| By Mitchell Adam | |
| MotoGP Correspondent |
If you scan back through MotoGP results from the end of the 2015 season to build a list of nine different winners, you'd go as far as May '07, more than 150 grands prix ago.
Aided by some wild weather and new tyres and electronics, MotoGP matched that in an often-chaotic 2016 alone - nine different winners, including a run of eight in eight races.
Other than a dominant champion, dominance was out in 2016, but who else stood up often enough amid the mayhem?
10. ALVARO BAUTISTA
Team: Aprilia
Starts: 18
Wins: 0 (best result seventh)
Championship pos: 12th, 82 points
Aprilia spent the bulk of this year testing in public with its first real MotoGP bike, the RS-GP, its 2015 machine having been production-based. Delays in development meant it only made its debut five weeks before the season opener, and that showed.
The bike lacked power and was a handful of kilograms overweight, but gains were gradually made, especially following the introduction of a new frame at Misano.
Both riders had to do a lot of development grunt work before that, trying new parts during race weekends, and when things improved Bautista made more of it. While he was outqualified 10-8 by team-mate Stefan Bradl over the campaign, Bautista recorded five top 10 finishes from the last six races.
Both Aprilia riders are perhaps unfortunate to be pushed out of the squad to accommodate Aleix Espargaro and Sam Lowes in 2017, but Bautista does at least get to stick around next season, on a 2016 Ducati with the Aspar team.
9. DANI PEDROSA
Team: Honda
Starts: 15
Wins: 1
Pos: 6th, 155 points
Other than securing a new, two-year Honda contract and winning at Misano, it's difficult to see how Pedrosa could have endured a much worse 2016.
He was one of the riders hurt the most by this year's changes, especially when Michelin adopted stiffer rear rubber following its early season dramas. That made life even harder for the diminutive Spaniard to generate grip from the rear, exacerbating Honda's acceleration deficit.
Nothing Pedrosa tried worked, as team-mate Marquez led the championship, and he admitted later in the year that perhaps he was trying too many different things. After inheriting third at Termas de Rio Hondo, third at Barcelona on a new chassis looked like a potential breakthrough, but the situation remained challenging.
It took until the wet Saturday at Silverstone for Pedrosa to outqualify Marquez, and he did at least continue his run of winning in each season in MotoGP with a masterclass at Misano.
Any hopes of building on that were crushed when he fell in practice at Motegi, breaking his right collarbone and fibula, and consequently missing all three flyaway races before returning at Valencia.
8. POL ESPARGARO
Team: Tech3 Yamaha
Starts: 18
Wins: 0 (best result fourth)
Pos: 8th, 134 points
Before Cal Crutchlow's season clicked into gear, Espargaro was 2016's top satellite rider as the field got used to the new tyres and control electronics.
He finished in the top eight in seven of the first eight races, including fourth at Assen in the rain to go with fifth in the dry at Le Mans - where he qualified fourth - and Barcelona. The Spaniard regrouped from a relative mid-season slump to finish the campaign strongly, qualifying on the front row at Phillip Island and grabbing top-nine finishes in each of the last six grands prix.
It's hard to see how Espargaro could have really done much more on a year-old Yamaha designed to run Bridgestones, and with a satellite team's limited manpower, as more manufacturers got their act together.
Team-mate Bradley Smith never really found a way to make the Michelins work this year before he injured his knee, but Espargaro did, and his advantage within Tech3 was commanding. They both get a factory chance with KTM in 2017.
7. ANDREA IANNONE
Team: Ducati
Starts: 14
Wins: 1
Pos: 9th, 112 points
The enigmatic Iannone would be a lot higher up a 'fastest 10' list of 2016, rather than this, for the top 10 performers.
At his best, a composed Iannone and his Ducati flowed beautifully. Witness his crucial tyre call to beat team-mate Dovizioso to victory at the Red Bull Ring, to end the manufacturer's victory drought dating back to late-2010. Or his podium in the season finale at Valencia, beating Rossi to third after a race-long scrap.
At the other end of the spectrum, he crashed out of six races – from the top three on five of those occasions. Some of those errors were more costly than others, namely coming unstuck at the penultimate corner in Argentina, crashing while third and taking out second-placed team-mate Dovizioso. While Ducati was assessing them both to be Lorenzo's 2017 team-mate...
