MotoGP Misano: They Can’t All Be Classics

MotoPub proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to MotoPub, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 740. I'm your host Jim McDowell with me as always Richard Jalich from the UK.

Richard, late night for you. Late night for me, a bit of a stinking cold, having been in very hot Paris last week and somehow I've managed to come back with sniffles but never mind, we've got some racing to talk about. That's right, I always get us motivated. But first of all, we want to thank everybody who donates to the show and everybody through PayPal, Kevin Kovic, Nick Saban, Alan Fleming and everybody at Patreon, Garish, Steve, Monk, Paul Lang, Hudson, Kai Cooper, Darren Andrews, Rob Fritas, Kyle Clark, Jacob Rora and Jeremy Bernich. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show for those of you who don't subscribe to this show, if you can, please do.

If you can't, go over to where you get your favorite, where you get this podcast, leave us a review. That will put us back to the top of the list and maybe more people can find us. And with that out of the way, oh I did forget Dennis, sorry Dennis. Don't forget Dennis. Don't forget Dennis.

He's there. Dennis, I apologize, you're there, you're always there. And without that, I guess we'll go to some listener feedback that's come in, Rich. So I'll let you roll with that. Okay, do we want to do the long one or the short one first?

Let's do the short one first. Okay, so this is just a quick, what's the way to put this, well an alternative opinion which came in from listener TzJohn on X or Twitter, depending on how comfortable you are with that recent change. So yeah, John basically saying, gents, re episode 740. In fact, I think this might be episode 741, Jim, but- Are we 741? Yeah, so re 740, sorry, he can't agree with us in the sense that he thinks that Dennis Onchoo definitely did deserve the penalty 100% for that clash with Munoz in the last corner.

John goes on to say, yeah, of course, Robin is racing, as we always like to say, but he felt that that was an avoidable collision that Onchoo kind of was steaming in there, might have anticipated and known what was going to happen. So yeah, I mean, all opinions are valid and welcome on this show. So I mean, we called it one way, Jim, I think we probably haven't massively changed our mind, but yeah, John sees it a completely different way and that's fair enough. I mean, about with the feedback. Yeah, that's great.

I mean, that's racing. I think that's what everybody wants is a different opinion of something. And you know, everybody has the right to see it their way. I think, like you said, you and I don't think we're going to change our opinion on it. But you know, it's free to John to have that.

And that's what makes racing great is everybody sees it differently. Yeah, I mean, Onchoo, just let's remember, did go steaming through that corner. So having seen a bit of a melee in front of him. Yes, I suppose there is a completely fair argument as John is saying that he could very well have expected that one of those bikes will come back onto the line and a touch would ensue. But I suppose in the heat of the moment, last lap, last corner, everybody's out for themselves.

So that's the sort of thing that's going to happen from time to time. Anyway, that was that was teaser. John, thanks for that. And then I think Gary gave us some feedback based on TV. So how do we want to break that one down?

How long have we got? Because Gary decided as he likes to do to sort of really sock it out a little bit. So he says you specifically asked for listeners comments, apologies for ranting and so on and so on. So this was to do with the discussion we had about the aftermath of the Banyai crash and the coverage, which created quite a lot of talk online, particularly on social media, of course, about whether it was overstepping the mark in terms of being a bit too voyeuristic, particularly with regards to team members and Banyai's girlfriend and sister in particular, who had the cameras sort of in their face a bit when they were waiting around at the medical center to see how he was. I haven't sort of read this and memorized it.

I think basically what Gary is saying that in the bad old days, stuff was televised and it was very much sensationalized. He refers at some length to the crash that happened in the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, which I think was Lorenzo Bandini, if memory serves me correctly, where he crashed on the hay bales, the car caught on fire. I mean, obviously there was fuel everywhere in those days and it was just a disaster. It was a helicopter hovering above shooting footage, which was fanning the flames and so on. So I don't know, Jim, I don't know what your thoughts on this are, whether you've got a different view on it, having thought on it for a week or so.

You know, having had a time to think about it in reflect, lots of things have been sensationalized on TV in motorsport. I'm not old enough to remember that crash in 67 at Monaco. However, I am old enough and remember watching when Senna was tragically killed at Imola in 94. And that got replayed a lot, especially, you know, the impact, the crash, all that. It does seem to be that centralized.

I think it was only a couple of years prior that Gerhard Berger went off and pick at the same corner in a Ferrari, but the angle was the angle of incidence to the wall was different in Berger's car simply, you know, was in flames. If you want to go even, it hasn't gotten worse. I think that's what Gary's saying is it's gotten worse. And he's probably right because if you want to think back to, oh gosh, I don't know when this was, it was, I want to say three years ago at the Formula One race in not Abu Dhabi. It wasn't, is it Qatar?

It wasn't Qatar. Oh, the Grosjean crash. The Grosjean crash. Bahrain, I think, wasn't it? Yes, it was Bahrain.

Grosjean's car goes into the barriers. It is flaming and the cameras never cut from that. And you watch Romain come out of the flames, which is horrifying to say the least. So having thought about what Gary said, I think Gary has a couple other instances of this too. I think I'm now in the camp of, yeah, that's a bit much.

I think it was, hey, here's a replay. Oh, crap. Ben Yaya has been hit in the legs. And that's that. We're done with this now and it shouldn't be shown again.

I mean, I don't think we can fault anyone for what happens on live TV. That's kind of what happened with Cimicelli. That was just caught live and it went out. There was no way to pause that or to cut to a different camera angle or anything of that nature. Now with those things, you're never going to stop that.

But I do think they went overboard with, Neo, thinking about it going back, I think they went overboard with cameras and faces of Ben Yaya's girlfriend, his sister, the team, everybody else. But I hate to say it, but they have a saying in the news, if it bleeds, it leads. So it's just a way to market themselves. And it shouldn't be, but it is. The other side of the coin is that good grief, that's why people went to the Roman Coliseum to watch things like that.

Somehow there is a macabre sense of they're there for the bad. I think that shows up a lot in racing here in America, in NASCAR, which is a stock car series that runs on very high speed oval tracks, that they run around in a pack and they're always referring to, quote, the big one. Hey, we're waiting for the big one. And it seems as though that's what many people are waiting for is this big huge crash that inevitably seems to happen no matter what people do to change the rules, to keep the cars apart, they come back together again. But again, that's just live TV and something's, you know, cars slipping over.

That's just what happens. But yeah, I do think it's gone too far. Before we just go into a couple of the other bullet points from Gary's rather long email, but yeah, great email as always. I mean, my view, having thought about this a bit more, Jim, is that I think Dorna have, or whoever's responsible for the coverage, but let's say Dorna is a general commercial holder of the rights and the TV access and all the rest of it. I think they have actually kind of upped their game and improved things in the sense that, yeah, you can't stop what happens live because it's live and it happens in two or three seconds or less in most cases.

So there's no way to cut away when something's happening very quickly like that. I think what was a bit egregious about what happened on Sunday was it was quite obvious that Banyai wasn't severely injured, as in critically injured, you know, had been to hit him in the torso or the neck or head, then I don't think we would have seen another shot of anything. But the fact that he was kind of okay, although he might well have had a badly broken leg or two broken legs for all people knew, I think that encouraged them to sort of replay the crash much quicker than they would otherwise do in the modern era. I don't know if you agree with that. And then obviously just to add insult to injury, they then did all the sort of the ambulance chasing and stuff, which did create a lot of backlash.

And I think from my point of view, I think in this day and age, rightly so. I think you're right. I do think that that weighs in it somewhere. I don't know which way it does, but it's a part of it too. Yeah, I think you're right.

