The Beast Returns in the East!

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 748 for November 13th, 2023. I am your host Jim McDowell with me as always from merry old England, Richard Jowd.

Richard, how are you doing today, sir? Very good, thank you, Jim. Yeah, looking forward to talking about Sepang as we get to the, let's call it the business end of the season. Yeah, I thought you'd be more excited about getting on a plane and heading to Qatar, but... Well, never super excited about waiting around in airports and stuff, but no, very much looking forward to Qatar and I'll perhaps just, what's the word, tease up what I think is going to happen, best laid plans and all that.

So we'll get into that in a minute. Yep. Alrighty, folks. We've got some really good listener feedback that has come in in the last couple of days. One from Scott Baldwin, one from Chris Boyce.

Rich, I'll let you cover Chris's questions first and then I'll take on Scott's. Yeah, okay. So thank you, Chris. Great email. I won't read it out word for word.

Just to precede this, Chris is, like we do often, Jim, is rather annoyed by the amount of loitering that goes on in the MotoGP field during practice and particularly qualifying as people kind of hang around on a live track waiting for a tow. So the key point that Chris makes, and I think you'll have a strong opinion on this, Jim, is why not enforce the 107% rule or whatever the minimum lap time percentage is for qualifying? They can take the top time from practice since that's the session that decides who goes through to the qualifying two. Anyone who doesn't complete, well, he says in and out laps, obviously they're different, but anybody that is not on an in or an out lap should be within the 107% time. And he says, I feel like that would do several things.

It would no longer be a judgment call by the stewards. Either you're under that time, that 107% time or you aren't. It would mean everyone is all business when they're out on a hot track, so loitering around waiting for somebody to follow. And it would shift all the shenanigans to the pit, true, but at least it wouldn't be happening on the track. So there'd still be people waiting around, watching as they do.

But yes, we wouldn't have people potentially getting in each other's way. So it's, yeah, using the 107% rule, which I think still exists as a cutoff. If you don't make that time, then you don't get to race, which we hardly ever see now a days. That was more when you had kind of less qualified wildcard or guest riders coming in. So what do you think of that idea, Jim?

Because we've moaned about the, well, I mean, there's a lot of it's been pointed at the likes of Marcos, isn't it, in recent times, but just hanging around on a live track and the potential of a collision taking place. Yeah, this one's this is an interesting solution to a problem that I think we all agree is becoming a problem. Yeah, I should say, Jim, can I just say, Chris quite rightly points out, and we said the very same thing last week, which is that the Moto2 and certainly the Moto3 riders do get heavily penalised for this. So we see lots of long laps or going to the back of the grid or whatever. But I think I was moaning about this on the last show, that the MotoGP riders seem to get away with this.

And I think we said, didn't we, that they'll get away with it up until the point at which there's a nasty accident. And then, you know, there'll be a knee jerk reaction and they'll do something stupid that spoils the overall format. So that's kind of why Chris is addressing the issue with what I think is a very good solution. Yeah, I think it is too. Now, a couple of things, and I'm not I'm not nitpicking here, but I think it's only 105 percent because I remember Simon saying something about that in Thailand, that one of the Thai riders in Moto2 wasn't allowed to continue because he didn't reach 105 percent.

I know that that rule exists for Moto3 and Moto2, but I don't think it exists for MotoGP. And I think it's because there's such a limited number of riders. Don't know if it used to, but whether it still does. I think it I remember back when we were in the CRT days, right. And that was to keep that was that was there so that I think it was at least good equipment that showed up.

So I and by that, I mean, I don't think they wanted people rocking up with a Yamaha R1 superbike and trying to qualify for MotoGP race. So they kind of they set the bar to where it was like 105 percent. So you had to have a very highly tuned M1, if you will, like somebody had to put some serious money into this to get it to be there. I mean, I think we're talking like million dollar euro visas for. For MotoGP bikes or satellite teams, they didn't want somebody rocking up with a three hundred thousand dollar superbike.

They want it. They want good equipment. I think that's where that part of it started. Now, whether it's still there or not now, I'm not 100 percent sure on it. But I like the idea because, hey, look, as soon as you go out of the pits, you start you've got however long it's going to take you to get from point A back around to the timing light.

And then you better be on it from that point for to maintain this this 105 percent, which is a good idea. However, we see most of the shenanigans actually technically happen on that out lap. So it's a great idea in theory. And I applaud the thought that was put into this, but I don't know if it fixes the problem because I think you're still going to see it. You could address the outlapped, however, by just having a I don't know, say 120 percent.

I it wouldn't be fair to expect them to go out on a tire that's not fully warm and say one hundred and seven or one hundred and five, whatever, all our time. But you could say you must still hit these vectors a bit like, you know, we're going to have this in the ball fest that is modern day Formula One. But there is precedent for that. And given the dash readouts and stuff that they have on the bike, they could be kept informed how far in or out of the target time they were. Thinking about that to me, why don't you have it set by like once you ride the pitch, you have to get to sector two by a certain time.

You have to be in sector three by a certain amount of time. And I think that's a little more realistic because what that would do, at least in my mind's thinking. As that first sector would take you a while because you're trying to warm the bike up, the tires up, brakes up. But by the time you get to that third sector, you better be basically on it to be able to get through the fourth sector to be able to get to that lap time. So I think if you did it like that, then yes, I think this could really be a great solution to it to keep everybody going.

But you know, somewhere somebody is going to be moan something and they're going to hate it and it's not going to do it. But as a thought exercise, this is actually a really, really good idea. And I do like it a lot. I just think there's a lot of no matter what you do. This is kind of like Formula One.

I think we bemoan this too, Rich, is that. You can give a group of engineers a rulebook and they will scrutinize every last bit of that rulebook to find every last advantage that they could ever possibly find in it. And they will suss out every weak point that you have in this. And I think. You could also just simply be here's the riders meeting is like no more.

Darling on the lap on your no more dawdling, no more looking for toes. If you're offline and you're you better have a bike that's got a problem as opposed to, you know, that and if you start finding the guys, if you start penalizing them that, hey, your fastest lap you turn is now gone. So think about it. Let's just make the example of Marquez is being towed around. It's in Q1.

He's he is now second quick behind whoever. And there's enough time for one more lap left. And oh, by the way, he was dawdling before he ever did that lap. Well, that lap's gone. So now he doesn't he doesn't move from QQ one to Q2.

You could easily do that, too. I think I think that's the penalty that you really have to impose upon these guys, especially in the capability. Q1 is like you're dawdling. We know you're dawdling. You do not get your fastest lap time.

And from what we've seen, you really only get one good chance on a tire, maybe two. But the problem then is you're not treating the guys and you could do the same thing in the Q1 and the Q2 session, right? You you could conceivably have somebody who dawdled was on pole because they were being towed. And then you say, nope, that lap times canceled because they do with track limits. If you are exceed track limit, exceed track limits, you get dinged instantly.

That lap is gone. So I think it's a great I think if you did a combination of 105 sectors and you penalize people by taking their fastest lap away, I think you'd solve it almost instantly there. That's it. And this is not really aimed at stopping people trying to pick up a time. I mean, that's just part of racing and always has been whether it's two wheels or four.

This is specifically about stopping people, yeah, riding very slowly, sometimes cutting across the track, across a light kind of racing line in a way that's very dangerous, given how fast these bikes are going and how quick, you know, the closing speeds are. It is an accident waiting to happen. So I do feel like they need to do something because as we talked about, I think in the last show, Jim, I mean, we don't want an accident to happen. And they say, OK, now it's single lap format one at a time. That would just be utterly turgid and would not be a good development.

And there's a sort of knee jerk reaction that you could envisage happening if something bad happens. So, yeah, appreciate the thought, Chris, is a really good one. Yeah, I appreciate the thoughts, Chris. So let's move on to Scott Baldwin's email again. Appreciate the accolades, Scott, for the show.

Really appreciate that. I like the fact that you like sort of the engineering insight that I try to bring to the show. So I appreciate that. Thank you very much. But Scott's main point that he's trying to say is, hey, just read that Aprilia had been banned because they had an automatic clutch.

And so the question then becomes, what is this automatic clutch? And what why is KTM complaining about Aprilia having it? What's the whole deal that's going on in here? And it is a it is a convoluted tale of woe that I must say that I I went down the rabbit hole for a long time with this to try to understand all of what was going on. And I will endeavor here to try to piece it together in a way that everyone will understand and get.

So early on in the year, we were talking about how KTM was having these absolutely fantastic starts. Remember, we were talking about that. And I speculated that they were manipulating the clutch via some of the hydraulic units that were being used to raise and lower the rear right height. They just would simply manipulate the clutch so that it would bite and go. Turns out that is what basically they were doing.

OK, if you read there's an article that exists on where's the really good one. I think it's on. I got this one from Autosport has a good one that sort of explains the rules and stuff on there. So if you search for automatic clutches in Moto GP for Autosport, there's a great article. Crash.net has another good one that's there as well.

And there's one from Motorsport that also has some details. This is kind of where I got all this. But what they were doing initially is they were like a full. They say how it's like a Formula One clutch. Well, Formula One clutch, they do these practice starts.

And what they do is they have the car learn the bite point, given X amount of grip and wheel spin at the first point. They then use an algorithm in the computers of the car to set the bite point of the clutch. So then it's still the driver holding the clutch and letting go of it at the green light. But as soon as the clutch is let go from the paddle clutch, the car then reacts and corrects itself and feeds in the appropriate amount of clutch to give them the optimum start with no wheel spin. What KTM was doing and I went back, I looked at some of these back like Portemayo, the earlier races.

If you watched practice sessions, you would see Bender and Miller stop. They would set the the ride height device, the whole shot device. Then they would start flicking. They were there. You could see two fingers moving on the clutch and a thumb moving.

And what I think they were doing was they were telling the bike is they fed the clutch out and would start to grab. They would push a button and that sets the bite point for the clutch. Now the bike knows where this is. And they would do that like when they took off from a warm up lap to get back around to the grid. When they came to the grid, they'd set all this stuff and then they let it roll a little bit to find the bite point.

And they'd hit this button that would set the bite point. So what would happen then is they could let the clutch go and the bike then using the hydraulics on the bike would let the clutch bite and then slip the clutch as it went along. And TC is checking to see if the wheel is spinning or not. And you can then basically create this wicked start. There is some one of these articles they talk about Miller going past one of the Ducati's with a V sign up.