If you give Iannone the 100-odd points from the positions he occupied when he crashed, he finishes the year fourth in the championship, even with having missed four races due to a back injury sustained in a practice crash at Misano. A diamond in the rough, if Suzuki can tame him.
6. ANDREA DOVIZIOSO
Team: Ducati
Starts: 18
Wins: 1
Pos: 5th, 171 points
Dovizioso started the year as Ducati's experienced hand, considered the rider most likely to be squeezed out if it managed to land a big fish such as Lorenzo.
But he proved his worth over the course of the year, mainly early, when Ducati was making its decision about whether he or Iannone would stay on. Both men were in the wars, but unlike Iannone Dovizioso's wounds were not self-inflicted.
After finishing second to Lorenzo in Qatar, he was taken out of podium positions in the next two races and then had a water leak at Jerez, leaving there 11th in the points.
He was dejected to miss out on becoming Ducati's first winner since Casey Stoner in Austria, but did get there in the end with a well-judged victory in Malaysia.
While Dovizioso probably could have won at Assen and/or the Sachsenring, he did on the whole make more of an increasingly competitive Ducati than Iannone.
Now he needs to win in the dry.
5. CAL CRUTCHLOW
Team: LCR Honda
Starts: 18
Wins: 2
Pos: 7th, 141 points
From a disastrous start to the season, including crashes in four of the first five races, to get back up to seventh in the championship would represent a fine recovery for most riders. Even if they weren't on the troubled Honda, and a satellite bike at that.
While Crutchlow says he never lost confidence, winning a race – becoming the first Briton to do so since Barry Sheene in 1981 – let alone two, would have also seemed far-fetched to most.
Crutchlow was superb to win at Brno, backing his judgement to run the unpopular harder wet tyres, biding his time early before storming through the field. He took pole and finished second at Silverstone the next time out, and then won again at Phillip Island to end the year with victories in the wet and the dry.
As he gelled with a different-specification Honda chassis (the one tried by Pedrosa at Barcelona but then dropped) and found a rhythm, there was a big window in the second half of the season in which Crutchlow was only outscored by Marquez.
He was typically shrewd in mixed conditions, but increasingly competitive in the dry, too.
4. JORGE LORENZO
Team: Yamaha
Starts: 18
Wins: 3
Pos: 3rd, 233 points
On the early-season Sundays in Qatar, Italy and France, there was an overriding notion of 'here we go again' about Lorenzo as he launched his title defence.
He was peerless in all three races, particularly emerging on top against a desperate Marquez in their final-lap showdown at Mugello, then dominating at Le Mans to lead from start to finish, as rivals fell foul of the narrow margin for error with the front tyres. After six races, he had won three and built a small championship lead.
But his crash in Argentina, in hindsight, proved to be something of a sign of what was to come. Lorenzo started to struggle with that front tyre, especially in cool conditions, while the wet days – Assen, Sachsenring and Brno – bordered on disasters.
His confidence in those conditions went, and so too did his hopes of leaving Yamaha with a fourth title, but he did sign off with another fine victory at Valencia.
Lorenzo finished the year having led more laps than any other rider, and had plenty of outstanding days. But having struggled in a third of the year's races, if you add Termas de Rio Hondo, Barcelona, Silverstone and Phillip Island to the wet days, he did not have as many good ones as recent years.
3. VALENTINO ROSSI
Team: Yamaha
Starts: 18
Wins: 2
Pos: 2nd, 249 points
Rossi's 2016 season is a tough one to gauge. Should he have won the title, or was it just good to see him looking increasingly competitive?
Both elements defined a year in which Rossi was significantly stronger than he was in narrowly missing out on the 2015 title to Lorenzo at the final hurdle. He met his stated aim of qualifying further up the grid – by an average of 1.46 places – aided by the return of the Michelin tyres he knows well from earlier in his career.
Rossi won two of the first seven races and a title bid looked on, even allowing for an Austin crash and a devastating Mugello engine failure while fighting Lorenzo. But unforced errors at Assen and the Sachsenring – a crash and misjudged strategy respectively – gave Marquez too much breathing space.
He huffed and puffed early in the second half of the season, but had to settle for podiums rather than wins. That meant he could not make significant-enough inroads into Marquez's lead, before a final crash at Motegi ended his slim title hopes.
Still, a fine season for the evergreen 37-year-old.