I mean, I was trying to think back to like when Simicelli crash, it happened live, you saw it, you knew it wasn't good. But I don't remember them replaying it. No, I'm sure they did. So I don't think they did. You know, I think the more sickening thing was they decided to finish the, no, they did, they can't, I can't remember now they canceled the race, didn't they?

Or did they continue? I can't remember. It's too, too many races. I think they canceled the race. I think they did cancel the race.

Yeah, they thought about it, but then they did cancel the race, which is obviously the right thing to do. So the other point, Jim, the number of people, not Gary, in this particular instance, I don't think, but another people online certainly did mention was that because it is a very quick restart procedure and the riders have to get back quickly to the pits if they've got damaged bikes. So we saw the likes of Zarco and Bizecki and so on rushing to get their stricken bikes up and back to the pits, which happily for them that they did. But then they were kind of sat for five or ten minutes in the pits just whilst things were getting sorted out. And the Banyaya incident was being kind of inverted commas cleaned up and he was being taken to the medical center.

And of course, all of this stuff has been beamed into the garages as well. So the riders have been subjected to these multiple replays of a very serious incident. And not to mention Brad Binder, who obviously was the unfortunate person that just could not avoid Banyaya in that incident. So there is again, and this was obviously a theme that came up in the Formula One crash in Bahrain with Grosjean that you referenced a little while ago. Most of the Formula One drivers were very unhappy about the degree to which that crash was replayed whilst they were in the pits waiting to find out what had happened and obviously getting themselves back in the mental space to restart the race.

So there are many facets to this issue. I guess we shouldn't go on about it too much, but Gary does indeed mention, as everybody forgotten about the Marco Simoncelli incident because nobody seems to mention it. I mean, it was quite some years ago, but we've just been at the Marco Simoncelli Misano race track, haven't we? But what else does he say? Gary pulls me up about my contention that Binder sort of jinked and in doing so kind of avoided a worse collision.

Gary thinks I'm possibly being a bit fanciful in that thought given that Banyaya was kind of spinning or turning on the tarmac at the time. So yeah, I take that point. I mean, just luckily for everybody concerned that he didn't hit him in the torso or higher up. And just finally, because as I say, this is a long email, I wasn't questioning the fact that Bastianini had got a penalty because in modern context, you're always going to get a penalty for causing a five or six-mile bike crash like that. I was simply referring to the fact, I think, if my memory serves me correctly, that Nakagami went piling in that first corner at the same race last year.

If you remember, he kind of had that thing where his visor flipped up and his sort of face virtually planted into the rear tire of somebody. I can't remember who it was now. And several bikes went down. Alex Rins been amongst them. He broke his wrist and Nakagami didn't get a penalty for that incident last year.

So just a bit of inconsistency there again. And was it Gary that was just telling us to shut up about going on about inconsistent penalties? Yes. Fair enough. I think we probably just do need to, I personally, or specifically do need to stop getting quite so aggravated about it because this is just the way that things are.

I mean, there was an absolute corker in the World Super Bikes this weekend in terms of a penalty or a non-penalty, but we might or might not get to that a little bit later on, just briefly. So yeah, long email from Gary and a great email as always. And yeah, keep them coming. All right. Let's move on to the news that has surfaced since the weekend.

It's the weekend started out with sad news on Saturday morning, learning that Mike Trimby, who is known as the man who started the IRTA, International Teams Racing Association, he passed away. I don't know exactly, but it seemed like it was like late Friday night, very early Saturday morning. It was a shock to everyone that he did pass away, which is sad. So arc condolences to his friends, family, everyone in the paddock. Who knew Mike?

Mike did a lot for the riders. He was sort of the guy back in the seventies that sort of was appointed to the head of the riders as Roberts and Spencer. And some of those guys were all battling for safer things. There's a great article in Motor Sports Magazine about Mike and how they transformed the sport. And I think you should read it because he did a lot to make MotoGP what we see it as today.

So it's going to be one of those things where there's going to be that transition of who's going to be this person. And we'll see how that pans out. I think you want to add from Mike there, Rich? Well, I need to share your message of condolence to everybody concerned. I mean, he was a towering figure in metaphorically and literally in the paddock.

I think he was a bike racer originally and then kind of got more into the kind of the behind the scenes stuff. And as you say, he was kind of like a, almost like a cross between a relevant person to mention, I suppose, in this context, Charlie Whiting and Jackie Stewart, who is kind of that technical and safety person and the whole Erta organization was very much, I think, set up to give the riders and the teams a lot more power in terms of rules. And I would imagine definitely in terms of safety, bearing in mind this would have been what in the late 60s through the 70s and into the 80s. I hope I'm not making him older than he was, but certainly into the late 70s and 80s, let's say that for sure. A massive figure in the sport and one whose absence and loss will be felt for a long time to come for sure.

And let's look at the rider silly season. We know another spot in Moto GP has been claimed. Luca Marini will stay at Mooney, VR46. I think that was, I don't think anybody thought that was not going to be a big shock. Yeah.

Not a shock. Yeah. Moving to Moto too. We learned this week that Sean Dillon Kelly was back for the Mazana round, but he was racing for forward racing. Now I didn't find out anything about whether he would be at Ford next year or not.

So that remains to be seen if SDK stays in the Moto GP paddock. I hope he does, but I'm not certain that that's going to happen. Second piece of Moto two news, Diego Moreira will move from Moto three to Moto two and he essentially replaces Joe Roberts at the Italian trans team. So Diego Moreira goes up and since there's now a space open at his old Moto three ride, Ortolla will now go over from his team to the empty helmets team replacing Moreira. So that's there.

Now I think some news just broke in Moto two rich, right? Why don't you tell us that one? Well, sort of top of the tree on the Moto GP.com website was the news confirmed. I would imagine certainly this afternoon, this evening that Celestino Vietti and Dennis Onchu are now confirmed to be the riders in the IO Moto two team next year. Now that's significant in the sense that Onchu comes up for Moto three, as we've been saying and hoping that he would do.

Significant that Vietti comes across, you know, he's still the bit of the rough diamond, isn't he? Will Lackey, IO work that magic with him? Probably equally as significant though is that Pedro Acosta will not be in that team next year. I mean, again, that's not a huge shock. It's just that we don't know where he's going to be yet.

We had a few exchanges on WhatsApp over the weekend, Jim, on this one. So I guess we've got a few ideas on how this might shake out. Assuming it is now correct that despite their massive efforts to make it happen, let's say KTM do not get another two bikes on the grid. So somebody has to go. Correct.

We were sharing some ideas on how that might shake out. No, do we want to share those ideas? You know, it's a limited field now, isn't it? So yeah, you go first. So one of the things we speculated was where's Jack Miller going?

Because his performance this year has been on a slow slope down. So if you take Jack out, you could slip Acosta into that factory KTM seat, put him right next to Bender, who if you look at how Bender rides, you look at how Acosta is riding that Moto two bike, their styles are close to each other. So that may be a better bit. Don't know. But if you do, do you really get rid of Jack?

Well, you could if you politely tell Paul, who is still recovering from very serious crash, right? And he says that he doesn't have the reflex, you know, he's not built back up that muscle memory of reflex for what he's riding. So if that happens to him, do you put Paul into a testing role alongside Pedro maybe and slide Miller back there? Or do you just remove Paul and move him to a testing spot and slide Acosta into the gas gas team? Take your pick.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say one of those two guys will be replaced by Pedro Acosta. Figure it out for yourself at that point. It's sad, but it's what's going to happen. Yeah. Well, I mean, five people in four spots doesn't work.

