Ductalk

Two men that are happy to see American Ben Spies sticking with MotoGP are his current and former Yamaha bosses Massimo Meregalli and Herve Poncharal.

Ben Spies was right to shun the opportunity to move back to World Superbikes to try and fulfill his potential in the MotoGP world championship. The Texan seemed certain to be leaving MotoGP after he announced on the eve of his home race in Laguna Seca at the end of July that he would quit Yamaha’s official factory squad. He was lining up a switch to the BMW Italia squad with Marco Melandri but then had a sudden and late change of heart to stay in MotoGP for 2013.

The 2009 World Superbike champion will join Italian rookie Andrea Iannone in the Pramac Ducati squad on factory-backed Desmosedici. Spies also negotiated with Fausto Gresini’s satellite Honda squad having said he opted to remain in MotoGP to show his true potential and not have regrets in the future that he walked away too soon.

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Dennis Noyes analyses the Sepang test in order to get a sense of the pecking order that could materialize at the dawn of the 1000cc MotoGP era.

The 2012 MotoGP World Championship season is just around the corner and now, after the conclusion of a second three-day test in Sepang, we can at least start to recognize some emerging patterns. But until they actually line up alongside to race each other in Qatar, we can only base it on test results.

The teams have all run their fuel consumption simulations on the test bed and have been able to confirm (or not) these results on track in Malaysia. However, the only rider to run a full race simulation was Jorge Lorenzo on the works Yamaha (Andrea Dovizioso also attempted a simulation on the Tech3 Yamaha but did not complete it). The total of 19 consecutive flying laps put up by the 2010 World Champion can be compared with Valentino Rossi’s race winning time of 2010 at Sepang. There was no race run in 2011 because of the fatal accident that took the life of Marco Simoncelli at the beginning of the race.

If we eliminate the opening lap of Rossi’s win in 2010 in order to compare only the consecutive flying laps of Jorge on the Yamaha 1000cc (although we don't really know the exact capacity) and Valentino two years ago on the Yamaha 800cc, we see that the Spaniard’s average flying lap was done in 2:01.750 compared to Rossi’s old average of 2:02.683...more

(translated from French via Google)

After being thanked for Yamaha to make room for Valentino Rossi, Ben Spies prepares to perform the reverse path of Dottore as it may affix his signature to a contract binding him to Pramac Ducati.

This is indeed what we reported Remy Tissier, the presenter of MotoGP on Eurosport.

" Ben Spies will ride in MotoGp next year, he will drive a third Pramac in Ducati colors and after the filter Bologna, it will probably be a motorcycle factory that will drive 100% American. We understand why Spies has not honored its pre-contract with BMW Italia WSBK.

Ben Spies could be a very good signing for the Italian factory as capable of results. The official announcement is expected to take place between 11 and 15 September "

With Iannone (today at Mugello read here) which has a pre-contract with Borgo Panigale, it seems that the stools of four GP13 are now occupied.

Stay tuned!

No Ducati content but it looked like a nice holiday dish and the recipe is on the Good Morning Texas website