Episode 777: 1043 Days!

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Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing.

This is episode number 777, the last of the great Boeing aircraft.

Because everything after that is probably junk.

Or the doors fall off or something.

Anyway.

Anyway, this is not an aviation podcast, this is a motorcycle podcast.

I'm Jim McDowell.

With me, back from holiday, Richard Jowett.

Richard, hopefully you had a great holiday, I hope.

Certainly did, Jim.

Yes, Mauritius, highly recommended to anybody that can ever get there.

Beautiful place, beautiful people.

Just nothing bad to say about it, really.

It was just a holiday of a lifetime.

It was our silver wedding anniversary treat to ourselves after 25 years of marriage, obviously.

So, yeah, really, really.

We enjoyed listening to you and Skyler talking again, Jim.

It was great.

Kind of throwback thing.

We should do a little bit of this more often, I think.

Just get some of the old hosts back on from time to time if we can.

So, yeah, all good.

Really good.

But glad to be back.

Yeah, it's good to have you back.

Good to have the normal guy back there that Skyler did.

Although, many, many thanks to Skyler.

It was great fun to sit down with Skyler and talk again and go over the racing and do all that as we had in the old times and whatnot.

So it was very nostalgic, very back and hopefully we'll have Skyler and I have been planning.

We got a couple of little things that we want to do more off season fill in kind of thing.

So we got some ideas floating around.

So hopefully those will work out and pan out and whatnot.

So some ideas that we had.

So anyway, that was all good and fun and all that good stuff.

But we've had a new subscriber to the show.

Rich, if you could kindly help us out there and go through all that, it'd be great.

Yeah.

So I'll just handle the PayPal subscribers first.

So we've got.

Gareth Locke, Jacob Nurkow, Paul Hunn, Rick Taylor, Nori Ito, Nick Saban and Alan Fleming.

And then on Patreon, we have, I don't think you mentioned this on the last one, Jim.

I'll just catch up anyway.

Michael Cowan has come on as a Patreon subscriber.

So Michael, thank you very much.

Good to have you on board.

Joined by regular contributors now.

Brenton Edwards, Scott Baldwin, Oli, Dennis Kindig, Jeremy Burnett, Jacob Rower, more of him in a moment, Darren Andrews,

Paul Lang, Gary Shavit, and Steve.

So guys, thank you, all of you.

The financial contribution is obviously massively important and very much appreciated at this end.

The more of you that can do that, the better.

So on we go.

All right.

Thanks for the update, Rich.

So as we said, Jacob has written into the show here.

So we'll do a little listener feedback.

It's a quick one.

He says that I made him laugh twice in the last show, once when describing the two Eflin tracks.

In the U.S.

As appalling, they really are.

So it is funny and apt.

As Jacob says, he says, then again, when using the British term for beating someone late in the race as pimped, apparently it's pipped.

So again, you know, I'm an American, so I speak American.

I don't speak English.

That's why Rich is on that side so that he can speak the proper English.

Uh, so yes, I guess it is supposed to be pipped.

I thought it was pimped.

Although, you know, if you walk through some of the big cities here and here in the.

U.S., that's definitely not the right term.

So I guess I should have thought about that.

But anyway, scholar and I were having fun.

Uh, apologies if that offended anyone didn't mean it that way.

And, uh, hopefully, uh, like I said, hopefully scholar and I will be able to come back with some off season shows together as well.

And, uh, thank you, Jacob, for the, for the words.

And I'm glad that I could at least make you laugh.

So that's what I'm here for.

Yes.

I'm here to make everybody laugh.

That's what I tell people at work.

I am here for nothing more than the comedy relief that I bring to the.

Job anyway, could I Jim, could I just cut in because Jacob finishes off by saying thanks for all the effort, which is obviously appreciated that sentiment and the interviews are great.

On which point I have a lot of interview content to put out.

Obviously I've still got the, the Donington stuff as well as the Silverstone stuff.

I'm going to busy myself over the next couple of weeks.

I've been on holiday.

Work has gone swivel.

I bonkers crazy for me over the last month or so that's going to remain the case.

Not necessarily in a fully positive.

Way, but, uh, anyway, I'm going to get my head down and get this interview stuff out.

Most of it is kind of not time sensitive in terms of news, because it's more about sort of themes and just a bit of a deep dive into people's kind of careers and stuff.

So hopefully it's not too time sensitive in terms of when I recorded it as to when we put it out, we're running into a busy sort of, what's this?

The last third of the season.

Most wise now.

So 12 races in nine weeks.

Yeah, it's a lot.

It's a lot.

So our nine races in 12 weeks, which way.

Yeah.

We'll slot stuff in as best as we can, but, um, content it's content at the end of the day, whenever it comes out and it's, it's good stuff that I got from Don and from Silverstone, but I will get my head down and get that stuff out now.

So, um, yeah, look out for that.

Come in hopefully fairly soon.

All right.

With that, let's go to some news that broke from the weekend in Aragon.

It is very likely that the pre-MAC Yamaha will be Olivera and Miller.

So there will be no seat for Garcia there.

We'll come onto the Garcia issue a little later on.

But I don't, I don't, I, does that surprise you rich?

I mean, it doesn't really surprise me.

I mean, Miller was a surprise to me.

I really thought Jack was going to leave the moto GP paddock, but all of air going there doesn't really shock me all that much.

I mean, I think, I don't know.

It just didn't work for him that at the, you know, satellite Aprilia team, if you want to put it that way.

So I think he would, would much rather go to pray Mac and have, you know,

good factory bikes, which is, you know, but are you, you know, part of it is, is it because Olivera is good at set up?

Is he good at development?

Are those pieces of the puzzle that Yamaha wanted?

So Yamaha's extending him the contract or is it just truly pray Mac?

Who knows in that deal, but your, your take, sir.

Well, my take is I'm either one of those two guys.

I fully endorse them being there from the point of view of their experience.

Particularly on other bikes,

but I'm rather surprised that pray Mac haven't taken the opportunity to take a young gun from moto too.

Which obviously taps into the whole Garcia thing.

Cause I personally felt that he would be, you know,

a shoe in there really.

And I'm rather disappointed for him that he's not there to be honest.

So Miller, I, I get Olivera.

I get, although I think both of those probably in truth have slight question marks about them in the sense that they've been very up and down in their

career.

I think they've been very up and down in their career for years.

Um, to have both of them now, I just, I get it from an experience point of view,

but I can't help but feel it's a bit of a missed opportunity for Yamaha,

obviously,

I'm a horror in that kind of next two to three years.

Certainly as you go into 2027, they do need good quality technical input and both Miller and Olivera will provide that without a doubt.

But you know,

you've got rinse who's,

you know,

it's hard to know really what's going on with Alex runs as much as I love him as a rider.

He is still good.

My favorite writer,

but obviously still quite badly injured.

And so we've not seen the best or the worst of him on the Yamaha and quarter.

I, okay,

we saw the weekend.

He still got the fire burning,

so he will always turn in a result.

But I just can't help but feel that they could have done with,

you know,

a bit of a future proofing element to this for rider lineup on works bikes.

And so for me,

it's a missed opportunity.

But what do you think,

Jim?

I don't know.

I mean,

if I'm,

if I'm Yamaha and I have some say,

if,

if I have some say on who are the two guys that are going to be riding it,

pray Mac,

I would want experienced hands for at least a couple years because I've got to get myself out of this development hole that I'm in.

Plus I need to have an all new bike essentially for 27.

I would really want them along for the ride for that too.

But that whole,

this whole new race or whatever,

you know,

the blindside that you've been working for,

things like that.

Yeah.

It's a big surprise.

There's more,

it's a lot more to see going forward and it's just coming,

but you know,

I mean you've gotta,

you know,

you've gotta,

you've gotta get that,

you've gotta get that in the game and all that stuff.

So,

so,

but,

but this one,

there is a lot of potential in the race and I think they're going to be able to get that to present.

If they want to go in,

they can get the,

you know,

I mean,

I don't,

I don't know if it's going to,

I don't know.

they've done it yeah but for me the problem that they might find is that by the time they get to

27 28 all four of those guys might be kind of looking at you know heading off into retirement

maybe not i mean i don't see any of them going into super bikes at that stage of their careers

but they'll probably see a motor gp and then you know go up and enjoy their well-funded retirements

but i just find it slightly odd that yamaha is not looking to yeah bring some talent through that

will take over from those guys once they depart but however as you say jim they've got some very

experienced hands that will get through the next couple of years go into 2027 hopefully with a

package that works better and then they can bring the young guns in at that point so it kind of

makes sense whichever way you look at it i suppose but i was just a little bit surprised

all right let's go to the second point here the 2025 ducati factory bikes update i think you

penciled this one in because i'm not sure yeah you're what you're thinking is here so so

i in the show before i went off on holiday i was kind of getting a little bit tongue-tied and

confused about who was on 2024 spec bikes this year and then obviously we were talking about

the fact that ducati had announced that they were only going to have three works bikes for 2025 so

just to make sure i was clear in my mind i got in touch with simon patterson just double check

my arithmetic on this one so effectively this year you have banyaya and bastionini obviously on

2024 spec bikes in the works team and both martin and morbidelli are on 2024 bikes this year as

well next year you will have marquez and pekka banyar on 25 spec bikes in the works team

but only fabio digiantonio on a 25 bike in the vr46 squad so morbidelli will stay on the 24 bike

so just to clarify what i thought was the case there will be there are four works bikes this

year and you can see that there are four works bikes this year and you can see that there are

four works bikes this year and you can see that there are four works bikes this year and ducati have

decided to drop to three bikes fully factory spec bikes next year so that's just to clarify what we

had spoken about before and they are my point going back a couple of episodes was i was slightly

surprised that ducati had decided to do that given that aprilia yamaha honda etc are all fielding

at least four factory bikes through their works teams and then their supported satellite squads

so i was just scratching my head a little bit as to why ducati would seek to do that at this point of

utter dominance or maybe that's why they're doing it you know they don't need to put four bikes out

there but just seems an odd decision to me but i just wanted to check that i was correct in my

assumptions there so it is only three 2025 spec bikes that will be out on the grid next year from

ducati well i mean maybe they're preparing for marquez to trash a few along the way

well crash damage will be a part of the deal i'm sure yeah okay all right so we got that straight

now you cynic he marquez has crashed quite a few bikes he he tends to do that he just simply tends

to to lob them up into gravel traps it just he just looking for the edge and sometimes there's

no there's no ledge beyond the edge that you can grab onto and he just does that so maybe you're

just pulling it in so they have you know you're just pulling it in so they have you know you're

you know what all the materials that they need because technically if you think about it ducati

would have to has to build um six full factory bikes at a minimum because everybody gets two

in the factory team right so you gotta have a you gotta have a bike for a wet or flag to flag race

yeah um so you know so there so that's a interesting take on that one so let us turn

now on to the next one which is a big one here mark vds is going to drop the klx chassis that they

currently run and are going to go to the bosca cura speed up whatever you want to call it in 25

it's amazing nobody wanted that chassis and as soon as somebody wins on that chassis everybody's

like oh i gotta have that chassis now interesting i think a lot of people looked at how well agura

and garcia adapted to those bikes and how easy they made it look and i think everybody else is

struggling for some reason i think a lot of people are struggling for some reason i think

everybody else is struggling for some reason now whether it's the stiffness of the klx in

comparison to the bosca core or vice versa whichever way it is and how they work with

pirelli tires that's sort of i think the biggest deciding factor is that those blocks there although

the klx's do seem to have come good here now they've had more than enough time now to sort

of sort through any setup tire combination things that they had to sort through so it you know it's

