MotoGP

Andrea Dovizioso To Take A Sabbatical, Cal Crutchlow To Take Yamaha Test Rider Role?

Submitted by David Emmett on

Andrea Dovizioso's future is becoming increasingly clear, and his choices are going to have a knock on effect for the test rider market. According to a report from Motorsport.com's Oriol Puigdemont, Dovizioso has decided to take a sabbatical and spend a year racing motocross, in the hope of making a return to MotoGP in 2022.

Dovizioso had been in talks with KTM, Yamaha, and Honda for a role as a test rider, and at one point had looked very close to signing with HRC, to work as a test rider, and as a competitive replacement rider in the worst-case scenario of Marc Marquez not being fit enough to start the 2021 season. He was also a long way into negotiations with Yamaha to replace Jorge Lorenzo as test rider, but both those options fell at the last hurdle.

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Europe MotoGP Saturday Round Up: Working With No Data, Mir's Mind Games, And KTM's Testing Advantage

Submitted by David Emmett on

What is the point of free practice? It is to prepare bike, rider, and team (not necessarily in that order) for Sunday's race. On a good weekend, you spend Friday testing your base setup and getting an idea of which tires to use. On Saturday, you refine the setup and check how your preferred tire lasts over something approaching race distance. In warm up on Sunday morning, you might try a final tweak in search of more tire life or a fraction more performance.

The goal of all this is simple: to arrive on the grid on Sunday afternoon with the best possible setup. To eliminate as many unknowns as possible, and provide the rider with the sharpest possible weapon with which to do battle. From that point on, it is up to the rider.

That's the theory. In practice, of course, it rarely runs quite that smoothly. There is always something cropping up that makes the whole process a good deal more complicated than anyone hoped, unexpected obstacles to be overcome along the way.

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2020 Europe MotoGP FP4 Result: Oliveira Leads Mir On Wet Track

Submitted by Zara Daniela on

After the skies punished the Moto3 class with a downpour, they looked more favourably upon the premier class with patches of blue sky for their final practice session. Miguel Oliveira went fastest in the closing stages of FP4, although it’s hard to say if all the wet running will prove educational by the time the race comes. Regardless, Joan Mir also seemed to have made solid progress in the wet to climb into second in the session, less than two tenths slower than Oliveira.

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Luca Marini And Enea Bastianini Confirmed At Avintia Ducati For 2021

Submitted by David Emmett on

The penultimate piece of the 2021 MotoGP rider puzzle has fallen into place. As has long been reported, Luca Marini and Enea Bastianini will be riding for the Avintia Ducati team next year. The young Italian pairing will be riding updated Ducati GP19s, with strong support from Ducati.

It was an open secret that Bastianini would be moving up to MotoGP after the Italian Moto2 rider announced as much at Misano in September. Marini's move was also long-anticipated, as protracted negotiations continued over how the VR46 Racing structure would replace the funding lost by replacing Tito Rabat, who had a contract with Avintia for 2021. Those details took a long time to sort out, but are finally settled.

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2020 Europe MotoGP FP3 Result: A Damp Morning For Zarco

Submitted by Zara Daniela on

Day 2 in Valencia started with doom and gloom – even if you weren’t Yamaha – but with rain having stopped before the action got underway, asphalt got a chance to very slowly dry out. Times steadily improved throughout the session, however, it was not enough for slick tyres and no one challenged the combined top 10 from Friday. Johann Zarco finished FP3 at the top of the timesheets by over seven tenths of a second from the nearest challenger, who was Maverick Vinales despite the impending pitlane start.

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