The Final Weekend

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. Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 750 and believe it or not, Rich, we're doing this on December the 5th.

It's snowed here today. I mean, nothing's sticking to the ground. We are talking preamble that it's been very cold for you guys in there and we're talking about racing. This is crazy. This is crazy.

Yeah. Well, it's slightly sad because it's the last race of the year that we've got to talk about, isn't it? But anyway, it's a short winter, I guess these days, isn't it? So we'll be back pretty soon. But yeah, let's get into Valencia and then talk a little bit about the test.

Yeah, I think that's what everybody wants to do. So let's just roll right into the race as it the racing as it happened. So we'll start with Moto3. Some news here that is a little disappointing, but CF Moto is pulling out of Moto3. We learned that we learned that like during qualifying somewhere along there.

I was surprised and they way they stated it. They said how they didn't have a bike, which they're riding a KTM clone. I'm like KTM can't build you another bike. I don't know. There's something fishy there, I think.

I suspect it's a money thing in the background. That's usually the case, isn't it? I mean, I don't know. I mustn't speculate any more than that. But yeah, it's sad to see a team because they've been around for a few seasons, I think, haven't they?

Yep. They've been there for a few. Now, Bristol GP, they are also leaving the Moto3 paddock as well. So I hate to see these teams leave because where are you going to harbor the young talent? Obviously, you got Red Bull rookies and you know where those kids are going to go.

There are other kids that are finishing in these national championships that are second or third, somewhere like that, who are talented kids. But where are they going to have a spot to get a ride at? I don't know. I mean, there's still plenty of bikes and teams, I guess, but it's just sad that these teams... I also feel sorry for all the mechanics and people that do all the work, the logistics, all that.

Those are jobs that are not going to be there either. Let's hope, Jim. I mean, if you cast your mind back, what was the Patronus Moto3 team a few seasons ago? Pretty much that entire squad became the Michael Lavaty Vision Track Racing Team, which runs Josh Watley and Scott Ogden, who are reconfirmed for next season, just incidentally. So hopefully some of those teams and personnel in particular, as you quite rightly say, will disappear completely.

They'll just get rebranded under some new ownership, hopefully. Yep. I think there's more to come on both of those, but that was the news that was coming out there. So let's go to qualifying one. It was a packed house of good talent that was in that first qualifying session with Rueda, Alonso, Furusato, Rossi, Toba, Bertelli and Artigas were all there.

However, Rueda, Alonso, Furusato and Rossi would make it onto the second qualifying session. That meant that Holgerdo finally got through a Q1 session. He got through without having to go to a Q1 session, I should say. So he's there. But he had the mother of high sides at turn 11 during his qualifying stint there.

That one was a big outs. That kid hit hard and it broke away quick on him. Then it was Finoli and Yamanaka came together, but at the very end, claiming his first pole was Colin Vier followed by Sasaki. So it's a Husqvarna 1-2 followed by Anshu Kelso, who is looking for... Was he looking for a job?

I can't remember which way it was. He had resigned with someone else, right? Yeah, he switched teams, but he is confirmed for next year. I'm just struggling to think who he signed for, but he's definitely got a ride next year. Okay.

Okay. And then after that, it was Alonso and or Tola. So again, there's nothing really to play for here. The championship has already been decided. So it's just raced to see who could be there.

I think a lot of us were... I was looking forward to like the shackles are all off. Let's see who wins this thing and all bare-knuckle brawl. But before it ever started on the warm-up lap, yes, the warm-up lap, Vier crashed. Sighting lap, I think, Jim.

Which one is it that's out of the pits? You go out of the pit, you go to the grid. Is that sighting? Sighting lap. Okay.

I wrote warm-up. That's sorry. I thought, yeah, I guess, yes, I'm sorry. So he crashes on the sighting lap. Well, we've seen that before.

One guy named Casey Stoner did it. So if you're in good company... And where did he do it, Jim? Turn four in... What is it about Valencia though?

I don't know. It's the wind. I don't know. Who knows? Either way, like I said, it's been done before, so nothing against your intention game.

So at the start, Sasaki got a whole shot, followed by his teammate, followed by Anshu, Kelsa, Ortolo, and Alonso. Now, Morera crashed with Perez, and they also had Artiga in there. Artigas was involved in that too. Holgardo, and he was actually the cause of the whole thing, Artigas was. He simply just, I don't know, forgot that he had brakes.

I don't know what he was thinking. That one was like ambitious but rubbish. I'm not sure, but he just went in there, completely forgot what he was doing. Maybe the brakes got cold on him, but there's still rotors on those blacks. I don't know about that one.

I think he just sort of misplaced himself there a little bit and had big ambitions of trying to pass a lot of people. Because I think Artigas doesn't have a ride, as far as I know, unless that's changed in the time since the race happened now. So I thought maybe he was trying to put himself in the window, so to speak, for a ride potentially. But either way, that forced Holgardo way wide because he was avoiding all the falling riders that were in front of him. Anshu got by Sasaki at 14, but Sasaki went right back by on the straightaway.

It was like a thing of things. It was a foreteller of things to come as it were to work out. Vair went back to the front, followed by his TVA to get Anshu third. Alonso, Ortolo, and then Kelso, who was starting to fade at this point. So the front five guys had gotten away a little bit, mainly due to the shuffling that happened because of the pack with the Artigas crashing, a couple of other things that happened.

So they were starting to fall off as those five or whatever. Masi was nowhere to be found in this one. He was literally stuck back in eighth place with like 15 laps to go. I thought for sure Masi was going to do better than that going through. At 12, Anshu had gotten by as well as Alonso.

They both got by Sasaki, but then Sasaki went back past Alonso on the straight. So most of the time Sasaki was getting a tad going into 14, which is the last corner, but he simply got the drive and would go motoring by everybody on there. So question to you in this regard, Rich. Perhaps maybe you know this. I wrote it down.

See if you can confirm this for me. They repaved the circuit. And if I'm not mistaken, were they not starting farther or, let me put it this way, were they not starting closer to turn 14 than they usually did? It seemed as though they moved the start grid back. Oh, that's a good question.

I don't know. I didn't hear anybody mention it. Yeah, so I guess it's not. But I mean, I was just looking at that like I just don't remember them going through the where the concrete pit lane opens up for the teams to get equipment in through. I don't remember them using that second gate to get to the grid.

I remember them using the first gate, which is much, much closer to turn one. Anybody out there knows, let me know because I think that they moved the start finish line. Not 100% sure. Email us, motopod, motopodcast.com. I want to know.

I want to know. Anyway, back to the racing action as it were. Sasaki got back past Anshu at one, so he was able to blow by Alonso on the straight. Then he set himself up to pass Anshu going into one. Hargato had made his way to eighth halfway through with 10 laps left to go.

Then Alonso kind of nudges Anshu out of the way at 14. Those two guys were going at it. Now Alonso is one for the brave pass and he's definitely the guy who will push that edge. He kind of reminds you a bit of Mark Marquez in that respect that there's a gap. He's going to shove it up in there, whether you like it or not.

So if you're going to cover the inside, you better cover it fully because Alonso is coming. So then Alonso was then backed by Sasaki at 14. That was his base place to attack. But it was this time Alonso actually held Sasaki off on the straightaway. I was impressed by that.

But it was starting to get to be Vier had went back to the top at five laps to go, followed by his teammate. Then it was Alonso or Tiga. There was eight tenths to get to Anshu and then another 1.1 to get to Rueda and Kelso. So Kelso and Rueda were falling off. It was going to be decided between Vier, Sasaki, Alonso or Tola and perhaps maybe Anshu.

He had a gap that he had to make up. He only had about a second, but that's usually not that bad. Vier went in hot at turn 10. I don't know what he was thinking there. He just it's like he just rode straight off.

