followed by a short straight, then a tight corner followed by a very long straight, and then a long hairpin followed by a medium-length straight. And then a bunch of complicated twists and turns to get back to the start and finish line.

Of course, a track is never the same on paper as it is when motorcycles actually race on it. Sure, Buriram has three straights which determine a lot of the circuit’s character.

But there is much more to it than just getting the bike turned and getting on the gas as quickly as possible. There are a plenty of places with a choice of lines, where a canny rider can find an opening on the rider ahead. And the nature of that tighter interior sector is such that a bike which isn’t a basic drag bike can make up a lot of ground.

Take Turn 3 (the long back straight has a kink formally designated as Turn 2), the long hairpin at the end of the straight. Not perfectly flat, it offers a choice of two lines: stay inside and hug the inside kerb, and try to make the ground up on corner exit; or run in wide and cut back to the second apex carrying more speed. Both lines work.

Both lines get you to the corner exit at roughly the same point in time. And both suit two very different bike characters. It may look point and shoot, but it really isn’t.

For the second time in his MotoGP career, Valentino Rossi is to change crew chiefs. At the end of the 2019 season, David Muñoz, currently crew chief for Nicolo Bulega in the Sky Racing Team VR46 Moto2 team, will replace Silvano Galbusera as crew chief for Rossi in the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team.

The news was first broken by Spanish daily AS.com early on Thursday, and confirmed by Rossi later in the pre-event press conference for the Thailand round of MotoGP at Buriram.

“Yes, it’s true,” Rossi said in response to a question from Mela Chercoles, the journalist who broke the story. “Next year I will change my chief mechanic. It was good, because after the Misano race we spoke with Silvano, because we want to try to do something to be stronger.”

Rossi explained that there were a number of factors involved. “It was different factors together, because also Silvano wanted to work for Yamaha, but he wanted to try something with less stress and also with less days out of Italy.”

“At the same time Yamaha wanted to try to make the test team stronger for next year to improve the work in Europe. I didn’t expect it at the beginning, but speaking together we decided to change so Silvano will go to the test team next year.”