How It All Began....

In summer 2011 had the trip of the lifetime! Two months in Europe with my girlfriend who was awesome enough to come with me to the Mugello Moto GP. (She told me to say this. In reality, she only came because I took her to Lake Como…)

I also took my trusty GSXR 1000, bought brand new in 2005. I'd since put over 65,000 kms on the clock, including an insane amount of track days, and I was slightly worried she wouldn't survive Europe. To make sure, I had her leak down tested (she was toight!), new tires, clutch cable, fresh oil and filters. With the motor and still pumping 158hp on the dyno, she was good to go!

In those two months, I covered another 14,000kms through the South of France, Switzerland, The Italian Dolomites, Tuscany and my birthplace Transylvania. Though I call Australia home, riding through the hills where I grew up was fulfilling a childhood fantasy.

The MotoGP bikes have been back in action for three days now - four, if you count Randy de Puniet and the other Aprilia ART (as Aprilia's CRT bike is called) riders' outing at Valencia - and fans and followers now have some real meat to chew over. The days of endless speculation based on nothing more than ill-informed gossip and rumor is over; the days of endless speculation based on slightly better-informed gossip, rumor and lap times are here.

So what preliminary conclusions can we draw from the test at Sepang? Has the Ducati really been fixed? Are the 1000s going to provide more exciting racing? Will the Honda be as dominant this year as it was last? Can Jorge Lorenzo take the fight to Casey Stoner? Do the times set by the CRT bikes mean that the project is a failure? Wouldn't it be nice if we could provide a simple yes-or-no answer to all of these questions?

Marc Marquez has been forced to pull out of next week's Moto2 test at Valencia with continuing vision problems. The vision problems were a result of his crash during practice at Sepang, caused when marshalls failed to display a flag while there was water on the track. The Spaniard underwent an operation to correct a partial paralysis of the superior oblique muscle in his right eye on January 16th, and had originally planned to return to the track at Valencia, for the Moto2 test scheduled for February 8th-10th.

But Marquez' recovery is not going as fast as the Spaniard and his team had hoped, and the decision to skip the test was made by Marquez' manager Emilio Alzamora, in consultation with Dr Sanchez Dalmau, the surgeon who carried out the operation on Marquez. They felt it was better to wait for Marquez' vision to return to 100% before risking riding a racing motorcycle. 

The BMW press office issued the following press release interview with Marco Melandri. In the interview, Melandri talks about being pleasantly surprised by the BMW, working with new teammate Leon Haslam, and his impressions of the 2012 season. Here's the press release:

BMW Motorrad factory rider Marco Melandri: "I am very confident about the bike."

Suter issued the following press release after this week's MotoGP test at Sepang, reflecting on the test. Fortunately for the readers, the quotes from Colin Edwards have not been too heavily redacted, and still make for an entertaining and informative read. Here's the press release:

MotoGP tests in Malaysia: Colin Edwards impressed with progress on Suter BMW

Comparing the times set on the final day at Sepang to the final times from both the same day during the 2011 test and the times set during qualifying for last year's canceled Malaysian GP once again provides interesting reading. As has been the case almost throughout the test, Cal Crutchlow showed the most improvement over last year, the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha rider now well-adapted to both MotoGP and the new 1000cc bikes. Surprisingly, Casey Stoner showed the second-best improvement, besting the time he set last year by over 1.2 seconds, but given the scorching pace the Repsol Honda man set early on Thursday morning, perhaps it isn't so surprising after all.

Hector Barbera proved that the 2012 Ducati - even the version that the satellite teams have, the bike they rode at Valencia - is a much better machine than the 2011 bike, while Stefan Bradl is clearly a better fit at LCR Honda than Toni Elias. Meanwhile, the actual GP12 is also a clear improvement, Valentino Rossi taking a second off his best time from last year, while the factory Yamahas of Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo were just half a second quicker.

Press releases issued by the teams and Bridgestone after the final day of testing for the MotoGP class at Sepang:

Casey Stoner has ended the first MotoGP test of 2012 on top of the timesheets in style. On just his second lap out of the pits this morning, the Repsol Honda man posted a lap of 1'59.607, crushing the circuit qualifying lap still held by Valentino Rossi from 2009, and beating his previous best at the circuit set in the second Sepang test back in February of 2011. Stoner was the only man into the 1'59s, ending the day six tenths ahead of Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo, who was in turn just a few hundredths quicker than Stoner's teammate Dani Pedrosa. Ben Spies put the second Factory Yamaha into 4th spot, and was the last rider to get within a second of Stoner.

With the excitement of MotoGP bikes being back on track subsiding to more manageable levels, the riders and teams were back hard at work again on Wednesday. The track had improved sufficiently to see times start to drop to where they might reasonably be expected to be. At Mugello in July of last year, Ducati Corse boss Filippo Preziosi had told the press that the simulations Ducati had run comparing their 1000cc bike - now radically changed since then - to the 800 showed that the 1000s should be about half a second faster round Mugello than the 800s, and that prediction proved to be just about spot on at Sepang.

The name of the rider at the top of the timesheet should surprise no one, Casey Stoner returning from a back problem - though still clearly stiff and not back to full strength - to post a scorching lap time, clear of the two Yamahas of Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo. Stoner did only a relatively few laps on the RC213V, concentrating on getting the parts tested he had on his work list, rather than working on a setup for the 2012 season. He compared the two chassis he had been given - and asked for the best parts of both chassis again, unsurprisingly - and concentrated on the big stuff.

With almost everyone at Sepang improving their times on the second day of the MotoGP test, it is once again worth comparing times with test times from the same test last year. Below is both a list containing the full ranking, including times from the second day of the 2011 test at Sepang and the second day of the 2012 Sepang test, and a list showing the amount by which each of the riders have improved.

The improvement for each rider makes for interesting reading. The most obvious detail is that the riders who have improved the most are riders who were rookies last year. Cal Crutchlow is nearly a second and a half faster than he was at the same time last year, while Karel Abraham has posted a very respectable improvement of over eight tenths. The other thing that is immediately clear is how badly Toni Elias struggled on the Honda - or rather, on the Bridgestone tires - last year: Stefan Bradl is over 1.6 seconds faster than Elias was at the test last year. Bradl's adapation period has been fast, the German getting up to speed quickly, but most of all, the number illustrates Elias' plight in 2011.