Wind and Rain at the Island

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear 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 Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 746 for October 26th, 2023. I'm your host Jim McDowell, riding solo for this episode as my good friend and co-host Rich is in an airplane somewhere heading back home to the UK.

I want to talk to you quickly about the island because the racing from the island was fantastic and we'll get to that in just a second. Remember, if you like the show and you have the ability, please think about donating to the show. If you want to donate, you can go to our website www.motopodcast.com and there are buttons for PayPal and Patreon. Also, we understand if you can make a donation to the show, we get that. But hey, do us a favor, head over to your favorite where you get your podcast, leave a rating, leave a review and that will get more people to follow the show.

With that, let's get into the great action that happened on the island. Let's take it with MotoGP qualifying to start out with on Saturday. In Q1, Benyai was there again, surprisingly, I didn't expect it with the Ducati. Followed with Marquez, Quattraro, Alex Marquez and Olivera. Augusto Fernando was in this session, but he was going to receive a three grid place penalty for having blocked Quattraro during practice.

It was Augusto Fernandez and Benyai who were going to go through, but in the end, Benyai, followed by Marc Marquez, who got a tow by Augusto Fernandez, get to advance into Q2. At Q2, it was Martín, Ben during Benyai halfway through the session. Marc Marquez went out to follow Benyai because he knew Benyai had a set of time, but he just followed him everywhere. Benyai tried to get rid of him, they went down the escape route there at Miller, where the commentator stand is, and Marc just followed him wherever he went. This is getting under Benyai's skin.

We were told by Saman Kreyfar that the Honda works better when they're in the draft of somebody else. Therefore, that's what these guys are going to do. The Honda riders are going to try to find somebody to tow them around, to break the air, to make the bike better, to make the lap easier. Marquez is the master of this. There's nothing in the rules that says you can't do it, but at some point, maybe we're going to have to look at it and potentially readjust what is going on with that.

I see where Benyai's frustration is in this, but I also think, as Saman Kreyfar rightly said, son, you just got to put your head down and get on with it. As it went on, we wound up having Martin, followed by Binder, Benyai, Alessius Partero, Zarco, Fabio DiGiannottonio, Marc Marquez, and Miller. At the very end of the session, Miller and Alessius have some words with each other, I don't know if somebody blocked somebody. It wasn't really definitive, but there was definitely a conversation about that. Now, after qualifying, things start to get kind of weird here for MotoGP.

It's known that the forecast for Sunday's race is not looking favorable. It's not going to rain or anything, but there's going to be some rain. There's going to be some wind, but that's the big thing, the wind. It was supposed to be like somewhere around the 80 kilometer per hour winds were supposed at the island right about when the MotoGP race would be taking place. That is roughly about 50 miles an hour in old money.

So those are some seriously strong winds. It was decided that since MotoGP is a priority and that the feature race, the main race, not the sprint, is the priority as well, that the main race would happen on Saturday in place of the sprint. And hopefully, cross your fingers, we would be able to race the sprint race on Sunday after Moto2 and Moto3. So with that said, Saturday afternoon, we were going to have the full 27 lap MotoGP race. Interestingly, there were some tire selections that may or may not work.

So Martín started with a soft front and a soft rear. Marc Marquez also opted for a soft rear. I think he's thinking that he was going to do something like last year, ride the soft tire because the pace of the race was going to be slow and he might be able to save that tire and conserve it. Martín, I think, had a different strategy with the soft was get out front, go as far as he goes, quick as he could, try to get as far away from the field as he could and then defend. Simon Crafer was spot on with the Michelin guys about this.

Then they were saying that the soft is not going to make it. It's going to be a bad news deal. But we were going to have to see how this was going to play out. So there was already intrigue before we ever had a green light thrown. When the green light went, Martín busted out to his usual hole shot, followed by Bender, Benyaya, Miller, DG Antonio, Marc Marquez.

Miller was on the back of Benyaya and he was right there. And then he wound up going, falling all the way back to sixth. And then we really didn't hear much from Miller at all after that. DG Antonio got by Benyaya for third. And then as the next after 25 laps or 25 to go, Martín, Bender, DG Antonio, Benyaya, Zarco and Miller and Marc Marquez were the top guys.

