Episode 127 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one covers this weeks’ whirlwind round of news from the Yamaha MotoGP team and its rider lineup for the 2020 season and beyond.
For these topics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and David Emmett on the mics, as the trio discusses the announcements that Yamaha has made, and what the ramifications are for the grand prix paddock.
Today starts with the bombshell news story that Fabio Quartararo has been signed to the Monster Yamaha MotoGP team, just a day after Maverick Viñales inked a three-year deal with the factory squad.
Combined, this news is a huge moment for the MotoGP paddock, as it signals the end of Valentino Rossi’s factory riding position, and possibly his motorcycle racing career.
To stymie that headline, Yamaha was sure to publish a second press release on Quartararo’s news, to explain that Yamaha and Rossi were taking time to evaluate their future together.
The first penny has dropped in the long march toward the 2021 MotoGP grid. Yamaha has announced that they have signed Maverick Viñales to a two-year deal, for the 2021 and 2022 season.
The move marks a clear decision, both on the part of Yamaha and the part of Viñales. The Spaniard had offers on the table from two other manufacturers, with Ducati especially keen to sign Viñales for 2021.
But, assurances given to Viñales about his role in developing the Yamaha M1 helped him make his decision. Viñales is to determine the future direction of Yamaha, based on the strength of his performance in the second half of 2020.
The world of MotoGP and WorldSBK has been relatively quiet for the last two weeks, as factories close and teams and riders take time off to celebrate their various holidays.
Very little has happened, with people off around the world, and only now returning to prepare for the 2020 season.
As we wait for the bikes to be back on track, and thus the news flowing again, here are the headlines that are tracking during the off-season.
As the MotoGP field prepares to spend the holiday season at home with friends and family – or in Andrea Iannone’s case, with his lawyers – the impending pressure of MotoGP Silly Season will be pushed to the back of their collective minds.
But with the contracts of the entire MotoGP grid plus the leading Moto2 riders up at the end of the 2020 season, that state of quietude will not last long. Silly Season has been temporarily suspended for holiday season, but it will soon burst forth in a frenzy of speculation, rumor, and signings.
So how will the Silly Season for the 2021 MotoGP grid play out? Given the number of changes likely, it will be a complex jigsaw puzzle indeed, with a few key players at the heart of the process.
And as a confounding factor, teams and factories will want to avoid the current tangle they find themselves in. The era of the entire grid being on two-year contracts is as good as over.
There are a number of reasons for no longer automatically offering two-year deals to everyone on the grid. Neither the team managers nor the rider managers I spoke to over the course of 2019 were thrilled at the prospect of another contract cycle like we have seen for the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
And the way the year has played out has given them plenty of reasons to avoid the same mistakes for 2021.
Who is the greatest MotoGP rider of the past decade? Followers of the sport will all have their own answers to this question, based on their own criteria. One way of trying to answer the question objectively is by using numbers to quantify performance.
Sure, the numbers may overlook certain factors. But going over the numbers from 180 races held over the space of 10 years helps eliminate outliers, and separate the signal from the noise.
To qualify for consideration, you have to win races. The 180 races held between 2010 and 2019 have seen 13 different winners: Cal Crutchlow, Andrea Dovizioso, Andrea Iannone, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Márquez, Jack Miller, Dani Pedrosa, Danilo Petrucci, Alex Rins, Valentino Rossi, Ben Spies, Casey Stoner, and Maverick Viñales.
Of that group, Iannone, Miller, Petrucci, and Spies have all won only a single race, ruling them out of contention. Alex Rins has won two races, but the Suzuki rider has only been active for three seasons, meaning he made little impact over the full decade.
That left eight riders who have won multiple races this decade: Crutchlow, Dovizioso, Lorenzo, Márquez, Pedrosa, Rossi, Stoner, and Viñales.
Of those eight, Andrea Dovizioso is the only rider to have started in all 180 races (he actually started 181 races, but the 2011 race in Sepang was red-flagged after Marco Simoncelli’s tragic death, and would have started in Silverstone last year, had the race not been canceled due to the weather).
Two other riders have started every MotoGP race held while they were in the class: Marc Márquez has competed in all 127 races held since 2013, and Maverick Viñales has started all 91 races held since 2015.