interesting because now that gives that'll

us what four six bikes on in under on the speed up i think possibly more if we come to one of the

next items yeah but interestingly jim without wishing to preempt what we're going to talk about

in motor 2 i believe it's the case that bosca skira brought a new chassis to aragon and quite

clearly not everybody was very happy with the change so just to prove the point that things

do change rather quickly in motorcycle racing and where the klex was not the bike to be on before

suddenly they seem to be turning things around and you know perhaps confused a little bit by

maybe changing some of their setup as well and parts so yeah we'll come to that so the rumor i

heard was that lopez was a possible replacement for arbolino at mark vds because arbolino

doesn't have a contract for next

year through mark vds he's going to go someplace else and you've got in here that dixon is in in

possible talk to go to mark vds no it's official oh it's official now okay so since the time that

i wrote the notes on monday they've made it official that dixon's going to mark vds yeah

he's leaving grissini and he replaces arbolino yeah and so interesting i'm trying to think of

the other rider on mark vds is i think it's philippe salach isn't it

uh

yes i believe so somewhat kind of let me not absent physically but absent in terms of the

coverage and the results i think he is obviously on a contract that keeps him in place next year

so dixon is definitely going to mark vds next year so i don't think lopez's destination i mean

i suspect he will stay put on the bosque secure squad because there isn't anywhere to go in motor

gp now obviously so it would be odd to think that he would go

anywhere else so i'm pretty sure that that's you know correct as of the time of recording jim

okay well that's in that's interesting i i really didn't think dixon would leave

grissini but i mean hey it's it it is what it is i mean there hmm that's a kind of the context of

what's happened in the last few races i mean again you don't know how long these negotiations go on

for and certainly if you go to the first half of the season everybody would be looking to go to

both in terms of teams and riders now whether that will remain the plum option as we go into

the second half of the season who's to know because dixon's just had his fourth podium on the calax

and won the last race as we'll come to so i mean these things ebb and flow very very quickly don't

they nothing stays still in life and certainly not in motor racing terms so uh well there's no

room at the end in moto gp for jake dixon or joe roberts or any of the others that aren't

confirmed there so i suppose the deck just shuffles as it shuffles every year but um yeah

time will tell on the wisdom of that move yeah so arbolino then is supposed to go to

the monster camp yamaha squad who are theoretically going to have baska koras speed ups

next year

which is interesting pretty sure i heard that mentioned on the commentary as a not as a

confirmed thing but as a strong rumor that that was likely to happen so i'm trying to put i'm

trying to draw lines where there aren't lines because there's just dot points out there

does that mean that yamaha is looking at arbolino as a potential one of the younger guys to move on

to either the premax squad or you know slot in next to quateraro because that would kind of work

because he'd be on the yamaha team there'd be a sort of a direct line to getting on one of those

bikes but i don't know i mean that seems like a weird choice to do i mean arbolino was a great

moto 3 rider hasn't had

you know

had a great moto two year when he finished second to acosta but he did slump in the second half of

the season let's be honest about that and then he's really not found a good run of form on pirellis

up until recently yes till like right now yeah the last two maybe three races you would say

i mean i think the last two i see arbolino's

position is very much akin to joe roberts and jake dixon in the sense that they've been in moto

2 for quite a long time in terms of moto gp the grid's not going to get any bigger and the riders

you know for one reason or another there are many reasons in terms of the nuance of the way

the championship works but you know the riders of motor gp hang around quite a long time i mean

let's go back to i don't know let's go back to gp 500 i mean people were injured so badly so often

that they weren't in the class for that long so there was always a kind of a through route for

new people to come in you know we're looking at people like alicia spargrove who are kind of

retiring because they've just had enough now you know rather than being forced out of the sport

they just decide to go and allied to that you've got so much talent in moto 3 sort of champion to

get into the next categories up that there's just no room at the end for some of these guys that

have been hanging around in moto 2 for quite a while so i think it's a good thing that they've

been hanging around for quite so long so i think you know for me as good a riders as they are and

they are obviously world-class talents the likes of jake dixon i say with a heavy heart

joe roberts from your point of view and your fellow americans jim and you know arbolino not

that italy's got too much to worry about when it comes to moto gp uh stars to follow but in

comparison to the brits and the americans for certain uh i just don't really see a route out

there you know i

thought if you remember that arbolino was quite likely to get called up to moto gp possibly to

grassini uh what a year or so ago and obviously mark marquez suddenly then popped into that spot

and kind of disrupted the market as he has continued to do ever since so yeah it's hard

to see really i i just feel that these guys will probably see out the best of the rest of their

career in moto 2 then they might drop into one of the other championships you know world supers or

national championships perhaps but i don't know that's just my thought interesting interesting

oh okay so if we move on the thailand in buriram has been confirmed as the opening

moto opener of the moto gp season for the next two years so we know first race buriram so that's

where we'll be we'll be in thailand for that it's probably a good move because that separates the

east you know the east southeast asia leg for the next two years and then we move on to the

into different things instead of going what japan thailand indonesia malaysia kind of thing

yeah so that's sort of and then on to australia so that sort of separates that up which i think

would probably be probably a good thing um we also learned that aldegar will ride for two years at

grassini and okay well where else was he going to go um your de facto number one ducati satellite

team would ditch you for for yamaha so okay you went with the guy who's the italian who runs the

team runs another team well sure let's just give him the de facto number one status at there and

hey by the way well hey guess as like as a parting gift for grassini we have for you one firming

aldegar and so you get to have him on your team for a couple years to get some seasoning in

some time on a year old ducati which is probably not a bad thing for aldegar

aldegar is fairly young he's still like 20 i think yeah he's really really young yeah he still might

be 19 i can't remember either way of the kind of well-known journos are kind of saying that perhaps

it might just be the case that the the degree of pressure that's been on him to win the moto

2 championship this year might just be all a bit too much and that a couple of years sort of

slightly under the radar

i was a very very young guy still but grassini might just be a good thing for him just to sort

of settle down learn his trade on the bigger bike but you know i was making snarky comments and not

snarky in the sense that i don't like aldegar because i really do super guy spoke to him if

people remember interviewed him in qatar last november uh just he's a great guy but you know

this year has been a bit of a horror show really hasn't it

given the amount of expectation rightly or wrongly the expectation but he did do four on

the bounce at the end of last season therefore expectations were high this year but there was

the pirelli thing that came in maybe he hasn't adapted to that the best and he's had a bit of

bad luck a few other things that have been a bit weird you know crashing in the long loop penalty

in barcelona a few other sort of odd things that have gone on this year again

so i think you know he's got the contract there's no way ducati are going to let him go

so i mean he's not in danger of losing that ride but grassini is probably a pretty safe

and i'll use the term relatively sort of um under the radar place for him to sort of just

yeah get out of speed again sometimes the weight of expectation is a lot it weighs on you you know

you're you you have to you know you have to you know you have to you know you have to you know

you have to perform and you don't and it's tough it's it's it's really tough i mean there's you know

i can't say that i've really had like a whole lot of expectation ever put on me when i was racing

but you had those moments there were those moments when i was much younger you know i'm talking like

10 11 12 years old it was like you know hey you've you've you're racing the local short track you're

doing really well oh and hey here's the chat here now comes the track championship race well you're

the favorite to win this thing because you've won a lot of races earlier well if you don't win this

one what's going to happen to you and you feel it right i don't think you feel it as much as a kid

you're just having fun as you don't care but it's it's definitely you know for someone who's trying

to to make their living as a professional motorcycle rider that weight of expectation

can be absolutely horrifying yeah and never mind the amount of expectation that he puts on himself

no yeah which is an enormous amount of pressure in and of itself

and i mean the move that we'll come to at the weekend did rather smack of a degree of

desperation really albeit a split second decision that went wrong but we'll come to that obviously

but let's definitely come to that because i have a different side perhaps than what you have to that

okay so excuse me um so uh this is the best news of the entire news in my opinion we go back to

five years yes yes yes i'm like really yes that track is one of the best motorcycle tracks i think

that you have on the calendar heck i think that track would be brilliant for weck it'd be

brilliant for formula one i think that track is one of the best it has no clunky chicanes it's

it's in it follows the natural terrain of the of the valley that it sits in and then if the

you know we everybody says oh horsepower hill it is it's a huge climb out of the valley to get

there to get back to top and then i guess technically the last two turns are a chicane

but it allows someone to get a draft to get in there sneak up the inside but it also it's so

wide you can actually run too wide through the next turn and you can have a really great drag

race to it plus it's the place where biagi almost flipped the yz yzr yamaha backwards doing a wheelie

i mean why not why not go back i don't know

why did it ever drop off i mean i guess obviously probably money i don't guess there's a backstory

here somewhere that i don't know yeah i think it was money the the track surface was becoming a

problem i think that remains a problem that needs to be dealt with before they go back next year but

it's under different ownership now i mean it is you know a double whip version of philip island

in europe as far as i'm concerned and it is certainly equal to philip island i would say

it just it follows the contours of the land and it's just a great great place and it is the best

news we've heard for quite some time and i am desperate to go next year i'm planning in my mind

bearing in mind i don't know when it is yet because the calendar hasn't come out i believe

the 2025 provisional calendar is going to be released this weekend at mizano so i'm eager

to know when renault is going to fall i'm assuming it will be sometime during the kind of july

august period because that's when it is

was held and i don't know if you covered it i'm just trying to remember if you cover this

with skyler on the last show but bizarrely silverstone has been moved to may uh we didn't

cover it on the show we talked about it i think possible possible you and i spoke about that in

the previous show that's an odd decision to me i mean may in the uk can be very nice but equally

it can be pretty wretched as well so i don't understand the rationale for that decision

there obviously is a rationale for the

decision

but if that means that renault lands somewhere early august or mid-august whatever probably

somewhere close to austria i would guess given geographical proximity then that works for me

i've got the bmwk 1300s primed and polished outside so that bad boy is going to be getting

a ride across into eastern europe if all things go well next year jim trust me i like it i like it a

lot oh

so uh last bit of news well two things left here chandra is going to ride at

inumetsu lcr honda assumingly well not assumingly he is replacing nakagami because zarko has a

contract still so yeah that one's a i don't know i'm not really sure what i'm not sure what i think

about that one i mean part of me says that chandra has had a few a couple good wins in the last year

in moto too on you know i'm not going to discount that but he's going to moto gp which everybody

wants to do which is great and i'm happy for him but what's he what is he providing to honda other

than maybe you know the inumetsu part of it right the asian connection you know that it's a semblance

of credibility for the asia talent cup and i get you know the inumetsu

kind of sponsorship thing they want an asian rider or essentially the asian rider on the

bike so i understand that but like you jim i mean there was all this kind of bitching and moaning

about joe roberts kind of getting a passport um kind of base ride which obviously didn't happen

in the end and you kind of feel the same i mean nothing against sonkat chandra but his record in

moto 2 is patchy to be fair yes and poor if you're going to be a little bit more stern about

things and on top of which the kicker is that the opening round of the season next year is where

thailand his first first race on a moto gp bike i mean that is going to be a challenge for the poor

lad um i'm really interested to know what the listeners think on this one nothing against him

he has won a race in moto 2 but i think he's only won one race maybe two i'm struggling to think i

mean he's not a serial winner he's not even a serial podium contender and the fact that

for whatever reason contractually politically whatever the fact that aigura has slipped

through the net as far as hrc are concerned kind of left them i suppose with nowhere to go i mean i

personally felt with the agira going to track house news that that was pretty much meant that

nakagami would stay put and i would have thought given the choices that would have been

the safer move to be honest um again being a little bit harsh towards chantra but i think