Benyaya was fourth and he seemed to have no pace. Like nobody, he couldn't go anywhere. He wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't like he wasn't even trying. I was wondering at that time if maybe he was trying to conserve the tire because even the medium was maybe a stretch to be able to get all the way to the finish or at least save it to get to the very end.

After another five laps, Martín was 1.8 seconds ahead. Bender was another further 1.4 seconds ahead. And then DG Antonio was one and a half seconds ahead of Benyaya and Zarco. The only battle on the track was for fourth and that was simply between Benyaya and Zarco. So, Mir went down.

As is the norm for the Honda, him and the Honda. He was bumped by Marini. There was no further action taken from this. I thought that was a good call by race control and we'll just leave it there. Martín has opened up a gap to some three and a half seconds with 14 laps to go.

Bender's got another half a second on DG Antonio and DG's got about six-tenths of a second on Benyaya. It's starting to close up and it's starting to become an interesting battle. Michelin says that with about 10 laps to go, the soft tire is going to give up. So, it's really close. Benyaya and DG Antonio start battling with each other and then Zarco is on Benyaya is also a good battle.

So, we have a fight for second and third, have a fight for fourth and fifth, which is kind of keeping us entertained as we count down the laps. Everything starts to close back up with 10 to go. So, second through fifth are all closing up. Everyone's coming together. The gap between everybody's starting to come down.

With six to go, Zarco gets by Benyaya. With five to go, Benyaya goes by DG Antonio. Bender is at this time four tenths faster than Martine. So, all of a sudden here at five laps to go in the race, the guys that are chasing Martine are lapping at almost a half a second faster. But that is not enough to catch Martine because there's not enough laps.

At three to go, it's still Martine followed by Bender, followed by Zarco, followed by DG Antonio and Benyaya. Is Martine going to be screwed? His pace is really starting to fall off. He's not even turning fast laps and he's struggling to stay out front. We've got a very close up view of the front and the rear tire on Martine's bike and they were shagged, completely unusable.

And it was a matter of like, oh my gosh, Martine might actually be like a sitting duck. We needed Zarco who had now made his way to second. Was he going to run interference for Martine? You thought he could because it was the team, but Zarco has waited forever to win a MotoGP race and he has an opportunity to. But we're not sure what's going to happen.

Is Zarco going to be the good teammate? Is he going to go by? But on the last lap, Martine did have a go. He went by at turn four Miller Corner. He had to.

Martine's pace was so slow. There was no way that Martine could have stayed behind. As things finished off and the run to the line, we wound up with. Johan Zarco winning the race. It was an amazing race.

The way these guys caught Martine at three second lead was totally amazing. Martine almost had the right strategy. It was about a lap and four turns short of making it there. There's a lot of ifs, buts, and woulds, and coulds with this. If Martine had slowed down just a little bit sooner and maintained a two second gap, would he have survived?

Could he have fought at the end? If he had just ran harder and had a bigger lead, could he have defended then? No one's going to know. We don't know, but it made for a great race at the island. Benyaya would swing by to become second and then Fabio DiTiantone would get his first podium in MotoGP finishing third.

Bender would be fourth. Jorge Martine would fall to fifth. Then it was the walking wounded of Bizecki. Miller slid to seventh. Then Alessio Spargro, Alex Marquez, and finally in tenth was Innea Bastianini.

So what does that do with the world championship standings? Because we've added now 25 points to the thing. Benyaya increased his points lead. So Benyaya is on 366 at this moment, followed by Martine 27 points behind. Bizecki's title hopes are pretty much gone.

He's 73 points behind. We have the Thailand race. We have Malaysia. We have Qatar and we have Valencia. So we've got four more races, 100 points up the grab.

He's definitely got a shot, but I don't see anything happen to Benyaya or Martine in this. After Bizecki is Bender in fourth, then Zarco, Alessio Spargro, Benyaya is Martine, Miller, and Quattro all rounding out the top 10 in MotoGP. Fascinating MotoGP race. Can't wait to get Rich's thoughts on this. I'm sure he'll have a lot of good stuff to offer as well.

