Brno, Czech Republic

The one place that everyone wants to be at a MotoGP race is in the paddock. Simultaneously, it is one of the most difficult places to get into, as, quite simply, Dorna does not sell passes into the paddock. The usual way - other than in a professional capacity, or working as a marshal - is to purchase a VIP package through one of the very few specialist travel companies authorized to issue paddock passes, such as our friends over at Pole Position Travel.

But now, MotoGP's (and MotoMatters.com's) official charity organization Riders For Health are providing an extra route into the paddock. Today, the charity announced that they will be auctioning off pairs of paddock passes for each of MotoGP's 18 races this season, with the money raised going towards Riders' outstanding work providing primary health care in Africa. If you want to get into the paddock and have a chance of meeting your own personal hero (be it Valentino Rossi, Bradley Smith or even Jerry Burgess), then read the press release below carefully, and dig deep for Riders.

Exclusive MotoGP paddock pass auction for Riders

Over the past year, the Balatonring project has been dogged by bad luck and economic hardship. The project was born under the unluckiest of stars, planned in Hungary and to be built by a Spanish-based construction firm shortly before the economic crisis began. Just months later, the Spanish real estate market collapsed, causing huge problems for the Spanish construction industry. At the same time, the value of the Hungarian Forint plummeted, plunging the country into further economic difficulties as so much of the business of the country was being done in Euros.

Fortunately, those troubles seem to be at an end. The holes created in the project's budget by the financial crisis have been filled by Magyar Fejlesztési Bank, the Hungarian Development Bank, according to BikeRacing.it. The Bank, whose mission is to provide funding for infrastructure and economic development projects such as the Balatonring circuit, has stepped in with a loan to allow the circuit to be completed in time for the September 19th Hungarian round of MotoGP. As a consequence, the Hungarian Grand Prix, which was cancelled last year after work on the Balatonring circuit ceased, is almost certain to take place as scheduled. Sources close to the management of the Balatonring track are extremely confident that the race will go ahead as planned.

At the same time as they announced the provisional entry lists for World Superbike and World Supersport, the FIM also released a revised calendar for the series. The revisions consist of a single change: The British round at Donington has been moved to Silverstone.

The move is the final episode in a long saga, both tragic and farcical in equal measure. It started with the ambitious plans of altering the Donington Park circuit to allow the return of Formula One, and ended with the bankruptcy of DVLL, handing the lease and a torn-up track unsuitable for racing back to the circuit's owners, the Wheatcroft family. It also sees Silverstone completely replace Donington as the main venue for world-class motorcycle racing.

The contrasts between the plans of the two circuits are key to their outcomes. DVLL, the company that ran Donington Park, had a huge and ambitious plan to build a new track and new world class facilities, at a cost of over 130 million pounds. Silverstone, on the other hand, made a few strategic changes to the track layout and spectator areas at an estimated cost of just 5 million. DVLL is bankrupt, and Silverstone has MotoGP, Formula One, World Superbikes and BSB. Such is the price of hubris.

When the revised version of the 2010 provisional MotoGP calendar was announced last week, we pointed out the problem which the lack of time between the Brno race and Indianapolis would create. With Brno just one week before Indianapolis, the customary post-race at Brno would have to be dropped, cutting the number of in-season tests by half, from two to just one.

This situation could not hold, and as reported by MotoMatters.com on Friday, it hasn't. Today, the FIM announced that the Brno round has officially been moved back a week to August 15th, the date which had appeared on the original MotoGP schedule. This switch puts two weeks between the Brno and Indianapolis rounds, reinstating the post-race tests at Brno, and easing the schedule a little for the riders and the teams. Two transatlantic hops in two weeks would have been punishing both for the riders and especially for the teams, who often have very long hours to put in preparing the bikes. With two weeks between Brno and Indy, the teams can take a little longer to acclimatize, and reduce the amount of jet lag they suffer.

The provisional calendar released for 2010 left the teams and fans scratching their heads a little. The calendar featured two sets of three back-to-back races; one set starting on June 20th with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and ending two weeks later on July 4th with Catalunya; and one set starting on August 22nd with Brno and ending two weeks later at Misano on September 5th. The first back-to-back did not raise any foreseeable problems, the middle race being the traditional run up to Assen for the Dutch TT. The second set, however, was a different kettle of fish.

For sandwiched between Brno and Misano was Indianapolis, on August 29th, meaning that the middle race in this back-to-back involved a hop back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean to the American Mid-West. As if that wasn't bad enough, the transatlantic schedule meant that the second of the two post-race tests scheduled for the 2010 MotoGP season would have to be scrapped, as alternatives for the traditional test at Brno were either thin on the ground or far too late in the season to be of any use.

The MotoGP paddock resembles a battlefield in many ways, but perhaps its most striking resemblance is that the truth is a very hard commodity to come by. The fog of war envelops the paddock, and stories which emerge always come out spun in one way or another, depending on which party is leaking a story, and which side of the argument a journalist is on.

