Dani Pedrosa

With the highest-profile moves all officially confirmed, MotoGP's Silly Season is starting to run out of steam. The big surprises are out of the way, and we are left with just over half the seats still unfilled. But even for the unsigned rides, names have already been penciled in, some rather more firmly than others. 

The two big names still waiting to put their signatures under contracts are surely Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa. Lorenzo's Brazilian manager is said to be playing hardball with Yamaha, trying to extract the best possible conditions out of the Japanese factory now that the sales powerhouse Valentino Rossi has left Yamaha to go to Ducati. Rumors of a 14 million euro salary demand are unconfirmed, but with Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica likely to take on sponsorship of the Yamaha squad, Lorenzo might be expected to earn that in sponsorship by allying his selling power to the Telefonica brand.

MODERATOR: OK, ladies and gentlemen, riders are on their way. In third place, Jorge Lorenzo here at Indianapolis. (Applause) Jorge has a 68-point lead in the championship over Dani Pedrosa, of course, who won the race.  In second place, Ben Spies. (Applause) And the race winner, his third Grand Prix victory of the season, Dani Pedrosa.

Dani, you look absolutely shattered, I've got to say. I think that was, all three of you look absolutely shattered but that was a pretty tough afternoon's work.

The industrious folks in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway press office have done part of our job again, collecting quotes from fifteen of the seventeen MotoGP riders for tomorrow's MotoGP race. Even better, they came up with a selection of fascinating statistics from today's qualifying session as well. Here's the official IMS press notes and quotes:

MotoGP QUALIFYING NOTES:

The impressively efficient press department at Indianapolis Motor Speedway collected and provided the following collection of quotes from fourteen of the seventeen MotoGP riders after the first session of free practice. Thanks to Paul Kelly and his staff for doing our job for us:

CASEY STONER (No. 27 Ducati Team, first): (Since you didn't run here last year, how hard was it to set up the motorcycle?): "We know genuinely the layout of the circuit. We know how the bike is going to react on a certain type – whether it's fast corners, slow corners, heavy braking or not. We had enough data from '08 just to start with, in general. There will be three or four different groups of circuits that we go to that we know what setup works. So we start with that rough idea; that's how we start every weekend. We'll know from previous years what roughly works on this style of circuit and then we just go from there. Out of the box it (the motorcycle) wasn't great. We tried one setting and completely went the wrong way, and it felt horrible. We came back and tried going a different direction and made another step and made it feel a little better, and we tried the last thing to make another improvement and sort of went backward again. We just have to go back and forth until we find that point where we're getting all aspects of the bike working."

Race day pictures from Brno, courtesy of Jules Cisek:

Andrea Iannone looked like doing another disappearing act in the Moto2 race, then went backwards

In good company: Rookie Marco Simoncelli chases two MotoGP and one WSBK champion

Dani Pedrosa hung in there a long time, but there was no staying with Jorge Lorenzo

The silly season for the factory riders is just about over: Ducati will be announcing the signing of Valentino Rossi on Sunday night at Brno with Nicky Hayden a racing certainty to follow at Indianapolis, and Yamaha likely to announce its factory team lineup of Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies immediately after the Rossi announcement. At Honda, the arrival of Casey Stoner has been officially confirmed, while Dani Pedrosa is sure to follow in the next few weeks.

But while Yamaha and Ducati are all more or less done, the Honda lineup has a few more loose ends to tie up. Stoner's contract is done and dusted, but the situation for Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso is a little more complex. As discussed previously, Dovizioso's situation is complicated by the fact that the hoped-for sponsorship deal with Red Bull never materialized, but according to a Honda spokesperson, the Italian's contract should be finalized some time around Misano. The spokesperson had no comment on which team Dovizioso would end up with.

With the MotoGP season at its halfway point, and the silly season starting to shake itself out, it's time to take a look at the state of the market for 2011. With contracts either signed or on the verge of being signed, the picture of who will be riding where is becoming clear. For the most part, names have been at least pencilled in, those pencil strokes to be replaced by contractually obliging ink after Brno and Indianapolis, but there are still one or two question marks that remain open.

In the first part of this silly season summary, we will address who goes where in the factory teams. The rider picture is just about settled, with the only real question mark what happens at Suzuki. But riders aren't the only factor here, as somebody has to pay the bills. So alongside the rider lineup for each team, we've addressed the issue of sponsorship, and who is likely to be footing the bill next year. Riders and sponsors in bold are confirmed (or as good as confirmed), while names in italics are either best guesses or based on firm rumors. Tomorrow, we will look at the state of the satellite teams.

A spectacular setting for a race, aided in no small part by money from Mazda

This Ducati will be wearing the same number in 2011

And this rider will have an old teammate next door to him again

Q: What happened?

Dani Pedrosa: I hit a bump. I was entering with the brake and I hit a bump with the front wheel, and I just lost the front.

Q: What does this mean for the championship? Can you still catch Jorge?