that's a challenging career development for him but you know every rider wants to be a moto gp and

he gets his chance and who's to say he won't grab it and do really really well but and i hope he

does but yeah um i'm fearful yeah i i tend to think and let's be honest

probably i probably wouldn't be in the same zip code with him when i was in my prime racing bikes

okay he's he's an immense talent there's no question about that but we're talking about

elite motorcycle racing here um i can't help but think that he's like a sponsor ploy kind of a

thing on a bike that is you know let's be honest trying to well severely injure its riders all the

time irrespective of where they are

uh so this is not a pedro acosta level talent that we're talking about if he were he wouldn't

have been a moto 2 for what four or five seasons yeah something of that nature yes he was there

for quite a while so that's my kind of fear factor a little bit is that there's so much

pressure on him given his nationality and the you know the um sparsity of people that are in that

position on that bike

starting off in thailand i just hope he doesn't injure himself

immediately because you know that's the risk on that bike

well last thing from testing or last thing is about testing and that is the fact that

the test calendar has been released for next year we have the traditional day after

the last race in valencia then we have a sapang shakedown test then we have the sapang test

um

to test and we're going to be the 12th and 13th of february which i think then

you're going to either have a very early like february 26 27 28 start to the season and then

kind of move two weeks later to qatar which would put you in that like march 10th 11th 12th kind of

idea so uh it's going to be interesting because when we saw what happened to porto maya when we

went there and then went to the first race of the season there that there was all kind of

shenanigans and chicanery and all kinds of things that went sort of sideways with people getting

their shoulders broke and people running people off the track and everything because everybody

had it all dialed in so i i'm me i'm fearful that that's what's going to happen when we go to

brewery realm everyone's going to have it dialed in at that point in time and then they're going

to turn them loose to go race and it's going to be a little bit of

pent-up anxiety there that everybody's just going to freak out again but who knows you have

any thoughts on that rich uh don't care i mean i don't really see that there's any difference

testing at qatar and then having the race at qatar i mean i'm assuming that qatar is not

the first race because i'm i'm guessing ramadan and some it might be dates wise interfering with

that traditional recent traditional opening slot so i mean it'd be

a nice change to go to um thailand for the first race i mean it's never happened before so

that'd be pretty cool i don't personally like the fact that they test at a place and then

immediately have a race in the same way that i hate the fact they're going to have a race at

mazano next weekend then have a test and then have another race there straight afterwards i just think

that is a recipe for boredom really particularly given how moto gp is inclined to be at the moment

so i've yeah got my enthusiasm

in check but very much offset by the fact that we will be going to places like bruno uh you know to

make up for it in terms of a place that nobody's been there's no pre-test there and therefore that

will be an exciting voyage into the relative unknown for most of the riders that bruno and

maybe a few other places i think they'll talk about a race in hungary next year

i haven't heard that one yet kazakhstan apparently is going to happen although

yeah hold that one

uh for the time being uh at least we're getting out of spain again well yes uh although aragon did

get a two-year deal very thin crowd at aragon this weekend though i mean a hundred they had

over a hundred thousand for for a race that wasn't really going to happen there and then

have everybody have 107 107 000 people show up for it i thought was decent that's better than

coda numbers uh well it's about the same as what silverstone achieved this year so

i mean aragon is literally in the middle of nowhere i think as well relative to some of the

other spanish venues so it's probably not bad in that context but yeah nothing against spain nothing

against italy but if we had a little bit less spanish and italian influence in terms of races

and riders i think that would be for me for the general betterment of the sport let's just leave

it at that that's a good place to leave it let's go to the racing from the weekend shall we go to

races yeah in spain ironically

we found out that it does actually rain in spain too that's true occasionally occasionally

oh okay let's talk about 03 qualifying um there's nothing really going on in the first qualifying

session everybody who's in the championship chase everybody who's in part of that is clearly as

easily into the qt session so there wasn't really anybody there that you didn't expect to be there

except for maybe for us auto was the only person who potentially was there but he did get out so

sawa um farioli and ogden actually made it into the second qualifying session as well uh ralston in

the second qualifying session he had a very nice high side at turn three that was a very good one

i mean you know these guys were working hard for that halfway through alonzo was out front uh then

kelso ortola vertelli rueda and picares but when it came down to it nobody could beat david alonzo

uh he would qualify number one followed by rueda followed by muñoz picares

also with another strong qualifying effort lunetta with a very good qualifying effort i mean he's

getting over the injuries that he had and we're starting to see a lot of the talent that he has

and the reason why he is on the 658 squad team and he gets the honor of being like uh first honda

so you can't really discount that uh so that was your top six there to finish out the top 10 it was

jorgardo vertelli weyer was ninth weyer not did not have a very good qualifying session at all

ortola so it was like the guys that were out front in the championship were except for alonzo

but like everybody chasing alonzo was going to start poorly here they just couldn't put it

together or whatever i'm assuming weyer this is weyer's first time to aragon i'm assuming because

he raced and he would have had to have raced in the cv at some point there i would think

he must have he had to have because either way we're not we didn't have an aragon last year

no okay

uh just a slight side note jim last week did you and skyler talk about the fact that

weyer has been confirmed in the akiyo moto 2 squad for next year yes we did okay that that is a great

position for weyer to go to isn't it really great i mean to go there

because i'm gonna forget it the other thing that i thought was very pertinent that you and skyler

spoke about was the enigma that is david munioff yes and you were talking i think skyler

talked about the fact that he's kind of like this very sort of up and down figure as would be the

case in this race and he is exactly the sort of guy that needs an akiyo in his corner to harness

that talent that undoubted talent that he has but it's a wayward talent isn't it and i see via as

he's not a wayward talent at all his problem in moto 3 is that he has to manage his tires

so much i think because of his physical stature so

as we are finding with dennis onto in moto 2 in that io squad i think via is going to be dynamite

anyway getting ahead of myself no you're i you're fine because i agree with you i completely i

completely agree that he he via got the plum moto 2 ride if you look at all the teams that are in

that are in moto 2 right and since we're in moto 3 let's talk about moto 2 right so we ramble around

but io is like the the team like it's right there is the top you know after that you you're you kind

of try to figure out who is like the next best team i would put i would put probably mark vds

second then i would put grissini after that but then after but then you'd also got to put uh the

the mt helmets msi team in there as well somewhere so that's like the top four

teams really but but there is io is a cut above everybody else i think i i think that is basically

true yeah all right we were in moto 3 lamps sorry i'm catching up i'm catching up i listened to last

time out because i was back to being an old moto pod listener from the days gone by when i was just

listening to the show rather than taking part in it and it was great you know so and i thought oh I

must mention the moon off thing because

really stuck in my mind because yeah he really needs some direction that kid and you know he's

moving out of the boe squad i think next year like cal so is and you did say where he's going

and i've forgotten but it's not to io which is kind of the place that he needed to go yeah yeah

yeah he didn't okay so we moved to the motor 3 race so the theme of the weekend became these

thunderstorms that would roll through in the night like before qualifying it had rained

and it was so bad that the you know the poor moto 3 guys when the first guy's out then that

morning they came back in looking like they'd been motocrossing on their bikes it was so they

were so dirty um so that that threat of rain persisted it was probably even worse on race day

morning so it was like wow we're going out with like a very green track and the track has been

the combination of the rain the dust the dirt all that got washed on washed off how you know

removing of any rubber that was down previously led to a rather crazy moto 3 race but like crazier

in a different way than the normal like hey let's have a 10 pack rider which is this is the one odd

you've got a very long straightaway in aragon and we know what other tracks have long straightaways

it's a pack ride but

i don't aragon doesn't really produce a pack ride of moto 3 bikes which is interesting because the

first part is twisty enough to break everybody up and you know you've got to be able to hit your

mark and you've got to be able to be consistent and all those things anyway what's interesting

is this is that it's how it starts off i think the only person who was on a hard hard rear was

rueda i think everybody else went with the soft because the track was green and everybody just

wanted to get wanted to get the best traction they could

but alonzo gets off the line very quickly followed by rueda picares lunetta

holgardo and kelso alonzo by by the time they hit the backstretch had a one and a half second

lead over everybody else so in the distance of roughly what is that 12 13 14 in 15 turns

he he had a one and a half second lead it was obviously

obvious that alonzo's idea was to go out front just run it as hard as he could build a gap and

then manage the tires for the rest of the race which was great because then that meant that

as alonzo got away we got to see some great racing that was happening in the pack before the first

lap had even been completed kelso had made his way to second and once he got there he promptly

patted the back of the seat to show everybody hey stay behind me and we're gonna go get alonzo

guys we're not looking up track at all alonzo is one and a half seconds ahead of us and if we don't

try to catch him and work together we may not be able to catch him can i just ask jim yes why does

any rider ever ever tap the back of their seat because it literally never works does it i mean

it's almost red rag to the bull for anybody that's behind so okay i did you ever do it yes

yes

the only

place the only place i've ever done it was on the mile at springfield and we were dirt tracking so

it's mild dirt at springfield and this is kind of where to me this is normal because this happened

in in grand national motorcycle racing all throughout the 80s and the 90s and it doesn't

it is not as common today but but in that time when i was i was a kid you go to the national

to see it it happened a lot because well what happened is you get a couple guys that would

have to run together on the mile which is really super critical for you know bikes that literally

have no aerodynamics whatsoever on them and you they would get they would tend to get away and

they would just run kind of run off and you had this little race period of about two or three laps

that you could jostle around for say third and if you guys didn't get in line the two guys in front

were now going to be uncatchable you weren't going to get there so guys on the mile would would get

by and they think they're going to get away and they're going to get away and they're going to get

out of the speed maybe they would just point to the back like hey stay with me stay with me

let's stay in line and let's let's figure out how to get to the guys in front and if they would

they're the next three guys would sort of wind up catching in a lap or two

the two guys that were out front so you brought everybody back to have pack racing

so another reason i ever did it was we were out like i said we were out the mile springfield

we were running our 600s out there and you had to be third to go to the main and i was run i was

four five six and the one two three guys were where you could tell we're getting away i'd finally

had made a move to get to fourth and i did that same thing and the guy behind me realized that

we could go somewhere together we actually did claw up onto the guys that were running one two

three and we caught them at the last uh at turn three the end of the backstretch we caught them

there and of course young inexperienced jim didn't realize how powerful the draft is so i go on their

way too deep right now and i'm like oh my god i'm going to go to the main and i'm going to go to the

you know buzz around the cushion on the outside and don't transfer but anyway

that that's that's the slap on the back of the motorcycle seat story for you so it can work then

it can work yes it can work it can work just rarely ever does in moto three yeah i think it

has more to do with moto three is the fact that the that it's in i don't think it really works

much in road racing anyway because just because of the fact that you've got all the turns that

you're trying to stop for and then accelerate to and from and back and forth and all that

on a mild dirt track it's it's it's like a it's like it's kind of like a flywheel right if you

can just keep that momentum going you will eventually just keep going faster and faster

and faster because you finally get yourself either you either you've got yourself figured

out how to run on the groove or you you got yourself right there at the edge of the cushion

and just running around and you're just going faster and faster and faster because really a 600

and even to some extent the 750s at the time when we were dirt tracking you could almost hold them

wide open all the way around

springfield i definitely held my 600 wide open all the way around you just didn't let off unless

you got sucked into the corner by the draft in which case i forgot the let off and anyway

sounds terrifying it's actually thrilling quite actually that's like people say which one did

you like better did you did you like dirt tracking or did you like road racing and i'm like

there's something very magical about going that fast on a mile on dirt there's also and then it's

