You may recall that, a couple of months ago, I published my tentative riders’ list for MotoGp in 2012. I just found the rough draft of it on paper the other day when I was cleaning up the office. It does make interesting reading. Here it is again, just to refresh the memory.
Repsol Honda: Stoner, Pedrosa
Gresini Honda: Takahashi, ?
LCR Honda: Randy de Puniet
Yamaha “works”: Lorenzo, Spies
Yamaha Tech III: Dovizioso?, Crutchlow
Ducati “works”: Rossi, Hayden
Ducati PRAMAC: Barbera, Espagaro
Ducati Cardion: Abraham
Ducati ASPAR: ?
Suzuki: ?
So, let’s see what’s happened in the game of musical chairs.
Repsol Honda, Ducati “works”, Yamaha “works”, Yamaha TechIII and Cardion Ducati remain as suggested (Dovizioso since confirmed)
Gresini Honda: Gone is Takahashi and “in” is Alvaro Bautista with the collapse of Suzuki. Gresini’s second bike will be a CRT machine with an FTR frame and a CBR1000RR-derived engine. The rider for this bike is yet to be named. Takahashi (who was thought to be in the frame for this ride) moves to Forward racing to partner Alex de Angelis in Moto2
PRAMAC Ducati: Barbera confirmed, no confirmation of who the second rider will be. Many are suggesting that PRAMAC will drop back to a 1-bike team next year due to the expense of leasing bikes from Ducati.
LCR Honda: RdP is out, seemingly now without a seat at all and looking at WSBK or Moto2 and Moto2 champion, Stefan Bradl is “in”
Suzuki is gone until 2014 (may as well say “never”). Their 2011 rider was quickly grabbed by Gresini.
So, where do the CRT teams stand? And how many entries can we expect? Well, the answer to this question is about as murky as the Yarra on a bad day (most days). Courtesy of David Emmett at the always-reliable motomatters.com, here’s a detailed analysis of just what CRT is.
Here is his analysis on what’s happened so far (bear in mind it’s a couple of weeks old – West since confirmed as a CRT entrant, Paul Bird has announced Ellison as his rider and Takahashi is out of the frame, dropping back to Moto2 with de Angelis with the Forward team.)
Now I’ve crunched the proposed numbers so far every way I can and I can’t see 20 more riders in this table. So, unless there are other teams lurking out there (and I’m sure there are) that would leave us with a potential grid of 24 riders. Not great, and only 12 of them on genuine prototype bikes, but certainly better than the 15 or so that we have been used to seeing this year. Will be watching with great interest to see who turns up for the first test of 2012.
In other news. Marc Marquez will miss this week’s final Moto2 est session, still suffering from double vision. This is starting to sound a deal more serious than what we were originally led to believe. I do hope that it isn’t.
And finally, nothing to do with motorcycling, but this amazing video shows a great bit of lateral thinking and clever technology. Simplest is best, I have been told. This proves it.