Mika Kallio

The press office of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway continue to do an outstanding job, collecting the following notes and quotes from the riders in today's MotoGP race. For quotes from the podium riders, see the separate news item.

MotoGP POST-RACE NOTES:

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:

On Monday morning, Jules Cisek had a final chance to take some photos during the Brno test. He had to be quick, though, as he was soon chased out of pit lane by overly officious security guards.

Pramac - because Ducati's don't necessarily have to be red

Nicky Hayden's wrist was sore, but he had work to do, so he got on with it

Still crazy after all these years: Italian veteran Loris Capirossi

Yesterday, we discussed who is going where in the factory teams in MotoGP. For the most part, those deals are either public, or really badly-kept secrets. Today, we'll look at the situation among the satellite teams, a situation which is much, much less clear-cut than the factory squad, in part because the factory deals have not all been announced yet. The number of changes are suprisingly few, reflecting in part the problems in MotoGP. As costs rise, the cost of being competitive is growing, and more importantly, the cost of failure is increasing as well.

As a consequence, teams are not willing to take chances on unproven but promising talent. The learning curve in MotoGP is now so steep - electronics, bike setup, but most especially tires - that it takes half a season to start to get your head around the class. Limited testing has made the situation much, much worse, raising the penalty for rookies entering the class even further - the scrabbling around for substitute riders for Valentino Rossi, Hiroshi Aoyama and Randy de Puniet illustrating the case perfectly.

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."

With MotoGP now one third through its 18 race season, the effect of the engine-life regulations - restricting each MotoGP rider to just 6 engines throughout the entire season - is starting to become clear. The latest engine information list - assembled by IRTA and MotoGP Technical Director Mike Webb, and distributed (if you can call it that) by Dorna - provides an interesting perspective on the impact the regulations are having, and how the factories have approached the problems posed by limited engines.

The clear winner that emerges from the list is surely Honda. Of their six riders, three (Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso, and San Carlo Gresini's Marco Simoncelli) have used just two engines, and not had to have a third engine officially sealed. Dovizioso and Simoncelli have distributed their races equally, with three races on each of the two engines, while Dani Pedrosa has four races on his number 1 engine, and just two on his number 2 engine.

Yamaha still can't find anyone to ride Rossi's bike

Dirty Leathers: Andrea Dovizioso had a big off, and no time to clean his leathers on Saturday

Full marks for effort: Randy de Puniet is on a mission at Silverstone

While the first day of practice at Le Mans was - unusually - a crash-free affair, day 2 got off to a bad start, with falls in the 125 and MotoGP classes, as riders pushed too hard on a cool track. In the MotoGP class, Ben Spies, Alvaro Bautista and Mika Kallio all had big crashes, both Bautista and Spies highsiding spectacularly.

Things looked worst for Spies, the Texan being stretchered off to the Clinica Mobile, but after inspection - and  worries about a fractured metatarsal bone in his left foot - Spies was pronounced badly bruised, but healthy. Spies and Kallio are both expected to ride this afternoon, the injuries not serious enough to prevent them.

One day after the last-lap thriller of a Spanish Grand Prix, the MotoGP riders were back on track for a one-day test at the Andalucian track, the first of two scheduled for the season. As on Saturday during qualifying, it was the Repsol Honda of Dani Pedrosa which was fastest, finishing ahead of the Fiat Yamahas of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. Differences were small, however: the top 12 riders finished inside 1 second, and just 1.5 seconds covered the entire field.

The riders had plenty to test. Yamaha were testing minor chassis modifications, some electronics and a revised engine which provides improved acceleration, which both Rossi and Lorenzo declared a slight improvement. Lorenzo spent a lot of time working on his starts, which have so far been his weak point, while Rossi also found some setup changes which solved a rear grip problem.

Big Ben's tough qualifying was followed by an outstanding race

This was about as big as Valentino Rossi's lead got

Scorpion