Brno, Czech Republic

The FIM announced a minor change to the 2009 MotoGP calendar today. The Misano round of MotoGP will be held a week earlier than previously scheduled, moving it to the week after the Indianapolis MotoGP round.

* Evening race
** Saturday race
*** Only MotoGP class

When HRC announced that they were to give the factory RC212V to a satellite team to test, very few people were surprised. Well behind in the points race, Dani Pedrosa needs all the help he can get . What did surprise almost everyone, however, was the fact that the bike was given not to Andrea Dovizioso, the rookie who has been most impressive on the satellite bike, and leads the satellite Hondas in the championship table, but Gresini Honda's Shinya Nakano.

Nakano has been mostly anonymous so far this year, riding around in the middle of the pack for the most part. The decision seemed at the very least, a little strange. HRC themselves stated that Nakano had been given the bike because he was Japanese, and he would be able to communicate with HRC's engineers in their native language.

Cynics and conspiracy theorists had another explanation. Pointing to Nakano's Bridgestone tires, they said it was a sign that the official Repsol Honda factory team is preparing a switch to Bridgestones for next year, after two years of problems with their current tire suppliers, Michelin. After all, the cynics said, both Dovizioso and the HRC engineers speak excellent English, and are used to working with riders for whom English is not their first language.

Testing concluded at Brno today, under hot and sunny skies. Only 11 riders took to the track, all of the Hondas except Shinya Nakano having left, feeling they would learn nothing as a result of not having tires they could use. Dani Pedrosa had left very early on Monday, having gone out for just 5 laps. The message from HRC to Michelin was pretty clear, as Nakano, the only Honda, was running on Bridgestones.

Casey Stoner completely destroyed the lap records, running full second under his pole record from last year on some experimental qualifiers from Bridgestone. But more impressive than that was a sequence of 5 laps Stoner set on race tires, 4 of which were in the low 1'56s, with one incredible lap of 1'55.904. Stoner commented afterwards that they had once again found some improvements in setup. The competition can only hope the jump for Ducati is not as large as it was the last time round they tested, after Barcelona. Stoner went on to win the next three races in a row after that test.

Stoner wasn't the only rider to improve. Valentino Rossi tested more new electronics, and improved his times to get into the mid 1'56s. Rossi's team mate Jorge Lorenzo was the best of the Michelin runners, shaving 1.3 seconds off his best time of the weekend.

Full times for Day 2 of testing, courtesy of GPOne.com: 

After Marco Melandri announced that he and Ducati had agreed to drop the second year of his two year contract, after a disastrous year on the GP8, speculation abounded about where Melandri would now end up. The most obvious option seemed to be Gresini Honda: Melandri and Gresini had split on relatively amicable terms, and Melandri had proved in the past that he knew how to ride the Honda - at least, once Honda fixed the dismal satellite RC212V.

But a return to Gresini is not to be. According to MCN's Matthew Birt, Marco Melandri has agreed terms with Kawasaki for 2009. There had been rumors that Melandri would make the switch mid-season, if Ducati decided to drop Melandri early, but after signs of improvement over the past couple of races, Melandri raced for Ducati at Brno, and is now almost certain to finish up the season with the team.

Melandri's main motivation for the switch to Kawasaki is that the Italian would rather stay with a factory team, to ensure he has more input into the development of the bike. His previous experience at Gresini left him occasionally frustrated, forced to wait for developments from the factory to be made available once they'd fixed their own riders' problems.

The switch is something of a gamble. The Kawasaki has been the weakest bike on the grid so far this year, with Kawasaki not looking particularly inclined to spend too much time and money on developing the bike. But the improved parts which Ant West and John Hopkins had at Brno showed that the team was at least making progress. The upside for Melandri is that the Kawasaki doesn't look as hard to get used to as the Ducati does, as Jamie Hacking's creditable outing at Laguna Seca demonstrated.

Times set during the post-race test at Brno, courtesy of GPOne.com:

Final times. Stoner's lap was set on a race tire, and just 0.1 seconds shy of the pole record held by Valentino Rossi.

