ASRA: Hazardous/Clark Racing Wins Team Challenge At Summit Point

What is a Press Release?

A “press release” is promotional text issued by a rider, team, company or organization to inform
the public about an event, product, or service from the issuer’s own point of view, and if deemed
to have news value, may be placed on roadracingworld.com as a service to our readers.

A press release is not an article written by Roadracingworld.com staffers. When a post is labeled with the words “press release”, it means that Roadracingworld.com is not responsible for its content and that Roadracingworld.com makes no guarantee that it is accurate. Not all press releases are posted and Roadracingworld.com may reject press releases if the content is too heavy on commercial promotion with little or no news value or if the press release contains obvious errors.

Vinales “much better” on Aprilia than Yamaha after early 2022 races

The nine-time MotoGP race winner will contest his 10th race as an Aprilia rider in this weekend’s Portuguese Grand Prix, having joined the marque midway through a tumultuous 2021 campaign after his relationship with Yamaha spectacularly soured.

Vinales is currently 14th in the standings having scored 19 points with a best result of seventh in Argentina, while teammate Aleix Espargaro guided the Aprilia to victory at the same event.

Despite no standout results yet in 2022, Vinales believes he is “close” to being a frontrunner on the Aprilia and feels much stronger than he did on the Yamaha after the early part of a season.

“Yeah, absolutely, I feel much better because the line we are taking is all going up,” he said, when asked by Motorsport.com if his form now was better than it was when he was winning races and scoring podiums on the Yamaha .

“It’s going up quicker than expected. I don’t always check the results. I check the feeling, I check laptimes.

“A weekend will come when we put it all together, this is clear. It’s a matter of time, a matter of especially how to get a little bit more with the bike because sometimes I fight a lot.

Maverick Vinales, Aprilia Racing Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“In the previous races I fought a lot with the bike and I struggled to even push a little bit more.

“I’m just one step back from being able to fight for the top all the time.

“But it will come when I do [everything as] one on the bike. So, we just need to ride, adapt without pressure because at the end we have this year to develop the bike, to make myself comfortable.

“It’s clear that if we keep up the job we are doing, we will be at the front. But when I do that I want to be there all the weekends.”

Read So:

This season marks the first since 2016 that Vinales hasn’t scored a podium or a win in at least one of the opening four races, but insists he has never felt better on a MotoGP bike than he does now on the Aprilia.

“Honestly, I never feel like I’m feeling now because I think I have just nine races with the Aprilia and I feel like everything is going up in a very quick speed,” he added.

“So, we need to just be patient, don’t lose the way because I think we are working very well.

“I have to say, after Mandalika warm-up, I found a good feeling on the bike and we just kept that feeling.

“So, it means we made a big step on the base set-up. Now it’s a case of trying new parts, seeing if it’s better or not, that’s it. We are very close.”

MotoGP Mugello: ‘Best race’ for Darryn Binder: ‘I deserve to be here!’ | MotoGP

On a weekend that RNF announced it will be switching to Aprilia machinery from next season, Binder threw his hat firmly in the ring for one of the RS-GP rides by delivering his ‘best race’ in the premier-class.

The South African jumped from 20th to 17th on the opening lap, but was then forced to serve a long lap penalty for falling under yellow flags in free practice, dropping him back to 23rd.

Binder made his comeback intentions clear by briefly overtaking factory Yamaha’s Franco Morbidelli on the following lap, the pair remaining together as they moved up the order.

But it was Binder, riding the year-old A spec bike, who had the last laugh, snatching the 16th from Morbidelli at the checkered flag.

Morbidelli confirmed: “Darryn Binder was behind me all of the race but then used the slipstream to overtake me by 0.031s at the finish line.”

Binder’s result was still a long way from his ninth in the wet at Mandalika, but subtracting the 2.5s lost in the long lap would put him in the battle for 13th with Jorge Martin, Alex Marquez and Jack Miller.

The 24-year-old also set the 16th fastest lap of the race, again as the second-best Yamaha after reigning champion Quartararo and 1.0s from race winner Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati).

Related Articles

“For sure [it was my best race],” Binder said. “Obviously the position was better in Mandalika, but this was the first real race where I’ve been able to push throughout the whole race.

“I found the step I was looking for on Friday with the confidence in the front end. So all weekend I felt quite happy with how things were on the bike.

