As the restart of the 2020 WorldSBK Championship draws near, Dorna and the FIM have issued an updated calendar.
In the previous version of the calendar, the British, Dutch, and Qatar rounds of the WorldSBK series were listed as to be determined.
These three races, at Doningon Park, Assen, and the Losail International Circuit, have now been canceled due to the organizational headaches created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trying to bring you as many breaks from the coronavirus news as possible, today’s installment features the Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade. A new superbike for the 2020 model year, the venerable Blade earns its extra “R” by being the most potent liter-bike ever produced by the Japanese brand.
Already showing itself to be capable on the race track, we have high hopes for the machine when it finally comes to the USA later this summer.
Until then, we will mostly have to suffice ourselves on spec-sheet items, like the 215hp (160 kW) inline four-cylinder engine, which makes 83 lbs•ft of peak torque; the pod of aerodynamic winglets on each side of the fairing; and the wet weight of 443 lbs (201 kg) .
Episode 135 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one covers the season-opener for the grand prix season, which oddly didn’t include the MotoGP riders. We are of course talking about the Qatar GP.
On-hand in the Middle East was the dynamic duo of Neil Morrison and David Emmett, as they discussed the racing action for the Moto2 and Moto3 classes.
It has been a decade, but it is here at last. The last time a rider from the United States of America took pole position in a Grand Prix was in 2010, at Indianapolis, where Ben Spies set the fastest time in qualifying. The last time an American rider was fastest in the intermediate class was Kenny Noyes at Le Mans in 2010. 2010 was a good year for Americans in racing.
Are we likely to see a revival of Americans in Grand Prix racing? Unlikely, given that there is only one rider from the US current in the entire series. But that doesn’t preclude seeing a lot of success for the US this year.
Joe Roberts has found something this year. The American Racing team (owned, ironically, by someone who is not American) have taken a big step forward with the Kalex, and the bike suits Joe Roberts’ riding style much better than the KTM did.
There is nothing like the sight of racing motorcycles entering a track for timed laps to bring a circuit alive.
If yesterday, the atmosphere was best described as eerie, the baritone roar of a pack of Moto3 bikes was enough to snap the MotoGP paddock out of its malaise.
We went from wandering around looking lost to watching the timing screens, and jumping out of the way of bikes as they entered the pits.
Walking up and down pit lane, and with a chance to focus on Moto2 and Moto3 exclusively, a few things catch your attention.
The second day of the final preseason test of 2020 showed pretty much the same pattern as the first day: Maverick Viñales didn’t finish the day on top of the timesheets, but the Monster Energy Yamaha rider clearly has the best pace, capable of running consistent low 1’54s, a tenth or two faster than anyone else.
Fabio Quartararo posted the fastest single lap on Sunday, and he and Alex Rins were the only riders getting anywhere near to Viñales’ pace.
As a benchmark, Quartararo posted 14 laps in the 1’54s, Viñales 13 laps, Rins 11 laps. Joan Mir was the only other consistent contender, with 6 laps in the 1’54s, and a solid race pace in the low 1’50s, high 1’54s. The Yamahas and Suzukis are looking very strong indeed at Qatar.
That was borne out by Maverick Viñales’ media debrief. Once, those were glum affairs, in which Viñales would sullenly respond with nearly monosyllabic answers. His mood has improved since last year, especially since his results became more competitive in the second half of the season.
This year, he is positively upbeat: he used the word ‘happy’ ten times in three-and-a-half minutes speaking to reporters. Two years ago, the only time Viñales used the word ‘happy’ was when he preceded it with the words ‘we can’t be’.
Danilo Petrucci certainly believes that Viñales is the man to beat. “Maverick has been really, really fast, also in Sepang,” the Ducati Factory rider told reporters.
“I think at the moment, he is the rider in the best shape, absolutely, both in the single lap and race pace. He can ride in high 1’54, and I think nobody is able to do that.”
If there is one thing that we learned from the Sepang test, it is that the field is even closer this year. In Malaysia, 18 riders finished within a second of one another. That pattern has continued at Qatar, Pol Espargaro in fourteenth just 0.987 second behind the fastest man, Alex Rins.