So somebody's got to give. I don't know. I mean, my speculation I think was that possibly this is time maybe for Paul Spargrove just to step back a bit, maybe do some wild cards. Trouble is he does crash quite a bit and he tends to crash quite big. And so he has been injured quite a lot through his Moto GP career.

I mean, fair play to the guy. I mean, he was Moto two champion a few years back, so he's got real class and pedigree. There's no two ways about that, but he's never really quite got as far in Moto GP, nearly one or a couple of races. And if we think back, but each year that goes by, I think it would be unfair. As I've said, numerous times to cut Augusto Fernandez because, you know, low ish key year, but he's a rookie, Moto two world champion and KTM don't really want to be seen to be continually sacking Moto two world champions that they have brought up through the ranks who only get a year and then they're cut.

I just don't think that's a good look for them at all or their kind of rider program because who knows? I mean, maybe it takes Pedro Costa a year or two to get comfortable on a Moto GP bike. It certainly took him three quarters of a season, if not all the last year with a leg break in there to really start to perform as a Moto two rider, having dominated in Moto three the year before. So, you know, people need a bit of time and both Jack and Paul have had a lot of time in Moto GP. Now, Jack has been a lot more successful in terms of race wins.

So for me, the choice would, whilst it's not obvious, I think, yeah, the question, as you said, Jim, is would they take the risk of slotting Pedro into the full works team next to Binder? Would they want to just give him a slightly softer landing? Although wherever he goes, there's going to be a massive spotlight on him just because of the nature of the sort of character and talent that he is. So that's a big conundrum for them. And surprisingly, we still don't know the answer to it.

I mean, I would imagine they have been frantically trying to figure out some way of getting these extra bikes on the grid. Some thoughts around Mark Marquez still haven't gone away with regards to that little scenario as well. Would Marquez hold enough sway to twist Dawn's arm? You know, that or walk, don't know. But as you said, I think to me last night on WhatsApp, Jim, you know, they've kind of been in a stranglehold of a personality that effectively rules the sport before and quite recently.

So they probably don't want to put themselves in that position again. But we are talking about Mark Marquez, Spaniard, the ultimate world champion. I mean, if he was to walk, it would be a big loss to the sport this soon after Rossi disappearing. But you've got Acosta coming in as the next kind of chosen one. So interesting.

It is. It's going to be very interesting because I think you have to throw Fabio Quattraro into the mix somewhere too. I think Quattraro is vying for a way out of Yamaha. We'll get to the testing at the end of the show, guys. So we can make more comments there.

But you're potentially talking about two established stars of the sport needing to be on better equipment that aren't on very good equipment right now and a new up and coming superstar who's going to go on to submit equipment. So yeah, it's a little mixed up right now in how this plays out and who holds all the cards and who's bluffing and who's not. And he's holding paces high in a full house. I mean, you know, it's going to be interesting. I just want to see how it all pans out.

Well, just before we move off the news, that kind of segues, I suppose, into the other news item that came out yesterday, but is pretty high up the list on the Dornar site, which is that Marquez, Mark Marquez, as we were just talking about, says he has plans A, B and C to consider and that he will make a decision around India, which is just under a fortnight from now, the next round, and will announce what he's going to be doing at the Motegi round in Japan. Now that has potentially some significance given where his current employers are based. So it's a bit of a kind of, what's the word, circus show at the minute, a lot of this. I mean, those weird tweets came out, didn't they, on Friday, which I think was just him kind of putting himself or keeping himself in the shop window and relevant from a social media point of view and just sort of fanning the flames and keeping the spotlight on himself a bit. Because there are other people that have a brighter light on them at the moment and the likes of Mark Marquez have a pretty large ego and don't like losing the limelight.

So I thought it was a bit naughty what he did really and a bit cynical, if I'm honest. Yeah. If he decides the walk from Honda, announcing it at Motegi is a serious smack in the face. Yeah. If he had in his contract anywhere that he gets the motorcycles he's one world titles on, he's not getting those bikes.

No, deal off. Deal off. Deal is gone like Valentino Rossi style there. So you can kiss that goodbye. The other thing is that it could be extremely anti-combatic that like, hey, I'm finishing out my year on my contract.

We're going to try to make the bike as good as we can, but I'm going to pursue other avenues. It could be that too. No one knows what's going to happen. Again, he keeps himself relevant and we keep speculating and we're not going to get the answer until he decides to tell us an answer. I mean, plan A might be, well, let's not say plan A, but one option is he stays put because obviously for him to leave a year early is going to cost him money because he's got a contract and a big pay and one at that.

There's no room at the end at Yamaha and debatably he wouldn't want to go there anyway. There's no room at the end as far as I can see at Aprilia, certainly not for next year. KTM, well, unless they could get another two bikes on the grid, that's a closed door as well because they're not going to take Marques over Acosta, let's be honest. That really only leaves the Ducati, the sort of the Grissini ride, doesn't it? Well, Grissini and Premac have a ride available because Zarco is left and we don't know who is going to slot into Premac.

Well, I think we have to assume at this point that it's Frankie Morbidelli, but the Grissini ride, okay, there's some symmetry there in the sense that it would be Alex and Mark together and Grissini are a bit more of an independent team in the sense that they're not fully works funded and so they might have a bit more say in terms of which riders that they take. Perhaps Ducati don't, I wouldn't say they don't care, but they might not have ultimate veto on that. So from a marketing point of view, it might help Grissini in terms of attracting sponsorship and stuff. So you can see why that might work, but I still think it'll be at Honda again next year. Although we're going to talk about the test briefly at the end, the signs from yesterday are not great, but we'll get to that.

Is that all the news Rich? I think so. Oh well, just the only other thing was just very briefly World Superbike, Johnny Ray is now confirmed at Yamaha. I don't think we mentioned that last year. I think we were speculating that that was likely to happen or seemed to be likely to happen.

So that is now official. So yeah, that's a big E as well because that's somebody that's broken their contract. Yeah, so there's a precedent. It does happen. If the incentive is big enough, it will happen.

Yeah, well, all right, let's look at what happened in the racing at Mizano. So Moto3, first qualifying, we find Holgardo there again. So again, the guy's got to come through, but he was joined there by Kelso. So a couple of people that were like, Kelso was on the front row, middle of the front row had a great qualifying. He's now back in Q1, but the Holgardo gets out of that Q1.

In the Q2 session, Masiya on the Honda would take pole. Sasaki and Toba finish out the front row. Then Murera, Anshu, and Alonso all make up the second row. Holgardo would qualify eighth, just to give you a point of reference from his troubles that he had. Now, this Moto3 race starts out with Sasaki and Masa.

They seem to take off with each other at the beginning, and Masa then quickly heads to the lead. Anshu kind of goes backwards because there's a very poor start as that happens out. But then Masa starts to do most of the dirty work. They tend to ride around in a group at the beginning with Masa, Anshu, and Murera, and Sasaki there. I was kind of on a Holgardo watch because he had went backwards and he was like tenth at one point.

So was he going to catch up or whatever? Then Anshu kind of goes to the front and he just starts to put down the laps. And he had way more corner speed than everybody else. It seemed like he was able to carry a lot of corner speed there, especially like a turn eight. So it was always a good race.

It was just deciding. Masa was doing most of the donkey work. Anshu would be up and down. Sasaki was always third, fourth, fifth in the group. But at some point, he knew someone was going to have to give.

We started to get to the very end, a few laps left to go. Anshu had a track limits warning. So you're just thinking, well, okay, the kid who's been riding really well is now going to be stifled yet again from a win by track limits because he can't keep it in there. But with seven laps to go, Anshu, Masa, Alonzo, Munoz, they all have broken away. They're definitely leading the pack and everybody else is going to be there.

