Donington, Great Britain

The FIM announced a minor change to the 2009 MotoGP calendar today. The Misano round of MotoGP will be held a week earlier than previously scheduled, moving it to the week after the Indianapolis MotoGP round.

* Evening race
** Saturday race
*** Only MotoGP class

Speaking of bad weather...  MotoGPMatters.com official photographer, Scott Jones, has taken a close look at the proposed Hermann Tilk-ified redesign for Donington.

The New Donington Park:

Since the announcement in July that Formula One would be coming to Donington Park in 2010, MotoGP fans have been waiting for details regarding exactly how this will change the track as a motorcycle racing venue. Plans for the Hermann Tilke re-design are now available on the Donington website.

Laguna Seca wasn't the only race Scott Jones attended. He also went to Donington, and shot some fantastic images there as well. Now, he's provided us with some of those photographs for use as desktop backgrounds as well. You can find the full selection over on the following page:

http://www.motogpmatters.com/page/2008/07/29/motogpmatters_desktop_images_from_doning.html

Here's a few to whet your appetites:

As promised last week, we now have some of Scott Jones' fantastic photographs from Laguna Seca and Donington available for download as desktop images. The images are available in three sizes to suit most desktops: 1280x1024, 1280x800 and 1024x768. If you would like to see the images in other resolutions, let us know. So, here's the first few of Scott's images, with the rest of them available on this page.

1024x768 - 1280x1024 - 1280x800

1280x800

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As expected, the Chinese round of MotoGP at Shanghai is off the calendar, and as predicted earlier this week, the Hungarian Grand Prix will take place in late summer. But the calendar has a lot of significant shakeups: Motegi moves from late September to the spring, June is a lot less busy, with only 2 lots of back-to-back races in 2009, rather than three pairs which we saw this year. The British Grand Prix moves from June to late July, and Estoril switches back to October.

* Evening race
** Saturday race
*** Only MotoGP class

During coverage of Friday Practice for the F1 British Grand Prix, Speed TV reported that this may be the last time Formula One is held at Silverstone for some time. According to Bob Varsha, Speed TV commentator, Donington Park has signed an agreement with Bernie Ecclestone to host the British F1 Grand Prix for ten years, following a 100 million dollar update to the facility. F1 was last held at Donington Park in 1993.

The British Racing Drivers' Club, the entity that owns Silverstone, has not been on good terms with Ecclestone for some time, and while the club is apparently doing everything within reason to keep F1 at their track, they have been unable to come to terms with Ecclestone.

Peter Windsor commented that Donington has committed to a Hermann Tilke refit of the circuit to make it suitable for Formula One. MotoGP fans will be familiar with other Tilke projects, such as the tracks at Shanghai, Sepang, and Istanbul. Windsor proposed that one of the problems with keeping Silverstone on the F1 calendar from Ecclestone's perspective is that Silverstone has not used Tilke for any modifications.

David Hobbs responded by saying that Silverstone, as is it, is "better than a lot of Herman Tilke circuits, that's for dead sure."

We've been privileged to receive some great reports and fantastic photographs from Scott Jones of Turn2Photography, who has been attending the race at Donington, and today is no exception. He sent us his view of the race, including more great pictures, as well as a series of shots capturing James Toseland's crash at Redgate. We hope you enjoy his report:

The View From Redgate Grandstand

Instead of rain, Sunday’s dominant condition was wind, and so much of it that the 125s were at the mercy of the strong gusts on certain parts of the track. The morning warm-ups for the 125s and 250s were brief as the skies cleared and the threat of rain seemed to evaporate. But as the weather can change so quickly at Donington in June, the premiere class riders warmed up first on bikes set up for rain, then on bikes set up on Friday for dry conditions. We watched the warm-ups beside the final braking marker for the Melbourne hairpin, then moved to our seats at the Redgate grandstand.

This is the only covered grandstand at Donington, and while it would’ve kept us fairly dry had it rained (we were in the third row), the wind that lashed at the material over our heads fairly ripped through the structure from behind. Even in the ‘sheltered’ area it was cold and very windy. Unattended cups and dislodged hats and caps regularly blew toward the track from the rows of blue plastic seats. Fans watching Turn 1 from the ground in front of the elevated grandstand huddled together and women with longer hair looked desperately for ponytail holders to save their eyes from their wildly whipping hair.

The main victim of the winds was Iannone, who according to the track announcers got blown off the track at Craners. 15-year-old British rider Scott Redding had been closing in on the Iannone when the Italian got caught by a gust that took him off track and out of the race. Redding found himself in first place and finished the race with admirable maturity, taking a lap with the Union Jack in tow to huge applause as the first British winner of a GP event in quite some time.