“It was such a shame that I had to do the long lap. But fortunately, I managed to join back in amongst the guys.

“Every single lap, I just started to understand a bit more when the tire dropped. And I feel like I was really able to just ride and learn.

“I managed to bring it home as the second Yamaha and it makes me happy.

“Because I feel like I deserve to be here, I do know how to ride a motorcycle! And I feel like I’ve got the potential to do well. I just need a little bit of time to figure things out,” added Binder , who has jumped straight from Moto3 to MotoGP.

Zeelenberg: ‘We celebrated like a victory’

Binder may not have joined Ducati rookies Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio di Giannantonio in featuring at the front of the race, but team manager Wilco Zeelenberg was delighted to see him take on and beat Morbidelli’s factory Yamaha.

“Having him battling with the boys, especially Franco and beating him in the last lap made the team very proud and we celebrated that like a victory,” Zeelenberg said.

“We are extremely happy with the performance of Darryn,” added team boss Razlan Razali. “He showed his worthiness, competencies, capabilities and most importantly his talent to be competitive and managed to be the second best Yamaha rider in front of Franco Morbidelli.

“We hope that he will continue this momentum for the next round in Catalunya. We must thank the team especially his Crew Chief, Noe Herrera for being able to give him the setting that he likes on the M1.”

Razali ‘lost for words’ by Dovizioso’s Mugello woes

While full of praise for Binder, Razali was ‘lost for words’ by the struggles for his experienced team-mate Andrea Dovizioso.

The Italian, on the factory-spec bike, qualified last and finished 20th in his home race.

“With Andrea, we are simply lost for words in terms of how much he has struggled from qualifying to the race,” Razali said. “We will have to sit down and discuss this next week and we need to find ways to turn his season around with 11 rounds to go. We look forward to Barcelona.”

Dovizioso is 21st in the world championship, on eight points, with Binder just behind on six.

In the top rookie battle, Bezzecchi’s fifth place at Mugello means he has pulled clear on 30 points, with di Giannantonio next best with eight. Behind binders are Remy Gardner (3) and Raul Fernandez (0).

MotoGP: Marc Marquez’s 10 Years With Repsol Honda (Video) – Roadracing World Magazine

VIDEO: Decade Defining: Marc Marquez’s ten years with the Repsol Honda Team

2022 will see the iconic number 93 enter his tenth season with the stalwart Repsol Honda Team, chasing their seventh World Championship title together.

Since joining the premier class in 2013, Marc Marquez and the Repsol Honda Team have continued to write MotoGP history. Marquez joined the team alongside Dani Pedrosa and quickly made an impression – finishing third on his MotoGP debut in Qatar. Victory would come at just the second race of the season, Marquez becoming the youngest premier class winner at 20 years and 63 days old when he took the first of his seven wins at the Americas GP. With four straight wins in Germany, Laguna Seca, Indianapolis and Brno, the Repsol Honda Team and Marquez set their sights on the title and achieved their target in Valencia, Marquez becoming the youngest premier class World Champion at 20 years and 266 days old, taking the record from fellow Honda Legend Freddie Spencer.

Over the following seasons Marquez continued to grow and develop as a rider inside the Repsol Honda Team, enjoying a number of memorable victories while also taking important lessons from the hard races and difficult seasons. This adaptability has been key to both parties remaining at the forefront of the MotoGP World Championship for such a long period. In 2022, Marquez is looking to overcome two difficult years interrupted by injury and return to consistently battling at the front. Crossing the threshold of 100 premier class podiums, becoming just the fourth rider to do so, is the first record on the line in the new year.

Other accolades achieved during Marquez’s ten years with the Repsol Honda Team include becoming the first rider to win 13 premier class Grands Prix in a single season (2014), where he also became the first rider since 1970 to win ten straight premier class races. The 2013 and 2014 seasons also saw the #93 become the youngest ever back-to-back premier class World Champion at 21 years and 237 days old. More recently, Marquez earned the most points in a single premier class season – 420 during his domination of the 2019 campaign.

To date Marc Marquez and the Repsol Honda Team have achieved 62 poles, 99 podiums, 59 wins and six World Championships together – the defining force in the last ten years of Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Motivation and ambition remains as high as ever for the combination as they aim to celebrate their decade together in the best way possible, winning the World Championship once again.

