Dani Pedrosa will be reconfirmed by HRC Honda for 2019 and the year after he’ll be replaced by Joan Mir. Who wrote this is La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Paolo Ianieri, whose article was published on the paper version of the daily. What Ianieri did in his article is a summary of all the ongoing negotiations concerning MotoGP.
MIR WILL STEP TO MOTOGP – Since Johann Zarco will race with KTM in 2019, another important piece has found its position in the MotoGP puzzle. The Tech3 Yamaha rider was one of the favourites of HRC Honda, who was interested in him to replace Dani Pedrosa. But finally, maybe also because of Repsol, tightly connected with Pedrosa, the rider from Sabadell will remain with Honda for one more season, before being replaced in 2020 by one of the most promising rising stars: Joan Mir, 2017 Moto3 World Champion, currently racing in Moto2 with Marc VdS. KTM will instead promote from Moto2 Miguel Oliveira, who’s supposed to race with Tech3, while Zarco will share the box with the reconfirmed Pol Espargaro. Oliveira’s team-mate in Tech 3 KTM should be Hafizh Syahrin.
NO SUZUKI FOR MARC VDS? – In the past few days a rumour circulated about Marc VdS switching from Honda to Yamaha, and not to Suzuki. Negotiations with Suzuki seemed to be close to the end, but the manufacturer based in Hamamatsu hasn’t made a clear proposal yet, differently from Yamaha. Suzuki is waiting for the arrival in Europe of Shinichi Sahara, MotoGP Project Leader. For sure he will be at Jerez for Spanish GP and there he will speak with Davide Brivio about the riders for next season: Alex Rins will be reconfirmed, while his team-mate is yet to be defined. Andrea Iannone was set to part ways with the team, but his amazing 3rd-place finish at Austin boosted his quotations for a possible reconfirmation. Of course, Andrea will have to keep the momentum going: «With Andrea we clearly said that we were going to evaluate his results at the first races, before deciding whether to renew the contract or not» said Davide Brivio.
SIX MILLION EUROS FOR DOVIZIOSO – But, first of all, Suzuki wants to see what will happen between Ducati and Jorge Lorenzo, whose bad moment is clear to everyone (6 points in 3 races). Borgo Panigale seems unwilling to reconfirm Jorge. The rider who would replace the Spaniard from Palma de Mallorca is Danilo Petrucci, but the nice results Jack Miller got in the past few races could lead to the Aussie’s promotion to Ducati Factory Team. But, first of all, Ducati has to focus on Andrea Dovizioso: negotiations are still going on, since Dovizioso wants 6 milion euros and Ducati has offered him four. In any case, Dovi on a different bike is something unlikely to happen.