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The forces in play with Ducati's torque arm Ducati has always been known for taking the path less traveled when it comes to their MotoGP bikes. Their willingness to experiment and innovate – and sometimes, pick up old solutions which were dropped in the past – has been put into overdrive since Gigi Dall’Igna took over as head of Ducati Corse, the Bologna factory's racing department. The appearance of a torque arm on the Ducati GP19s at the Jerez test in November last year is another example of exactly this kind of thinking from Dall'Igna. An idea which was once common practice in racing motorcycles in the 1970s and early 1980s, but disappeared shortly afterward. Why had Ducati reinstated the idea again? What were they trying to achieve?. or to post comments.
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Dani Pedrosa's career as test rider for KTM has gotten off to an unlucky start. The Spaniard has suffered another broken collarbone, and will require surgery and a long recovery process before he can start testing again. Pedrosa's injury is a legacy of the many previous times he has broken his collarbone. The right collarbone is severely weakened after being broken twice before, and having surgery to fit plates. That has left him with a so-called sclerotic lesion on the collarbone, which means that bone growth in the collarbone is very slow.
That, and a lack of blood flow to the bone, has left him with osteoporosis, and a weakened collarbone. Just how weakened is clear from the fact that Pedrosa managed to break the bone without any particular physical impact. He had broken it as a result of 'a gesture of strength', he said in a press release, by which he presumably means a sudden and strong movement. That endemic weakness means Pedrosa faces a long recovery process. He is to undergo treatment with stem cells to help promote bone growth and strengthen the bone, to prevent a recurrence. or to post comments. After what has been a very difficult year for Aprilia's effort in MotoGP, the Noale factory is to shake up its racing department.
Current Aprilia Racing boss Romano Albesiano is to be moved sideways to concentrate on the technical side of the racing program, while Massimo Rivola, former Ferrari F1 team boss and head of Ferrari Driver Academy, will take over as CEO of Aprilia Racing. The move is a response to the difficulties Aprilia has faced since making a full-time return to MotoGP. Romano Albesiano's background is in engineering, but being forced to manage both the engineering and the sporting side of Aprilia Racing did not prove easy. Albesiano clashed on occasion with Aprilia Gresini team boss Fausto Gresini over the running of the team, which further detracted from Albesiano's ability to focus on the technical development of the RS-GP. Rivola's appointment allows for a clear split in responsibilities. Rivola will oversee the entire organization, covering all aspects of racing.
Romano Albesiano has been appointed Technical Director, and will oversee the engineering and technical side of the MotoGP project. And Fausto Gresini will focus on managing the MotoGP team, along with the Gresini Moto2 and Moto3 teams. The press release from Aprilia announcing Rivola's appointment appears below: MASSIMO RIVOLA TO BE APRILIA RACING CEO. or to post comments. 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.
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. or to post comments.
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. or to post comments. 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.
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'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.' . or to post comments. The trouble with post-season testing is that it takes place after the season is over. That is a problem, because the season runs well into November, so any testing after that is nearer to December than it is to October.
And wherever you go inside of Europe to test, you will never get a full day's testing done, even with the best of weather. So it came as no surprise that when the track opened at 9:30am on Wednesday morning for the first day of a two-day test, nothing happened.
Or that nothing continued to happen for another couple of hours, as we waited for track temperatures to break the 20°C barrier, and make it warm enough to generate useful feedback. It is a perennial issue with no easy answers.
Finding a warm, affordable track is tough this time of year. The good news was that once the track had warmed up, we had ideal conditions for testing. Dry, sunny, warm if you were standing in the sun, though not quite so much if you were in the shade. Despite the fact that so much time was lost to the cold, the riders ended up with a lot of laps completed, and a lot of work done.
or to post comments. It's been a difficult test at Valencia. The weather simply hasn't played ball. Tuesday started wet, took a few hours to dry out, then rain started falling around 3pm, meaning the riders effectively had around two and a half usable hours on track.