Marquez has also cemented himself as a landmark rider in Honda’s history and sits as the Honda rider with the most premier class wins, most Honda wins across all classes as well as being the outright premier class pole record holder – four ahead of fellow Repsol Honda Team great Mick Doohan. Only Dani Pedrosa has spent more time inside the Repsol Honda Team, having raced in the iconic colors for 13 years.

The 2022 MotoGP World Championship begins on Sunday, March 06 in Qatar with Free Practice 1 starting the season on Friday, March 04. Marc Marquez’s 93 will once again adorn the front fairing of the Repsol Honda Team RC213V.

Red Bull Ring next for the Repsol Honda Team

Pol Espargaro and Stefan Bradl are eager to get their heads down and get back to work as the World Championship arrives in Austria for Round 13.

The Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria will feature a revised layout for the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix as a chicane has been added just before Turn 3 at the top of the hill. This formerly ferociously fast approach will now become more technical with the revision. Coming from the longest circuit on the calendar to the second shortest will call for riders and teams to first adjust the setups of their machines. Races at the Austrian GP have classically been last-lap thrillers with exciting battles out of Turn 10 featuring in almost every edition of the event.

Pol Espargaro was involved in one such battle in 2020 when he took third and claimed his second premier class podium, going on to take six more since then. The #44 arrives in Austria with a point to prove after two challenging races in Austria the previous year. With the intense stop-start layout of the track, the weekend is sure to give Espargaro and the Repsol Honda Team more valuable data as they hunt their pre-season form. Now with a race under his belt after missing two Grands Prix and not riding Over the summer break, Espargaro is assured of his bike fitness and aiming to work hard from FP1.

Although Marc Marquez will be visiting the Repsol Honda Team in Austria, Stefan Bradl will again contest the weekend in the iconic colours. This will be Bradl’s fourth race at the Red Bull Ring, having previously raced there in 2019 and the two 2020 editions. His best finish so far came in 2019 when he was 13th. Since the German GP, ​​Bradl has shown constant progress during the weekends to consistently keep pace with the full-time World Championship grid.

‘We have to build bikes made for qualifying’ – Pit Beirer

KTM has had a less-than-expected season in MotoGP. Brad Binder’s podium in Qatar, followed by Miguel Oliveira’s victory in Indonesia, even hinted at a high-level season, but the truth is that the regular dispute for podiums that was desired did not happen. Pit Beirer, sporting director, acknowledged the failure to achieve the goals, and pointed to qualification as an area for improvement.

On the ServusTV antenna, the official assumed that the goals for this season were not achieved: ‘We wanted to finish regularly on the podium this year. But when you start the race and you only have the speed of the top teams after two or three laps, it’s complicated. However, the race doesn’t start after three laps later. We wanted to fight for the podium, we lack a little’.

Knowing that this is a very complicated class, with constant improvements and sometimes minimal distances, Beirer stressed that qualifying pace is an important weakness of KTM: ‘The fast lap really bothers us. In the last two races we finished 2.7s away from the winner. But nobody cares if you finish sixth. Our next key has to be to go through qualifying. We have to build bikes that are made for that. That will be our next big step’.

‘Fabio Quartararo will be able to retain the title, but he will suffer’ – Alex Criville

Fabio Quartararo achieved another good result with second place at the Austrian GP, ​​just behind Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) – who moved within 44 points of the championship lead held by the Monster Energy Yamaha rider. Alex Criville believes Quartararo is well on course to renew his title for 2021, but he will have no easy task.

Commenting on the Austrian GP race, the 1999 world champion told Woonkly, as quoted by Marca newspaper, that El Diablo was on top of his game against the might of his Ducati rivals: ‘The Frenchman gave a riding lesson on a circuit where power is the key, so all the Ducati riders were the favourites. Fabio Quartararo was the only Yamaha rider who was able to defend himself and stand up to the Ducati.’

Although he considers that there are circuits that are theoretically more favorable to Quartararo, Crivillé anticipates that the Frenchman will not have an easy task in defending his title:

– From now on, the circuits will be smoother and he will suffer less. Even so, Pecco Bagnaia has grown. The reigning world champion will defend himself tooth and nail, taking advantage of the points advantage he has. Fabio looks very fluid on the Yamaha, very determined and solid. If he doesn’t fail, he will be able to retain the MotoGP world championship title, but he will suffer because Bagnaia is going to go for it.