So his left hand isn't doing anything. So that's what they're talking about. Now, I think that at that level, when that happened with Miller on the KTM, KTM took it off because I think they got told by the rules makers that be that's a fully automated system, because now what had happened was that they weren't using and setting the bite point by hand anymore. They were simply testing it as they took off in the computer. In the bike was noting where that point was.

So now it's not it's not a an analog system. It has just the computer setting the bite point. And then Miller just throws a clutch. That's kind of what the system was developed by Aprilia. KTM having been told, hey, this is outside the lines.

And I think it was MS, the who who is it? It's Erta Erta is in charge of the teams, right? Rich, yeah, yeah. Erta Erta controls the teams and controls sort of the rules. I think some people from Erta looked at what KTM did, and they kind of walked over and said, look, guys, you're on a gray area here.

Let's not go down this path. Can you please just take this back to the more analog system where it's being used by hand and not being fed through the electronics of the bike? I think KTM kind of went, OK, but then we're going to be the same for everybody. Right. And Erta kind of agreed.

Now, this is all my speculation here. This is this is purely me speculating. I think Erta said, yeah, we'll police everybody else. Meanwhile, Aprilia had collected this system, figured it out and had figured out the same thing KTM had figured out, to which Aprilia had some great starts like Barcelona and a few races before there. And then all of a sudden it got bad for them again when they did the flyaways.

Because KTM went, hey, Erta, you told us we couldn't have that. We think Aprilia has got the same thing. And if we can't have it, they can't have it. So you need to tell them to take it off their bike, which basically the rules makers came to for Aprilia, said, no, you can't have that on your bike and it got taken away. So that's what's going on.

And again, it's just simply we are using some methodology to manipulate or find where the bite point for the clutch is. We're using trash control and a loop to decide how much wheel spin we get. And we're fundamentally taking the human out of it for the launch of the motorcycle. Now, we're still changing gear by our feet and we're doing that manually and all that stuff that's there. But that's the part that was there.

So now I think they've sort of moved it back to where, OK, you have to feather the clutch out with your hand to get that start again. I don't I think you can kind of maybe still do that. Set the bite point by hand kind of thing. But it's still going to take you to get it to that point. At least it's going on.

Now, what's also interesting about this is in my search for all these automatic clutches and stuff, I stumbled across a article that was three days old at the time, which yesterday was three days old. It was from Honda. It's on the MC News dot com dot AU. And it says Honda previews the first E clutch for motorcycles with conventional manual gearbox. And in that, what they do is Honda uses an electronic clutch to where you can basically put it in gear and rev the bike up and it will go.

Their idea is that it allows people who can't really manipulate a clutch and a throttle together very well. So they don't have to worry about the clutch part of it. They can just turn the throttle part on and the bike just simply goes. And if you go to this MC News dot com dot AU and you look for the Honda gearbox, like the E clutch gearbox, it's got a pretty good explanation of what's going on. Got a pretty good example of what's happening to make that clutch actually work.

And it's really a pretty neat little video that they have of it all. So I suggest you go there to look at that. If you really want to see what's coming, because I got a feeling that if it's on a production bike and Honda has it next year, it'll be on their race bike. And they're going to argue, why can't we have this on here? So wait for that battle to show up.

But that is all that I can tell you about the auto clutches, the automatics that we have. And it's probably coming to that. And I, you know, Scott makes the point that he wants it to be manual. He wants it all to be very manual. I agree with him.

I would prefer to be all manual. But, you know, the same thing could be said. The same argument can be said about ride height devices and all that. That, hey, you're not you're taking the rider sort of out of this equation. And, you know, he and Scott says he really wants it all out.

He wants all the aerodynamic stuff off of the bikes. I don't blame him. Again, I think we've had this discussion, Rich, and I think it's well out there. Hey, it's going to take somebody, unfortunately, I think, getting hurt by a wing that fell fall off falls off. And if we saw the warm up lap to this week's Malaysian GP, Jorge Martinez bike had another wing lip problem where it came off again.

And they were putting a new one on on the grid before they started the race. It's getting to the point now that it's starting to get really scary. That's two races in a row. We've had a problem with a little wing lit falling off of a motorcycle. And it happens to be Jorge Martinez each time.

My theory on why it's always Jorge Martinez is that Martin leans over the farthest of anybody. And I think he can touch things that other riders can't touch. And I think it's just enough to put it all it takes in a piece of carbon fiber is one little crack because it's designed to be loaded in a specific direction. And the other direction, it's not it's not designed to take that punishment. So who knows where that's going to go?

But that's the tech segment for this week, guys. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Hopefully you liked it, Scott. They'd appreciate the email. Yeah, I mean, I've got nothing to add to your engineering oversight on that, Jim.

I mean, you've explained that really, really well. Even I can kind of understand what you're saying, which is saying something. But the evidence actually is in the results because the Prilier and KTM both do appear to have slipped back a bit. And in modern day Moto GP, we're qualifying and or getting off the line well, in terms of being in that first, well, I don't know, three or four positions. Because of tire pressure, which is another problem which we're going to come to.

Perhaps, you know, the fact that maybe they they've been stymied a little bit with this clutch technology, if that is indeed true. And obviously some of this is speculation that would help to explain why the Prilier in particular, not KTM quite so much, but certainly Prilier has really gone backwards in the last third of a season, I would say. So that may well coincide with them having been running this auto, semi auto clutch, whatever you want to call it. And then being told, no, that's about to be protested and you'll be forced to take it off. So you do yourself a favour and just do it for yourself.

So that does kind of make some some sense. But the last thing I just wanted to mention, Jim, because at the end of Scott's email, as you just alluded to, you know, he goes on the tirade that we've been on many times before. You know, let's have smooth sided fairings. Let's not have ride height devices, ride height devices, rather, and a whole shot devices and all this sort of stuff. And I always come to an interesting or problematic kind of conclusion with this.

Well, there's what some of our listeners have told us before. I'm thinking of people like Alan Fleming, for example, who was very, very strong in his position that no, no, this is prototype racing. If there's a something allowed within the rules and a team exploits it, that's the whole nature of prototype racing. And of course, you can't argue against that. But the thing that kind of flimaxes me a little bit is that if you take a modern super stock 1000 bike, arguably, it's as technologically advanced, certainly from a software point of view and ride riders of AIDS point of view, it's more advanced now than what Moto GP are up to in some respects, because obviously the ECU is so much more kind of managed now.

So there's that aspect. And then if you take the view as I do, the kind of the really wild arrow devices that we're seeing are not going to trickle down to road bikes. And I certainly see no reason why, you know, ride height device would ever find its way onto a road bike. Even a, you know, an expensive super bike. I just don't see what purpose it serves.

So it kind of makes me think it's kind of like a. What's the word, an existential threat to the sport in a sense, if the if the bikes or the manufacturers are there to develop stuff that goes on to road bikes, but they've kind of hit the blocks now really nothing else can do and the road bikes that they're already making in some areas as if not more advanced than the race bikes. You kind of do worry what's in it for the manufacturers, don't you? Other than the whole win on Sunday, sell on Monday kind of thing. But we don't really necessarily believe that that's quite the force that it was once upon a time either.

So it does make you wonder whether this will come back to a kind of slightly scaled back, kind of just pure racing thing rather than this pseudo development test bench, which I'm not sure that it is anymore for the reasons I've just sort of hamfistedly tried to explain. But I see your point, man. I really do. It's like, OK, yeah, world super bike. The electronics there are far more sophisticated than what they are in Moto GP.

So it's like, if you want to develop an ECU for a street bike, you're going to do it over a little bike, and then that trickles onto the bike that you buy. OK, yeah, if you're going to give somebody a thousand cc bike in 280 horsepower, roughly, you're going to have to give them some aids to make it so that they can survive on it. I mean, I would even need something to help me because there's a whole lot there and I'd probably be in trouble real fast. So. You know, do we need that?

Or I don't know. The ride high thing, I'll disagree with you because our friends in Australia had wrote a letter long ago, said, hey, look, I only stand five foot five. Think about how many more people could could ride a bike if it was capable of them coming to a stoplight stop sign to lower the ride height so they could have both feet on the ground and not be tippy toe. OK, I'm with you there. I'm 100 percent behind that one.

OK, is it? And that's a fair point. And I totally get it. But at some point, you're going to have to do something. They don't have to be done.

Because it can't become. Modern day Formula One, in the essence, that like it's what bike you have, as opposed to what the rider can do with the bike. And how do you like the worst thing is, is it's not going to be spec racing, spec chassis, spec tire, blah, blah, blah. Like, OK, you do already. If you don't think everybody's not copying what everybody else has got, you're you're you're stupid.

But you do can tell a difference, at least in the engines, when they go by. They sound different. So at least we have that. But at some point, it's just the cost of developing these things is going to is going to be what's going to ride this out. They're going to be written out of the rulebook, underneath some sort of cost savings or safety measure, because it's just not going to work anymore.

Well, and your point about aerodynamic appendages, you know, coming off or the risk of them coming off. And it stands to reason that the kind of the Colin Chapman approach will start to prevail on this, where you go lighter and lighter, you know, to try and extract some advantage in terms of weight distribution or whatever. And of course, that is obviously a dangerous route as well. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's no easy answer to any of this, is there really?

But. I think it may have been in the email that we were just alluding to that Scott wrote, but, you know, many people make the point if everybody's got a ride height adjusting device, nobody's really got an advantage anymore, though you quite rightly pointed out in the last show that some of them appear to work better than others. But that's an operational thing. True, but if everybody's got them and it's making the bikes faster and, you know, arguably unsafe, as well as the fact that they're dangerous if they fail, then you do start to see, you know, the banning room on safety grounds then coming to the floor. I mean, honestly, if you want to play this game the right way, in my mind, my simple thing, the first thing I would ban would be carbon fiber brakes.

I would remove that. Like, you don't get them anymore. So, OK, when you do that, now it's a much longer braking zone, which means now we can see the people who can brake later and can turn on the front. And the people who can do that are going to be the ones that are going to be faster. They're going to be able to pass people because you've lengthened that space.

So who cares if you got a ride height to go accelerate faster or not now? Because everybody can't stop like the same. And that's really going to put a lot of skill back into it. Who could manage, you know, manage that braking? If you did it, if you just said, no, it's iron discs and you can.

And that's it. You're done. So is that going to and the thing of it is, is that really going to hurt a lap time? I don't think so, because it wouldn't bother me. Because if you remember Malaysia, when we first showed up there, I think in 99, 2000, maybe it was early on, it was very late 90s.

