MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The pre-race press conference which takes place at every MotoGP round follows a pretty rigid format. A handful of riders are present on a podium, and field a selection of fairly predictable questions with similarly predictable answers. The whole affair has an air of tradition about it, such is the ritual of questions and answers.

The Spanish motorcycling journal Motociclismo.es is reporting that Jorge Martinez Aspar, the man behind the team dominating the 250 and 125 classes, turned down an offer of runnig a Dunlop-shod M1 in MotoGP from Yamaha.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a team that nobody loved. Their results had become ever more marginal, since a woefully underfunded season with World Superbike stars Neil Hodgson and Ruben Xaus. Yet though the results got worse after Hodgson and Xaus left, finances gradually started improving. Pramac, having lost their Honda tie up in 2004, found an alternative home with Luis d'Antin for 2005, and expanded to field two riders in 2006.

Now, news unrelated to MotoGP, but related to the site. Over the past few weeks, the site has received some financial support from various sources, which have helped me to cover a few costs.

Roadracing World is today confirming the rumors prior to Misano that Chaz Davies will test for Ducati. The official test is scheduled to take place next week at Mugello (sadly, about a week before I am due to visit the place), and Davies will be testing alongside Ducati's official test rider Vittoriano Guareschi.

The human mind is a weird and wonderful thing. Over millions of years, it's evolved to sieve through thousands upon thousands of tiny chunks of information, and try and discover the underlying pattern in them, in the hope of fractionally improving our chances of survival. So strong is this tendency that we routinely find patterns in places where they aren't even there, as anyone who has paid top dollar for a jar of peanut butter with the face of Elvis in it can tell you.