Lusail Delivers, On & Off Track

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 749. For November 22nd, 2023, covering the next to last race of the season from Qatar.

And let me tell you folks, this is special because Rich is in Qatar. Rich, come on, give us some deets, we gotta have the tea. As the kids say. Well, first of all, Jim, I mustn't forget to say happy Thanksgiving to you and the rest of your nation. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. The LaSalle circuit, Doha, the city, Qatar, the place, has been wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I mean, I think that's the best word to use. People are really kind and polite. Obviously, the facilities there are very, very modern.

I had a kick-ass thunderstorm on Thursday night, which caused a lot of flooding, which was not what I expected. It doesn't rain here very, very often, but when it does, it really does rain. Obviously, the circuit itself and the facilities in terms of the paddock has benefited massively from Formula One rolling through town in recent times because they completely redeveloped it. So it's all pretty much brand new and it is state of the art. So I think probably as a first experience of getting into the paddock from the point of view of Dawn very kindly supporting MotoPod and giving us an official media pass, probably it's only downhill from here in terms of future experiences because I dare say that the paddocks and the facilities at some of the tracks in Europe in particular are probably pretty basic.

Overall, a massively positive experience. As I said to you just before we started recording, it's really highlighted to me that the things that you regularly hear about the sanitized, joyless, unfriendly, unwelcoming GP paddock, that has not been my experience at all. Pretty much to a person, everybody has been bending over backwards to be helpful, considerate, polite. People that are following us hopefully on the social media channels will have seen me milking it for all of it, all it's worth in terms of pictures and stuff because I spent a lot of money to get there. So I thought I might as well make the most of it.

So I did turn into a gurning fanboy and a sycophant, but it's very hard not to. But it's funny, just before we talk about things properly, I turned up on the Thursday, which was the sort of the pre-event press day when I did most of the interview work, certainly with the riders. And you're just sort of awestruck everywhere you look. There's a person you recognize from the TV and there's Mark Marquez and all these people. And by Sunday, you kind of start to get into the flow of the fact that you're just in this environment and it's all quite normal.

So it's funny how your perception changes, even after a fairly short period of time. But yeah, 100% positive. I'll say I'll keep on, although it took a lot of work and they took a lot of persuasion, once Dawnur sort of said, okay, we'll give you a pass, it's been brilliant. The access has been second to none, really. The teams, all the press offices have been brilliant.

Obviously, well, not tonight because we're on a very short time scale to do this. So this is just a quick in it, Jim. I've got so much material that's going to fill up shows and shows for stuff. So I think most of that will lend itself to some, you know, like a rider special, a team manager special, and then some of the ad hoc stuff. Because like, for example, I bumped into the likes of Tony Elias was in the paddock.

He's starting to do some work with Grissini, funnily enough. So I did some ad hoc stuff with people that wouldn't necessarily have been on my list of people to talk to, but they were there. So I grabbed them, you know, in some cases just for two or three minutes. But there's at least three shows worth of material. And then I've got because I was in the media center, I was able to record most of all the rider debriefs on each of the days as well.

So whilst I wouldn't necessarily suggest that all of those will be put out, some of them were quite interested in the level and type of feedback that the riders give, particularly after the main race on Sunday for obvious reasons. So because there was lots of differing opinions. So yeah, you and I will have a chat offline about how to do what to do, when to do and all the rest of it. But lots and lots of content to put out once we get into the part of the season. Yeah, that's good stuff.

All right. So we got some impressions there. I do think it's going to take a month of Sundays to wipe the smile off of your face because you were just riding on a hot. I get that. I understand when I was running around, I had a pass just to do Moto America.

Same thing is like, well, you ate me. Josh Hayes has acknowledged you as a person. Jay Ghani is like, hey, stop in. We'll sit down. We'll have after practice today, sit down.

We'll have a chat. So you're simultaneously awestruck and like fanboy, but you're like, I need to focus and do this for you guys, fans of the show, but just weird place that you're at. And I'll be honest, I was very, very, very nervous, you know, about doing it as well because you know, you're swimming in with the big boys and girls on this one. So and I'm not a professional journalist. I mean, we're not, are we?

This is a hobby and a passion which we share with the MotoPod listeners. I mean, we were like MotoPod listeners and still are because I still listen to the shows, we're the ones that take part in them. Me too. Bit bizarre, hard to break the habit really. So yeah, sorry for the kind of melting into a sort of a gibbering wreck of enjoyment or whatever the term is, but hard not to really.

But the other thing I must say, because I don't want to forget, Jim, and I will forget otherwise, there was a big crowd at the event all weekend. Oh, good. Even the sprint race was very well attended on the Saturday and the Sunday crowd alone was bigger than the whole weekend attendance last year, according to the stats that I saw. So the idea that nobody goes to some of these flyways, which I've been guilty of saying in the past, you know, that Formula One and MotoGP and they chase the dollars, you know, in terms of some of these countries have got the resources to sort of pay to have races. And it is true, I think, with regards to Qatar race in particular, being one that probably did have quite badly empty stands, certainly in the early years.

But that was not the case on Sunday, for sure, because I went out and actually watched the races from the stands and I even walked down to the turn one seating area as well. And it was pretty full. So, yeah, they're doing some good stuff there and it was well attended. Well, we can only hope that when we get back to Kota, this coming year, that there'll be more people than what there has been, because I believe the years that I've been going to Kota, it is seriously reduced in its size and stature. Well, Silverstone, I think, is the same as well.

I mean, Silverstone had a disappointing crowd this year. Now, Silverstone obviously always has the problem that people are expecting the weather to be cold and wet. And it's quite often that is the case. So it does that does give people pause for thought, even though it's in August, which should be the better time to do it. But that's the British weather.

So you don't have that as a barrier here. So, no, but it's interesting. And one of the people that I have managed to connect with, I'm fortunate I didn't get to speak with them because I just didn't bump into them all weekend. But I will try and get a hold of now is Dan Rosamundo, you know, this new guy that's come in from the NBA. I think it was wasn't it, Jim?

Yes. To talk to him about, you know, what the strategies are now for marketing the sport and, you know, getting the viewership and, you know, the bums on seats aspects, race getting some insight into what's going on, because clearly it's working in some places and harder than others. So that's an interesting thing to try and get into perhaps over the offseason. Yeah. Well, we must get to the reason we're here, which is to talk about the racing.

And we will start with Moto3. Just quickly with qualifying Munoz, Nepa, Rossi, Fernandez, Furusato and Bertoli are all there in that first session. Eventually it becomes Faroli, Adrian Fernandez, Furusato and Bertoli that move on to that second qualifying session. Second qualifying session. I will say this.

I could not believe it. There were so many Moto3 guys that were pretty much stopped on trackside. There was people who had feet down. I'm literally aghast by some of that, that that really should not be happening. But at the end, Polgardo was on pole followed by Marrera, Anshu, Sasaki, Vier and Adrian Fernandez.

So that is how we had the Moto3 qualifying. We get to the race. The big thing right off the bat, they held them. They held the lights for what I thought was exceptionally long amount of time. I mean, I've watched a lot of these races and I'm like, Ooh, what's going on?

Is there some problem that's going to cause them to put a red flag up and send them out for another warmup lap or whatever? Because it just seemed like there was an extraordinarily long amount of time that they were being held. Apparently that was just what they wanted to do. And it caught out Anshu because Anshu jumps. He makes the move at the beginning.

He obviously gets the first turn first. Like if you leave before everybody else, you have a good chance of actually doing that. He did succeed at that. He was followed by Polgardo, Marrera, Sasaki. Then Anshu went wide.

Like, I don't know how he wound up going wide. And then everybody sort of goes crazy for the first couple of corners. Sasaki is getting pushed back and everything is just all mismatched. You like if somebody's ahead, somebody counter strikes and comes right back again, which I think that's like the theme of this whole entire show is punch, counter punch, because it was like one thing would happen. Next thing would happen.