I don't know if he had a problem. I mean, I didn't see they didn't have a very good angle to decide what had happened there. I was thinking perhaps maybe he had a bit of a wobble on the front end and shook the brake pads back as they sometimes happen to do and they retracted the caliper. So when he went for the brakes, he didn't have it. He had to double pump it to get him back up to stop himself.

I did not see that at all with it. So then I started thinking conspiratorially, because that's what I do sometimes is that, oh, he did this to let Sasaki back by so that Alonso couldn't pass him in the championship. But I was like, that's really weird. I'm not sure that that was happening. I think he just overcooked it, to be honest with you, because he's been on the crest of a wave, hasn't he?

His first win, he's been battling at the front. I think it's just one of those natural tracks, isn't it? Where probably a mistake like that's quite easy to make. Yeah, it's a go-karty track. So there's definitely everything's made up on the brakes, right?

If there's that's how you do it. So you're probably right with that one. Although I was curious about it. So we got with four laps to get Sasaki's back out front. Ortola has made it to second, followed by Alonso.

Ortola is back, but he's back about two tenths of a second. Anshu has joined the lead group. So that eight tenths he's made up in a couple of laps. So Anshu's into that lead group. Alonso moves to second over Ortola.

Ortola goes back to second. And then Alonso and Vier are fighting it out with each other. You get down to finally the last lap. Sasaki leads it all. He rides a great defensive lap to beat Alonso, to beat Ortola.

That's the podium. Vier misses the podium in fourth. Anshu was fifth. Then it was Rueda, Kelso, which I thought was a great ride by Kelso. I'm putting him on a little bit better team.

I think Joe may produce some better results than what we've seen. Helgardo held on for eighth, followed by Munoz and Yamanaka. That was the Moto3 race. It was not the best Moto3 race I think we've seen this year. I expected a little bit more with things to play for and stuff like that.

But there was nothing to play for. So I think everybody was just there. I was glad to see Sasaki finally get a victory. But he also had his elbows out a lot in this race. And he had a bit of...

I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. You said it, not me. I was glad to see him get his elbows out.

I was glad to see him actually fighting and not settling for anything. And I think that's why he isn't champion. He simply did not want to race with his elbows out. He's going to Moto2. Not sure what's going to happen there in Moto2.

He reminds me a bit of... He was Moto3 champion on the Leopard a couple of years ago. De La Porta. He's very small in stature. And I'm wondering how this transition to the Moto2 bike is going to work for him.

I don't have a problem. I don't think Anshu is going to have a problem adapting to a Moto2 bike. I think it's going to fit him and everything's going to be fine. I'm worried about Sasaki being on a Moto2 bike and just in his physical size to be able to move that bike around. I'm small.

I stand five, seven and a half. And he's probably maybe five, five. Yeah. No, he's tiny. He's tiny.

But Marquez is also tiny. If you see his leathers on a rack, he's not the tallest person either. He's probably about my height because I got a picture of me standing next to him. I know you had that picture with Mark from LaSalle. You're close to six foot, 5'10", Rich?

I'm six, yeah. Okay, you're six foot. So you had a good head on a head above it. That makes Mark five, five. Yeah.

I mean, none of these guys are exactly what you call giants. But Sasaki is particularly small. It's definitely true. So I'm hopeful here that that doesn't become an issue. So in the championship standings, Masi is your champion.

Of course, Sasaki retains second. Alonso, Anshu, Hulgardo or Tolovire. Marrero, Rureta, Emunyos. That's how the championship points stand there. Anything else in the Moto 3 race before we jump to Moto 2?

I think you've summed it up, Jim, to be honest with you. I mean, Valencia, as we've said, is one of those real kind of love it or hate it kind of venues. I think the consensus is if you go to it as a spectator, it's pretty good because you get that amphitheater thing going on. But I have to say from my personal perspective, and others will disagree, I guess, but it's not a great televisual spectacle. You would have expected the Moto 3 race to be the pick of the bunch, really.

And it really wasn't. Other than the fact, well, two things really. I mean, Masi just didn't turn up. I don't know if it was just elation or perhaps his ego has been crushed a little bit. Because let me tell you, the team, Moto GP itself, continually tweeting about the new Moto 3 champion and the hatred has continued online.

I mean, it's really been quite a shocker, actually, just how unpopular that behavior in Qatar by the team, in particular by the team overall, let's say, was. So whether his shoulder was down a little bit or more likely he was just looking forward to getting on a Moto 2 bike and not doing anything silly to disrupt, the test that happened on the Monday, I think it was. So great to see Sasaki win the race, as you say, Jim, and particularly because it was his last race in Moto 3. And there's kind of the moral victor aspect of it going around as well because of what had happened in Qatar. So not a great race, but good to see Sasaki win the race at long last.

And yes, I mean, in Moto 2, the stature thing is a good point. And he's definitely going to need to have his elbows out there because it's no less ferocious than Moto 3. So we'll see. I haven't actually looked at what the Moto 2 test revealed on the Monday, but you wouldn't have expected too much from the rookies. So we'll catch up on that another time, I guess.

Yeah, we can do that. I think more people are interested in what happened in the Moto GP test than anything else. Yes. For good reasons. We'll recap probably testing for Moto 2, Moto 3, and another episode.

Let's go to Moto 2. So we learned that the Pons team, we know Cito Pons' team, is leaving here. I should say that Cito is leaving the team. The team was basically, I don't know if sold is the right word, but I'm going to use it here, to essentially, it becomes the MT Helmets MSI team. That's what they're going to be next year.

So all the crew, everybody's going to be there. However, this is the shocking point. They are going to use Bosco Cora chassis for next year. I thought that was very, very interesting because it's a late call to change from the Kalecs that they have to the Bosco Cora. But if you look at how one certain individual is riding on a Bosco Cora, maybe it's the bike to be on.

Yeah, and let's be honest, it's nice to have a couple more of those bikes on the grid just so it's not completely and utterly the Kalecs kind of show because going back to the beginnings of Moto2, you had Suta. And what was the Japanese chassis manufacturer that Tony Elias went on first time out? Was it Forward? When I was Forward, although is that not, I think that's basically what the Bosco Cora team is now, isn't it? But I might be wrong.

I thought it was a Forward, but I don't know. But yeah, it all came to me in a minute. Kalecs, Suta. I'll look it up. You keep talking, I'll see if I can find it.

Okay, so let's look at Moto2 qualifying one. Chantja, Roberts, Agura, Arbolino, Vandegorber and Alcova were there, which is a bit interesting that those, you know, I've thought for sure like Agura would have been a little farther up. I thought Arbolino would have been a little farther up there as well. But they weren't. But at the end, it was Solache, Chantja, Agura, Roberts.

They would move on. So Arbolino didn't get out of that session. And again, you know, I think we agree it's not the best racetrack. I mean, it's really kind of a good racetrack for Moto3 and maybe a go-kart. But as you get to the bigger bikes, it's a tight track.

And that's just kind of what happens with it. Second qualifying session, halfway through, Dixon was leading the race to pole, followed by Kennett, Roberts was up there. Outager, Chantja and Lowe's were there. Then when we got to the end of that qualifying session, Kennett threw down a lap to claim pole ahead of Outager. Ramirez jumped up to be on the front row, followed by Lowe's with a great send off because his fellow countryman was right there with him.

And Jake Dixon. And then you had Pedro Acosta, who could not seem to get qualifying right. He had race pace from what we've seen in practice. But in qualifying, he just could not put it together. He was trying, but he just couldn't get there.

I don't know. Acosta had really nothing to show. Right. But part of me was like, I wondered how the race is going to fold out because this might be one of those moments where you get to see Outager v Acosta with nothing on the line. There's no reason to not race all the way, to go for it.

