Dani Pedrosa

Two more crucial pieces of the MotoGP silly season puzzle have fallen into place at Misano, as HRC announced that they have signed new contracts with Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso for next season. The deal consolidates the basic agreement which HRC boss Tetsuo Suzuki announced at the Brno round in the middle of August, though the terms are different to those in the initial announcement. Neither Pedrosa nor Dovizioso have signed two-year deals, as Mr Suzuki had said they would; instead, Dovizioso has signed a deal for 2010 with an option for 2011, while Dani Pedrosa has penned just a single year deal for 2010.

The basic agreement spoken of at Brno had the paradoxical effect of increasing speculation on the future of Pedrosa in particular. The speculation was fueled by Alberto Puig's denial of an agreement between his protege Pedrosa and Honda, made directly after Mr Suzuki made the HRC announcement. More oil was thrown on the fire when Pedrosa acknowledged he had had talks with Ducati, after the Italian factory had been turned down by Jorge Lorenzo. Stories also emerged that the sticking point in the Pedrosa / Honda negotations was the role of Alberto Puig, and as Pedrosa's manager was the man that HRC were being forced to negotiate with, that made the talks difficult.

One of the main reasons that Pedrosa had held off for so long - and possibly a reason for agreeing just to a single year deal, rather than the two year contract favored by Honda - is the failure of Honda to provide the kind of competitive machinery that the factory built throughout the 990cc era. Recent rapid improvements may have persuaded Pedrosa to give Honda the benefit of the doubt, the RC212V now clearly competitive, as Pedrosa's dominance at Indianapolis proved - at least until he crashed out of the race.

Silly Season is just about over in MotoGP: With the announcement that Ducati have just offered Nicky Hayden a new one-year contract for 2010, the available factory seats are all filled, with the notable exception of Honda. Andrea Dovizioso has admitted he is very close to a new deal with Honda, but most of the media and fan attention has been focused on the future of Dani Pedrosa.

At Indianapolis, Pedrosa acknowledged approaches by Ducati - for a salary thought to be broadly similar to the gigantic sums on offer to Jorge Lorenzo, before he turned the Bologna factory down - but repeated that discussions with Honda were still ongoing, and that no firm conclusions had been reached. The sticking point, it was believed, was the role that Pedrosa's manager and mentor Alberto Puig was to play next season, with HRC pushing for a much diminished role for the former GP winner, and Pedrosa refusing to sign unless he had the man who has done so much for his career by his side.

Reports coming out of Spain earlier today - published by the sports daily Sport.es and reported by the Catalonian radio station Catalunya Informacio - indicate that Dani Pedrosa has already decided to sign a new contract with the Repsol Honda squad, and will make an official announcement this weekend at Misano. According to the reports, Pedrosa will sign a contract for at least one year, but no word has been forthcoming on the role of Pedrosa's manager Puig.

Nicky Hayden ran his best-selling Laguna livery on race day

Colin Edwards and his Amazing 3D Camera Rig (tail section)

The Moriwaki Moto2 bike was out on track at Indy ...

As was the Blusens Moto2 bike

Third, behind two Spaniards. That's two too many.

Kids in 99 t-shirts. Are 46's days numbered?

Indianapolis Motor Speedway: Getting a sense of scale is almost impossible

Hiroshi Aoyama at the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix. Just so you know

IMS - 100 years of people going too fast

The Tornado, proving that it takes more than rain to make a Tornado

Dani Pedrosa - Too fast for the human eye

JT - Apparently, his mojo is kept in a box in Indianapolis

Lorenzo is wearing a Captain America helmet. Shame the wing looks just a little bit like the Honda logo.

That is a Honda, with a rider who might not be there next year

Loris Capirossi is back with Suzuki, and Suzuki is back with new parts

When you're 50 points ahead, why bother looking through the corner?

Earlier today, when we reported on Jorge Lorenzo's decision to stay with Yamaha, we speculated on whether Ducati would now turn its attention to Dani Pedrosa, as a backup plan for an ailing Casey Stoner. The idea was hardly rocket science, as the play Ducati made for Lorenzo was an obvious statement of intent, and the only other top rider available to the factory Ducati squad is Dani Pedrosa.

So obvious was the idea that Mela Chercoles, one of Spain's most senior MotoGP journalists writing for AS.com, asked Ducati team boss Livio Suppo just that: Did Lorenzo's refusal mean that Ducati could make an approach to Dani Pedrosa. Suppo's answer was brief, but pretty revealing: "Impossible is nothing. But everything is difficult." Clearly, Ducati are interested in signing Pedrosa, the question is, would they chase the Spaniard as hard as they had Lorenzo, given that Pedrosa is more like Casey Stoner than Lorenzo: His talent is unquestionable, but his marketability is much more difficult.

