Another domino has fallen in the MotoGP satellite team Silly Season. Danilo Petrucci has signed on to remain with the Pramac Ducati squad for the 2018 season. Petrucci had been courted by Aprilia, but Petrucci has elected to stay with the team and the factory with which he has scored his most recent successes.
Petrucci has been key to the early progress made with the Ducati Desmosedici GP17. The Italian won the right to use the sole GP17 in the Pramac garage after outscoring his teammate at the end of the 2016 season.
At the start of the season, that had more downsides than he had realized, as Ducati were using Petrucci to test parts and setup for the new bike, and then filtering that data back to the factory squad.
Well, we knew the weather was going to be a factor at the Sachsenring, and we weren’t disappointed. (Or perhaps we were, depending on your point of view.)
The MotoGP riders started off on a bone dry track in the morning, spent an extended 55 minutes on slick tires, then suffered through a couple of full on rain showers in the afternoon. They had time on a dry track, and time on a wet track, and time on a track with a dry line forming.
It was the perfect preparation for what promises to be a weekend of mixed weather. The chances of making it all the way to the race on Sunday without another wet session are very small. But they are also not zero.
Riding in both weather conditions gave the riders a chance to assess the grip of the new surface. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Aleix Espargaro summed up the general impressions, and entirely in character, he also summed it up with the most enthusiasm.
“It’s unbelievable,” the Aprilia rider said. “They did a super job, a fantastic job. The tarmac has zero bumps, nowhere. The grip is super high. Actually, I think we finished five seconds from the dry times, which is very very very fast. So, German style, they did a great job!”
The grip was generally judged to be good in the dry, but absolutely phenomenal in the wet. “Honestly, in the wet you can’t believe it,” Cal Crutchlow told us.
“I left the pit lane. I was late because we were messing around in the garage. Marc had done three laps. I saw the blue flags, sit up and I looked down and Marc’s got his elbow on the floor! When I see someone’s got their elbow on the floor it means you’ve got to push.”
From Assen to Sachsenring, 700 kilometers in 7 days. One of the shorter hauls between back-to-back races, but a tight schedule nonetheless.
Sachsenring’s weird split paddock was full of tired looking faces on Thursday, as truck drivers and hospitality staff rushed to tear the entire paddock down in Drenthe, then build it all up again in Saxony.
It is hard to think of a greater contrast in circuits, too. Assen is flat, fast, and sweeping, the Sachsenring tight, slow, and with massive changes in elevation. There are similarities too: the bikes spend a lot of time on the edge of the tire at both tracks.
At Assen, it’s especially the right side of the tire, as riders sweep through the succession of right-handers from Mandeveen all the way to the Ramshoek.
At the Sachsenring, it’s all left-hand side of the tire which takes the punishment, as the bikes come out of the Omegakurve, pitch into Turn 4, then hustle their way all the way down and then up and over the hill before Turn 11.
Turn 11 is a vicious beast, laying in wait for the unwary, its voracious gravel trap waiting to claim anyone who flicks the bike just a little too enthusiastically right after spending so much time on the left-hand side of the tire.
The opposite right-hand side has had 40 seconds to cool off, while the right-hand side of the tire takes all the punishment. The transition from left to right, from scorching hot to cool rubber, from one of the hardest tire compounds of the year to one of the softest, is tricky.
Switching between two very different feeling rubbers catches plenty of riders out, in both MotoGP and Moto2.
They are hard to spot, but if you look closely at the 2017 Ducati Desmosedici GP (a bevy of photos are after the jump) you will see something very unique going on with the front suspension. This is because Öhlins and Ducati have teamed up to develop new fork technology, namely carbon fiber fork tubes.
The Öhlins carbon fiber fork tubes can be seen on the machines of Andrea Dovizioso and Jorge Lorenzo, starting from the season-opener in Qatar, and are noticeable for their matte black tube finish, with gold ends.
