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If there is an axis around which every MotoGP season revolves, it has to be the sparkling jewels in the crown at Mugello and Barcelona.

From the glory of the Tuscan circuit, all high-speed and rolling hills set just an hour down the road from the heart of Italian sports motorcycles, the circuits heads to the magnificent track at Montmeló, just outside Barcelona.

A stone’s throw away from the cradle of Spanish motorcycling, and with a third or so of the grid (and the paddock regulars) having been born within an hour’s drive, Barcelona is MotoGP’s true home race.

Like Mugello, it is a track worthy of MotoGP, where the big bikes can properly stretch their legs. A massive front straight, exhaust noise booming between the great wall of a grandstand, with a tricky right-left chicane at the end of it.

Lots of long fast corners, allowing differing lines and offering up chances to try to pass. A couple of hard braking sections with more opportunities to pass.

After the chicane at Turn 1 and 2, the next favorite passing spot is into Turn 5, a tight left hander. If you’re feeling cheeky, you can have a sniff at Turn 7, though that can leave you open at Turn 9.

Turn 10 is prime passing territory, a fast approach with a long downhill braking section, before you flick it left round a long, wide corner. Care is needed, though, as it is easy to lose the front on the greasy off-camber corner, or run wide when passing.

That allows the rider you just passed to come back underneath. If the pass does not stick there, all is not quite lost, but it will require every gram of skill and bravery you can muster. Passes are possible at the final corner, as Valentino Rossi so stunningly demonstrated in 2009, but they are far from easy.

As expected, we didn’t have long to wait to find where Pol Espargaro would be working next season, as KTM has announced that it has signed a two-year contract with the Spanish rider, for the 2017 and 2018 MotoGP seasons.

Espargaro’s departure from the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 was announced earlier this morning, along with the news that his direct contract with Yamaha Racing would not be renewed.

The change from Yamaha to KTM won’t be a dramatic shift though, as Pol Espargaro will be joined by his current teammate, Bradley Smith, at the Austrian brand’s factory team as well.

KTM hopes to capitalize on both riders’ feedback on developing the KTM RC16 race bike, as well as their promising pace for strong results.

In any other year, the approaching weekend at Barcelona would see speculation around MotoGP’s Silly Season nearing its peak, with a spate of contracts signed in the weeks which follow. But this is not any other year.

Going into the 2016 Gran Premi de Catalunya at the Montmeló circuit, eight of the twelve factory seats open for next season have already been filled, while a ninth is just a matter of days away.

Of the remaining three, only the seat at Aprilia is truly up for grabs, the open seats at Suzuki and KTM already having riders penciled in. It is truly a bizarre year.

So where are we so far? The seats at the factory Ducati and Yamaha teams are all taken, with Andrea Dovizioso partnering Jorge Lorenzo at Ducati while Maverick Viñales joins Valentino Rossi at Movistar Yamaha.

Repsol Honda is as good as complete: Dani Pedrosa has already signed on for two more years, while Marc Márquez acknowledged at the press launch for the Barcelona MotoGP race that he would “definitely continue with this bike.” He will sign a contract with Honda again, but he wants it to be a “perfect” contract.

Suzuki, KTM, and Aprilia all have one rider signed already. Sam Lowes’ seat at Aprilia was settled already two years ago, when he signed for Gresini to race in Moto2 in 2016, and MotoGP for 2017 and 2018.

Bradley Smith was the next to slot into place, signing on for the first seat at KTM ahead of the first race of this year. And Andrea Iannone took over at ECSTAR Suzuki after Viñales announced he was leaving, and Ducati announced they were keeping Dovizioso.

The Ducati XDiavel is making impressions everywhere, most notably with the competition. First, we got word that BMW Motorrad was looking to build its own power cruiser, likely based off the company’s six-cylinder platform.

Now, it seems that Husqvarna wants in on the game, with the Swedish brand build its own tarmac monster off of the KTM 1290 Super Duke R platform. At least, that’s what these spy photos suggest to us.

The working title on this new machines for now seems to be the Husqvarna Vitpilen 1301, as it will likely fit into the on-road segment that Husqvarna has been carving out with bikes like the Vitpilen 401 and Vitpilen 701.