2. MAVERICK VINALES
Team: Suzuki
Starts: 18
Wins: 1
Pos: 4th, 202 points
If Vinales started 2016 as a star of the future, he finished it as one of MotoGP's bona fide superstars.
The signs were there from the outset that he would build on an impressive rookie campaign, showing encouraging speed on an improved Suzuki during winter testing and then qualifying on the front row of the grid for the Qatar season opener.
That weekend would come to encapsulate Suzuki's season – quick over a single lap or in cool conditions, but struggling for rear grip over long runs in warmer conditions and in the wet.
That this frustrated the 21-year-old so much was a sign of his maturity, and how far expectations had shifted. A first podium came at Le Mans, and then a win at a cold Silverstone, on a layout that suited the GSX-RR to a tee. Vinales more than doubled team-mate Aleix Espargaro's points haul and only crashed once in a race all season – in Argentina – the least of any frontrunner.
That got him the nod for second on this list over Rossi. Vinales more than vindicated Yamaha's decision to sign him as Lorenzo's replacement, and will give Rossi plenty to think about this winter.
1. MARC MARQUEZ
Team: Honda
Starts: 18
Wins: 5
Pos: 1st, 298 points
Was there a better performer in all of world motorsport in 2016 than Marquez, on his way to a third title in four years? Marquez added a newfound consistency and maturity to his repertoire, alongside the blinding speed we all know he possesses.
The Spaniard thoroughly outperformed team-mate Pedrosa, and the troubled Honda itself; he scored 298 points, the other four riders on the RC213V managed a total of 382 between them. As he always does, Marquez threw his bike at braking areas and generally found ways to defy logic and physics and make it stick, or at least found the limit before the race itself.
Until his crash at Phillip Island seven days after sealing the title, Marquez was the only rider across the three classes to have scored points in every race.
But it wasn't all safe points and settling. Marquez turned on the speed when he wanted at Austin, Aragon and Motegi in particular, and threw everything into battles with Lorenzo at Mugello and then Rossi at Barcelona and Silverstone. And he took seven pole positions, the same as Lorenzo and Rossi combined, to go with his five wins.
Even with the late-season crashes that flattered his closest points rivals, Marquez was complete in 2016.
THE REST
Hector Barbera was unlucky to be pipped to a spot on this list by Bautista, given his giant-killing efforts on Avintia's GP14.2 Ducati that included qualifying in the top five three times, and three top-five race finishes.
Barbera was good value for his 10th in the championship, but misses out based on his comparatively poor weekends when called up to the factory squad to stand in for Iannone.
Jack Miller would have just about made a mid-season top 10. Miller started his second season in MotoGP injured and then knocked his right leg again in a practice crash at Austin. As he regained fitness, the Marc VDS Honda rider's form improved, and Miller's perfectly-judged win at Assen came one race after recording his first MotoGP top 10 at Barcelona.
He followed that with seventh at the Sachsenring, but another crash in the Sunday warm-up at the Red Bull Ring was a major setback. It ruled Miller out for most of the second half of the season.
Scott Redding was also looking strong mid-year, headlined by qualifying on the front row and finishing third at Assen. He backed that up with fourth in Germany and eighth in Austria to sit 10th in the points.
That was even with a torrid run of early-season unreliability, including losing a podium in Argentina due to a mechanical failure. It was slim pickings from there for Redding, though, only scoring 21 more points and losing the intra-Pramac battle to ride a 2017 Ducati next year to team-mate Danilo Petrucci.
For his part, Petrucci missed the first four grands prix after breaking his right hand in testing at Phillip Island in February, if you exclude riding in practice in Qatar when he later said that he couldn't hold a pen.
Petrucci also had his share of unreliability, including at Assen while he was shining – yet again – in the rain, but then crashed at the Sachsenring while leading. They were two races in which it looked like either Pramac rider could end Ducati's winless streak, rather than the factory boys.
Bradley Smith's 2016 mirrored Dani Pedrosa's in many respects, struggling to make things work on the new Michelin tyres and then having his season interrupted by an injury.
Smith fell from sixth in the standings last year to 17th, having missed three grands prix after injuring his right knee in practice for the Oschersleben 8 Hour endurance race. He did make some late progress with the tyres, and the off-season gives his knee a chance to recover fully before he becomes a factory rider with KTM.
| By Mitchell Adam | |
| MotoGP Correspondent |
If you scan back through MotoGP results from the end of the 2015 season to build a list of nine different winners, you'd go as far as May '07, more than 150 grands prix ago.
