MotoGP: Austria ahead

Photo: MotoGP

The next round of the Moto GP championship will be held August 14 at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. The track is built around the remains of the fearsome Salzburgring, which opened in 1969 and held many European and world championship races, including both Formula 1 car and Grand Prix motorcycles. The bikes were there from 1971 to 1994, with 1980 and 1992 excepted.

It was a fearsomely fast track with little-to-no run-off, laid out in a narrow alpine valley, basically two long straights with a couple of bends joined by loops at either end. Five-time world champion Mick Doohan said the section between turns 7 and 10 was his all time favourite piece of racetrack, likening it to “threading a motorcycle through the eye of a needle at 180 mph whilst banging fairings with your competitors with Armco barriers on each side. Sure it was fast and dangerous, but also enormous fun. To me it’s what motorcycle racing is all about”.

The track was closed in 2008, later bought by Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz (with a personal net worth on the far side of $12 billion U.S., hardly a big deal …) and shortened, refurbished, brought up to modern standards – and this year both F1 and Moto GP will be back.

The Moto GP circus had two days of testing earlier this week, and it looks like a Ducati track. Despite the many changes, it’s still fearsomely fast with a few slow corners from which to accelerate, and Ducati riders took six of the top 10 times, including the first four, with factory riders Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso ahead of test rider Casey Stoner and Avintia Ducati satellite ace Hector Barbera.

The factory Hondas weren’t there, Cal Crutchlow on the LCR satellite Honda 12th and relatively happy with his pace.

The Yamaha and Suzuki riders were glum, Valentino Rossi saying, “It’s very fast and the place is good and the corners are OK. For us, personally, it’s not the best circuit because usually we suffer a bit on top speed, and in fact we are struggling.”

For the first time KTM was on track with other Moto GP bikes and went very well, development riders Mika Kallio and Tom Luthi only about two seconds off the top Ducati times. That’s closer than Suzuki was when they first came back to Moto GP, so bodes well for 2017. Kallio will be riding one of the bikes at Valencia as a wild-card at the end of this season.

In other recent news, to no one’s surprise Moto 2 champ and series leader Johann Zarco has been confirmed to partner German fellow Moto 2 rider Jonas Folger in the Tech 3 Yamaha team, while Eugene Laverty looks to be passing on a return to World Superbike and staying with a satellite Ducati team – either Aspar where he is now, or to Avintia to partner Barbera in place of Loris Baz.