MotoGP #36 Seizoen 2017 is coming up!

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Jorge Lorenzo, P17: “On this track there’s a lot of difference between this bike and the one I was riding for nine years. I think that to go a lot faster we have to do two things. The first is to adapt the bike bit by bit to how I like it, and the second and most important is to understand how to go fast. To get there I’m missing quite a lot, more than I expected, honestly, but it’s still very early to draw conclusions. It’s a question of putting in the hours and the laps to bit by bit find how to go fast. The most important thing and the big positive from the day is that the other Ducatis have done great times – and that means the bike has a lot of potential.”

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Op maandag 30 januari 2017 19:19 schreef H1N1 het volgende:

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Ik denk sowieso dat hij het dit jaar lastig gaat krijgen. De Duc heeft zoveel potentie maar Lorenzo heeft zo'n unieke rijstijl..dat gaat nog lastig worden om dat te veranderen.

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Andrea Iannone (Team Suzuki Ecstar) made the timesheets fantastic reading for his new home Suzuki on Day 2 of the Sepang test, as he smashed Ducati test rider Casey Stoner’s day one pace to set the fastest lap of the test so far. A 1:59.452 saw the Italian an incredible four tenths clear of the man in P2, Maverick Viñales (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP). Impressing once again, Alvaro Bautista (Pull&Bear Aspar Team) was third.

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Yamaha has made the first public move in MotoGP's 2017 fairing 'war' by revealing this response to the new ban on wings.

On day two at the Sepang test, Valentino Rossi tested with concealed winglets on either side of a special, wider M1 fairing.

This is within the new rules, which only ban wings that are "protruding from the fairing or bodywork and not integrated in the body streamlining".

The other five MotoGP manufacturers are still testing with normal fairings, but most admit they are working on more radical designs to try and claw back the downforce lost following the wing ban.

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Tito Rabat (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS) suffered a tough crash in the first test of 2017 at Sepang International Circuit, with the Spaniard falling at Turn 11 and suffering multiple injuries in the incident. motogp.com caught up with one of the men who successfully operated on Rabat upon his return to Barcelona, Dr Xavier Mir, at the Hospital Universitari Dexeus in Barcelona.

Dr Mir: “Tito crashed during the Malaysia test. After the being transferred to Kuala Lumpur for a check, it was deemed safe for him to return here for surgery if he chose to do so, which he did. After a check up, he was found to have five fractures. He has two broken wrists, has broken fifth metacarpals in both hands, and a fracture in his foot. As well as that, he has lost skin and soft tissue from his knee, which is the injury that concerns us more. An MRI scan revealed that the injury to his knee is only to the skin and tissue below the skin. Yesterday we repaired the fracture to his right hand, plated and put screws in the radius fracture and the fifth metacarpal, and cleaned the wound on his knee – which permitted us to close it; something we had been worried would prove difficult.”

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Dr Mir: “What worries us more, and the reason why he will be kept admitted, is that the injury to his knee was very dirty – with some remains of asphalt and leather in the wound – and it could become infected. So he will remain under observation for four days and we shall see. We will try to cut his recovery time short as much as possible, but first he has to get through the first four days and check he has no fever – so we can rule out infection. After that, we’ll start the recovery process proper to get him back to full health as soon as possible – when that will be, I don’t know.”

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Op zaterdag 4 februari 2017 20:31 schreef Funzel het volgende:

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Even een vraag van iemand die de sport al jaren niet meer zo volgt, maar waarom zit die Pedrosa er nog steeds? Gewoon als ideale tweede rijder zeker? Want voor de titel doet 'ie nooit mee toch. En ik heb het idee dat die gozer ook meerdere keren per seizoen veel te hard van z'n motor lazert.

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Op zaterdag 4 februari 2017 20:38 schreef Funzel het volgende:

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Alien reputatie?

Anyway, denk dat ik het dit jaar toch weer wat meer ga volgen. Heb me een beetje verdiept in het startveld en de resultaten van laatste jaren, moet goed komen.

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After three days of testing it is clear just how close the field is this season. The top ten riders are separated by just four tenths of a second. Sixteen riders are within a second, from Maverick Viñales in first to Hector Barbera in sixteenth. The top four riders are on four different manufacturers, less than two tenths apart, and there is a good mix of manufacturers throughout the top of the timesheets.

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That does not mean there are no real favorites, though. A quick scan of the full lap times offers some interesting insights. In terms of race pace, there are two riders who are head and shoulders above the rest. While there were a lot of riders with fast times, Maverick Viñales and Marc Márquez were consistently lapping faster than anyone else was capable of matching.

A few numbers. There were ten riders who lapped in the 1'59s. Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Andrea Dovizioso, and Johann Zarco did it for 1 lap. Casey Stoner did it for 2 laps. Dani Pedrosa, Alvaro Bautista, and Marc Márquez did it for 3 laps. Cal Crutchlow managed 4 laps in the 1'59s. But Maverick Viñales hammered out a total of 10 laps faster than two minutes.

Expand the times to include laps in the 2'00 mark and the dominance of Márquez and Viñales is clear. Viñales had 20 laps in the 2'00 to go with his 10 in 1'59. Márquez' pace was positively searing: he may have had only three 1'59s, but he cranked out a massive quantity of 39 laps in the 2'00 bracket, twice as many as most of his competitors. And they were fast laps too: 26 were sub 2'00.5, and 35 were sub 2'00.7. He did 14 laps of 2'00.4. That is a positively Lorenzo-like consistency.