As comparison, the KTM rider was the last rider within a second of the fastest man after the first day of this test in 2019, but then, there were just eight riders ahead of him, rather than thirteen. And there was a gap of nearly four tenths of a second between the riders in second and third last year. Not so in 2020.
But if the single lap times were close, the race pace was a lot less so. Maverick Viñales towered over the rest in terms of consistent pace, with only the Suzukis of Alex Rins and Joan Mir getting anywhere near the pace of the Monster Energy Yamaha rider.
Viñales laid down a real benchmark, with ten of his 47 laps in the 1’54s, which is under the race lap record. That included a run of ten laps, seven of which were 1’54s, five of which were consecutive. That is a rather terrifying race pace for the Spaniard to lay down, just two weeks ahead of the first race.
Viñales has a reputation for being the winter testing champion, frequently topping the timesheets, yet never quite able to convert that into a consistent championship challenge once the season gets underway.
But there is reason to think things are a little different this time: not only is the Yamaha M1 a good bit faster than it was last year, but Viñales himself has a different attitude.
From the humid heat of Malaysia to the cool desert night air, MotoGP enters the final test before the season kicks off in two weeks. The Qatar MotoGP test is something of an oddity, and hard to quantify.
It comes too late to make any major changes to the bike, yet plays a crucial role in exposing vital weaknesses in the factories’ MotoGP machines. It is a place where you won’t see any major updates being rolled out, but it is also the test where factories are looking to catch each other out.
With just two weeks to go to the start of the season, it is too late for anyone to understand and copy any brilliant new ideas before the start of the season.
The main purpose of the Qatar test is to verify engine configurations. All six factories rolled out new engines, updated over the winter break, at Sepang, but the Malaysian circuit is deceptive.
Hot tropical air, a big, wide track with very few tight, low-gear corners means that it is hard to tell whether additional power has pushed the engine over the fine line between aggressive and uncontrollable.
Episode 121 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is a WorldSBK show, as the production championship comes to us from Qatar..
As such, this means that we see Steve English joined by Gordon Ritchie on the mics, as they are our World Superbike reporting duo for the 2019 season.
Recording straight from trackside at the Losail Circuit, the guys give finish up the 2020 season for World Superbikes, and talk about the racing under the lights and in the desert.
Episode 94 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison, and David Emmett on the mics, as we cover the very eventful Qatar GP. MotoGP racing has finally started in earnest, and the two-wheeled action under the lights of Losail did not disappoint GP fans.
The action off the track was there as well, with teams protesting Ducati’s use of aerodynamic aids on its swingarm. The guys give this topic a lengthy discussion, looking at the protest from all the angles, as it will have huge implications for the MotoGP Championship.
For a place which 95% of the paddock hates going to, Qatar certainly knows how to make us want to come back. The area between Doha and the Losail International Circuit has been a mixture of noisy construction, omnipresent sand and dust, and an ever-changing and convoluted road system (the route to the track regularly and literally changing overnight) ever since I first went to a race there in 2009. But once at the circuit, the track layout serves up some of the best racing in the world.
Fittingly, the title sponsor for the Qatar round of MotoGP was VisitQatar, the Qatari tourist office aimed at stimulating inbound tourism to the Gulf peninsula. To be honest, the best thing VisitQatar could do to attract visitors to the country is just play all three of Sunday’s races on a loop. In the Moto3 race, the first eleven riders all finished within a second.
The first five riders in MotoGP finished within six tenths of a second. And the winning margin in all three races was five hundredths of a second or less. These were races decided by the width of a wheel, the winner in doubt all the way to the line.
The MotoGP race was a thrilling affair, a close race from start to finish, with wild passes as far as the eye can see. Riders jockeyed for position, vying to make their contesting strategies pay off.
Yet it still left some fans feeling empty, with the impression that they were being cheated of an even better race if the riders has been willing and able to go flat out as soon as the lights went out all the way to the end.