MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.
MotoGP winter testing began on Tuesday in very wintry conditions, which isn’t the idea of winter testing.
The weather was so grim at Valencia that Yamaha packed up and headed 150 miles north to Aragon, pursued by rent-a-cars full of journalists and photographers anxious for their first glimpse of Valentino Rossi and his new Yamaha getting down to it on slicks.
They needn’t have bothered – the weather wasn’t much better at Aragon – so Rossi and new/old team-mate Jorge Lorenzo learned nothing. In fact Lorenzo did learn something – that it’s very easy to crash in the wet, but then he knew that already. Yamaha should’ve gone south, to Jerez, or even north, to Brands Hatch, where the autumn sun shone beautifully.
