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Thursday Summary at Assen: It’s Not As Close As It Looks

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The times were close after the first day of practice, closer than they have been for a very long time. Just 0.471 seconds separates the top 11 MotoGP prototypes (Karel Abraham is barely fit enough to ride, after breaking fingers in his left hand, and is way off the pace), with Ben Spies leading Cal Crutchlow by just 0.006, just a tenth separating Nicky Hayden in 3rd from Dani Pedrosa in 6th, and less than a tenth between Andrea Dovizioso in 7th and Stefan Bradl in 11th. It has all the makings of a great race, right?

Not according to Cal Crutchlow. “Lorenzo will run away with it,” the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha man opined. Everyone except for Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa had set their fastest time on the soft tire, Crutchlow explained. Lorenzo’s best time, a 1’35.057, was set in the middle of a run with a used hard tire, his race rhythm in the 1’35.0 while everyone else was running 1’35.3. Lorenzo was looking very smooth on the bike, team manager Wilco Zeelenberg saying he was pretty pleased with the bike and the way the first day had gone.

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Learn to Shoot MotoGP Racing Like a Pro from Scott Jones

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Before he was a fixture in the MotoGP paddock, our main-man Scott Jones had to swing a lens just like everyone else: sans a GP photo credential. Luckily for our Nikon-clad photo warrior, his home track, Laguna Seca, provides some of the best vantage points on the GP calendar for non-credential holding photographer s — a fact Scott exploited during his first forays into photographing the premier-class.

Ready to share his hard-learned lessons related to shooting around armco, trees, and chain-linked fences, Scott will be down at the San Francisco D-Store on Sunday, July 15th, leading a seminar for would-be motor sport photographers, with the Red Bull US GP round at Laguna Seca specifically in mind.

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Wednesday Summary at Assen: Of Chatter, Silly Season Updates, And Expected Rule Changes

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Three races in 15 days, right in the middle and most important part of the season. MotoGP lines up at Assen with one third of the season gone. By the time the triple header is finished at Mugello, just over two weeks’ later, we are half way through the season and the title is a lot closer to being settled. These three races are crucial.

Not that it changes anyone’s approach. During the press conference, I asked the riders if they took a more cautious approach, knowing that the cost of injury is much, much greater now than it is when there is more time to recover between races. They looked at me as if I were stupid – a conclusion they have some justification for drawing – and told me that they treat these three races the same as the first race, the last race, and every other race in between. Flat out, and trying to win. It is impossible to win championships without winning races, as Casey Stoner likes to point out, so it is better to focus on that than on worrying about what might happen.

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Trackside Tuesday: Patience is a Virtue

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One of the great things about the support classes in Grand Prix motorbike racing is the depth of the competition. While there are a handful of favorites in each class, we generally don’t have the Three Alien situation of MotoGP. Once a rider leaves that broader talent and equipment pool for the premier class however, his potential results are limited by the bike he lands on.

Alvaro Bautista paid his dues for two years on an 800cc Suzuki, finishing in lucky thirteenth spot for both the 2010 and 2011 championships. If Suzuki hadn’t folded up and gone home for 2012, Bautista might still have been on an uncompetitive bike with a crowd of fans who could only think fondly back to what an exciting 125cc and 250cc rider he had been.

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Who Needs MotoGP.com When We Have This?

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If you are a true MotoGP fan here in the United States, then you have surely dropped SPEED’s abysmal coverage of the premiere class for the vastly superior coverage on Dorna’s own web property: MotoGP.com. Having a monopoly on internet-based video coverage of Grand Prix racing, MotoGP.com certainly brings its euros-worth of MotoGP/Moto2/Moto3 news, interviews, and analysis to your computer screen.

However, there has always been a desire for something more, something free — now that day has come. Ladies and Gentlemen, let us introduce to you the MiniBikers web series. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll hate Alvin & The Chipmunks even more than you already do. Check out the Silverstone round re-cap after the jump.

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Rossi Makes Forbes Top 100 Highest-Paid Athletes List

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Every year, a list of the highest-paid athletes worldwide is released, and every year we get to bask in the star power that is the nine-time World Champion Valentino Rossi. This year, we have Forbes to thank for our list, and while Rossi’s ranking is down in 20th position (he’s usually a Top 10 sort of guy), the value amount has remained steady…which is really saying something considering the slogging the motorcycle industry has taken the past few years.

Coming down to an almost 50/50 split between raw salary and endorsements, Rossi is estimated to make a tidy $30 million per year, tying him for the 20th spot with Formula 1’s Michael Schumacher. The only MotoGP star to top the Top 100 on Forbes’ list, it just goes to show that MotoGP salaries and endorsement contracts aren’t always about results. The Top 20, and other notable entries from the Forbes’ research are listed after the jump.

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Honda Building “Production Racer” Variant of the RC213V

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Honda is working on a simplified version of its RC213V MotoGP machine to sell to teams as a CRT bike. Working together with Thomas Baujard, journalist for the French magazine Moto Journal, we have learned that work on the V4 machine is already underway, though a production date for the bike is not yet known.

