Only , Randy de Puniet is back on two wheels with his fractured tibia and fibula. Taking some laps at Circuit d’Ales on a Honda CBR1000RR, de Puniet’s track time is presumably to see if the Frenchman will be ready for the Czech GP this weekend.
No it’s not Victory Day, nor Valentine’s Day, and not even the next showing of the Vagina Monologues, the countdown to V-Day in the motorcycle world is the day that Valentino Rossi announces his move to Ducati in MotoGP racing. Slated to occur at Brno during the Czech GP because of a gentlemen’s agreement, Valentino Rossi’s announcement will be the crack in the doors that opens the flood gates of other announcements. Like a line of domino’s strewn about the MotoGP paddock, Rossi’s plans for 2011 are the tipping stone that sets the rest of the paddock in motion…and we’re sure he’d have it no other way.
Karel Abraham has just confirmed that he will be riding a Ducati Desmosedici GP11 in next year’s MotoGP Championship series. Who is Abraham you may be asking? Well he’s the son of Karel Abraham of course. Yeah…we didn’t think that would explain things very well either. Let’s put it this way, Abraham Sr. is the owner of the GP track at Brno, and Abraham Jr. is his son that has never won a race, let alone a podium, at any GP level race.
Swelling Ducati’s numbers on the MotoGP grid, Karel Abraham (Jr.) will be the sixth Ducati on the grid, which includes the two factory Ducatis of Marlboro Ducati, the two semi-factory Ducatis of Pramac Ducati, and the satellite Ducati of Team Aspar. That’s a lot of Desmos.
After breaking the news that Valentino Rossi signed a two-year contract with Ducati Corse, or as we like to refer to it: the worst kept secret in the MotoGP garage, we waited to see the official news of Rossi’s departure materialize after the weekend break, but to no avail. Knowing that our information was correct, we now understand why the announcement didn’t materialize when we expected it: because of a gentleman’s agreement between Ducati & Yamaha.
In exchange for delaying the announcement until after the American round at Laguna Seca (now slated for the Monday after racing at Brno), Yamaha is allowing Rossi to test the Ducati Desmosedici GP10 when MotoGP stops at Valencia at the end of the 2010 season.
Mika Kallio filled in for the absent Casey Stoner this weekend, and finally got his shot riding with the factory Ducati team. Kallio’s big break would be cut short though, as he had an “incident” with Marco Melandri on the second to last lap, which took both riders out of the race.
In a classic he said, she said, Kallio and Melandri have very different views on what exactly went down. Read the quotes below, watch the video above, and decide for yourself what you saw happen.
Big announcements came out of Brno this week, with the 2010 season starting to shape up with riders solidify positions for next year. With plenty of silly season ahead of us, we can at least reflect on the racing from the Czech Republic, which has once again shaped the MotoGP Championship standings.
After a two week hiatus, MotoGP is back to racing with a stop in the Czech Repubilc. Amongst the press conferences, and positioning for next year, the riders actually made it out to the track to qualify for Sunday’s race. The masters of two-wheels clearly used their break to hone their game, and for the first time a pole position record was broken since the introduction of the one-tire rule.
Ducati has just announced that Casey Stoner will miss the GP this weekend at Brno, as well as the next two races. The decision was made by Stoner and his medical staff back in Australia, who have been trying to track down the reason for the rider’s chronic fatigue.
Stoner will return to MotoGP racing in October, at the Portuguese GP. Until then, Mika Kallio will replace Stoner on the Ducati Marlboro factory bike, and WSBK rider Michel Fabrizio will take Kallio’s spot on the Pramac Ducati satellite team.