Now, Murera, he's fading. It's well known that he has an arm pump issue. And so apparently that must have came back to haunt him again. But we get down to it. We see Holgardo starting to go backwards still.

He eventually falls out of the points with five laps to go. But that last lap is an absolute... It's worth the wait. There's a lot of good racing going on, but it's calm by the standards of Moto 3. And you just knew somewhere along the way, this race was going to break open and become absolutely crazy.

Now, if I get this wrong, apologies, you'll have to correct pitch. But as they're going through the last lap, Alonzo tries to get past Masiya. But Masiya sort of defends it and he's attacking Anshu. Now, he drives in way deep and goes super wide to where Alonzo then gets past both of Anshu and Masiya. And Alonzo would take the win, which was fascinating.

Masiya would be second. He recovered and kind of blocked Anshu out. Then we had Munoz, Vier, Toba, Sasaki, Ortola, Rueda, and Fennady finishing out the top 10. When they did the interviews after the race, Alonzo's all smiles. It's his third win in four races.

The kid is, again, it seems as though the KTM organization seems to find these young, talented kids that just burst onto the scene and show us what they're made of. Masiya had ran a great race. But what was interesting was Anshu says, I quote, I F'd up because he made a mistake. He went too deep. He let Masiya get there.

After doing all the donkey work, which is this track that doesn't have a lot of draft, it's not a true stop start circuit. So Anshu's not really at a handicap for being in the draft of being this big kid that he is. But it was just such a crazy last lap. It was all just in the last few corners of that last lap. It's well worth the watch to see it, but good on Alonzo for winning again.

And Anshu was just kind of really with Anshu finishing where he did. And if Anshu really should have had the win, if he had the win, he would have vaulted himself up points. He would have been probably second. I think he would have gone to second or at least third of the points. Yeah, I think he definitely would have been third.

I think he almost would have got Sasaki. But it's just wild how that one finished out. Was there anything in there that you want to say about it, Rick? Well, yeah, only on that last lap going down that long back straight through those two fast right hand sweepers, let's call them, or kinks. Anshu was actually quite a handily ahead at that point.

And then, as you say, Jimmy, just overcooked it a bit, really. Just went wide. That kind of opened a smidgen of a door for Masiya who almost, I mean, he had from the overhead drone or helicopter shot, whatever it was. Masiya had the mother and father of all front end tucks, and he saved it. But that wobble sent him wide.

And as you say, Alonzo just said, thank you. And through he went, you know, just stole it from both of them really. I mean, a well deserved win, it's true. But what got me over the whole weekend, and particularly on the Sunday, not in Moto GP, because of the downforce, I suppose, but certainly in Moto 2 and definitely in Moto 3, incredible amounts of chatter that a lot of the bikes are suffering. Lots of people having front end crashes because of the chatter issue.

I don't know if that's an issue with the tarmac or the blacktop, as you like to call it, or the asphalt. You know, it could do with a resurface. I don't know. I can't imagine they have terribly cold, bitter winters there, you know, in terms of affecting the surface. Or maybe it's just heavily used and it gets worn out.

But certainly chatter was a feature throughout the weekend. And just focusing on Moto 3, last thing to say, a really good demonstration of the differences again between the KTMs and the Hondas. You know, the Honda is very good still on the fast bits, but the KTM is just so much better on the brakes and going into the turns. So it really, maybe the characteristics of the Mazano, I don't know, but it really kind of, for me, highlighted where certain bikes, more than riders even, were particularly strong. But yeah, hands down, the best race of the day by country mile, as is often with Moto 3, but certainly at a track like Mazano, which I'm a bit on the fence when it comes to the Mazano's place on the calendar.

It doesn't tend to create memorable races, but that one was an exception. That's three great Moto 3 races on the trot. Yeah. Well, Moto 3 rarely disappoints, does it now? No, it really does not.

Yeah. Yeah. There's so much talent and it's so close with competitive bikes that it's the rider really making a difference. Yeah. And Alonso, it's fun to watch, is now a championship contender if you're going to go through the points.

Yes, we're going to head through the points. Somehow, magically, Elgardo actually still makes, having not scored a point, he did not score one point. He still leads on 161 points. Sasaki is now close to within four, so he's on 157. Masiya stays in third at 149 with 12.

Anciu is the big loser in this because Anciu would have been only seven points. If he did one, he would have only been seven points behind Elgardo and would be still in this championship, but would have been so much closer to being in this championship. And then you have Alonso, who is 21 points behind in fifth. He is now a championship contender. I think that one's pretty obvious.

And sixth is Ortolla, who had a couple of race wins, but he's 29 out, which there's, he needs to do something here quickly. And what I think is exciting is we're going to India to where Moto GP has never gone. So this becomes a real wild card track with a real wild card possibility of flipping this around. Yeah. It's going to be exciting just from that standpoint.

So that is how the championship is looking at this point. I do think it's just the top five who have a chance. Now, Alonso, who won't necessarily be at a disadvantage as far as track knowledge, because he's a rookie and everybody's going to be a rookie at this track. He seems to learn things well and reads races pretty well. You can't count him out for putting another victory on this one in some sort of stunning fashion.

One, as you say, I mean, he's won, what was it? Three of the last four races or five? Yeah. I mean, it's all about form this game, Holgado being a prime example of that going in the opposite direction. So definitely all to play for.

We can't wait for the next race. Yeah. So let us go to the next race that happened to the weekend. Let's go to Moto 2. So with Moto 2, there wasn't a whole lot that went on in qualifying other than Arbolino is in Q1 again.

Arbolino seems to have lost the plot. Would the real Arbolino please stand up? I'm not sure where he actually is, but he did get through into the second qualifying session, which was important for that. Now, this second qualifying session was basically destroyed by yellow flags and having laps that were canceled. So to start with, Dixon never goes out until about seven and a half minutes left to go, which would have only given him like one run.

And Dixon had laps that were taken away that were decent laps by the fact that he went past the yellow, a waving yellow flag because it seemed like everybody decided they wanted to crash as they were going through. So even Acosta was a victim of that. He had a lap. He was fast all weekend. He had a lap going that was going to put him on pole.

However, he went through waving yellow flag, which knocked that lap out. So we were left with Vietti to claim the pole position. Acosta had enough speed to be second. Gonzalez was third. Kennet was fourth.

Pacini, he can never bet against Pacini, even though it's not like on a, what, a six-year-old bike or six-year-old chassis or something like that. It's insane. He just got track knowledge, right? And then Lopez figured out that a shout out to Roberts, who actually had a great qualifying because he was seven. And then Arbolino did come in at nine, which he seemed to have made a turn a bit there where he got things kind of maybe figured out a little bit.

So he at least was looking better, but I think Arbolino might've even had a lap that got lost to yellow flags as well at the end. I don't have that in my notes, but I'm thinking he did. So that is where that came about. Now things were a whole different story when we got to the race, when we got to the race on Sunday. Now Acosta took off, he had Vietti behind him, Kennet, Lopez, and Gonzalez were all there with him.

Arbolino would get himself up to sixth, but Acosta was pretty much unheaded. He did not lead from start to finish. Vietti did, or I'm sorry, Acosta did lead from start to finish. No one could touch him. Vietti did try to make some moves at the beginning, but he kept on making small little mistakes along the way.

Lois fell off at turn one, but there's nothing good that's here. I mean, some of there's good racing in the pack. The Agurachantra, Gonzalez battle that happens towards the end of the race is a good race, good race in there. But Arbolino did start to climb his way back up through the field. So he had dropped, he was sixth, he worked his way up and he seemed to have long race pace.