Aided by some wild weather and new tyres and electronics, MotoGP matched that in an often-chaotic 2016 alone - nine different winners, including a run of eight in eight races.
Other than a dominant champion, dominance was out in 2016, but who else stood up often enough amid the mayhem?
10. ALVARO BAUTISTA
Team: Aprilia
Starts: 18
Wins: 0 (best result seventh)
Championship pos: 12th, 82 points
Aprilia spent the bulk of this year testing in public with its first real MotoGP bike, the RS-GP, its 2015 machine having been production-based. Delays in development meant it only made its debut five weeks before the season opener, and that showed.
The bike lacked power and was a handful of kilograms overweight, but gains were gradually made, especially following the introduction of a new frame at Misano.
Both riders had to do a lot of development grunt work before that, trying new parts during race weekends, and when things improved Bautista made more of it. While he was outqualified 10-8 by team-mate Stefan Bradl over the campaign, Bautista recorded five top 10 finishes from the last six races.
Both Aprilia riders are perhaps unfortunate to be pushed out of the squad to accommodate Aleix Espargaro and Sam Lowes in 2017, but Bautista does at least get to stick around next season, on a 2016 Ducati with the Aspar team.
9. DANI PEDROSA
Team: Honda
Starts: 15
Wins: 1
Pos: 6th, 155 points
Other than securing a new, two-year Honda contract and winning at Misano, it's difficult to see how Pedrosa could have endured a much worse 2016.
He was one of the riders hurt the most by this year's changes, especially when Michelin adopted stiffer rear rubber following its early season dramas. That made life even harder for the diminutive Spaniard to generate grip from the rear, exacerbating Honda's acceleration deficit.
Nothing Pedrosa tried worked, as team-mate Marquez led the championship, and he admitted later in the year that perhaps he was trying too many different things. After inheriting third at Termas de Rio Hondo, third at Barcelona on a new chassis looked like a potential breakthrough, but the situation remained challenging.
It took until the wet Saturday at Silverstone for Pedrosa to outqualify Marquez, and he did at least continue his run of winning in each season in MotoGP with a masterclass at Misano.
Any hopes of building on that were crushed when he fell in practice at Motegi, breaking his right collarbone and fibula, and consequently missing all three flyaway races before returning at Valencia.
8. POL ESPARGARO
Team: Tech3 Yamaha
Starts: 18
Wins: 0 (best result fourth)
Pos: 8th, 134 points
Before Cal Crutchlow's season clicked into gear, Espargaro was 2016's top satellite rider as the field got used to the new tyres and control electronics.
He finished in the top eight in seven of the first eight races, including fourth at Assen in the rain to go with fifth in the dry at Le Mans - where he qualified fourth - and Barcelona. The Spaniard regrouped from a relative mid-season slump to finish the campaign strongly, qualifying on the front row at Phillip Island and grabbing top-nine finishes in each of the last six grands prix.
It's hard to see how Espargaro could have really done much more on a year-old Yamaha designed to run Bridgestones, and with a satellite team's limited manpower, as more manufacturers got their act together.
Team-mate Bradley Smith never really found a way to make the Michelins work this year before he injured his knee, but Espargaro did, and his advantage within Tech3 was commanding. They both get a factory chance with KTM in 2017.
7. ANDREA IANNONE
Team: Ducati
Starts: 14
Wins: 1
Pos: 9th, 112 points
The enigmatic Iannone would be a lot higher up a 'fastest 10' list of 2016, rather than this, for the top 10 performers.
At his best, a composed Iannone and his Ducati flowed beautifully. Witness his crucial tyre call to beat team-mate Dovizioso to victory at the Red Bull Ring, to end the manufacturer's victory drought dating back to late-2010. Or his podium in the season finale at Valencia, beating Rossi to third after a race-long scrap.
At the other end of the spectrum, he crashed out of six races – from the top three on five of those occasions. Some of those errors were more costly than others, namely coming unstuck at the penultimate corner in Argentina, crashing while third and taking out second-placed team-mate Dovizioso. While Ducati was assessing them both to be Lorenzo's 2017 team-mate...