like okay that's really wild there's also something really kind of crazy about running

a half mile up on the cushion and be like a foot away from a set of hay bales which is some weird

cool thing too i guess it's for the more crazy of us out there and then what about road racing well

that's fun because there's a lot of speed and you're dragging your knees and if you go through

very long arc radiuses and you know you can you know the idea of just going that fast with your

knee on the ground is mind-boggling but then if it rained that was even cooler because it's now

just nothing works

and everything's just going all wiggly and whatever anyway we were talking about three

right sorry it's okay it's like yeah so anyway hopefully you guys enjoyed that little story

but anyway we had just gotten through first couple laps and fernandez had worked his way

adrian fernandez had worked his way up to get past kelso to go to second

via at this point was eighth so after two laps via is only eight for asado

worked his way to third by the 14 laps to go kelso went backwards to sixth and first auto made it all

the way to second place picares crashes at the corkscrew because again the line there was so

much dirt offline that you were running on that i'll call it a three meter wide line and if you

got anywhere outside of that three meters of line they talked about it being like ice which is

really probably the best description that you can have you have no traction and as simon crayfar

said this is a great way to put it you can't have no traction you can't have no traction you can't have

any the bike doesn't doesn't go anywhere because it spins it doesn't stop because it has no grip

and it doesn't want to turn because it has no grip which is all valid points and literally

there's nothing you can do you feel like you're just being the you know you're just a passenger

on the airliner so to speak at that point i think also jim it's just worth pointing out i mean most

people that listen to this show will know this perfectly well for themselves but there's this

concept of a green track after rain ie the rubber off the racing line gets kind of washed away

a little bit so it reduced but at aragon it was worse than that and we i'm sure you get this in

the states all over we get this in the uk a bit and in spain it will be definitely a problem

particularly in aragon which is as i say quite isolated in a very sort of arid surrounding area

so when it rains there's a lot of dust in the rain so if you get overnight rain you just get a lot of

dust that you know once the water is evaporated you have a film of dirt on the track off the line

as well so

it is super slippy so this idea of dirty rain you've got the kind of combined thing that the

rubber gets washed away and you get a load of dust in places as well most as you say you've

got this two three meter kind of groove that's okay if you move off it and we saw this a lot

over the weekend you've got nowhere to go but down a lot of the time so yeah very very true

uh five laps into the race vire had made his way to third so from eighth

he's now third then he moved into second then for us auto is going backwards so what problem

does he actually have um he lost his he lost his pace he went backwards to third lunetta then moved

past him to be third so lunetta has having a great ride in essentially tricky conditions you

know again this is a three meter wide group got to be sure that you stay there

now alonzo is way down the

race track he's like two two and a half seconds down the track honestly i thought alonzo is gone

like this was a master stroke of genius by the kid in my mind hey you have pole you have an

advantage you're starting on the groove you're going to be leading just go out there and ride

as hard as you can and let the chips fall where they may because no one may be able to catch you

because if anybody starts fighting they're going to slide off get their tires dirty it takes a

turn or two to clean the tires back up so

i thought brilliant race strategy by the kid you know and sure enough all of a sudden here's

buyer who is now taking tenths of seconds out of alonzo and you're looking for the pit board

looking for him for alonzo to respond and he doesn't it's just this is now consistently

vire taking time out of it's like vire sort of the master of the tire saving effort perhaps maybe

alonzo's tire is gone and we found out they had a shot great shot

of that pirelli rear was shagged it looked bad so i was like okay there's a serious grip problem

for this kid on the left hand side and well with 10 left turns that's going to be tricky to deal

with so it's like oh the race is on now because we now know alonzo is in trouble but we didn't

know what anybody else was or where they were at that point uh kelso had sort of stabilized at

fifth he got by for asado reredo was way wide at 11 and then he went to the left hand side and

wound up just piling it on and he got past lunetta at this point you have to think i'm

thinking wait a minute reredo might be in with a shot here maybe because he had the hard tire

and if everybody else's tires was going to look like alonzo's tire well maybe the hard was the

better choice to actually have if you could make it work or if you were patient but reredo is still

long like long way off of where the front guys were but he was making some he was making some

progress at six laps to go vire got by alonzo at turn three

and then you looked and it was reredo and lunetta were coming these guys were coming hard and fast

they were starting to take five tenths out of people lap which that in moto three is uncommon

unheard of but it was one of these weird things that happened that allowed them to start taking

these massive chunks of time out of it boom they were there they were together and it was a

four rider battle for the win at this point but lunetta would get by alonzo

for third and then reredo would get by vire and with three laps left it was reredo leading

followed by vire followed by lunetta followed by alonzo kelso for osado had basically settled for

his fifth he wasn't going to try anymore but reredo would ride home for the victory his first

victory showing us the talent that he had to be the only kid to win red bull rickies in the junior

world championship in the same year

so the kid had a great pedigree coming in but we've never seen it again you know poor guy had

appendicitis and coda had to have the emergency surgery he's finally back from all that he wins

that race it was a great race for him vire would hang on to be second lunetta finishes third alonzo

you know terrible race for alonzo he's fourth the world has come crashing down a little you know

poor kid i gotta feel sorry for him kelso with a strong ride to finish fifth as we said for

had settled for six munos with his up and down

with seventh then zurat zurat zurat zua has gotten himself in at eighth which looked like a great ride

for him given the circumstances ahogardo ninth and bertelli fernandez ortola 12th then nepa 13th

suzuki 14th and the last point was scored by esteban in that a great fascinating different

strategic kind of a race a lot different than what we usually see in moto 3 which just go for it kind

of thing and then figure out how to draft by somebody at the last lap or whatever but this was

a this is a good one rich just different it was a what's the word kind of captivating i think is

probably the word for it because yeah i mean alonzo like you said jim on the end of or halfway

round lap one had as you said had a one and a half second lead you're thinking oh my god he's just

going to be 10 seconds up the road by the end of this one but weird that his tire went in the way

that it did but

again who knows i mean all alonzo in those well in that first half two thirds of the race all he

could do was just lead at the front because he had a good start there was a bit of kind of jostling in

the pack behind him on the first few laps which kind of helped him to stay up front so for whatever

reason his tire just went but rueda being on that hard tire was just a masterstroke i don't know if

that was his choice or the team's choice but it kind of won in the race and it's worth noting that

he's a winner as well all time since the championship started which kind of seems like

not a big number to me you'd have thought that more people would have run a race over since 19

what 50 49 49 was it when it started anyway uh because i kind of wrote down alonzo i'm a big

big fan of alonzo i mean he's clearly he's a massive star of the future i mean he's a massive

star already but kind of champions ride he kind of rallied a bit towards the end and secured that

fourth place and he's a massive star of the future i mean he's a massive star already but

place which was a good result when we look at the points i mean he's handsomely in front so

fourth overall when you consider how odd that weekend was is a pretty good result

brilonzo but my standout is lunetta yes you know he qualified where was he he was sixth on the grid

coming back from an injury he missed the last race i think or the last certainly the last couple of

races and that's his last race and he's a massive star of the future i mean he's a massive star

of the future i mean he's a massive star

first podium

he has been knocking on the door all season looking good i'm interested to see now that he

has that podium this is always the bit that interests me in terms of the mentality of a

rider and the team and the galvanizing effect that has around a rider and a sort of a potential

star in the making i'm really curious to see where he goes from here assuming he stays fit

he's coming back from an injury as we just said but great weekend for him and i'm really curious

i mean full disclosure i didn't see any of the qualifying any of the practice because i was away

at the weekend on a family day so i got home late sunday afternoon ignored your whatsapp message jim

just in case it was telling me the result of the gp race i was busily binge watching all of the

races sunday afternoon late afternoon sunday evening um so yeah i didn't kind of see what

happened through practice and whatnot to get him onto sixth place on the grid but certainly that

third place finish was very very impressive and i'm

a little bit of a mini fan of um lunetta at the moment and i'm kind of curious to see what he does

through the remainder of this season it's hard not to be a fan of just the sick sick 58

well how is it it's sick 58 corsa squadra corsa squadra corsa thank you um it's hard not to be

just because it's sick and six that right i think it's hard not to be in in you know lunetta is a

great hopefully the next

i don't want to say great but the next budding young italian talent right and he seems in his

interviews and stuff he seems thrilled he seems very you know personable you know sponsors kind

of like that kind of a thing and you know he seemed kind of down to earth too like hey look

i know i'm just now getting over my shoulder injury i think he had and hey you know hopefully

this is this beginning hopefully we can carry some momentum you know he says all the right

things but you know i think you and i have now interviewed enough writers and i think you and i

have now interviewed enough writers and in in the moto gp paddock to realize these guys are very

well coached in pr speak and whatnot so they're never going to really let you in on things but

that being said i was impressed that lunetta i mean on difficult racetrack to finish where he

finished he cooler heads prevailed and he wound up in a podium perfect and he goes to his home

around where he's got two shots at it coming up so this will be interesting to see so you know

mentally and psychologically how he deals with both the the ecstasy of having got his first podium

in moto 3 world championship racing and the pressure of going into his home rank because

that tells you a lot about the future potential of people i mean it's interesting what you're

saying about rueda he came into moto 3 last year didn't he yes as kind of well not kind of

the replacement for pedro acosta and that was an incredibly

difficult position to fill let's be perfectly honest but as you say jim he was red bull rookie

and junior moto 3 world champion at that stage so he came in with all of the pedigree and then

kind of probably a bit unfair to say underperformed but didn't kind of do a pedro acosta level

job in his first season and then this year he had these health problems and some injuries and stuff

early in the season so this first win's been a long time and i think it's been a long time

coming but again it'll be interesting to see how he pushes on forward from here because

you have to say at this point the likes of holgado you kind of wonder where they go from here

in terms of this season and beyond in terms of whether they go up to moto 2 and stuff and the

other sort of notable one was ortola you know let's not forget he's been running rampant behind

alonso really in terms of pushing alonso in terms of the points and getting a few

points back here and there but had a very poor weekend i mean where did he finish i think he was

like 11 or 12 yeah he was 12 it was 12 it was so poor result for him given where alonso finished

despite alonso's troubles having led for so long so yeah i mean let's come to the championship

positions which i'm sure you'll run us through but overall you have to say alonso came out of

the weekend looking pretty good yeah did what he needed to do because he maintains his championship

points lead in fact he expanded it ever so slightly over a buyer alonso sits on 237 points

he is a full 75 points three race victories ahead of colin buyer there's talk of alonso

clinching in japan which he could do conceivably he wins a couple races you know if he wins

two races in in in italy and i don't put it past him not doing that i mean you know i mean it could

be like you know easily japan slash thailand

indonesia he's going to be a world champion there's just no one's going to really catch him

he's going to win three or four races still this season and isn't he the most winningest

rider in moto 3 now behind fanati oh sorry in front of fanati you had way more years

yes in moto 3 oh yeah so that that's the level of talent we're talking about

yeah it's crazy the kid wins or finishes off the podium i mean yeah it's just bizarre

but ortola has been was passed by vire because he's now uh five points behind vire but he's 80

points behind alonso which is that's starting to become monumental to replace you just can't see

i mean anything can happen but you just don't think it's going to happen with alonso you just

think he's just going to do his job do his thing and that's gonna be it holgardo's fourth on 156

then it's uh muñoz rueda with that wind jumps up to sixth then it's adrian fernandez

manaka kelso nine and then picares is 10th and that's moto 3 so anything else for moto 3 before

we dive into moto 2 only what i've been saying all year which is it's remarkable how few crashes

there are in moto 3 so nobody's really losing yes points are they i put it down to tires i put