At one point I've even written, does he have a chance at the podium? Because Acosta was gone. Lopez was the one who was falling off. He definitely was lacking the edge grip on the Basque Cora, which I guess because they're on the side of the tire for so long, it must work it harder than the Kalex does. That's at least my theory.

And so I was wondering, you know, is Arbolino going to wind up on the podium? He did not. He would wind up fourth, but Acosta wins in a runaway. He was the dominant guy all weekend and he showed us why he is going somewhere in Moto GP with another great ride by him. Vietti was second and another great ride by Vietti, which maybe that's why he gets the IO ride because he's turned it around now.

And maybe they think that they have them, they know the magic, you know, IO has got the magic to turn anybody. Look at what he's done with Antti, right? I mean, he took a kid that didn't work in Tech 3 and has now got him, you know, in the championship fight. So well played there. Arigura would be fifth, then Chantra, Gonzales and Roberts and Slack the top and the scene he got a top 10, which was interesting, but it was not the greatest of Moto 2 races, Rich.

Rather a boring and rather large riding on my notes. I got dull race written there. I mean, you were just sort of hoping for something a little bit exciting to transpire. Although nobody wants to see crashes going on, but I mean, the only couple of things of the note that you haven't mentioned, Jim, was that I don't think you mentioned that Kinnett crashed. Just one of those really kind of depressingly predictable kind of Kinnett things that happened.

Two or three monster front end tucks saved kind of crashes from Vietti as well, plus a couple of other people. But Vietti was nearly down two or three times in that race and saved them. But other than that, really nothing much to talk about. I was interested not just because he's a Brit, but Dixon ran the race. He finished, I think, in the 13th or 14th, something like that, maybe 12th.

I just felt that because he had a problem in qualifying two. So as you said, he didn't get out until seven minutes ago in any crash at the end of the race. And of course they don't have warm up anymore. So I just think he had a problem with the bike somewhere and he just couldn't do anything with it on the Sunday because he was pretty much rooted in that 12th, 13th, 14th place spot for the entirety of the race. And that's not like him.

Normally he comes forward, certainly in the last two seasons that's been the case. And so I just wondered if that was a hangover from what had been going on on the Saturday. And I just, this is one of the problems with the warmups having been taken away from Moto3 and Moto2. If you've had a crash or there's a bike problem or you need to change your setting or whatever, you just don't get a chance to figure it out for 10 or 15 minutes on the Sunday morning. And I think that's a great shame.

And I'm sure that that must have hamstrung him to some extent, or maybe he was just having a bad weekend because that does happen too. Didn't they take those away to accommodate the rider parade that happens? I mean MotoGP itself only gets a 10 minute warmup now, which is hardly anything at all really, but anyway, it's better than nothing I suppose. Yeah. I mean, I think that's dumb, especially because, I mean, I just can only go back to like Kota.

The temperature difference between the Saturday when everybody qualified to the Sunday, which was race day, and with a direction of wind change, it would have been nice for everybody to get 15 minutes or so, just to try something and maybe change a few things or whatever. But yeah, this seems for the illusion of running at Kota, the illusion of running the riders around on a flatbed truck to a big articulating lorry there for you guys in Europe seems stupid. It's not a good trade. Yeah, it's not. I'd rather see bikes on track.

Yeah. And as people have commented, and we've certainly mentioned before, there is also that kind of safety aspect to it, whereby if you're running a repaired bike or something's been heavily rebuilt, you really want to get a chance just to take it out for a few laps and just check everything's right from a systems checkpoint of view and that there aren't any sort of finger trouble things with bolts and that kind of stuff going on that you carry into the race otherwise. So yeah, I applaud what they're trying to do to bring the riders and the fans closer together. We've seen in the last couple of rounds with the kind of fan pit around the podium that they had at Barcelona. Now that was a good innovation and that's something they need to expand upon.

But the rider parade itself, I mean, they go by in a matter of two or three minutes and then they're gone for half an hour on some of these tracks. And meanwhile, you're just sat there scratching your ass, waiting for several hours for the actual racing to start. So yeah, it's just not a good solution for me that one. I hope they change it or slot the rider parade in somewhere else, perhaps somewhere else in the weekend. But I mean, I'll see why you couldn't do it in that any like our lunch break that resides between sort of a Moto 2 and Moto GP.

These guys have already eaten, they've already got themselves hydrated and they're ready to go. I mean, most of the time, most of those guys are on the truck. Anyway, we're just sitting there sucking on a water bottle anyway, and it just seems silly to me. They must have African elephant sized bladders, these guys, because they just do nothing but drink water. I mean, I'd be on the toilet every 20 minutes if I was drinking the amount of water they drink.

I don't know about you Jim. When I was racing, I drank a lot. I mean, I did the same thing. I'm not talking about beer, I'm talking about water. No, I was talking about Gatorade's water and stuff like that.

You just simply consume that hydration, you sweat it out. Almost it seems like you just if it's you know, most of the time we were racing it was I remember one race we was 103 degrees and we were racing inside of a typical banked oval track in the US and there was no breeze. It was just scorching hot and it was terrible. It was like you were done. And even then it's like, you know, you suck down another two or three bottles of water and it still wouldn't go to the bathroom.

Everything inside of me was gone. You do always see them flooding off, don't you? Literally flooding off probably between the sighting lap and the actual warm up and race getting going. They always go off for a comfort break. So I suppose there is a certain amount of expulsion of fluids going on.

If you don't have to pee right now, you're not drinking enough is what they usually tell you. The way it's dehydrated. So let's look at the points now for Moto to Acosta leads on 211. He's now 34 points clear of Arbolino. I think Acosta, we can safely say he's got at least a couple of fingers on the world championship trophy right now.

It's not sealed up and he's not gone but it's definitely he's the man in charge of it right now. Arbolino is still second. Dixon is third and now he's 65 points behind Acosta. You got to think Jake is not really a championship contender at this point. Kennett is fourth, Alonso fifth via a tee with his win had bolted himself up to sixth.

His second place gave him a jump up as well and just around the top 10, Solache, Chantra, Outiger and Gonzalez. So with that, I think we should look at towards Moto GP and what happened over the weekend there. Again, there's not much to read. The only thing to kind of report out of the key one was that they had Takahashi on a LCR Honda replacing Rens and he was not even he did not get within the 105% rule from practice. So he was not allowed to take part in the qualifying sessions.

Miller and Alash Esparguero were in Q1 which is kind of cements the problem that Miller is having and Alash having won is now back to Q1. Such is the change of conditions, the heat or something that the Aprilias were not working through but that's how it goes. I mean all the Aprilias were there because even Olivero was there but Olivero and Esparguero do go through and would get to Q2. From that point, it was basically the question was it was going to be which Ducati? It was either going to be either Martin or it was going to be Bizecki or maybe Banyaya.

You had some inkling what was going to happen. I think Banyaya set like a wicked fast lap that was like a track record. Bizecki I think came by and broke that record and then Martin just I mean he just threw down a lap that was a lap of a gods. I mean I have no idea where he I think he wound up with breaking the record with a 130.3 which is like three tenths faster than Bizecki or something like that. Three or four tenths faster.

I think it was closer to half a second faster. Was it half a second faster? It was. I can't remember if it was in practice a half a second or if it was in the qualifying was a half a second. So yeah it was just one of those laps it was just ridiculously fast by Martin and you're like well I didn't really see that going on but Martin Bizecki Banyaya on the front row Vinales Pedrosa yes Danny Pedrosa who was wild carding for KTM was there in fifth and Alash did do well to kind of pull himself together chips are down put my head down and come in and throw down a great lap which he did do to get sixth.