I know formula around about that. Yeah, I know. Formula one was there. Ninety nine. I'm assuming MotoGP was there probably like in 2000 or something or maybe early 99, whatever.

I think the first laps were MotoGP bike were 202s. Now we're at 157s. What were they racing at? Two minutes, two minutes, one. Yeah.

You can't and you can't tell it from the TV, can you? And backside, you cannot tell that difference. Not really. No, I mean, I think you could. I think you could maybe, maybe tell if they had to lengthen their braking zone, because I think you'd see riders sit up sooner, but you'd have to be paying really close attention to it.

I don't think any of us would complain that we make MotoGP or whatever two seconds slower per lap if there's three guys at the front battling tooth and nail for it. I think we'd think it's the greatest race that we've ever seen. Yeah. Well, as we're about to say, and as we've said, almost without exception, well, not every race this season, but I'm going to confidently say at least two thirds of the races this season, the best race has been the Moto3 race. Easily.

You know, OK, they're not going as fast and they're not as spectacular in that sense. That's true. But it's damn good racing. It is. You know, the clues in the title, you know, so watching people going around separated by two or three seconds because they can't risk getting their front tire over pressure, although some people notably didn't manage that.

Is that good racing? I'm really not convinced that it is now. I think we've come to a point where something needs to change. Anyway, we'll come to that in a little while. All right.

So guys, appreciate the feedback, the letters of feedback. All right. So guys, appreciate the feedback, the letters. If anybody else has anything they want to know or comment on the show, please do write us, MotoPod at MotoPodcast.com. And with that, Rich, I think we'll get into the weekend's events and we'll do that by starting with, well, I guess we'll start with some news.

I guess that's the first thing I mean, we'll get into the news. So these this is a fun. This is the fun time here. The first thing is, is that. With MotoGP, it is now heavily rumored that Marini is going to be going to HRC to take this spot vacated by Mark Marquez.

I think that's a great choice to put on the bike. I I personally think that I think the I think of I think there are. Four riders on the grid that I think are that are extremely good at bike development. Agree or disagree with me as I take these out. Miguel, I think that's a great choice.

I think he's very good at setting a bike up and getting the most out of a bike that he has. I think Zarco is an incredible development rider. I think he can feel small differences about what makes the bike better and can get you know, he's good at throw parts at him and he will tell you which parts are which and et cetera. After that, I think. Marini is probably the next best guy because he's always within himself and gets the maximum out of the bike and gets the maximum out of the bike once he gets the bike to where he wants it.

And then from there, it's a toss up. It's a toss up at that point. But I think that maybe maybe Bender is the next one. But I'm not too sure there just because I think Bender has done really well with the carbon fiber chassis that KTM has developed. So if I'm Honda and I can't get or sorry, Renz, I didn't say Renz.

Renz is the guy I was thinking of. Yeah, Renz is I think Renz or Bender, I think is a toss up. I mean, I could go either way, right? Renz back for when Renz is allowed to set the bike up. He can do really well that I give you Texas this year, right?

He took a bike that had no reason being anywhere near the podium and made it win, made a win out of it. Yeah, he got help. But I think he's there. So they obviously tried to keep Renz. He decided to leave.

Nope, not doing it. They tried to go after Olivera said, you know, it's two years or nothing. And no, you've got a contract to stay here at R&F. We're not playing this game. So where are you going to go?

That left you with going to Marini or Bender or or those. OK, you're not taking Bender out of this KTM contract. It's ridiculous. So Marini is like your last chance. So I think that's interesting.

The question, sir. Sorry. Well, Marini makes an awful lot of sense from the HRC point of view. Well, I am scratching my head out is how much sense it makes for Marini to go there. I mean, that's the bit that doesn't quite add up to me.

I haven't read them. I noticed just before we came on to record a tweet from David Emmett, who has written is up, which publication does it matter? It does matter. Thank you. I think he's got an article up describing the background to this Marini thing, which sounds as if this has been on the go for actually for quite a while.

Trying to get this to happen. So there's obviously a lot of background to this. And so things will add up ultimately and we'll all go, oh, yeah. But right now, in terms of when I first heard that. I thought, what?

It just didn't make and I'm still kind of shouting out loud like that, because I don't really see why Marini gets off the jucati of his half brothers team, unless that's reason in itself to get out from that shadow, perhaps. And he has been outclassed by Bizecki for the most part this year. That's true. But to jump on that Honda at the moment, I mean, it is a poison chalice for whoever does it just to ask Joanne Mia. So, yeah, really caught me unawares because, I mean, we should just not this will be news to any of the listeners, but obviously in recent weeks we've had Fabio Di Giantonia very strongly linked with that ride.

And that one certainly made a lot of sense to me and a lot of sense to him because he's out of a ride. And then over the weekend, although this was quashed by HRC pretty firmly and quickly, the rumour of Firmin Al Degep going there, sounds as if that might be more the Al Degep camp kind of trying to make that one a bit of a news story. Although interestingly, as we say, that he might potentially slot in elsewhere, which would make more sense, because again, putting Al Degep on a HRC at his age with his relative lack of experience, despite his obvious world class credentials, as he's now demonstrating, that would have been a potentially career career ending misstep, in my opinion. So, yeah, that was my initial thoughts on the Marini thing. But yeah, it's a really, really strange one to me.

Yeah, I agree. But the question then, because if Marini does leave VR46 for whatever reason, I mean, hey, some people want to ride for a factory. OK, you know, I I can't say that if that if when I was running around with Club, if somebody would have, you know, said, hey, here, we'll give you a you'll give you a support ride with Kawasaki like I wouldn't have signed it. I would have I would have thought twice about it. So I can understand just there's that allure.

OK, so that's the question that becomes who replaces the marina of VR46. Well, out of your is supposedly the man who is going to take that place there. I can see that if you're going to if you're going to go to Moto GP, I think it's kind of makes it better for you to be on a Ducati and in one of their satellite teams riding a year old bike, because there's a ton of setup data here and you can work on yourself for that first year. Try to get better your second year, put yourself in the window for going to whatever may happen as there. So I can see that.

So that's that part of it. Although although I've still got issues with that, I still have issues because I don't know if it's not part of the VR46 setup, which so that's a bit weird. Did you Antonio, who is Italian? It is really starting to show some form on a Ducati would be a much more sensible choice. And again, I still come back to the point that I would go is clearly world, world class.

And he's really shown that in the last two races, anyone at Silverstone early in the season. So this is not a surprise that he's getting tapped up by various teams, but he's still very, very young. And another year in Moto two certainly wouldn't do him any harm whatsoever. The cynic in me and the little troublemaker in me wonders, because, you know, it's not Valentino Rossi. I know, but it's his half brother going to Honda.

I wonder how much input Rossi had on that, unless part of the deal is that NSR 500 comes over to devulia. Stranger things might have happened. So because he still wants it. I know it does. I would want mine, too.

I would. I cannot believe that Valentino Rossi has not been heavily involved in the discussions over if Marine does make that move. Yeah. Do you agree? I mean, I can't see that done in complete isolation.

And we know what the history there is between, you know, Rossi and Honda or HRC. So I cannot in any way, shape or form believe that Rossi is not coaching this in some way. Like, I get that Rossi owns the team now. But the question becomes in my mind. Rossi could let Marine go if Dorna gives him something that he wants.

OK, if you get if you get a little extra money from Dorna because you let Marine go. I don't know. I mean, Rossi is not going to want for anything. He doesn't need anything. But I agree.

There's something there. Again, it's not confirmed. It's a rumor that's running around. I don't think we're going to know who's going to be on that bike until maybe the Valencia test. And even then, I don't know if we know that the person who may be on it's going to be the person who's going to be running around on it.

I still I don't know. I have this envisionment that that poll goes back to that seat. But I can't imagine he does it. But somehow I'm thinking that that's going to happen. And I don't I don't think it's going to happen.

But I'm going, well, that seems like a logical thing to do. But I know what do I know? Well, sorry, Jim. Yeah, I mean, that was the other story that broke over the weekend, wasn't it? On Sunday morning, Alberto Pooch was being interviewed by one of the door people, I think Jack Appleyard probably.

Yeah. And the whole poll is, you know, firmly in position or under consideration, at least for the ride. So that one broke as well. So it was another name that sort of went into the mix. So.

Oh, it's really interesting. It's great kind of fodder for us to chat about. But this is obviously, as you just quite rightly said, none of this is confirmed, although the Mariney deal is being mentioned by the likes of Simon Patterson, you know, David Emmett, people that are fully clued in and have very, very high level sources that are reliable for the most part, I'm sure. They're all saying it's a done deal. So and it's been a done deal for a little while.

But that does rather put into question why some of these other names have been banded around over the last week or two. You know, I mean, it's all politics, right? It's all politics. So, you know, given given get going on and. I don't want to say shady stuff going on behind closed doors and the back of the pit boxes, but, you know, there is.

So there is an element of that going on. Of course, there is. The other thing that was happening in the pits this weekend was the fact that could Jorge Martin. Find himself on the factory Ducati next to and next to Ben Yaya, provided he wins the world title and would then Bastionini be sent to Premac. I don't know about that.

I mean, they had I can never say his name to pull the chip. The guy, the chipati, chipati. That's a chip fatty. I can't imagine, you know, he's he threw high octane fuel in the fire going, well, we would be stupid not to consider that. Oh, you know, I mean, I I think that there's a happy go lucky part of Ben Yaya that enjoys the fact that Bastionini is right there.

With him, I don't think he wants Martin in the same box with him. I don't think he does. But then again, I don't know how much sway Ben Yaya has with the with the boys in Bologna. You're Italian on a bike and you're Italian world champion. I think that's some sway.

But Ducati doesn't do things that way. They'll do whatever they want to do and they're going to do it. So I don't know. That's all wild and crazy. And who knows what the discussion I've been reading and listening to in terms of the other podcasts that I listened to was this notion that Ducati would not want the number one player on a satellite bike.

And most I understand that it's not a particularly ideal scenario from a marketing perspective. I sort of look at it slightly the other way, which is the, you know, the satellite bikes that are running the works by the satellite teams that are running the works by, you know, they get in top quality equipment. And if you put a good rider on, you can win the championship. Now, you know, famously, as many people know, Simon Patterson has always said, you know, satellite teams do not win world championships. And it remains to be seen whether Martin will win the championship.