It looks like updates are coming to the KTM 1290 Super Duke R for the 2017 model year, if our spies can be believed. The changes appear to be mostly cosemetic, with the 2017 KTM 1290 Super Duke R sporting a new split headlight design and more cowling over the radiator.

One can expect changes to occur under the skin of the updated KTM 1290 Super Duke R. We would guess an upgrade to the brakes package, with the Bosch MSC “cornering ABS” coming to the Super Duke R, as it is already on the new Super Duke GT.

Yet once again, Ducati has topped Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) – showing the continued prowess of Ducati dealerships in the United States.

For those that aren’t familiar with Pied Piper, the company’s Prospect Satisfaction Index is sort of the Consumer Reports of dealership network experience, and acts as a bellwether as to how a brand is performing while facing the consumer.

As such, the PSI takes into account a mixture of “mystery shopper” experiences along with actual sales success for each brand, thus giving a mixture of subjective and objective measurement for a company’s dealer network.

Jerez is an important punctuation mark in almost every Grand Prix season. Whether it kicks off the year, as it did ten or more years ago, or whether it marks the return to Europe after the opening overseas rounds, the racing at Jerez is always memorable and remarkable.

Not always necessarily exciting, but always portentous, marking a turning point in the championship.

So it was this year. The MotoGP race saw a shift in momentum, and Valentino Rossi win in a way we haven’t seen since 2009. The Moto2 race solidified the positions of the three best riders in the class, and edged winner Sam Lowes towards a role as title favorite.

And in Moto3, Brad Binder broke his victory cherry with one of the most astounding performances I have ever seen in any class, let alone Moto3.

Put to the back of the grid for an infraction of the software homologation rules, Binder worked his way forward to the leading group by half distance, then left them for dead. It is a race they will be talking about for a long time.

Aside from Husqvarna bringing the Vitpilen & Svartpilen concepts into production, another gem to come from KTM’s investor report for 2015 is that the Austrian company is working on what it calls a revolutionary two-cylinder engine design.

KTM is surely referencing the parallel-twin project that has been spotted a few times by spy photographers (shown above, and featured after the jump), which is rumored to feature an 800cc lump.

We are not too sure what is so revolutionary about a parallel-twin power plant – my Two Enthusiasts Podcast co-host Quentin loves to go on rants about how much he hates the engine design – but what is interesting is to hear that KTM plans on using the engine as a platform for multiple models.

It has been suspected for some time that the Husqvarna brand would build production versions of its Vitpilen & Svartpilen concepts. Now we have official word of that, as KTM has confirmed its intent to make the Vitpilen 401 & Svartpilen 401 concepts into production bikes, in its 2015 investor annual report.

KTM doesn’t outline a timeframe for both models, but it has confirmed that Husqvarna will debut two Vitpilen models for the 2017 model year – something that we already knew.

What is not clear however is whether Husqvarna counts the Vitpilen 125 & Vitpilen 401 models as two separate releases, or one bird of a feather. If it is the latter, then we can expect the Vitpilen 701 to arrive for next year. As Martha Stewart says, that’s a good thing.

News out of Austria says that KTM is gearing up to pull its shares off the public stock market. The move comes from a request by Cross Industries, which is run by Stefan Pierer and is the largest shareholder of KTM’s stock, with 51.4% of the shares.

With Indian motorcycle manufacturer Bajaj owning another 48%, this means the announcement only affects roughly 0.6% of KTM’s overall stock, which is floating around on the Third Market (Dritter Markt) of the Vienna Stock Exchange.

According to KTM’s press release on the issue, Cross will offer €122.50 per share for the outstanding stock, which will then make KTM officially a privately held company.

Remember the Husqvarna TR650 Terra and the Husqvarna TR650 Strada? The ill-fated dual-sport models, along with the Husqvarna Nuda 900, came out just before Husqvarna was sold by BMW Motorrad to KTM’s Stefan Pierer.

In the USA, those models are now the responsibility of KTM North America, and as such Team Orange is recalling 1,015 units of the Terra/Strada duo.

The recall centers around bikes built between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2013, which stall for an reasons that are still being determined.