For these two to go head to head with each other to say who is the better of them. Right. I was hoping for that to happen. But I think, well, let's talk about the race. We'll decide what actually did potentially maybe happy there.

At the start, Outager gets away. Then followed by Kinnett, Ramirez, Dixon, Acosta and Lopez. Then Garcia went down and he was hit by Guevara. And Vietti was also in that incident at turn four. That was a nasty crash.

That one, Jim. It was. It was a nasty crash. I was trying to think. I can't remember if it was high side, low side.

I did not write it in there, but they got cleaned out by Garcia. Got cleaned out by Guilfara. Right. Yeah. Well, as I recall, Garcia high sided himself.

I don't know if it's because the bike was just kind of in the way, but Guevara rode right over the torso, which is not good to see because you can get a lot of internal injuries from that. He was up on his feet relatively quickly afterwards. So I'm assuming there haven't been any subsequent medical repercussions from that because obviously the airbag would have gone off and these guys are pretty well protected. But nasty crash. Yeah.

Yeah. I had it here in my notes that he was actually hit by Guevara as in physically with his body as a, as to hitting him with the bike. But they were down there. One of the wild carders was down at the last turn as it was in the Zane. Or I can't remember who it was, but they were not sure there, but they were down.

Acosta and Lopez, they bump at the turn four and Acosta's ninth. Acosta was going backwards and Altager was just pulling away. I mean, let's be honest at this point, let's call it what it is. Altager runs off on everybody. Just his, he was literally metronomic.

He was the epitome of a Lorenzo incarnation because he did everything in like, I don't know what they were turning like 136s or something like that. He was like in the 134s like the whole time. And he had like one blip that was like a 135 something. It was just incredible consistency that he had displayed. The idea was like, well, what's going to happen in the background here?

So at 15 laps to go, Knet was running second, followed by Ramirez, Dixon, Lopez, Chanchard, Lowe's had gone sort of backwards. Lopez was running pretty good until he had a bump and run with Dixon at turn four. That was, I don't know, they didn't do anything about that with, from the stewarding standpoint, I thought it was just a racing thing. It was just you guys on the same racing line that just intersected with each other at the same time. So not a big deal.

Then Lopez was by Ramirez at turn four through turn six. They kind of went back and forth for a battle for third. By 10 to go, a little under a little over halfway. Acosta was 12th. The top three hadn't changed.

Ramirez had lost his podium position to Lopez, Dixon, and then Chanchard. Chanchard was by Dixon at turn four with seven laps to go, which is a pretty good move by Chanchard to get by Dixon. So I thought that was a nice move there. Outagher, then Knet, Lopez, Ramirez, Chanchard, and Dixon, and Acosta up to 11th with five to go. And then as we ran through, it was Outagher winning.

Knet was on the podium in second. Lopez on third, the final podium position. Then it was Ramirez, Chanchard, Dixon, Lowe's, Robert's, Foggia, and Arenas. So that is the Moto 2 race. Again, that was not the best race of the weekend, but I got to give all credit to Outagher.

He is the hot property. There was a lot of people wanting him to be on a Moto GP bike. And I would say that he's destined to be there next year. However, the boss, Mr. Boscacorra himself, is waving a contract in front of everybody's face.

And given how Outagher has been riding, that price to get him out of that contract is forever going up. So he's not going to go anywhere. I hate to say presumptive anything for next year, but you've got to believe that Outagher is going to be one of the main people to be looking at for the championship next year. I think there's some other people that are going to come into the championship that may give it a run, but he's definitely on the front of my list for potential world champions next year. Oh, yeah.

I mean, he will start next season as one of the Red Hot favourites, won't he? No doubt about it if he can carry that form over. I forget the date now, Jim, and they probably mentioned it over the weekend, but somewhere in late October, I think, possibly early November, a date went past on his contract that would have released him, let's say for less money, had a Moto GP team come calling. So I understand that because that date had expired, the buyout clause was something in the region of about 400,000 euros. Not that big of a deal, I suppose, if you're an HRC, but it still would have needed the agreement of the team.

And quite understandably, as you say, Mr. B has got a hot property on his hands and he's looking at a proper title tilt next year. So that was going to be a hard one to do. I think, actually, I hope and believe probably that Deep Down Aldegaard knows that it's right to stay in Moto 2 next year because I'm sure he would like to win the championship if he can. And let's be honest, by the time you get to all of the silly season for 2025, there are a lot of seats up for grabs in Moto GP because of the contract cycle.

So it makes more sense for him to do that anyway. So it's kind of worked out for the best, I think. But given, I mean, back to whether Aldegaard is going to challenge for the title or not next year, if you look at everybody else that's around him, there's not anybody there that you look at and go, wow, you have the consistency to run with him or to be anywhere close to him. I mean, I'm not trying to say it's going to be a boring year next year, now that Aldegaard is winning everything that's there. Something's going to happen to change it.

But you look at it and you just go, hmm, you know, who of this group is going to step up? You hope Agurra is going to actually be better next year because he's had that terrible wrist injury, right? But he's going to a different team. He's going to the MSI Helmets team, aka the old Pons team, right? Yeah.

And he's going to be teamed up with Garcia. You would hope that Garcia or Guevara would get it together on a Moto 2 bike after a year of learning. I mean, they were the two guys that dominated Moto 3 before they moved up, Guevara being the Moto 3 champion. So yeah, it's just weird. It just seems like you always got this influx of talent that shows up for Moto 3, which is somebody comes out of that you weren't expecting to be at the front, right?

But it seems like Moto 2 doesn't have that sometimes for whatever reason. Don't know. I mean, obviously Pedro Costa has been the man this year. I'd say he easily won the title, but with a bit of time to spare, didn't he? And clearly wasn't that bothered in Valencia because he had Tuesday on his mind, perfectly understandably so.

I mean, what happens to Tony Arbolino over the winter months? Because he was strong in the first half of the season and then it just completely all went away, didn't it, in the second half of the season? You know, you've got Joe Roberts going into an American racing team, which despite all of the nonsense that's been going on with them and the way they go about their business, that's a strong team next year. And Ramirez has been showing that the bike, you know, because it's not a stock bike, but you know what I mean? It's that there shouldn't be any huge disparities between the various Cal-X chassis bikes.

So he, you know, Roberts could be back home in an environment that's going to suit him. Obviously, from a British perspective, we've lost some lows towards Superbikes, but Jake Dixon, if he can string something together. I think the point about Aldegar is, I mean, that's four races on the bounce and that is quite unusual and it's the manner in which he's done it as well, isn't it? So that's concerning for everybody else. Yeah, he's only the second rider to win four races and four consecutive races.

And it was Tony Elias who did it in the very first year of Moto2. I've just looked it up because I know people will have been shouting at me for not remembering. It was the Moriwaki in that first season and that was with the Grissini team back then. I think that was 2010, was it? Or something around about that quite a while ago.

Wow. No, I would think Moto2 went to Forstrix before that. I want to say like 2008 or 2009. I don't know. I because it could have been.

It certainly is a good, good wee while and it's been obviously Cal-X dominated since then. So going back to the Bosco Skiro thing, I mean, just going back to the last episode that we recorded, we were speculating that the Bosco Skiro chassis is sort of famously good on lower grip tracks. So we were wondering what they would be like at Valencia. New track surface, quite grippy and the weather was good. Well, you know, Aldo just showed that at the moment he can ride the bike on any condition.

So possibly with the exception of the wet because we haven't seen him recently. Having to contend with that. But yeah, he will be getting a lot of people's attention in terms of the early running next year. That's for sure. But there are plenty of people that can step up.

I mean, I forget where you said he finished in the overall order. Foggia was sort of in the top 10 solidly. And yeah, Foggia was. We haven't mentioned him, but again, he's one of the guys that come into the tail end of his rookie campaign in Moto2 because don't forget he's been in Moto3 for years and years and years until this year. He's been making steady progress in the way that you often see with the Moto3 guys that come up.

