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Though racing has stopped, necessity is forcing teams and factories into making choices.

With almost everyone in MotoGP out of contract at the end of 2020, and only a few riders already signed up, seats have to be filled for next year and beyond, racing or no racing.

After the early spate of more or less expected signings, the latest round of deals are more of a surprise.

None more than the expected deal for Pol Espargaro to join Repsol Honda in 2021, displacing Alex Márquez as brother Marc’s teammate before the younger Márquez has had a chance to prove his worth.

That, as I wrote previously, will inevitably lead to a parting of the ways between Marc Márquez and HRC, I believe.

It has been two weeks since news of that deal emerged, and yet there is still no confirmation. Despite protestations to the opposite, the deal is very much on.

But there is something of a hiccup along the way, in the form of a contractual stipulation that forbids Espargaro from discussing a deal with another factory before September 15th. No announcement will be made before then.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Necessity is no respecter of contractual obligations, however.

KTM boss Stefan Pierer may claim that the Austrian factory still has hopes of keeping Espargaro, but the fact that Danilo Petrucci has flown to Austria to visit the KTM factory in Mattighofen, and come away making very positive noises about his visit, is something of a giveaway.

Petrucci’s manager Alberto Vergani told GPOne.com that there had only been exploratory talks so far, but the fact that the pair were invited to visit the racing department is itself telling.

Racing departments are very much off limits to outside parties, for fear of what might leak out. Only the privileged, or those with a contract, are allowed a peek inside.

Hanging on to Talent

There may not yet be an official announcement from KTM, but the facts on the ground speak volumes.

It is all very well getting riders to sign contracts forbidding them from speaking about new deals before a certain date, but shopping around for their replacement is something of a giveaway.

In theory, of course, Petrucci could be a replacement for Brad Binder, who is also still without a contract for 2021. But replacing Binder with Petrucci would be a spectacular failure of management on many different grounds.

Firstly, dumping Binder before he has had a chance to even race in MotoGP would be throwing away the years of investment KTM have made in the South African.

Secondly, it would also upset Miguel Oliveira – another long-term KTM investment – to be passed over for the factory team for a second time in two seasons.

And the Austrian factory has already lost rising star Jorge Martin to Pramac Ducati. KTM’s management is way too savvy to do anything so stupid as to risk losing both Binder and Oliveira.

KTM is just one of Petrucci’s options, though arguably the best one. Ducati has offered him a seat in the Aruba.it WorldSBK team, but Petrucci seems keen to remain in MotoGP.

Aprilia is another option, but that is somewhat uncertain, as the Italian factory is still waiting for a verdict from the CAS on Andrea Iannone’s suspension for doping.

Until the outcome of that appeal is known, Aprilia is offering a show of loyalty to its rider. For the remainder of 2020, test rider Bradley Smith will step into Iannone’s shoes.

Desmo Dovi Lives On

Petrucci replacing Pol Espargaro at KTM rules out the chance of Andrea Dovizioso taking that seat. But in reality, Dovizioso was never likely to leave the Bologna factory.

At 34, Dovizioso is in the closing stages of his career, and has shown no signs of wanting to continue into his 40s, following in the footsteps of Valentino Rossi. That doesn’t leave him much time to get up to speed on a different manufacturer.

“At this time in MotoGP history it’s kind of hard to be swapping machinery like that and jumping from manufacturer to manufacturer,” Jack Miller said at Valencia last year, commenting on Jorge Lorenzo’s retirement.

“I think you need two to three years, and well into your thirties, two to three years becomes a long time. It’s so hard because the biggest thing is understanding how the tires work on each bike, how each bike works, what is it’s strengths? And you can’t do that in winter testing. You need racing, you need experience and it’s hard to do.”

If Dovizioso has any thoughts of retiring in the near future, he faces a choice.

He can stay with Ducati, and hope that Gigi Dall’Igna and the engineers in Borgo Panigale finally give him the last few missing pieces that will help him solve the puzzle of winning a MotoGP title, then retire in a year or two.

Or he can switch manufacturers, sacrifice a year or two to get up to speed, and hope his new employer has built a more competitive bike.

Dovizioso has shown no real appetite to continue racing for another three or four years. Ducati remains his best and most realistic shot at winning a MotoGP crown.

Symbiosis

Viewed from the other side of that transaction, it also makes sense for Ducati to do whatever it takes to retain Dovizioso.

Despite the fractious relationship between Dovizioso and Ducati Corse boss Gigi Dall’Igna, the Italian rider has been an absolutely key part in the revival of the Borgo Panigale manufacturer.