I kind of thinking that Bagnar probably will just about cling on to this and retain the title. But yeah, I mean, if that comment by Dupati was intended to put pressure on Bastionini and put him under sort of intense negative pressure to help the Martin thing along. It didn't quite work out, perhaps, as they might have thought, if that was the intention. And I'm not suggesting that it is, but suddenly out of nowhere. Yeah, Bastionini wakes up.

So again, we'll come to that in a minute. Well, come to that one. There's not an awful lot to say about the race. There's not a lot to say about about two of the races this weekend. That's why we're sort of going through all the news and all the listener feedback, right, to make a show.

Well, this one I forgot to put in the notes, so I apologize for this one, which is the fact that I read in Motorsport magazine through Matt Oxley that Dupati is going to basically get reverse concessions now to where their bikes are so good that they're not going to be allowed as many test days. They're not going to be as loud to have as many wildcard entries. They're going to do they're going to limit what Dupati can do to make that bike better. Now, the conspiracy theorist in me loves this because that's what they're going to do so that Mark can win on the Grissini Ducati because they'll be able to test more. They won't be able to sort the 2024 bikes out.

Mark will have the 23 bikes, and he's going to put up such a big lead in the points that he just cruises home to the victory. I don't know. I'm making that part up. But I mean, it's you can see where this is headed. I mean, their idea is that they need to get Yamaha and Honda back at the front.

And they're not going to anytime soon. Even if they did, by some miracle, come up with a better bike, it's still not going to be anything more than a top five motorcycle. But just I mean, they're just not I don't think they can get the sums right. I wouldn't put anything past Honda building a better bike than what they have this year. But I don't think Yamaha can build a better bike as easily as Honda can.

If you follow that line of thought. Oh, I think most people kind of think along those lines because they're restricted by size and budget compared with HRC. And there's obviously the ongoing argument about whether an inline four can really cut it against, you know, the army of V4 machines, which from an engineering point, Jim, you'll be able to say better than me is a more optimal solution in terms of weight distribution and power delivery and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I guess. Although I made a particular note of my on the main race on Sunday about the fact that I distinctly remember seeing Morbidelli drive past a Ducati on the main straight. So the idea that the Yamaharis dog slow, I'm not quite sure that's exactly right.

I mean, it might be that he had a better exit and Ducati had relatively a poorer exit, but he did overtake a Ducati on the main straight on the Sunday race. So I think there's life in the inline four yet. And Suzuki was certainly proven that emphatically last year. So I don't know. There's there's there's pluses and minuses to to to both configurations.

The big thing with an inline four is it's got a much better handling concept because the because it's like if you can get it over on its axis, it sort of stays there. It's a it's a handling machine. You can easily distribute the weight because you don't have the V. Right. So that center of mass is in one place.

You mean that the V allows you to rev higher and get more horsepower for cheap. The problem with an inline four is the more you try to rev it, the harder it is because you've got all these bearings that you got to deal with. Right. Like you had another set of crank journals. You get another set of, you know, I think two extra sets inline four versus what you would have in a V four.

So there's all I mean, it's internal friction. It's it's all these things that are there. It depends on what you're going to do now. I personally don't think that Yamaha will walk away from their inline four, mainly due to the fact that that's what they make. You don't think of Yamaha having a V four.

You OK, they did for the they did in the 500 era. Everybody had a V configuration. I get it. But if you look at the if you look at Yamaha street bikes, there's really nothing that's got a V. I mean, they got they they have inline threes.

They've got inline four. There's really not a Yamaha. Never. I don't. Maybe I'm wrong, guys.

If somebody out there knows this better than I do, maybe Yamaha did have a string of V somewhere in their history. But for my mind, from what I can remember from, you know, roughly 1980 on, it's always been inline four for Yamaha. Always. Yeah. That's just their thing.

Just what they do. I mean, Honda's always had a V, right? There's always been an R. That's why they're RCV. V.

That's why they're why it's in there. I mean, the first world's the first 88, 89 world's your bike, Mark. Fred and Freddie Merkel, that was a V for Honda. One Honda build a V five to get motor GP racing. This is what they do.

Do you, Connie? They've got to, you know, it's a V, but it's an L four if you think about it, because it's one cylinder is basically horizontal to the to the ground. Although I do think they've tilted that back some in the Jolene era where they rotated that cylinder backwards. So but anyway. Oh, let's go back to.

Yes, go ahead. What's your view on? I don't like this reverse concession thing. I mean, what's good about the concession system is people that are struggling get a bit of a help. I'm not sure I like the idea of penalizing the people that have done well.

I'm not sure that's the signal that we want to be sending out. I don't know. I mean, do you disagree? Well, you said you quite like the idea. So obviously you've got a different view on it to me.

But it's a little bit like success ballast in a way. It's kind of like hobbying people just because they did a good job. Yeah, I. I don't know. I don't.

If I portrayed that as I liked it, I I'm sorry. I didn't mean to to come across that way. I don't think you should be penalized for the success that they have. But the fact of it is, is that both Yamaha and Honda cannot get it, get any concessions based on their results of this year. And Dorna wants concessions for them.

They want them to have extra testing. They want them to have extra wildcards, all this stuff, which by their own rules is not allowed. So what they're going to do is take away the success of Ducati, say, hey, you guys got to basically sit still and not develop anything while the guys over here at Honda and Yamaha catch up. And I think this is more along. I don't think this is 100 percent.

Yes, we are going to do this. I think this is like a trial balloon being floated out there by Dorna going, look, we want Yamaha and Honda to have concessions. If you, Ducati, are going to sit there and tell us, no, they can't because Honda had a podium, they had a win, they had a podium, I think. Yamaha's had a podium. Hey, guess what, guys?

That they don't get concessions. And if Ducati wants to be hard lined about that, I think this is Dorna going, look, we can take that away from you. And you're not going to have any wildcards. We're going to you're not going to have any test days outside of what you get at the track. And let's see how good you are now.

I just think it's a it's a political thing that's running around. Right. And part of the problem is, I mean, we always go on about Dorna, but Dorna don't really have any say in this. Unfortunately, the governance of the sport is so kind of a whack because you need union. Now, this is a word I struggle with, you know, unity, unity amongst the teams for these kind of changes, you know, big wholesale changes to the rules.

And of course, Turkey's vote for, I was going to say Christmas or Thanksgiving would be more topical coming up. So it's hard to see a change coming any time soon, unless it's just absolutely rammed through like it or not. But that's obviously a dangerous game to play, which has been done in the past. Talk about ECUs and so on earlier on. But I mean, something clearly does need to change because the concession system worked really well for a few years.

But everybody, with the exception of Yamaha and Honda now, the other teams have kind of really benefited from that. But you almost feel as if the concessions need to cut in an earlier stage now. So, I mean, if you get a win in the season, that shouldn't rule you out of getting a concession, because if a Honda gets one win the season and Ducati get 20, that is still a wide disparity in performance as far as I'm concerned. So maybe they just need to look at freeing up a bit, you know, how you qualify to get concessions rather than taking away from the people that have actually done well. That would be my preference.

But whether they could get the teams to agree is a whole different discussion for another day. Yeah, I mean, maybe it should be a percentage thing, right? Because, I mean, you really only have you only have the two Yamahas. You only have four Hondas. You got eight Ducati's on the grid.

So if you did it by percentage, maybe that's, you know, you think about it over one Honda win over 20, what, 40 races there, right? And you buy percentage, blah, blah, blah. I mean, you could do it by points percentage. I mean, you could do something else, I guess. But I think there's just the evilness of the politics is there.

Dornan doesn't want to one make championship, and that's kind of what you've got. Ducati is definitely the dominant player. And what we can see, they're going to be the dominant player for a while. The only hope that we have is that by 2025, KTM has come good and Acosta is just the magic on that bike. Because otherwise, I don't think there's really anybody that could match Ducati.

No, not at the moment. And you only have to look at the race last weekend to see that. I mean, first few lap is like Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, and then Binder, because Binder is usually in there somewhere. But it's just an army of not bloody Ducati's. I shouldn't swear like that, because they've just done a great job.

You know, they flooded the grid with top, top bikes that are the best. Technically, they got great riders on pretty much every single bike. And so, you know, they're reaping, reaping what they sowed in a positive sense, aren't they? So hobbling them, I think, would be a bit tough because they've done the best job with the rules that they've got. And, you know, the others either need to do better or they need a bit more of a help in terms of how those concessions work.

That would be my view. Very interested to know what other people think on that. OK, let's move on to the last two things in the news. Roy Skinner has been out for the American racing team. I did not know that, Rich.

What happened there? This is yeah, this is just broken. So they had earlier in the season, they had obviously confirmed that Joe Roberts was going to be going back. So Joe's been at the Trans Moto T for the last two seasons. But he's going back to American racing, where he started off so that was confirmed a little while back.

Now, whether it's on the back of the weekend just gone, probably not because he's been doing well. But if you remember, they and we never really quite got to the bottom. What happened here either? Sean Dillon Kelly was arrested from the team. He was having ongoing arm pump issues, or that was the story.

Went off to have more surgery and never came back, although he is riding the forward on the Ford Moto 2 team now. So they brought in. I want to say it's not Manuel Gozalde, it's Marcos Ramirez. So I always get those two guys muddled up. Marcos Ramirez came in to replace Sean Dillon Kelly.

And it's done actually, I mean, all credit to the guy. He's done really, really well. Got a podium at the weekend. He's just been confirmed for next year alongside Joe Roberts. But Rory Skinner was on a two year deal.

So that contract has just been apparently just torn in half and thrown away. For the second time this year, two riders that were contracted to the team have been basically thrown out on the rear when they had valid contracts in place. So, I mean, there might be ramifications to that in terms of contract recognition boards and so on. But, you know, I'm sure by his own admission, whether I'll get a chance to have a quick chat with him this weekend, I don't know. And obviously this is obviously not going to be a good time to chat to him about it.

But I'm sure Rory, by his own admission, would say he's probably a bit frustrated with his results. Results this year, but. I distinctly remember John Hopkins himself said Rory's coming in on a two year deal, no pressure year one, learn to bite, learn the tracks. Year two is when he's due to perform. Well, he's not going to get a year two with that team now.

So that is not good, really, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I know we all sort of glibly say contracts are there to be broken. And there's an element of truth to that if contracts are poorly worded. But in this particular case, of course, as many people will know, but some won't. Rory Skinner was both managed by the team owner of American Racing Team.

