You know what grinds my gears about MotoGP?
Four times, this year, the championship goes to Spain, yet they go to Italy just once, and San Marino once - so instead of the potential of four, maybe even five, races in the heartland of motorcycle racing, we get two, and have to go to soulless places like Aragon. It's not right, in my opinion.
Right, now I've got that off my chest, let's instead look towards what will be a truly superb weekend at Mugello. It's one of my top three circuits on the calendar.
I love it. There's the blistering home straight, where the speeds will make your heart skip, gorgeous sweeping turns and a couple of hairpins to test their mettle too. Here's a lap on board last year's Repsol Honda..
In The News
- The Ducatis are strongly fancied this weekend, with the amount of acceleration zones tending to favour the brute force of the Duke. They'll have an extra rider, with test rider Michele Pirro taking the grid on a third bike. Indeed, Andrea Dovizioso led both free practice sessions today.
- Mugello isn't just one of my favourites - the riders love it too. Cal Crutchlow, Valentino Rossi and Danny Kent have all spoken about how much they like riding around here, while Thursday's press conference was full of riders singing the praises of the track.
- Aleix Espargaro is free to ride after being given the all clear, following his huge high side at Le Mans.
- Jorge Lorenzo goes into the weekend looking for his fourth Mugello win in five years, having won in 2011, 2012 and 2013. More MotoGP facts here.
- Tito Rabat rides in his 150th GP this weekend, and celebrated it by posting the fastest ever time by a Moto2 bike around Mugello in FP2. Will he repeat his win from pole last year? More Moto2 facts here.
- Last year's Moto3 race saw the top three separated by 0.011 seconds, the closest ever podium margin in grand prix history. More info here.
Last Time Out - Le Mans
I realised, while writing this, that I've already written a couple of thousand words about what happened at Le Mans. So instead of repeating myself, I'm going to direct you to this link here to read what happened in France.
Last Year In Italy
I made a similar revelation about the results. Instead of copying tables, here's some links to the race classification from last year.
MotoGP
Moto2
Moto3
Race Times
MotoGP
Qualifying
1) 13:10-13:25 BST/8:10-8:25 ET
2) 13:35-13:50 BST/8:35-8:50 ET
Race
13:00 BST/8:00 ET
Moto2
Qualifying
14:05-14:50 BST/9:05-9:50 ET
Race
11:20 BST/6:20 ET
Moto3
Qualifying
11:35-12:15 BST/6:35-7:15 ET
Race
10:00 BST/5:00 ET