MotoGP

Six weeks have passed since the last MotoGP action at Assen, with plenty of talking points and racing to look forward to over the second half of the season. Maverick Vinales will face the MotoGP paddock for the first time since announcing his split with Yamaha at the end of this season, as speculation mounts

Morbidelli underwent surgery on his knee ahead of last month’s Dutch TT after aggravating a pre-existing injury he suffered earlier this year in training. The Italian was ruled out of the Assen race and will be out of action until at least September’s Aragon GP. SRT has confirmed Yamaha test rider Crutchlow will stand in

The satellite Yamaha squad looks set to have potentially two vacancies for 2022 as Franco Morbidelli appears the most likely replacement for the departing Maverick Vinales. With Valentino Rossi almost certain to move on from SRT – whether into retirement or to race for his own VR46 team in 2022 – SRT’s line-up next year

Marquez suffered a serious break to the humerus in his right arm in a crash in last July’s Spanish GP, which ultimately ruled him out for the entire 2020 campaign and required him to undergo three operations. The six-time world champion overcame his career threatening injury to return this year at the Portuguese GP and

Quartararo has comfortably been the top rider within Yamaha’s own stable in 2021 having scored four wins from the first nine races and opening up a 34-point championship lead ahead of the summer break. Vinales failed to get close to the podium following his stunning Qatar GP win until the Dutch TT, where a bad

Earlier this month the Australian MotoGP round at Phillip Island was struck from the 2021 schedule, effectively replaced by a second Portimao race penned in for the 5-7 November, with the calendar tweaks resulting in the Malaysian GP being moved to run one week after the Thai round as the remaining rounds on the Asian

Three-time MotoGP title runner-up Dovizioso was ousted from the factory Ducati squad at the end of last year and elected to take a sabbatical after turning down a race ride with Aprilia. With the 2021 RS-GP immediately proving to be a strong package, Dovizioso requested two private tests with Aprilia before signing on for a

Zarco returned to factory rider status this year for the first time since quitting KTM after a disastrous 2019 after Ducati promoted him to Pramac from Avintia on full works-spec machinery. The Frenchman scored four podiums from the first nine races – all of them second-place finishes – and currently sits second in the standings

Maverick Vinales’ decision to quit the factory Yamaha squad at the end of the current MotoGP season amid a strained relationship between both parties is set to open up at least one spot at SRT in 2022, with Franco Morbidelli the most likely option to replace him. Should Valentino Rossi retire at the end of

Ducati currently sits second in the manufacturers’ table, 17 points behind Yamaha, while three of its riders – Pramac’s Johann Zarco and factory team pair Bagnaia and Jack Miller – occupy three of the top four spots in the riders’ title battle. Zarco is Quartararo’s nearest rival heading into the summer break, though is some

Mir has been critical of the lack of progress Suzuki has made with its 2021 challenger compared to the bike he won the championship on last year, noting after the Dutch TT last month that his current package was “not enough” to defend his title with. PLUS: Why Mir’s MotoGP title defence can’t be written off

Aprilia is in the midst of its best-ever season in the modern MotoGP era with its 2021 RS-GP, the improved package allowing Espargaro to consistently score top six finishes and sit eighth in the standings after the first nine races with 61 points – 19 more than he scored across the entire 2020 campaign. Espargaro

The double 250cc and one-time 125cc world champion retired from MotoGP at the end of the 2018 season after a 13-year stint in the premier class with Honda. Upon his retirement from racing Pedrosa took up a role as an official test rider for KTM and has remained with the Austrian marque ever since. Until

Petrucci’s place at the Tech3 KTM squad looks in doubt after the Austrian marque confirmed it had signed current Moto2 points leader Remy Gardner for 2022. Though yet to be officially announced, Autosport understands it had also signed Gardner’s Ajo team-mate Raul Fernandez to step up to MotoGP with Tech3 next year. Petrucci previously told

Ducati elected last season to ditch three-time championship runner-up Andrea Dovizioso and double race winner Danilo Petrucci for 2021 in favour of former Pramac duo Miller and Bagnaia. The move came in for some criticism given Miller hadn’t won a race since 2016 and Bagnaia had just one podium to his credit ahead of this