Now I think they talked about the fact that Pedrosa had been working on a carbon fiber chassis KTM. Now whether he rode that or not I don't know because his chassis was painted orange just like the other steel frame chassis are but you can paint carbon fiber as well. So it was interesting I do believe he was riding a carbon fiber or there's pieces of it that are carbon fiber so apparently they're looking for something and they think that going down the carbon fiber road is going to help them. Now Ducati went down that way for a long time until Rossi showed up then Rossi forced them to make an aluminum frame and to my knowledge they've stayed with an aluminum frame they haven't tried going back to carbon fiber so it's going to be interesting to see what KTM does with it. Again we don't know all the details is it all carbon fiber is it simply carbon fiber pieces somewhere that they're using to change the rigidity of the steel you know as it just cross members we don't know but it was interesting it was just interesting that there was just so much chatter about that after qualifying and which bike Pedrosa was on.

With that we'll move to the sprint race and you know I like MotoGP, I like the sprint races but this was a snooze fest Jorge Martin basically was out front and gone by you're never going to see him he wasn't in the same zip code. The walking wounded of the Zechian Vignes who they're warriors there's no other way to describe it would finish second and third and Pedrosa would be fourth. Now Bender did give us some excitement during this sprint race as he did not start well at all was very far back and he rode his way up to just behind his teammate for the weekend Pedrosa then Vignes would be sixth. There was really nothing to say other than you know Alex's brother Pips Alex Pips his brother Mark for the final point in there and you know Marquez did have some very different shaped wings on the front of that Repsol Honda but it's nothing was working there as well he stayed on the bike he's gathered some data but there's really nothing in this sprint race it was an absolute I hate to say it was a snoozer. I mean obviously not helped by the fact that Bizecki and Bagnari were really still quite injured carrying I think Bizecki had a bad wrist as a result of the first turn crash and obviously we know about Bagnari I mean could hardly walk really in the early part of the weekend and I don't suppose it got much easier as the weekend went on I mean nearly sort of surprising thing but not in a good way was just the fact that how badly the Aprilias struggled in the sprint race or the sprint as I suppose you're supposed to say.

Vignales was the first one home but like you say Jim sort of going from Barcelona where they were pretty dominant really and then all of a sudden I don't think Mazzano is a particularly favorite track of the riders or the bike it's true as compared with Barcelona but yeah it was well we don't have to spend too much talking about it doing too much time because there isn't really much to talk about in the sprint. Now maybe aerodynamics perhaps plays a part in this I know there's a lot of talk going on around the tyre pressures thing spoiling the racing and so on so I'm sniffing a bit because of my cold but because Pedroza ran into a penalty or a warning of a penalty didn't they either at the end of the sprint or possibly the end of the main race on the Sunday so that's starting to create a few issues with the tyres just being overcome with the loading that they've been subjected to because of the front end downforce and that's not going to change anytime soon because this Michelin front tyre is still not due until 2025 probably at the earliest. Yep don't know what's going to happen there so I think we could move to the MotoGP race how about that Rich? Yeah again it's not going to take a huge amount of time to get through this. No I will say this at the beginning of it I thought that Vignale's yellow Ducati was pretty sweet I liked it it was cool I loved the yellow it was very very well done I did like that.

Yeah no it did look nice. The other Ducatis that I actually really loved were the Grissini's in the white those looked absolutely stunning in white I wish they would run that the whole time because I thought the white ones were fantastic and a sea of red and orange the white was just night and day different and it was just beautiful I love it. Yeah I know it's clever how they design the graphics and stuff because they do look properly retro don't they? Which is obviously they do that's the appeal to people of a certain vintage I suppose in part I mean I like the Grissini that sort of bluey gray color that they normally run that is a nice looking bike to my eye that's obviously in the eye of the beholder but yeah the the Fasso Grissini tribute thing that they seem to roll that out for the Mizano round they do that damn good. Yeah I agree with you I do like the blueish color that's on the Grissini bikes I do like that color too I do find it pleasing to my eye as well but that white was yeah yeah let's see it then again then it also reminds me of I remember when Honda built a VFR and they came out with an all white one like I want to say like an 84 85 and I so I kind of go instantly back that retro point with that bike for the Grissini so yeah that was the original 750 VFR wasn't it?

