Scott Jones, Ducati Corse

One of the great pleasures in watching Casey Stoner ride a MotoGP machine is the controlled way in which he manages to slide the bike through the corners. In an era when the spectacular slides once so beloved by fans have been tamed by electronic intervention, Stoner has managed to convince his engineers to limit the electronics sufficiently to give him enough control to slide the bike to help get it turned. 

His ability has fascinated both fans and journalists around the world, and many have tried to get him to explain how he does it, but Stoner himself has always found it very hard to say exactly what he is doing. At Qatar, a group of journalists - including MotoMatters.com - pressed the Repsol Honda rider again to explain exactly where and when he chooses to slide the rear, and what benefits it provides. Though he protested it was hard - "It's really difficult to explain, so many people have asked me," he said - he went on to talk at length about what he does and why.

How to wheelie a Moto3 bike: stand up, apply throttle, pull back, lift off!

It would be a tough weekend at Qatar for Ben Spies

It wasn't that much better for Alvaro Bautista

Lorenzo, Pedrosa and Stoner at the start of the race. The best thing about Qatar was that they got these close again at the end of the race too

Moon over Marquez

Scott Redding did not reap the rewards of an outstanding preseason at Qatar

Racing at the speed of light

Fastest Italian on the day, yet only one Italian journalist turned up to his debrief

Bring the bling: the Ioda CRT bike has slick chrome wheels, and is pretty damn fast for a slow bike

Welcome to 2012. Gentlemen, start your engines.

The traditional start to the MotoGP season. The group photo photographer scrum

Lorenzo lost his number 1 plate last year, and now he wants it back.

The class of 2012. The biggest it's been for a while.

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One of my most abiding motorcycle racing memories comes from my first trip to Indianapolis for the 2009 MotoGP race. On the Saturday night, I joined the majority of the paddock in making the pilgrimage to the Indiana State Fairground for the Indy Mile flat track races, the first time I had ever visited a flat track race. In addition to the overwhelming visceral experience of having a couple of dozen thundering twins roar by at over a hundred miles an hour, rear wheel sideways and looking for grip, came something very special indeed. Kenny Roberts Senior, three-times world champion took his Yamaha TZ750-powered flat tracker, one of the most legendary motorcycles ever to grace a racetrack - though Roberts would probably reject the verb "grace" - out for a spin, 34 years after it made its debut at the State Fairground.

Ducati, in partnership with Italian telecommunications company TIM, presented their 2012 bike today in an online launch for a reported audience of 96,000 fans and media around the world. Much excitement had surrounded the launch of the new livery, the color scheme feature a lot more white than in previous years. A hint to that effect had been seen in the new team gear sported by Ducati staff at the Sepang tests, which also had a lot more white than last year's all-red clothing.

The best of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels is, in my opinion, his last, the title of which I've borrowed for this piece. In The Long Goodbye, Chandler shows us more of what makes Philip Marlowe tick than in any of the previous novels, and along the way, as observed by my old professor Thomas Steiner, the book itself seems often to be Chandler's personal farewell to Marlowe and to the hardboiled detective novel itself. 

This off-season has been a kind of Long Goodbye of my own, in this case not to a genre of fiction or to a fictional character, but to a real one. My main task over the past few months has been to go through my photos from each race weekend I've attended since 2008 and pull out the best images to show on Photo.GP, my online archive. Each time I open a new catalog or revisit one partially processed, I'm confronted with more images of Marco Simoncelli to edit and decide if they belong on Photo.GP or not. 

Silky Smooth Stoner? Not so much ...

No Rizla at Indy, so retro Alvaro on the Suzuki. It was a great color scheme

Big skies at Indy

You don't get many chances to get an image like this, with the entire grid together on track. Some circuits don't have a good first couple of turns, or it's hard to get there from the grid in time for the shot, or a good plan to get there is ruined by some unforeseen problem like a broken down shuttle, V.I.P. traffic on the access road, etc.

The San Francisco Dainese D-Store welcomed me and Jensen Beeler last week to share some of our thoughts and experiences in MotoGP. For my part of the presentation, I showed some photographs on a projector and told the stories that went along with them. A few folks asked if I could video the show, but that turned out to be a non-starter for various reasons. So instead I thought I'd write up the stories to share here for anyone who is interested. So here is the story behind...

Bradl's Angst
Assen, 2011

Over the hill and far away

King Kenny rode Laguna on an M1. And hated it.

GP Eleven. Point One.

Loris' Last Laguna

The annual launch of Ducati and Ferrari's season got underway today at the Italian ski resort of Madonna di Campiglio. The Wrooom event was opened with the official presentation of Ducati MotoGP riders Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden, alongside Ferrari's Formula 1 drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, followed by an official dinner.

Though Rossi and Hayden are present, the expected star of the show will be absent: Ducati will not be presenting the 2012 Desmosedici GP12 at Wrooom, and the bike will make its first public appearance at the Sepang test on January 31st. Ducati Corse project leader Filippo Preziosi told French journalist Michel Turco of Moto Revue that Ducati had planned to do this since November. The bike will be taken to Jerez for a shakedown test; however, it is as yet unclear whether the bike will be tested by Carlos Checa in Spain, or if only test rider Franco Battaini will take the new bike out on the track.

Much will be cleared up about the new bike on Wednesday, when Preziosi will face an extended grilling by the assembled motorcycle media. On Tuesday, it is the turn of Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden to face the press.

A Ducati in the hills of Tuscany. It doesn't get much better than this.

But a Rossi podium was not going to happen at Mugello, despite the GP11.1

Ant West had a tough 2011, but it got better once Warren Willing joined him in the MZ garage