Times as of 2pm local time

Yesterday, we reported that all 17 current MotoGP riders had held a meeting to discuss safety with Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta. That meeting took place behind closed doors, and so the exact details of what was discussed were not made public, although it was an open secret that the riders had asked for a single tire rule.

Fortunately for us, the Spanish sports daily AS.com is very well connected, and has managed to find out just what the ideas were that the riders presented to Dorna. The riders had 5 proposals to improve safety:

With so few bikes on the grid, you would think it would be relatively easy to get into MotoGP. All it would really take is a sponsor with deep enough pockets to fund a bike, a decent rider and the team - with the costs for the team probably being the least significant part of the entire package. But the saga of Jorge Martinez tells quite a different tale.

Jorge Aspar Martinez, the owner of the Aspar team which dominates both the 125cc and the 250cc classes, has been trying to get into MotoGP for quite some time now. At the end of last year, Martinez seemed to have the whole deal sewn up: Suzuki would provide him with a factory machine, and either Ben Spies or Alvaro Bautista would ride it. It was just a matter of tidying up a few loose ends, and preparing for 2009.

It didn't quite work out that way, though. Suzuki's interest in providing a bike quickly cooled, after the Rizla Suzuki team failed to continue the progression they had shown in 2007, leaving Aspar without a bike. Aspar then turned to Ducati for equipment, but rumors emerged in the Spanish press that though Ducati appeared to be willing, Alvaro Bautista, the man Aspar wanted on the bike, had refused point blank to ride a Ducati, pointing to the examples of Marco Melandri, Toni Elias and Sylvain Guintoli. Discussions with Yamaha were also held, but proved fruitless.

Just a quick reminder for all our US-based readers: The MotoGP race from Brno is due to be broadcast  by CBS on Sunday, not Speed. The race is due to be shown as a same-day delay broadcast at 2pm EDT. For more details, check your local CBS affiliate, or the TV Racer website.

Be sure to check your DVRs, and don't miss the race. It could well be another classic.

Some unusual reports are coming out of Brno this evening. On Friday evening, there was a scheduled meeting of the riders' safety comission, but at that meeting, Valentino Rossi and Loris Capirossi arranged for another meeting, between all 17 of the current MotoGP riders and the CEO of Dorna, Carmelo Ezpeleta. The subject of that meeting was the dangers presented by the rapidly increasing corner speeds in MotoGP, and ideas were presented and discussed to tackle the problem.

Or at least, that's the official version, according to MotoGP.com, the website owned and operated by Dorna, the organizers of the MotoGP series. Respected motorcycle racing journalist Julian Ryder, however, is reporting over on Superbikeplanet.com that the main idea discussed was the institution of a single tire rule.

There is good reason to think that this is the case. With Michelin on course for their third hiding in a row, the Michelin riders are getting decidedly restive. According to Alberto Cani over at GPOne.com, the atmosphere in the Repsol Honda pit is very poor, with all of the anger directed at anyone wearing a blue and yellow Micheliin shirt. When asked by a Spanish journalist about what the relationship was like with the Michelin technicians, he replied: "I'd like to answer that question, but it would probably be better if I waited until another day."

The announcement that Team Scot and the JiR team of Luca Montiron were to split up has raised questions in the paddock about what effect this will have on the size of the grid, and how the spoils would be divided. It was generally assumed that Montiron's role in MotoGP was finished, and that Team Scot, having turned the worst team in the paddock into a model of efficiency, would stay in MotoGP, most likely with Yuki Takahashi, their current 250cc rider, taking the seat Andrea Dovizioso will vacate when he leaves for Repsol Honda.

But in an interview with GPOne.com's Alberto Cani, Montiron claimed that he will have a Honda, a title sponsor, and either Alex de Angelis or Nicky Hayden as a rider for next year. Montiron told GPOne.com that he has already presented his plans to Honda, and that these plans would include a big-name rider. Montiron confirmed that Alex de Angelis is one of the riders he is interested in. The other "big name " is believed to be Nicky Hayden, but Hayden is almost certain to sign with Ducati for 2009.

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.