Yamaha has withdrawn its request to unseal the engines to replace internal components which they believe caused issues for Maverick Viñales, Valentino Rossi, and Franco Morbidelli at Jerez.
Yamaha had made a formal request to the MSMA, the MotoGP manufacturers’ association, to open the engines and swap out defective parts.
Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring proved as exhilarating a spectacle as ever, but like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s banquet, an absent specter took some of the attention away from a celebration of racing.
A little over an hour after qualifying finished – delayed because Jaume Masia tore the fairing from his Leopard Honda Moto3 bike after crashing in Q1, then rode back to the pits dumping oil and water all over the track – a press release from the Repsol Honda team reminded us of the absentee champion.
Marc Márquez, the press release announced, would be out for another two to three months, to allow him to recover fully from the broken humerus he suffered at the first round of MotoGP on July 19th.
Marc Marquez will not be returning to race at MotoGP at any point in the near future, and may not return at all in 2020.
Today, the Repsol Honda team issued a press release lacking in much detail beyond the fact that they will delay Marc Marquez’ return until he is fully recovered from the injury to his right humerus that he suffered at the first race in Jerez.
It’s groundhog day. The MotoGP paddock is back in exactly the same place and doing exactly the same thing it was doing a week ago. The coronavirus-curtailed 2020 season is big on repetition, and as a result, on disorientation.
With no distractions at the track, everyone is starting to go a little stir crazy. What things will be like at the second race at Valencia, in the middle of the third run of three back-to-back races doubling up at some circuits, heaven only knows.
What does change from last Friday was the work to be done. Better weather and a weekend’s worth of data mean that most teams are much closer to their base set up. (But no everyone: there are a few riders who are a bit lost, and grasping around for a solution).
That leaves the teams free to experiment with the tires they weren’t sure about a week ago, riders swapping between the soft and medium rears, for example.
“Not too much difference,” Jack Miller said. “It is what it is. Don’t get too focused on what worked the week before. You’ve got to keep an open mind. For example, I’m leaning towards the medium tire this weekend, but we need more analysis.”
Johann Zarco has been penalized for the crash with Franco Morbidelli, which happened during last Sunday’s MotoGP race at the Red Bull Ring.
The two riders faced the FIM Stewards on Thursday, the Stewards hearing their stories separately. After reviewing the evidence and listening to the riders, the Stewards decided to punish Zarco for irresponsible riding.
A week later, and back in the same place. Plus ça change pas… The same riders are back at the same track, in the same situation. So we should have the same result, right?
That’s not quite what the data from Jerez says. Sure, the first two places were the same in both races. But behind that, the results were completely different between the two races, a week apart on the same circuit.
Only 9 of the 22 riders on the entry list of the first race finished both races, three of them ending up injured in the carnage of the two opening rounds.
Only Pol Espargaro crossed the line within one place of his finishing position in the second race, ending sixth in the first race, seventh in the second.
Only Johann Zarco’s finishing position varied by two places, crossing the line eleventh in the first race, ninth in the second. The rest of the field either finished three or more places out of position, or crashed out – and there were a lot of riders who didn’t cross the line one way or another.
The biggest name not to finish in either of the MotoGP races at Jerez was, of course Marc Márquez. The reigning world champion won’t be at the second race at the Red Bull Ring, Repsol Honda announced earlier this week, and an eerie silence surrounds when he will be back.
And so Honda languish in fifth in the manufacturer standings, and the factory Repsol Honda team is dead last in the team standings. Only Takaaki Nakagami is sparing Honda’s blushes, and he is riding a 2019 bike.
Johann Zarco did not come away completely unhurt by the massive crash he had with Franco Morbidelli in the Austrian MotoGP race at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday.
Scans made on Monday revealed that the Frenchman had suffered a fractured scaphoid in his right wrist in the crash.
The Frenchman is to travel to Modena in Italy to have surgery on the scaphoid, before returning to Spielberg to attempt to ride in the Styrian Grand Prix, the second race at the Red Bull Ring to be held this weekend.
Episode 158 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and it sees us covering the incredible Austrian GP at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria.
As such on the mics, we have David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Steve English, as the trio discusses the latest round of the MotoGP Championship.
The guys have no shortage of topics to discuss for this one, and right off the bat there is the conversation about the incident between Johann Zarco and Franco Morbidelli, and the massive controversy that the crash created.
It was one of those days. We had a fascinating FP4 session for the MotoGP class, where a clear pattern emerged for the race, followed by a thrilling and action-packed qualifying, yet barely anyone is talking about that at all.
And all because early on Saturday afternoon, the bombshell dropped that Andrea Dovizioso will be leaving Ducati at the end of the 2020 season.
Though the news itself did not quite come as a surprise, the timing and nature of the announcement caught us all a little off guard. Ducati had said they had hoped to make a decision after the two races at the Red Bull Ring.
Desmo Dovi is no more. The eight-year partnership between Andrea Dovizioso and Ducati Corse will come to an end when the flag falls after the last race of the 2020 MotoGP season.
The news was made official by Dovizioso’s manager Simone Battistella, after a final meeting with Ducati management to try to agree terms. Battistella told broadcaster Sky Italia that they had been unable to find common ground to continue.
We nearly got away with it. The clouds hung heavy over the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg for much of the morning, but it stayed dry for all three classes, and the Red Bull Rookies practice as well – I will leave it to the imagination of the reader as to why the Red Bull Rookies are racing in Spielberg this weekend.
But halfway through FP2 for the Moto3 class, at the beginning of the afternoon, the heavens parted and the deluge began.
The weird thing about the rain is that it was so incredibly localized. The Red Bull Ring is a relatively compact circuit, not elongated like Assen, or spread out over a vast territory like Silverstone, so to have a downpour in Turn 3, the track completely soaked and water running across the track, while a few hundred meters downhill, along the front straight and at Turn 1, the track was completely dry, made for impossible conditions.
A few Moto3 riders nearly got caught out as they hammered up the hill toward Turn 3, then found themselves unable to brake for the corner and forced to run wide.
And so MotoGP lost out on FP2 almost completely. The track was neither one thing nor the other, soaking wet at the top half, between Turns 3 and 4, and desert dry down the bottom near the pits.
It was way too dangerous to go out on slicks, and a waste of time to go out on rain tires and burn up the limited sets they have. The wet parts of the track were wet enough for the soft wets, the dry parts of the track were capable of destroying even the medium wet within a few laps.