Then somebody would go for it. Somebody goes back. Anyway, immediately Anshu was given a double long lap penalty. He later on said he knew he was in trouble, so he just wanted to put his head down and try to get out there. So Anshu then I think by lap two starts to take the first of his double long laps.

And then he takes his next one on lap three. Meanwhile, Polgardo is out front there. Masiya has gone from like his 10th starting spot, because I think it's where he's Yeah, he started at 10th. He had gone from 10th. He had made his way to fourth.

He back his way up to like second. And like, wow, this is a lot of pace for Masiya who didn't really seem to show much pace and qualifying, although his practice times are pretty good through the week. But the biggest problem with gauging what was going on with Moto3 was just the track. Track was very dusty. It's brand new pavement.

It had to be rubbered in. And for whatever reason, the Moto3 guys just couldn't seem to go faster as quickly as Moto2 could go faster, as quickly as MotoGP went faster. It's just odd. I have no idea why, no real rationale other than maybe Dunlap went with a more conservative compound or construction or something for this because of the new pavement, but it was just interesting that they just could not seem to find speed as quickly as there was. So we get to the first point of first really big talking point.

We're at lap 14. Masa goes under Sasaki and they both run wide. And at first glance, I thought Masiya had outbraked himself. He was in a little bit too deep into six. Sasaki was leaving that door open.

And as a racer, you would go take that. There wasn't necessarily contact, but I was like, wow, that was really pushed way, way out there, allowing half the field to go flying by because we're only three laps into the race. My first notation is, did he really outbrake himself or did he actually try to run Sasaki off the racetrack? Because when they took a second, because again, everything's happening quickly, and they showed a view from, I think it's a helicopter that's sort of following the bike. You see it from behind the riders.

It literally looked like Masiya had turned into the corner, was under Sasaki, and then simply stood the bike up and rode straight off with Sasaki. Well, okay. Maybe there's some mitigating circumstance in this that I did not know at the time. So I'm like, wow, that's why I have this question. Do you really just run this guy off the racetrack?

Were you able to see any of that in the media center? I was sat out in the stands for the races because I was in the media center pretty much all the rest of the weekend. I was getting very frustrated with the fact that I'd gone all this way and I hadn't actually seen a bike out on a track. So I was like, I don't care about being in the media center anymore. I want to go and actually watch the bike races because at the end of the day, we're fans, right?

And I want to see bikes, particularly when they're racing. So yeah, I was in the main grandstand. So I didn't really notice the held start because I was sort of a bit further up the track towards the end, final turn on the course. So although I was looking at it on the big screens, I haven't had time since to actually watch the races back on my computer so that I could see things in more detail. But like you, I thought that looked like he'd outbroke himself.

So like most people, you probably were thinking that was a bit of a tough move. Maybe he got it a bit wrong. You give people, somebody a bit of a let on that one. But then as you're about to tell us, go on, Jim. Sasaki didn't road back to the front because he had speed, he had pace.

He was followed by Masa and Munoz and Alonzo is now in the front here with Ortola and Vier is coming along. So at this point, Masa is kind of being outgunned because I guess we never really stated why this is a problem. That's because in the championship, the way the points worked out is if Masa were to win, Sasaki had to be fourth or better. If Sasaki is not fourth or better, then he as in Masa, he would become world champion. So, OK, so where is all this going?

Well, we get to like 10 laps to go and then Masa runs into turn six again deep with Sasaki on his outside in a carbon copy move to which now it's obviously blatant that what he's trying to do is run Sasaki off the track or put him far enough back in the pack that Sasaki is going to be incapable of recovering to finish fourth, provided that Masa would win the race. OK, now that we know this happens and we see a carbon copy of the exact same thing again, now Masa gets a conduct warning from race officials. Now they had to do something. There's no way around it because this was now getting ready to become ugly. However, I can hear all the screaming about, well, he should have been disqualified or he should have had a time penalty or whatever.

And we'll kind of save that, I think, for the end of this, Rich, and we'll just sort of continue on. Yep. Eight to go. Horgato still out front, Sasaki still running second. So even though he's been shoved off the track twice by Masa, he's still in second place ahead of Masa, who Alonso is running third, Masa is next, then Munoz and Viara.

Ortola gets a too long lapse for a responsible riding. Him and Marrera had a little coming together with put Marrera down, I believe, completely. He can't remember exactly again. He fell off and ran out, didn't he? Yeah.

OK, he fell off and I can't remember if he just ran him out really wide or if it was a crash and then a remount. But we had that happening. Sasaki is still at the front, you know, six to go. Sasaki is right there. Horgato, Alonso, Masa, it sounds the same thing.

Viara is there. Well, OK, is Viara going to wind up helping his teammate? You know, if there's anybody sort of outgunned by anyone, it's Masiya. He doesn't really have anybody there to help, although we just have, you know, Horgato's got a KTM, right? That's a clone of Husqvarna, his other Husqvarna teammate.

Viara is there. So, OK, you know, and all this really he is, Masiya is the lone Honda against a horde of KTMs. Five to go, still Horgato out front, still Sasaki. Masiya is now running second to that. But all of a sudden, Adrian Fernandez has joined the party.

Adrian Fernandez is right behind Masiya. And granted, they've been coming in. And again, this track, it's very hard for the Moto3 bikes to separate themselves. They all seem to want to just cling together because it's very high speed corners, very long straightaways, and that draft just pulls everybody along. And so this thing was a I want to go with about a 12 rider train of bikes that was capable of being either on the podium or at least winning or being on the podium that was there.

So we got down to about three laps to go. It's crazy. At this point, Fernandez is now kind of stood him up at turn six as well. So now it becomes a blatant idea that Leopard is trying to use team tactics to stall Sasaki at this point, which, you know, is it's pretty interesting because Sasaki and Masiya are having a pretty amazing race. And of course, as this happens along, Fernandez is right there with them now.

So that's that's sort of like, well, Viara is there too for Sasaki. So you have all the teammates that are in play with each other, sort of this little moment in time. But that last move by Adrian really put Sasaki down. Sasaki was now way back in eighth and Masiya was out front ahead of Helgardo and Rossi and Alonso and Anshu, who just reappears at the front. I mean, we had no indication that Anshu was coming at all.

Although if you were watching the screen and of course, your attention is at the front. This race with Sasaki and Fernandez and Masiya and Viara is so entertaining that you're watching there, but if you've watched in the back, you could see the KTM of Anshu coming, right? He's coming. But it's like, well, what's going to happen? Where is this going to run out at?

With two laps to go, Sasaki is now back to ninth. Things go from bad to worse for Sasaki. I don't know what happened here. He was run off again. I get the frustration.

But was that frustration or was there the tires run out dirty or ruined? Were they destroyed? I'm not sure what was happening, but things go bad to worst. As it turns out, Masiya then wins the race ahead of Alonso. Sasaki had a moment where he was almost down at 13 on the last lap, which would have did more damage as he went backwards.

But that means because of how they finish with Sasaki well down, he finishes sixth. So the running order is Masiya, Alonso, Anshu, Rossi, Viara and Sasaki, which means that Masiya wins the world championship. Although being on questionable terms, Rich, would you like to have the first crack at your thoughts on Leopard's tack? Well, I think not that social media is ever a good gauge of places to go for informed and considered comment. It's true.

But in this particular case, I think you only have to sort of scroll through all the stuff that MotoGP and the Leopard team themselves have been putting out just to see the overwhelming animosity there is towards the team and Masiya on this one. And whilst you can argue that what they were doing wasn't illegal to the rules, although he did get a conduct warning after that second repeat, literally repeat offence. And it's absolutely clear what he was doing and why he was doing it, because he, as you said quite correctly, Jim, he deliberately sat the bike up to send them both wide. I mean, for me, that was kind of already long lap territory. What was more egregious and you didn't mention, so I don't know if you didn't really spot this, but I'm quite sure and happy to be proven wrong on this.