If you give Iannone the 100-odd points from the positions he occupied when he crashed, he finishes the year fourth in the championship, even with having missed four races due to a back injury sustained in a practice crash at Misano. A diamond in the rough, if Suzuki can tame him.
6. ANDREA DOVIZIOSO
Team: Ducati
Starts: 18
Wins: 1
Pos: 5th, 171 points
Dovizioso started the year as Ducati's experienced hand, considered the rider most likely to be squeezed out if it managed to land a big fish such as Lorenzo.
But he proved his worth over the course of the year, mainly early, when Ducati was making its decision about whether he or Iannone would stay on. Both men were in the wars, but unlike Iannone Dovizioso's wounds were not self-inflicted.
After finishing second to Lorenzo in Qatar, he was taken out of podium positions in the next two races and then had a water leak at Jerez, leaving there 11th in the points.
He was dejected to miss out on becoming Ducati's first winner since Casey Stoner in Austria, but did get there in the end with a well-judged victory in Malaysia.
While Dovizioso probably could have won at Assen and/or the Sachsenring, he did on the whole make more of an increasingly competitive Ducati than Iannone.
Now he needs to win in the dry.
5. CAL CRUTCHLOW
Team: LCR Honda
Starts: 18
Wins: 2
Pos: 7th, 141 points
From a disastrous start to the season, including crashes in four of the first five races, to get back up to seventh in the championship would represent a fine recovery for most riders. Even if they weren't on the troubled Honda, and a satellite bike at that.
While Crutchlow says he never lost confidence, winning a race – becoming the first Briton to do so since Barry Sheene in 1981 – let alone two, would have also seemed far-fetched to most.
Crutchlow was superb to win at Brno, backing his judgement to run the unpopular harder wet tyres, biding his time early before storming through the field. He took pole and finished second at Silverstone the next time out, and then won again at Phillip Island to end the year with victories in the wet and the dry.
As he gelled with a different-specification Honda chassis (the one tried by Pedrosa at Barcelona but then dropped) and found a rhythm, there was a big window in the second half of the season in which Crutchlow was only outscored by Marquez.
He was typically shrewd in mixed conditions, but increasingly competitive in the dry, too.
4. JORGE LORENZO
Team: Yamaha
Starts: 18
Wins: 3
Pos: 3rd, 233 points
On the early-season Sundays in Qatar, Italy and France, there was an overriding notion of 'here we go again' about Lorenzo as he launched his title defence.
He was peerless in all three races, particularly emerging on top against a desperate Marquez in their final-lap showdown at Mugello, then dominating at Le Mans to lead from start to finish, as rivals fell foul of the narrow margin for error with the front tyres. After six races, he had won three and built a small championship lead.
But his crash in Argentina, in hindsight, proved to be something of a sign of what was to come. Lorenzo started to struggle with that front tyre, especially in cool conditions, while the wet days – Assen, Sachsenring and Brno – bordered on disasters.
His confidence in those conditions went, and so too did his hopes of leaving Yamaha with a fourth title, but he did sign off with another fine victory at Valencia.
Lorenzo finished the year having led more laps than any other rider, and had plenty of outstanding days. But having struggled in a third of the year's races, if you add Termas de Rio Hondo, Barcelona, Silverstone and Phillip Island to the wet days, he did not have as many good ones as recent years.
3. VALENTINO ROSSI
Team: Yamaha
Starts: 18
Wins: 2
Pos: 2nd, 249 points
Rossi's 2016 season is a tough one to gauge. Should he have won the title, or was it just good to see him looking increasingly competitive?
Both elements defined a year in which Rossi was significantly stronger than he was in narrowly missing out on the 2015 title to Lorenzo at the final hurdle. He met his stated aim of qualifying further up the grid – by an average of 1.46 places – aided by the return of the Michelin tyres he knows well from earlier in his career.
Rossi won two of the first seven races and a title bid looked on, even allowing for an Austin crash and a devastating Mugello engine failure while fighting Lorenzo. But unforced errors at Assen and the Sachsenring – a crash and misjudged strategy respectively – gave Marquez too much breathing space.
He huffed and puffed early in the second half of the season, but had to settle for podiums rather than wins. That meant he could not make significant-enough inroads into Marquez's lead, before a final crash at Motegi ended his slim title hopes.
Still, a fine season for the evergreen 37-year-old.