And I think Hopper's in there as sporting director with involvement as well. So the person that wrote the contract for him is now just canceled it for him at the same time. So conflict of interest. I mean, it's a bit it doesn't smell great. That one, whether we'll get to know more about it in the short term, I don't know.

But as things stand, Rory Skinner's out of the ride next year. And it's very late in the season for this to have happened, because I mean, the BSB season finished ages ago. Although there's many deals to be announced in BSB, which is where Skinner came from. You know, the top riders are already gone. So it really leaves him in a tricky position, unless he can pick up another motor two seat somewhere, which is possible.

But yeah, it doesn't doesn't sit well with me that kind of shenanigans. Yeah, that's an interesting one. What to keep your eye on that one. And the last thing Qatar is this weekend in use or will be in the Middle East. Yeah.

So let me just quickly run through now, obviously, best laid plans and everything always subject to change. And this is me running around like a headless chicken in a panic. I've never been to before me and people I've never met before. So I don't know how exactly how this will go. But chops to all the press officers and stuff.

I've been given this access by Dawna. And thank you very much to Dawna for being so accommodating on this. So I've been getting in touch with people, trying to see if we can get some face time with the people that. I would like to talk to, I know a little bit about them. I'm hopefully, you know, it's people that all of the listeners will be interested in, so in sort of hopefully relatively concise order of who I'm meant to be seeing.

Most of this is on the Thursday, because that's obviously the main day for me to start. We have Dennis on shoot. Have a puncher out. Sam Loews, Colin Vire. Are you me, Sasaki?

Then a little gap and then hopefully at two o'clock, Jake Dixon, Joe Roberts. So again, I'm sort of a little bit around who our core listenership is, although obviously we have listeners all over the world. But hopefully this will please a lot of people. After Joe, I've got Takenaka Gami. I would have been speaking to Alex Rins, but he's ruled out again because he's still recovering from this latest operation he's had on this broken leg.

So should get to speak to his replacement, Ika Lekwona. Then we've got Sergio Garcia, Alonso Lopez and the man himself, Minaldega, towards the end of the day and elsewhere in the weekend. I should certainly get to speak to Scott Ogden and Josh Watley from the VisionTrack team. And I've got a session on Friday afternoon with Lucio Checcinello of LCR as well. And I'm sure I'll get to bump into the likes of Simon Crafer.

I could ask him about automatic clutches, for example, what he knows about that, because he's bound to have some insight there, Jim. Matt, I'm hoping I might get a chance to have a chat with Neil Hodgson. He's a commentator for TNT Sports, so he'll do the UK coverage. And a few other people I'm sure I'll get to as well. So I don't want to overcommit because otherwise you've missed meetings and then you sort of tick people off.

And I'd rather go sort of try and do quality rather than quantity. Well, I've got rather a lot on the plate already there. So, yeah, that's the plan anyway. So let's see how it goes. My first time in the GP paddock, so I'll be shitting my pants basically.

And I hope to do a good job. Pardon the French. I think you'll be fine, Rich. I do. All right.

Let's get to the actual racing. We'll try to go through this like there's a couple of races that are not really worth talking about, but we'll start with Moto3. The first qualifying session, Rueda, Vier, Alonso, Forasato and Toba are all in that session. The previous week's winner, nowhere this week. That's what I love about Moto3.

Alonso did have a massive crash at Turn 3. It was a major high side. He landed square on his hip. And credit to that boy being able to even get back up and get on a bike and actually race the next day. But Colin Vier, Rueda, Artigas and Perez, who's substituting for Anna Carrassa, went through to that second qualifying session.

The second qualifying session, well, interesting. All the KTM guys were all trying to tow each other around. So they were definitely running around there or whatever. Holgardo got crashed and turned seven. With four minutes left, Masiya threw down a 2'10.846.

He was 9 tenths of a second faster than any other person on a Moto3 bike. I thought that was wildly impressive for that class. He did seem to get it just right with a huge pack of riders on each of the two long straightaways. I think that's roughly three, maybe four tenths, which means if you took out his slipstreaming, he still would have been a half a second faster than anybody else, which I find that to be massively impressive. But Masiya would start on pole.

Vier was second, then Bertelli, Ortola, Sasaki, Rueda, Kelso, Munoz, Anshu and Brera. Those are the top ten from qualifying. We get to the race and they start off with this one. Ortola had a whole shot. He got a great shot, but Vier, Masiya both go by.

Anshu was ahead for a little bit of Ortola, then Ortola got back by. It was just kind of crazy that first lap. They were just shuffling it up. Any which way. Anshu was on the charge.

He was definitely moving from where he started going forward. They had, again, it was crazy. I was sort of an Alonzo watch because he was 12th after the first lap, way from his lowly like 20th spot he started in. I'm like, this is what the kid does, right? He crashes, he gets on, has like, okay, I don't have to go that fast anymore.

And then he rides up to the front, which his rides from the back of the pack are really worth watching, to be honest. They are quite... Yeah, they made nine places on the first lap. Yeah, I mean, that's insane that the kid can actually do that. Sasaki got a turn at the front around Masiya with Vier.

Anshu as well. Alonzo was up another two places. He was 10th after two laps there. Then we get to probably the most critical moment of the race. Alonzo has another wicked high side.

He does this one at turn four, which is a high speed corner. He loses it, throws it down on the ground. This collects Helgardo, Barrera, and Rossi. They ran into Alonzo's bike. They had nowhere to go.

They were trying to go off track to what would be rider left at that point. And they just got caught up in Alonzo's bike. Helgardo just kind of plowed it. Now, the amazing thing to me was that Alonzo was able to get that bike running again and actually make a lap or two. I couldn't believe the bike was actually that way.

I couldn't really tell, but I think it must have been wheels towards everybody coming. And I think that maybe Helgardo went rubber on rubber and bounced over it, which would have been, nobody wants to hit anyone or anything. You're trying not to. You're trying as best you can, but there's only so much you can do because we talked about this. There is Newton's laws of physics come into play.

Objective motion stays in motion until you're active by an outside force. The outside force is you either trying to break or swerve or something, and then you can't do it as quickly as what your approach speed is to this. But Furusato was also down, but that was a separate crash. He sort of low sided himself out of turn four too. I think it was a weird crash.

The carbon angles weren't that great for both incidents, really. So I mean, Alonzo, as you say, definitely high sided himself coming out of turn four and the others had nowhere to go. Furusato was a fair bit back into the corner and a bit just to sort of more or less do the same thing. But this time it was on his own and he didn't take anybody with him. I don't think anyway.

Yeah, so Helgardo was up holding his sort of right wrist, right arm. I was thinking collarbone, maybe his wrist. Apparently it was just a stinger or something. Maybe I haven't found that he's got any kind of an injury that would prevent him from riding a guitar. If you see Helgardo walking around, they're asking how the arm feels because I want to know.

Yeah, they did show him briefly walking back into the pits with Furusato. I think it might have been. And he kind of at that stage looked a bit better. So probably just tweaked a finger or something. Yep.

The front is pretty wicked. It's Sasaki, Munoz, Weier, Anshu, Masi, Bertoli, Ruret and Artorla. That's the lead group. Literally put them in any order because it's changing at every possible spot. What happens is what's interesting is that Munoz has what I think is the save of the season because it was...

Masi nudges his front onto the back of Munoz's rear and it just pushes it out sideways just a little bit. Somehow the kid catches it. I mean, I would have been flipping through the grass, but he saves the thing and just kind of like, oh, okay, that happened. I would have needed new underwear, new leathers. I would have had to stop for a minute, make my heart rate come back down.

But it was just this little nudge that he put on Munoz. I thought it was going to be major high side, but he somehow saved it. It was quite impressive. With the eight to go, things are starting to stretch out a little bit. Our lead group kind of has some space in between.

And I thought at this point Masi was going to go to the front and use that advantage that he had in qualifying. I figured, okay, if you're Masi and if you can get by at like, say, maybe turn four and you can run that faster pace, because he was very quick through sectors two and three as well. If you could run that pace, you're going to put enough on the guys that are behind you that they're not going to have an effective draft to catch you on the two long straightaways. So I thought this was going to be the spot where Masi is going to break this and he's going to be gone. And maybe Sasaki will go with him.

How wrong was I? That didn't last. It just sucked itself right back together again. And it was a top six battle. And those six were Sasaki, Iwai, Masi, Anshu, Bertoli and Rueda.

They get together. Masi had slid up the inside of Sasaki and Verhe with three to go, which is a great move. Then Anshu wound up going out and falling at turn five. So we're now down to like that kind of separate everybody to like the top three, which was basically Masi, Sasaki and Iwai. You kind of saw what you thought was going to happen was that Colin was going to toe Sasaki down the first of the two long straights, let Sasaki go by at turn 15 and then follow him home and be that buffer between him and Sasaki.

This seemed to be the ultimate Husqvarna plan. It happened for a couple of laps where Vair was really, really super tentative of trying to go around Sasaki. He was being ultra respectful of his teammate. And you just think, well, okay, this is what's going to happen. But needless to say, in the last lap, that's not what happened.

Vair just simply went wide and then cut it back and went charging right up underneath Sasaki to win his first Moto3 race. Sasaki would finish second and then you would have Masa on there. Great race by Colin Vair. I mean, this kid, him versus Alonzo next year for the Moto3 title is going to be sweet because he seems to be the real deal. Great ride by Colin.

He is not a typical looking Moto3 rider either. I mean, he's really, really tall and he must be a weight disadvantage. So he's doing miraculous things on that bike. Really, when you bring that into consideration, because think, bearing in mind how much we've talked about, how much of a perceived handicap it's been for Dennis Anshu, the size and weight thing. But Vair, yeah, I mean, just muscles that bike, doesn't he?

Well, if you look at it for some reason, I don't know why, Vair can collapse himself to fit under that bubble. Anshu is a wide kid. He's got broad shoulders. Vair doesn't. Now, I can't remember how old Anshu is.

He's got 19, almost 20. I guess he must be something around about that. Something like that. It's been several years since his brother won in Valencia. Vair is 18, they said.

So I don't know if it's just Vair is just late to the puberty bell or whatever. I don't know. I mean, he's a typical Dutch. I mean, he's literally like nine feet tall. So I mean, it's just ridiculously tall.

Compete towers over his teammate. I don't know if you saw them in part fair, mate. But it must be a foot and a half, two foot taller than Sasaki. So or foot, a foot taller. Certainly.

So I'm exaggerating. But yeah, he's a very unconventional, successful Moto3 rider at this point in time. That's the point. Yeah. So he's going to be there next year.