Rain on Tuesday evening meant the track was wet on Wednesday morning, and in the chill of a November morning, it took a couple of hours before the track dried out enough for the riders to hit the track. At least it stayed dry and sunny throughout the day, and the last couple of hours saw the best conditions of the test, times dropping until falling temperatures put paid to any thought of improvement. The teams may have lost time, but at least they had a solid four and a half hours of track time to work. For half the factories, what they were focusing on was engines.
Yamaha, Honda, and Suzuki all brought new engines to test, and in the case of Yamaha and Honda, two different specs. Ducati was mainly working with a new chassis, aimed at making the bike turn better. Aprilia had a new engine and a new frame to try.
And as usual, KTM had a mountain of parts and ideas to test. Choices, choices.
or to post comments. If you want to see the law of unintended consequences in action, just take a look at MotoGP testing. The nature of testing has changed as manufacturers have suffered the consequences of not fully understanding the effects of the engine development freeze during the season. Honda suffered, Suzuki suffered, and now Yamaha have suffered when they made the wrong choice of engine in preseason testing.
They learned the hard way they had to get it right. This has meant that the Valencia MotoGP test has become first and foremost about getting the engine in the right ballpark, giving the engineers enough data to work out the fine details over the winter. A tight track and cold air temperatures sees engines at their most aggressive, with plenty of horsepower on hand and very little room on track to actually use it.
The addition of Jerez as an official winter test – to be held at the end of next week – makes this even more explicitly an engine test. If the factories bring an engine which is manageable at both Valencia and Jerez, they are in good shape for next season. or to post comments. It has been a strange and intense year in MotoGP, so it seems fitting that we should end the year with such a strange and intense weekend. Three races defined by the weather, by crashes, and by riders holding their nerve and playing their cards right. And at the end, an explosion of emotion.
Exactly as it should have been. There were no titles on the line on Sunday – no serious titles, though the riders vying for Independent Rider and the teams chasing the Team Championship may choose to disagree – but the emotional release on Sunday was as great, or perhaps even greater, than if all three championships had been decided. We had records broken in Moto3, a new factory on the podium in MotoGP, and a farewell to old friends in all three classes, as riders move up, move over, or move on.
The weather figured prominently, as you might expect. Moto3 and Moto2 got off lightly, the rain falling gently and consistently, keeping the track wet, but never to a truly dangerous degree. That did not stop riders from falling off, of course, and dictating the outcome of both races. Those crashes – two races, two riders crashing out of the lead – were just as emotional as the riders who went on to win. In with the new, out with the old.
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Not much, though. Let's be honest it isn't the kind of news you'll want to hold the front page for.
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Or the back page or any of the other pages in between, either. Because, well, because at this time of year you're only going to get small, minimum news. The kind that pops up when - I'll be honest again - there basically isn't any. We're up and at 'em, though, here at F1 And MotoGP News; scraping the barrel and doing our best for you.
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Here's what there is: Arrivabene, ex Ferrari team principal and the man shown the door by Ferrari the other day, may well be on his way to Sauber. Why they'd want him or why he'd want to go, I've no Idea. Alternatively another story somewhere else says he may be off to a big Italian soccer club. Obviously not as a player. Remember I did say these are not big stories, right? Nico Rosberg, the retired ex F1 Champion, says that Sebastian Vettel will struggle to beat his new teammate, Charles Leclerc, this year.
Mattia Binotto Is in And Maurizio Arrivabene Is out Will it make a difference? Who can tell?
Ferrari is a very Italian team. They build great cars; always have done. But they always - apart from the days of Michael Schumacher and Brawn and co - have loved to work amid utter chaos. It all started with the great Enzo Ferrari and the tradition has lasted quite well.
Their executives seem to live in a 'He's in - He's out' world where chaos rules and blood flows. Whilst at the same time people a bit further down the pecking order beaver away oblivious to it all and produce beautiful cars. Ferrari are a big red enigma wrapped up in a mystery. And the mystery is how they succeed with an organisation as weird as that.
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But they're usually up there, aren't they? So this change at the top may work. Although I will miss Arrivabene's Mafia-like persona.
You wouldn't want to.