Archive - News Item

The news that Ducati had finally come clean and admitted they have signed Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden for the 2011 MotoGP season set the Internet abuzz this morning, after US magazine Cycle World published an interview with Ducati CEO Gabriele del Torchio. In that interview, Del Torchio reportedly said that he looked forward to "Valentino Rossi teaming up with Nicky Hayden."

It is hard to pin down at exactly what stage a rumor stops being a rumor and becomes news, a fact demonstrated by Valentino Rossi's impending move to the Ducati MotoGP team. The very first rumors emerged around the weekend of Mugello, the story broken by veteran Italian journalist Paolo Scalera of the Corriere dello Sport. By the time the MotoGP paddock arrived at Assen, the paddock was positively buzzing with rumors, and at Barcelona, speculation switched from whether Rossi would switch to Ducati to when he would announce it. At the German Grand Prix in the Sachsenring, Rossi cleared up that detail as well: any announcement on his future, he told the pre-event press conference, would have to wait until Brno.

The engine limits introduced for the 2010 MotoGP season have posed crew chiefs throughout the paddock with a delicate problem: How do you manage the engines to ensure that the rider can get the track time he needs during practice to find a good setup, yet still have an engine fresh enough and fast enough to be competitive during the race? This is a conundrum that we at MotoMatters.com have been particularly interested in, and so we decided to track someone down who could answer some of our questions.

At Barcelona we spoke to Pramac Ducati's Technical Director Fabio Sterlacchini, who also functions as Mika Kallio's crew chief, about how the team is handling the limited number of engines. How did they go about shuffling the engines to ensure that their riders always had a strong engine for the race? "We have a schedule," Sterlacchini told us, "Normally we manage the life of the engine, and we use the engine until we arrive at a mileage that we know that above this, it's better that we don't use this engine."

A variety of Italian sources are reporting that WSBK championship points leader Max Biaggi will extend his stay at the factory Alitalia Aprilia team until 2012. A move to a rival team was never really considered a serious possibility, but the parties were said to be haggling over compensation. All that has been resolved, according to reports, with Biaggi agreeing to a salary of one million Euro per annum, which would probably make the Roman Emperor the highest paid rider in the series. All that remains is for Biaggi to sign on the dotted line. Aprilia is also reportedly keen to retain the services of the current BSB champion Leon Camier. 

Ever since its return to America, MotoGP in the USA has been something of an anomaly. When the series first headed back across the Atlantic in 2005, it was only the MotoGP class that made the trip to Laguna Seca, with cost and limited paddock space cited as reasons for leaving the (then) 250 and 125 classes back in Europe. When the Red Bull US GP in Laguna was joined by the Red Bull Indianapolis GP at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway facility in 2008, the two support classes joined the MotoGP riders in the US, but only at Indy. Furthermore, the two US rounds have also always been separated by at least one European race, forcing the teams to fly their bikes and equipment out to the US twice.

After another weekend of nail-biting racing in the World Superbike series, the championships in both World Superbike and World Supersport classes have tightened up a little. And as always on the Monday after a weekend of WSBK, the organizers have released another set of highlight clips from the three races on the official World Superbike Youtube channel. So start your week off with a recap of Sunday's action from Silverstone, or if you have a little more spare time - and the ability to either understand or at least enjoy listening to Italian - you can see both race 1 and race 2 in full on the website of Italian broadcaster La7, who show WSBK in Italy.

World Superbikes Race 1

Sunday's World Supersport race at Silverstone was marred by an ugly crash shortly after the start. Eugene Laverty accidentally clipped the rear wheel of Joan Lascorz' Motocard Kawasaki, and the Spaniard went down. Lascorz was then hit full on by wildcard rider Roberto Tamburini on the Bike Service Yamaha, in turn throwing Tamburini off his bike and sending him tumbling through the grass at the side of the track, and hitting the unprotected wall just a few feet from the edge of the track. Both Tamburini and Lascorz were removed from the track by ambulance for examination at the Clinica Mobile, where early reports suggested that both men had come away virtually unscathed, with Tamburini reported as having a dislocated shoulder.

The World Supersport race at Silverstone was red-flagged before the first lap had been completed, after a nasty incident in Copse corner. Motocard Kawasaki's Joan Lascorz, who had taken the lead off the line, had his rear wheel clipped as he cut inside by Parkalgar Honda's Eugene Laverty. Lascorz fell, and was hit by Roberto Tamburini's Bike Service RT Yamaha R6 in the back. That impact also launched Tamburini off his bike, tumbling nastily through the grass.

Both Tamburini and Lascorz were removed from the track by ambulance, Lascorz apparently sitting up in the ambulance. Both men were transported to the Clinica Mobile, where they are currently being examined.

Both men have been ruled out of the race, which is due to be restarted in the next few minutes. The crash will have a big impact on Lascorz' title chances: the Spaniard was 15 points behind leader Kenan Sofuoglu in the championship standings, and 7 points ahead of Eugene Laverty in 3rd place.

UPDATE:
Reports from Silverstone indicate that both Lascorz and Tamburini are relatively OK. Lascorz is beaten up and bruised, with bruising to his chest and a concussion, while Tamburini has a dislocated shoulder, and bruising to his lower back. 

As is common at world championship motorcycle racing events, the Superbike commission - the World Superbike series' rule-making body - gathered to discuss rules to be introduced for the 2011 series. After the meeting, a press release was issued detailing the changes to be made for next season, and they make interesting reading.

The biggest change was the scrapping of the loophole which has allowed Aprilia to drive the camshafts on their RSV4 World Superbike machines using gears instead of the chains fitted on the production bikes. The rule had originally read "The method of cam drive (chain, belt or gears) must remain as on the homologated motorcycle unless a complete kit is available through normal commercial channels" but the last part of the sentence - "unless a complete kit is available through normal commercial channels" - has been dropped.

On the eve of the British round of World Superbikes at Silverstone, and the first time the World Superbike paddock has reconvened after Valentino Rossi's tests on the WSBK bike at Misano and Brno, it was inevitable that the subject of Rossi on the R1 would be brought up. At the pre-race paddock show, James Toseland addressed the matter head on, in response to questions from GPOne.com's representative, Claudio Porrozzi.

Toseland had been upset by stories that had appeared in the media after the Misano test, stating that he had demanded that Rossi not be allowed to test his bike. "I was surprised by what I read," Toseland said, and went on to deny categorically that he had vetoed Rossi using his Sterilgarda Yamaha R1 to test. He was a Yamaha rider, Toseland affirmed, and so had no say in the matter as to who got to test his bike.