What happened when Valentino Rossi crashed? How serious is his injury? When will he be back? Who will replace Rossi, if he doesn’t return at Aragon? And what does Yamaha think of Rossi’s training methods?
Yamaha boss Lin Jarvis spoke to a small group of journalists at Misano on Saturday morning, to answer these questions and much more.
Jarvis knew about the accident very shortly after it had happened. “I knew before he got to the hospital,” Jarvis told us. “Albi [Tebaldi] called Maio Meregalli as soon as he got the news that Vale was on the way to the hospital. Maio called me straight away.”
The good news was that Rossi’s injury was not as bad as the last time he broke his leg, at Mugello in 2010. “It’s much less serious,” Jarvis told us, “but probably just as irritating.
Irritating because it effectively means his championship chances are over. So whilst the injury is less serious, the consequences are equally as serious.
Especially now being still very much in the game, being on form, having done such a great race in Silverstone, coming to his home Grand Prix where we tested so well. It’s like a worst possible scenario in terms of timing. It’s a great shame.”
It feels like the two days of practice we have had at Misano are set to come to naught.
With a cold first day of practice, a cool morning on the second day, and a hot afternoon, conditions have been hard enough to track, especially after heavy rain on Thursday scoured any rubber from previous events from the surface.
But the riders have had no practice in the wet, and with rain set to fall on Sunday – exactly when, we don’t know, but fall it will – everything is very much up in the air.
The five factories who tested here should be used to it. The track feels totally different from the test here back in August, grip levels radically lower.
Tires feel very different too, despite Michelin insisting they are using the same tires this weekend as they brought to the test. It’s all a bit topsy turvy, so why should adding a bit of rain make it any more complicated.
A wet Sunday would be a shame in more than one way. The Misano races in all three classes are shaping up to be fantastic spectacles. In Moto3, four of the top five in the championship start from the first two rows, with Enea Bastianini thrown into the mix for good measure.
Moto2 pits Franco Morbidelli against a resurgent Mattia Pasini, the Italian veteran making it four pole positions in a row. Tom Luthi may be on the third row, but his qualifying position belies his pace. Sadly, Alex Márquez will be absent, the Spaniard having banged up his hip badly enough that it’s trapped a nerve.
MotoGP is fated not to escape the influence of the weather this season. There has barely been a race which has not been affected in one way or another. Even when it hasn’t rained, it has been stiflingly hot, sizzling tracks causing tires to wilt. So why should things be any different at Misano?
Heavy overnight rain left the track still spotty and damp in patches in the morning, Moto3 getting the worst of it, MotoGP just being left to deal with the occasional stubborn spot of dampness where the water took longer to dry.
It caused a spate of crashes in the morning, and though the track dried nicely and blue skies dominated, it was cooler than normal. When Marc Márquez tried the hardest front tire, that proved just a little too critical, the Repsol Honda rider washing out the front in the final corner.
The rain had also washed any residual rubber from the track, radically altering the grip level. That was a major setback for the factories which had tested at Misano prior to Silverstone, in preparation for this Grand Prix.
“The feeling is completely different than at the test,” Aleix Espargaro complained. “It looks like all the settings we had were not working. The grip is completely different. No grip at all. It feels like ice.”
Triumph wants you to know that it’s getting ready for the 2019 Moto2 Championship, where the British company’s three-cylinder engine will power the intermediate grand prix racing class.
Testing the engine, Triumph has mated the 765cc lump to its supersport machine, making it a Triumph Daytona 765. Getting some help from Moto2 rider Julian Simon, Triumph has been testing at Aragon, looking to evaluate the performance and durability of its middleweight engine.
“At this stage of the development program we are in a good place,” said Steve Sargent, Chief Product Officer for Triumph Motorcycles.
“We are very pleased with the pace that Julian is showing with the latest engine and his feedback has been very positive. We have confidence that we will deliver an engine that the teams will enjoy racing with and a spectacle and sound that will excite the fans.”
While the launch of the Ducati’s Desmosedici Stradale V4 engine and leaked photos of the Ducati Panigale V4 dominated the news on Thursday, Aprilia Racing was quietly changing the sport of motorcycle racing, as it debuted an augmented reality helmet that its mechanics will wear in MotoGP.
Aprilia has partnered with DAQRI and Realmore to make the augmented reality helmet come to fruition – DARQI is making the hardware, while Realmore is responsible for the software.
As followers of augmented reality (AR) tech may already have guessed, Aprilia Racing’s AR helmet will allow its mechanics to visualize and share information, overlaid on what is occurring in the pit box.
Does the absence of Valentino Rossi from the Misano race make much difference? It is too early to tell. Certainly the media center feels a little more empty, but this is a trend which has been underway for a while.
Print media has less money to spend, and non-specialist media is increasingly choosing not to report from the race track, taking their information from publicly available sources such as the ever-expanding TV coverage.
Specialist print media and websites are also suffering, though their very rationale depends on being at the track, and so they have little choice.
So maybe a more empty press room is a sign that Italian newspapers have decided against sending a correspondent because Valentino Rossi is not racing. Alternatively, it could just be a sign of a more general decline in media presence.
The paddock feels pretty busy, but then it was only Thursday, and the real frenzy doesn’t start until the bikes hit the track. We won’t really know how badly Rossi absence affects the Misano race until the flag drops on Sunday, and official figures and empty spots on grandstands tell the true tale.
No, the beard and skinny jeans crowd aren’t abandoning their broken down Honda CB’s and flocking to the crazy looks of the Kawasaki Z900, but Team Green does seem to have a heritage-inspired version of their four-cylinder street bike coming down the pipe.
Teasing the Kawasaki Z900RS in a short YouTube video, it seems that the Japanese brand is taking the stout Z900 and styling it for the mercurial tastes of younger riders.
This could be an interesting move for Kawasaki, and while the Z900 isn’t the bike that immediately comes to our minds as being appropriate for this venture, one has to remember the success that Yamaha has seen doing a similar maneuver with the FZ-09, turning it into the XSR900.
Using motorcycle designs as platforms for multiple machines is nothing new, but we have seen the Japanese brands using this strategy with growing success each year.
As such, the upcoming Kawasaki Z900RS could be a very intriguing machine to see, once it drops. Stay tuned.