Tag

MotoGP

Browsing

Episode 58 of the Paddock Pass Podcast sees David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Steve English on the mics, as they cover both the Austrian and British GP rounds.

At the end of the racing in Silverstone, we saw a new leader in the MotoGP Championship standings, and according the show discuss how Andrea Dovizioso has risen to the top of the MotoGP riders.

The conversation then turns to the Movistar Yamaha garage, and the rivalry that is brewing between Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales. It should be noted that this episode was recorded before Valentino Rossi broke his right leg enduro riding.

The last MotoGP topics covers Marc Marquez, his exploding engine, and what’s happening the HRC side of the paddock. The guys also talk about Bradley Smith, and the trouble he is having with the KTM RC16.

After a quick talk about Moto2 and Moto3, the conversation turns to the big winners and losers of the last two rounds. It’s another great show from the Paddock Pass crew, and you won’t want to miss it.

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on FacebookTwitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

Hello and welcome to a new era of Ducati motorcycles, which is starting with a very special engine. Named the Desmosedici Stradale, this road-going version of the company’s MotoGP power plant is what is going to power Ducati’s next superbike, the Ducati Panigale V4.

Debuting today in Misano, at a special event ahead of the San Marino GP, the mystery around the Desmosedici Stradale engine has finally be revealed, to the tune of 210hp (@ 13,000 rpm) and 88.5 lbs•ft of torque (@ 12,250 rpm).

Dropping details on the 90° V4 engine with desmodromic valves, we now know that Ducati will continue to play the displacement game with its superbike, as the street version of the Panigale V4 coming with a 1,103cc displacement.

In 2019 however, Ducati will release its “R” spec machine, which will have a 1,000cc displacement, in order to homologation compliant for the World Superbike Championship and other national series.

Will we get a glimpse of a MotoGP future without Valentino Rossi at Misano? The news that the Italian icon had broken his right leg in an enduro accident will have caused hearts to sink at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, just a few kilometers from Rossi’s home in Tavullia.

Recent editions have been packed to the rafters. With motorcycling’s biggest draw out of action, ticket sales, the biggest source of revenue covering the cost of hosting a MotoGP race, are likely to be down.

How much, is the question, of course. Yes, Valentino Rossi is still unquestionably the biggest name in motorcycle racing, but there are plenty of reasons to be watching right now, and plenty of things for Italian fans to cheer for.

An Italian rider, Andrea Dovizioso, is leading the championship on an Italian motorcycle, the Ducati Desmosedici GP17. The racing is closer than it has ever been, with any of five or six riders in with a realistic shout of the win, and a handful more a chance of a podium.

More often than not, races are won on the last couple of laps, and surprisingly often, in the last corner. Though the loss of Rossi is an undeniable blow, the show will likely be as good as ever.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the signs are that numbers will be down. There are still plenty of tickets on sale for Sunday at Misano, both in the grandstands and for general admission.

Transport is changing, and one of the biggest ways in which it is changing is the shift to electric vehicles. That change is slowly starting to seep into the world of motorcycling as well.

Electric motorcycling manufacturers have sprung up in many places around the globe, though more often than not as tech startups in Silicon Valley rather than as engineering firms from more traditional motorcycling regions.

The more established manufacturers have also started to show an interest. BMW offers an electric scooter, the C Evolution, and KTM sells the Freeride E in three different versions. Slowly but surely, a solid engineering base is starting to form for electric motorcycles.

This change has not gone unnoticed by Dorna. The Spanish firm who run MotoGP is making plans for an electric bike racing series, provisionally scheduled to be starting in 2019.

That is very provisional, however: a lot of work still needs to be done before such a series can take place. Bikes need to be found, and circuits need to be modified to ensure they have the facilities needed to host, and most especially, recharge the bikes ready for racing.

To find out more about what an electric bike series might look like, and how far along the planning stage Dorna is, we spoke with MotoGP Director of Technology Corrado Cecchinelli.

The Movistar Yamaha team have today confirmed that Valentino Rossi is to miss the Misano round of MotoGP. The injury the Italian sustained in a training accident last week is sufficiently severe that he will not be fit for his home round.

Yamaha had widely been expected to withdraw Rossi from Misano, given the fact that he had broken both the tibia and fibula of his right leg, and only had surgery to pin the bones in the early hours of Friday morning.

The Movistar Yamaha team has updated us on Valentino Rossi’s condition, as the MotoGP underwent surgery on his right leg earlier today.

Rossi was first examined at the Ospedale Civile di Urbino, where he was initially diagnosed, then he was transferred to the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Ospedali Riuniti in Ancona, where the surgery was performed.

The team reports that the operation was a success, and that the doctors implanted metal pins (locking intramedullary nails, to be precise) into Rossi’s leg to hold the bones together.

Movistar Yamaha has issued another press release about the condition of MotoGP racer Valentino Rossi, confirming that the nine-time World Champion has broken the tibia and fibula bones on his right leg.

As such, Valentino Rossi will undergo immediate surgery to correct the fractures. The condition of the 38-year-old racer will be updated Friday morning, but it seems likely that this news dashes Rossi’s MotoGP Championship hunt for this season.

This is because a displaced fracture is a serious injury, as it means that Rossi has broken his bones in several places, and the pieces of the those fractured bones are not set correctly to heal on their own.

After reports from Italy told of Valentino Rossi breaking his leg in an enduro training accident, we have been waiting for confirmation of that news from an official source.

Now getting on top of this evolving story, the Movistar Yamaha team has confirmed that the nine-time World Champion has been involved in a training accident, and that he was taken to the Ospedale Civile di Urbino for a medical check-up.

Reports from Europe are saying that Valentino Rossi has broken his leg while training on an enduro bike.

Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport, says that the nine-time World Champion has sustained a “suspected fracture of the tibia and fibula” and that Rossi is expected to go into surgery tonight to repair the injury.

We should caution that these reports have not yet been confirmed, with Yamaha yet to comment on the injury, but if true they could have dire consequences for Rossi’s bid to be the 2017 MotoGP World Champion.

In one week’s time, Ducati will unveil its new V4 engine, which will power the next-generation of the Italian company’s superbikes and other high-powered motorcycles.

Set to debut the Thursday before the San Marino GP round for MotoGP, Ducati has begun teasing us some information, the first of which is the new motor’s name, the Desmosedici Stradale.

True to Ducati naming conventions, the name of the engine literally means what it is, a road-going version of the Desmosedici engine that powers Bologna’s MotoGP project.

The news that Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta is on his way to Thailand to sign a contract with the Buriram circuit to host MotoGP from 2018 signals that the publication of a 2018 provisional MotoGP calendar is imminent.

The Thai round of MotoGP is the final piece of the puzzle needed for putting together next year’s Grand Prix schedule.

The 2018 calendar will consist of 19 races, with the Thai round being added to the Pacific flyaways held in October. The series kicks off March 18th, at Losail in Qatar, a week before the Formula 1 season-opener in Australia.