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WSBK

Ernesto Marinelli Leaving Ducati Corse at End of 2017

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A major surprise out of Borgo Panigale this afternoon. Ernesto Marinelli, the man behind so much of Ducati’s World Superbike success, is to leave the company at the end of 2017 for pastures new.

Marinelli has been a lynchpin in Ducati’s WSBK operation, working with the company for 22 years. He started as a track engineer, working with both Carl Fogarty and Neil Hodgson, but soon took on a major role in Ducati’s racing operations.

The Italian led Ducati’s AMA racing program at the end of last century, working with such legendary riders as Troy Bayliss, Ben Bostron, Anthony Gobert, and John Kocinski.

After returning to Europe, he took over the role of technical director, then project manager of Ducati’s WorldSBK project.

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MotoGP

Jack Miller Breaks Leg in Training Accident

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The 2017 season has claimed another training victim. This time, Jack Miller is the victim of misfortune, the Australian breaking his right leg while out trials riding in Andorra.

Miller was relatively fortunate, in that he suffered the injury at very low speed, putting his foot down trying to save the front-end from washing out. However, his foot got stuck, causing the tibia to fracture just below the knee.

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WSBK

Stefan Bradl Will Miss the Rest of the WorldSBK Season

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Stefan Bradl is to miss the rest of the 2017 WorldSBK season. The Red Bull Honda rider’s wrist injury, sustained in a crash at Portimao, is more serious than initially thought, and the recovery period required means he will not be fit for either the Jerez or Qatar rounds of WorldSBK.

The decision was taken after surgery on Bradl’s right wrist. Pins were inserted and a torn scaphulonate ligament reattached, damage sustained in the crash.

The surgeons who performed the operation have ordered Bradl to keep his wrist immobilized to allow the damage to heal. This effectively makes it impossible for him to ride for the rest of the season.

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WSBK

Pirelli Will Continue as Single-Tire Supplier to WorldSBK

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Pirelli will continue to supply tires to all classes in the World Superbike Championship for the foreseeable future. The Italian tire manufacturer has extended its current contract with Dorna, through the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

Pirelli first took on the role of single tire supplier in 2004, and sparked a revolution in motorcycle racing.

With the favoritism of competing tire factories for sponsored teams removed, and a much more level playing field for privateer teams, the World Superbike model would come to be replicated in many different road racing championships, with MotoGP eventually following suit in 2009.

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MotoGP

Sunday MotoGP Summary at Aragon: One Step Closer to the Championship

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When they come to write the history of the 2017 MotoGP season, one of the largest chapters is going to bear the title “Weather”. The weather continues to play an inordinately large role in the 2017 championship.

Not always on race day, perhaps, but the amount of time wasted during practice because conditions were so utterly different to Sunday has made a significant difference to the course of the championship.

Aragon was a case in point. Wet conditions on Friday meant one less day of practice for the teams. For some, that meant never finding a solution to problems which would come to plague them on race day.

For others, their first guesses at setup were pretty much spot on, the benefit of years of experience allowing for an educated guess. For the race winner, failing to find a decent setup leading to a lack of feeling was no obstacle to success. Sometimes, the will to win can overcome remarkable odds.

This lack of setup time may be the bane of the teams’ lives, but it is a boon for fans. It adds an element of unpredictability, helping to shake up the field and make the races and the championship more interesting.

The championship ain’t over till it’s over: there has been too much weirdness this year to take anything on trust.

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MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at Aragon: Losing Practice Time, Deceptive Times, And Rossi’s Miraculous Recovery

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When you lose the first day of a MotoGP weekend to rain, the remainder of practice becomes incredibly hectic. FP3, especially, becomes insane. Teams and riders are trying to force 90 minutes of practice into half an hour, and then throw soft tires at the last 15 minutes in an attempt to avoid Q1.

Unfortunately, the constraints of temporal physics make it impossible to put the best part of race distance on the different compounds of tires, try different bike balance and electronics settings to measure their effectiveness, try to follow a rival or two to figure out where you are stronger and weaker than they are, and finally throw a couple of soft tires at a quick lap, all in just a single session of free practice.

Sure, there’s another 30 minutes of FP4 to try to figure things out, but usually, that is where you are trying to nail down the fine details, not evaluate radically different bike setups.

So on Saturday evening, when riders are asked what their strategy is and which tire they will be racing, there is a lot of shrugging of shoulders. Andrea Dovizioso was a case in point at Aragon.

“Still we don’t know,” he said. “Still there is a lot of work to do about setup and also the decision of the tires, because we didn’t really have time to work on them. The temperature was so cold in FP3, and in the afternoon the temperature change a lot. In the morning you can’t work on the tires.”

