Andrea Dovizioso

After Nicky Hayden's less than surprising switch to Ducati, the 2nd worst kept secret in MotoGP was announced at Motegi today. HRC formally announced that Andrea Dovizioso will be heading to Repsol Honda as Hayden's replacement. The Italian rookie has made a big impression since arriving in MotoGP, and his long-standing relationship with Honda, including struggling to compete with the much faster Aprilia's in the 250 class, made him a racing certainty for the Repsol Honda seat.

The devil of such a deal is, as always, in the details. Dovizioso signed a one-year deal with Repsol, in itself a rarity, as the factory team has preferred to work on a two-year cycle with riders. But Dovizioso's biggest challenge will be sharing the pits with Dani Pedrosa. With the full weight of the team's Spanish sponsor behind him, as well as a competent political operator at his side, Pedrosa has had most of the attention from HRC over the past two years, even going so far as to engineer a switch to Bridgestone tires in mid-season, breaking up a long-standing relationship which HRC has had with Michelin.

But according to GPOne.com, Dovizioso has secured some powerful guarantees from Honda. Firstly, according to Masumi Hamane, President of HRC, both Dovizioso and Pedrosa will be afforded equal treatment, with a decision made during the season as to who will get preferential access to new material based on who is ahead in the championship at that time. Furthermore, regardless of whether a single tire rule will be introduced or not, Hamane said that "regardless of what happens (with respect to a single tire rule - Ed.), we hope to be able to give both riders the same tires. Even more intriguingly, Hamane ruled out that the two sides of the garage would be divided by a wall, as is the case in the Fiat Yamaha pit box, and as was introduced into the Repsol Honda garage after Pedrosa switched to Bridgestones.

For most of this year, qualifying has followed a reasonably predictable pattern. A couple of laps after his out lap, Casey Stoner would seize pole position, gradually turning the thumbscrews on the rest of the field. About halfway through the session, Randy de Puniet would be the first rider out on qualifying tires and snatch pole from Stoner. His glory would be short-lived, however, lasting only until Stoner threw on the first set of qualifiers, then the process would repeat itself, the only real question being how big Stoner's margin would be over the rest, and whether Valentino Rossi would manage to qualify on the front row.

The inaugural Indianapolis MotoGP race was anything but predictable, and turned into one of the most fascinating and thrilling sessions of the entire year. This may have been due to the fact that the session was the first truly dry outing of the weekend, with both Friday's sessions having been held in torrential rain, and Saturday's morning free practice session starting off damp, and only really drying out towards the end. And so for most teams, the first 20 minutes of the session were spent searching for some kind of dry weather set up, before they could even think about qualifying.

The session started much as expected, with Casey Stoner the first rider to crack into the 1'43s, but just 10 minutes into the session, the fast laps were flying thick and fast. Ben Spies, Sylvain Guintoli, Nicky Hayden, Jorge Lorenzo, Randy de Puniet and Toni Elias all held provisional pole at one point, as the times edged towards the mid-1'43 mark, and beyond. 

But with 20 minutes of the session gone, the really fast times started to shake out. Naturally, the first of the fastest was Casey Stoner, the Australian shaving nearly 3/10ths off Elias' time with a lap of 1'43.105, but he wasn't to be the only quick man. Just a couple of minutes later, Valentino Rossi took 8/100ths off Stoner's provisional pole, improving to 1'43.021.

Rossi wasn't finished there: his provisional pole was just the first in a sequence of fast laps, eventually taking pole down to 1'42.945. But Rossi wasn't the only rider capable of running fast on race tires. Nicky Hayden was running low 1'43s, smoking his rear tire in crowd-pleasing fashion through some of the long left handers, while Toni Elias was also getting quicker. So quick, in fact, that the Spaniard took his Alice Ducati to provisional pole with an impressive 1'42.741, 2/10ths quicker than Rossi's previous time.

There are points during the year when the so-called silly season - the period during which contract negotiations hot up and rumors about who will be riding wear start circulating furiously - becomes so febrile that it becomes hard to tell where insider gossip ends and psychedelic speculation begins. At these times - usually shortly after the summer break, and once a major name has switched rides, freeing up the rest of the market to move - speculation about who will go where ceases to be an educated guessing game of which riders would be the best match with which teams, and becomes more like just linking every possible rider with every team with a possible empty seat, in the hope of getting it right thanks solely to the laws of statistics. Consequently, during these periods the silly season is not so much silly as just plain ridiculous.

Now appears to be such a time. Once Marco Melandri officially announced that he would be leaving Ducati, and then confirmed he would be riding for Kawasaki, the rest of the market seemed to fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle. Nicky Hayden would go to Ducati, Andrea Dovizioso would go to Repsol Honda, and if Suzuki kept both their riders, then Ben Spies would go to Gresini Honda, courtesy of American Honda.

