MotoReview

Trouble Ahead for Fortuna Honda? - Continued
Last month we reported that the Fortuna Honda team could be facing some problems with funding for the upcoming season. Well the word now is that Altadis have indeed cut part of their sponsorship budget that was supposed to get the Gresini Racing/Fortuna Honda team through this year, and team owner Fausto Gresini may be footing a large amount of the bill himself. The team are said to be 'reorganizing' to reduce costs, but despite this there are still rumours that the team do not have the cash to get through the entire season. Some believe that HRC will step in to keep Marco Melandri in the running, but GP class rookie Toni Elias could have problems in the job security department later in the year.

Trouble Ahead for LCR Honda?
Yep, it seems there's trouble all over the place at the moment. Lucio Cecchinello's single bike team consisting of Aussie Casey Stoner is rumoured to currently only have the budget to get through to the Dutch TT in June. Of course a lot can change in week in MotoGP let alone three and a half months, so we'll have to wait and see how this plays out.

18 round championship in 2007
Talk is that Dorna are considering an eighteenth round for the 2007 championship, possibly in the form of the Misano circuit. This would be the second Italian race, with Mugello already a standard fixture in the MotoGP calender. It's also been suggested that Sepang could be removed from the calender due to poor ticket sales, but with the extensive testing completed at the circuit the teams are likely to want it to stay.

Development on the Honda RCV
Michelin have been doing their 'official' testing with Yamaha rather than Honda during the pre-season, and Marco Melandri's not happy about it. His view is that this will give Yamaha a big advantage this year; Michelin's is that they can't test with Honda until Honda decide which evolution of the RC211V they want to use, and until they do decide testing would be pointless.

On a related note, it's rumoured that the 2006-spec RCV, which has a smaller and lighter engine, has introduced some technology which will appear in the 800cc bike in a years time. Some believe this is why Honda have been 'struggling', although Honda would dispute that they were struggling in the first place. Finally, Nicky Hayden may be hoping to get out of his position as official Honda development rider, as he may not stay with Honda in 2007 and will be wanting to make the best impression possible this season. To do so he'll be wanting the fastest bike, which isn't necessarily the one with the untried and untested development parts.

That's it for this weeks Rumourmill - we'll have more on these and other interesting titbits from the paddock as and when we hear them.

(0) Comment on this article in our forums