After announcing that Alex de Angelis would be joining their Moto2 team for the 2012 season, NGM Forward Racing has now revealed that former MotoGP rider Yuki Takahashi will also be in their line-up.

This will be the Japanese rider’s third season in Moto2; in 2010 he was with Tech3 Racing on the Mistral where he won a very dramatic Catalunya GP after Andrea Iannone was given a ride through penalty and 2011 spent the season with Gresini Racing on the Moriwaki, where he scorded a 3rd and 2nd place podium at Estoril and Le Mans, respectively and finished 11th in the overall standings.

“I am pleased to have reached an agreement with NGM Mobile Team Forward Racing to race the Moto2 World Championship next season,” said Takahashi. “To me this represents a new challenge, because I’ll be changing everything: team, bike and frame. I want to aim at winning the 2012 title. In these two years, NGM Mobile Forward Suter Racing and have been shown to be competitive and I will giving it 100% to reach the target. “

Mark Curioni, Sporting Director: “I am very happy to have reached an agreement with Yuki for next season. For 2012 we think we have the “right” bike and we hope to see him and Alex constantly fighting for the top positions. Aside from his professional side, he is very nice and kind that makes a really nice person to work with. I really think he’s the right rider for our team and he’ll integrate with the rest team without any effort. ”

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Yesterday’s Moto2 race at Catalunya was marred by two horrific looking crashes, the first occured on lap 6 of 23 and involved Interwetten’s Thomas Luthi and last year’s Catalunya winner Yuki Takahashi on the Gresini Moriwaki, the second was between Kenan Sofuoglu and Julian Simon.

Luthi’s rear Dunlop tire decided to step out and his Suter wanting to throw him into a highside, but the Swiss rider just held on to the side of his machine, but was then hit by Takahashi who was coming up fast and had nowhere else to go.

The incident could have had more dire consequences when they slid across the track, than just a few bruises for both riders.

“Bad luck in a Grand Prix to forget. First of all we had trouble finding the right set-up and then we got wiped out by a crash early in the race,” said the Japanese rider. “Fortunately I wasn’t hurt by the impact other than a blow to my backside. We will fight back next week in England.”

Here’s Luthi’s take on his brief race and incident:

“I had a poor start. The bike made a wheelie and I had to cut the gas, which made me lose a few positions. But then I was riding within the pursuing group of riders quite comfortably. I saw that Stefan Bradl didn’t manage to break away and I didn’t think of attacking yet. But then the bike went sideways anyway, without any pre-warning. I had a highsider and landed somehow back on the bike. Then Yuki Takahashi touched me and we both went down. But even without him running into me I don’t think I would have saved it. I didn’t get hurt in the crash, which is good. But now we have to try to solve the small problems that contributed to this crash. I am always running close to the top, in practice as well as in the races, but I have to take man risks to be that fast. We have to think about changes to the bike’s geometry to make the bike easier to ride!”

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Koki Takahashi, the younger brother of Yuki, (former MotoGP rider who presently rides in Moto2 for Fausto Gresini’s team) died in a tragic accident early Sunday morning near Saitama.

Koki, 23 was returning home after taking part in a charity event for earthquake victims when the accident occured. The younger Takahashi was also a motorcycle racer and raced for MIU Racing, Keihin Kohara Racing Team, Burning Blood Racing Team and wildcarded in several GP events in the 250cc class and in Moto2 last year at Motegi.

The Gresini team will be honouring Koki this weekend at the Estoril GP.

Our heartfelt condolences go out to the Takahashi family.

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With Moto2 tests already underway at Valencia, Fausto Gresini finally got around to officially confirming that he’ll be fielding Michele Pirro (which we pretty well already knew) and Yuki Takahashi in his Moto2 team, that won the first Moto2 championship title with Toni Elias.

Pirro is a former Supersport rider, while Takahashi raced for Poncharal’s Tech3 Moto2 team this season and finished 12th in the 2010 standings.

With Vladimir Lenov ousted from the team, we expect that Gresini will now lose the Crimea GP sponsor backing.

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Toni Elias stretched his Moto2 Championship lead in today’s race by taking his fourth race win of the season at Brno.

The Spaniard emerged the winner after several riders battled it out for the lead at the beginning of the race until the field began to thin out with Andrea Iannone grabbing the lead on lap 6 and began to pull away, but Elias wasn’t having any and began to hunt down the Italian with Roberto Rolfo hot on his tail.

After several passing attempts Elias took the the lead on lap 14 from Iannone with Rolfo also passing Iannone. The battle wasn’t over, Rolfo then grabbed the lead from but went wide letting the Gresini rider through. One lap later Rolfo’s Suter MMX suffered an engine failure and had to pull out of the race leaving Iannone in second.

Continue reading: Moto2 Brno: Toni Elias wins and lengthens championship lead

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Today’s Moto2 Catalunya race was action packed and full of drama with Yuki Takahashi from Tech 3 Racing team taking the win after Andrea Iannone was penalized for overtaking under the yellow flag regime.

The race was yellow flagged when a huge crash at the start of the race saw a nine-rider pile-up at turn one triggered by Alex Debón that saw Mike di Meglio, Roberto Rolfo, Robertino Pietri , Shoya Tomizawa, Héctor Faubel, Dominique Aegerter, Sergio Gadea, and Alex Baldolini all going down.