But when Adrian Fernandez got involved in the fight and kind of picked Sasaki up as well in turn six, it was clear to me that he then deliberately slowed down in the subsequent couple of corners. Because if you remember, suddenly there was quite a big gap that Sasaki had to get across. And that's why he was so hard to try and get back to fourth that he almost high sided himself because he knew that he had to get it on that last lap and he had to bridge a big gap. That gap wasn't caused by a crash. It was caused by Adrian Fernandez riding slowly.

Somewhere in there, I thought Fernandez had a long look over his shoulder to figure out where Sasaki was. And then the cameras kind of break away. Yeah. And we go back to what's going on at the front. So I missed what happened after.

So that fills that in for me. I'm quite sure that that is what happened. Now, as to whether or not that was kind of a spur of the moment thing, I don't know if Adrian Fernandez has a contract with Leopard next year, but, you know, he's been in and out of the championship a bit over the last, so, you know, he would have wanted to ingratiate himself to the team. But I just thought it was very dirty and underhand. And I've since postulated on the Twitter feed, my one, not the official motopod one, because this is my personal opinion, that although funny enough, ironically, the weather forecast in Valencia looks pretty reasonable for this weekend.

It looks if it's going to be dry and sunny and reasonably warm. But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking that Leopard had sat down and thought, look, we need to win this championship today, because if we turn up to Valencia and it's wet, that will favor Sasaki, because the Japanese riders historically tend to go better in the wet than the Spanish riders do. So I think they had a plan to pull out every possible stop to try and nail the championship, which obviously they did, but under very questionable terms. And as I say, if Twitter stroke X is anything to go by, and I suspect most of the other social media channels are very similar, they're getting absolutely lambasted for it now. Once the dust settles and, you know, a year or two down the line, people will just say, oh, yeah, John, I'm asked you a Moto 3 champion in 2023, and people will kind of forget the detail.

But as things stand right now, it's a very, very unpopular win. And I think definitely so, because I think it was underhand. Yeah, that's we always make these comparisons, but I was drawn to draw a comparison to Formula One because it's the only other high end constructor type championship that you can go by. And if you think back to the Schumacher era, and especially back to his days at Venetan and like 94, 94, 95, first couple of championships, Schumacher was notorious for being on pole and moving to the opposite side of the track to block anyone that was starting second. And people became incredibly agitated by what Schumacher was doing.

Schumacher would look at you and go, hey, I am entitled to since my car is in front, I am entitled to drive where I want to drive and I'm allowed one move. Therefore, my move is to block you going into the turn, which subsequently now everyone seems to play that game in Formula One. Motorcycling to me is not cars, but technically what Masiya and the team did is not against any rule in the rule book. There was a conduct warning because there is a conduct issue there, but there's not, there's not a rule that says you can't ride somebody out to the outside from what I can see in the rule book and the way I interpret the rule book. But that goes against everything that I think motorcycle racing is as far as how we conduct ourselves on a bike.

And I think it's a lot different to be sitting inside of a carbon fiber tub or a chromoly steel roll cage with four wheels around you. You can be, I don't want to say braver. That's not the right word, but you can be more inclined to do something that's incredibly aggressive because you are generally not going to have a problem with the car. You're going to be safe inside of that. You try doing these kinds of tricks on a motorcycle.

You're going to tangle a clutch or brake lever or a handlebar and everybody's going to be down in front of a roaring pack of 20 more bikes to which if you're online and that happens, you have a great propensity to be hit or struck by another motorcycle and the rider or something like that, which is uncalled for. Should he have been penalized by giving a long lap? I don't know. I'm not, I'm glad this is the one time I'm glad I am not sitting inside of that Stewart's box and trying to make this decision based on what I see there. I would hope that Freddie Spencer or someone would go have a very, very long and frank conversation with Masiya, with Fernandez and with the team and say, that's not how this sport is run.

I still think that this is very much a handshake is everything kind of world and your actions mean more and you have to sort the bad egg out. And back in the day, I think this would have been sorted out behind trailers with a couple of fists in the seventies with Barry Sheen and Roberts or, you know, any, even up to like, you know, the timeframe, you know, maybe Boston and Wayne Gardner or something that surely Raney and Schwantz still even to that point, but as things become more professionalized, we have to, we don't expect to have to see that kind of attitude from riders, but we do have these things that occur. I wish it didn't happen in Moscow. Just simply ran the, won the race and wherever Sasaki finished, Sasaki finished, but we weren't in tune to that, but it is definitely outside of the sporting balance and good sportsmanship. That is definitely wrong, but per the rules, it's not.

So that's why he didn't get penalized. I suppose, isn't it? I mean, it was the very definition of the professional foul, wouldn't it? Which obviously, as you said, Jim Schumacher took to the absolute extreme and did come off on the wrong side of that from time to time due to his actions. I mean, what bothers me slightly here is that either because the stewards couldn't really do anything, because you had the incidents with Maslian, and then you had an incident with Fernandez.

Well, you know, so it was kind of split. It was almost like it was a team tactic. I mean, I do believe that is what was going on. So either that they couldn't penalize them or they didn't, which are obviously different things, but it does set a precedent now for future. That's the problem.

And we don't, you know, people will say, oh yeah, Senna was the greatest woman on dry balls, but Schumacher was, but no, because they, the behavior on track at times was utterly appalling. You know, so if you want to talk about the greatest of all times, you've got to look for people that were brilliant and they were fair. So then you're talking about a Jim Clark or a Sterling Moss or, do you know what I'm saying? So we don't want that. And what you said is quite correct.

I think, you know, a lot of the behavior that you see from younger drivers or people that are at the top of the sport, whether it's two or four wheel, you know, it is based on what's gone before and what's been allowed or what's become sort of the given norm of behavior. And you can certainly see that Schumacher in particular set a standard for dirty driving. I mean, he was a great driver, but boy, you know, he was single minded to the point of being utterly dangerous, you know, on occasion. And there was nothing he wouldn't do to win a race. So we don't really want to see bike sport going that way, because as you say, it's inherently more dangerous in certain regards anyway.

So, yeah, nothing much more to say on it, really. But what's so stupid about all this is that Massia is, you know, on balance, he is the worthy champion. He's won races this year. He's been fast all season. He's been a bit unlucky.

You know, he's had at least one breakdown I can think of, possibly two, but certainly one in Austria. And, you know, Sasaki's had a great season and he's a lovely lad. I interviewed him. So he'll be appearing on the show at some point in the coming weeks. But he finished seventh, I think, sorry, second seven times this year.

So he didn't win a race. So Massia on balance, I think, is the deserving champion. It's just a shame that he's done it under what is now such a dark cloud, because it's silly. Yeah, considering that he was nowhere at the beginning of the season, Hogarto was the runaway champ. And if you had told me Massia would be world champion against the horde of KTM, I'd have told you, I'd laugh.

I didn't think it was possible. I think somewhere around Silverstone, when Hogarto still had what, a 50, 60 point lead at one point. And Massia fell off in the race. Yeah. Then Hogarto had his own problems, right?

Massia is the worthy world champion on paper. It does not look good right now. It will be in the news cycle until the races are finished in Valencia. And we're all testing. And no one's going to care about it anymore.

There isn't going to be an asterisk next to his title whatsoever. It's just one of those things that happened, and it shouldn't have happened. But it did. But then again, I can't sit there and say that I wouldn't have tried the same thing considering the fact that I was writing for a world championship. That means everything to a lot of people.

It's what drives you, it motivates you. Yeah. I mean, it was me that said it will be forgotten. Perhaps this one might stick in people's memories a bit. I mean, to me, it's a little bit like the Schumacher's 94 championship when he went off track and knew he had to take Hill out.

Otherwise, he was going to lose the championship. It kind of smacks of that to me. And that one I have never forgotten. And this one, I don't think I personally will never get over the kind of wrongness of what happened on Sunday in my eyes. But it's done.

It's in the history books. And there you go. Yep. And I don't know about it now. So on we go.