We'll get to that one after we get through Thailand and when Rich is back and we can talk about that. So that was the end of Saturday. There was hope then sprung eternal that we'd be able to have all the racing on Sunday, but it was a very wet morning warm up for the Moto3 guys. Just quickly to recap qualifying, Ortolla, Furosawa, Olgardo, and Rurayt are all in the first. Going through with Orgardo, Yamanaka, Faroli, and Ortolla.

Ortolla really pulled out a great lap at the end to be able to get into Q2. QP2, it was Sasaki taking the pole, fall by Kelsa, NEPA, Marrera, Bartoli, Vier, and then our points leader, Massia, was 13th to set the stage for the Moto3 race. It's wet, it's windy, and on the out lap, Marrera crashes and turns 12 on the siding lap. He just came out of the pits, got in there. This was one of the things they were talking about that could be a problem was the fact that it was so cold that being able to put heat in the tires, even rain tires need heat to work effectively, that this was really going to be tough.

Even Bartoli crashed and he did that at MG. Orgardo crashed and he had to pick himself back up. He did that at Miller and Perez went down as well. So we had multiple guys that were falling due to the wind, due to the cold tires, the heavy wet conditions. Marrera's bike was definitely very bent up and it was doubtful whether he would start or not.

He looked to be dazed and confused about this. Now, it was said that he had a concussion. I've seen that on Twitter from various journalists, that he had a concussion, that he actually had temporarily lost consciousness. If he really did or not, I do not know. That's what the rumor mill is.

And people are wondering how he was ever allowed to start the race. Which he would do from the back of the grid, because he went through pit lane for the warm up lap and then joined at the back of the grid. But a 21 lap Moto3 race was on offer for us at this point on Sunday morning. And so it started with Sasaki, Kelso, Weier, Fernandez, Anciu, Masia and Holgardo. Now, Fernandez went from 9th to 4th on the first couple of corners.

Alonso crashed at turn 4 and Fernandez looks to be pulling away. He literally blew past everybody and was pulling away at the front of the pack. So, Adrian Fernandez on the Leopard bike was just pulling away from everybody in what was appalling conditions to say the least. Anciu was now in 2nd, Sasaki 3rd, Kelso hanging in there with Weier and Agi. Masia was fading fast, he was going backwards.

The rain started to let up with about 15 laps to go. It was then at that point still Fernandez, Anciu, Kelso and Sasaki at that point. Masia had now fallen down to 14th. Feroli had crashed at turn 4 and Ortola went down at turn 4 as well. Munoz then crashes at turn 1.

Anciu and Kelso are coming for Fernandez. With about 13 laps to go, those two guys got hooked up and they started to put together fast laps that were faster than what Fernandez was turning or was willing to turn. Again, if it's a rain race and you're the first guy through everything, you're not sure exactly how fast you can go through. You don't know if it started to rain harder on that part of the track where you're going through now from the last time you've been through. You're always on tentative, you're always riding within yourself.

It's very hard to ride very fast. However, the guys behind you can see what you're doing and have a better chance of understanding what the track may or may not be doing. That allows them to catch you. This is what's happening at this point in the race. At 9 laps to go, Salvadori crashes at turn 10.

Masia was now up to 9 thanks to the people who were falling out in front of him, which was also Furusato, Agi. They both crashed out as well. Sasaki then got his way past Kelso. Anchu has a huge moment at turn 4. Sasaki is now in second as a result of that.

Anchu again has a moment at turn 8 and that's another big one. Then before we get ourselves back together with the whole what's going on with Anchu, is his tires shagged, is he having problems with the bike, is it the wind, is it raining harder? Before you learn that Adrian Fernandez has gone down at turn 11, just the front end tucked as he's going up the Luki Heights. The front end is gone. Sasaki is now leading.

Kelso is in second with a great shot at being on the podium. Then Anchu is behind them. The front three are going to decide who's going to be where on the podium with these five laps to go. After that, Anchu moves his way back up to second. It's running Sasaki and then Anchu.

