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Day of Champions Raises Over £286,000 for Two Wheels for Life

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Every year at the British GP round, a special event is held on the Thursday before the races. It is called the Day of Champions, and it raises money for our favorite charity here at Asphalt & Rubber, Two Wheels for Life.

Now in its 30th year of running, the highlight of the Day of Champions is the rider auction at the end of the day, where special memorabilia and opportunities are sold to the highest bidder to raise money for the charity.

At this year’s Silverstone round, the Day of Champions raised £286,000 at auction, before the weekend’s final tally was made, and well on its way to surpassing the £300,000 that was raised last year.

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MotoGP

Sunday at the British GP with Tony Goldsmith

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Swinging a lens for us at the British GP, photographer Tony Goldsmith gives us a glimpse of the MotoGP action at Silverstone.

Photos: © 2019 Tony Goldsmith / www.tonygoldsmith.co.uk – All Rights Reserved

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MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the British GP: Confidence Breeds Contempt

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Confidence plays a key role in racing. Having confidence in yourself, in your team, in your bike, in your strategy. If you have confidence in every part of the jigsaw puzzle which goes to make up motorcycle racing, you can exceed expectations.

Motorcycle racing may play out on 300 hp machines around six kilometer stretches of asphalt, but the fifteen centimeters of gray matter between the ears is where winning and losing is decided.

That confidence is what explains so much of Marc Márquez’ success throughout his career. He has confidence in his ability, gained through hours and hours of practice, and hard training in preparation.

He has confidence in his team, having worked with the same group of people for most of his career. He has confidence in his bike: it may not do everything he would want, but he understands exactly what it will and won’t do, and can make it do what he needs it to do.

He has confidence in the ability of his team and himself to come up with a strategy to cope with whatever a race weekend throws at them.

All these things combined are what has allowed him to win five MotoGP championships and 50 MotoGP races. Each of these elements of confidence feeds into the other, in a virtuous circle, making him stronger.

And they allow him to take risks at the right time to gain maximum advantage.

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MotoGP

Friday MotoGP Summary at the British GP: Why Grip Creates Complications as Well as Advantages

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Has the resurfacing of Silverstone been a success. Judging by the reaction from the riders, you would have to say yes. “I don’t think you’ll speak to another rider today who doesn’t have a smile on his face, because the asphalt is amazing, the grip is amazing,” Jack Miller raved, echoing the thoughts of most riders.

The timesheets proved that they were not just saying that at the behest of the Silverstone PR people. It took Marc Márquez 4 laps of the track to beat the best time set during FP1 in 2018, his time already faster than the existing race lap record.

By the end of FP1, Fabio Quartararo was within a whisker of the outright lap record set in 2017. That record was beaten first by Valentino Rossi at the end of FP2, then destroyed by Fabio Quartararo five seconds later. Quartararo’s best lap in FP2 was over seven tenths quicker than Márquez’ pole record from 2017.

It was much the same pattern in Moto2 and Moto3. Tony Arbolino smashed the outright lap record in FP1 for the Moto3 class. In Moto2, Fabio Di Giannantonio broke the outright lap record by six tenths in FP1, then in the afternoon FP2 session, Jorge Navarro took another seven tenths off the time set in the morning.

The track is much, much faster. On Thursday, Jarno Zaffelli, the man who had drawn up the requirements, and then overseen and monitored the laying of the new asphalt, had predicted that the race lap record might be cut by as much as 1.7 seconds on Sunday. It is looking increasingly likely that that is a realistic target.

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MotoGP

Friday at the British GP with Tony Goldsmith

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Swinging a lens for us at the British GP, photographer Tony Goldsmith gives us a glimpse of the MotoGP action at Silverstone.

While much was made of the track’s issues with wet weather last year, for 2019 the talk is all about the heat and the sun. Let’s hope Sunday’s race has the same intensity as the weather.

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MotoGP

KymiRing Test Concludes with MotoGP Riders Critical of the Track

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The first official test at the Kymiring has wrapped up, the second day of testing taking place under much better conditions than the first day on Monday. The day started dry, though action didn’t start until 11am, the riders losing an hour of time as the test was cut short by the weather.

On a dry track, times were considerably quicker than on Monday, when the track was both wet and dirty. Where riders were circulating in the 2’10s on Monday, Bradley Smith managed to get down to 1:47.540 on the Aprilia. 

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Racing

FIM & FIA Hold First-Ever Conference for Women in Motorsport

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This past weekend was an historic one for motor racing, as the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) and the Federation Internationale de L’Automobile (FIA) combined their forces to hold the first-ever motorsport conference for women.

The conference was held in Vierumäki, Finland, and aimed to bring conversation around women empowerment, leadership, women’s role in the industry, and the future task of involving girls in motorsports.

The two-day event saw nearly 40 speakers (mostly women) from 25 countries and 5 continents sharing their stories and experiences in motorsport. 

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MotoGP

MotoGP Testing at KymiRing in Finland Gets Underway

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Testing has come to an end after the first ever day of MotoGP action at the Kymring in Finland, six of the test riders for the six official MotoGP manufacturers turning some laps at the newly built circuit.

Present were Stefan Bradl for Honda, Jonas Folger for Yamaha, Sylvain Guintoli for Suzuki, Mika Kallio for KTM, Michele Pirro for Ducati and Bradley Smith for Aprilia. Kallio was chosen over KTM’s other test rider, Dani Pedrosa, to give the Finnish rider a chance to ride on his home track.

The test was convened mainly to give Michelin a chance to understand the stress the track will put on the tires. Although they have software that can simulate tire loads and wear based on the layout of the track and the abrasiveness of the surface, measured using special molds, that is always an approximation.

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MotoGP

The Different Trajectories of Johann Zarco & Jorge Lorenzo

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What are you to do if you find yourself stuck on a bike you know you can’t ride? On a bike that you are convinced is trying to hurt you, and that you keep falling off of every time you try to push?

The obvious answer is you try to leave as soon as possible. But that simple answer hides a host of factors that make leaving not as easy as it looks. The cases of Jorge Lorenzo and Johann Zarco illustrate that very well.

First of all, why would a rider want to leave a factory ride? The pay is good, rarely less than seven figures. Riders have a chance to shape the bike and point development in a direction that suits them.

They are treated, if not like royalty, then at least like nobility: transport is arranged and rearranged pretty much at their whim, picked up at their front doors before a race and deposited there again afterward. The pressure is high, but in a factory team, they do everything they can to take the strain and let their riders concentrate on riding.

That is little consolation when the going gets really tough. When you are struggling to get inside the top ten, despite giving your all to try to make the bike go faster.

When you are crashing at twice, three times your normal rate. When factories are slow to bring updates to the bike. Or even worse, when they bring boxes and boxes of new parts, and none of those parts make much of a difference to your results.

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