All right. Let's leave it there and let us move to Moto2. Quickly, it was been talked about, discussed that Arbolino and Aldegar are being courted by VR46 to possibly replace Marini, who the ink isn't dry on the contract, but it seems now like it's far more likely that Marini is going to HRC and VR46 needs somebody to replace Marini on the team. And if VR46 is looking and talking to Arbolino and Aldegar, you almost got to believe the Marini thing is actually set in stone or will soon be set in stone. So I thought that was rather interesting from there.

Oh, I don't have much to say about qualifying other than Joe Roberts had a poll that I thought was interesting. Did make me get the flag out of the box and set it nearby just by some miracle to happen. Learned Jim to leave the flag in the drawer. Yeah, that's my fault. I will take the blame for this one all the way around, because I, you know, after qualifying, I got the flag out of the box.

I should never done that. And I apologize. But we went into that when it went into the race. Roberts got a whole shot. He was followed by Vietti, Aldegar, Dixon, Gonzalez, Kinnett and Arbolino.

Acosta was starting well back. He had a terrible qualifying. He was 14th after having a miserable start on the first part of that one. It was crazy that he couldn't seem to make anything work. Now, he said how he was going to be full send and he was going to get back up.

But he didn't have a great weekend at all. Perhaps maybe a bit too much partying for the 19 year old in between. I, I, yeah, I would too. I mean, I wouldn't blame him though. So Kinnett winds up going, moving to second with a great move.

Aldegar and Lopez are on their way for a really wide. Those two guys go really, really wide. They were city, I think it was at one. Maybe they got caught in the draft. I think they're there at one.

They kind of went by. Gonzalez was up to fourth, which was a good ride by Gonzalez. Kinnett would go to the front following Roberts along. Roberts started to have some tire trouble because he would get on the gas out of the corners and you could see it. The bike would kind of want to slide out.

That did create a bit of a gap. So by 15 to go, Kinnett, Roberts, Dixon, Gonzalez got a half a second lead over Vietti and Arbolino. Acosta made his way to 12th. You thinking maybe something's going to happen here. You know, he started to turn a fast lap, fast lap kind of a thing.

He's like, all right, OK, good. Get here. Roberts having tire trouble is out of the seat. He then creates a big gap, which gives Kinnett and the guys a half a second lead there. But then you realize Aldegar is flying like the kid is absolutely on fire.

It's fast lap, fast lap, fast lap. I think everybody was playing around in like the one 58. Aldegar was playing around in the one 57 and you saw why this kid is being courted for a Moto GP ride because Aldegar then puts on an absolute masterclass of coming from behind and literally just running everybody down. And the Bosca score we know is good on saving its tires. So he had grip the whole way.

But Aldegar was flying. There's no way he's superbly riding. Dixon has gotten to second. So the good on the Brit there. Aldegar had made his way to third.

Roberts is going backwards like he threw an anchor out. And Jim put the flag back in the box hoping to reverse fortunes. That didn't happen. Aldegar eventually makes his way to second. I think he was like fourth or fifth at the beginning of like lap 12.

By the end of lap 11, he was second. There was no way he was going to be stopped as he simply went flying by Aldegar with 10 to go. Aldegar was on another playing field. He was all literally on another racetrack. He was on another time zone, another zip code, however you want to look at it.

He simply was in the 157th in running away with it. He was gone. Acosta had made his way to eighth. He was 10th, made his way to eighth. With five to go, it's Aldegar way out front followed by Gonzalez, Canett, Dixon, Ayagura a quiet race to put him near the podium.

Then Aldegar's teammate Lopez. Well, nothing really happens then. Agura does get by Dixon with two laps to go. And then Dixon goes back by Agura at turn one, the last lap. Canett got by Gonzalez, but then Gonzalez takes it back.

And then Agura got back by Dixon, which was a good little race on the last lap for everybody there, but Aldegar wins by a mile. Gonzalez gets a second, which was great for him. He got off of the fifth place, got on the podium. Canett with another podium. Agura was fourth, Dixon fifth, and Yeti was sixth.

Our world champion Acosta was eighth and Arbolino slid back to 10th. But that is the Moto two race. There was really nothing. I guess now Aldegar has a real shot at third in the championship. Yeah, he does.

He's standing. I forget exactly what it is, but I think it's single digits now. So yeah, that's going to be a close run thing on Sunday. Yeah. The fight is definitely there for the third place in the championship.

And I hope Aldegar gets it because that boy has just turned the corner and has been fantastic these last, I want to say like last five races, maybe even for the beginning of the flyways. I don't think he had the greatest race in Japan, but the Bosco Quora doesn't seem to work well there through history. Listening in to people that know an awful lot more about this than I do, again, from the privileged and I'll use the term advisers position I had over the course of the weekend. A lot of the journalists were pointing out that the Bosco Squira is notably very good on low grip tracks. So obviously in Australia, it was wet.

You know, the weather was really dodgy. Sepang is quite a low grip track, given the nature of the circuit and the ambient conditions there, let's say. And Qatar is definitely a low grip track because it's so dusty. So it will be interesting. I mean, let's be clear, Aldegar has been on a rip and then some.

And he's been absolutely brilliant. I interviewed him as well. So that'll be coming up on the show. Ooh, that'll be a good interview. I made the joke when I started the interview with him, I started shaking his hand and I kind of made the point that I was almost afraid to shake it because he's so hot at the minute.

I didn't want to burn myself. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see with Valencia, which I don't know to be notoriously low grip, whether the Calyxes will come more to the fore, which might give Aldegar a bit more of a trouble and it might give Dixon, because that's what we're talking about in terms of the third place finish in the championship, a slightly better shot throughout the course of the race. So we don't have long to wait to find out, do we? Because it's this coming weekend. So yeah, not a classic race, as is often the case with Moto2, but some good last lap and last corner dices to save her on.

Yeah, so that's it, I think, from me. All right. Well, let's move to the big daddies, the MotoGP. First, we must speak a bit about what happened in practice. Alaysh and Marie, and sorry, Morbidelli have a coming together, which then requires Alaysh to give Morbidelli a smack on the helmet, which I don't know what their whole makeup was there, other than it seems like when we come here, this is different because we're usually in the first race of the year here, as opposed to being near the last of it.

But either way, it wound up giving Alaysh a six grid penalty for the Sunday race, not for the sprint race, no matter where he qualified. And he was pocket was ten thousand euros lighter. So the picture of Rich and Alaysh, check it out on the MotoPod feed, is pre Alaysh ten thousand euros lighter. So he's got a happy face. So I don't know what their problem was, Rich, I just don't quite get it.

Again, provided I need to sort of check in with Dawna and tell them what I've got content wise outside of the interviews that I had been given free rein on, because I did, as I said, some exceptions, it's true, because I wasn't there the whole time. But I got a lot of the rider debriefs on the Friday, the Saturday and the Sunday. And on Sunday, because he didn't debrief because he was in the medical center, because he had a spill in the sprint race, which we'll come to. Alaysh, to be fair to him, and I've been very critical of what we both have in terms of his hot headedness. I mean, there was that incident, I forget which race it was in, where he got sent out of the pits and something wasn't right on the bike and he came storming back in, just losing his proverbial beep, beep, beep, beep.

And, you know, that sort of thing, I really find hard to handle. But as somebody pointed out to me, the flip side of that aspect of him, though, is that he gets very passionate about issues that are important to do with safety and stuff. So a lot of things have changed because he's one of the representatives in the kind of safety commission and stuff, I think. So his willingness to lose his temper and to bang his fists does have another side. It's like yin and yang, I suppose, which has resulted in various rules or stipulations or whatever that have been to the benefit of himself and other riders and things like safety.

So, I mean, it is important to consider that in the overall context. But what he was saying specific to that incident was that he was saying, just don't judge me on the footage that you see in that corner when he kind of strikes out, because he says he didn't intend to hit Mourbidelli in the crash helmet. He said he was really wanting to just brush him away from him, you know, on the shoulder sort of thing. And it ended up not going so, you know, you can sort of either accept that that's true or that he's just making it up. But the point that he made was that he needs to be judged on the entirety of what transpired, which was that the reason he lost his patience was that Mourbidelli was cruising on the racing line.