Kelso has decided enough enough, I'm going to ride in, I'm going to take the podium and get there because that's what he wants to do. He wants to be sure that he gets on that podium and I don't blame him. Anchu takes a look a couple of times with two to go on Sasaki but can't make it work. Sasaki's got speed and a straight line. Anchu doesn't but Anchu seems to be more willing to ride the corners, ride deep into the corners I should say.

If there was anything that was going to happen, it was going to have to happen at turn 4 or turn 10. Anchu had to lead on to the front stretch if he was going to win the race. Anchu made the pass happen at turn 10 and that allowed him to go on to win the race. Followed by Sasaki, followed by Kelso. Great podium for the Aussie.

It was great. Colin Vier was fourth, Fernandez fifth, Rossi sixth, Furusato, Masiya our championship leader in eighth, and Bertelli ninth, Lorenzo for on in the 10th spot. It was a great Moto3 race and the idea that there was this intrigue that could Anchu win, could he not win, since Sasaki win or not win. He thought maybe Fernandez would win. So there was all these up and down emotions about who could or couldn't win.

So it was another great race. Again, the island never disappoints in the races that we get. These were even better than ones we've had lately. So great race in Moto3. We'll move towards the points championship standings after the Moto3 race.

João Masias still leads this championship. He's on 217 points, but Sasaki second place finish puts him only four points behind. If Sasaki could have beaten Anchu to the line, well, then he would have been leading the championship by one single solitary point. Orgado stays in third position. Not going anywhere there.

Alonso in fourth, Anchu fifth, then Ortole sixth, Morera seventh, Rueda eighth, Munoz and Nepa rounding out the top 10 for the championship. This battle between Sasaki and Hologardo is going to go all the way to the end. Or sorry, between Masias and Sasaki. Huh? Looking at the wrong part of the document, guys.

Sorry about that. Those two guys, that is going to be the battle. Again, Hologardo was the runaway championship leader for so long, and he's now 22 behind Masias. It's only 22 points. Anything can happen in Moto3.

He's not out of it, but you got to believe it's going to be Masias who's on a good run of form until we got to here. And again, perhaps maybe caution is the better part of valor because being able to stay upright and finish and gain points was probably more important to Masias than it would have been to have a race win or push it and fall trying to be at the front. So we'll see how this pans out. Like he said, there's still four races left to go. This battle is going to rage all the way to the end, just like MotoGP.

With that, we will get to the Moto2 race. Moto2, let's look at the qualifying from Saturday. In the first session, we had Balthus Alcoba Agura. And that was really interesting to me that Agura was there. Yeti came back from his crash that he had in India, so he was riding.

He was in there as well. Agura never did make it out of that first session. It seems like Phillip Island is a bit of a bogey track for the Japanese. I don't know why that actually is. So many people love the layout of Phillip Island, the flow, the ups, the downs, all that good stuff, but it just doesn't work for Agura.

And I'm not sure why. But Salach, Balthus, Yeti, and Van der Gerberg all got out of that session to go to the second session. The second session, Acosta was on par early, but Alcoba Agura decimated everybody and who had decimated everybody in practice, went to and threw down a 1.31 lap, which was nobody could match. Kinet then was second, and he was followed by Lopez, Roberts, Acosta, and Dixon. Now, the Moto3 race is running right after the Moto3 race in wet and appalling conditions that's there.

So on the sliding lap, Acosta has a near miss, and he just kind of comes out of the seat. Arbolino has a near miss where he's almost out of the seat. But as the sliding lap continued around, Acosta was down. His bike wouldn't start. So again, what's going to happen?

Jim's going to have a rant about starter motors on Moto2 bikes. But we'll save that for another time. You know how I feel about that. But Pedro winds up getting the bike back, but he's going to have to start at the back of the grid because he's going to have to go out for the warm up lap from pit lane after his mechanics tidied up the bike and got it restarted. So that meant he would take his position at the back of the grid.