HRC boss Shuhei Nakamoto confirmed to Baujard at Silverstone that work was ongoing on the project, though Nakamoto did not like it being referred to as a CRT bike. “Not a CRT bike,” Nakamoto told Baujard, “it is a production racer!” When asked later about the engine layout, Nakamoto confirmed that the bike was a V4 rather than an inline four. “It is a replica of this bike,” Nakamoto told me, pointing to the Repsol Honda garage, “But cheaper. It is easier to use an existing design.”

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Ben Spies Comments on MotoGP Dropping the Rookie Rule

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After winning the World Superbike Championship in 2009, Ben Spies continued his rise to motorcycling stardom, as Yamaha gave the Texan its blessing to move onto the MotoGP Championship. The move wasn’t made without resistance though, as the satellite teams within MotoGP were sick and tired of seeing top-talent riders like Spies go directly into factory-backed teams in their first season. Thus the Rookie Rule was born, seemingly with the direct detriment of Spies in mind.

Showing its mettle with the American Spies, the Rookie Rule was again tested when Italian Marco Simoncelli entered MotoGP, and was forced to join the San Carlo Gresini Honda team. Simoncelli, considered by many in the MotoGP paddock to have the future star-power of mentor Valentino Rossi, served his two-season sentence in the satellite squad, and before his untimely death at Sepang, he was expected to move up to the factory ranks in 2012.

Now with the shock news of Casey Stoner’s retirement, HRC has been put in a tremendously difficult position with its factory-backed Repsol Honda team. Though said to be eager to retain Dani Pedrosa, HRC realizes that its long-term future is in Marc Marquez. With the young Spanish Moto2 rider posing a number of problems in his expected ascension into MotoGP in 2013, Honda has found itself between a rock and a hard place for next season.

Similarly, Dorna is in a precarious spot with the state of the MotoGP Championship. Watching its golden goose Valentino Rossi struggle on the Ducati, and counting the nine-time World Champion’s future time in MotoGP on only several fingers, the MotoGP media rights holder is under tremendous pressure to find a new star to attract the masses, and as a Spanish company…the preference is seen as favoring a Spaniard to take that center-stage spotlight. Enter the repeal of the MotoGP Rookie Rule, which kills two birds with one stone.

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MotoGP: A Silly Season Update

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Now that three races have passed, giving the paddock time to digest the news of Casey Stoner’s shock decision to retire and consider what effect it will have on the future line up of the MotoGP grid. The riders’ representatives have been very busy at the past few races, putting out feelers to factories and teams, weighing up opportunities and gauging the market value of their riders. With summer approaching, Silly Season for the 2013 Championship is very much open.

Two more decisions have accelerated developments, and drawn the lines of the 2013 season a little more clearly. Firstly, Jorge Lorenzo’s decision to stay with Yamaha for next season – “if Jorge wants to win championships,” said Lorenzo’s team boss Wilco Zeelenberg at Barcelona, “his best option is to stay at Yamaha.” The strength of the team and the state of the bike do seem to have been the key criteria for Lorenzo’s decision, the Spaniard opting for performance over financial gain.

The second development is the dropping of the Rookie Rule, preventing newcomers into the MotoGP class from going straight to the factory teams. The rule was popular with some team owners, but it also created major headaches for them: a big-name rookie like Marc Marquez does not come alone, but brings a small army of sponsors, advisers, mechanics, and assorted hangers on.

Room has to be made for these people and these sponsors, and long-term relationships have to be put aside to make way for them, which team managers then have to try to reestablish a year later once the rookie has gone. The abolition of the Rookie Rule clears the way for Marc Marquez to enter the Repsol Honda team, but it also opens up opportunities for other rookies at Yamaha or Ducati.

With these developments in mind, we can start to take a look at the current state of the market, the range of options open to riders in MotoGP, and what bikes may be on the grid for next season.

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Trackside Tuesday: Seeing is Not Always Believing

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For the first quarter of the British Grand Prix, there was a Ducati racing at the front  in a dry race, something we’ve not seen for some time. Almost as soon as Nicky Hayden crossed the line with 15 of 20 laps to go, his GP12 changed from something that could match the pace of the leaders into something else entirely.

Hayden lost fourth place to Lorenzo, then fifth to Dovizioso, both times going wide as his bike suddenly wouldn’t turn like it had been doing for the previous four laps. Hayden said in his post-race media scrum that the bike had been great until it destroyed the soft rear tire.

Earlier, when I’d walked onto pit lane and headed for the grid, we felt sprinkles in the air and wondered if the volatile weather was about to change from cool-but-dry to wet-and-even-colder, as it had several times over the weekend.

It seemed unlikely that it would start raining hard enough to begin the race on wet tires, but up and down pit lane crew chiefs appeared from their boxes, looking up at the skies, wondering what to do. Soft or hard tires? Dry, cool, warm, damp, what would the track be like over the course of twenty laps?

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