Honda

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:

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:

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."

MODERATOR: We said all the things, Jorge, 77 points, wins at Laguna, Indianapolis. You come here in very, very good shape.

JORGE LORENZO: Yes, I come here in very good shape. You know, all the things are going so well this year. There was sort of -- I got second position, so I couldn't ask for anything more. And we come here in a track that I love. In 2008 with a lot of rain and very hard conditions, I made my first podium in rain in my career, and last year I won. So it's always very positive that MotoGP comes here in America, and I'm happy for that.

MODERATOR: And just walking into the Motor Speedway is a special place, an iconic place, isn't it?

LORENZO: Yeah, very special with a lot of history and a lot of races here in the past. And obviously we are -- we want that this continues for long years, but I don't know whether it's going to happen for the next years.

MODERATOR: We sat here two weeks ago, not here but in the press conference in Brno in the Czech Republic, you said: "Now I think very hard about the championship. I have to be careful. Wins not so important but podiums. We just want to win the race again." Is it the same philosophy here, the same theory?

Hiroshi Aoyama's rookie season in MotoGP has not been easy. The last ever 250cc World Champion entered MotoGP in a brand new team on a satellite Honda and had spent his time slowly getting up to speed, all the while struggling with a wrist problem. Then, just as the Interwetten Honda rider seemed to be getting to grips with the new class, fate dealt him a cruel blow in the form of a Sunday morning cold-tire highside at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. Aoyama fractured his T12 vertebra, and was out for at least three months.

Rejecting surgery, Aoyama decided to let the fracture heal naturally. Speaking to MotoMatters.com at Brno on Saturday, Aoyama explained that the alternative would have been to have the vertebra above and below fused together, and though that would have allowed the Interwetten Honda rider to return to action more quickly, it would also have permanently restricted his range of motion, complicating the process of learning to ride. Aoyama's decision not to have surgery was vindicated two days later, when the Japanese rider tested the Interwetten Honda RC212V once again, and immediately set times faster than Alex de Angelis, the rider who had been drafted in to replace Aoyama during his absence.