Until Pedrosa finally signs a new deal - whether that be a formalization of the "basic accord" that HRC boss Tetsuo Suzuki announced at Brno, or he makes a shocking switch to Ducati - the Spanish media will surely be full of speculation. After all, with Lorenzo signed to Yamaha for another year, they once again have thousands of empty column inches to fill

So it's finally done. Jorge Lorenzo has made up his mind, and decided to stay with Yamaha for 2010. The deal was announced early on Tuesday morning, European time - just as your humble correspondent boarded a plane to fly to the US for the Indianapolis Grand Prix, as it happens - in a press release issued by Yamaha. As keen observers will come to expect, none of the important details of the deal were announced - how much money was involved and whether Lorenzo got the assurances he craved of equal treatment with team mate Valentino Rossi - all we know is that Lorenzo will be riding for Yamaha for at least one more season. 

Despite the lack of details announced, there is much that can be concluded by Lorenzo's - in the eyes of most observers, extremely wise - decision to step back from the abyss and stay with Yamaha. As attractive as the 6-8 million euros a year that Ducati was reportedly offering him must have appeared, Lorenzo must have understood that the risks outweighed the potential rewards.

The biggest and most immediate problem Lorenzo would have faced is the drastic reduction in the amount of preseason testing. The Ducati is a notoriously difficult beast to tame, indeed, many would argue that only Casey Stoner has managed that feat successfully, and the only route to mastering the Desmosedici lies in seat time. With testing slashed to just 3 two-day tests prior to the start of next season, plus two more days directly after the final race of the season at Valencia, Lorenzo would have had very little time to acclimatize.

With the veritable category 5 hurricane of media attention that has surrounded Jorge Lorenzo's deal with Ducati - a deal that has been both confirmed and denied - most other MotoGP news has gone unnoticed. And yet the whirlwind of news has managed to stir up a few fascinating details from around the rest of the paddock, as seats are being held open and details hammered out for potential deals which could come into play if Lorenzo moves and his seat at Fiat Yamaha becomes available.

One candidate for that vacancy would be Dani Pedrosa. Despite HRC boss Tetsuo Suzuki announcing that Honda had reached a "basic agreement" with both Pedrosa and Dovizioso, with just a few details left to be thrashed out, both Dani Pedrosa and his manager and mentor Alberto Puig denied that any deal had been agreed upon, though Pedrosa described the talks as being "positive". Until a deal with Honda is finalized, Pedrosa is still at liberty to explore other options, one of which is Yamaha. Puig has commented several times that if Pedrosa cannot reach an agreement with Honda, Yamaha would be his best option.

But there is one detail which is blocking any deal which Pedrosa may be considering. Both Honda and Yamaha have said that they would welcome Pedrosa with open arms, but they will not accept the presence of Alberto Puig in the garage, according to the Spanish website Motoworld. The contract which HRC presented to Pedrosa reportedly contained the condition that Puig would no longer be welcome in the Repsol Honda garage, a condition which caused Pedrosa to refuse to sign it. Similarly, when Jorge Lorenzo flirtation with Honda caused Pedrosa to put out feelers to Yamaha, one of the conditions demanded by Yamaha was that Puig would not be involved.

The past few days have been a veritable whirlwind of news, or more accurately, rumor and speculation, about the future of Jorge Lorenzo. The Spaniard has been holding up the MotoGP transfer market since early July, when he held off on signing a new contract with Yamaha over the conditions of the deal, and explored the options on offer to him from the other manufacturers. He had, as he took pleasure in pointing out, received offers from all the other manufacturers, and was using those offers as leverage with Yamaha, to try and extract promises of equal treatment from the team. The kind of promises that Lorenzo believed he had from the factory when he signed with them the first time around, for the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

At Brno, the market started to show some signs of movement, with Marco Melandri going to Gresini Honda, Alvaro Bautista moving up to the Rizla Suzuki ride, strong indications that Hector Barbera would take the Aspar Ducati, and a statement by the head of HRC that they had reached basic agreements with Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso. At the same time, HRC boss Tetsuo Suzuki also indicated that they would not be signing Jorge Lorenzo. Two different stories are in circulation about the reasons for this: One says that the deal failed because Honda was unwilling to meet Lorenzo's salary demands; the other reports that Suzuki-san's statement was a face saving operation, after Lorenzo had already turned Honda down.

It looked like Lorenzo's role was played out. But Casey Stoner's absence due to illness, the presence of Philip Morris head of marketing Francesco Calvo at Brno despite Stoner's absence, and a series of late night meetings in the Ducati hospitality unit soon gave rise to speculation that Ducati were closing in on signing a deal with Jorge Lorenzo, to take over development of the troublesome Desmosedici, and become the new face of the team. The sums involved were reported to be astronomical, somewhere between 4 and 8 million euros a year, for a two-year deal.

The saga, which reported on on Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, seems to be coming to a head. For Spanish website Motocuatro is reporting that Lorenzo has reached an agreement in principle with Ducati, and will be riding with the Bologna-based factory for the next two seasons. Concrete salary numbers were not reported, but according to Motocuatro, the deal would make Lorenzo the second highest paid motorcycle racer in the world, behind only - you guessed it - his team mate Valentino Rossi. That would put the deal in the upper end of the 4 to 8 million euro range being bandied about.