As his relationship with Yamaha deteriorated over a tough 2021 season, the Japanese marque announced on 28 June that Vinales – upon his request – had terminated his two-year contract a season early and will leave the squad he has raced with since 2017 at the end of 2021. As speculation over the Assen weekend

Though Marc Marquez did score Honda’s first win since 2019 with a sensational comeback victory in Germany, Honda has struggled to get close to the podium this season with its problematic 2021 RC213V. Honda currently sits fifth in the constructors’ standings, just 24 clear of Aprilia and 98 adrift of Yamaha following the first nine

In April a Saudi company known as Tanal Entertainment issued a press release announcing VR46 would come to MotoGP in 2022 with Aramco as its title sponsor, with VR46 confirming the news last month alongside a three-year deal with Ducati. However, the title sponsorship deal between Aramco and VR46 doesn’t actually exist, despite insistence from

Suzuki is yet to win a grand prix in its title defence season, with Mir currently 55 points adrift of championship leader Fabio Quartararo in fourth in the standings having amassed just three podiums from the first nine races. Mir has been critical this season of the lack of progress made by Suzuki with its

Marquez was forced onto the sidelines for around 10 months after badly breaking his right arm in a crash in last July’s Spanish Grand Prix, which required three operations across 2020. Returning to racing in April’s Portuguese GP this year, Marquez has been struggling with lack of power in his right shoulder – a consequence

A series of events over the last few weeks centred around what was previously thought to be a solid title sponsorship deal of his graduating VR46 team could mean that Rossi will race in 2022 after all, campaigning a VR46 Ducati with his brother Luca Marini as his team-mate. The 42-year-old Italian is racing in

Espargaro joined KTM for its debut season back in 2017 and was instrumental in the development of the RC16 into a race-winning package in MotoGP.  He signed for Honda for the 2021 season before racing got underway in 2020, with KTM motorsport boss Beirer noting the marque looked at “other big names” to replace him.

After a storming rookie campaign in 2019 with Petronas SRT on Yamaha’s ‘B-spec’ M1, in which he scored seven podiums and six poles, Quartararo was signed by the Japanese marque to its factory team for 2021 at the very start of last year. PLUS: The Rossi replacement who’s become the MotoGP leader Yamaha needed  With

Espargaro has qualified in the top 10 on just two occasions from the first nine rounds of the 2021 campaign, which has hindered his progress on Sundays, with the Spaniard’s best result so far an eighth. The Honda rookie has on a number of occasions shown strong pace through practice, but struggles in time attack

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation confirmed that neither event will go ahead in the final quarter of this year as planned. The F1 race had already been moved from March to mid-November.  The move follows failed talks with health officials at state and federal government level over how to bring personnel, including riders and drivers,

A number of names were linked to the RS-GP alongside Espargaro for this season after Andrea Iannone was banned for four years due to a doping offence. As well as MotoGP winners Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow, leading names from Moto2 in Marco Bezzecchi, Joe Roberts and Fabio Di Giannantonio were all linked to Aprilia

Quartararo won four of the first nine races of the 2021 season and holds a 34-point lead in the standings as the championship pauses for its summer break. The Frenchman has already surpassed his 2020 haul of three wins and bettered his overall podium tally to six courtesy of two thirds in France and Germany.

Razgatlioglu was one of the names linked to Yamaha’s satellite MotoGP squad for 2022, which is facing losing both of its current riders for next season.  Maverick Vinales’ shock departure from the factory Yamaha squad may see current Petronas man Franco Morbidelli moved into that slot, while Valentino Rossi is looking set to retire at

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on all sporting events in 2020, with MotoGP’s original 20-race season transformed into a heavily revised 14-round schedule which began last July. Centred in Europe, MotoGP held double-headers at Jerez, Red Bull Ring, Misano, Aragon and Valencia, while it also managed to bring back the Portuguese GP to

The Australian was running eighth in a tight group battling for the final two podium slots when he crashed on lap 15 of 26 at the Strubben hairpin. Miller says he was braking harder at that point in anticipation of Suzuki’s Joan Mir and LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami coming to blows and tucked the front