Marc Marquez has fractured his upper right arm in a highside during the Jerez race.
For a stunning and heartrending reminder of just how difficult and delicate the 2020 MotoGP season is going to be, see Alex Rins’ huge crash at Turn 11 during qualifying on Saturday at Jerez.
The Suzuki Ecstar rider lost the front at one of the fastest and most treacherous corners of the circuit, and was forced to pick the bike up to try and save it.
But as he entered the gravel trap, he realized he was traveling too fast, and decided to drop the bike to avoid hitting the barrier on the outside of the corner.
That is never an easy maneuver at speeds well over 170 km/h, and Rins fell badly in the attempt.
Be careful what you wish for. For four months, MotoGP riders sat at home and twiddled their thumbs, hoping for the racing to return. They got their wish, but there was a catch: the season opener is in Jerez, in July, in the withering heat of an Andalusian summer.
It was positively punishing on track, especially in the afternoon, once track temperatures started to creep into the mid 50s °C. The track gets greasy, and that catches riders out, especially rookies. Alex Márquez was one such rider: the Repsol Honda rider tucked the front at Turn 8, disrupting the plan for the session.
“In the crash, I was too optimistic, coming from the morning with a good feeling on track, you know,” the younger Márquez brother told us. “I made a rookie mistake.
The grip changed quite a lot from the morning to the afternoon. I was a little bit wide in the entry, but I was on a good lap so I tried to go back to the right line but I was a with a little bit too much lean angle on a dirty surface, and then the front was just closed.”
Understanding how the heat affected the track was the key to the afternoon. The track has plenty of grip when temperatures are in the 30s and 40s°C, but once the mercury creeps past 50°C, the grip goes away, turning the MotoGP bikes into a real handful.
By the end of FP1, track temperatures had hit 40°C. By the start of FP2, the track temperature was already 54°C, and rising.
Racing is back, at last. After a period of four months, in which the COVID-19 pandemic took us on a journey from concern through despair and back to hope again, the MotoGP paddock is busy once again, preparing for a weekend of on-track action.
Not as busy as otherwise, perhaps, the atmosphere is very different from a normal weekend, with no fans, no VIPs, no guests, no media, and half of the team members working from home.
But the trucks are behind the garages, the riders are in their leathers, and the bikes are back on track.
So what should we be looking out for this weekend, now that racing has returned? Here are a few things to keep an eye on at this critical opening race.
Episode 153 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Steve English talking shop about the single-day MotoGP test at Jerez, and also giving us a glimpse into what to expect at the season-opening round in Spain.
Fabio Quartararo and Sergio Garcia have both been handed penalties for using unauthorized machines to practice on track. The pair have been punished by being forced to miss the first 20 minutes of FP1 when action resumes on Friday.
The two were punished for separate incidents, Garcia for riding at Aragon in June, Quartararo for riding at Paul Ricard in the same month.
It is hard to believe, but it is here at last. After a layoff of over four months due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Grand Prix racing motorcycles will be back on track in just a few hours time.
At first it seemed like there would be no racing at all in MotoGP, as race after race was canceled, but as the pandemic started to burn itself out in Spain and Italy, Dorna and the FIM started searching for a way ahead.
As the weeks passed, the cancellations ceased, and plans were laid for a new season. Hugely curtailed, and limited to just a handful of tracks, and with the way the series would be run radically reconfigured to make it as safe as possible.
13 races to be held over 18 weekends, teams limited to a much smaller presence, a limited number of TV crews, and journalists excluded entirely. Everything to avoid MotoGP becoming a catalyst for the further spread of the disease, and races having to be canceled once again.
So on Wednesday, bikes take the track again for a day of testing for all four classes – MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, and MotoE – before the season kicks off in earnest again on Friday. On Sunday, we should be racing again, at last.
As the MotoGP Championship gears up for its first race of the 2020 season this coming weekend, we get a bevy of announcements from Jerez, Spain.
The first item is that Franco Morbidelli will be continuing with the Petronas Yamaha squad, signing a two-year contract with the satellite Yamaha team. This surprised no one.
More surprising was the silence about the future of Valentino Rossi, as the Italian is expected to announce his move to the Petronas Yamaha garage this week. However, The Doctor may have held his tongue because of the news that was coming from the Honda contingency.
Confirming the paddock rumors, HRC announced that it had signed Pol Espargaro to the Repsol Honda squad on a two-year deal, thus displacing Alex Marquez from the factory-backed team before the Spaniard had turned a single racing wheel with the Japanese manufacturer.
The good news was that Dorna had submitted a plan to hold two races in Jerez on the 19th and 26th of July, and that the authorities in Andalusia and the city of Jerez had supported the plan.
But many obstacles remained in the path to turning the plan into reality. Now, nearly three weeks later, those obstacles are starting to disappear.
The biggest obstacle was removed on Monday, when the Spanish government announced that the enforced quarantine on anyone entering the country would be lifted from July 1st.
The German round of WorldSBK at Oschersleben has now officially been canceled.
With Germany still imposing restrictions due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and large-scale events being banned in the country until August 31st, it was clear that the race would have to be postponed at the very least.
When postponement proved not to be possible, cancellation was the only option which remained. In its place, Dorna is planning to hold a round of WorldSBK in Jerez.
The return of World Championship racing took a big step towards reality on Thursday morning.
At a teleconference, Dorna, the regional government of Andalusia, and the city council of Jerez agreed on conditions to hold two MotoGP races and a WorldSBK round at the Jerez circuit.
The conditions would include a vastly reduced paddock, and holding the races behind closed doors, with no fans present. Those conditions have been turned into a proposal and submitted to the Spanish government for consideration.