Andrea Dovizioso will not complete the 2022 MotoGP season. Today, Yamaha announced that the Italian had decided to end his career at Misano, his home race (Dovizioso is from Forlì, some 70 kilometers away).
Yamaha official test rider Cal Crutchlow will take Dovizioso’s place in the RNF WithU Yamaha team for the remainder of the 2022 season.
Valentino Rossi has announced that he is to retire from MotoGP racing at the end of the 2021 season. The legendary Italian has decided to call it a day after 26 seasons in Grand Prix racing, as results were becoming more difficult to come by.
Jorge Lorenzo is set to retire from motorcycle racing. The 32-year-old Spaniard has decided to end his career as a result of the disastrous season at Repsol Honda, hampered by extreme crashes and severe injury, and never having become comfortable on the bike.
“I always thought that there are four significant days for a rider,” Lorenzo told a specially convened press conference at Valencia. “The first is you first race, the second your first win and then your first world championship – not everyone can win a world championship but some of us made it – and then the day you retire.”
The decision to retire came because he could no longer summon the required energy to continue at the level which was necessary. “Everything started when I was three years old, almost 30 years of complete dedication to my sport,” Lorenzo said.
“People who work with me know how much of a perfectionist I am, how much energy and intensity I have always put into my sport.”
“This level of perfectionism requires a lot of motivation, that is why after nine years at Yamaha – so wonderful, probably the best years that I enjoyed in my career – I felt that I needed a change, if I wanted to keep this full commitment to my sport.”
“That’s why I wanted to move to Ducati, it gave me a big boost of motivation and even though the results were very bad, I used the motivation to not give up and keep fighting until I achieved this beautiful Mugello victory in front of all the Ducati fans.”
When it was announced that Jorge Lorenzo would be holding a special press conference at 3pm, the Thursday before the start of the Valencia round for MotoGP, and that Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta would be talking at the media event as well, the news could only mean one thing: Jorge Lorenzo was about to announce his retirement from the MotoGP Championship.
It is true what they say about smoke and fire, and today the smoke cleared for an announcement from the man himself, telling a packed press conference room that “this will be my last race in MotoGP” and his last race-weekend as a professional rider.
Confirming the news we reported yesterday, Marco Melandri has made his retirement announcement official. As such, the 36-year-old Italian will hang up his leathers for good, at the end of this year’s WorldSBK Championship season.
Melandri’s career spans three decades of racing, and includes some impressive feats, but his results this season have surely been the deciding factor on today’s announcement.
Currently ninth in the WorldSBK Championship standings, Melandri’s season has seen high points at Phillip Island and Jerez, but has otherwise been a forgettable affair. This surely has been the cause for Melandri’s lack of motivation to continue racing.
The MotoGP website is currently counting down to a live press conference that will feature Dani Pedrosa. The time on the clock is T-minus 15 hours, and at T-minus 15 hours plus one minute, the MotoGP paddock expects the 32-year-old to announce his retirement from motorcycle racing.
The rumors leading up to the German GP have gone both ways for Pedrosa, with some suggesting that the Spaniard would retire this season, while others thought he would take a ride on the newly formed Petronas Yamaha team.
We expected an announcement, one way or another, from Pedrosa first at the Catalan GP, then at the Dutch TT, but now we know that Germany will be the spot – a track that Pedrosa has carved out as one of his places of two-wheeled dominance.
To that end, Roadracing World has published that their sources have revealed to them that Pedrosa’s plan is to end his career at the end of the 2018 season, rather than try his hand on the satellite Yamaha in 2019.
In the World Supersport Championship, one name has dominated the results list for the past decade: Kenan Sofuo?lu. This is because the Turkish rider has posted five championship titles since he entered the class, along with 43 race wins in the WorldSSP class.
And now, the Kawasaki rider is ready to hang up his spurs, announcing that he will retire from motorcycle racing, after the WorldSBK paddock races in Imola this coming weekend.
Never fully recovering from a crash he sustained at Phillip Island during the 2015 season, Sofuo?lu broke his hip during a crash at Magny-Cours last season, and as a result the 33-year-old narrowly missed out on his sixth WorldSSP title.
Sofuo?lu has talked many times about his retirement from racing, and now with his family, he decided it was time to move on from racing motorcycles.
At the San Marino GP today, MotoGP officially retired the use of #58, giving honor to Marco Simoncelli, who died almost five years ago while racing in the Malaysian GP at Sepang.
Of course, this weekend’s stop on the MotoGP Championship calendar actually takes place at the Misano World Circuit, which changed its official name to the the “Misano World Circuit – Marco Simoncelli” in order to honor the fallen racer.
This makes the San Marino GP a fitting venue for Simoncelli’s number to be retired, and of course the weekend’s events take place in front of a home crowd, with Simoncelli born just a few miles away on the coast, in Cattolica.
Perhaps one of the most well known names worldwide for motorcycle stunt riding, Chris Pfeiffer has decided to retire from the sport. This marks an end to the 45-years-old’s 20-year career, which has seen him perform around the world at thousands of shows.
Largely responsible for legitimizing stunt riding beyond just hooligan antics, the BMW-sponsored Red Bull rider announced his retirement on his Facebook page yesterday, much to the dismay of 270,000+ followers.
One of the greats in motorcycling, Pfeiffer says he is leaving stunting to the next generation of riders. His message to fans is after the jump.
When Marc Coma hinted at a return to the Dakar Rally for 2016, everyone assumed it would be on a bike and with KTM. The famous Spanish rally-raid racer has other plans now, announcing his retirement from the sport, and also that he will begin working as a Sporting Director for the Dakar Rally.
This makes the announcement a double-shock, one because we expected to see Coma vying for his sixth Dakar Rally win, and two because it was expected that when he did stop racing motorbikes, he would follow the path by many competitors, and race in the four-wheel classes.
There has been a lot of talk around Guy Martin’s 2015 Isle of Man TT bid, with several outlets speculating with various amounts of reliability as to whether this will be the charismatic rider’s last TT.
The latest publication to add fuel to the fire is Scunthorpe Telegraph, a local English paper, which quotes Martin in a Q&A session as saying, “I’ll go there whatever happens. Whatever I do I’ll give it 100%. If I go and finish 20th I still know I’ve done my best. It’s the last time I’m doing it.”
“Let’s be honest, it would be mint to win. It would be great, I love motorbikes,” Martin added. “But it is only motorbikes. Tomorrow is another day. I’ve this sort of mindset – it is what it is.”