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Tito Rabat Signs for Two More Years with Avintia

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The rider line up for the 2020 MotoGP season is nearly complete. Today, the Avintia Ducati team announced they would be signing Tito Rabat to a new two-year deal, for the 2020 and 2021 seasons, with a promise of obtaining factory-spec equipment.

The announcement is a result of the Pons Moto2 squad announcing that they would be signing Lorenzo Baldassarri and Augusto Fernandez for the 2020 season in Moto2.

Baldassarri had been strongly linked to the Avintia ride, while Rabat was said to be in talks to head to the WorldSBK championship, to ride a Kawasaki alongside Jonathan Rea. When Baldassarri decided to stay in Moto2, Rabat became Avintia’s best option.

The deal has two interesting details. The first is that Avintia are trying to obtain factory-spec machinery and commensurate support for 2020. That would imply that Ducati would field five GP20s (or six, if Karel Abraham were also get one) for next year.

For Ducati to support that many factory bikes is a question of money, which would mean Avintia stepping up their investment, and raising more money from sponsorship. 

The second is that Rabat has chosen to sign for two years instead of one. That puts him out of step with the whole of the rest of the grid. Everyone else with a contract will be free for the 2021 season, and in a position to negotiate for a new deal with every other team on the grid, potentially at least. Rabat has no such freedom.

On the other hand, Rabat being signed for 2021 also means he won’t have to fear losing his ride to one of the influx of youngsters from Moto2 expected at the end of next season.

With Rabat signed, only one signature is missing to complete the field. Jack Miller is still in talks with Pramac Ducati about 2020, though they are currently only talking numbers. The rest of the details – including having a Ducati GP20 – have been settled. A deal should be announced soon.

Here is the nearly complete rider line up for the 2020 MotoGP season:

Rider Bike Contract until
Monster Energy Yamaha
Valentino Rossi Yamaha M1 2020
Maverick Viñales Yamaha M1 2020
     
Repsol Honda
Jorge Lorenzo Honda RC213V 2020
Marc Márquez Honda RC213V 2020
     
Ecstar Suzuki
Alex Rins Suzuki GSX-RR 2020
Joan Mir Suzuki GSX-RR 2020
     
Gresini Aprilia
Aleix Espargaro Aprilia RS-GP 2020
Andrea Iannone Aprilia RS-GP 2020
     
KTM Factory
Johann Zarco KTM RC16 2020
Pol Espargaro KTM RC16 2020
     
Factory Ducati
Andrea Dovizioso Ducati GP20 2020
Danilo Petrucci Ducati GP20 2020
     
Satellite Teams
Pramac Ducati
Pecco Bagnaia Ducati GP20 2020
Jack Miller Ducati GP20 2019
     
LCR Honda
Cal Crutchlow Honda RC213V 2020
Taka Nakagami Honda RC213V 2019
     
Tech3 KTM
Miguel Oliveira KTM RC16 2020
Brad Binder KTM RC16 2020
     
Petronas SIC Team
Franco Morbidelli Yamaha M1 2020
Fabio Quartararo Yamaha M1 2020
     
Avintia Ducati
Tito Rabat Ducati GP19? 2021
Karel Abraham Ducati GP19? 2020

Source: Avintia Racing

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MotoGP

MotoGP Silly Season Update for the Summer Break

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Though empty seats are limited for the 2020 MotoGP season, in recent weeks there has been some movement to fill those vacancies.

The moves have mostly been unsurprising, but then with so few seats available, the chances of something unexpected happening are very slim.

Just before the Sachsenring, we saw Danilo Petrucci keeping his seat alongside Andrea Dovizioso in the factory Ducati team for the 2020 season, a fully expected move since the Italian’s victory at Mugello back in early June.

That leaves Jack Miller in the Pramac Ducati team for another year, though that deal is not yet signed.

A deal is close, however. “We’re fighting over pennies now,” Miller said on Sunday night in Germany. Miller will have a Ducati Desmosedici GP20 at his disposal, the same as his teammate Pecco Bagnaia, but there were still a few financial details to be ironed out.

“It more or less should be done, I got some information today. So hopefully we can get it done before we get back at Brno and put all that stuff behind us and just focus on riding.”

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MotoGP

Brad Binder Will Race in MotoGP for the 2020 Season

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It was perhaps an inevitable move for the young South African, but Brad Binder has finally secured a ride in the MotoGP Championship, signing today a contract with the Red Bull KTM Tech 3 team for the 2020 season.

The move makes Binder the fourth rider to move all the way from Red Bull Rookies Cup to the MotoGP class, a feat previously completed by Miguel Olivera, Johann Zarco, and Joan Mir.

Of course, this good news for Binder means bad news for Tech 3’s other rider, Hafizh Syahrin, who will most surely be without a KTM rider for next season, and very possibly no longer in the MotoGP Championship after this year’s dismal results.

Tech 3 boss Herve Poncharal has made it quite clear publicly that he has been disappointed with Syahrin’s results this year, as the Malaysian rider sits with only three championship points, in a three-way tie for second-to-last place in the series.

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WSBK

Marco Melandri Will Retire at the End of the WorldSBK Season

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Confirming the news we reported yesterday, Marco Melandri has made his retirement announcement official. As such, the 36-year-old Italian will hang up his leathers for good, at the end of this year’s WorldSBK Championship season.

Melandri’s career spans three decades of racing, and includes some impressive feats, but his results this season have surely been the deciding factor on today’s announcement.

