HRC Repsol Honda is readying itself for the upcoming 2010 season and is giving the team a partial makeover. After wooing away three techs from Yamaha (Andrea Zugna, Carlo Luzzi and Christian Battaglia) and Ducati’s Livio Suppo who will be their marketing director, they have now decided to have two separate team managers.

HRC will see the omnipresent Alberto Puig follow his protégé Dani Pedrosa, while Gianni Berti will be Andrea Dovizioso’s team manager. Berti followed the Italian when he left the now defunct JiR Scot Team for the factory Honda.

Peter Benson, Dovizioso’s former chief mechanic will be substituted by Ramòn Aurìn, who has been promoted from telemetry technician.

Source | bikeracing.it

Continue reading: Two Team Managers in HRC Repsol Honda

According to Spanish website Cadena Ser, Dani Amatriain, Jorge Lorenzo’s and the Espargaro brothers, Pol and Alex’s manager till their split last year, was arrested yesterday in Barcellona for death threats against his former riders, obstruction of justice and damages.

Apparently the threats have been going on for months, but in this last period have escalated and have ranged from harassing phone calls at all hours of the day and night and personally threatening his ex riders with bodily harm over unsolved contract disputes.

Amatirian announced his retirement last October citing that he wished to spend more time with his family and son, however paddock gossip in that period ran wild with rumors on what really happened, and why Lorenzo and other riders were cutting the Spanish manager off. Gossip went from saying that Amatriain was caught with his hand in Jorge Lorenzo’s very deep cookie jar and others were saying that the manager was abusing cocaine and that he had been arrested for DUI.

Amatirian was also Alberto Puig’s (Dani Pedrosa’s manager) biggest rival on track and off. Their rivalry was so fierce that when both riders turned manager, the carried on their feud using their top riders Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa as go betweens. Even the King of Spain Juan Carlos, an avid motorcyclist and racing fan tried to play the peacemaker on Jerez 2008 podium when he grabbed the two Spanish riders hands and forced them to shake hands.

Continue reading: Dani Amatriain Arrested for Death Threats against his former riders

When Jaume Girò, one of Repsol’s top managers, who recently left the Spanish oil company to head for the Caixa, one of Spain’s most important banks, Dani Pedrosa lost one of his most staunchest and oldest allys that he had in Repsol. Girò was almost a sponsor within a sponsor, he was the one that insisted on Repsol backing Pedrosa and he was the one took Pedrosa away from Telefonica back in 2005.

There was some discontent in Honda last year, bouncing around both Spain and Japan, regarding Pedrosa’s continuing and disappointing results and an ever increasing hostility towards Pedrosa and his manager/svengali Alberto Puig, it was Jaume Girò who intervened and protected the duo.

Now that Girò is no longer present, there has been some nervousness on the duo’s part because Giro’s departure has come at the wrong time. Pedrosa’s contract is up at the end of the year and their have been certain rumors running in the paddock that since Girò left, other Repsol managers have been trying to contact Jorge Lorenzo and bring him into HRC. Lorenzo is a top rider, he’s Spanish just like Pedrosa and certainly has better communicative and media qualities than Dani has.

Continue reading: Repsol: We'll support Pedrosa for as long as it takes

In this interview with Spanish website strong>Solomoto, Jorge Lorenzo talks about many things and as always in any conversation with a MotoGp rider, it eventually turns to Valentino Rossi and also Lorenzo’s other rival Dani Pedrosa.

Valentino is adored by the public, do you feel the same about him?

No, I don’t adore him because he’s not my friend, but I do respect him because he’s my teammate and because of what he’s achieved and for what he’s done for motorcyling. He’s very charismatic and he’s a reference point for me, not only as a rider also what he’s done for this sport.

Continue reading: Jorge Lorenzo talks about Rossi and Pedrosa

I doubt that anyone has ever thought that Nicky Hayden could be so fun and mischievous, traits that MotoGP fans normally associate with rider Valentino Rossi, but take a look at this sticker that Nicky had made up, we didn’t see during Saturday’s qualifying session, but it was on Hayden’s bike on Friday.

Obviously the Honda/Repsol bosses blew a fuse when they saw it and asked Nicky to kindly remove the sticker before going live in front of millions of TV watchers around the world. The 69 N.Hypocrite sticker was a very direct reference to Alberto Puig’s accusations saying that Hayden was a hypocrite and has been using Dani Pedrosa’s settings because the American is totally incapable of setting up his own bike.

Hayden said: “It was just a joke, really, everybody knows the comments from my buddy - he called me a hypocrite a few weeks ago and I just made the sticker up as a bit of a joke. It wasn’t some malicious thought or trying to be a punk.” “I hope nobody took it the wrong way, it was just for a good laugh. A request came to take it off because the bosses really didn’t like it.” “I didn’t mean to be a big punk like that, but it’s good fun. But they asked me to take it off, and I don’t want to cause no major drama. We got the picture.” “There’s been a lot of drama, but I know you guys (the media) like it,” said Hayden. “Nobody really wants to talk about tyres or front forks, or this and that. When people call each other out and it gets personal, honestly we all like it.”

You’ve got admit that Hayden has a wild sense of humour when he refers to Puig as his buddy …….

Source | Autosport.com

Continue reading: A Nicky Hayden Original

Nicky Hayden has finally decided to set the record straight regarding a number of Alberto Puig’s accusations, stating that that he’d really prefer not to get into a public cat fight with Pedrosa’s manager, but he did say:

“That wall I couldn’t care less about. It doesn’t even faze me even a little bit. Me and Dani haven’t exactly set the world on fire this year. A team like Honda should work together somewhat, even with your teammate, and certainly with your crew chief.
“Really, some of the stuff he says is a joke about sharing data and that’s why I’m mad. I haven’t seen his data for a long time and the truth is he sees everybody’s data, so be clear about that. So if it’s me going fastest or Dovizioso going fastest, he (Pedrosa) sees everything. I was just proud that two years later, he finally admitted it was Dani’s fault for knocking me down in Portugal! I think he showed real clear what kind of person he is—he’s a rider who had a big accident, threw the towel in, and now he tries to live his career through Dani.”

Source | Autosport.com

Continue reading: Round 3 - Hayden Responds