I believe it was which we are now showing our age so we shall shut up and move on so the race on Sunday is if you thought it was a snoozer for 13 laps it was a horribly boring 27 laps as Jorge Martin again disappears off into the sunset and again you have the Zechi and Benya the walking wounded trying to keep him in sight they did for a certain extent they were definitely again they were warriors about it all but Miller and Miller had a crash him and Piro had a crash they had a very they came together at four and five they so that was going to be looked at after the races Bender had a crash at turn 14 with a low side and that put him out obviously so we already had two KTMs gone and the only factory KTM was Pedro's there and there Martin like I said he's just gone I mean Marquez Marc Marquez actually had a point where he was actually in sixth place now there's some attrition that actually gets him there as well but he seemed to be having a better race I don't think Honda has found anything or has given him anything beyond that's going to make it better for him for the rest of the year but if they're trending towards the right direction or maybe they just didn't suffer as much from the heat and the tire grip that's there the only real big thing was a pole he had a crash again at turn five again he's like I said pole sends the crash a lot here he crashed yet again though I was scared there at the end there is a blip martin does get a track of him it's warning and you're like whoa dude you get that with 10 laps left to go and you're gonna have to ride inch perfect you know I was like I was waiting for the for the martin a long lap of inconvenience penalty to come out it did not and I will give it to the stewards I think they raced races this weekend and the stewards didn't do anything to cause us anything to complain about or be argumentative about it was a well-run race over the weekend so I will say that and leave it there yeah but really I have I have really nothing for this other than you know at the end things do move around a little bit marquez fades off from his sixth to seventh um pedrosa let's go back through it martin bosecki banyaya pedrosa vinalas and olivera vinalas always seems to do good here at mazano always has just maybe he disagrees with this track olivera marquez fernandez marini and zarko um I really hate to be the Debbie founder of this podcast but that was another snooze fest race uh and uh yeah this one hurt yeah I mean in the sprint and in the main race there was this possibility of a pedrosa podium wasn't there but I don't know about you jim but I mean Danny's not the kind of guy at his sort of stage in life where he wants to go put in rash moves in a championship he's not involved in at all he never really got the feeling he was going to get close enough again with modern MotoGP the effect of running that close to the giocchi of all things which is you know one of the more aerodynamically spectacular things out there so I didn't really think there was unless he was going to launch one but that's never been the Danny Pedro's away really and it would have been nice to see him on the podium but didn't really ever think it was going to happen the one thing that I think was a highlight all weekend in actual fact and we'll come to him in the test in a minute was personally I don't have a tremendous amount of love and sympathy for but credit where credit is due raul fernandez on the other rnf aprilia suddenly started to look like the rider we've been expecting to turn up for the last year and a half yeah did he finish I think he finished nightful tenth or something like that he finished eighth oh eight so that was hands down his best performance but that was not a fluke I mean all over the weekend he was quick and in fact he was shading olivera through because olivera was in q1 as you said earlier jim well for that is went straight through the q2 so let's see if that continues as a trend because he's really been I mean obviously he had a catastrophic year at KTM tech three last year we know that so did remy gardner and we know what happened there everybody was expecting him just to jowl the aprilia straight away and it has taken some time but maybe this is the first sort of green shoot of progress wish the guy well not been a big fan of some of the antics of him and his entourage in the past that we've read and heard about but anyway perhaps he's growing up a little bit and if he's starting to enjoy riding that bike then it's another person in the mix isn't it rather than somebody languishing around at the back that we wouldn't really normally see so that was really the only other point of note really I mean I just I understand why they did it was a safety thing given the speed of that back straight but mazzano's never recovered from being run the opposite direction to how it was originally conceived it's true I forget which year they changed it it was probably around about mid to late 90s maybe the very early noughties they sort of went from what would have been clockwise to I can't think now but those what are the very fast sweepers on the back straight now where you've got lots of runoff if you go the other direction the wall is quite close that's why they switched it around because the super bikes back in those days were going through there even in the late 90s we're going through pretty damn quick and if you had a crash you were going to arrive at the wall disturbingly fast so that's why they changed it but it's never really delivered for my money anyway great racing after they changed that which was a shame it's always going to be to me the place that rainy broke his back and paralyzed himself yes yeah just for me these things just come back each time that we go there now granted rainy's was in the was when it was going anti clockwise now it runs clockwise but still it's never really been much of an anything kind of a circuit it's kind of like immala you know immala's is not that great of a circuit for cars for bikes I think it's a good circuit yeah there've been some good bike races around immala obviously world supers still go there yep and it's up and down you got elevation at immala you got the park and the trees and so on so at least there's some other stuff to captivate you but mizano I mean okay if you get the helicopter shots over to the Adriatic coast or whatever it is yeah that looks pretty fine to me but the track itself is a bit bland I think yeah it just is and uh it hasn't really produced any stellar racing you know moto 3 is moto 3 so you're gonna get a good race there but the rest of it is usually a processional no passing type of thing with a few sprinkle of low sides and front end washes that happen because of being on the left side of the tire sorry being on the right side of the tire for those three fast rights and then there's a couple slower rights that finish it off so I think it's what six rights in a row or something so the tire is taking a lot of punishment and you're asking a lot of at the end of it so you always get the low side there but I mean hopefully not being offensive or putting any noses out of joint in the beautiful country of Italy literally one of my favorite places ever and let's remember Mugello is certainly top three track in the world on any day of the week any day of the week so I mean Italy is motorsport in Italy it just kind of bedfellows that have always existed aren't they but yeah mizano always leaves me a little bit cold anyway yeah that was that was the race well let's look at the point standings after that so he can get to the testing that happened afterwards Benya still leads the championship obviously he's on 283 points martin is now 36 points behind him even after doing the double so it's going to be tough for martin to get past benya in this championship benya is obviously capable of riding riding at the front and finishing second or third at least maintaining a podium position which is going to keep him leading this championship and granted we've got we've got this is race 12 which leaves us with eight races left there's still plenty of points and anything can happen but benya has at least got one ham firmly planted on the trophy if not one in a couple of fingers on the other hand yeah martin is some 29 points ahead of bazzacchi who's on 218 then you have bender who's fallen off and he's like 110 behind benya so something you know the ktm is still not good enough yet although it's close and asparguero is in fifth and zarko sixth so there's really nothing in it there that's going to really change in the points here drastically anywhere despite the injuries to bazzacchi and benya what we can say with total confidence jim is that a ducati rider will be lifting a championship this year yes i think that's fair to say not that we've had any doubt about that anyway but there we go so that wraps up the racing portioning from mazano and that allows us to then move on to the testing that happened afterwards so one of the things that happens is marquez goes out and tests a honda so that implies that mark is going to stay at honda because if you're honda and you know mark's leaving would you let him ride your 2024 prototype bike i don't think you would but conversely you are in such sad shape would you want and would you value the opinion of the six times moto gp champion would you want that maybe i'm not sure honda goes its own honda goes its own way so there's that it seems as though from what i saw the press conference video afterwards that mark says that basically we still have the same problems we haven't adjusted anything haven't changed anything drastically enough although braddle's bike had a long exhaust on it ala ktm he also had little winglets on the swing arm i think as well sort of ala aprilia but we've said this before and not to belabor the point all of that must work in conjunction with the motorcycle you just can't bolt pieces onto it and figure out that it's going to be super so much faster than it was before is there anything else you want to say about the honda i think before we go to yamaha and quadrar well paraphrasing mark marquez he said words to the effect of if this is what we have then we're very far away something like that and i'm just looking at the top 10 i mean testing okay you always have to take it with a bit of a pinch of salt it's true but no sign of mark marquez in the top 10 so i can't believe anybody's sandbagging at this point of view i mean we know that mark has not exactly been since saxon ring that sort of fateful weekend he hasn't exactly been pushing it to the absolute limit although he's had you know a couple of good rounds comparative to the other honda riders which is a horror story really for everybody else so it's hard to know what to say jim really isn't it i mean honda have got quite a long way in front of them to climb out of this problem that they're in i don't think they're going to leave the sport anything kind of melodramatic like that but i mean pooch said that mark marquez has not said anything to him about what his plans are or that he's leaving anything like that i suppose from honda's point of view they're just going to assume that he stays put he hasn't got a contract and a costly one to get out of but the testing itself really doesn't tell us very much does it because he says the bike isn't really any different to what he's already been complaining about with what he's got so that doesn't sound terribly hopeful to me no it does not but i wouldn't put it past honda to build something completely different and potentially get the sums right but there's also they're just too slow to adapt to they missed the boat with aerodynamics they really did it just they missed it was a miss and i don't think they have enough aerodynamic research and i think they're looking for a solution to their rear grip problems and things of that nature aerodynamics and i just don't see that happen as the way you're going to get it i still think you need a car that fundamental or car sorry you need to have a motorcycle that has fundamentally good grip and feel and then you can enhance that grip and feel i don't think you can make more grip than what you have right um i could be wrong but that's how i see it only with aerodynamics and if you're behind the curve on that then you know you're gonna not have as much load as everybody else so that's still a problem hence he's not in the top 10 yeah so if we follow this aerodynamic theme forward we talk to quadtoraro and quadtoraro is basically like there's not enough horsepower in this thing which if you're more aero you bolt on the more horsepower you have