Now, this is something that Mourbidelli has quite a bad reputation for and has been sanctioned for in the past. The two hate each other's guts. I mean, that is patently obvious. So, I don't know, it's one of these kind of like six or one and a half a dozen of the other sort of situations. But the thing that prompted Alash to do his usual kind of red mist job was bad behavior again by Frankie Mourbidelli, who should know better because, A, you're not meant to do it and B, he's been reprimanded for it in the past.

So, yeah, there is more context to the overall thing when you look at it in its entirety, not just the bitch slap that obviously got everyone's attention and made his pocket or his wallet 10,000 euros lighter. But it's a big fine, but I don't suppose it's going to cause him too much of a sleepless night. True. Oh, well, 10,000 euros for them is probably not a lot of money. So what the heck?

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, you are a MotoGP racer and I would give almost anything to have had the chance to ride and do what those guys have done. So, yeah, yep. So it's just me sitting on the outside going, what are you doing? But I've had run-ins in club like that with a couple of people that would do things that you would consider on the edge and you want to go have a talk with them and whatnot. So anyway, let's look at the qualifying that we had going on there.

Excuse me. In the first session, Miller, Alex Marquez, Zeke, Zarco, Bastionini, and Quattrorara were all in there, notably absent, Mark Marquez. He made it through, interestingly. No? Okay.

Fabio had a very huge front end tuck. He almost lost it. Nakagami had a tuck, but he went down. Lots of difference between Yamaha and Honda. One of them stays up, one of them goes down.

Bastionini had a great lap that probably would have put him through to the second session. However, that was spoiled by Leccewona. He was in the way, which caused the beast to kind of go ballistic, which hot blood Italian, right? Passionate about what you do. We go again.

Same thing. Same again, though. This time, nobody was yelled at. It was, which was good. No one lost any more money than necessary for that one.

However, Zarco and Alex Marquez both go through out of that session and they get into the second session. The second session, halfway through, DJ Antonio was quick. Now, he said early on in the weekend, I'm here to win this race, which, okay, that's sort of what I would call rider speak for what everyone says. I'm here to win. I'm not here to finish second.

I'm not here to finish third or get on the podium or something like that. I'm here to win. But there seemed to be something different about the way DG was backing up what he was saying, right? Because halfway through the session of a second qualifying, DG was on pole. Marini was second, Martín, Vinales, Benyaya and Marc Marquez.

There was, they had a little bit of downtime. DG had, I said, a 1.51.8, which was an incredible lap time. Benyaya was in right there. He was towing Marc Marquez along and to Benyaya's credit this time, he didn't care that Marc was there. He just simply got on with the job at hand and went for it.

So at the very, very end, Marini makes a very stunning 1.51.7 to snatch the pole away from DG, which I felt bad for because this Marine came out of nowhere to do it. DG was second quick. Alex Marquez would be on the front row. Then it was Benyaya, Martín and Zarco. Interestingly, everyone on the first row was on a 2022 Ducati.

Everyone on the second row was on a 2023 Ducati. I don't know what that means. I don't know if it just happens to be the random look of fate, but I thought it interesting. Everybody thought it was interesting because I think Matt Burtle, a diatribe about how that was going on. Well, make of it what you want, people.

I have no idea. Rich, any thoughts? Rich I hadn't spotted that, if I'm honest, Jim. I'm probably more inclined to think it's coincidence, but because everybody was kind of back to zero in the sense, as you pointed out at the beginning, that it was a completely new track surface. So I'm sure data is still relevant to some extent, but you are dealing with some fundamentally different stuff if you've got a completely different surface.

So yeah, I don't know. It could be something in it. I mean, who knows? Devils in the detail, as always with this sort of stuff. Isn't it?

So quickly, was anybody complaining about the curves? Because that's all Formula One drivers did was complain about the curves. And we're not complaining about them with motorcycles. Interesting. Whether they changed the curves for the bike racing, possibly.

I don't know about that. I don't think they might have been doing that at some tracks. I would need to double check that. But it certainly was not an issue or question that I had come up all weekend long. Rich Well, that's another one of Jim's theories shot right there, folks, where I figured that given all the fun, that's okay.

I figured since all the trouble with Formula One cars, you'd think it would be even worse for motorcycles. But I haven't watched a Formula One race in two or three years now because it just doesn't excite me anymore. The other point about Qatar is that the racing line, because it's so dusty and because it's a new track, and there was a huge, as I said, I can't remember if we were recording or not, but there was a huge thunderstorm on Thursday night. So not that they'd been out on track at that point, but any rubber that was on the track would have been washed away. So I think probably, you know, they weren't straying very far to the extremities of the track for that reason because it was so slippy out there.

So that might be why curves also weren't so much of a feature because I don't recall an hour. It's true. Because I, well, I know I did watch all the races, didn't I? Because I was in the stands on Sunday and I sort of peripherally watched the sprint race from the paddock. I don't remember anywhere you get an attract limits warning all weekend either.

Nope, no one. I don't remember either. Something as well that people would stay away from the curves. But I don't think it's because of the curves. I think it's just because the racing line on the asphalt was very, very narrow and you strayed away from your extreme peril.

All right. So if we go into the sprint race, Marini gets the whole shot followed by Alex Marquez, followed by Martín, then Benyanya. Martín's wide and Benyanya and Marquez get by. Alex and Bastionini are right there. They're having a ding-dong.

Martín is back by Benyanya after their contact and then Digia is by too. With they to go, it was Marini, Alex Marquez, Martín, Digia, Benyanya and Binder had come to the fore here as well. Martín was out front by lap seven followed by Alex Marquez. Digia would then get by Alex Marquez as well on the same lap. Martín is in front of Marini now.

So with six to go, it was Martín, Marini, Digia, then Alex Marquez, Benyanya and Vinyals who was coming on strong. Seemed like Vinyals was getting a little better as time went on. You notice now Binder had kind of fallen out of that strip of people which we really didn't see because we were very focused at the front. But there was a cast of characters that sort of revolved in and out in this one. Had four to go, Martín was in control.

Digia had gone to second, then Marini, Alex Marquez and Benyanya. The race would finish with Martín winning. GD Antonio was on the podium in second. Marini would get a third and have a podium. Then they would have Alex Marquez, Benyanya and Vinyals.

That meant that with Benyanya finishing in fifth and Martín winning, the championship is now seven points different. So what was a 14 point gap has now been cut in half by Martín and he has his seven points. Again, Martín had had problems all weekend sort of getting the setup on the bike right and was having difficulty. At one point he didn't even want to go back out on these tires. He just felt like he would crash.

They had no grip, anything like that. So for him to come in and win the sprint, I thought was pretty good. So there's your punch Martín and now Sunday you got to see if Benyanya would have any kind of a counterpunch. Anything else for us? No, nothing really to say Jim, to be honest with you.

I mean, it was a good race and Martín obviously pulled off a notably hard move to get past Benyanya on the first or second lap. I think it was probably the first. From there on in, he didn't look really as if he was going to get anything other than first place, did he? The main interest was did you kind of stayed with him? And most people were kind of praying that you could get the win in the sprint because we didn't know what was going to happen on Sunday, but nothing much to say about it really.

But it did obviously set up a tantalizing main race given that the points gap between the two of them shrank to the seven points that you just mentioned. So when we got up on Sunday evening, I wanted to get up on Sunday morning. Well, that's me. I physically got up on Sunday morning to watch the race because it's so far ahead in time for me. But interestingly, Simon Kreyfer and everybody were talking about how KTM was still bringing new bits, new visual bits of go fasty stuff to these races.

We had the carbon fiber chassis that showed up at Japan. We've now got another exhaust, which Brad wasn't using that exhaust because he didn't like how the torque curve worked with the new exhaust. Miller was running the new exhaust. He liked how that power flow came in. And KTM is just working and burning the midnight oil.

