The San Francisco Dainese D-Store welcomed me and Jensen Beeler last week to share some of our thoughts and experiences in MotoGP. For my part of the presentation, I showed some photographs on a projector and told the stories that went along with them. A few folks asked if I could video the show, but that turned out to be a non-starter for various reasons. So instead I thought I'd write up the stories to share here for anyone who is interested. So here is the story behind...

Bradl's Angst
Assen, 2011

With the 2012 World Superbike season just over two weeks away, preparations are ramping up for the return of racing. As part of those preparations, BMW issued a press release interview with their new Head of Race Operations, Andrea Dosoli. Dosoli came to BMW from Yamaha, along with Marco Melandri, who he had previously worked with at the Hayate team formed when Kawasaki officially pulled out of MotoGP in 2009. In the interview, Dosoli covers a lot of ground, including his impression of BMW's World Superbike effort, his role within the team, his expectations of the BMW S1000RR machine and his hopes for riders Marco Melandri and Leon Haslam.

Below is the text of the interview, issued by BMW:

Interview with Andrea Dosoli: “BMW Motorrad Motorsport has a lot of potential in many areas.”

Nicky Hayden has returned home after successful surgery on his shoulder. The Ducati rider had damaged his shoulder in a training accident - on his first time back on a motorcycle after recovering from a broken wrist, sustained in the final race of 2011 at Valencia - and though the initial diagnosis only showed up a cracked shoulder blade, further examination after the Sepang test showed damage to his glenoid labrum, the cartilage which holds the upper arm in place in the shoulder socket. Dr Ting, the famous motorcycle racing surgeon based in California, carried out surgery to repair the tear, sending Hayden home to recover.

Bridgestone issued the following press release after the first Sepang MotoGP test, in which Bridgestone's general manager Tohru Ubukata and Dorna's newly appointed Safety Advisor, Loris Capirossi, discuss the reaction to and development of the 2012-spec Bridgestone tires for MotoGP:

Press releases from the Repsol Media Service after the first day of testing at Valencia:

A week after their MotoGP counterparts packed up the garages in Sepang, the Moto2 and Moto3 teams rolled out at Valencia for the first test of 2012. The day started very cold, leaving a lot of the teams stuck in the garage waiting for temperatures to rise; despite the winter sun, track temperatures reached just 12°C, putting a damper on grip and lap times.

Despite the cold, Scott Redding managed to get just inside Karel Abraham's Moto2 lap record at Valencia circuit, the young Briton adapting very quickly to the Kalex chassis which the Marc VDS Racing team switched to for 2012. The Kalex proved to be quick for everyone: the five fastest men were all on Kalex machinery, with Thomas Luthi the first of the Suters in 6th, ahead of Andrea Iannone on the FTR Speed Up and Simone Corsi on the FTR Ioda bike. 2010 World Champion Toni Elias return to the Moto2 class has been muted: Elias posted the 11th fastest time on Wednesday, 1.8 seconds down on Redding, and a tenth of a second behind 2011 125cc runner up Johann Zarco, telling MotoGP.com that he had decided to take it a little easy on his first day back on the bike after a two-month layoff.

MotoMatters.com continues to grow in popularity - a massively heartening phenomena, for which we are all grateful - but that popularity comes with a downside: at peak times, the site can become very slow, and provide a frustrating user experience. In response to this - and in anticipation of the further growth of the site - we are switching MotoMatters.com to a different server, with more powerful hardware and much more memory. The end result, once the changeover has been made, should be a much zippier site which loads and responds faster, especially around the busiest times on race weekends.

The switch has been a little more complicated than expected, but it looks like we have everything under control, thanks to the outstanding support from our hosting company Rimuhosting.com. who we really cannot recommend highly enough (and no, we are not being paid to make that statement). The actual switchover will take place some time today (Wednesday, February 8th 2012), once the new server has been fully tested and all of the data has been transferred. In the meantime, the site may go offline for a brief period to facilitate the switch. We are working hard to make the changeover as painless as possible.

Valentino Rossi underwent surgery today to remove the pin in his right tibia, the final memento of his monster crash at Mugello in June 2010. The surgery, carried out at the Cervesi hospital in Cattolica, not far from Rossi's home in Tavullia, was performed by Dr Giannicola Lucidi and Dr Marco Trono, while Professor Giuseppe Porcellini, the surgeon who fixed the shoulder Rossi injured earlier that year in a motocross crash. The surgery was a success, and after a period of 5 days rest and recovery, the Italian should be able to get back to training ready for the 2012 MotoGP season. In a press release issued this evening, Ducati announced they expected Rossi to be fit enough to take part in the second Sepang test due to take place at the end of February.

The Marc VDS Racing press office issued the following preview of the first Moto2 test of 2012, due to be held from Wednesday to Friday this week:

In the second of the two interviews which the Repsol Media Service put out with the Repsol Honda MotoGP riders after the test at Sepang, Casey Stoner gets a chance to answer a few questions. Like Pedrosa, Stoner talks about the differences and similarities of riding the new 1000cc MotoGP bikes when compared to the old 800s, as well as the extra weight that has been added to the bikes. But the Australian also talks about the role that fuel consumption is likely to play with the new, larger capacity bikes running the same amount of fuel as the 800s, and he denies that becoming a father will have any effect on his speed.

Below is the press release interview with Stoner, as sent out by Repsol:

"It's crucial that Honda and Repsol work together to get the same performance out of less consumption"

Reigning MotoGP World Champion, Casey Stoner, prepares for his second season in Repsol and Honda colours onboard the 1000cc RC213V