So again, you never know. I mean, he could turn up next year and be a bit more of a contender as well as Garcia has been rather unusually for a motor or for a class rookie this year. So yeah, I mean, there's going to be plenty to keep us captivated, I think, in Moto2 next year. Oh, yeah, there's always going to be something. Quickly, let's just look at how the championship finished.

Obviously, Acosta is your world champion. Arbelino was second, Altegr, Dixon, Kinnett, Chantra, Lopez, Gonzalez, Aguera and Vietti. So, well, the real Celestino Vietti, please stand up next year. You know, there's another one. Flashes of brilliance, right?

Like, yeah, who knows? Oh, OK. Now to the race that mattered the most this weekend and quite honestly was the most entertaining race of the weekend as well. First thing, MotoGP. Whoever thought of putting a camera on Tardazzi's jumper?

I congratulate you, sir. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I loved it. I loved every second that we got to see Tardazzi walking around and from his view. I thought it was great.

I did. Maybe you didn't, Rich, because you kind of gave a lot about that one. Yeah, well, I'm a little bit on the fence for things like that. Also, like, you know, the kind of the heart rate monitor thing. It's like, really, I think we've done that one to death.

I mean, it never goes over 110, does it? I mean, there's nothing that seems to frazzle the guy. So move on to somebody else, please. Yes, as the weekend began, we learned that it was confirmed that Marini was going to HRC. That was confirmed.

We also learned this weekend that DG Antonio would go to VR46, being the first non-ranch, if you will, rider to ride in Rossi's team. Very interesting. Quite honestly, I think that Adidja Bezeki team is a very, very strong team that will definitely surprise a lot of people. That's going to be something to watch, because that is a strong, strong team that Rossi's put together. And in my mind, Bezeki, I think, is a very strong rider on the cusp of becoming a regular, he's coming out of the shell that Jorge Martinez came out of.

That was fast, win a race, but there's that consistency part that's not quite there. That Martin, it clicked, and now it's there. I think Bezeki is right there. It's going to click, and he's going to be right there with him. And I think Adidja is in that same spot.

It's so close. He got to win, and you're like, okay, he's going to go. It's just going to keep going. And he's going to be on good equipment still. Yeah, the only thing for Adidja, which I guess is a little bit of a shame from his point of view, is that he doesn't take Frankie Calcetti with him.

Calcetti obviously stays in Crisini, and Marquez is pre-chief. But it was interesting, and again, obviously we weren't there, unfortunately. But Rossi was in Valencia, and my understanding from the chatter that I was hearing on the commentary and stuff and a few bits on social media was that it was ultimately Rossi that came in and said, no, we're going to take Digia. Now, whether people were leaning on Rossi a little bit, as in from the Dornara side of things, because there's so much public support for Digia. And he was the obvious choice to slot in there.

I don't know, I'd be intrigued to find out one day how that all went down, because Uccio, who's Rossi's best mate and who runs the team. Is it Uccio? I think that's his common name. Common name. Sort of said categorically in Qatar, no, he's not even under consideration for this team.

And then within a week, it all changed. And lo and behold, there he was riding the VR46 bike and testing on the Tuesday. So clearly something went down. So I'd be interested to know what that was at some point. But he slots in there perfectly sensibly.

As you say, that is a strong team. If Bizeki can keep it. Again, great first half of the season. And then it kind of all went a bit awry second half. And I mean, if you remember, I don't know that we talked about it particularly, but in Qatar, he had that weird on track thing going on on the Friday with Pol de Spargrove.

Well, they both kept sort of just deliberately riding into each other. And on the Friday night in the media debrief that I was at, I mean, Bizeki, who is sort of seen as the rock and roll guy, the sort of the Rossi-esque one. I'll tell you what, people were getting out of his way, because he had a face like a slapped ass, that bloke. He was not happy and wouldn't talk to the media, was really, really sort of seething about something. So things have obviously gone a bit funny for him at various points in the second half of the season.

So again, it'll be interesting to see how he kind of winters and then comes back strong again, hopefully at the beginning of that season. But we'll wait and see. Yeah, that is an interesting take on that one. Let's see, that was the main points. I think those are like the last two things that we needed to figure out as far as riders for MotoGP.

So we'll move into the qualifying. So in the very first session is Bashtanini, Alex Marquez, Ben Yaya, Marini, Watararo, and Morbidelli. Who's missing out of there? No, I was looking at that. Oh, that's okay.

That's all right. Mark Marquez actually had made it through. He had actually got to the second session, which I thought was interesting. Halfway through, it was Alex Marquez and Biagi who were fast. Augusto Fernando was there, but no one else was even close.

Then it was basically it was Ben Yaya and Alex Marquez that go through because Augusto was there and Alex Marquez kind of bumped him out to getting in. But I thought Augusto put a great ride in on the Gas Gas. He's improved, improved, improved, improved, improved. And he's really made a bit. He hasn't quite made that next step, but.

He's been quietly solid for a rookie though, hasn't he? Yeah, I would say it's really has. Yes, he really has. He really has. Under the radar.

Yeah, it's been an under the radar thing. I mean, Acosta is not going to be under the radar because everybody's talking about him. You know, that's the thing. Here is the guy who went there with. I don't know if anybody had a preconceived notion of what he was going to be able to accomplish on that bike, but I don't think I think he exceeded the expectations that everyone kind of gave him.

So he's done really well. But by the way, Ben Yaya did a 129.054 lap, which is stunning. Stunning, really, to be honest with you. In that second session, Martin. Pulls a Mark Marquez tear off out of his inlet when they go down the pits.

Mark is in front of him. Mark takes a tear off off, lets it go, and it goes right smack dab into the inlet of the bike or about in the inlet of the bike. Martin just calmly reaches up over top of that, grabs it, flicks it away. You could tell Martin's head was in the game, right? Because attention to detail of everything.

If that was three races into the season, he never would have saw it, right? So I thought that was, you know, that was pointed out by a lot of people. It was very interesting as well. Halfway through Binder was fastest, followed by Martin, Miller, Bezeky, Raul Fernandez and Vinales. Mark Marquez and Martin touch at turn nine and Martin goes wide.

That is the story of the weekend. It's these two guys, right? We'll get on to that here as we go along. Vinales then jumped up to the top of the lap of a 128.9. The first sub 129 lap at Valencia, which was crazy.

Marquez, Mark Marquez fell and then Alex Marquez fell. So both the brothers fell trying to go faster. Couldn't do it. Martin needed needs a lap, but he could not get it. He was close.

He made some mistakes. Was the pressure showing? Was this the crack in Martin? Who knows at this point, but it was Maverick Vinales with a pole. Benyaya was in second.

Zarco third. Miller, Binder, Martin sixth. So on that second round, the last man on the second row, Bezeky, Marquez, Marquez, Fernandez, Gigi Antonio, Asparga. That's how they're going to start the sprint race. The sprint race starts out and we have to understand Benyaya leads by 21 points going into this sprint race.

This is the first opportunity to win the championship and not have to worry about what happens on Sunday. Simply all you need to do is collect four more points than Martin and you're going to be world champion. Given the fact that Martin is a sprint master, if you will, and that Benyaya has shown flaws in those short races, short races where he just doesn't come alive till the end, there was a possibility that this was not going to happen. It's going to go on to Sunday and we'll see what happens. So that kind of sets the table here because you got this drama of what's going on with it.

At the start, Vinales, head of Benyaya, head of Martin, head of Binder, head of Marc Marquez, head of Bezeky. Benyaya went from second to fifth and you're thinking Benyaya's got the elbows out. He's got this. He's going to just settle this, put it away, put the champagne on ice, let's get it done and not worry about what's going to happen tomorrow. With 11 to go, Vinales is now there.