My question to you, Rich, is it because Acosta gets on one of those bikes next year and they want to give Acosta the best bike they possibly can? Or is it just KTM being KTM and they just want to be successful? I think it's just KTM being KTM. At this point, I think that Miller and Binder are teammates at the Works team. I think Acosta will slot in very happily at Gas Gas because he'll be partnered up with Augusto Fernandez again.

Obviously, they chanced together in Motortour and worked very well together and were quite friendly with each other there. And interestingly, I kind of put this question. I have one of the big off season shows that we'll put out. I mean, it's pretty much a show all on its own is my two part talk with Herve Pontural because he's just the perfect guy. You ask him a question and he talks for like 15 minutes giving one answer.

Nice. And if you've got like five or six questions, it turns into a long conversation. And he's so generous with his time. So anyway, one of the things I asked him was talk about the difference between being an obvious, what's the polite way of putting it? Well, satellite squad for Yamaha back in days have passed and very obviously having machine that was quite far behind as compared to being what I use was a semi Works team, which I think is what the Tech3 Gas Gas team is.

It's my point of mentioning all of that is that I think Acosta will not suffer for out of date equipment next year. I think KTM's whole approach and they're unlike the Yamaha. The reason for mentioning that is KTM clearly have the wherewithal and the desire and the budget to make new parts and to follow the Ducati path, which is to not have wildly different bikes out there. The closer the bikes are, the better the data is that you can share all together and move forward. And clearly Ducati have proven that beyond any doubt whatsoever, that that is a model of behavior that works.

So that is what KTM are going to mimic. So I don't think Acosta needs to be in the Paul Red Bull team at the moment or works KTM squad. I think he's going to be well served in the Tech3 squad. And also we learned during the week that Red Bull is leaving HRC and following Mark Marquez to Grissini. Gives you an idea of where Mark is actually finally going to stop in this game of musical chairs, doesn't it?

Yeah, that's not a big shock really, is it? I mean, well, I mean, it's an unpleasant shock, I suppose, from HRC's point of view, but they've got money. They've got money. Yeah, they don't need that money. That was obviously a nice to have.

They came with Marquez. So great for Grissini, mind you. Oh, yeah. Well, the thing that's never make us start to speculate there quickly was the fact that what are you going to do? Reptile's been on the bike for decades now, at least two decades.

I can, well, a decade and a half, probably good 12 to 15 years. And everybody says, well, what? Because I know they had it with doing in Crevier back like in 99 or something like that, I think, or a little before that. It was earlier than that. So I was actually I was looking at this yesterday because Rothman's sponsored the team up to 94.

Then in 95, they kind of had like a version of Honda branding on the bike, which is one of the prettiest NSR 500 ever that doing has. Well, that might have been 95. Did I say 94? That might have been 95. So I think the Reptile first appeared in 96.

I'm pretty sure one of the listeners will definitely check me on that. But either 95 or 96 is when Reptile appeared on the bike, as I recall. So it's been there a long, long time. Yes, I don't think Reptile will go anywhere as long as there's a Spanish rider. No, I agree.

That was sort of that was sort of the reason, right? You had Crevier sort of brought that to the team when he joined. And when Crevier left, they had Pedrosa at the team. Right. So there's another Spanish rider.

Right. And since then, you then you got Marquez, another Spanish rider. Now you've got Juan Mir, another Spanish rider. Right. And you'll have, along the way, they had Italians with them like Devisioso, maybe Marini.

So I don't think it's going anywhere. I don't think Reptile is going anywhere. I don't think Reptile was putting up the major bunny. I do think that there was a small amount of Red Bull money there, which I'm beginning to wonder is that small amount of money, you know, like when I say small, like maybe maybe a million euros, maybe a million and a half euros. I mean, not a lot was basically there to kind of prop up Marquez and just because he is a Red Bull rider where I think it's going to be a whole lot more Red Bull money going to Grissini where that bike's going to look like a Red Bull bike.

Yeah. And not Red Bull stickers on a bike. You see what I'm saying? That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, the thing about the HRC squad, because don't forget you had kind of like in between Crivie leaving, you went through, you had Biagi was there, Barros was there, then obviously you had Nikki Hayden. So they went for a period where they didn't have any Spanish riders. But I think the point is that although we always talk about HRC, it is fundamentally a Spanish team.

It's based on, I think it's pretty much next to the Catalonia track in terms of where the team is headquartered. So it is a very Spanish outfit, although it runs Honda HRC machinery and that obviously comes from Japan and I know that, but it's not like they're building the chassis in Barcelona or whatever. But you know, that Repsol link from the sort of Spanishness thing runs at all levels of the team, whether the riders happen to be Spanish or not, which obviously at the moment, one of them is. So in terms of Joanne Mears, so I have no expectation that that will change. All right.

Let's look at what happened in the race. So this is a 22 lap event. Martin had a horrible, horrible start. The bike simply spun and slipped and spun and he was, I think Martin was, I don't want to call it lucky, but he, if he would have dropped that bike, because it was very far out of shape. If he did drop that bike at the start of the race, that could have been extremely ugly.

He did not. So he simply just went backwards with that. Basically Benyanya got a whole shot there. He beat Marini, DG Antonio and Alex Marquez to the first corner with Alex's brother right behind him. Bender would get by Marquez for fifth.

That's Mark. Alex Marquez would move up to P3. Martin was going backwards. Now he had slid back to seven. Benyanya had four tenths on Luca and then Alex and DG.

But on 19th lap, DG moved into third. Then DG on the next lap went up to 18th. Now, Alesh pulled in. Now he did have, and we did not mention this, he did have a crash in the sprint race and it was determined after that that he had a small fracture on his right fibula, which I believe that is the bone that is in the front from your knee down to your ankle. So it was a small fracture there at the top.

I would think that'd be painful regardless of whether it's a small fracture or not. Just to be got on the bike and rode is means he's way more of a man than I'll ever be. So hopefully he can heal up and can ride in Valencia this coming weekend. I don't think it'd be fully healed, but at least maybe swelling pain, that kind of thing can be controlled and he can get back on the bike. So Benyanya is out front with 15 to go followed by DG and Tony out followed by Bender who had raced his way to the front.

Again, we're watching what's going on at the front and we're watching what's happening with Martin. So we don't see where Bender is. He just simply appears. I want to call him the magician because this whole weekend he did nothing but just show up. I'm like, there's Bender.

Where did he come from? I don't know. I couldn't find him on the track. Followed by Alex, followed by Luca Marini, Martin holding on and then Marquez is behind Martin and then Vinales. Now Vinales would get by Marc Marquez and Martin with 13 to go was in big trouble.

The question I have is what's exactly wrong with it? My speculation at the time was the front air pressure in the bike was wrong. Maybe that was it. I don't know, but they didn't want to fall a foul of the rule of low tire pressure. But Vinales would get by.

Marc Marquez would get by. Martin was running in the 55s and I think everybody else was like running in the low 51s or whatever. Definitely in the 52s. He was like three seconds off the pace. Even Quattroraro who had come from way back, I think Quattroraro started almost basically dead last or very close to dead last, had gotten by Martin with 11 laps to go.

Marc Marquez was in trouble too. Now I don't know if that was because he was running wide a couple of times. Was that a front tire issue? Was it a rear tire issue? Don't know.

We weren't really paying attention to what he was doing, but he definitely was in trouble as well. Miller got by Martin who was now ninth with 10 to go. It seemed like the woes of Martin were going to be absolutely terrible. Eight to go. Benyaya was still leading over DG Antonio.

Bender, Alex Marquez, Luca Marini, and Vinales. Quattroraro was then next, then Miller, and then Martin. Vinales had then caught the 3-4-5 battle. He was potentially there for a podium. Maybe a podium was going to be on the cards for Vinales.

Would have been good to see. I know Gary would have hated it. Shout out to Gary. But probably Gary wasn't getting worried about it. I would be worried about Joe Roberts winning.

