It may be December, and the world of motorcycle racing may be retreating into hibernation for a few weeks, but news does keep cropping up from time to time. So before we also take a break for the holiday season, here is a quick round up of the news stories you may have missed.

The week started off (or ended, depending on when you start counting) with a fascinating and honest appearance by Jorge Lorenzo on British MotoGP broadcaster BT Sport's season review show. The Spaniard spoke frankly about the reasons he left Yamaha, the struggles he faced at Ducati, and how he pondered retirement before turning it around.

Lorenzo made his reasons for leaving Yamaha clear: he had run out of challenges to chase. "There was a time when I was in Yamaha that I was not learning so much anymore, because I'd achieved my dream from when I was a little kid, which was winning the MotoGP World Championship. I won it three times with Yamaha, so I didn't have any more things to achieve, no, and I was feeling a lack of motivation."

No easy move

Ever since the Superbike Commission - the rule-making body for WorldSBK - announced back in October that a third race would be added to the WorldSBK schedule, we have wondered exactly what this would mean for the class, both in terms of championship points and qualifying position for the second WorldSBK race, held on Sunday. On Tuesday, the FIM issued a press release containing the missing details for the coming season.

The new schedule impacts both qualifying and the races. The current two-stage Superpole has been abolished, replaced with a single Superpole session for the World Superbike and the World Supersport series. Those qualifying sessions will set the grid for the WorldSSP race on Sunday, and WorldSBK race 1 - the normal length race - on Saturday, and a new, 10-lap sprint race to be held on Sunday. 

The 10-lap sprint race - to be named the Tissot Superpole race - will set the first 9 positions of the grid for the second full-length race on Sunday afternoon. Positions 10 and onwards will be set using the qualifying positions from Saturday's Superpole session, presumably taking account of riders who qualified inside the top 9 but crashed out of the Superpole race on Sunday.

The off season is a good time for motorcycle racing organizations to do a spot of housekeeping. There is time to look back over the year, and figure out what was missing from the rules, and what was unclear, an issue made more pressing by the number of rule changes in recent years. And so that is what the Grand Prix Commission, MotoGP's rule-making body, did, at a meeting in Madrid on 30th November.

Though it took a 3-page press release to cover all the changes made during the meeting, most of them are fairly minor in their effect. The biggest change was not even in the press release, although that is because it is a consequence of the switch from Honda to Triumph engines in Moto2, and from the Honda ECU to the spec Magneti Marelli electronics kit. That switch means that the Moto2 technical regulations need to be updated to reflect the situation going forward from 2019. Nothing in those changes is new, however: the changes have long been debated and agreed between the FIM, IRTA, and Dorna, as well as the suppliers and chassis builders for the Moto2 class.

Marc Marquez has had surgery on his left shoulder to fix the recurring problem of dislocating that shoulder. The surgery was carried out by Dr. Mir, together with Dr. Victor and Dr. Teresa Marlet, at the Hospital Universitari Dexeus in Barcelona on Tuesday. 

The surgery, which involved grafting a section of bone onto the head of the humerus, is meant to stop the shoulder from being dislocated so easily. This has been a problem which Marquez has had for a number of years now, the issue getting worse every time the shoulder popped out. The problem had become so bad that Marquez managed to dislocate his shoulder when he reached out to receive the congratulation of Scott Redding, after the Repsol Honda rider had wrapped up the title at Motegi. He partially dislocated the shoulder twice more at Valencia, after crashing. 

Marquez will require some time to recover from the surgery, six weeks of rehabilitation being needed before he can start to train properly. At the Jerez MotoGP test, Marquez had expressed his concern about the loss of training time, and the recovery period. "The plan is surgery next week, and then recovery all the winter," he told us last Thursday. "Because it's a long recovery, and I will not arrive at Malaysia maybe 100%, it will be tight. So all the winter will be concentrated on my shoulder, and then I will have all of February and March to work on my physical condition."