Binder's gotten to second. Martin has gotten to third. Marquez is there in fourth. Benyaya has fallen back to fifth. So whatever was going on at the beginning of the race for Benyaya wasn't working or something wasn't working right.

And he just simply trotted backwards to fifth. Well, that's not where you need... Now we're into this new permutation that if you finish fifth, you'd have to be sure that you finish at least fifth in the race on Sunday provided Martin wins the sprint in both of them, which might be a far task because at this point Martin was there but he wasn't looking the best. Quattroraro fell down. He actually had just gone by Benyaya at T6 and tossed it away, low-sided.

Amazing that really we haven't said that Quattroraro had crashed, I think, all year in a race. He's had bad races but he hadn't crashed. And he had two crashes on the weekend already because he crashed in practice, I think, and then he crashed again in a sprint or he crashed in the warm-up that morning, I think. Yeah, I didn't see that. But he's not just not really a crash a full stop, is he?

No. Threw the majority of his MotoGP career, well, his GP career full stop. So yeah, it was unusual but he's clearly having to push that bike very, very hard. Very hard. Very hard.

I agree. Seven laps to go. Bender had gotten by Vinales and was leading. Martin still in third. Marquez fourth, Vinales fifth.

Then Martin got by Vinales. Then Martin is on a tear. He's got it together and he gets past Bender for the lead. Marquez has now made his way to third because Vinales has fallen back to fourth. Benyaya is fifth.

Five to go. And Martin is leading. Bender, Marc Marquez, Vinales, Benyaya. But Digia is now all over Benyaya. Like, oh, whoa, we've got some computations that need to be done because Benyaya is hanging out there in fifth.

If he drops a place and Martin wins both races, this could get interesting. The masks are going to get harder. And it was like that drama that you're wanting to have is coming to the fore over all this. Two to go. Digia was all over Benyaya.

The question then became was, it looked like he was trying but not trying. It was one of those moments of like Digia was maybe looking at the bigger picture because in all reference, we didn't know he was going to VR46 until the next day. It wasn't announced until Sunday race day, I believe. So maybe he was looking at the bigger picture like he was trying to salvage some goodwill or something with Ducati. Like, hey, I could have passed, but I didn't kind of a thing.

Who knows what was in his mind. He was definitely bigger picture there, Jim. 100%. He looked so much faster than Benyaya in the last third of that race. He was kind of riding out of his way not to go into Benyaya.

So definitely he knew that the worst thing he could have possibly done at that point in his career was taking Benyaya out. That would have been disastrous for both of them. So yeah, totally agree on that. Any kind of a rub-knock, anything. Benyaya was obviously riding for that fifth place because I think Benyaya knew where Martín was.

They weren't that far up the road that he couldn't see where they were, especially with the turning nature of the track. He'd quickly look and see the other way and see. I think when you go through one, two, three to four, you can easily look and see Martín accelerating away in the lead and you're trying to go through four. So Benyaya was hanging on in my mind for dear life to fifth. The thought that occurred to me, Jim, I can't remember how far behind at the end at the flag, let's say, Benyaya was behind Vinales.

I think that was the order in which they finished, wasn't it? But he must have, Benyaya this is, must have also been thinking, I might need to hold back a bit here because he didn't want his front tire pressure to be a problem because he was already on a warning. The last thing he needed was a three or six second drop, whatever that would have been, because that would have been very costly in points before the Sunday race as well. So I don't know if that was kind of, you know, he was thinking bigger picture as well because he is that kind of a rider and being in fifth in the pack there, that is obviously danger territory with regards to this bloody annoying front tire pressure rule that we have. So I'll come back.

I got a point I want to ask you about Benyaya, but let's quickly figure out who was where. Martín won, Bender second, Marquez third, Mark that is, Maverick Vinales, then Benyaya on fifth, then Digi Antonio who rode in behind him at six, Bizecki, Alex Marquez, Zarco Fernández. I agree with you going back to Benyaya. He's one of the most cerebral racers that I know of, that I ever saw. In fact, it's really odd that he is that cerebral and yet that fast and has won these championships.

I'm not taking anything away from him. He's a great rider, great rider. But if you go back through history, the cerebral riders aren't the ones that are winning titles. Really, maybe the last two that I can think of was Eddie Lawson, who was always thinking about what was going on, and Rainey who was always the, I'm going to take what I can today and I will fight again tomorrow, unless Kevin Schwans is in front of him and then it was just red mist. But really, it's always the guys that are just sort of that, not carefree and wild, but definitely not as thoughtful.

So I mean, he's great. I love Benyaya. I think he's fantastic. Yeah, I take your point. Yeah, I'm just trying to think if there's anybody else that would kind of, I mean, again, we'll do our usual trick.

It's kind of like the Prost center thing, wasn't it? Prost was always famous for being the guy that thought his way to a championship. Was very, very fast and was very fast when he needed to be, but didn't bother if he didn't need to be. And you kind of, Benyaya does slightly smack about, I mean, Rossi perhaps at certain stages could turn it on or off as he needed to. But yeah, if you think of the sort of the post Rossi period, you know, you've got Lorenzo, Stone and Mark and none of those people necessarily jumped to your mind as the people that really think their way to titles.

I mean, they were just quick out front pretty much all the time, weren't they? So yeah, I take your point. Yeah. Interested to know if anybody has a different view on that. Yeah.

So the stage was set. Benyaya had finished fifth. The math was if Martine could win Sunday, Benyaya had to be fifth to retain his title. Interesting. I don't know if anybody follows Sofa Racer on X, but you should because he's got some very, very funny things that he says in particular.

And I thought this was very funny. After this sprint, he tweeted somebody on a Honda finished third. The next Honda was 18th. This person is going to be on Ducati next year. Be afraid.

Be very afraid. I thought that was good because, you know, I think we know Marquez is a talent, right? Which goes to show just how good he is. The fact that he could ride that bike there. Again, it's only half race distance.

It's not the full distance, but still the fact that he was there for that. And you can say what you want about Benyaya racing for the title and trying to be very thoughtful about it. But still, he never rode fast enough to beat Marquez. Fair play to Mark. I mean, as I've said many times on the show, I'm not the world's biggest Mark Marquez fan.

I think he's great, but I'm not one of these sort of rabid people that goes mad at the suggestion that he's anything other than perfect because I don't think he is perfect. But choppers to him for putting it on the line and wanting to get a good final result on the Honda this year. I mean, it remains to be seen whether he ends up back at Honda at some point in the future. I suspect he might. But, you know, he really rode really, really, really hard.

And fair play to him for doing that because obviously, as you would find out on Sunday, there are risks associated with that. And he had Tuesday to think about, which was obviously a massive, massive thing for him. So because we have commented on which in the sense, certainly post Saxon Ring, when it all kind of clarified in his mind that he couldn't stay in this team any longer. I think that was the real turning point. Saxon Ring, because of its significance to him as a place where he's been unbeaten up until this year.

Yeah, I mean, he just really put it all out there and I think he deserves a lot of respect for that. And that was a great result to finish third in the sprint. Yeah, it's only the sprint, but you still got to finish. Oh, yeah. He's had several thirds in the sprint.

So everything now is set. Again, two Martin wins means there's got to be two Benya Fiss. So that's what we're looking for in the race. But drama started at the very beginning of this one. And then Vinales ignored a black flag and was given a three grid place penalty because the Aprilia was smoking.

Now, he did pull off, but he was being waved on by the corner workers. So he continued on and that led to some protests about what was going on, blah, blah, blah. It didn't really matter. The morning warm-up is morning warm-up. He's smoking.