But that was before the madness struck. Earlier, we reported that Ben Spies had been talking to Ducati for a seat in World Superbikes, though Ducati are far from enamored of his wage demands. And now, according to the otherwise reputable Spanish magazine Motociclismo, a whole bunch of the other deals we thought were already cemented are up in the air as well.

Perhaps the least exotic of these rumors is one which has been raised earlier. After failing to meet performance targets that would have automatically given him another year at Suzuki, Chris Vermeulen is currently in the midst of renegotiating a contract with Suzuki. The problem here is that Suzuki, though they are keen to retain Vermeulen's services, are only willing to do so at less than half his current salary. As much as Vermeulen wants to stay in MotoGP, such a pay cut may make sticking with Suzuki a rather unpalatable prospect, and the Australian may instead choose to replace Troy Bayliss at the Xerox Ducati factory team in World Superbikes. If Vermeulen does stay in MotoGP, Suzuki isn't his only option: he also has options with Gresini Honda and Kawasaki.

At the end of the first day of practice at Brno, it was clear that there were two men a long way clear of the rest of the field. Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi were over half a second ahead of the man in 3rd, and the only riders capable of cracking into the 1'57s. The timing sheets seemed to tell a fairly clear-cut story of two fast men, a pack of riders all very close to each other, and another disastrous failure by Michelin. The grid seemed to be shaping up nicely.

The problem was, Saturday's weather threw not so much a fly as a whale into the ointment, after a storm front unleashed torrential rain over the Czech track, leaving the circuit completely drenched, though still ridable. With more rain coming in during the day, the grid was going to reflect a slightly different reality than Friday's practice had revealed, and confusing the picture even more, the forecast for Sunday is for the usual warm, bone dry conditions we have come to expect from Brno over the years.

During the morning's free practice session, Casey Stoner had already proved quite emphatically that he is probably the best wet-weather rider in the world, by stomping all over the competition. And as qualifying started in a light drizzle, he continued in the same vein. On just his 2nd flying lap, the Australian took a 5 second lead over the rest of the field, leaving his rivals gasping for breath.

No need for an introduction this time, just straight into more of Jules Cisek's fabulous photographs from Laguna Seca.

Typical Californian weather: foggy and cold

You know you're in trouble when you have to use intermediates in the dry

Of course, if you had Bridgestones, the conditions didn't bother you

Dean

Laguna's front straight, not long, but still fast

Last year, we ran some photos from Laguna Seca by friend of MotoGPMatters.com, and one of the driving forces behind the rideontwo.com forums and the outstanding MotoGPOD podcast, Jules Cisek, who many of you will know by the nickname Popmonkey. Jules' day job is "something in computers", an occupation which seems to be almost compulsory in his native San Francisco. But it's quite clear from his fantastic photography that IT's gain is photography's loss. Fortunately for us, he's allowed us to share some of his superb pictures from the 2008 US GP at Laguna Seca. And what's even better is that Jules' skill as a snapper is obviously improving.

The Doctor's bike at the Hard Rock Cafe

Names To Watch For: The Red Bull Rookies

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's poor Jorge Lorenzo

The big time:

 High Expectations

Dovi

10th on the Grid

A Foggy Start

 Corkscrew as fog clears

Rossi Descends

After the damp morning practice, during which Dani Pedrosa finally pipped Casey Stoner to the post setting the fastest time in the dying seconds of the session, the big question in the afternoon was whether the Pedrosa could repeat this during qualifying, or whether Stoner would dominate as he had on Friday. It was a question Stoner seemed determined to answer in a hurry. He went straight to the top of the timesheets on his 2nd lap, and by lap 4, he was close to the previous pole record pace, with a time of 1'22.082, less than 7 minutes into the session.

Under normal circumstances, that time would have stood for most of qualifying, while the riders worked on their race setup, before breaking out the soft qualifiying rubber. But the possibility of showers disrupting practice meant that a number of riders took a very early qualifier, gambling that such a move could pay off if the rain started to fall for real. Alex de Angelis, Randy de Puniet and Colin Edwards all took a very early qualifier, with Edwards taking provisional pole well before the halfway mark, with a lap of 1'21.794.

Worryingly for Edwards, that time was only 0.2 seconds faster than the 1'21.996 set by Casey Stoner, in the middle of a long run on race tires. Qualifiers can generally be relied on to take close to a second off of your best time, so Edwards' 0.2 second advantage was looking more like a 0.8 second deficit, once Stoner got serious.

The weather had been forecast to be poor for the 2nd day of practice, and boy, where the weather forecasters right. Both this morning's free practice and this afternoon's qualifying practice took place in full rain. And like the morning's session, the afternoon's qualifying saw the wet weather specialists leap straight to the top of the table. Within ten minutes of the session starting, the tables were headed by three Australians: Casey Stoner, Chris Vermeulen and Ant West. Vermeulen and West will be no surprise, both men being renowned specialists in the rain - Vermeulen's protests that he doesn't like the rain notwithstanding - and Stoner has always coped very well in the wet.