Yuki Takahashi

Yuki Takahashi, and the Mistral 610

With 41 Moto2 bikes, the track was packed

Nearly ready ...

Jorge Lorenzo groks Web 2.0 and social media

Valencia has not so far been a lucky venue for Tech 3's Moto2 team. The team was scheduled to test at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in December, and were confronted with snow, a rarity in this part of Spain. Returning  to the track for this week's test alongside some of the World Superbike teams, they were spared snow, but instead had to deal with two days of rain and a cold and wet track. So when the sun came out on Thursday morning, the team breathed a collective sigh of relief. As Herve Poncharal put it: "We got here on Monday and since then we have only had 4 hours on track, but finally we got some work done."

Poncharal was delighted with the way the final day of testing went for Tech 3's own bike. "I am very, very happy, we made a big step forward," the Tech 3 team boss told MotoMatters.com. "We didn't find any chatter with the chassis, which was a problem we had at earlier tests." The chatter had been solved at a previous test with a revised chassis, but the conditions were such that the team hadn't been able to confirm the changes had fixed the problem entirely. In the better conditions - "Not good, only decent," Poncharal qualified - neither Yuki Takahashi nor Raffaele de Rosa encountered the chatter.

It is a tradition to look back at the end of the year, and pick out the highlights of the season. Certainly for us at MotoMatters.com, the highlights have been Scott Jones' beautiful photos. Having paddock access for the first time meant that Scott could attend more races and take better photos. Over the next few days, we'll be going back and selecting a few of our favorites from among the very many beautiful shots Scott took for us. If you see any photos you'd like to have on your wall, then drop Scott an email to ask about pricing. And if you want to help us do it all over again in 2010, then head over to the donate page and send us a contribution. Here are some of Scott Jones' photos from Qatar to help persuade you of the wisdom of that decision.

Of the 18 men who started the season, three would be gone by Valencia

The night race at Qatar may be weird, but it does generate some spectacular photos of sparks ...

... or shift lights, as Chris Vermeulen's visor demonstrates

Casey Stoner started the season as he meant to go on

The Moto2 grid is slowly starting to fit together. Today came the announcement from the Tech 3 team that they had signed 250cc star Raffaele de Rosa and former MotoGP rider Yuki Takahashi to ride the team's Moto2 bike, built and designed by Tech 3's technical guru Guy Coulon. As team mate to the last ever 250cc World Champion Hiroshi Aoyama, De Rosa did very well indeed, winning the rookie of the year award in the 250cc class and finishing on the podium twice. After a strong year in 250s, Takahashi struggled on the MotoGP bike, but the experience in both classes should stand the Japanese rider in good stead for the new Moto2 formula.

Yesterday we reported that Yuki Takahashi would not be racing at Laguna Seca, today the news is even worse. In a statement issued jointly by Team Scot and Honda, the team announced that Takahashi has been dropped for the rest of the season, in favor of Gabor Talmacsi. The reasons for the decision were simple, and stated plainly: It was a matter of money. Team Scot needed the income provided by Gabor Talmacsi and their new sponsor, Hungarian oil company Mol, but couldn't afford the extra bikes needed to allow them to run both Talmacsi and Takahashi. And so Takahashi had to go, as the Japanese rider's results so far had been very disappointing.

The withdrawal of Takahashi leaves the MotoGP class without a Japanese rider for the first time since 1992, a situation the Japanese factories - and especially Honda - have struggled to avoid for many years. But the flow of talent coming out of Japan recently has dropped to just a trickle, with fewer Japanese rider entering through the 125 series and working their way up through the ranks. The question is now whether next season will see the return of a Japanese rider, with 250cc championship leader Hiroshi Aoyama the current favorite to make the step up to MotoGP.

Below is the text of the press release issued by Team Scot concerning the release of Yuki Takahashi:

Earlier, we reported on a story on usually reliable GPOne.com that Yuki Takahashi was out of Team Scot, to be replaced by Gabor Talmacsi. But after MCN reported seeing Takahashi in California at the rental car pick up desk, we contacted Team Scot to get the official story on Takahashi's future in the team.

The Team Scot press officer confirmed to MotoGPMatters.com that Takahashi will not be riding at Laguna seca, but denied that Takahashi had been dropped altogether. "Yuki has a slipped disc and his results on track are conditioned by this problem," Stefano Bedon told us. "The team would face a lot of extra costs to line up two riders but without the possibility to improve the results. The solution is to wait for his recovery and to defer a decision later."