And so therefore three grid places down. That helps everybody out because that reshuffled the grid, right? But Vinales going backwards, that puts Benyaya on pole, right? Moves him up. And you're like, OK, well, that just gave Benyaya an even better place to start from with more grip at that point.

So the start of the race. Benyaya gets the whole shot followed by Martin, Binder, Miller, Zarco, and Vinales. As we kind of go through, Marc Marquez and Bezeky are under investigation. We didn't know why because we didn't see it at the time during the race. However, Bezeky was down.

And I saw this on Instagram MotoGP feed. They showed the helicopter shot of what happened. And Marc Marquez is up under Bezeky and Bezeky does fall off. What I thought was interesting after this is the comments that were made by Bezeky and Marquez. Bezeky basically says he just took me out.

And the clever part of Marc Marquez is he makes it look like he didn't do it, which I thought was very interesting, to which Marquez was like, I didn't do anything wrong. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? I mean, this is the other side of Marc Marquez that I was alluding to, I suppose, in some respects. But, you know, like one, these things are going to happen, aren't they? He was extraordinarily lucky not to get a penalty for it, mind you.

Now, I don't know quite why Race Direction was a sleeve at the wheel on that one, because they have multiple angles that we don't get to see in the live feed. Because Bezeky went down hard. I mean, that was a quick old crash, that one. And when you saw that replay that you're mentioning, Jim, I mean, Marquez really did ram it in there. So you would have to say that he was the guilty party.

And to not get a penalty was curious. When you look at other penalties that have been handed out for other things. Oh, yeah. Again, the only feed that I saw was literally from the helicopter, and that was on MotoGP's Instagram page. I would kill it for another angle.

I would have killed for the angle off of Marc's bike, anything, something. Anything more than what we had to look at to decide whether this was an infraction that required some intervention by the stewards for this. From what I've seen, I think Marquez deserved a penalty on that one. Long lap, double long lap, take your pick, whichever. I don't care.

He deserves something, but they didn't give it to him, which again, Marquez likes to dish it out. I'm not trying to defend Marquez's actions here with this, but Marquez doesn't seem to really be bothered by anybody who actually puts it back on him. He doesn't seem to act that way. Now, maybe it's in private, maybe it's somewhere that we're not seeing. But if somebody's up the inside of Marquez and they have something, Marquez just kind of shrugs it off and he's just sort of like, that's racing.

That's why we're here. So, I mean, again, it could be just an act. Like I said, he could be back in the Honda trailer just literally throwing his toys out of the pram. But his forward-facing view is the assassin smile, and well, that's racing. I mean, for the majority of his MotoGP career, not many people have been overtaking him anyway, have they?

I mean, that's part of the problem. So, I mean, okay, that's not been the case in the last couple of seasons, that's for sure. I don't know. I mean, you're kind of tempted to go back to the old classic out and say, if you don't go for a gap, you're not a racing driver or a motorcycle racer in this particular case. So it was just a hard move.

I mean, whether Bezeky was kind of late apex in that corner slightly. I mean, it was lap one, so perhaps he was just being a little bit cautious. Mark saw a gap, went for it, but they touched. And the way I saw from the replay angles that I saw, Bezeky was still reasonably ahead. And I mean, he didn't T-boning, but the angle was such that Bezeky was straight off and into the gravel at a fast rate of knots.

So Bezeky, I think, was quite within his rights to feel heavily aggrieved, A, at the incident and B, at the fact that Marquez went unpunished on it. But, you know, it's done. So they just have to move on. But they clearly hate each other's guts even more now than they did before. And it was already pretty substantial.

Yeah, agreed. Because it's not the first time those two had contact either. So, you know, again, it's one of these things where it tends to be a bit of a run-in thing. Anyway, they'll be happily sharing data next year. So we'll see how that goes.

Oh, you almost got to believe Yucati's ethos of everybody gets to see the data. Has made them the strongest bike on the grid. It's also going to be their worst nightmare next year because this other guy is going to get all this data to make himself better. But that is a very double-edged sword. I applaud Yucati for doing it, though.

I'm trying to remember, Jim, whose tweet it was that I read from somebody who was on site for the Tuesday test. I know we're jumping forward, but I'll forget otherwise. Already some people, as in riders, were getting a view of Marquez. Who was it, man? It might have been Didger, actually, because obviously they're in the same garage.

I can't remember, but it doesn't matter. Already one or two riders were looking at the data and thinking, how the hell is he doing that? Oh, gosh. We're already at that point. Man, like Cal Cutre said, he gets on a Ducati, you may not know which way he went.

He's going to be on a real, real rip next year. That's 100%, unless he injures himself. At the last turn on the first lap, Benyaya ran wide. That gave Martín an opportunity to make a run at Benyaya. They're both going to turn one and they touch.

Martín is off and he's eighth now. Drama, because now Martín is really in a hole. Whatever he's going to do, he's got to pull some magic out of the hat if he wants this world title. And I think Martín really did want this title. He was going to ride his ass off to get it and he was going to do what he had to do.

As we reset this, because there's a lot that's happened here, Benyaya, Bender, Miller, Zarco, Marc Marquez, Benyala, and then Martín. Those are where they are. As it goes on, you still have Benyaya out front with Bender on the next lap, but Martín is now really starting to put his head down and he's starting to get there. They, Martín and Marquez, tangle. And is it turn?

I can't, I don't have the turn here. I think it's turn six, four, is it four? Okay, it doesn't, they tangle with each other. I thought it was six because I thought it was farther around. But because five, six, I don't know.

It really doesn't matter. But though, but Martín goes up the inside of Marquez. And cleans Marquez off. He throws him over the bike massively. And he comes down awkwardly in the gravel trap.

And by that, I mean, the way his head hit and his body reacted to it. I hopefully I don't give anybody PTSD, but it was like that awful moment in 93 with Rainey for me. It's like, it looks so similar. The head went into the gravel and I was just, you know, I mean, again, I'm a Marquez fan. I'll make no bones about that.

But I would have been this way about anybody who would have went into that gravel. I was petrified for a few seconds. And then he bounced up. I was like, okay, at least he's okay. Which is a, yes, which is, it's a testament to the airbags in the suits.

It's a testament to the helmet technologies of where we've gone from 1993 to 2023. That's 30 years has happened in between. It's a testament to what has happened with all this stuff that Marquez was okay. It was a very nasty crash that had happened at that point. So that was basically it because Martín sort of right at the bike up as he went through the gravel trap, had to bail the bike because he was going to the wall.

And that's it. Martín doesn't restart. So that's it. Benyaya is world champion now. He's the first guy in 25 years to successfully defend a number one plate on the bike.

Because you think about the Rossi years was all 46, right? Yeah. And then Marquez did the same. He had his, I think, I think the Rentho had a one on his bike when he won it the first time and never then he didn't win it the next year. I think Rossi took the title back and then when Lorenzo won, then he kept the 99 on his bike.

So it became, you know, that was what was going to happen basically. So that was, I mean, that was kind of interesting. So that, I mean, that part of the drama of what was going to happen then was over because the championship was decided. Yeah. So now this guy, go ahead, I'm sorry.

I've got a couple of questions for you, Jim. Sure, go ahead. A couple of questions on Martín who is rapidly becoming, at least certainly in my mind, a bit of a love him hate him kind of a character. Well, before the Marquez incident, a lap or two before, so obviously as you said, he had the incident way, sort of went a bit kind of a bit overly optimistic, ended up eight. So he's now in the pack.

Did you see the bit where he and Vinales was swapping places a couple of times? And Martin was sort of shaking his head in frustration when Maverick re overtook him in that same corner, actually, where he would go on to crash a couple of laps later. And I'm thinking, you know, okay, yeah, Martín's in the title fight, but, you know, it is a race. And Maverick Vinales is an Aprilia rider who, let's be quite honest, has not had a stellar season when it comes to actual results. So he's out there, you know, not fighting for his job because he's got a contract next year, but he's not there to give way to Martin.