So it has been hard to make sense of the stories emerging from the paddock recently of the offer Ducati has made to Jorge Lorenzo. Depending on which source you believe, the amount involved is either a suspiciously precise 3.52 million euros a year, 6.5 million euros a year rising to 8 million, or 7 million euros a year, and by the time you read this, doubtless a new figure will have emerged from somewhere. The numbers being given smell of a mixture of propaganda, sensationalism and guesswork, and all parties involved planting stories in the press to serve their own ends. Riders' salaries are always swathed in secrecy, and contract offers are far worse, with a healthy dose of subterfuge and misdirection thrown in for good measure.

However reliable - or more likely, unreliable - the numbers, they reveal an underlying truth: Casey Stoner's absence has opened a can of worms that his previous success had kept firmly shut. For the stories doing the rounds speak of Ducati offering Lorenzo extremely generous terms, but in truth, it isn't Ducati but their sponsor, Marlboro which is behind the move. Marlboro provide a sizable chunk of Ducati Corse's MotoGP budget, and have both the money and the influence to decide on rider choice.

With one extremely successful rider already at Ducati, why would Marlboro want to secure the services of another, and risk upsetting the only man who has so far brought them a world title? The answer is simple: Casey Stoner may appear on the podium regularly, but as far as appearances off the bike, he is extremely unwilling to play ball. Rider appearances, corporate entertaining, all the boring stuff that persuades sponsors to keep paying the bills, Stoner loathes it and keeps his commitments to a minimum. Even something as simple as a publicity shot is impossible to organize, with body doubles in leathers posing for glamour shots while Stoner's face is photoshopped in afterwards.

The rain brought proceedings to an early end at the final day of testing for the MotoGP class for this season. It started to rain shortly after lunchtime, and though it rained only briefly, by the time the track had started to dry out a fresh shower arrived to drench the track again. Only in the final hour did the riders venture back out onto the track again, and then, it was only Valentino Rossi who managed to improve his time.

So the riders did not get the testing done that they had hoped for. Jorge Lorenzo was once again the fastest rider on the track, ahead of the ever tardy Valentino Rossi, who did not roll out of the garage until after 11am, and Dani Pedrosa. The Repsol Honda riders were due to test Ohlins suspension, but as Dovizioso was scheduled to run the Swedish suspension in the morning, and Dani Pedrosa only in the afternoon, Dovi did the bulk of the testing. Pedrosa did get out on the new forks, according to GPOne.com, but certainly wouldn't have given the new suspension the kind of workout he would have hoped for.

Julian Ryder, over at Superbikeplanet.com, reports that there was cloak-and-dagger atmosphere inside the Suzuki pits, where screens were being erected around bikes every time the fairings came off. Obviously, the factory brought more than just the minor tweaks that they gave to Loris Capirossi for the race on Sunday.

The first outing for a Moto2 bike at an official MotoGP event was not a roaring success. Spanish rider David de Gea crashed during the morning while testing tires for Dunlop, and was transported to a local hospital with a broken foot. De Gea was not the only faller. Both Gabor Talmacsi and Nicky Hayden hit the gravel, though neither man was seriously hurt.

Times at the end of the day, courtesy of GPOne.com

The press conference given by HRC President Tetsuo Suzuki was remarkable in many more ways than one. The announcement that Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso had been signed to new contracts, subsequently denied by Alberto Puig, then clarified as a "basic agreement" was the most striking news to come out of that press conference, but the press conference contained more than just the rider announcement.

Buried among the big news of the basic agreement with Dovizioso and Pedrosa and the statement that HRC would not be signing Jorge Lorenzo was some potentially more significant news on the future of MotoGP. At the press conference, Mr Suzuki also discussed the proposal put forward by the MSMA a month ago at the Sachsenring to lease just engines to teams, in an echo of the Moto2 class and Kenny Roberts' Team KR effort. According to Michael Scott in the excellent online magazine GPWeek, Honda is opposed to the idea. "We prefer to lease entire machines," the HRC boss told the press conference, though he stressed he was speaking on behalf of Honda, and not for the MSMA.

The proposal to lease engines was put forward by the MSMA in response to the suggestion put forward by Dorna of using highly modified 1000cc production engines in the bikes, alongside the existing 800cc full prototype equipment. Both of these proposals are aimed at drastically cutting the cost of participating in MotoGP,  something that all parties acknowledge is a problem.

The bikes are out on track at the final test of the year at Brno, and the first times are starting to appear. The field is still a little empty, as Valentino Rossi is yet to emerge from his motorhome, while the Tech 3 Yamahas of Colin Edwards and James Toseland have been crated up ready for their journey to the next Grand Prix at Indianapolis. Randy de Puniet is giving his fractured ankle a rest.

The Hondas are out testing Ohlins suspension, in a move which could mirror their switch in World Superbikes, where the factory-backed Ten Kate team has made a similar switch to Ohlins. Now that Yamaha has sold the Swedish suspension firm back to its founder, Honda feels comfortable testing the shocks as possible replacements for the Showa units which are produced by a Honda subsidiary.

As it's still early, the times are not much to write home about, though Dani Pedrosa has already dropped into the 1'56 bracket. What is interesting is that David de Gea is circulating on the Blusens Moto2 bike, putting in some important tire testing for Dunlop. At 11am, his times would have made him the 15th fastest rider during the 250 race.

More updates as the day goes on.

Times at 11am (courtesy of GPOne.com):