to have to pull that through the air now can the inline 4 have more horsepower yes but it's going to take something clever to get it and we saw i cannot think of his name dude he was he was a former the one yeah i'm just trying to look it up because i saw a tweet about this earlier on so keep talking and i'll see if i can find it he was in the garage with yamaha he's supposedly consulting on their engine and he's known to have done work with aprilia for their engines so he got them the horsepower that they have now so it's possible you know one of the things is maybe they are going to go down the path of variable valve timing ala Suzuki's in line four which is entirely possible that they put that in there there's other little tricks that you could do i you know there's you could in theory take the two middle connecting rods and put them to share one journal and do that and you could get a little bit more rev out of it get some there that's probably going to be more vibration than what it's worth i don't know i'd have to think about that one a little harder but there's going to have to be something clever for them to get there to get anything for quadtoraro and i mean quadtoraro that's on a brave face at the races but in qualifying he doesn't really go anywhere his sprint races are horrible and he does seem to do a little better on race day but wow it's just again here's another guy with immense amount of talent you know i rate him highly and he's on a bike that's just absolutely not competitive whatsoever and you've got to wonder what would he do on a pre-mac you caught him right yeah again a guy that probably can't get himself out of his current contract quick enough i would imagine although you know you've got rinses going on next year and the conundrum really in all of this by the way luca marmorini is the name of the engine thank you guru he's an ex ferrari formula one guy and then came across as you said and did some work for i don't know if he's still involved with ferrari i have no idea but has obviously done consulting work at the very least for aprilia and now is helping yeah i mean you say the real conundrum within line four is suzuki because that bike works that bike was powerful it had good aero great balance and all the things that they always used to say about suzuki's all down the years it was just the complete package maybe not the very very best bike on the grid but very very close to being that and so it does prove that there is life in the inline four and as you say it might well be that the new engine that is in the amahar is pushing out a few more horsepower but if you've got more aero you need more power to push it down the straight so yes yeah i mean it's just a never-ending trudge of trying to improve all the time i mean what was it necessary must go faster as the japanese used to say yeah something to that effect i think but again a bit like the honda situation it looks like a bit of a long rest of this year and probably most of next for you know the amahar riders but it'll be interesting to see what rins can do on the bike because they haven't really had for whatever reason and i'm not criticizing overly but they haven't really had a functioning second rider on the yamaha so it's all on quattro aro really isn't there it's been like that for quite a while i mean hopefully frankie lands at gcati somewhere as we think he will and maybe the rider that we used to see will re-emerge all of a sudden but we'll have to wait and see on that one but they need two riders you know top riders which is what they're going to have next year um to help try and push that development further you know that's the hope i think at honda too is they have zarko going to take the lcr seat we know that he's dg delinia's preferred tester of new parts and bits and pieces he also has been riding in ducati for several years so he kind of knows what it should feel like now the question is i don't think zarko leaves willingly unless there was a big payday and some assurances that honda is going to listen to him because i don't think his contract is specifically with lcr no it's hrc 100 positive it's an hrc contract it is and i wouldn't be terribly surprised jim i mean a penny for 10 minutes in joanne mears head at the moment because that again is a person that is having an utterly torrid year i mean he cannot have foreseen that things are going to be like this and he's run a form this year and then that number of crashes that he's had is enough to drive somebody out of the sport i would think just from a self-preservation point of view both mentally and physically so the jury's out on mear and you know you know i wouldn't be terribly surprised he's are going on an hrc bike next year and i think that's where the flexibility in the hrc contract is from it's very possible yeah is there anything else from the mazano test that we wanted to talk about i've just got the top 10 in front of me so i'll very quickly shoot through i won't bother with times and stuff the times look sort of similarish to what people were doing over the race weekend so in first place as always king of testing luca marini then we had maverick vinales on the aprile then brad binder jorge martin jack miller pops up in fifth place interestingly quattro in sixth and he was half a second or 0.575 of the fastest time set by marini so maybe not so disastrous miguel oliver in seventh morbidelli okay that's the guy that you don't really talk about very much morbidelli in eighth then alex marquez and raul verlanders once again rounding out the top 10 on the rnf aprile so bit of a mixed bag very close changeable because we tend to see in motogp these days so more than i don't know perhaps i'll get to read a few more things over the coming few days and talk about it a bit more next time out okay so let's change gears here and move to testing of pirelli tires at catalonia from moto 2 and moto 3 the question was were the tires going to be better faster what was going to happen it appears as though from what i was able to read at least they talked to rory skinner on moto 2 and he said that the tires are faster the pirellis provide a lot of feel on the front and they're able to get there now this is a bit of a conundrum because the pirellis you know if you were to take a dunlap tire and you were to sit on it it would hold up to it to that shape it would maintain its roundness right yeah if you try that with a pirelli it's going to squish itself into a pretzel which is interesting there is a very very good article by matt oxley at motorsports magazine that is the danilo protrucci blog basically and in the last episode of this blog if you will protrucci talks about racing on michelin's dunlaps in moto america so michelin's and moto gp dunlaps in moto america and now pirelli's enrolled superbike and his explanation of the differences between tires is i will do it no justice to try to do it here and i won't you need to go read that because it is fascinating in in depth from a rider's point of what those tires feel like the differences in all of that in between is really fascinating read it's safe to say that it's going to be very interesting because we know that pirelli signed a deal to provide tires to moto 3 and moto 2 until the end of 2026 michelin has a contract for tires for moto gp to the end of 2026 does anyone want to make a guess that pirelli is going to bid tender and may potentially take michelin out of moto gp and moto gp will be a pirelli based series just like world superbike says its potential stranger things have happened yeah stranger things have happened and one of the things that protrucci talks about is how well you can break on the pirelli front and how you can only really crash it if you lock the front up which i thought was very weird considering the bridgestone was an uncrashable front tire that it seems as though the pirelli is too but i guess there's a point of you have to develop that trust in the tire because the the slicks for the moto 2 bikes are based on world superbike slicks the moto 3 rear tire i believe i have this right at this is from memory the rear is based off of a supersport tire and then the front is an all new tire for the moto 3 bikes right okay so there's that pretty skinny yeah there yeah they are kind of skinny so that's going to be interesting and the other thing that's really fascinating is that sort of michelin this is all from what protrucci said because i'm kind of summing up some of the high points i guess out of what protrucci's talked about is that the pirellis are all a production tire so they work in a much wider range of temperatures where the michelins they want to build you the best tire that's possible so they build sort of a bespoke tire that's supposed to work at this track and we're hoping that the forecasted temperatures for those days are going to be those temperatures and the dunlaps are kind of in that same boat they're sort of a very hard slick and the construction is so so stiff on those and i i thought for sure the kxs would have trouble with that but apparently not soft squishy pirellis seem to be fantastic on it i mean no one seems that it's going to be such a big deal but please go read the article with protrucci it's very fascinating read so we'll leave it there on that i think we are done rich unless you have anything else in your bag of tricks just one thing to say and it's a long term hold that thought but and i'm assuming that he will be in moto 2 next year but rory skinner will be interesting because he's having a pretty tough first year full year in moto 2 i think it's fair to say you rarely see him running inside the top 20 but with the pirellis coming in and being that they are based on superbike tires rory skinner ran on pirellis and built in british superbike for two or three years so it'll be just i'm curious to know i mean some riders will make the switch very easily some guys might find it a real struggle to get their head around that as you say jim that very very different construction and feel that that will create anybody that's coming from fairly recent knowledge of that kind of attire might have a bit of an advantage so it would be interesting to see how skinner gets on next year on the assumption that he remains in moto 2 with the american racing team or a another so yeah that'll be one just to keep in the back of the mind but i tend to forget why i had for dinner last night so me remembering that by next march is probably not likely but we'll obviously be talking about tires a bit in the early rounds of next year with regards to moto 3 moto 2 because it is a huge change so but i should go off and find that matt oxley article and have a read yeah if you don't think tires are not important think about simon crayfar he was racing in the 500s he had a victory at dinington park he was on the podium he was chasing mcdoon and then the team changed from the don labs to the michelins and simon crayfars ride they wound up i think partying like halfway through the season if i remember correctly yeah and then that sent him to world supers did simon go to world super bike i think he did he went i think it became i think it became the beginning of the end of simon's motorcycle career just on tires he came to gp 500 from world super bikes and was that rarest of rare things in the 90s of a person that came across from that paddock and actually did very well and as you say not least of which is that he won a race which not many people can have that claim on a gp 500 bike so what he did after departing like yeah i can't remember i think he he popped up in bsb for yeah he did after season i spoke to him about it when i interviewed him last summer golly that seems that's a long time ago now which he bitterly regretted ever doing making that move but yeah as you say change your tire can have all the difference in the world can't it yep some people i think we're gonna see some people are gonna thrive some people will struggle and it's gonna be interesting to see who's who yeah so with that if you want to get in contact with us and drop us a line you can do that at by emailing motopod at moto podcast.com you want to get a hold of richard myself via social media channels we are i am at moto rgv instagram x formerly twitter and threads on instagram as well rich is at richard jowett that's two t's at the end on all the same platforms as well i think right rich yeah pretty sure thread is the same i've forgotten like everybody i signed up on day one and two and then i haven't looked at it since yeah that's pretty much me too so with that guys i'm gonna remind you all to ride safe. See you next time!