Dorna and the MotoGP rider’s Safety Commission met in Sepang this past Friday before the Malaysian GP to talk about the upcoming 2010 season, and in particular the addition of the Hungarian Balatonring to the schedule. While Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta believes the track will be completed on-time for its MotoGP debute, Satefy Comission Founding Member, Loris Capirossi, disagrees. Putting his money where his mouth is, Capirossi has bet Ezpeleta on the Hungarian tracks completion.
Although initial reports suggested that John Hopkins went relatively unscathed after his crash at the Nürburgring (video above), .
The last day of testing at Phillip Island has ended with Ducati on top of the time board. After losing Troy Bayliss to retirement last year, Michel Fabrizio and Noriyuki Haga have stepped up to show that they are ready to defend the Ducati crown. Fabrizio ended the day the fastest, with a time of 1’32.19 it was well under Bayliss’ winning lap time from last year’s race. Team mate Haga was not far behind, just fractionally ahead of new boy Ben Spies. The American took a second off his time from yesterday, on only the second day of riding at the track.
.
There were 876 crashes this past GP season. That’s a lot.
Between free practices, qualifying, and races, the 125cc, 250cc and MotoGP series racked up 30% more crashes than last year, with an average of 48 crashes for each race weekend. It should be noted that this was the wettest season in the history of the series, with 16 out of 18 race weekends having at least one day of rain in the official three days of racing. While the rain certainly is a factor, it should also be noted that Randy de Puniet crashed 22 times this season, and only took his shirt off twice.
The crash numbers for the past seasons for the quant-jocks in the room:
1999 – 565
2000 – 633
2001 – 634
2002 – 646
2003 – 705
2004 – 706
2005 – 737
2006 – 647
2007 – 672
2008 – 876
Source: GPone
At least Randy looks really, really, really ridiculously good looking when he crashes.
The 2009 season has started. Well…sort of. The champagne only stopped flowing moments ago for Valentino Rossi, but work for the 2009 season waits for no man. With more rider and team shakeups than the Sunday morning Times word search, the 2009 MotoGP teams (sans Tech3) have begun shaking out their new bikes, and for some, their new riders.
Read more after the jump.
Well that’s it folks, the MotoGP season is over. Not to spoil it, but Randy de Puniet was not the come-from-behind points winner for the rider’s cup. Click on the jump to see every dirty spoiler.