So far, the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the 2020 MotoGP season has been to delay everything. But today, we had the first cancelations.
The races at the Sachsenring in Germany, Assen in the Netherlands, and the Kymiring in Finland have all been canceled for 2020.
The 2020 world championship motorcycle racing calendars continue to slide due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday evening, it became apparent that there will be no racing in either MotoGP or WorldSBK before the end of June.
After last Wednesday’s announcement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that large-scale events would be banned in Germany through August 31st, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte extended the ban on large-scale events in The Netherlands to September 1st.
These two announcements have a direct bearing on the WorldSBK and MotoGP calendars.
The COVID-19 outbreak has caused further delay in the WorldSBK calendar. Today, it was announced that the Dutch round of WorldSBK, due to be held at Assen on the weekend of April 19th, has been postponed, and pushed back to August.
The postponement of the Assen round became inevitable on Monday night, after the Dutch government extended its ban on public events until June 1st, and tightened restrictions on travel and gatherings.
Episode 1076 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison and David Emmett on the microphones, as we discuss the happenings at the Dutch TT in Assen, The Netherlands.
Our dynamic duo is joined on this episode by Adam Wheeler, from the magazine On-Track Off-Road, and once again he brings his great insights to the table for our show.
Is there still such a thing as a Honda track, a Yamaha track, or a Ducati track (or even a Suzuki track)? Once upon a time, it seemed like there was. MotoGP would go to Indianapolis, and you knew that a Honda would win. Go to Mugello, and chances are, a Yamaha would emerge victorious.
In the press room, we would spend hours trying to decipher why one bike or another would win at a particular track. Was it temperature which counted? We suspected that, but then a Yamaha or a Honda would win at a cold track one week, and a hot track the next. Was it the layout or the type of corner that mattered?
Hondas dominated the stop-and-go layout of Motegi, and then got destroyed by the Yamahas at the stop-and-go layout of Le Mans. In the end, we figured it all came down to grip: in low grip conditions, the Hondas were quick; when there was plenty of grip, the Yamahas were unbeatable.
That disappeared in recent years, killed by the technical developments which led up to the switch to Michelin tires. 1000cc engines, spec electronics, and the regulations which have seen the bikes grow ever closer in performance.
With the differences between the machines so small, other factors had a greater impact on results than just the character of the bike. No longer can you predict a winner based on which bike they are on.
It has been a bad few weeks for Jorge Lorenzo. During the Barcelona race, he lost the front and wiped out three of his rivals (or rather, three of Marc Márquez’ rivals), Maverick Viñales, Andrea Dovizioso, and Valentino Rossi.
The next day at the test, on an out lap, he launched the bike at Turn 9, suffering a huge crash and causing himself a lot of pain.
Eleven days later, and a relatively normal crash in Assen saw him bang himself up very badly. Lorenzo lost the front going into the fast left at Ruskenhoek during FP1, not an uncommon occurrence.
The problem was he was doing over 200 km/h, so when he hit the gravel he started to tumble, not quite ragdolling through the stones, banging his chest and his back as he went.
The consequence of the crash is severe. So severe, it forced Repsol Honda team manager Alberto Puig to have to talk to the media, something Puig tries to avoid as much as possible (and being team manager means he can avoid it an awful lot).
“Basically I am here to explain about his condition,” Puig said. “Normally I am never here. So I am just here to tell you the situation…and probably you already know. So I will re-confirm.”
Four weeks after press releases full of rolling Tuscan hills, the cliché machine is running out release after release containing the phrase “The Cathedral of Speed”.
There are of course good reasons to employ a cliché (and press releases usually benefit from trite language, as their objective is to promote the team and its sponsors, rather than the literary skills of press officers), but to call Assen the Cathedral of Speed is to raise the question of whether it still really deserves that moniker.
Much has changed since the first ever Dutch TT in 1925. The first thing that changed was the very next year, in 1926. The first circuit ran over public roads between the villages of Rolde, Borger, and Schoonloo, but the council in Borger refused to pave one of the sand roads on the original course.
So in 1926, the race was moved to Assen, run between the villages of De Haar, Hooghalen, and Laaghalerveen to the south of the city of Assen.
Since then, the track has been reduced and reshaped a number of times over the years, losing a little bit of its glory each time it was shortened. The last time it was cut was in 2006, when the North Loop was excised to allow the land to be sold to fortify the circuit’s coffers.
That, perhaps, was a cut too far. The North Loop section was stunning: fast, flowing, challenging, immensely rewarding if you got it right, punishing if you got it wrong.
What replaced it is a tight little hook, a sequence of right-handers leading on towards the sharp Strubben hairpin. A shadow of its former self.
Episode 100 (woohoo! one hundred shows!) of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is a WorldSBK show. As such, this means that we see Steve English joined by Gordon Ritchie on the mics, as they are now our WorldSBK reporting duo for the 2019 season.
Recording straight from The Netherlands, the guys talk about the on-track action at Assen, where once again (how many times have we said that now?) it was a sweep by Alvaro Bautista and the factory-spec Ducati Panigale V4 R race bike.
This race weekend came with a twist though, as it snowed during Saturday’s events, which caused a cancellation of the day’s World Superbike races.
As such there is a limited amount to discuss, so we recruited Ducati rider Chaz Davies to the microphones for an interesting interview that you won’t want to miss.
While the MotoGP paddock was busy in Austin, Texas dealing with the rain, the WorldSBK riders were contending with their own weather, as the snow halted racing activities on Saturday.
Thankfully, the Sunday brought better weather, and WorldSBK racing fans were treated to the show that the richly deserved.
Assen is perhaps one of the most revered tracks on the World Superbike Championship schedule, even after changes to the circuit removed some of its best turns.
The Cathedral always provides good racing, and this outing was no different, including a photo-finish with local hero Michael van der Mark.
Helping us relive the magic is photographer Stephen McClements, with this ample gallery of WorldSBK photos from The Netherlands. We hope you enjoy them!
A day full of racing, that is what the fans at Assen got this Sunday – thanks in no part to the snow that fell on the Saturday before. Back on the track and ready to ride, WorldSBK fans were treated to some good racing at The Cathedral, despite the names in the Top 3 not changing.
If there is on thing that we have learned from the 2019 season so far, it is that the assumptions from 2018 and before are completely up for grabs. The other lesson is that the Ducati Panigale V4 R is the real deal.
The Netherlands is known best for its rain, tulips, and windmills, but on Saturday at Assen it was the snow that had everyone talking.
Leading ultimately to the cancelation of the day’s races, the snow was certainly a setback for the paddock, though also quite the spectacle.