From the moment Gabor Talmacsi confirmed the rumors of a ride with the Team Scot Honda squad in MotoGP by turning up at Barcelona with a new sponsor and a contract, the writing has been on the wall for Yuki Takahashi. Despite the denials and promises from the team to try and find a way of accommodating both riders, in reality, it was merely a question of time before the Japanese rider would be forced to make way for the Hungarian, who was bringing a much-needed cash injection into the squad.

That time, according to the authoratitive Italian site GPOne.com, is now. Takahashi, it is being reported, has been withdrawn from the US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, ostensibly to allow surgery to be performed for back problems Takahashi suffered in his crash at Barcelona. The surgery will require a recovery period of 3 months, leaving Takahashi sidelined for the rest of the season. Just how badly Takahashi required surgery remains open to speculation, but his back injury is extremely convenient.

Team Scot manager Cirano Mularoni was open about the problems faced running two riders without spare bikes. "It was a difficult situation," he told GPone.com," because contrary to what I had read, extra spares were not available for the RC212V, a situation which would have gotten worse after Brno, with the limit on the numbers of engines. Not to mention the problems we would have faced in a flag-to-flag race, where we would have been forced to change wheels instead of bikes." Just where Mularoni read that Honda had extra RC212V parts lying around is a bit of a mystery, for HRC have made no secret of their aversion to supplying any more bikes, especially since sales slumped in aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Qualifying for Sunday's Catalunya Grand Prix took place in intense heat, making the conditions difficult for both riders and bikes. The riders were thankful that this was the first outing for Bridgestone's asymmetric dual compound tires, for the combination of very high track temperatures and the Barcelona track's endless right handers made a very hard compound necessary on the right-hand side of the tire, but a relatively softer compound on the left-hand side.

The heat meant that the early running was made by the riders on the hardest of the tires available, the extra-hard rear and the hard front, the compounds the teams are almost certain to be using in the race tomorrow. It was Jorge Lorenzo who took practice for the race to the greatest extreme, the Spaniard starting out the session with a monster run of 17 laps, over two thirds of race distance.

It wasn't just a long run, however, Lorenzo also demonstrated he was on race pace, taking the top spot after just a couple of laps, briefly ceding it to Andrea Dovizioso, then snatching it back, the first rider to lap under 1'43, with a time of 1'42.990. A lap later, Lorenzo took another two tenths off his time, setting out a marker of where race pace will be, and following it up with a long string of laps in the high 1'42s and low 1'43s.

The only person capable of following was Lorenzo's Fiat Yamaha team mate, Valentino Rossi. Rossi too ran low 1'43s, taking a provisional 2nd place on the grid with a quarter of the session gone. The other candidates for victory tomorrow were all running mid-1'43s, a couple of tenths off Rossi's pace.

The advent of Gabor Talmacsi to the Scot Honda team led to an avalanche of speculation that this would be the end of current rider Yuki Takahashi's MotoGP career. The two men have a single bike each at this weekend's Catalunya Grand Prix, which works fine when the sun is shining, but would make a flag-to-flag race in mixed conditions an impossible challenge. This bald fact prompted speculation that there would only be room for one rider in the team, and that rider would be the one who could bring money in in the form of sponsorship.

But in an informal press conference, Cirano Mularoni, boss of the Scot Honda team, denied that Takahashi would be given his marching orders at the end of this weekend. "Our plan is to run two riders for the rest of the season. We will need two more bikes for this, but of course they will be difficult to obtain so late after the start of the year," Mularoni said, according to MotoGP.com.

Honda has always denied it was capable of providing any more bikes, and after a winter of cost-cutting measures, the mood is not one of expansion. There is, however, an overriding reason why this time, things could be different. The Japanese factories - with Honda at their helm - have long ensured that MotoGP has a Japanese rider in the series. If Takahashi were to be forced out, this would leave MotoGP without a regular Japanese rider for the first time since 1991. This is unlikely to be acceptable to Honda, as the factory team with the strongest ties back to Japan, and it is not unthinkable that Honda might just step up to provide the extra equipment and keep Takahashi in the series.

By Assen, we should know how successful that attempt has been. And with the wildly variable weather Holland has had for the past few weeks, varying between pleasantly warm and cold and very, very wet, a flag-to-flag race is a very likely scenario at Assen.