The the flags waving Andrea Iannone took third from Takahashi at turn 1 and then passed Toni Elias at the New Holland and Luthi and proceeded pouring on the speed and breaking away from the rest of field.

The race direction issued Iannone with a go back one position penalty on lap 7, and he was holding over 1.3sec lead by that time. The Italian ignored the penalty, later stating he couldn’t read his pit board where his team tried to convey the penalty with pen and paper. Seven laps later Iannone was given a ride through penalty and this penalty he understood and went through the pitlane and rejoined the race and then rode to 13th.

Continue reading: Moto2 Catalunya: Crashes, Yellow Flags, Ride Throughs, Drama and Takahashi Wins

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Kenny Noyes of the Jack&Jones by Antonio Banderas racing team took his first pole position today in the Moto2 qualifying session at Le Mans. The American rider (who was born in Barcelona and is the son of MotoGP journalist Kenny Noyes) put in a best lap of 1′39.234 on the Bugatti circuit where the former CEV Extreme rider has never raced before.

Following Noyes will be former MotoGP rider Yuki Takahashi on Herve Poncharal’s Tech 3 bike with Alex Debon and Jules Cluzel in third and fourth, and these riders all within one tenth of a second from the pole position.

Fonsi Nieto with his Moriwaki and Sergio Gadea on his Kalex were fifth and sixth respectively. Toni Elias fell in the opening minutes of the session will take off in seventh. Simone Corsi was eighth and Julian Simon was ninth, using the Suter MMX chassis for the first time. Roberto Rolfo closed out the top ten.

Continue reading: Moto2 Qualifying: Kenny Noyes Takes his First Pole Position

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Yesterday at the Ledenon circuit in the south of France, finally saw the first debut on a race track of Tech3’s Moto2 bike. The chassis was designed and built by chief engineer Guy Coulon who switched from Yamaha Tech3 MotoGP team to Moto2.

Instead of the official riders, Yuki Takahashi and Raffaele de Rosa doing the shakedown, the bike was ridden by French rider Florian Marino. The shakedown didn’t last very long because the bike suffered an elettrical problem that will be resolved before the official tests on December 9th at Valencia.

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Daniele Romagnoli, Jorge Lorenzo’s ex-team manager has found a home in Herve Poncharal’s Moto2 team, Tech3.

Romagnoli made the shock announcement at the Sepang GP citing that he wanted to return to the more technical aspects in a team.

The French Manager has hired 250cc rider Raffaele DeRosa (and Marco Simoncelli’s close friend) and will see the return to racing of Yuki Takahashi, who was axed from Scot Racing’s MotoGP team in favour of Gabor Talmacsi.

Romagnoli will crew chief for DeRosa, while Gary Reynders, the apple of discord between Colin Edwards and James Toseland has been moved to the Moto2 team to make room for Ben Spies crew chief, Tom Houseword.

Houseworth has been with Spies since his days in Yoshimura Suzuki (AMA) and followed the Amercian rider to WSBK’s and now in MotoGP. Spies has also brought to Tech3 his mechanic Gregory Wood.

Photo by Motogp.com

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Scot Racing could throw up as many smoke screens as they wanted, announcing its intention to keep both Yuki Takahashi and Gabor Talmacsi. They could tell us that they were trying to get a couple of extra RC212Vs, that they needed to give each rider a spare bike in case of a flag-to-flag race. They could feed us news about Yuki Takahashi’s bad back, but we all knew in our cynical hearts that Talmacsi was riding on borrowed time when Gabor Talmacsi showed up in the Scot Racing Team garage with his big name sponsor MOL.

Honda, in their official press release with the preview of U.S GP this weekend, nine paragraphs down, announced that Takahashi has been politely removed from the team due to the usual financial difficulties:

From Laguna onwards, the Scot Racing Team will continue with Gabor Talmacsi in the MotoGP class. Due to unavoidable circumstances Yuki Takahashi will no longer ride with the team. This decision was reached after exhaustive attempts to find a way to continue with two riders, but the economic realities facing the team, combined with the increased cost involved in running two riders, has led to this regrettable outcome.

“For Honda as well as the Scot Racing Team, this is a sad announcement,” said HRC vice president Shuhei Nakamoto. “But we understand that the extremely challenging financial circumstances facing the team left them with no choice. Takahashi was the only Japanese rider in the MotoGP championship and of course Honda wanted to see him continue. But in the end the team made it clear that this outcome was impossible and we respect their decision. Honda will continue to support the Scot Racing Team in MotoGP with Gabor Talmacsi riding.”

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According to the well informed gpone, Yuki Takahashi will not be racing in this weekend’s Red Bull U.S. GP at Laguna Seca, due to back problems.

Officially the Japanese rider has suffered from back problems that were worsened after his crash during the Catalunya GP, but the Clinica Mobile reported that Takahashi fractured his middle finger and picked up a haemithorax contusion in Spain and at Assen, after another crash, he severely bruised his right knee.

The Italian website also reported that the Takahashi may need to undergo surgery on his back and recovery could take at least three months.

Continue reading: No Laguna Seca GP for Takahashi

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When you see crashes on TV they happen so fast that you really don’t see the dynamics, but check out this video that puts together all the pics of Takahashi wiping out Nicky Hayden and moves them in slow motion.

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