GasGas, the iconic Spanish motorcycle brand, bought by the Pierer Mobility Group and KTM, is to enter MotoGP with the Tech3 team.
From 2023, Tech3 will become the GasGas Factory Racing Team, with Pol Espargaro confirmed as one of their riders. The team will compete with factory-backed KTM RC16s branded under the GasGas name.
South Africa is an amazing country, and well worth the visit for the wildlife alone (mind the Hippos though, they’re faster than they look).
But for two-wheeled fans, we cannot recommend enough visiting the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit and spinning a few laps. It’s divine, and one of motorsports best-kept secrets.
A beautiful sweeping track that flows with elevation, Kyalami is in my Top 5 tracks to ride around the world, and it should be on your bucket list as well. It’s certainly a circuit we don’t talk about enough.
Part of the reason for that is because it has been a long time since Kyalami has seen international motorcycle racing on its apexes.
Interestingly enough though, with the African track getting updates in 2015, the new layout technically doesn’t have an established lap record. That’s where Brad Binder and Red Bull come into the equation.
There is a bittersweet irony to motorcycle racing. On the one hand, we want the racing to be as safe as it can possibly be.
On the other, the element of risk, the thrill of watching a rider wrestle a motorcycle at very high speed on the edge of adhesion, teetering on the brink of disaster, is part of the appeal. Racing a motorcycle is difficult, and because the rider sits aboard the bike, in full view, it is obvious even to the most casual observer just how difficult it is.
Which brings me to the Red Bull Ring. The circuit at Spielberg is simple, and incredibly dangerous, because the bikes spend so much time either pulling hard in high gear, or braking hard into tight corners.
Episode 291 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees us looking ahead to the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring.
On the mics, we have the full crew of Steve English, Adam Wheeler, David Emmett, and Neil Morrison as they talk from the road about the next MotoGP round.
With the summer break over, MotoGP is set to resume at Silverstone. Was a five-week break a long time? “It was short!” Pol Espargaro insisted.
He would say that, though, having ended the first half of the season with a cracked rib and a couple of disastrous weekends.
“I think it was the first time I enjoyed a break so much, because I was mentally and physically quite injured, and I needed to stop, to take a deep breath.”
The rest of the field were not quite as emphatic as Espargaro, but they all said that having a proper break, rather than just three weeks instead of two between races, made a difference. They returned refreshed, motivated, and genuinely keen to get back on a MotoGP bike.
Andrea Dovizioso will not complete the 2022 MotoGP season. Today, Yamaha announced that the Italian had decided to end his career at Misano, his home race (Dovizioso is from Forlì, some 70 kilometers away).
Yamaha official test rider Cal Crutchlow will take Dovizioso’s place in the RNF WithU Yamaha team for the remainder of the 2022 season.
The official announcement that Alex Rins has signed a two-year deal with the LCR Honda team means that the 2023 MotoGP grid is now officially half full. The factory Yamaha, KTM, and Aprilia seats are all confirmed, as is the Gresini Ducati team.
There has been official confirmation of one side of the Repsol Honda, Ducati Factory, and LCR Honda teams.
Does that mean that the remaining 11 seats are still wide open? Not all of them. There are some which are sure bets, while others are still very much open.
Alex Rins is to race for the LCR Honda team for the next two years. The official announcement only came today, but that Rins would end up at LCR was a foregone conclusion since the MotoGP race at Assen, where the Spaniard had admitted as much.
“We are almost done and everybody can imagine where I will go next year with the exit of Alex Marquez going to Gresini,” Rins had told us on the Sunday night of the Assen race.
Pecco Bagnaia has been involved in a car crash while vacationing on the Spanish island of Ibiza, which occurred while he was under the influence of alcohol.
According to local Spanish media, Bagnaia crashed the car he was driving at a roundabout, losing control when he caught a wheel in a ditch.
Though no other vehicles were involved, when the police arrived, Bagnaia failed a breath test, showing a blood alcohol level of 0.87g/l. Spanish law states that the legal limit in a breath test is 0.25 g/l, while the limit for a blood test is 0.5 g/l.
Episode 285 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees us covering the Dutch TT at The Cathedral, in Assen.
On the mics, we have the full crew of Steve English, David Emmett, and Neil Morrison as they look at the events of the Dutch round, and the aftermath of Fabio Quartararo’s crash with Aleix Espargaro.
The guys get the conversation started by covering the plethora of rider-market news that happened at The Cathedral, especially the news concerning Alex Marquez and Alex Rins.
We of course have to give considerable time to Aleix Espargaro’s race, after he recouped disaster from Quartararo’s crash, and made his way to a heroic last-corner pass for fourth place.
Espargaro is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the MotoGP paddock, and Aprilia had a strong showing in Holland with Maverick Viñales on the podium as well.Ada
The guys then look at the fate of KTM at Assen, and we have an interview with Brad Binder, as he talks to our man, Adam Wheeler.
The show’s last topic consists of a discussion on why the Ducati is so good, and what an incredible performance it was from Marco Bezzecchi to grab his first podium. Naturally, we finish off with our winners and losers.
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Source: SoundCloud
Is the 2022 Yamaha M1 a good MotoGP bike? It is a simple question with a simple answer: it depends. If Fabio Quartararo is riding it, it is good enough to have won two races, get on the podium in three others, and lead the 2022 MotoGP championship by 22 points.
But if anyone other than Fabio Quartararo is riding it, it is not quite so good. The best result by the trio of Franco Morbidelli, Andrea Dovizioso, and Darryn Binder is a seventh place, by Morbidelli at Mandalika. That seventh place is one of only two top tens for the other Yamahas, Darryn Binder being the other at the same race.
Together, Morbidelli, Dovizioso, and Binder have scored a grand total of 40 points. Fabio Quartararo has 147, over three times as many. And he has never finished behind any of the other Yamahas throughout the season.
In fact, the closest any other Yamaha rider has gotten to Quartararo is Franco Morbidelli’s eleventh place, two places behind his teammate, at the season opener at Qatar. Since then, Quartararo and the other Yamaha riders have been operating on different planets.