So you knew what was going to probably happen by that. Anyhow, with five to go, Benyaya is still leading Digia. It's still Luca Marini, still Alex Marquez, still Vinales, still Bender, Quattroraro, Miller, and Bastianini who have gotten past Martin. Martin is now like 10th, if not 11th at this point. Finally, five laps to go and we get Mapping 8 appears on Digia's dashboard.

Dun dun dun dun. Mapping 8. If we all remember, that was code to let somebody buy at one point in time. However, we did learn later on from I think Simon's post-race interview with the team that all Digia wanted to know was when he had five laps to go. And that was the code that they put on there to let him know that they had five laps to go.

Are you talking about Simon Krafar there, Jim? Yeah, I think it was. So there's a couple of Simons involved in this one. So if Simon Krafar asked him that question. Obviously, social media again exploded with conspiracies on this.

The truth of the matter was that this was a joke that Digia and his crew chief, Frankie Carcetti, thought up between each other. And they thought that he wanted that five laps to go thing. So they thought it was a funny joke. They would use the Mapping 8 thing because it's so infamous from the De Vizio, Lorenzo incident a few years ago where Lorenzo just ignored the order because he'd been sacked effectively. So he's like, well, so gee, I'm not moving over.

I'm going to win the race. Because we immediately see shadows in the door, but it was a joke. I mean, it was a deliberate. It's good. It was meant to rile a few people because Digia is in a tricky position at the minute.

You know, but it was just meant to be a bit of an in-joke between the two of them. Yeah, he is unemployed as well. So yes, but yes, it was good. But at that point, then Digia just went by Benyaya, like Benyaya threw an anchor out backwards and that was that. Now, as he did get by and then they came down the long front straight away, Digia's leading Benyaya is there and Benyaya sort of duffed his braking a little bit.

He said he got a little bit more draft than what he thought. You know, the dirty air from the aerodynamics of the bikes in front causes a bit of problem. Maybe not enough front grip and Benyaya almost flips the rear of Digia's bike with his front tire. It probably looked closer on TV than it really was, but Benyaya winds up running wide. You were at that in the first turn, weren't you, Rich, for the race?

By that stage, I'd kind of walked up to the end of the Grand Slam. I was near the final turn, to be honest, at that point. But again, I saw it on the screen. So this is not the same as seeing it for real with your own eyes. It's true.

But it looked flipping close to me, I have to say. Yep. So that is basically the race is decided at that point. But with one lap to go, Zarco almost took Marc Marquez and himself out with a bold move. That was really interesting there as well.

But the race finished with Digia winning the race. I felt so good for him. He said he's going to come. He's going to win. He did it on a year old bike.

Begs the question what Marc Marquez will do on a year old Ducati. Mouthwatering just to see. If he's even just running in the top five and causing problems and havoc, that's going to be fun, irregardless. Vignola would finish second. Marini would get a podium.

So he double podiums on the weekend, which is really super cool. Digia gets two podiums for the weekend. Great. A win in the second in the sprint. Vignola had made his way to fourth.

Didn't get to the podium. So it's good. Binder then fifth. Alex Marquez. Quattraro really good.

Then Bastigny and Miller. Jorge Martín would finish tenth. It is now a 21 point lead heading into Valencia for Ben Yaya. The title with Martín having won the sprint race in Qatar, that guaranteed us that they would have to go to Valencia to decide the title. And now since it's a 21 point lead in Valencia, it could be over on Saturday as opposed to Sunday.

However, it's Jorge Martín in the sprint race. I do not think that this is over until Sunday afternoon in Valencia. A decent race in the desert, Rich. Yeah, particularly because it looks like Saturday and Sunday will be dry and warm in Valencia. So that won't affect Martín in the way that Marta Denevich had been damp and cold.

So because he is the sprint king. Thoughts, Jim? Well, it was not a classic race in the sense it wasn't sort of like loads of great fighting up and down the field. But obviously it was just significant because of the situation that Digia Antonio is in. He's out of a ride.

There's a potential ride for him. And there's a lot of pressure if you go onto social media again for him to get the ride that's likely to be opening up. We can perhaps have a very, very brief discussion on that, although we're already running out of time. But yeah, I mean, the race was really all about what happened to Martín and the fact that Digia just had a stunning weekend and capped it off with his first ever win, which won race to go and no ride next year. Kind of really just amps the pressure up on what can be done to help him.

Or what's he going to do? Which team is going to step forward? Because there aren't many options left open now, assuming that the Luca Marini to Repsol thing is a done deal, which it sounds as if it is. It just hasn't been announced yet. But I mean, it has to be announced pretty quickly because they're out testing in less than a week and moving teams have to be on their new bikes.

So they can't leave it much longer. So obviously there'll be announcements this weekend. So we expect the Marini to HRC thing to be announced this weekend, ready for the test on Tuesday. I think it will be. Yes, Tuesday.

Yes. And that will obviously open up a vacancy at VR46. Now, interestingly, talking to Simon Patterson over the weekend, who has an encyclopedic knowledge about all of this stuff, there's some what's the word? And again, this is sort of speculative, but based on some decent insider knowledge of the history, Aner Bastianini and Fabio Digiantonio are two Italians that famously didn't come through the VR46 route. Now, I don't know why they didn't, but they didn't.

And it was suggested to me by more than one person that there's a perhaps a degree of mild animosity towards them in that regard. And this might be behind VR46 or so. No, Digiantonio is not up for this ride. Now, obviously the talk is about Aldegaard going there. Well, Aldegaard might have just been having a sweet spot because, you know, the nature of the track is being low grip and stuff, although he's clearly a massive, massive talent.

And he will come to MotoGP within a season or two, for sure. But it does strike me as quite bizarre that you've got a fast Italian who has now won a race on the Ducati is being overlooked by a team that is there to promote Italian talent, even though he didn't come through the VR46 route. It's true, but true. It seems a bit churlish if that's the reason why he's not being considered, because even if you just gave him a one year contract, which I'm sure he'd be happy with, because then he'd be on the right contract cycle with most other people in terms of renewals for 25 and beyond. So it kind of makes such logical sense to me for everybody concerned.

It's baffling really that it's not happening or that it hasn't been announced to happen. But it might well happen because obviously VR46 aren't going to say anything until Marine's whereabouts next season are officially announced as well. So it might be that the cards do fall into place and hopefully last weekend we'll have at least done something to make that more of a likelihood. But there's clearly some history there is the point I'm making that is preventing it from being an obvious thing to do. I think that's the point.

Yeah. Well, there's all this politics. Your passport means a lot. It means a lot to Dorna, which is weird that they do. Seems like the championship is dominated by Spanish writers, by Italian writers.

Interesting to see if they actually try to do something with Moto America to get another American over. I mean, we have SDK, we have Joe Roberts. So we shall see what happens there. But it is weird that DJ isn't going to have a ride. A guy who I think has performed massively well this year.

I mean, you want a GP race that says something to itself, right? That you were able to do that. Not many people could say I've won a Moto GP race. You beat the best of us. Jim, he really won the race on Sunday as well.

I mean, he beat Bagnar. Oh, yeah. It was not as if people fell off in front of him or broke down and he kind of got a lucky win. He won that race by sheer hard work and determination, good bike setup, clever planning, et cetera, et cetera. You know, he's at the end of a two-year stint now and he's learned how to ride the bike.

And, you know, his results have been improving gradually, you know, ever since he first got on the bike and particularly in this second half of the season. So he's absolutely the right choice to take on the vacant VR46 bike if and when it becomes available. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean to say he's going to get the ride. But yeah, it would be really bizarre if he didn't at this point in time. Yeah.

The problem is that there's, it's kind of like Formula One. There's 20 cars on Formula One grid, 10 teams, 20 cars, 20 drivers. So there's a lot of guys that you can say have talent and should be in there aren't. Just like there's 22 Moto GP bikes, I think. So you can say there's a lot of guys who have talent who should be there.