Since his arrival in 2013, Dovizioso has provided a lot of the input which has helped get the Ducati to where it is. He has the experience and the detailed understanding of the Desmosedici and its DNA to make it go faster.

Ducati’s prospective 2021 line up needs Dovizioso to stay. Jack Miller’s move up to the factory squad is deserved and timely, and his experience at Pramac as the tester for the holeshot device and “shapeshifter” rear squatting device serves him well.

But he hasn’t had the responsibility for leading the direction of development in a factory team yet, and is an unknown quantity. For 2021, Pramac will have Pecco Bagnaia and the (as yet to be confirmed) Jorge Martin.

Bagnaia was a disappointment in 2019, after an outstanding career in Moto2, and Martin will be a rookie. They are not yet material that you can build a development effort on.

So it seems like only a matter of time before Ducati announces a contract extension with Andrea Dovizioso. But both parties will negotiate hard before agreeing a deal.

Thwarted by RNA

Where does this leave Johann Zarco? The Frenchman has perhaps been one of the biggest victims of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thrown a lifeline by Ducati after a disastrous year at KTM – the living embodiment of how difficult it can be to switch manufacturers – Zarco took a spot in the Avintia squad after being persuaded by Gigi Dall’Igna that he would get strong factory backing.

He did so in the hope that he could earn a factory ride with the squad in 2021, by proving he could be quick on the bike in the early races.

Then COVID-19 happened, and all racing has been put on hold, until the middle of July. By that time, the seats at Ducati – both factory and Pramac – will be filled.

The chances of the Frenchman finding a better seat than Avintia for 2021 are pretty close to zero, no matter how well he does this season. And given that he will be on a 2019 bike, a Desmosedici GP19, making a real impression at the front will be doubly hard.

So Zarco faces at least another year with Avintia, with support from Ducati. The best he can hope for is an upgrade to a GP21 for next year, but given the financial impact of the pandemic, finding the budget to fund an extra GP21 will be difficult for Ducati.

His saving grace will be the fact that development on engines and aero has been halted until the 2021 season, meaning that whatever he races in 2021 will be much closer to the factory machines than the GP19 he has for this year.

The Devil Is in the Detail

The one piece of news we are all patiently waiting for is the official confirmation that Valentino Rossi will be racing for Petronas Yamaha next year.

The simple fact of Rossi on a Petronas bike seems like a foregone conclusion, but the mechanics of making it actually happen are vastly complicated.

Talks are taking place through Yamaha, rather than directly, and there is the question of Rossi’s crew. He will want to end his career with the mechanics who have (for the most part) been with him throughout his 21 years in the premier class.

But Petronas will not want to have to lose one entire side of the garage to make room for his crew, some of whom may also decide to retire at the same time that Rossi does.

Then there are the little details. At the moment, Rossi’s PR duties are limited, one of the stipulations of his contract. Petronas will want more from him than Yamaha did, however.

The counterweight to the upheaval that having Rossi as a rider brings is the PR and advertising exposure. Petronas will want to milk that for all it is worth, especially in a region in which the Italian veteran is so wildly popular.

Finding a balance between the diametrically opposite PR demands of Petronas and Rossi will not be simple at all.

Photo: Ducati

While the motorcycle racing world awaits the return of real racing, contract time is heaving into view. Though the methods are different – Skype calls and WhatsApp messages, rather than private conversations at the backs of garages or between trucks – the objective is the same: to find the best match of bike and rider, giving the most hope of success.

Having to work remotely is the least of both managers’ and teams’ problems. The bigger issue is that there is next to no data to go on. Teams and factories are having to make a guess at who they think will be strong in 2021 based on who was fast in 2019, and who showed promise in the winter tests.

Riders have no idea which bikes have made progress over the winter, and which have stagnated. Is it worth taking a gamble on KTM? Has the Honda gotten any easier to ride?

After thirteen and a half weeks of silence, MotoGP bikes are to roar into life once again in their natural habitat.

The KTM RC16 machines are to spend two days testing at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, on May 27th and 28th. The last time MotoGP bikes were on track was at Qatar, on February 24th.

Factory rider Pol Espargaro will be joined at the Red Bull Ring by test rider Dani Pedrosa, where they will continue work on the RC16.

The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated motorcycle racing in many different ways, some quite unexpected. To address some of those complications, the Grand Prix Commission, MotoGP’s rulemaking body, agreed a number of exceptions to the rules for the 2020 season, concerning wildcards, concerning concession points, and concerning engine development.