So Acosta is going to start dead last in this race. And again, windy conditions, the rain has come back again, and we're looking at a 23 lap race. Lopez gets the whole shot at the beginning of it. He leads. And then at turn four, he high sides himself in front of the entire pack.

And to credit to all the Moto2 guys, every single person missed him. And it was amazing riding by everybody to get around there. It is a slow turn and it was just on the X of the turn. So everybody had a chance as they're looking to the corner, look to the apex to see the bike, see the rider, make an adjustment and get through. It was Garcia who had gotten to the front, followed by Outaguer, Roberts, Kennett, Dixon, Solatch.

Then Darren Bender would go down at turn one and they talked to him at the beginning before the siding laps or sorry, talked to him on the grid, I should say. And he was saying it was very tricky with the wind. The tires were cold, couldn't generate any heat. And he said, it's going to be a race of survival. Van de Gerberg goes down at turn four, Baltus goes down as well.

20 laps to go. Garcia is still out front followed by Arbolino who's having a great race in the rain. Solatch, Loews is there, Dixon and Outaguer. Acosta is 18th after three laps. It doesn't look like Acosta is going to go very far in this one, but we'll see what happens.

Garcia then goes down. And then Solatch are both down. They both are down at the hay shed. So Garcia is down, Solatch is down right after him. Loews is then down at turn 10.

Dixon is down at the end of the loop. There's crashes everywhere. Suddenly everybody's either lost their mind or the conditions have worsened with a downpour of rain. We're not sure what it actually is, but with 19 laps to go, it's Arbolino followed by Outaguer, then Canet, then Guevara, then Chantre, Alcoba, Roberts and Acosta has made his way to 11th. He's helped here by the rash of crashes that's happened in front of him.

So he's slowly gaining points. He's now into the points because only the top 15 get points for it. And he's getting some now. At 15 laps to go, it's basically the same guys are out front, except Pedro has now made his way to ninth. So he's gained two more spots.

At that point, red flag. So now we've determined at this point that the entire race is red flagged. We are not at two thirds distance, so we're looking to restart the race. So I think they want to see if the weather conditions were going to maybe improve. It had started raining.

I think the bigger thing was it was still raining, but the wind had now started to pick up. Now we're getting closer to the midday, a little bit maybe past midday at this point. That was when the wind was supposed to start to pick up. It's when it was supposed to start to get worse. Nobody was quite sure what was going to happen.

It took about 10 or 15 minutes for the officials to decide that's it. We're calling the race and we are going to call it at that an award half points. Now we hadn't gone to two thirds distance, so we have to issue half points. So Arbolino is your winner. Kinet is on the podium in second, followed by Altegr, Alcoba, Robert Bavara, Chantra, Bogen, Pedro Acosta, and Marcos Ramirez.

They all received half points for this. So that changes the world championship standings a little bit, only in the fact that Pedro Acosta is on 280 and a half points. Arbolino is on 224 and a half points. That's the 56 point lead. You know, it was I think 65 points previously.

So it has gone down somewhat. It's still Acosta's championship to lose. They're heading to Thailand and then on to Malaysia, to Qatar, and then back to Valencia. It's going to be interesting. It's only a matter of Acosta outscoring Arbolino.

If all he does is just keep beating Arbolino to the flag, it's easily going to be his championship. There's nobody else even close. So Acosta is going to probably be on cruise control for this one to get him. So that's how Moto2 finished up. Now, what about the MotoGP sprint race?

Well, that was canceled as well by the officials. Again, the wind picked up. It was blowing really hard. I saw some video of some of the tents and tents and other vendor type awnings and things like that, umbrella tables and stuff that were being blown all over the place, which is definitely not safe to race in because it isn't safe for a person to be standing out there. Then it's not safe for somebody riding a motorcycle at high speed around the island.

So we did not get the sprint race. So again, that leaves us with Benyai out front and then with Martine trying to catch him. And we'll see where that goes when we hit Thailand. So that's a quick update for everything that happened at the island, just so you guys know what's going on. Again, Rich and I might have a few words about this after we get done with Thailand.

But until I'm able to talk to you guys again, after the race in Thailand, please ride safe.