it down to the pirelli the squishy fun pirelli gives a better feel and these guys know it for

longer and i think it's a more controlled breakaway feel i think the

the pirellis have feel feel feel feel feel feel oh it's getting really bad but i'm still good okay

now it's gone whereas the dunlap was sort of a hey grip grip grip grip grip grip grip gone

there isn't that there's not that warning there's a warning in there with the pirelli that i think

these kids really really like and it's just it's just the different nature of the construction of

the compounds of literally of the profile of the tire i mean this is years ago the last time i

seen looking at you know pirellis and dunlaps dunlaps dunlaps front are very triangular very

very triangular pirellis are triangular but they're there's way more of a bigger arc going

on in there than there is on the on the pirellis so and historically with moto 3 what we would see

is that as we still see this year the in general terms the pack stays together and then things go

a bit kind of crazy on the last two to three laps but when that

happened in previous seasons the dunlops with their lack of predictability people would high

side or just crash for whatever reason with you know trying to go in on the front end or whatever

we're just not seeing that this year and i just think it's as you say jim it's just a much

wider operating window even on low grip at the end of a race people can manage it

so we're not just not seeing the attrition rates that we used to see and that's why

partly why we're seeing such a big gap i think for alonzo who is super

consistent um so yeah i mean you might say that perhaps it's been to the detriment i don't know

but you know i like to see the cream rise to the top personally and alonzo over the course of the

season's just been spectacularly good so anyway still a way to go yet but hard to see major

changes as far as i'm concerned yeah just kudos kudos to pirelli jumping in taking the contract

and i mean not you know i'm not here to bash dunlap they were

a fine tire they're just pirellis are just different and they have given us different

racing who knows next year everybody's got a year on pirellis it may be a completely different thing

we don't know but as of right now you can't complain about the racing that's for sure good

yeah okay motor two okay motor two uh motor two uh we get to the first qualifying session

arbolino is there ayagura is there uh balthus bender garcia is there what why is garcia there

you know this is the guy who's he's there it's like okay i i wasn't ready to throw up alarm bells

at this point in the game because we've seen him qualify kind of poorly silverstone being the most

recent example that i could throw at you but it's like whoa okay that's all right well let's see how

this goes here as we go through arbolino had a moment at turn 13 masi went down navarro high

himself at the top of the course crew and you know again there's there's no room for error here

we were we're talking there is no margin for these guys

to be able to take and ideally these guys had the best track to deal with they had all of moto gp

qualifying they had all of moto 3 qualifying and you know and they had temperature they had the

the best shot of having the best track to qualify on and these guys were still going crazy

then garcia high-sided in turn seven just and it just the rear just steps out and it just

flicked him he was just done

and he stayed in the gravel trap for a little bit i was a little worried but i think he just got sort

of the air knocked out but what we have now with garcia and this is the point we're kind of alluding

to earlier he has a crisis of confidence he has been overlooked for not one but two moto to moto

gp seats and he can't seem to comprehend why he's not there he can't figure out why anybody else is

better than him given the status of what he's doing and he's not there he's not there he's not

what's happening especially considering that iagura got a ride when he's basically been the

better of the two riders in that in that particular team which that's a tough one to think to go

through and he literally has this crisis of confidence right now where even the team has

said they're working hard to help him understand what's going on and hey look you know your future

is still bright just got to put some results in here be a moto to a world champion force people

are a great rider and that you do deserve a moto gp ride you can't sulk about it i mean i don't know

if he's actually technically sulking but i mean just metaphorically that's kind of the impression

you get that the team is trying to stop is there anything that you want to say about that rich

well only in the sense that i'm kind of pinching somebody else's viewpoint on this in terms of

just credit them simon patterson who had a different take on this

which is that i mean garcia was a pretty accomplished moto through rider and i'm sure

he was a very accomplished rider in the junior categories before he arrived in the world

championship so it's not that he's not used to dealing with pressure i mean human nature being

what it is but clearly the talk around him potentially being in line for moto gpc that's

bound to have weighed on his mind i mean i don't doubt that for one moment but from what um simon p

was saying

was that garcia himself was pretty irritated at the team insinuating that the moto gp stuff was

kind of messing with him and going back to what i alluded to earlier on i think the bigger issue

if you look across at least 50 percent of the bosque skewers was that they brought a new chassis

to aragon and it clearly worked better for some people and garcia perhaps with other things

weighing on him just

couldn't get his head around it so i think my inclination is that probably just it was a

combination of factors not really the fact that he was kind of sulking or upset about the moto gp

thing that's bound to have been a part of it because there's nuance in all of these things

of course there is it's not a zero-sum game you know there's never just one thing that's to blame

but the insinuation was that garcia didn't get on with the new chassis i mean lopez had an okay race

with his injury had an okay race probably was the best performer of everybody given that injury and

aldega will come to in a moment which is a another kind of curious 2024 kind of aldega performance so

and garcia i mean it was a horror show really on sunday again i didn't see the practices and the

qualifying so i hadn't sort of spotted the fact or wasn't aware that he had a big crash in qualifying

which is why he was obviously so far back on the grid in the first place and just made no progress

during the race and then parked it so which is not a good look really under any circumstance

you know to come in and park it but he had a long lap penalty which he didn't serve

and i was thinking well does he have to serve that at the next race and or does it get wiped off

that i don't know and um yeah uh not great not great for garcia again

i've said many many times on this show i'm a big fan of sergio garcia but

that was not a great weekend all in all and again one can only hope that both he and the team

and bosco scura as a chassis provider maybe they go back to the chassis that they were running before

yeah because he's been doing pretty well on that so hopefully things turn around a bit in mazano but

the other thing i just want to say jim is that

you know the calyxes on mass have been getting better as the season has gone on

so maybe the bosco scura riders and the empty helmet squad in particular have kind of i don't

want to say flattered to deceive but maybe they've just made the best of the early running

and now the pressure is piling on now that other people are getting fit i mean dixon's not been at

the races for the first third of the season because of course he had that horrendous crash

in qatar right at the very very beginning and you know arbolino's taking time to get up to speed

etc etc roberts has been there or thereabouts and you know just the wave of the calyxes is coming

back a little bit again now and and so that's adding more pressure as well and kind of costing

points for people so i mean for me this season moto 2 is by far and away the best championship

in terms of the racing and the intrigue off track as well yeah very much so very much so so with

that crash at best he would have started 25th he wound up starting 29th in the grid because

zanderberger band of gerberg arbolino had towed each other around for a great last lap for those

two guys to get one and two and go through and agura and slash salak went through as well when

you got to the second qualifying session halfway through it was uh morera and then it was arenas

kennett dixon ramirez lopez we changed tires they come back out it was it was dixon

who winds up taking the pole he just pipped not pimped pipped

p-i-p-p-e-z yes he pipped moray pipped morera to get to get the pole position um

and then uh ken then sorry then it was uh morera kennett onchu onchu was having a great weekend on

the bike he they asked him well what are you kind of after qualifying

what are you doing he's like well nothing i'm just riding i'm not hurt anymore which is he did

start the year with an injury and it's taking him some time but again here's a kid running around

in you know the uh io team and io has been very careful to tell him this is a learning year and

get your footing and do your thing and work your way up and whatnot all of a sudden boom onchu was

suddenly like whoa he's in the show and i kind of you know i kind of felt that onchu would do

on a moto 2 bike i took him a while longer but there are injuries okay so we can you know you

got to kind of excuse it but for him to qualify for the thought it was great but then you know

then it was arbolino arenas lopez joe roberts would get to eighth vietti was there then gonzalez

aldiger would be 11th and then ramirez was the last one at 12th so that's how things qualified

so then we go to race day again we rain over time overnight or whatever but dixon gets away with a

shot followed by arbolino marrera onchu aldiger and roberts roberts had a pretty darn good start

because basically anybody who was on who wasn't on the groove who would would have been uh what

you would call riders right on the outside you know away from the pit wall anybody who was closer

to the pit wall had a worse start that was there roberts made the best of where he was because you

know being in that eighth place spot he was able to leap up quite a few places at least a couple

there to get in there or whatever uh but we had

uh guevara crash at turn three iagura was off track and it caused a slipperiness now can it and

lopez had a little coming together then they were trying to straighten it all out as they got down

to the corkscrew which is uh eight i think starts eight nine yeah eight nine yeah eight nine and

then canette just goes in there and it's like a skating rink the back end just goes out finally

gets grip and plots him over to the high side and down you know the look on canette's face was

behind sorry aaron no one hit you from behind that was just all you you know dirty tires small

groove you know again didn't work it wasn't the heat of the day right we still were wet patches

that you could see on the track for moto three for the moto two guys so that was crazy this so

the start is kind of mango it's kind of crazy but in the mayhem outager got himself the second then

arbolino went by dixon for the lead for a little bit and then he arbolino led for a few laps there

but it was a nice group of of six riders that were kind of jostling for the win there and then

dixon went back in front then uh on she was there in second aren't you had got by marera uh outager

tried to go by onto a turn 14 and outager had this massive high side they actually caught it

from the camera while i was on the inside of the corner you see the whole thing he just tries to

back it in there and it just goes away from him it gets so far that finally just grabs and it was

flicked him like a proverbial matchstick and down he came outager's race ran at that point he was

so you had a different view in terms of what was going on with this crash jim you said earlier on

so i was insinuating that perhaps it smacked a little bit of desperation but you have a different

view i don't think it was desperation you know i think that

outager

thought on she would be faster into that corner and it caught him out because on she was checking

up we were still pretty early into into the into the into the race at that point um you know it

you know we only gone about four laps i think on she was playing the long game

it was making sure he got everything up to up to snuff and that section of track was

really slippery even in the moto gp race that part of the track was really slippery i think

on she was just tentative

and he was just more tentative than what outager thought he was going to be so it outager closed

the ground quicker than he thought he was going to and that required him to kind of go for a little

more front brake which i think started the problem because then the front kind of slipped and he let

off of it now he's trying to save it now the back end's coming around he's pivoting it then he just

it just got away from him there i don't think it was desperation it's possible it was desperation

but i didn't think so when i looked at it i don't think it was desperation it was desperation

i still don't think it either i just think it was the closing rate was just there just on she was

not going as fast through that section and if you look at the previous couple laps on she was losing

a little bit of ground in that section i mean if you think about it from the gp standpoint like

marquez was dominant through that reverse corkscrew and jorge martin you know who now gets to see

marquez's data said dude i'm losing like four tenths there i don't know how he does it i don't

know how he goes through it that fast

so there was something more it was more to meet racetrack just the conditions i don't think it was

you know outger had been announced that he was going to ride at gersini he really at that point

i'm not so sure that you don't necessarily want to go out on a bang but it just didn't smack

desperation for me that's my choice yeah yeah no perfectly valid and quite possibly that's

the way it was i mean it's a bossy theory versus a calyx through those

turns as well they have slightly different approaches as chassis through there and as

you say i mean it's slightly reminiscent of what would come and and that we will come to in terms

of banya and alex marquez i suppose these things happen so quickly and with all the time to sort of

think about it in retrospect it's easy to come to conclusions but the reality is that these things

happen in an absolute split second so

maybe just overcooked it was kind of caught out as you say jim i mean clearly

what was very awful obvious from the kind of camera view was that that rear end came around

on it really quickly and there's only one outcome really from that and it was a nasty crash actually

it was good that he was able to get up and walk away from that relatively unscathed i presume

i mean we didn't really see or hear much more about it but um yeah just what an odd year i was

having really and i i guess from his point of view the end of the season can't really come

soon enough really and then you can just hopefully settle into a slightly calmer

slightly less pressurized inaugural campaign in moto gp anyway yeah interesting nixon and arbolino

have like a 1.1 second lead on the chasing pack of lopez moreira and onchu roberts would then punt

vietti off at turn 16. roberts would then punt vietti off at turn 16. roberts would then punt vietti off at turn 16.