So I look forward to it as well. Let's see. So we had Vair, Sasaki, Masiya, Ortolla, Fernandez, Artigas, Kelso, Freoli, Yamanaki, Bertelli. Anshu was 11. Then it was Perez, Ogden, Wattley, sorry.

And then Nepa taking home the last point. Which takes us nicely to the championship standings. It is a 13 point lead that João Masiya has over Sasaki. So it's 246 to 233. David Alonso is at 205.

Holgardo is on 205. Then Anshu is at 196. If Anshu hadn't had that accident and finished on the podium, he'd have been third and wouldn't have been too far out of whack. If he could have won at those 25 points would have been incredible for his championship challenge. But that seems to have faded.

It's simply just these... I mean, I know that Alonso is 41 out and you've got 50 points left to play. I don't think that he's going to do anything about that. It's between Masiya and Sasaki. They both have to crash out this weekend for Valencia to really be a realistic shot for Alonso or anybody else or Holgardo.

Really, I think at this point in time. I'm going to ask you this. Let's assume... I'm going to make an assumption here. I hate assumptions, but let's assume that we have relatively 10 points or less between Sasaki and Masiya at Valencia.

Who do you take for the title? Masiya. Really? Interesting. I need to pick...

Well, better be careful because I'm going to be talking to him on Thursday. But because I've got the utmost respect for Sasaki. I mean, he's a damn good rider. And obviously he will want to... Well, same applies to Masiya, of course, because they're both going up to Moto 2 next year.

So this is their last chance to win the Moto 3 Championship and only one of them can do it. But that was the seventh second place finish for Sasaki this year. So, I mean, he may well win the title and he may well be a person that wins the title never having won a race all season. I mean, he's won races in previous seasons, so it's not as if he's never won in Moto 3. But in the last lap scuffle, he always seems to come off second, doesn't he?

And it's not just this year. That's kind of tended to be a little bit. He's quite polite in a way that Japanese riders quite often are. Yeah. I mean, I think we're sort of underplaying a little bit how tricky that must have been in the team garage after the race because obviously Vaya got his first win and it was a great win.

But, cool, that could end up costing his teammate big at the end of this season. And it was a tricky one for Colin Vaya, though. I mean, let's not forget Masiya was there. So he didn't want to sort of do something and mess it up. And then Masiya snuck through for the win.

That would have been even worse, potentially. So certainly from the team's standpoint, they would have rather Vaya won rather than Masiya. But so it was a very tricky thing for him to manage. But like you, I was fully expecting him to pull aside. But on the other hand, Jim, does Sasaki want to win a championship by being gifted positions by his teammate?

Probably not. I'm sure he wouldn't want to win it that way. So, yeah, but it was a hell of a race. I mean, just brilliant. I must just say you've underplayed slightly Omchu's crash, which wasn't really his crash.

I mean, it was Ruaida that lost control and bashed into him and knocked him off. So under the circumstances, to finish 11th or whatever it was, was, I suppose, not a bad outcome. Well, it was a bad outcome, but at least he rescued some points. But it's really screwed him up in the championship now. He can't win now.

He's 51 behind. Yeah. The only reason I thought that I would take maybe Sasaki is I'm not so sure the Honda's going to fit that well at Valencia. I can see just all the KTM clones being ahead of Masiya easily. Yeah, I was thinking a bit more from the point of view.

If you put, based on form, and I can only ever go on form really, if you put them both in a sort of last lap battle, assuming that it's good conditions and Valencia may well not be. I mean, if it's wet, I would probably then start to favor Sasaki more than Masiya. But it's a lottery. If Valencia is wet and cold, it's going to be a lottery anyway because tires will be a nightmare in terms of heat. All sorts of shenanigans could go on there.

But in a straight fight, my point was, I think probably Masiya's the more regressive of the two. Yeah. But it's impossible to say. It's just utter speculation, really. Yep.

All right. Well, let's go to Moto2 quickly. As quickly as possible. We'll get it over as quickly as possible. Okay.

Yeah, right. Basically, in the Moto2 second qualifying, Outiger just threw down a lap that was just literally wicked. I mean, he had a lap that just no one was going to touch at all. A couple other people got their laps kind of taken care of because of crashes and yellow flags and stuff like that. And it was sort of a free-for-all.

But Outiger was just head and shoulders above everybody else. There was Outiger, Vietti, Gonzalez, Kinnett, Ramirez, then Acosta, Arbolino right there in seventh, Dixon, Chantre, and Roberts. Those are your top 10 out of qualifying. What we need to understand going into the race is that it doesn't matter where Arbolino finishes. As long as Pedro Acosta finishes in the top four, it's his title.

That's the simplest math going into this. We get into this Moto3 race on Sunday. Basically, Gonzalez gets a whole shot to start it off. But then he's out wide at two. And he's trying to come back.

I guess between one and two, he's trying to come back to the racing line, which would be riders' right. And lo and behold, there's somebody there, and that's Outiger. Gonzalez bumps into it with the bike leaned over pretty far. It kind of picks the front end up. He loses it.

He crashes in front of the entire pack. Hold your breath, Todd. Yes, that was a big hold your breath moment. Credit to where credit is due. Arbolino basically stopped to not hit Gonzalez.

What's funny is Gonzalez is kind of sliding on his butt with him looking in the direction of the race. He's looking towards turn two. He senses Arbolino there and picks his arm up. So Arbolino could kind of go through. And then he looks around.

Everybody else has missed him. And now he's there. Thank goodness that Gonzalez and his bike went right or left because most people were to the right to set up for that turn. So everybody was able to miss him. It was hold your breath time.

Thank goodness that was there. But that meant Arbolino was well down the pack. Now, let's just call it what it is. Gonzalez at that point was gone. Hello.

It was hello, goodbye. He was out. Outaguer was. Darn it. Sorry.

Outaguer was gone. Sorry. So he was gone. Acosta kind of slid into second place. Nothing changes in this whole race.

It stays that way. It was a boring, boring race because nothing really happens. I was a bit upset that you really didn't get to see Aguera come charging through the pack because Aguera, although he qualified well down and he was making it up, but it was a good battle there. It was an Arbolino watch for me. I was trying to figure out where he was going to finish off or whatever.

But basically, Arbolino was like with nine laps to go. Arbolino was like 13th. And by then it was all over. And basically, the race finishes with Outaguer on the podium. Acosta gets second, which gives him the world championship title.

He is your world champion. Ramirez on the American Racers has a great race to get on the podium. He kind of spoke about that in the first part of the show. Then it's Aguera, Dixon, Chantre, Lowe, Roberts, Aranis. Arbolino got 10th.

Baltis, Alcoba, Essig, Salach, and Foggia for the last point. I don't know. What do you want to talk about there, Rich, because it was a dull, but a two race. Yeah, it was really, really tedious. Again, because I didn't get up in the middle of the night to watch it.

I watched it on Catch Up on Sunday morning, my time. And again, I've written fast forward, but it's been used quite a bit here. There was quite a high attrition rate, it must be said. I mean, a lot of riders went down. We lost Garcia.

Nazani went down. Canet went down. Vietti went down. So there was a lot of crashes, but it was all kind of people just crashing on their own. It was a lot of weird front-enders again.

Whether the tyre pressures were perhaps becoming a bit of an issue. I don't know. Obviously, it's a different tyre brand. So no, nothing extraordinary going on with the weather compared to a normal Sepang kind of condition. So a little bit hard to understand what that was.

The one thing that did stick in my craw a little bit, and I kind of understand why they do it. But again, this is where the picture-in-picture thing ought to be more heavily used. And that is, although it probably wasn't as close as I thought it was going to be, Aguirre was closing in or had been closing on Gonzales. That last podium place. And on the last lap, we pretty much followed Pedro Costa around, who was on his own.

Okay, it was the last lap before he won the Moto2 Championship. So I understood that. But we were missing a piece of racing and a race that didn't have a lot of racing to enjoy. So it seemed to me that they should have put, you know, Costa trundling around on his own down in a box in the bottom right or something. Where, you know, you could watch that if that was of any interest, which I can't see why it would have been particularly.

And instead focused on whether or not Aguirre was going to get Mano Gonzales. I saw it. No, sorry, not Gonzales. It was Marcos Ramirez. I'm doing it now because Gonzales went down at the turn one, didn't they?

So no, it's Marcos Ramirez on the American racing team, as we were talking about earlier on. He that was a very, very, very strong ride by him. A great result to get third. And Aguirre looked like he was going to pinch it, but he didn't in the end. So yeah, other than that, not really much to say.

Did you see Acosta throwing up? Yeah, I was wondering if he was throwing. Was he throwing up or not? I thought he was. I thought he was throwing up, but I don't know if he really was or if it was.

I'm pretty sure he was. Yeah, I mean, that is a anybody who's been to Sepang and I've been several times lots of the race, but I've been been there on work in the past. I mean, like all of that part of the world is ferociously hot and humid. So to ride a bike under that much physical and mental pressure with that title on the line. I mean, it was never really much doubt that Acosta was going to win the championship, but you still got to get the bike across the line and score the points that you need.

So and you know, it's been a big year for the lad, you know, a lot of pressure. He's going up to MotoGP. So you can understand how it all came to suddenly came to a fall for him. And yeah, he was pretty ill, I think. He looked quite understandably dehydrated when he was having his little kind of out on track celebration stuff.

He had to get a bottle of water down if you remember, because he was coughing up a bit there as well. But took it all on the chin, didn't he? Still chatted away to Simon Graefer in part firm, even though he kept retching. So yeah, bit of a superstar that boy. He might do well.

Yeah, he's got potential. Really fascinating to see how he adapts to the GP. But I mean, people have drawn parallels, of course, between him and say Ross, one year to learn one year to win the title. I'm sure we'll see. I'm not suggesting it win the GP championship in 2025.

But then again, he's on a KTM, which is not far off being the best bike. So it could happen. It could happen. He's the youngest Moto two world champion replacing one Mark Marquez. Yeah, there you go.

I mean, you start to break those kind of people's records. You got potential. And for the most part, although we've just been commenting on how drained he was, thoroughly understandably so on Sunday, for the most part this year, it's all been pretty serene, I mean, he I'm not suggesting it's been an easy championship because no championship is easy, but he has just been fast and consistent all year long. So if he can replicate any level of that kind of performance in Moto GP, he will be getting tongue twigging pretty quickly. Pretty quickly.