Engine development had already been frozen in response to the coronavirus crisis. In part as a cost-cutting measure, and in part because the European manufacturers had had their factories closed, all six MSMA members agreed to halt engine development and use the engines they were due to homologate for the 2020 season for the start of the 2021 season.

The MotoGP season is closing ever nigh, and we know this because KTM just debuted its two teams in the MotoGP Championship, while giving us a glimpse at its 2020 machinery.

For a treat, we can see that the 2020 KTM RC16 stands out from its predecessor by its larger, more oval and more central air intake. The aerodynamics package on the machine continues to evolve as well, as KTM tries to spend its way to the front of the timesheets.

Mechanical bits aside, one of the highlights from the 2020 launch is the new livery (and quasi-new sponsor) for the Tech3 KTM squad, which is hocking Red Bull’s new cola product with a fetching orange, white, and blue livery.

The start of the 2020 MotoGP season is now just a matter of hours away. The entire MotoGP grid will soon be rolling out at Sepang for the start of the first MotoGP of the year. Notably, it is the entire grid: unlike previous years, nobody has fallen of a motocross bike, minibike, or even a mountain bike and hurt themselves.

There is plenty to get excited about. We will soon be able to get a sense of the work done by the various factories over the winter, who looks like hitting their goals, who has found something extra, who is lagging behind.

We will see which of the rookies is off to a strong start, how last year’s crop of rookies is progressing, which of the veterans has made a step, either forward or backward, and which of the crop of title candidates is looking sharpest.

Yet a note of caution is advised. By Sunday night, we will have a timesheet showing who was fastest over the three days, and we will have a complete list of every lap posted by each rider (helpfully published by Dorna on the official MotoGP website, unhelpfully, in a format which is not easily extracted for analysis).

What are you to do if you find yourself stuck on a bike you know you can’t ride? On a bike that you are convinced is trying to hurt you, and that you keep falling off of every time you try to push?

The obvious answer is you try to leave as soon as possible. But that simple answer hides a host of factors that make leaving not as easy as it looks. The cases of Jorge Lorenzo and Johann Zarco illustrate that very well.

First of all, why would a rider want to leave a factory ride? The pay is good, rarely less than seven figures. Riders have a chance to shape the bike and point development in a direction that suits them.

They are treated, if not like royalty, then at least like nobility: transport is arranged and rearranged pretty much at their whim, picked up at their front doors before a race and deposited there again afterward. The pressure is high, but in a factory team, they do everything they can to take the strain and let their riders concentrate on riding.

That is little consolation when the going gets really tough. When you are struggling to get inside the top ten, despite giving your all to try to make the bike go faster.

When you are crashing at twice, three times your normal rate. When factories are slow to bring updates to the bike. Or even worse, when they bring boxes and boxes of new parts, and none of those parts make much of a difference to your results.

Episode 113 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison and David Emmett come together on the microphones, as we discuss the happenings at the Autrian GP at the Red Bull Ring.

In this episode, there is no shortage of topics to cover – thanks largely in part to KTM releasing a bevy of announcements at its home round.

Of course, before the start of the Austrian round, there was talk about the Repsol Honda garage, and whether Jorge Lorenzo would be departing it. By the end of the weekend, the conversation was still about Repsol Honda, but instead focused on the last-turn loss that was handed to them by Ducati Corse.

The Austrian round of MotoGP has been a weekend of bombshells. After the news that Ducati and Jorge Lorenzo had been in talks to replace Jack Miller in the Pramac squad before the weekend, on Sunday night it emerged that Johann Zarco asked to be released from his contract with KTM for 2020.

The Frenchman has long been unhappy with the Austrian factory, sometimes very publicly so. Since the moment he jumped on the KTM RC16, he has struggled to adapt to the bike.

Their home Grand Prix is traditionally the place where KTM announce the racing plans, and this weekend’s Austrian MotoGP round is no different.

There is to be a shakeup in the Moto2 and Moto3 classes, while the Austrian manufacturer has extended its commitment to MotoGP for five more years beyond 2021.

KTM will stop as a chassis manufacturer in Moto2, but bring back Husqvarna as a separate team and bike in Moto3.

Another day, and another factory MotoGP team debut. This week’s entry is actually a two-fer from the KTM camp, as we see in their race livery both the factory-back Red Bull KTM team debut (Pol Espargaro & Johann Zarco), as well as the factory-supported KTM Tech3 squad (Hafizh Syahrin & Miguel Oliveira).

KTM will be looking to make big steps this year in the MotoGP Championship, as the team stalled on its progress last year. This is part of the reason for a two-pronged approach in the paddock, and for the Tech3 outfit getting substantial support and involvement in the development of the KTM RC16 race bike.