now my first thing was like wow i wonder if roberts is going to get a penalty for this the only

real view that we saw of it was the onboard of the rear camera the camera on the tail section

of vietti's bike that's facing forward and roberts does really just ram it on in there

i felt like that was a racing incident and i didn't think it deserved a long lap penalty but

it did get a penalty which given the pill given

what happens in the next race i gotta look at that as an inconsistency among the stewarding

for this one so i was not i you know look it wasn't going to affect robert's race like he

wasn't anywhere near the front wasn't going to be near near the front and so again roberts

has another opportunity when garcia is nowhere to gain points and has completely just either run a

streak of bad luck or is just that's just his maximum velocity they can do and you know

i think there's a way to look at is there are good riders who win a race or two

then there are great riders who win lots of races and but maybe not a championship and

then there's the championship winning riders who are fast who win races and win championships and

they're sort of that elite group of eliteness you know the elite of the elite if you will the alien

to use maybe a better term but they maximize everything even if it's not everything that's

available yes agreed if you're not i mean they'll just take the maximum they can get all the time

relentlessly yep uh garcia got a long lap penalty uh you know basically he doesn't he

just pulls it off calls it a day shows up there on you wound up being like all over lopez at

towards the end of the race

roberts gets the long lap for a response for riding so his fifth place was gone which would

have been good for him he wound up coming back out in eighth just by the virtue of having to

go through the longest long lap that exists anywhere in racing yeah so that was painful

to watch just good lord but you dixon is never really headed at this point in fact he kind of

started to pull a lead there at the end uh you know he starts to get the gap and basically dixon

goes on to take a win fantastic race by jake i think this sequence of jake that we've seen over

the last two three weeks is the jake we would have seen all season long except for the you know

the bad luck of the injury that started at the beginning of the year arbolino would then be

second in the race onchu would get to the podium which was amazing for him just to be there and

then you had alonzo then gonzalez chantra ramirez ayagura then bender

vietti salach sasaki bautist go vandergerberg and then mario agi taking home the last point in

that race anything for the race rich before we talk about where we are in the championship with

these guys uh well you seem to slightly fortuitously skate over the fact that roberts

smashed himself up on the last lap against his teammate ramirez that's what did you make of that

oh well stupidity apparently there's not a lot of love loss between the two of them

roberts served his long lap rightly or wrongly he came out immediately behind his teammate ramirez

and they then went on for what two or three laps i guess at that stage yeah it was on the last lap

to take lumps out of each other and it resulted in again i don't want to overstep the boundaries

of what i know versus what i kind of suspect but roberts looked like an angry rider at that point

how can we say this charitably i think that was an ambitious move on the last lap and yeah i mean

a bit like aldega really it just all went wrong very very quickly didn't it and he had a quite a

big crash was lucky not to injure himself worse than he might or might not have done i don't know

how he was but he looked okay let's say but that's kind of game over really i think psychologically

given the track house thing i mean talking about riders being affected by what's been going on

off track so yeah i kind of you know i do i do genuinely feel sorry for joe roberts but as i

said earlier on i see him very much in this kind of vietti dixon um canette i mean where the hell

connect goes from this weekend long term who who can say i mean he's just so inconsistent he's very

very fast but i mean that was a horror show on the lap one from

so yeah i feel for joe but i mean i don't know really what else there is to say other than

a couple more seasons maybe if he's lucky in moto too and then probably

america maybe while superbike can't see the motor gp thing ever happening as indeed i think probably

would be the case for jake dixon which you know i say is a brick with a heavy heart because we have

like the americans we have or the united states americans we have nobody representing us in

the gp and that's a you know a big shame yeah everything you said about joe's second crash is

correct it was it was a desperate rider trying to get back to any kind of points for

a you know a mistake of his own making or a stewarding mistake take take it for what it's

worth either way you put yourself in that position to begin with because guess what you could have

been third in silverstone you threw it away think where you'd be now joe anyway you should know that

third track is won by being consistent week in week out week in week out

and you have not been able to accomplish that his time in the moto gp paddock is now limited

he has a ride for next year with american racing i don't see him doing any better this next year

than he is this year and after that he's gonna be because i think joe will be 28 next year

so that's getting long in the tooth when a lot of people are 21 22 getting onto a moto gp bike

not to say that it can't happen but i think everybody sort of made their

moves for who they want and he's not on anybody's list anymore yeah despite what his passport says

so then the question is where does he go is he going to go over and join

gerloff and and you know world superbike maybe i mean you know he seems to

joe seems to enjoy europe where most of the other american riders don't really gel with it

maybe because he's california maybe because he can speak spanish fluently i'm not sure

just

it's just different but joe could come back and race in moto america and then we'd have the old

guys club because bobby a gagne uh heron and him would all be almost all of them would be 30 or

older by then so really interesting what skyler was saying and i'm super interested for your

off-season show about motor america that you hinted at maybe doing because you know as skyler

said motor america as good as it is in terms of that top sort of five or six

guys none of them are going to be around for a great deal longer and you know where is the talent

in terms of motor gp route anyway where's the talent coming from in the states and you could

with you know some utility say the same thing in the uk other than the fact that we have a very

dynamic british superbike and all the support classes series in the uk a lot of which talent

goes into world superbike

which as i've said many many times before is kind of criminally and i'm pointing this one at

dawner criminally kind of under promoted underfunded whatever you want to say i personally

think you know when you look at world superbike it is a great series and it should be much much

better than it is and i sort of lay the blame for that at dawner's door because they're in charge

they're the kind of the serious rights holder but anyway parking that's one side the brits

have a route to world championship stardom through there whereas i mean yeah okay you've got girl off

and you know i know garnier uh showed up twice seasons in the in the sort of the honda camp but

you know the honda was not in a good position i mean they're not in a good position now but

they were worse then so it looks a bit grim for kind of american riders in certainly from a motor

gp standpoint doesn't it jim because where you're going to be in the future you're going to be in the

yeah where's the next superstar coming from don't know where's the next nikki hayden

don't know because i mean that's the last guy that you had and i mean that was 2006 i mean

that's a long time ago now when he was world champion at least anyway well i've always felt

i i consider speeds the last american champion because he had the 2009 superbike championship

and speeds probably would have won moto gp just he got stuck in the lynn jarvis train now it's

that bustle let's not go there let's just say lynn jarvis and i are not christmas card friends okay

i'm just putting that way speeds kind of was so beaten up with his shoulder injuries and stuff

that it just would pop out yeah his shoulder was done it was anyway hey uh let's try to get

through this so georgia garcia no it's okay sergio garcia has scored no points so he's on

still on 162 iagura collected a few points

to bid on 150 he's only 12 behind alonzo uh alonzo lopez is only 30 29 behind and then roberts is

32 behind but roberts is you know he's wasted his opportunities to be where augura is dixon if he can

keep this run of form going and if garcia can't figure out the new bosco cora i give jake a chance

you know in the writers that you mentioned there i would take dixon out of that i think he has way

more than he can keep an eye on but he's a great athlete he's met of his desire and everything

i think is he's an outstanding player to look at and i think he's gonna do managing some things

well k cane is another great player you know k cane has he's one of kind of a strong dribbler

why is he what's that last and lastơno is obviously good to watch because he's got

so many unbeatable looks and i think he is looking strong towards the end growing up

show-up show-up fitness than canette then the eddie then roberts than anybody else i think please

I don't know that I can say that he's an obviously fully deserving person but i don't know exactly how he ages

that's been passed over but his form at the moment if there were some seats open as we went into this

last third of the season might get attention of one or two teams but there isn't any space left

in motor gp that's my point so i just think he's gonna miss out but there's no doubt i mean i think

roberts is kind of probably blown his season out a little bit now yeah lopez is sort of very up and

down and aguirre is injured so for me it's i think jake is a genuine chance in terms of this

year he is a genuine title contender now because if the boss is kind of starting to lose its

advantage and if the riders for one reason or another are slightly you know pegged back through

injury or psychological things or whatever yeah i mean if jake keeps winning or podiuming for the

rest of the season

which he looks like he could do 43 points is not that big of a gap particularly if the guys at the

front currently you know in terms of garcia and aguirre start to shed big points you know that

could turn around pretty quickly so i've i've got high hopes for jake dixon at the moment but i'm

keeping my keeping my enthusiasm under control i understand uh let's see we were at the dixon on

43 behind out of yours

behind who knows what's going to happen there then it's uh vietti uh gonzalez connect and

arbolino and that is the championship standings there from moto too it's the best championship

by far you know so we shall see anyway okay let's get to moto gp and get through the this

one's easier to go through there's not quite as much there oh a lot to talk about not a whole

lot to talk about there but anyway yeah if we look at the first qualifying session uh bender

acosta digia and and bascinini and miller are all in there now uh aco he was quick early

then miller got on top of it now we got new tires and the cost just blast past and he gets there

but uh bender and acosta move on miller sort of was the odd man out in that sequence so that's

how they get to the second session you had that heavy rain the question was could mark who had

been dominant in every practice session led every time you had that heavy rain you had that heavy

rain could he win the pole position and could he do it well basically he got a little bit of a

break because mr pole man himself mark uh jorge martin threw it down the road at turn five on a

front end tuck again greasy track because now these guys are qualifying early in the morning

wet patches very narrow groove and jorge winds up tucking the front he's gone it was mark marquez

and acosta and benyaya they were they were now on new tires those three guys were the

fastest from the first half or whatever but mark marquez would go on to take pole position his 94th

pole and then acosta would be second so it's like oh the magic of acosta has suddenly reappeared

been rekindled something has changed and he's he's back into the game benyaya got third and

immediately was like oh i don't know as long as it rains tomorrow we're gonna have a terrible time

with the start like okay martin was fourth he got back on his other bike and uh would be fourth

and alex marquez would be fifth morbidelli was sixth that's how the first two rows would be

going off for the sprint later that afternoon so the question then becomes what the heck is going

to happen in the sprint could mark do it could he win a sprint we've seen him on the podium the

sprints but you know what's going to happen here and the bigger question was what was going to

happen with with benyaya's start because they were you know tardazzi and everybody was very

concerned about them starting on the dirty side of the race

track and it remained to be see what would happen well marquez got the whole shot as expected

then it was followed by martin and acosta and then alex marpa alex marquez a leash would go down at

turn one and zarco would crack you know we didn't i didn't say this but a shout out to zarco

on the very difficult honda he was in the top 10 he didn't have to come through q q1 to get there

he was the he was the first time a honda had made it to directly to the second qualifying session

is zarco finding something in setup is honda getting somewhere who knows well i'm just saying

that you know perhaps maybe with zarco they are going to get somewhere and perhaps there is light

at the end of the tunnel although i still think the tunnel is very long very dark and it's going

to take a lot of effort for them to get out of it if they can at all until we get rules changes in