2. MAVERICK VINALES
Team: Suzuki
Starts: 18
Wins: 1
Pos: 4th, 202 points
If Vinales started 2016 as a star of the future, he finished it as one of MotoGP's bona fide superstars.
The signs were there from the outset that he would build on an impressive rookie campaign, showing encouraging speed on an improved Suzuki during winter testing and then qualifying on the front row of the grid for the Qatar season opener.
That weekend would come to encapsulate Suzuki's season – quick over a single lap or in cool conditions, but struggling for rear grip over long runs in warmer conditions and in the wet.
That this frustrated the 21-year-old so much was a sign of his maturity, and how far expectations had shifted. A first podium came at Le Mans, and then a win at a cold Silverstone, on a layout that suited the GSX-RR to a tee. Vinales more than doubled team-mate Aleix Espargaro's points haul and only crashed once in a race all season – in Argentina – the least of any frontrunner.
That got him the nod for second on this list over Rossi. Vinales more than vindicated Yamaha's decision to sign him as Lorenzo's replacement, and will give Rossi plenty to think about this winter.
1. MARC MARQUEZ
Team: Honda
Starts: 18
Wins: 5
Pos: 1st, 298 points
Was there a better performer in all of world motorsport in 2016 than Marquez, on his way to a third title in four years? Marquez added a newfound consistency and maturity to his repertoire, alongside the blinding speed we all know he possesses.
The Spaniard thoroughly outperformed team-mate Pedrosa, and the troubled Honda itself; he scored 298 points, the other four riders on the RC213V managed a total of 382 between them. As he always does, Marquez threw his bike at braking areas and generally found ways to defy logic and physics and make it stick, or at least found the limit before the race itself.
Until his crash at Phillip Island seven days after sealing the title, Marquez was the only rider across the three classes to have scored points in every race.
But it wasn't all safe points and settling. Marquez turned on the speed when he wanted at Austin, Aragon and Motegi in particular, and threw everything into battles with Lorenzo at Mugello and then Rossi at Barcelona and Silverstone. And he took seven pole positions, the same as Lorenzo and Rossi combined, to go with his five wins.
Even with the late-season crashes that flattered his closest points rivals, Marquez was complete in 2016.
THE REST
Hector Barbera was unlucky to be pipped to a spot on this list by Bautista, given his giant-killing efforts on Avintia's GP14.2 Ducati that included qualifying in the top five three times, and three top-five race finishes.
Barbera was good value for his 10th in the championship, but misses out based on his comparatively poor weekends when called up to the factory squad to stand in for Iannone.
Jack Miller would have just about made a mid-season top 10. Miller started his second season in MotoGP injured and then knocked his right leg again in a practice crash at Austin. As he regained fitness, the Marc VDS Honda rider's form improved, and Miller's perfectly-judged win at Assen came one race after recording his first MotoGP top 10 at Barcelona.
He followed that with seventh at the Sachsenring, but another crash in the Sunday warm-up at the Red Bull Ring was a major setback. It ruled Miller out for most of the second half of the season.
Scott Redding was also looking strong mid-year, headlined by qualifying on the front row and finishing third at Assen. He backed that up with fourth in Germany and eighth in Austria to sit 10th in the points.
That was even with a torrid run of early-season unreliability, including losing a podium in Argentina due to a mechanical failure. It was slim pickings from there for Redding, though, only scoring 21 more points and losing the intra-Pramac battle to ride a 2017 Ducati next year to team-mate Danilo Petrucci.
For his part, Petrucci missed the first four grands prix after breaking his right hand in testing at Phillip Island in February, if you exclude riding in practice in Qatar when he later said that he couldn't hold a pen.
Petrucci also had his share of unreliability, including at Assen while he was shining – yet again – in the rain, but then crashed at the Sachsenring while leading. They were two races in which it looked like either Pramac rider could end Ducati's winless streak, rather than the factory boys.
Bradley Smith's 2016 mirrored Dani Pedrosa's in many respects, struggling to make things work on the new Michelin tyres and then having his season interrupted by an injury.
Smith fell from sixth in the standings last year to 17th, having missed three grands prix after injuring his right knee in practice for the Oschersleben 8 Hour endurance race. He did make some late progress with the tyres, and the off-season gives his knee a chance to recover fully before he becomes a factory rider with KTM.