I did see something on Twitter. I think it was Simon Patterson, not going to say that was saying, I wonder what Alessia's contract status is for next year because there's a kid, Honadou Kadi, who would probably get really good on Aprilia. Obviously referencing Digia, which I, I'm not going to tell Alessia's done. But if I'm Aprilia, that's a logical step, right? To go maybe try to hunt down Digia.

I mean, could they even, even if it's just a few wildcars, we would produce a third bike. Could they help R&F by putting Digia on a factory contract and putting him in place of Olivero, who second half of his season has been horrible or, you know, get rid of Fernandez, right? Yeah, Raul Fernandez. Yeah. But he's been doing better in the second half of the season.

So it's hard to justify. Tough choice. Yeah. I mean, one, I mean, obviously we're going into the off season now, but one thing we didn't mention from the sprint with that crash that Alessia had was that Olivero was the one that I think that instigated that crash. And he's actually picked up the same injury that Bastianini had.

So he's broken his shoulder blade. Correct. That's a long recovery. Yes, it is. So not only does he miss this weekend's race, he obviously misses the test.

And it's quite likely he will be at Jeopardy missing the test in, or the first test in 2024. All the things I've heard and read to say that he's now in a race, a battle for fitness for the first round next year, let alone any of the tests in between. Because as you say, it's a nasty injury. And as Bastianini has shown this year, it takes a long time to overcome it. So, you know, maybe there could be an opening at Aprilia, you know, in terms of a reserve ride for some of the period of time.

There are probably some options. And Digia is going to be pretty hot property after this weekend that's gone. But there aren't that many options for him. But it's hard to believe he wouldn't get offered a ride for the following season. But it depends where he ends up in terms of any reserve or test duties if he doesn't get the Mooney VR46 ride.

So, you know, we'll find out by the time we next speak, when we start talking about Valencia. Hopefully this is clarified. Hopefully, hopefully. That's enough speculation on the silly season, because there's obviously some shows in there where to go through all the changes that are happening to Moto2, Moto3, where everybody's going. So we have plenty of time to speculate about all that.

I think we're good here, would you say, Rich, for Qatar? That you get everybody up to speed and have them prepped for Valencia this coming weekend. We haven't talked about Martín's tie-rate against Michelin in the rear tire, have we? Oh, OK. I haven't seen the tie-rate on that one.

Being here holed up in the motorhome for a week. OK, well, clearly he had a problem. And then in the post-race interview, which I might tag on his interview onto the back end of this, I don't think I'll get into trouble for that. But he basically accused Michelin of stealing the championship off him. Oh.

As if it's come some kind of deliberate action. This is the side of some of the characters you start to think, really? I mean, again, lots of conspiracies about interference from Ducati or Mitch. No, no, no, no, no. These tires are handed out randomly.

They're selected, as you pointed out earlier to me, by Irta, I think. You know, the teams don't get to touch the tires until they're in the garage for the weekend. You know, and then that's where they are. But we do know that Michelin have had a bit of a history of problematic individual tires, for one reason or another. But I overheard a conversation in the media room several hours after, and Michelin had gone and looked at all of the rear tires, including Martín's, and couldn't find anything unusual about it in terms of graining, as compared with anybody else's.

Obviously, Martín was very vociferous in his criticism. Mourbidelli was quite unhappy with his rear tire, as was Raúl Fernández. Although Raúl Fernández, as I said to you earlier on, does seem to be unhappy about most things most of the time, it seems to me. But others of the riders said, no, the rear tire was great. Funny enough, because they really went off to the main press conference for the top three, which I wasn't allowed into.

I didn't have that level of power. So I was left on my own in the media scrum area, and I had pretty much the tail end of Maverick Vinales' interview, and all of Joanne Mears on my own. So I got to ask Joanne Mears the one and only question that he answered in the post-race thing, and I asked Maverick, could you have got third on the last lap? He goes, yeah, yeah, I had good grip. So not everybody was having a problem, and it's not definitely the case that the rear tire is at fault.

I mean, he had that problem off the start line, Jim, so maybe he had an electronic problem for a weenow. Could have been all sorts of things going on there, couldn't there? So that's all I've got to say on it before we wrap up. But that one's obviously going to run and run and run now. I didn't realize that Martine had that big of a tie rate against Michelin, but oof.

Oh, yeah, we had the whole this is unacceptable championship's been stolen from people in this way, as if there was some kind of malign intent behind it. It might have just been a bad tie, and Bagnari had trouble with his rear tire on the sprint race, which he mentioned in post-race as well. So it does go around, this sort of thing, and maybe Martine did have a bad tie, but to say that it's been stolen from him, I mean, you could equally say, well, you stole it from yourself by crashing when you didn't need to in Thailand. True. Anyway.

Yeah, anyway. Enough said before we go to the show. Yeah, well, that's true. Yes. OK, so I think that's it now, and we will wrap it all up here.

I know it's probably very, very late in Qatar for you. It's middle of the afternoon here for me. But either way, everyone, hope you enjoyed the show. Hope you enjoyed the drama that's there, and be prepared for even more drama when we go to Valencia, because it's going to be very edge of your seat kind of a thing. So until then, please ride safe.

See you next week. Well, I don't know. It's difficult to say. It seems like I forgot to write. And I think you could see already in the start, when my rear tire started spinning, it was like a stone.

And normally this happens when the track is dirty, that it wasn't, because it was the grid. And when the tire has maybe 30 laps, and it didn't, because it was new. So you have to, you know, you can guess what happened, I think, by your own. And yeah, from that point, I tried to manage a little bit, but I felt I was crossing every corner from the rear. You know, it's a pity that a championship like this, after such a great season, working hard, that you, where I feel like, you know, they stole it from me, because I think I could do it before this race.

Now it's really difficult. So, you know, whatever. I think it's difficult to know what happened. Was it clear on the warm up lap that it was... No, no, I think it was on the start.

Already, you know, I was the only rider in all the grid, in all categories that happened this. So for sure, something wrong was on the tire. And then, you know, I think after three laps, I understood that it was impossible to do the same as yesterday. You speak with the guy of Michelin... No.

...Battery. I spoke with my team. It's a pity that this happened to us, but... I mean, for sure, I think they need to improve. It's unacceptable that a MotoGP championship is decided by a tire.

Maybe sometimes it happened to Peko. He said before, it never happened to me, but today it was difficult to finish the race. I am happy and proud of myself because I just finished, because it was super complicated. The bike was OK. I think so, but when the tire is not working, nothing works.

Yeah. I don't know. Was it the same feeling on Friday? Yeah, it was the same with a clean track. But it was...

It's difficult because yesterday I was making 53, not easily, but on 4 pace. Today I was 1.2 from the pace of the race. I think I am a bit faster than that. It's difficult to understand at the moment. We need to analyze and for sure ask the tire provider some questions.

Jorge, was it a race of anger or was it emotion, frustration? At some point I started laughing. It's not that they beat me on the track, because with the same conditions, trust me, I was able to win today. At some point I was frustrated. At some point it was like a big relationship, but only for 40 minutes.

I had all the moments. But I am frustrated for sure because I think I deserve also this championship and we lost a big part today. Jorge, what do you have to do about this? Because we hear riders complaining all the time about this, but it has never had as much impact as it has today. I think they don't even understand what happened, because I guess they don't want to decide the championship.

I mean, they want to be competitive. They want to... I think so. I hope so. That they want to give us the same conditions.

But I lost 1.5 seconds of pace in one day. I think I didn't forget to ride. They need to improve and they need to analyze why this happened. So it doesn't happen again in the future. Hopefully I can battle for more championships in the future.

But today I feel a big loss because it's really difficult now. 21 points into Valencia, Jorge. I mean, it's a big ask to try and recover those points. Well, I think we can do it still. Valencia is...

At least we go to Valencia. Let's see if we can be competitive. It's a track that I really enjoy. I'm super fast. I've been so fast in the past.

And let's see. I mean, it's easy to recover points now. You can see today I lost a lot. So if I win both in Valencia, I can have a small chance to win. But the thing now is not about this.

It's about how this tire changed the way of the championship. Because I think today I was able to still recover points.