27 yeah anyway yeah morbidelli would fall at turn nine and he would be in the top 10

he would go down benyaya had you know the terrible start he ran wide at turn five uh that

would let alex marquez and olivera get by benyaya was just having a terrible time it seemed as though

he had like no rear grip he could get no drive he couldn't get anything going um bender and benyaya

would have a battle there and they would rage back and forth uh who was going to get what where

so they had a bit of a ding dong back and forth which was kind of nice to see uh benyaya it was

very obvious he had zero faith in the front tire of that motorcycle zero absolute zero he was no

way no how did he think that was ever going to be he was ever going to have any confidence to go

fast there which was not a good thing to come out of that sprint race and have no confidence in your

machine considering you know you're gonna have to do this all again tomorrow and the threat of

rain overnight was greater than what it was the previous night so like oh okay this is not looking

good for benyaya um even quattroraro got by benyaya which you know that's who would have thought the

yamaha would pass the factory ducati but it did but mark marquez would win the sprint martin rode

within himself which was a good thing to finish second uh and take nine points acosta got a podium

that was really great then it was alex marquez olivera brad bender bastionini who also got by

benyaya because benyaya would wind up being ninth uh quattroraro was sandwiched between the two

factory ducatis and bezeki was the final uh guy in 10th so that was a sprint the question i think

really out of this was what was going to happen overnight was it going to rain and could mark do

the thruple that was really what everybody was wondering could he win a race could mark win that

and that was the big question anything you want to add there on the sprint real quick rich i mean

it wasn't particularly compelling no watching as i think we've said for a lot of motor gp this year

the one thing i felt compelled to tweet about after the race because i did actually watch it

on my mobile phone when i was away at the weekend well i had horrible signal so it kept buffering

but what the hell is going on with the tv direction it kind of i i bitch and moan about

the time to time and it was particularly egregious so we uh zaka went down we never saw how or why or

what well the daily went down we didn't really see why or how or what and then you know the sort of

the crowning turd in the water pipe as far as i was concerned was on the final turn when banyaya

is battling for that single point or whatever it was for ninth place against bezeki final that

final turn they're side by side going into that final long left-hander

and the direction cuts away to look at marquez he's already gone across the line and he's kind

of slowing down and waving to the crowd and i just think what happened to the little picture

in picture thing let's at least look you know if there's racing going on somewhere down the field

which is something of a rarity in terms of moto gp but not i mean it applies to motor 2 and motor

3 as well then for goodness sake let's see that and if you want to watch marquez waving at the

is very significant and is more significant in terms of the sunday as we'll come on to but

for goodness sake i mean let's at least look at some racing that's going on so i just found that

really frustrating and you know if motor gp wants to appeal to a wider audience particularly once

liberty gets involved and it has to maximize the action when it occurs and you know cutting away

from a race on track to somebody who's actually finished the race is not

for me is not a good strategy for engagement with the excitement of the sport which we all know is

there so for me that was the biggest takeaway and it kind of undermines somewhat mark mackers

having won the sprint because we've all been saying all year can he win a race any race

whether it's a sprint or a grand prix i personally don't see a great big distinction between the two

things but that's just me a race is a race um but yeah i mean it was a fairly

tepid affair wasn't it overall mainly because of marquez's brilliance that has to be said and i

must just say just because i know you probably won't mention it jim but i did because i was

catching up on sunday afternoon and sunday evening i did actually watch the 10 minute

warm-up on sort of catch-up uh playback as well and marquez is so cool because he went out did

one lap on a set of wets just to scrub them in just in case and then he parked it for the rest

of the warm-up rest of the warm-up for the last eight minutes and it's nothing really that warm

up is hardly worth doing it but um that showed his confidence really that he just went out did a

lap and then sat down and waited for the race to come around so the race did come around at what

two o'clock in the afternoon or whatever it was yep so here we go all right let's look at the

actual race i think the idea here was was there going to be a tire management race because we

seen what had happened sort of some of the moto two guys had a problem with the tire management

race because we've seen what had happened sort of some of the moto two guys had a problem with the

problem with the pirelli's kind of chewing on the left side new motor three had a problem with

that as well hey these are michelins are these going to fall prey to the same potential problem

that's there and the question was can marquez win the whole darn thing and we got to remember

because of being paid points in the sprint jorge martin would take a three-point lead

into the race ahead of benyaya because of benyaya's terrible sprint race where he only

gained one point well marquez gets another hole shot surprise surprise

surprise he's on the good part of the track benyaya just has wheel spin again that bike

was sideways it was not going in any which direction i mean a lot of times you saw a lot

of the guys in the in the moto two moto three point their bikes the other way to try to get

towards that groove because it was just so dirty and dusty and crappy that no one could get anything

out of there now i can't imagine why ducati could not have changed how their launch system works to

feather more clutch into it or something but maybe that was a risk they didn't want to take

where they could burn the clutch and they could burn the clutch and they could burn the clutch

and they could burn the clutch and they could burn the clutch and they could burn the clutch and

out of the bike i i don't know how all that all interacts with each other um but you would think

that i mean i almost thought if i was benyaya i would want to have my front right height device

engaged i would want the back end engaged but i wouldn't want anything else i would want to be

able to feather the clutch all the way myself because it looked like each time to me that

just threw the clutch like everybody else does

when it's perfectly dry track and the bike does the rest this is one of those times where you

i don't know maybe it's just the old dirt tracker me going well hey you'd want to slip that thing

off or start in second or do something different right you you knew you had that problem the day

before it was worse rain overnight and you guys didn't do a damn thing to fix it it just it just

i couldn't i couldn't figure it out i'm like how you've opened up a can of worms

here man please please go ahead well let's cast our minds back to oh golly now is it 2004 2005

qatar with rossi out on a scooter oh yeah yeah okay so there's that precedent in terms of they

couldn't really do anything you can't clean the track i i i'm 100 behind that one yeah you are

where you are my my bitch is ducati didn't in my mind you can't clean the track you can't clean

the track you can't clean the track you can't clean the track maybe they did but to mine just

they didn't seem to try to reprogram anything well i would point your attention to mark marquez

in austria last week uh the weekend before where his front ride height device or the what you call

it the um whole shot device didn't engage and the the simple fact that that was not correct

meant that he just sank into the mid pack off the start so that i mean

there is just no room for any deviation from the norm is there and um again because i'd listened to

the race podcast over the last couple of days um the guys on there were saying that on the saturday

on the sprint it looked as if banyan just had wheelspring because of dirt on the track and

that might have in the same way that jorge martin had a very similar thing happen in qatar

last november which he kind of blamed michelin for but he had a massive kind of

spin off the track and it kind of did something to the tire that meant that

it took a while for that to work its way out or to rectify itself let's say

um simon patterson pointed out that on the sunday morning i think it was alex

crivier was doing some demo laps on the nsr 500 and might have been going down the inside of the

track to stay off the racing line that might have put some other stuff on the track

that caused a different problem in terms of the wheel spin that banyan had although

and i can't say this with any great certainty because like most of us i was watching banyan

off the first off position three on the grid at the start i don't know if anybody else saying

sixth or ninth or twelfth i.e the other people on the inside but further back on the grid if

they had massive wheel spin problems but i certainly was aware that banyan did so i i don't

wonder if it was just one of those kind of perfect storms of everything going wrong for banyan this

weekend you know and it's just a bit of an outlier kind of weekend and he just has to

chalk it down to experience i mean obviously things will get worse in the races we'll come

to in a minute um he just has to move on to his home run where i strongly suspect he will

pick up a lot of points and get back to normal the what he would get what do you get for a sprint do

you get uh

you get 12 for a 12 so yeah 24 plus a plus 50 is 72 points in there or something yeah yeah i i

wouldn't put it past it anyway he will score a lot of points unless something really old happens

i mean whether who knows likely is it but no not this time of year anyway so marquez has that whole

shot banyan has got the wheel spin so it's basically marquez it's a cost it's alex marquez

martin who had some trouble getting offline then morbid deli oliver and banyan banyan is seventh okay

so oliver goes down to turn 16 not sure why again bad tv direction we never did see that crash

that happened then uh martin and the cost or martin and acosta go after each other at the

course crew and they're both sort of like after each other they're they're off the track a little

bit they're like you can tell that they're trying to tiptoe around each other and not really fall

off because they know that they're going to win so they're going to win so they're going to win

they're not on the line and tires are going to be dirty and everything but martin does get by

and that puts martin in second puts acosta in third so it's like well okay maybe acosta is

going to get you know a podium finish out of this which would be very nice to see um

you know but alex marquez would get by acosta and in fact costa would start to go

backwards at this point um watcher would fall off at turn five which let's not under let's

that is an incredibly difficult corner that is probably one of the trickiest corners

of any moto gp corner on any of the circuits we currently race on because you're carrying a very

high amount of speed out of four heading to five you're on the side of the tire and you're required

to brake and downshift at the same time and you're going left so it's your feet are not where they

really want them to be either and that and on a track that was like ice because of the

conditions we were on that turn was insanely you know hard incredibly difficult in the first

part that was one of the things when i was road racing i could never ever do correctly was to be

going left and then have a very short amount of time to straighten the bike downshift or whatever

and go left again incredibly difficult never could figure it out but that's why i did what

i did and why i sit here now because i couldn't figure that out don't be too hard on yourself so

well you know there's a lot of things that i think after i started you know how actually

watching moto gp and listening to engines and tactics a lot of things that i wish i would have

known then now kind of a thing that it would be you know hey i can do this but anyway uh

can i just say yeah jim as an extremely mediocre motorcycle rider on the roads in the uk which the

roads in the uk are bloody terrible in terms of potholes and crap on them and

but the degree to which these riders brake on the side of the tire into turns all the way to the

apex and then crack open the throttle i know they've got a lot of electronics and stuff but

god that's hard to do i mean you know you touch a brake on a bike when you're on the turn and it

just wants to sit up so i mean just the physical strength and the yeah hats off to these guys and

the fact that more people didn't turn at the turn sorry crash at turn five as quattro did

it's just amazing to me because you know that is as you say that is one of the probably one of the

trickiest turns on the whole calendar and anyone that rides a bike and has kind of spooked themselves

in a turn and suddenly hit the brake by accident or as a reaction to something and it's the worst

thing you can possibly do you just have to lean harder because the grip is there but yeah it's

just phenomenal to me that what these guys managed to do and i don't even have the first clue as to

what they're doing because they are as you said they're just like they're just like they're just

the elite of the elite so yeah it's amazing that you don't see more crashes

yeah it was i was amazed at how crash free it actually was to be honest yeah but alex marquez

would move his way to third uh morbidelli runs was you know sort of gaining on a costa with ben

yaya and you know morbidelli would go wide at five and then he ben yaya would be would go back

to fifth uh because of bender there and then he would go back to fifth and then he would go back

well then alex marquez starts to slide back and we we had a pretty good battle for four thousand

between a costa and ben yaya it was good racing they were trying each other the costa goes wide

at 16 and ben yaya goes by then ben yaya's catching you know alex marquez for third and then

you know we got 10 to go and it's mark marquez it's martin it's alex so we're everybody's talking

hey another podium for the brothers you know this time it's in spain and da da da da

and ben yaya is next you know he's he's running fourth and a costa and bender and then you know

again there's a gap here right like more alex marquez is starting to go backwards slightly

ben yaya is starting to put it together and he's coming forward but with seven to go ben yaya was

actually on alex marquez and then we get to this to six to go and we get to turn 12 now you come

left-hander followed by 11 which is nothing more than lean the bike over and go through it's kind

of like road road america with the carous out of the carousel and through the kink the kink is a

turn but it really isn't a turn kind of a thing and then alex's just goes wide he just makes the

mistake difficult conditions again so he makes a mistake he runs wide he's starting to come back

on but then yaya stays online is underneath of him alex then come the two of them as they

as ben yaya exits on the correct racing line as alex is trying to come back onto the correct

racing line the two of them just bang into each other and then they get tangled together

both of them go down and the scary part is ben yaya is actually under alex's bike for pretty

good distance as they topple off into the gravel trap then it's like wow this is now carnage because