I just thought it was a bit odd that Martin's busy sort of shaking his head in frustration that somebody's just overtaken him in a race. I mean, people might completely disagree with me and say, well, no, Maverick shouldn't have been interfering in the title fight, but that's not how it goes as far as I'm concerned. So and then what was kind of more upsetting from my point of view is having, you know, completely white markers out and potentially seriously injured him because my first thought, Jim, was diplopia. You know, when he buries himself into the gravel on his head like that, you know, he's had that a few times in the past and that's caused the eye problem to recur. And yeah, not the biggest Mark Marquez fan, but I wouldn't want to see him, you know, subjected to that condition back again, particularly with what he's got to look forward to and we've got to look forward to next season.

So for Martin, who also, as you say, crashed just to walk off and not even a second glance, I thought was a bit, yeah, I didn't really take too kindly to that. Now, it is true that Marquez did the same thing to Joanne Zarka at Saxon Ring, kind of crashed into him, just walked off, couldn't care less kind of attitude. So Martin is not alone, but I understand that he just, you know, he would have realised in that moment, that's it, game over, championship is done. But yeah, I mean, I don't know what's your thought. He seems to have become a bit, I mean, he's a very aggressive rider.

And from what I have seen around the paddock, given my access recently, he's quite a feisty character off the bike as well. Let's just leave it at that. And I must say, my recent encounters with him and views of him on the TV screens have not made him kind of come across as one of the people I would necessarily be supporting too much going forward, which is not the case of how it used to be, because I really liked Martin. I might have even had an 88 t-shirt at one point when he was at Moto3. But not too keen at the moment.

I have never been a keen Martin supporter. I think he's a good rider, but he's mind bogglingly fast. You know, when I'm trying to, and I said, you know, I want to pick a rider and I'm going to support this rider or whatever. I look at the whole package, right? And that being said, let's talk about Martin and Vinales.

The head shake I thought was weird, which to me shows that you're rattled because you've done something wrong. Now, I don't know what's in Martin's head, right? If it's me, if I was riding, okay, I would, and then Vinales got by me like a lap after I'd made the mistake and ran myself wide at eight and had, you know, moved myself up a little bit. I might be shaking my head at myself like, dude, you shouldn't have done this because now you have a problem because you ran off because of it. I don't think that was what was in Martin's head.

I also thought about it from the standpoint of, you know, if Vinales had done Martin dirty in some way, roughing him up a bit, picking him up a little. Okay, you could shake your head at that because I think Vinales is a good rider. I think the guys that are riding with you in that race have a race to run, but I also think that as a sport and as sportsmen, you owe it to make sure that if you're going to pass that guy fighting for that championship, you do it cleanly. Agreed. I didn't see Vinales go by Martin in a way that would make me think that it was a dust-up, a touch, a rub or anything like that.

Well, no. In fact, what happened was it was at turn four where he took Marc out a couple of laps later, one or two laps later, whatever it was. And when he went piling in underneath Vinales, Martin went wide as a result. So Maverick just undercut him back. You know, I don't know what Maverick is supposed to do in that situation.

You know, just park it up and wait for everybody else to go by. I don't know what Martin was expecting to happen in that scenario. So to shake his head when it was his mistake, well, two mistakes that had put him in that position just seemed, yeah, I mean, I think your word that he was rattled at that point is absolutely bang on the money. Okay, massive pressure. You know, he knows he's got to win the race in order to get the championship.

And at this point, it's all going wrong. But so, you know, you can give him a degree of kind of leeway, I suppose, on that. But he's just a very, very aggressive guy, full stop. He reminds me of somebody who has led a spoiled life or had a silver spoon in their mouth their entire life, and they get really mad when things just don't go their way. Call it an entitled mentality, maybe.

I'm not sure exactly how to say it, but he's always struck me that way. And that's the part that has always turned me off of it. It always seemed as though to me, whether he was riding at KTM in the beginning, or, you know, when he was riding in Moto 2, or, you know, when he was riding in Moto 2, on the KTM chassis, it always seemed like he felt entitled. It was always like, well, I don't deserve to be here. I deserve to be Moto GP.

And I should be there, and etc. You know, all of that plays out. And I look at it somewhat from a fan standpoint. But I think in the reality, yeah, you're going to get that because you worked hard. Because you are actually good enough to get there.

You are talented enough to be that rider. Don't have that mentality of being entitled. If you do, it looks bad on you. I would, no so far as to call it arrogance. Okay, that's probably maybe a better way to say it than my way.

That's certainly, I mean, I know he's not going to be listening to this. So what the hell do I care? I mean, that's certainly the person that I met in the paddock in Qatar. He was one of only two people that I would not take too much time to bother trying to get him again. So I mean, you take people as you find them, don't you?

I mean, I'm old enough to say as I say, you know, it's just as simple as that. I mean, if I did something wrong, if it was wrong with me to approach him when I did, well, fine, I'll take that on the chin. But you can still act with a degree of decorum. Right. He didn't.

So that is his character. And obviously that is part of the mentality and part of his overall thing that makes him a sensationally fast rider. But clearly when it doesn't go his way, and if and or if he's under pressure, he unravels. Right. But contrast, you know, you say, well, it's a Spaniard thing, something like that.

Contrast him to Acosta. I don't think it's a Spaniard thing. I just think it's a it's a Martin thing. Not how I want that to start. But if you were just to simply pick Martin and Acosta, Acosta has greater vision of what the sport is and what it means to be there in the sport.

Acosta sees it from the outside looking in. In my opinion, he understands the commitment that it takes as far as the dedication of training, practice, talent, set up, blah, blah, blah. But he also understands there's people in that paddock that he's got to be nice to, that he's got to be jovial with, that if a fan wants an autograph, if a fan wants a picture, that has to be done. That's part of the mystique. Rossi throughout his entire time in the paddock had never, you know, eventually would sign autographs.

And I've witnessed this at Indy and when we were able to get passes to get into sort of the paddock kind of. Rossi would write up, people would be there for all that. Rossi would sign 10 to 15 autographs and he would politely say, I have to go. And he would walk in and nobody, you know, people were disappointed that maybe he didn't pick them for an autograph. But Rossi handled all of that with great aplomb.

Martine doesn't seem to want to be able to handle any of it due to his arrogance, as you said. Right. Well, yeah, that's all I said. I think that a lot of the riders look at it like, you know what, if it wasn't for these people in these stands, if it wasn't for these people that are in the paddock who are sponsors and people giving the money for them to ride these exotic bikes, they would not be there doing something that they love. So you have to take the good with the bad and you've got to take a bad day and make it a good day.

And yeah, there was a world title on the line. Yep. There was a lot of pressure. And I don't know what to tell you, bud. You caused your own problem.

Vagno was dealing with it as well. Sure. In his way, you know, so. Yeah, it's a weird one. What was I going to say?

I mean, it's a bit like kind of Rossi and Biagi, both Italian, but completely opposite characters. So I mean, it's just just individuals, I suppose, isn't it? But yeah, I just thought he came out of the weekend, ultimately, not having done himself many favors at all. And then obviously, then there was the sort of walking away, having completely wiped out Marquez and potentially injured him quite badly because, as you say, your first thought was, oh, my God, I hope he's, you know, not seriously injured from that. So, yeah.

So one last thing I got to ask you a question about this one, because I can never remember his name. The guy, Chabati is the guy who heads up Ducati, right? Palo. Palo. OK, if you're Palo, having seen what you've seen of Martin, would you want him on your factory team?

Well, he'd be a real disruption in that team. That's certainly the case. Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean, even if I mean, I would seriously look at him and be like, no. Well, I deserve this factory ride.

