2012 MotoGP World Championship
The 2012 FIM MotoGP World Championship was the premier class of the 64th F.I.M. Road Racing World Championship season. Casey Stoner started the season as the defending World Champion, while Honda was the defending Manufacturers' Champion.
In the premier MotoGP class, the championship battle revolved around Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo and Honda pairing Dani Pedrosa and defending champion Stoner. Lorenzo won four of the first six races to be held in the campaign to open up an advantage over Stoner, before he was taken out of the Dutch TT on the first lap by Álvaro Bautista; Stoner won the race to eradicate the points lead. In the next race, Stoner crashed out of the German Grand Prix on the final lap and allowed Pedrosa to take his first win of the season. Stoner struggled in the next few races – despite a victory at the United States Grand Prix – with his championship challenge ended by a qualifying crash at Indianapolis. After ankle surgery, he returned to the series and won his final race of his career at his home race, the Australian Grand Prix, for the sixth successive season. Pedrosa went on a run of five victories in six races, with the streak being interrupted by a first-lap crash at Misano, where he was taken out by Héctor Barberá. Lorenzo finished second to Pedrosa on each occasion that he had won, and he took advantage of Pedrosa's accident to win at Misano. Lorenzo ultimately won the title with a second-place finish to Stoner in Australia, after Pedrosa had crashed out of the lead early on.
Changes
Class changes
The MotoGP class saw the introduction of engines with in capacity, with a limit of 4 cylinders and a maximum cylinder bore.Claiming Rule Teams
In 2012 the MotoGP class saw the introduction of Claiming Rule Teams to allow for participation by independent teams with lower budgets. CRTs were given twelve engines per rider, six more than the other teams and more fuel – instead of – but were subject to a factory team buying, or "claiming", their engines for €15,000, or €20,000 with the transmission. The sport's governing body received applications from sixteen new teams looking to join the MotoGP class.Calendar
The following Grands Prix were scheduled to take place in 2012:The Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme released an 18-race provisional calendar on 14 September 2011. Another provisional calendar was released three months later, with the Qatar Grand Prix moved forward by a week.
| Round | Date | Grand Prix | Circuit | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1 | 8 April ‡ |  Calendar changes
New entriesIn June 2011, the FIM announced that six teams from Moto2 – Interwetten Paddock, Forward Racing, Marc VDS, Kiefer Racing, Speed Master and BQR-Blusens – had been granted entries to the 2012 grid; two additional entries – Paul Bird Motorsport and Ioda Racing – announced that they had been accepted to the grid, running under CRT regulations. However, Interwetten Paddock, Marc VDS, and Kiefer Racing were absent from the revised grid released by FIM in January 2012.Rider changes
Grands PrixRiders' standings;Scoring systemPoints were awarded to the top fifteen finishers. A rider had to finish the race to earn points.
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