Currently ninth in the WorldSBK Championship standings, Melandri’s season has seen high points at Phillip Island and Jerez, but has otherwise been a forgettable affair. This surely has been the cause for Melandri’s lack of motivation to continue racing.

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MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the German GP: On Injury Heroics, Confusing Race Pace, & Marquez’s Master Manipulation

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It has been a pretty brutal weekend for the MotoGP riders at the Sachsenring. With less than a week to recover after a punishing race in Assen, everyone is stiff, sore, and tired. But those who crashed in Assen or had a physical problem have it doubly tough, having to deal with the tight and tortuous layout of the Sachsenring circuit.

Such conditions inevitably create tales of motorcycling heroism. Taka Nakagami is one such, the LCR Honda rider still badly beaten up after his crash at Assen, where he was taken out by Valentino Rossi. Nakagami has a badly damaged left ankle, but is trying to ride anyway.

Having an injury on his left ankle is one of the worst possible injuries at the Sachsenring, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because is mostly left corners, meaning that the left ankle is bearing much of the load for a large part of the lap, riders leaning much of their weight on their inside leg through the corner. And secondly, because there is so much gear shifting to do, riders going up and down through the box through the tight and twisty circuit.

In FP4, Nakagami had to spend a lot of time in the garage having his ankle retaped, as he hadn’t been able to move his ankle sufficiently to actually shift gear. But once that was done, he put on a heroic display to post a blistering lap in Q1 and make it through to Q2 behind Valentino Rossi, displacing a despairing Andrea Dovizioso along the way.

How tough was the laps which Nakagami put in? He hobbled out to his bike on crutches to go out, and then had to be helped off the bike and onto crutches after he had come back in again.

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MotoGP

Friday MotoGP Summary at the German GP: Blocked Laps, Honda’s New Frame, & Marquez Applying Pressure to Quartararo

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What was the big surprise on Friday at the Sachsenring? The fact that there were no real surprises. The first day of practice played out pretty much as you might expect based on the first few MotoGP rounds of 2019. Marc Márquez put in a push on FP2 to wrap up top spot at the end of the first day, a third of a second clear of Alex Rins on the Suzuki.

Besides Márquez, Rins was quick, as were the Yamahas of Fabio Quartararo, Maverick Viñales, and even Valentino Rossi. Cal Crutchlow got into the top 6, just behind Pol Espargaro – the KTMs and the Hondas were the only bikes which could gain a chunk of time from using the soft rear tire – while the Ducatis are not far behind.

Fabio Quartararo felt he could have been quicker, if he hadn’t come across his teammate while he was chasing a fast lap. The Frenchman came up behind Franco Morbidelli, who was cruising around the tight interior section between Turns 2 and 3. For a few minutes, Quartararo was fuming, waving his arms in the air and gesticulating wildly.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Preview of the German GP

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There are two things which any motorcycle racing fan needs to know about the Sachsenring circuit in the east of Germany.

The first is that the track has an awful lot of left-hand corners, which all flow together into one long turn, the bike spending a lot of time on its side.

The second is that Marc Márquez has started from pole position and won the race since 2010, nine years in a row, in 125s, Moto2, and MotoGP. These two facts are probably not unconnected.

Marc Márquez loves turning left, his win rate at anticlockwise circuits hovering around 70%. If a track goes left, there is a more than two in three chances that Márquez will come out victorious.

Márquez is especially good at the Sachsenring. The reigning champion starts every race as the man to beat, but the German Grand Prix is different.

Here, riders speak of how close they hope to finish to him, rather than how they are going to beat him. His name is penciled in on the winner’s trophy, the race almost, but not quite, a formality.

Even though the race is something of a foregone conclusion, the track itself is a fascinating circuit. On paper, it seems far too short and far too tight to be a MotoGP track, the bikes barely cracking sixth gear, and spending little time at full throttle. But that doesn’t mean the track isn’t a challenge.

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MotoGP

Danilo Petrucci Confirmed with Ducati for 2020 Season

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The possible permutations in MotoGP rider line up for 2020 are limited, with almost everyone already under contract for next season. At the Sachsenring though, Danilo Petrucci was added to the ranks of confirmed riders, with Ducati extending his contract in the factory team for 2020.

A contract extension for Petrucci had been on the cards for some while, the Italian’s victory at Mugello making it an inevitability. Ducati is very pleased with Petrucci’s performance, and the way that he and Andrea Dovizioso have worked together.

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MotoGP

Friday MotoGP Summary at the Dutch TT: The Battle for Assen

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Is there still such a thing as a Honda track, a Yamaha track, or a Ducati track (or even a Suzuki track)? Once upon a time, it seemed like there was. MotoGP would go to Indianapolis, and you knew that a Honda would win. Go to Mugello, and chances are, a Yamaha would emerge victorious.

In the press room, we would spend hours trying to decipher why one bike or another would win at a particular track. Was it temperature which counted? We suspected that, but then a Yamaha or a Honda would win at a cold track one week, and a hot track the next. Was it the layout or the type of corner that mattered?

Hondas dominated the stop-and-go layout of Motegi, and then got destroyed by the Yamahas at the stop-and-go layout of Le Mans. In the end, we figured it all came down to grip: in low grip conditions, the Hondas were quick; when there was plenty of grip, the Yamahas were unbeatable.

That disappeared in recent years, killed by the technical developments which led up to the switch to Michelin tires. 1000cc engines, spec electronics, and the regulations which have seen the bikes grow ever closer in performance.

With the differences between the machines so small, other factors had a greater impact on results than just the character of the bike. No longer can you predict a winner based on which bike they are on.

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