“We have only 30 minutes in the afternoon to try and understand something. I think for everybody, the decision is not clear. Still we have to study a lot of data and take a decision about the tires and the set-up. Maybe all three are an option but I don’t know.”

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MotoGP

Friday MotoGP Summary at Aragon: A Wasted Day, A Reversal of Fortunes, & Rethinking Testing

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I, along with almost every photographer and a good part of the journalists present at Aragon, made my way down to the pit lane on Friday morning, to watch Valentino Rossi’s first exit on the Yamaha M1 since breaking his leg in an enduro accident.

It was overcast but dry, and there was a real sense of anticipation as Rossi limped to his bike, swung his leg awkwardly over it, then exited the garage smoothly and headed off down pit lane.

Before he and the rest of the MotoGP field had reached the exit of pit lane, the rain had started to fall. Not hard enough to leave the track properly wet, but enough rain to make using slicks impossible. FP1 was a wash. Fastest man Marc Márquez was 13 seconds off lap record pace.

The track dried out again during the lunch break, but once again, just as the MotoGP riders were about to head out, the rain started to fall.

They found the track in FP2 much as they had left it in FP1: too wet for slicks, not really wet enough for a proper wet test. And with Saturday and Sunday forecast to be dry and sunny, any data collected was of very little use indeed.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Preview of the Aragon GP

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What is Valentino Rossi doing back on a race bike just 22 days after breaking both the tibia and fibula in his right leg? The answer is simple enough: racing. How on earth can he be thinking about racing so soon? Quite simply, because his leg is in much, much better shape than he expected it to be.

The last time Rossi broke his leg back in 2010, he was in worse shape after the accident. “I remember in 2010 after the surgery I had five or six days where I was very, very bad,” Rossi told the press conference. “This time already the next day I was able to come back at home.”

That was also the moment when he started to think he might be able to return to racing quicker than in 2010. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, he immediately focused on Motegi as the target for his return.

But that changed quickly. “In the first days I understand that I feel a lot, lot less pain compared to last time. So I think that I can make in a shorter time. The first week was difficult, but after the first 10 days I start to improve a lot, also every day, and started to have good feeling from the leg and ankle. And started to think about Aragon.”

Before anyone in the paddock saw Rossi, there were few who thought he would be in any shape to be riding. But when he drove up to the paddock and got out of his car, it was clear he was in much better condition than any of us thought.

He hopped out with relative ease, and took off with just a single crutch for support. No cast on his leg, just a support bandage.

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MotoGP

Swapping Rea for Iannone – An Idea Abandoned

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Andrea Iannone has been something of an enigma since joining Suzuki. The Italian was blisteringly quick last year on the Ducati, which is one of the reasons Ducati took so long to choose between him and Andrea Dovizioso, after they signed Jorge Lorenzo to the factory team.

He was fast when he jumped on the Suzuki GSX-RR for the first time at the Valencia test, then carried that speed to Sepang, where he finished as second quickest overall.

Things have gone downhill since then. The Italian slipped down the order at the Phillip Island, then trailed further behind at the Qatar test.

His season has gone from bad to worse since racing started: he has five DNFs from 13 races, and when he finishes, he usually ends up around tenth. His best result so far has been a seventh place in Texas, but that was the exception, not the rule.

He currently sits in sixteenth in the championship, with a paltry 33 points. Iannone, race-winner in Austria last year, sits behind both Monster Tech 3 Yamaha rookies, and behind a total of seven riders on satellite bikes.

His rookie teammate, who has spent most of the season banged up with injury, is threatening to beat him more and more regularly. How to solve an issue like Andrea Iannone?

There has been one possible solution floating around since early summer. The basic concept is a surprising, yet surprisingly logical, swap.

The idea was that Andrea Iannone would be shipped off to World Superbikes to ride the Kawasaki of Jonathan Rea, while Rea would take Iannone’s place on the Ecstar Suzuki in MotoGP.

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MotoGP

Valentino Rossi Will Travel to Aragon & Attempt to Ride

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Valentino Rossi is to travel to Aragon and attempt to race in the fourteenth round of MotoGP at the Motorland Aragon circuit.

After evaluating his fitness on a Yamaha R1M at Misano on Monday and Tuesday, the Italian had his leg assessed by Dr Pascarella, who performed the surgery on his broken tibia and fibula. After that examination, Rossi decided he was fit enough to travel to Aragon and attempt to race.

Rossi faces one more hurdle before he is allowed to race. He will be subject to a further assessment by the circuit doctors at the Motorland Aragon track, who will have to evaluate whether he is fit enough to race.

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