What was impressive about Marc Márquez wrapping up his sixth MotoGP title in seven years was not so much that he took the title with a win (as outstanding as it was), but how he got there in the first place.
Márquez’s record after Thailand is almost unparalleled in the MotoGP era: 9 wins, 5 second places, and a single DNF. Márquez’s sole DNF came when he crashed out of the lead in Austin, a result of the engine braking problems the 2019 Honda RC213V suffered early in the season.
The only rider to have done anything like this before was Valentino Rossi in 2002. Then, in the first year of the 990cc four strokes, Rossi won 11 of the 16 races, and took 4 second places, with one DNF, caused by a problem with his rear tire.
It was Rossi’s third season in the premier class, a year after winning his first title aboard the 500cc two stroke Honda NSR500.
For the second time in his MotoGP career, Valentino Rossi is to change crew chiefs. At the end of the 2019 season, David Muñoz, currently crew chief for Nicolo Bulega in the Sky Racing Team VR46 Moto2 team, will replace Silvano Galbusera as crew chief for Rossi in the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team.
The news was first broken by Spanish daily AS.com early on Thursday, and confirmed by Rossi later in the pre-event press conference for the Thailand round of MotoGP at Buriram.
“Yes, it’s true,” Rossi said in response to a question from Mela Chercoles, the journalist who broke the story. “Next year I will change my chief mechanic. It was good, because after the Misano race we spoke with Silvano, because we want to try to do something to be stronger.”
Rossi explained that there were a number of factors involved. “It was different factors together, because also Silvano wanted to work for Yamaha, but he wanted to try something with less stress and also with less days out of Italy.”
“At the same time Yamaha wanted to try to make the test team stronger for next year to improve the work in Europe. I didn’t expect it at the beginning, but speaking together we decided to change so Silvano will go to the test team next year.”
Episode 103 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison and David Emmett on the microphones, as we discuss the happenings at the French GP at Le Mans.
As usual, the guys cover the on track action at the race, as well as the goings on behind the scenes in the paddock.
The main topic of the show is Marc Marquez, who rode a master class race in France, and showed a truly unstoppable form throughout the race weekend.
There are only three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and Marc Márquez winning any MotoGP race organized in the United States of America. That has been true since the Spaniard moved up to MotoGP, and for both years he spent in Moto2 as well.
There is something about America which makes Márquez nigh on invincible. Is it the anticlockwise tracks? Is it the low grip and tricky surfaces found at the circuits? Or is high fructose corn syrup Márquez’ equivalent of Popeye’s spinach?
MotoGP went to Austin hoping this might be the year when things changed. With good reason: the racing in the series has been getting closer and closer almost on a race-by-race basis. Valentino Rossi finished just 0.6 seconds behind race winner Andrea Dovizioso at Qatar, but he crossed the line in fifth place.
In Argentina, the seven riders fighting for second place were separated by 3 seconds on the penultimate lap. The Ducati Desmosedici GP19 is faster and better than ever, the Yamaha M1 has made a huge step forward since 2018, and the Suzuki has consistently been in the hunt for podiums since the middle of last year.
That is all very well and good, but the margin of Marc Márquez’ victory in Termas de Rio Hondo suggested that ending Márquez’ reign in the US would require something extraordinary to happen. The Repsol Honda rider had a 12 second lead going into the last lap in Argentina.
The Honda RC213V had the highest top speed in both Qatar and Argentina, the bike having both more horsepower and better acceleration. Then, during qualifying, Márquez took pole – his seventh in a row at the Circuit of the Americas – with an advantage of more than a quarter of a second over Valentino Rossi. Normal service had been resumed.
Mini-bikes racing is heating up in the United States, thanks in part to the hilariously fun (and cheap) Honda Grom offerings, as well as the sophisticate and potent machines like what’s coming from Ohvale.
If the sport is to continue, then there needs to be pathway for young racers, and mini-motos is one of the keys to solidying our two-wheeled future. For bonus points, they provide a super-fun and relatively pain-free way for adults to race and crash on the weekend.
The interesting part though is that even if you are a nine-time world champion like Valentino Rossi, the value of a day on a mini-moto is certainly there, as we can see above The Doctor spinning some laps on the machine with his VR|46 cohorts.