Toprak Razgatlioglu is to remain in WorldSBK for two more seasons. The Turkish rider agreed a deal with Yamaha that will see him continue with the factory World Superbike squad through the 2023 season.
With the news coming out on Saturday, talk of Maverick Viñales leaving the Yamaha camp was rampant in the MotoGP paddock.
Tipped widely to be headed to the Aprilia Racing garage for the 2022 season, Viñales’ woes on the Japanese squad have reached a zenith in their difficulties, shown clearly at the Sachsenring round last weekend.
The Spaniard’s experience on the Yamaha YZR-M1 has been mercurial, however, also shown clearly by this weekend’s result at Assen.
Nonetheless, following Maverick Viñales‘ request, Yamaha has agreed to put an early end to their current two-year contract.
Today, the Gresini Racing Team announced that their immediate future lies with Ducati.
The Italian team, now run by Nadia Padovani, the widow of team’s founder Fausto Gresini, will lease Ducati Desmosedici machines from the Bologna factory for the 2022 and 2023 MotoGP seasons.
Another seat in the MotoGP is spoken for in the 2021 Silly Season, as Remy Gardner will be making the step from the Moto2 paddock into the premier class.
Signing with KTM, Gardner will find his rookie season inside the satellite Tech3 squad, though it remains to be seen which of the current Tech3 riders will be making way for the young Australian.
2021 is proving to be a more normal year than last year in many different ways.
One of those is the fact that in addition to racing at the more traditional MotoGP tracks, MotoGP’s Silly Season is kicking off pretty much on schedule.
Mugello is traditionally the point in the season at which teams and factories start to think about next year, and 2021 is no exception.
Winning two MotoGP races back-to-back has proved to good fortune for Jack Miller, as the Australian racer has just inked a deal with Ducati Corse that sees him staying on the factory team through the 2022 season.
While Miller was likely to see his contract renewed for the next season, his previous one-year contract was certainly some matter of concern for the 26-year-old.
Around this time in a normal year, we would be back from the launch of a couple of the MotoGP manufacturers, and looking forward to a couple more as we prepared to travel to Sepang for the first test of the year. But this is not a normal year, of course. Nor was last year, for that matter.
So instead of packing my bags in preparation of the test at Sepang – originally scheduled for February 19th-21st – I, like the rest of the media, are checking our microphones and internet connections to get ready to do the MotoGP launch season from home.
And not just the launch season: in all probability, the media won’t be allowed to physically attend a MotoGP race for the first half of the 2021 season at the very least. But at least we will have a 2021 MotoGP season.
The 2021 MotoGP grid is finally complete. Or complete-ish, anyway. Aprilia has finally made a decision on their second rider for 2021, and their decision is that they will decide after the winter tests at Sepang and Qatar have finished.
Both Lorenzo Savadori and Bradley Smith have been signed for 2021, to fill the roles of second contracted MotoGP rider alongside Aleix Espargaro, and MotoGP test rider.
It is news that we have been expecting going into the Valencia GP, and today it became real, as Cal Crutchlow will leave his full-time racing job for duties as Yamaha’s MotoGP test rider next season.
Andrea Dovizioso’s future is becoming increasingly clear, and his choices are going to have a knock on effect for the test rider market.
According to a report from Motorsport.com‘s Oriol Puigdemont, Dovizioso has decided to take a sabbatical and spend a year racing motocross, in the hope of making a return to MotoGP in 2022.
The penultimate piece of the 2021 MotoGP rider puzzle has fallen into place.
As has long been reported, Luca Marini and Enea Bastianini will be riding for the Avintia Ducati team next year. The young Italian pairing will be riding updated Ducati GP19s, with strong support from Ducati.
It was an open secret that Bastianini would be moving up to MotoGP after the Italian Moto2 rider announced as much at Misano in September.
Marini’s move was also long-anticipated, as protracted negotiations continued over how the VR46 Racing structure would replace the funding lost by replacing Tito Rabat, who had a contract with Avintia for 2021.
Those details took a long time to sort out, but are finally settled.