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Episode 298 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees us looking back on the Japanese GP at Motegi.

On the mics, we have the usual crew of Steve English, Adam WheelerDavid Emmett, and Neil Morrison as they talk about the events from the Japanese round.

In the show, the guys cover a lot of ground, starting off with the strange circumstances of the weekend, and the effect a lack of track time had on results.

We are entering the four most important weekends of the season. Important for a lot of reasons: there are five races to go and just 17 points separate the championship leaders.

But above all, important because we are heading to three tracks where MotoGP hasn’t been since 2019, and Sepang, where MotoGP has only tested in 2020 and 2022. We are heading into the unknown, just as the championship is coming to a head.

So much has changed since MotoGP was on its last Pacific tour. Valentino Rossi was still in the Monster Energy Yamaha team. A young rookie called Fabio Quartararo was making a massive impression on fans.

Andrea Dovizioso was doing his best to win a championship for Ducati, against an unstoppable Marc Marquez. Marquez was having perhaps the best season in grand prix racing since Giacomo Agostini crushed the opposition in the late 1960s on the MV Agusta.

2019 saw the ride-height devices first start to make an appearance, Jack Miller using the system in Thailand. It was the last year of the old Michelin rear casing, the new tire introduced in 2020 effectively killing off Andrea Dovizioso’s career.

The Honda Hawk11 made its public debut this past weekend, unveiled at the Osaka Motorcycle Show.

Thanks to spy shots and details that leaked ahead of the bike’s debut, there aren’t too many surprises to be found from this Africa Twin powered roadster.

In fact, the biggest surprise is not on the spec-sheet, as Honda is so far saying that the Hawk11 is destined only for the Japanese market, with nary a word from the European and North American subsidiaries about the bike arriving in those regions.

The Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R is a crazy machine. Maybe not quite as crazy as the small-displacement screamers from the heyday of sport bike design, but still crazy enough in a world of tightening regulations and budget-focused OEMs.

Of course, we know that the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R was made for markets where the Kawasaki Ninja 400 was too expensive to own, primarily because of taxes, insurance, and licensing structures.

This is also part of the reason why the 50hp 250cc machine doesn’t come to the USA or Europe, but instead finds a home in the Asian markets.

Now, we get word that rumors have begun about an encore to Kawasaki’s craziness – a four-cylinder 400cc machine that could be called the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R.

All four Japanese motorcycle brands have agreed to a standard on swappable battery packs for two-wheelers, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha are reporting.

The Swappable Battery Consortium for Electric Motorcycles is focused only on the Japanese market, and shouldn’t be confused with a similar agreement and effort that Honda and other brands (Yamaha, KTM, and Piaggio) agreed to earlier this year.

After a bit of teasing, the new Honda CBR600RR is finally here, and with it comes a few surprises.

Because of Honda’s teasers, we already knew that this machine would be an overhaul of the current model, using the same chassis and basic engine architecture as the American-sold Honda CBR600RR.

Photos and video though confirmed that the bike would get a facelift, most notably with winglets installed to the front fairing, and that a robust electronics package would be added to the mix, to help things feel modern on this aging beast.

Also, we already knew that the late-2020 arrival would sadly not be coming to the North American or European markets, being likely a Japan-only model, though some sales in other parts of Asia could happen as well.

Now that Big Red is spilling the beans on the new Honda CBR600RR, we can see that there are a few items about this supersport that we didn’t know about.

One of our favorite events each year, the Suzuka 8-Hours is perhaps one of the most important races on the motorcycle calendar, as the Japanese brands jockey to prove who is the best on their home turf.

However, the legendary Japanese race is not immune to the global situation relating to the outbreak of the coronavirus, and from that we saw its original July race date moved  to the beginning of November.

Now with new concerns, the endurance race and finale of the FIM Endurance World Championship calendar has been unfortunately canceled altogether.

After last week’s announcements that the Silverstone and Phillip Island MotoGP rounds were canceled, today, the Japanese round of MotoGP joined the list of cancellations.

The race at Motegi has been called off, and will not take place this year, despite the importance of the race to the Japanese manufacturers.

Today’s announcement was the last step in a general clearing out of the schedule to allow for a calendar of races that could feasibly be held for 2020.

The plan, as Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta pointed out in the press release, is to do as many races in Europe as possible, and only heading overseas after that, if international travel is still possible.

The good news was that Dorna had submitted a plan to hold two races in Jerez on the 19th and 26th of July, and that the authorities in Andalusia and the city of Jerez had supported the plan.

But many obstacles remained in the path to turning the plan into reality. Now, nearly three weeks later, those obstacles are starting to disappear.

The biggest obstacle was removed on Monday, when the Spanish government announced that the enforced quarantine on anyone entering the country would be lifted from July 1st.

The Suzuka 8-Hours is traditionally a summer race, held in the sweltering heat of Japan – it is part of what makes Suzuka, Suzuka.

That won’t be the case this year though, thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, but there is good news as the iconic endurance race will remain as the season finale for the FIM Endurance World Championship, just with a slight reshuffling of the racing calendar.

Accordingly, the new date for the 2020 Suzuka 8-Hours will be Sunday, November 1st – moved from the originally planned July 19th schedule.