Again, the fascinating things we're watching for. Oh, so that we can look at the championship. Acosta is world champion. Arbolino is there. He has a 77 point lead on Jake Dixon.

There's 50 points left in play. So I think Arbolino is going to be second. And Dixon is on 183 and Outaguer is on 162. So that's 21 behind. Jake needs to be looking behind him because Outaguer may take that third spot from him.

After that, it's Ken, Kenet, Chantre, Alonso, Gonzales, and Ayagura and Salas and your top 10 there. So it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting, that's for sure. So that is Moto 2. I don't know.

Is there anything else we want to talk about Moto 2? I don't think so. I think we're pretty much done there. So let's get the Moto GP here. Real quickly, you had the games with Marc Marquez and Morbidelli in qualifying.

I think we covered that at the beginning of the show with the 105% rule and whatnot. No reason to go through all that again. Sparger was down. Marquez was down. He had fallen at turn seven and went over that sausage curve.

Him and the whole bike went together. Again, I hate sausage curve, but there we have that. DJ Antonia and Bastionini go through, excuse me, go through in the first, from the first qualifying session to the second. Martina got it down to a 157.5, which is absolutely incredible that he was down to that speed or whatever. I thought that was it.

I thought they were done at that point. But again, Benya threw down at the very end a 157.49 to take the pole position ahead of Martina, ahead of Bastionini, ahead of Alex Marquez, Luca Marini, Marco Buzzecchi. Anything, notice anything about the top six? They're all on Ducati's. I agree.

Yeah, exactly. Then you had Bender as the first non-Ducati. And Quattro, I thought was a brilliant qualifying from him. I mean, he was directly into Q2 and then he was able to ride to eighth. And then Benyala's Miller is the other KTM, then Fabio, DJ Antonia, and Zarco.

So that was the qualifying session there. We get to the sprint. Everybody was talking about the pace that Alex Marquez had all weekend long. That he was there. I wasn't so sure that he was going to be able to hang it here with the big boys on this circuit.

But we started out, Benyala got out front, Bastionini was right there, Alex Marquez, Martina Miller, Bender. Then Alex gets by Bastionini and Martina goes by Bastionini because this is like they're mixing it up pretty hard there. And then Benyala was wide and he was so wide. He kind of went wide because Marquez was forcing the move on him. But that let Martina hit by as well.

So it kind of settled out where Benyala kind of raced back to the front or was Benyala, Marquez, Martina, Miller, Bender. Then Mark crashed at turn 14. Mir crashed at turn 15. Benyala was still out front. Marquez was right behind him.

Bastionini was setting the fastest laps of anybody. So Bastionini, who had went backwards, had now come back forward again. He had some serious pace. But Alex Marquez went by Biagi, Benyala. Exactly what year, what Italian.

I don't know. It's been a lot. This has been a long show, I guess. I don't know. I scribble off B-A-G there instead of my mind just went to Biagi.

That's how I do it. The glory days. Yeah, the glory days. I'm stuck back in 1994 or five. Anyway, finally, Martina got by Benyala as well.

Benyala had something that was on the right fairing. I don't know if it was like a part of a plastic bag or something that was over there. I don't know if that was affecting his handling or it was affecting his top speed. But he got that on the bike and then he sort of went backwards. Yeah, he did.

He's a paper or something? Yeah, it was very, very odd that they had caught something. I mean, what it reminded me of was like a lunch bag that one of the marshals may have had in a corner that the wind blew out to the track. I'm not saying the corner workers had anything to do with this, people. I'm just making an analogy.

I have utmost respect for all the corner workers because I mean, they got to stand out there in the heat the whole time. Oh, that's a nightmare place to be a marshal. Yeah, God, they don't earn every penny that they make because they don't make any money. I mean, they're just doing it because they're fine. They love sport.

Great people. Yeah. The other thought I had about what it was that flew up was I wondered if it was a kind of a delaminated bit of paint from one of the curves because it kind of looked as if it was breaking off bit by bit. So I don't know. Good thought.

I don't know. Because in a climate like that, stuff does, you know, delaminate because it's so hot. You know, the temperature swings there are so enormous and the amount of moisture that's around obviously is colossal. So another thought, but who knows? But it must have whether he would have even seen it.

I don't know because it was kind of like probably just about out of his eye line. I would have thought that it must have affected the bike a little bit. I think it did in some way. But who knows? But while we're trying to figure out what was going on there, Marquez was gone and Marquez would win the sprint race.

He was followed by Martin, Benyaya, Bastionini, who got to Benyaya and promptly stopped. It was almost too obvious, right? It seemed like there was a lot there. There was a lot going on in that. There's a couple of moments there like, I'm not going to pass him because the other guy is ahead.

So I'm not going to put myself in this spot. I'm going to play the consummate teammate because I would really like to ride the red bike next year and not the purple and white bike next year. So I think there's some of that going on. But Bastionini was probably going to win, I think. I don't know if he would have caught Marquez, but I think he would have caught Martin as well and been second.

That was my theory on there. But all in all, Marquez won another sprint race. He won at Silverstone, I think, in a sprint. Martin was second. Benyaya, Bastionini, Bender Miller, Bizecki, Zarco, Marini and Villanova.

There's your top 10 out of the sprint. Basically, that was down to eight points or something like that, I think, at that time. I don't remember. I did write it down. It was 11.

So it was 11 points separating us. Now, we would go to the race on Sunday and this was going to be a race of front and rear tire management. Everybody on the front row went with the medium-medium. Okay, this is going to be interesting because we're going to have this thought about who is on what tire and maybe there's a long game here because there's 20 laps around this place. Martin got a whole shot, but he went very deep in a turn one.

That pushed him wide. Bastionini, Alex Marquez, sorry, not Mark, and Benyaya kind of went by. Even Bizecki got by to put Martin back and then Quattrarra was there. Bastionini was in front of Alex. They were pulling away.

Benyaya was next and third. Martin was there. Martin tried to go by Benyaya at turn 14, but Benyaya went right back underneath him. Martin tried again to get past Benyaya, but it was a good ding-dong battle where every time Martin got by, Benyaya got the elbows back out and Benyaya went right back in front of him again. Basically, with 15 laps to go, the race was decided.

What you saw was what you got. I think you probably used the fast forward button there for a while too, didn't you, Rich? Because I watched the replay too. It was obvious, as you say, Jim, that front tyre pressure was the thing that I know we're running long already, but we're going to have to talk about this because it is as things stand at the moment, and this is not the first race where this has been an issue. It's certainly the worst, I would say, this year.

People can't afford to get on the wrong side of that rule at the minute because there's a lot to lose. On top of which, obviously, I suppose part of this is also that the bike's just become unrideable if that tyre starts to over inflate effectively with the heat. This is a problem, and it's not a problem that could be solved particularly quickly either unless they would... Yes, it can be solved quickly. Scrap the rule.

No, they just say that you can be... The rule states that you cannot be below 1.88 bar for more than 50% of the race. The problem is if you're in traffic, the tyre heats up. Once it gets beyond 2 bar, 2 bar or higher, it's like you have ice. It's like you're riding on ice according to what I've read in Motorsport magazine, Matt Oxley.

That's what he's saying. So what the teams are doing, they start with lower pressures. Now, for some reason, somebody who I think is not a race engineer or is not a tyre engineer, I think it's a lawyer, and that's me speculating, has decided that 1.88 is... We're not going to be below because we won't want tyres delaminating and having a problem. Most people have said that in the last few years, no one's raced in one on a front tyre that has been less than 1.6 bar.

So what they're saying is if you drop it from 1.88 bar to 1.78 bar, you would see better racing and it would be safer racing because they would have grip and whatnot. The other thing is build a better tyre, which we've been told Michelin has a better tyre, but they haven't had time to test it because nobody wants to test it because everybody's working on what they got right now. Yeah, so some of them... Michelin is desperate to test it. It's not their fault.

Right. So I don't know who's to blame in this one, but what was interesting is Martin could not risk running afoul of the rule because he'd already had one warning this year that he was below pressure for over 50% of the race. The thing of it is that you can have that lower pressure, gives you better stability on braking, gives you better feel at the front end and you can race harder with it. So Benyaya did not have a said penalty or sorry, said warning and Benyaya was contemplating using it at Qatar where he was willing to run under the limit at Qatar because of the cool temperatures, because of the long straightaway, because the dew settling on the track that we seem to have in that timeframe. I don't know.

We're there in November now. We've always been there in March. Maybe the temperatures are the same or close. I want you to tell me how humid it is and whether the dew does set during race time. So please take note of that for me while you're there.

But the thing was is that Martin could not attack Benyaya because he said I was on ice. So he had to ride home behind Benyaya. Benyaya, who's wanting to save this one joker card, if you will, for his time at Qatar, he gets told, nope, you are underneath for 50% of this race. You don't have a warning. So the next time you're under, whether it's Martin or Benyaya, you get a three second penalty, three second time penalty.

There's some time penalty involved. There is a time penalty involved if you're that way. Now, next year, it's going to be even worse because there's no warnings. There's no time penalty. It's instant disqualification.

You talk about crummy racing that's going to show up here. It's terrible all over this rules. So the only good thing I can say about this is now what would have been an advantage to Benyaya has been stricken because he has been given a warning as well. So at least the two guys who are going to fight for this title have the same problem. Neither one of them can afford to literally be under on their tire pressure.

Yeah. But I mean, come back to the problem, Jim, though, which is and Alessius Barger, I think, said that that rule is destroying the racing at the moment. I think that was pretty much exactly what he said. And I think on the evidence of Sunday, you'd have to conclude that he's right. I mean, I was trying to think back to previous races in Sepang, in MotoGP, and it's not a track that necessarily comes to the front of your mind for classic races.

It's true in MotoGP. But that was a particularly boring affair in the main race on Sunday, wasn't it? I mean, the front four guys who we got to see pretty much all race long, all just sort of separated by two to three seconds by the time the race settled in. And nobody's seemingly able or willing to do anything much about it. So I mean, it suggests to me that that rule needs to be modified.

I mean, I understand why they don't want people running tires way under pressure compared to what Michelin would want them to be running at. But I have to say, have we ever seen major problems with tires before with people running them at lower pressures? Well, we had the one rear tire that delaminated years ago at Malaysia. And I think that was a I want to say that was a bridge stone that did because it was on the back of an Aprilia. I can't remember who it was.