now we have ben yaya

out of this race and is ben yaya injured because he stayed in the gravel trap for a long time

before he moved um you know i didn't think he was

gravely injured or you know it wasn't like oh it's his is it like a rainy thing where his back

was broken or something like that i didn't think that i just thought maybe a foot peg may have got

him you know i was expecting like a puncture wound of some kind or something like that just

based on how they kind of went into the gravel together but ben yaya eventually did come to his

feet he did get himself together i'm sure he had the wind completely knocked out of him but he did

go to the medical center for checkups and as far as i know ben yaya is just a bruised and battered

puppy and that's really all that he is but then it was like okay well what's going to happen to

alex marquez you know these guys were fighting for the same piece of racetrack you know alex

basically wasn't in a position where he would be quote unsighted like he couldn't

see ben yaya coming for my take and ben yaya kind of knew that alex was out there somewhere

because he watched him go off because there was enough distance between the two of them for ben

yaya to actually see that happen so it's like okay i wonder who the stewards are going to

appoint blame to each other well they declared that one a racing incident and i'm going like

and your reasoning was that difficult track conditions followed by the fact that the two

riders were fighting for the same piece of tarmac resulted in both riders

going down and going off the track so therefore no further no further incident nothing nothing to

see here people move on wait a second joe roberts and ben and vietti are going for on a difficult

track looking for the same piece of ground and literally you give joe roberts a long left penalty

for it i'm like the the two things in my mind don't add up and that's my opinion on it and i'm

not trying to be favoritist as an american and joe is an american i really didn't see that as

any more than good hard racing between the two of them

just like i can look at what alex and ben yaya had as good hard racing and these things happen

yet somehow you know you know i really thought for sure that they were not going to let alex off the

hook and that they were going to give him some three grid penalty or something for knocking the

world champion down because we seem to like to punish outcomes as opposed to uh actual incidences

and what's there what what's your take on all this one rich because it is the talking point of this

season yeah and it might well end up being the talking point of the season let's not forget but

i don't know jim it's a real can of worms isn't it i mean you might take the view that

as i think i do that i mean i think i'm just about on balance the race direction

or the stewards rather called the banyan marquez one correctly by which i mean they probably called

the roberts vietti one incorrectly because these things will happen in close combat

i think there is a slight difference however in the sense that the roberts vietti tangle i think

happened at the end of the back straight didn't it yes and so you would argue that roberts was

in no way impeded or unsighted when he made that move on vietti and they made contact and vietti

went off it didn't crash neither of them crashed but it did cost vietti time so i can sort of see

why roberts caught the long last time and i think there is a slight difference however in the sense that

that for that i think the banyan alex marquez one is a bit different i mean first of all

alex marquez didn't go off the track he went wide but he only went onto the curb so he didn't go off

the track and and he obviously didn't look behind him so he didn't know how close behind him banyan

was so marquez did what any rider would do in that situation and he got back online as quickly

as he could and he went for the apex of the next turn

banyan saw the opportunity and went for the outside move as he would do and there was no

quarter given by either rider so what was interesting to me was if you looked at it from

the front view versus the rear view you would take a completely different opinion on the crash

because on one view it kind of really looked as if marquez just kind of almost deliberately rode

into him whereas from the other perspective it kind of looked like he was going to crash

like well maybe they were both slightly unsighted and they were just going for it

to you know because they're in a race i mean that's what they do so i personally after thinking about

it a lot because i knew i knew we were going to be talking about this one a fair bit i genuinely

do think it was a 50 50 job and at the end of the day they both fell off you can argue about the

fact that the stewards kind of um go after

outcomes rather than intent and because both of them fell off they both kind of

popped a penalty and actually for i mean banyan was extraordinarily lucky not to get

badly injured well and marquez because marquez actually had a pretty nasty you know tumble

himself so he was lucky not to be injured banyan with the bike on top of him particularly with the

rear wheel as close to his head as it was i mean had that tire kind of interacted with his crash

given the friction

oh yeah the tire would would give when it's spinning on a you know on a crash that doesn't

really bear thinking about it so overall i think once you kind of get over the fandom aspects of

this in terms of who you support who you don't the fact that both of them walked away relatively

unscathed is kind of the big win out of this and who cops a penalty who doesn't is kind of

ultimately not that big of a deal but banyan you know again he lost a lot of points didn't he

there and he was certainly going to be a bit of a problem but i think it's a good thing that

he was going to get third and it was just unfortunate what happened but i just do think

it was a racing incident yeah i completely agree if you're going to be really really kind of

pointed about it i'd say possibly 55 60 percent alex marquez and banyan possibly slightly the

innocent party in both of it but banyan could well have predicted in full view of what was

going on in front of him that alex marquez would go for the corner so i think it's a good thing that

i think for me that makes it a 50 50 and i think the steward's got that one correct i agree this

one was correctly called by the stewards i can argue that the roberts one is not correct by the

stewards um but it is what it is it is racing and these things happen this is sort of kind of

smacks of banyan escaping from catalonia having been hit by brad bender and not having only a deep

bruise on his

his thigh or his lower leg or whatever it's sort of the same thing banyan has a very bad crash

that he then is very lucky to have escaped any kind of an injury too so it's like well

okay i guess banyan is gonna have one crash per year he almost gets injured to be able to carry

on to win a championship because it's that way um but you know uh that's the incident but now

it's it's it's what you expect then is the fact that banyan is going to be able to win a championship

that mark marquez wins it's 1043 days since his last victory in a moto gp race not a sprint let's

be clear about that martin rides home to second which was good on him which now he has a 23 point

lead in the world championship acosta guts up gets a podium sort of by luck but he did he did

write the ship you've got to give acosta credit he did go backwards he righted the ship he got

back in it and he kind of used he kind of used banyan as

a as a tool to help him get further up which is what a smart rider would do uh bender then

is the second ktm to cross the line then bastionini morbidelli bezeki dj antonio rins

aleish takanakagami uh augusto fernandez zarco with a 13th mirror with a 14th and miller

15th i you know i don't know what happened jack because he was never on the screen

but that is the race that takes us to the championship now martin is on

99 he's as i said he is 23 points ahead of benyaya uh we're going to benyaya's backyard

yeah i don't see martin winning anything there but you know at worst if if everything were to

play out i think uh you'd only have five you'd gain eight points a race so even if martin finished

second both times it'd be 16 points that he would get um essentially gain on martin

but it's going to cut it down to to essentially he was 16 seven seven point championships or

something some point 17 points something like that this one's going all the way to the end

this one is going to be yeah oh yeah i think this one's going to i think there's going to be a lot

of back and forth that's going to happen here as we we head through it but marquez as in mark now

is on only 70 points shy of the leader uh until he's third bastionini is he leaped he leapt over

bastionini who had you know he's got a lot of time to do his job and he's got a lot of time to do his job

he's got a lot of time to do his job and he's got a lot of time to do his job and he's got a lot of

that good run of form there for a smidge by one point and then acosta is now fifth in the

championship he's the best ktm because he's ahead of bender then vinyal's alaysh you know it's weird

that vinyal is is ahead of alaysh but he is then dj antonio and then alex marquez is 10th in the

championship a wacky and crazy race just because total elation because marquez won i mean this is

one of the greatest comebacks

in motorcycling history it's on that george foreman um tyson not form who was it you said

richard tyson mohammed ali george ali ali foreman fight right it's in that vein i propose that it's

in the same vein as uh mick doing having almost lost his leg almost lost his right leg to come

back and win five titles and on in on the trot um but you could make the argument that marquez's

competitors are vastly more talented than what um doing title challengers were at the time

the 500s were a nasty beast and it took a special person to ride them and it did take a special

person though you know again crevier was 99 world champion some 25 years ago but also doing

broke his shoulder too at that time so it took crevier

basically three and a half years to figure out how to ride a 500 as fast as doing did so

i i don't know it's still it's a phenomenal thing that marquez had the problem he had with his arm

i mean good grief they rotated the bone 30 degrees and put it back together again and he's won a moto

gp race it does it is an ominous shot across the bow of ben yaya of look buddy if i get on the same

track as you have you're going to have me to deal with as well as martine and that's going to be wild

although martine being on an aprilia is going to really throw a wrench in things next year so

this is just mouth-watering to say the least i i know we've got to wrap this up jim so i'll be

brief i mean i admire mark marquez i've i've i've always been very clear just the fact that i've

never been a huge mark marquez fan

um i mean i'm not really a huge fan of anybody in particular i kind of like alex the most but

i i don't know why just probably because of the suzuki thing going back in wiles

but what i particularly admire about mark marquez as well as his kind of coming back from that

injury which let's be honest that was a career-ending injury and it would have put most

people out permanently so his you know his his

will to win and to continue is is really impressive but not only that i mean and this

is what for me distinguishes him from most other riders is that he kind of he went through that

incredibly difficult period with honda when he came back which kind of culminated in that famous

sort of saxon ring um nadir or whatever you want to call it last july august whenever it was

and from there he kind of

bought himself out of his contract okay you can quite rightly say he could easily afford to do it

but he's jumped on another bike and an inferior bike in terms of its specification because we

know the gp23 is way way behind the 24 it's way behind the 23 that ended last season

and he has now won on it and he's got himself the plum position in the work squad for next year so

it's kind of like tick tick tick tick tick all

way along isn't it in terms of job done for him so as much as i kind of find some of his tactics

and some of his behavior i mean what the whole kind of putting his crash army on and dancing

to the dj on the podium thing is about don't get me started on that i just find that kind of i don't

know how to describe it really just kind of like just cheese inducing kind of cringe levels for me

but that's because of my age i suppose i'm just out of tune but putting all that to one side he's

a phenomenal competitor and a phenomenal kind of uh physical kind of yeah i don't know how to

describe it really but it is for me it is genuinely out there with the whole ali foreman

thing that kind of comeback story against the odds it's phenomenal what he's done you know

and nobody should underestimate it and if he jump if that 25 ducati is anywhere close to what we

will be and it will be good let's be honest because you know ducati are just kind of like

honing in on these this current set of regulations he's gonna be hard to contain next year he you

know he does crash a fair bit but he wins a lot when he's on form and he's coming back onto form

so next year is going to be crazy the only other thing i want to say jim before we close this thing

out is aprilia what the hell happened to aprilia i mean i'm surprised we've not

had an email from gary uh this week because i mean maverick parked it up in the race

that's how bad things were now we know the aprilia loves high grip and we were the absolute

opposite of high grip this weekend in aragon there was no grip whatsoever but it was just a

horror show for aprilia so i don't know what to say really i mean i've got maverick still on my

fantasy team i don't know what to say i don't know what to say i don't know what to say i don't

know what to say i don't know what to say a bit of a mistake really because i'm just

hemorrhaging points as a result of that so yeah gary right in give it both barrels because you've

got all the justification to do so at the minute but yeah it was yeah interesting weekend

yeah i think we move on to mizano i think you're i think you said it all correctly i agree with you

100 it is phenomenal to watch this next year will be probably even more phenomenal to see what

happens

looking forward to the double at mizano and see where that all shapes up given the fact that it's

tight and twisty i kind of give and marquez has that boost to having one you got to think he's

going to be in the mix at least in the podium somewhere the question is can he run interference

for benyai and take martin don't know it's going to be interesting to watch gonna be great fun

uh for the weekend there i think that's it for the show rich um write us in as jacob has at

motopod at motopodcast.com and i'll see you next time bye bye

dot com you can connect with rich at richard jowd on instagram or instagram threads twitter x

whatever the kids are calling it today i'm matt moto rgv same three things and with that i will

remind you all to ride safe here we go

rm

land

Thank you.