Öhlins is coy about how much weight savings are involved with the forks tubes, but they are noticeably lighter when they are in your hands, something we have first-hand knowledge of, as we had one to pass around at the Two Enthusiasts Podcast live show at Austin, Texas this year.
Beyond simple weight savings though, the likely purpose of using carbon fiber fork tubes is to adjust the flex of the front suspension.
Episode 56 of the Two Enthusiasts Podcast gets us back into our normal format of talking about motorcycles, and whatever rabbit holes present themselves along the way.
Before we get to that part though, we take a somber moment to remember Nicky Hayden, who passed away just a couple weeks before the recording of this episode.
We had recorded a special episode just about Nicky, the day that he passed, but it didn’t feel right to publish it. Our emotions were too raw.
Modestly philosophical during the show now, we also discuss the passing of Davey Lambert, who on the day of this recording succumbed to his injuries sustained at the Isle of Man TT. Two more racers would later die at the TT, Jochem van den Hoek and Alan Bonner. We hold all these racers in our thoughts.
Getting back to our normal selves, we discuss a bit of news, namely Harley-Davidson’s new factory in Thailand, and what that says about the state of the motorcycle industry. We also talk some racing action, as Andrea Dovizioso had just won the Italian GP at Mugello.
The show wraps up with some discussion about supermoto racing, as I participated in the Cascadia Supermoto round held here in Oregon, near Portland.
You can listen to the show via the embedded SoundCloud player, after the jump, or you can find the show on iTunes (please leave a review) or this RSS feed. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well.
On the eve of the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring, the Grand Prix Commission, MotoGP’s rule making body has allowed a system which was first mooted at the same race last year.
In Assen, the GPC gathered to discuss various minor tweaks to the MotoGP rules, but among them was a major upgrade: permitting the use of dashboard messages by the teams from 2018.
The ability to send messages is piggybacking off the system put in place to aid Race Direction. With spec ECUs and spec dashboards in Moto3 and MotoGP, Race Direction had long wanted the ability to send messages to the bikes on track.
Episode 55 of the Paddock Pass Podcast sees David Emmett and Neil Morrison back on the mics, as they cover the Grand Prix racing’s stop in The Netherlands, for the Dutch TT.
The longest-running round in the MotoGP Championship, Assen always provides good racing for fans, and this year was no different. Assen was also the stage for Valentino Rossi’s return to winning form, with the Italian taking his first race win in over a year.
The results of the Dutch TT have big consequences for the MotoGP Championship, and Assen also gave us our first glimpse into the growing rift between Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales, inside the Yamaha team.
Per usual, once the MotoGP talk is done, the conversation turns to the Moto2 and Moto3 championships, before the guys talk about their winners and losers of the two weekends.
As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter 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!
The Circuit of Wales, the track which was to be built near Ebbw Vale in South Wales, has been dealt what will likely be a fatal blow. Today, the Welsh Government rejected the request of the Heads of the Valleys Development Company to underwrite the debts incurred for the construction of the circuit.
The HOTDVC, the company that had been set up to build and run the project, had originally requested that the Welsh Government underwrite the full £280 million cost the project had been expected to cost.
After years of negotiation, the estimated costs had risen to £433 million, and the Welsh Government refused the HOTVDC proposal to underwrite half that debt.
The Welsh Government had demanded that the HOTVDC find external investors, and the firm had brought in outside money from UK investment firm Aviva, but Aviva had only agreed to become involved if the Welsh Government had promised to underwrite the project.
With the Welsh Government refusing to underwrite the debt, Aviva’s commitment now looks to be at an end.
The Max Biaggi continues to show progress on his recovery, with the six-time world champion finally leaving the intensive care unit at the San Camillo Hospital. The transfer occurred yesterday, which also happened to be Biaggi’s 46th birthday.
Tweeting to his fans on Twitter, the Roman Emperor said “After the time I spent in there, the most beautiful gift and get out of intensive care after 17 days. Thank you for all the birthday wishes and for all the affections received every day. Unforgettable. I love you.”