I think it was back in the CRT day. OK, I don't even remember that, to be honest. But it was I know it was it was in testing. It was in testing in Malaysia, like in February. And it was and it was it's not Alvaro Bautista, but the guy's name was had to be bass, Loris Bass had had a tire to laminate the lamp, don't let me take good grief, the lamp, don't let me take good grief, delaminate it, not delamitate it.

I make it as we go here. But I think it was Loris Bass. It was somebody somebody had a problem with with a tire. That's the only one I can think of. And I think it's a shame because we're getting robbed here for really good championship battle because both these guys could not afford to have a three second penalty in there.

So you can basically I think you're going to see Qatar is going to be something really weird where the two title contenders are going to be fifth and sixth or fourth and fifth. They're not going to be the guys racing at the front because they can't afford to. They're literally going to have to start with 1.7 bar or something and pray that the temperature goes up. And if it's cold and they're not going to get that and they're probably going to have to run it like, you know, seven, you know, eight, 1.8 bar and, you know, get the temperature in that way. I mean, this is it's kind of ridiculous.

And I think you have to blame the powers that be Dorn or somebody because Michelin said they've got a different tire that they want to test. They haven't been able to test it because none of the teams want to test it. Yeah, because the team's too busy testing what they need in what is a, you know, unbelievably small amount of testing that they're allowed to do now with their race riders, which is the only quality testing really you're going to get. So, I mean, I lament the fact that there's so little testing. I get it on cost grounds and stuff, but it hasn't, you know, the cost ground argument doesn't seem to apply when they keep adding more races to the calendar every year.

So although I get that that generates revenue as well, but, you know, this is a solvable problem. But, you know, the reason I said it's not going to be one that's solved quickly is because of this issue around Michelin bringing the new front tire in, which is presumably being or has been designed for some time to address these increased loads, increased temperatures that are coming about with the modern generation of MotoGP bike, which has developed a lot in the last three or four seasons, let's be honest. And the tire hasn't really had a chance, in terms of its construction, to keep a pace with that. And we're starting to really bang into the rough end of that stick now. So, yeah, but like you said, Jim, I mean, they can alter that pressure limit, I suppose, and that might well be just enough to keep the wolf from the door until this new tire does come along.

But whether that will happen, of course, is a whole different discussion. But again, I'll try and grab an idea from, I don't know, Simon Crayfar or one of the pundits I bump into inevitably during the weekend and see what they got to say about it. Yep. So let's finish this up. Bastianini wins, Marquez, Alex, that is the second, Benyaya, third on the podium.

Then Martin Quattraro, Bizecki, Morfidele, Miller, Bitter did crash out of that spot. Then it was DG Antonio, Marini, Vinales, Zarco, Mark Marquez got three points for finishing 13th. Augusto Fernandez, 14th, and the last point going to pull a Spargero. So what that does to the championship is that it's a 14-point lead that Benyaya has over Martin. Bizecki is on 328, which puts him 89 points behind.

I need to correct myself because last show I said Bizecki was out of it at 75 points behind, 79 points behind. That had been okay if we did not have sprint races because I forgot to calculate the other 24 points that's available there. So we have 50 points plus another 24 points, which is 74 points to play. So Bizecki is still not mathematically out of it, but I mean, he's not, you know, he can make up, he's at 89. I guess he's at 89 now, right behind.

So at 74 points, Bizecki's title hoax are now ditched even with the sprint races. So I called that one a weekend early. So I missed that one. I was still stuck on the fact we don't have sprint races. But it's a two horse race, Benyaya versus Martin with a tire problem.

So who knows what's going to happen in Qatar? We'll have to wait to see how that goes down this weekend. And we'll have to see what we can do about that. So the interesting thing that came up in both the sprint for me, well, they didn't win, but you know, the whole MotoGP weekend really was about Pasquinini in the end, wasn't it? Because I have, you know, what's been a total nightmare of a season, largely not his fault because of injury, although, well, certainly the crash at Portimao was not his fault.

And I forget what he did to his shoulder. He broke his shoulder in some way. He broke his shoulder in the crash with Marini in Portimao. Yeah, he broke the shoulder blade. Right.

Then got involved in the, he created the accident in Catalonia that damaged his wrist or hand. Yeah, exactly. So some of it has been of his own making, but the main one, which was the shoulder injury, which is a nasty injury to come back from, particularly when you're riding the MotoGP bike. So you can understand why he's had the year that he's had. But the interesting thing this weekend, Jim, and again, we mustn't overrun much further, but he started to use a thumb brake for the rear brake this weekend.

And suddenly he's in the mix and well, more than the mix. I mean, he probably, as you say, could have taken third, possibly even second in the sprint. I don't think he would have beaten Alex Marquez, but he was clearly not risking doing anything silly to impede Bagnari being on the podium. And then handsomely won the race out front. Okay.

Huge advantage being out front, but anyway, you still got to finish the race. Where's that performance come from? Two things. He couldn't ride the bike the way he wanted to, to turn the bike. Because the rear Michelin's so grippy, he couldn't turn it.

So the electronics guys changed the engine braking map into a direction that he liked. He said, hey, if you do this and use the rear thumb brake, you're going to be able to ride like you want to. And as soon as they did that, it was magic. I mean, Simon was talking about how to get used to a thumb brake versus using it with your, you know, you spent your life breaking with your right foot and now you're going to do with your left thumb. And like in the sum of grand sum of two hours, he had it figured out, which I'm absolutely positively flabbergasted.

Yeah. Because this is going to sound stupid. And again, it's a, we shouldn't run over, but I think it's kind of relevant to it. When I started road racing, I came from dirt track, so I never had a front brake. So I started breaking with three fingers on the brake because that just was natural.

That seemed the right thing to do. And I went to like a road race school and they're like, Oh, you got to use two fingers. And it took me over half a season of riding to finally figure out how to break with just two fingers and make it work. So I mean, okay, we're talking about maybe racing. I think all total, we probably ran maybe 20 races in a, in a, in a season, all combined, all different classes we ran and stuff.

So it took me like 12 races to figure out how to do it and be comfortable with it. It was just crazy. And to think that he's got a Moto GP bike and he's using his thumb, which is way more sensitive than what your foot is to the situation, but it's disconnected from the feel that you would have. And in two hours, he's got it figured out running at the front. Nevermind all the other stuff that fiddling around with on the handlebars, you know, corner to corner, straight to straight.

I mean, pressing this button, releasing that thing, you know, it's just mind boggling. They're like bloody fighter pilots. These guys know what they would, you might have multi tasking that they're doing. If you walk by and you bump into Bassey and you look at him and says, Jim says you're amazing. Because I think it is.

Well, so the proof of the pudding now is going to be, if that is what has kind of transformed him and his feeling on the bike, how does he get on in Qatar? How does he get on in Valencia? Because he could go on a rip now, because he certainly went on a rip, you know, frequently in the last two seasons, didn't he? And he has great late race pace, because he's so good at, you know, managing the rear tire and stuff. That was his big kind of USP in the last few seasons, wasn't it?

So he will have a material effect on the outcome of this championship now, because, you know, Martin, you say, well, it's only 14 points, but that's quite a big gap when Bagnars is consistent as he is, you know, so and if Bassey starts taking the bigger points, that doesn't help Martin one little bit. So this is all part of me thinking that Bagnars probably just about going to cling on to this. Just there's going to be a very close run thing. Yeah. Who do you want to win the championship, Jim?

I mean, in your heart, who do you want to win? In my heart, I want to see Martin win. Just because I think he's done so much to get there. He's ridden incredibly the past this past season. It took him a little bit to figure out how to be a Moto GP rider, I think.

But he's got it figured out. And I love the story. I think the kid just tries hard and, you know, he's done a lot to win to do it. And he's and there's that whole story of being the first in the Moto GP area to win a title on a satellite team or, you know, a non factory team, however you want to look at it. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, Benya has a world title. I'm not going to try to take anything away from that. But I don't necessarily rate Benya as good as I don't think Benya is as good as Martin in natural skill. I don't have any room to sit here and criticize any of these guys.

They're so much faster than I ever could have been on a motorcycle. But you just look at what Martin does throwing down pole laps. And he's transferred that into race winning races. And the Thailand race on a tire that was pretty close to being shot, he just held everybody off. I thought was, hey, let's think Martins road better this year than Benya.

It probably comes down to because it's motorsport and motorbikes and racing. I mean, Martin is the spectacular one out of the two, isn't he? Benya is just much more controlled and a little bit. I would never use the word boring because if you stand track side and watch any of these guys, that's the very last word that you would ever apply. But he's quite sort of methodical in the way that he goes about stuff, isn't he?

Although in fairness to him, I mean, he put down a great pole lap on the weekend and Martin crashed. So that's the yin and yang between them, isn't it? They are really very, very different characters. And don't forget, they were teammates at Premac, weren't they, for a season or two? I tend to forget that.

So they kind of come up through the similar path. And that might be partly what's fueled the real fire in the belly of Martin this year to sort of say, I'll show you Ducati. So this intervention, let's call it by Bastia Nini, coming back to him is incredibly well timed. And you do wonder how much of a coincidence that is. You know, Ducati said to him, look, you ride under pressure.

What are you going to do to turn it around? And he said, this is what I need. And if they've given him something like this thumb brake, if his engineers have said, look, that will be the thing that gets the bike moving in the way that you need it to. And I've done it for him. And as you say, he's adapted so quickly and suddenly turned it around.

But of course, this will be for nothing if he's in 15th place in Qatar. There could be a one off. But I doubt it. I mean, Bastia Nini is a very good rider. And I kind of feel a little bit for Ducati on this one, because they've landed in a sort of KTM-ish situation where they've got too many good riders fighting for too few.

Well, there's a lot of bikes out there. But in terms of the works, see, they've got this nice problem to have, but it's still a problem when you cut it. Anyway, interesting. Yeah. Well, I think that's the race weekend.

I think that covers everything that we wanted to remember. Any questions, comments, concerns, email us, motopod.motopodcast.com. Rich is heading to Qatar on Wednesday for hopefully some great interviews and whatnot. I'm going to be out of here because it's Thanksgiving week here in the States. So come Friday, I'm heading to the East Coast for vacation.

And we'll be back. We'll find some time during that week to chat and create another show and tell everybody what happens from Qatar, hopefully. And I think that covers it all. Right, Rich? I think it does.

Yeah. We'll look forward to coming back and chatting about Qatar because we've got, you know, this is the final triple header now. So yeah, all action. All action. Ready, folks?

Ride safe with your roadskins and we'll see you all next week. Cheerio.