As the start of the MotoGP season grows closer, the news cycle is starting to ramp up.
Websites are starting to be able to report on things that are actually happening, rather than desperately thrashing around looking for filler content. So here’s a round-up of the latest developments in MotoGP.
The danger with making predictions is that it can go horribly wrong. Yesterday, I confidently predicted that it would remain dry all weekend. That prediction lasted until the end of Moto3 FP1.
As the final minute approached, the dark clouds which had been slowly creeping up on the Circuito Ricardo Tormo started to sprinkle the track with rain. Just a little at first, then growing heavier once MotoGP got underway.
The rain stopped during the Moto2 session, leaving the track wet throughout (and giving Sam Lowes the opportunity to suffer a horrible highside and injure his right foot), the cool, overcast weather meaning the track dried out quite slowly.
“This track is special.” Alex Rins summed up what most of the MotoGP riders, and indeed, almost anyone who has raced a motorcycle, think of the Circuit van Drenthe, the official name of the TT Circuit, or as most fans around the world know it, Assen. “One of my favorite tracks,” is how championship leader Fabio Quartararo described it.
Pecco Bagnaia loves it so much he has a tattoo of the circuit on his arm. “I really like the layout of this track,” the Ducati Lenovo Team rider told us. He had good reason to like the layout, as Assen has been a happy hunting ground for him.
“My first victory, the best weekend of my career in Moto2 here, when I was first in all the sessions and in the race,” Bagnaia told. Reason enough to create an indelible reminder of the occasion on his own body.
“Assen is a great place,” Valentino Rossi said. “It is the track that more or less every rider loves because, first of all, it is the track with the most history in motorcycle racing and was on the calendar from the beginning, and secondly, the layout is fantastic. Now it is modified but it remains the taste of the old Assen and the ride here is always a great pleasure.”
One might accuse Rossi of being biased, having been made an honorary citizen of the city of Assen by the Mayor, Marco Out. But the fact that it was almost impossible to find a dissenting voice suggests he was not lying.
As expected, Valentino Rossi’s Aramco Racing Team VR46 MotoGP squad will be on Ducati machinery when it comes into the premier class next season.
Considered widely to be the best bike on the grid, and with Ducati eager to expand its ranks in the grand prix class, the leasing of Italian machines by VR46 was widely tipped, despite Rossi’s links to Yamaha.
As such, the Saudi-funded race team has a three-year contract with Ducati Corse for Desmosedici race bikes, which will span the 2022-2024 seasons, while the Saudi government has a five-year deal with VR46.
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.
There is good news and bad news for MotoGP. The good news is that the VR46 team will, as expected, make the full-time leap to the premier class for 2022, replacing the departing Esponsorama team.
The VR46 team has signed a five-year deal with Dorna to compete in MotoGP during the next contract period, from 2022-2026.
Which bikes the VR46 team will use is still to be determined. The choice appears to be between Ducati and Aprilia, with a decision to be made in the next month or so.
Given that VR46 are already fielding Luca Marini in MotoGP via a collaboration agreement with the Esponsorama squad, alongside Enea Bastianini, the most logical step would be for the team to continue working with Ducati.
It is no secret that motorcycle racers at the top of the sport use flat track as a way to hone their skills during the season. The practice dates all the way back to Kenny Roberts Sr., and has stayed in the grand prix paddock ever since.
Like all great champions though, Valentino Rossi has taken things to the next level, building his own private flat track course near his home in Tavullia, Italy.
The first step toward the 2022 MotoGP grid has taken place. With a new five-year contract period between Dorna, the manufacturers, and IRTA as representative of the teams starting in 2022, grid slots are open for application once again.
Gresini Racing, led by Fausto Gresini, is to separate from Aprilia and become an independent team once again, they announced in a press release.
I do not make a habit of marking the birthdays of motorcycle racers, but Valentino Rossi’s 40th is worthy of an exception to my self-imposed rule. His 40th birthday is clearly a milestone, though any birthday can hardly be regarded as an achievement. To reach his 40th birthday, all Rossi had to do was keep living.
But of course, the fuss being made of Valentino Rossi’s 40th birthday is not because of the age he has reached. It is because he reaches the age of 40 a few months after having finished third in the 2018 MotoGP championship, racking up five podiums and a pole position along the way. It is because the media, his fans, and Rossi himself regard that as a disappointing season.
It is because he enters his 24th season of Grand Prix racing, and his 20th in the premier class, the first year of a two-year contract which will see him racing until the age of 41 at least.
It is because he is one of the leading favorites to wrestle the MotoGP crown from reigning champion Marc Márquez (15 years younger), along with Jorge Lorenzo (9 years younger), Andrea Dovizioso (8 years younger), Maverick Viñales (16 years younger).
And he will race against, and be expected to beat, Franco Morbidelli (16 years younger) and Pecco Bagnaia (18 years younger), two riders who enter MotoGP thanks in large part to the tutelage and support they have received from the VR46 Riders Academy, the scheme set up by Rossi to nurture young talent where the Italian motorcycling federation FMI were falling so woefully short.
Another San Marino GP means that we have another special helmet design from Valentino Rossi. Celebrating his home grand prix, The Doctor this time riffs on the movie Back to the Future, borrowing the movie’s typeface for his “Back to Misano” title, and throwing a nod to the DeLoren time machine.
The new design for the Rossi’s helmet is also a reference to last year’s edition of the San Marino GP, which Rossi had to miss because of a training incident where he broke his tibia and fibula bones.
