Ducati

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.

Being a Texan, Ben Spies is naturally unfazed at being thrown out of the saddle

Nico Terol shows that blue can be the fastest color

Seeing eye-to-eye: Colin Edwards ...

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:

As widely expected, and anticipated here just a couple of days' ago, Nicky Hayden announced an extension of his contract with Ducati at the Indy Mile flat track race on Saturday night. The good news for Hayden is that the deal is for two years, with Hayden signed up for 2011 and 2012. Hayden told the crowd at the Indy Mile "Next year I'll be teamed with some guy named Rossi, who knows a little something about bikes."

With both Hayden and Valentino Rossi signed up for two years, Ducati is clearly playing it safe over the formula switch back to 1000cc, due to take place at the end of the 2011 season. This allows both Hayden and Rossi to test and develop Ducati's MotoGP bike for the new formula, maximizing testing without running the risk of losing knowledge should one of their riders want to leave at the end of the 2011 season. But with Hayden having made a huge leap forward this year, and his public profile in the US helping to sell Ducatis in large quantities both at home and abroad, Ducati also felt that signing Hayden was a safe bet.

Below is the text of the official press statement:

DUCATI ANNOUNCE A TWO-YEAR DEAL WITH NICKY HAYDEN

MODERATOR: Ben, quite a weekend for you. Up and down, as it has been for I think most people here at Indianapolis. First of all, congratulations, pole position. Two weeks ago was the first front row, and now you've gone one better in pole.

BEN SPIES: Yeah, it's a dream, I mean to have a pole position at any time in MotoGP and to be able to do it in the first season on the Monster Tech 3 bike in front of the American crowd, it's great and add Indianapolis to it. It's kind of ticked all the boxes this weekend. We just got to, you know, not get ahead of ourselves, so it gives us some common edge for tomorrow but got to kind of live the moment right now. You know, it kind of took the pressure off the announcement on Friday and just knowing what's going on and am I'm really wanting to repay the Tech 3 team because they've helped put me in a place to be there and, you know, to be able to get a pole for them and hopefully can end the season good and keep being consistent and progress. But, you know, today we'll just savor the moment right now and go in tomorrow and try to put a hard 45 minutes and see what happens.

MODERATOR: It's been an interesting weekends, I think, for everybody in MotoGP, grip level has been a problem. You've crashed yourself, and the weather conditions also seem to be getting a little bit hotter.

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:

We should have known that the writing was on the wall when Valentino Rossi debuted his "Farewell" helmet at Laguna Seca

Jorge Lorenzo is redefining "unstoppable" this season

Kenny Noyes, one of three US riders crowding the Moto2 class at Indy

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."

The Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix has unleashed a veritable avalanche of official press releases about the future of the sport. The latest release is from the Aspar team concerning the extension of their contract with Ducati for 2011, but the release also hints at further developments in the future. The press release mentions Jorge Martinez' desire to field a two-man team on Ducatis for the 2012 season as well, which would appear to contradict rumors linking Aspar to Aprilia. 

For rumors in the Spanish and Italian press have linked the Aspar to a deal with Aprilia to race a heavily modified version of their RSV4 bike in MotoGP in 2012, entering under the guise of a CRT team. Such a suggestion is plausible given Aspar's strong historic connection to the Noale factory, having raced and won many titles for Aprilia in the 125 and 250cc championships. However, given Aspar's strong ties to the Italian manufacturer, the chances of the Grand Prix Commission granting Aspar CRT status should he apply to race Aprilias seems rather slim. A deal with Ducati to race factory prototypes seems a much more likely chain of events.

ASPAR TEAM AND DUCATI TO CONTINUE IN 2011
Excellent relationship between Spanish team and Italian factory leads to fresh deal