Now, with that attitude, you don't. And I'm not saying that Martin's got to kiss somebody's butt to get that ride. He's obviously talented enough to have a full factory bike. And essentially, he does have one. Yeah, it does.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, if it's I mean, they're really damn close to each other, if not exactly identical. It's just weird. It's just, you know, you're not.

If you're if you're Martin, you were angling to try to get into the that garage, get into the factory garage. That's not the way to go about doing it. No, and let's be honest. I mean, he's he had a great season, I would say up until the crash in it was Thailand, wasn't it? Or was it Indonesia?

Maybe it was Indonesia. Indonesia. Indonesia. He was way out front on the end. He just made a mistake and kind of threw it up the road because we'd all been kind of rooting for him.

You know, the independent team, you know, the guy that's sort of making good up after a few seasons have been really, really fast, but crashing too much. And we were kind of even I was rooting for him, you know, even though I don't think he's covered himself in glory since he came into MotoGP. But and so there was that then there was the kind of the weird tire choice thing that happened at Philip Island. And he was not very happy about, you know, the fact that he was leading on the last lap and finished, I think, fifth. Oh, yeah, that was that was his choice.

Then I mean, I think there was something else, but then there was obviously the cat off thing, you know, accusing Michelin of having stolen the championship from him. It's like, really? Come on. And then there's Valencia where, you know, he had a great sprint race, but it just all went completely wrong on the Sunday. And he just behaved, I thought, really petulantly.

And, you know, with a degree of arrogance that didn't certainly I don't think would have won in many favors. I mean, the cost of thing, I think the jury's out until he's been in MotoGP himself for two or three years, because clearly people will change with the higher pressure and the higher profile and one thing and another. But I do agree with everything you said, though, Jim. You know, at the moment, it costs it looks like the guy that, as we've said before, kind of melds the Marquez and the Rossi Magic together in that kind of sort of marketing man's wet dream, isn't it? Really?

Oh, yeah. Well, let's finish this race because we still got testing and everything else to go to. Yes. Sorry. Bender, no, it's fine.

It's fine. These are the good conversations that I love having, you know, in these race reviews, just picking on these different little points and discussing it and throwing it out there and letting people know how we see it. And that's kind of what the show is about, right? I mean, we're not saying we're right. It's just our opinion.

It's just that we are opinionated people and that's how we saw it. Anyway, with all the action with Martine and everything and all that and the Martine and Marquez crash or whatever, Bender went to the lead ahead of with Miller second, then Benyaya, then Zarco, then Benyala and then Alex Marquez. Now, then Basheen went down at turn one and then all of a sudden Bender showed up in sixth place. Like, what? Whoa, what happened?

I have no idea because literally we never saw it. I think we were probably checking in on David Atoddotsis heart rate. Well, my dad or we were on his sweater vest and his jumper camera. Yeah, whatever. Take your pick.

What happened? Apparently, Bender went through the long lap penalty for some reason, lap, which I guess he just outbriaked himself and took the penalty lap. So Miller was leading ahead of Benyaya and Zarco at that point. Then Bender slams Alex Marquez and needs the drop of place. So we had a rough riding call by the stewards because Bender really did.

He really did put a move on Alex. It was a bit much. Okay, Bender's good at putting down moves on people. That was a bit much. The weird part about this is that Bender passes Vinales and then going into one and then less Vinales back by when he gets to turn two, thus relinquishing one place per the rule.

This seemed to make Matt Bird go crazy because that was not the place he should have given up. In his mind, it should have been he had to have dropped back behind Alex. How do you see it? Should Bender have had to have been behind Alex or was it okay that he went by Vinales and then went back Vinales back in front again? I suspect there's some gray area in the rules on this one and there should never be gray area rules.

Because you would say logically when the penalty is awarded, I drop the place, then the person who is behind you is a person you have to drop behind. But we don't know how quickly Bender would have seen the message on his screen because they are in the middle of the race, let's face it. It's not like reading the Sunday paper. It takes a moment to catch a message like that. But Bender, we know, is a very canny sort of another of these sort of cerebral races.

He might have thought, Christ, I've got a more so let's overtake Vinales because Alex Marquez, I think, was a good sort of cut the seconds back down the road. So that would have been a big, a big loss of time for Bender, who was already trying to recover having made the mistake. So it was if he did deliberately say, right, I'm going to get past Vinales and then drop back to give, you know, to fulfill that penalty. That was very clever thinking by him. I mean, I don't know.

We'd already had, you know, the incident with Marquez and Buzzecki, which race control did nothing about maybe that, you know, it's been a long year. Maybe they're all up there, you know, asleep at the wheel because they just seem to be letting things go this weekend, didn't they? So I don't know. But he wasn't told to drop another position, was he? So presumably that that penalty served.

But it was a bit cheeky. It was. But it might have been maybe he has a certain amount of time in which to do it. So I don't know. I don't know that we would need to know the rule, I suppose.

Again, my thing is, I thought it was super cheeky. I mean, just by the fact that he passed, I'll let that back by and I'll go right back by again. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, you could see if race control had decided to enforce maybe a long life penalty for not giving up a place properly, whatever they wanted to do afterwards, you know, after had this happened to sort of right the wrong of what may or may not be correct in the rule book, you know, KTM was going to come with a protest. They just showed up there within seconds going, no, the rule says drop a place.

He did. So I wonder if the rule is going to be changed before next year, aka the Brad Bender rule. So, you know, you must fall behind X rider as opposed to just dropping one place. Anyway, so that was a point of contention. I thought we'd need to discuss.

So we have your thoughts on that now, Rich Miller would fall off at turn 10. Rins went down at turn one. It was Benya Zarko Bender Digia suddenly appeared in the fourth place. Like you get this imagination of like, where did he come from? Because you're like this, no, you know, there's so much chaos happening at the front.

And rightfully so. Like, again, the drama of the championship was enough. It stopped. And then suddenly we got all this other drama that happens with Bender in this penalty or that's not a penalty. And you're like, okay, you know, there was maybe a five lap gap in the middle where everything was calm.

And you thought, okay, this is it. We're going to ride it out. And that's going to be that. Nope. We had to come up with a whole other scenario of crazy for this race to add on to it.

Meanwhile, you know, as it is, Digia winds up getting past Bender and he's third with five laps to go. Digia is flying. I mean, Digia is absolutely flying on this motorcycle. He winds up getting by with two laps to go. He gets by Zarko.

So now he's second and he's on Benya. And at this point, everybody knows Benya is the world champion. It doesn't matter. Digia can put Benya on the ground if he wants to and win the race. It isn't affecting the championship.

So there's no holding back now. Digia tries, tries, and I tell you, he tries and tries to find a way by, but he was covered. I'm sorry. Benya covered every possible place that Digia could have went. Digia did hold back a little bit.

He could have really shoved it up at four, but he didn't. Benya was a little bit quicker through that section. He could have tried at the end of the back straight kink, which I think is eight, but that's a fast entry there. And you have to be sure you had it. And Benya, again, Digia was just behind.

You thought maybe 11 was the place he was going to go because that's where Digia was getting everybody. Benya covered that. And now the only thing left was 14 going around the sweeper at 13. And Benya was just absolutely positively hugging the line. He rode the last lap as slow as he possibly could to win the race.

So Benya wins the race. Digia would come across in second. Then Zarco. Then Brad Bender. Raul Fernandez shows up.

We didn't see anything of that, but good on him. We were talking about how we thought he was a great rookie, did good as a rookie on the gas gas. Here he shows up. And then Alex Marquez. And you think, oh, everything's cool.

Drama over. Nope. One more twist in the plot. We got one more. Oh, guess what?

The dreaded tire pressure rule. He also had a warning already for low front tire pressure. And what the heck happens? He gets demoted to fourth because he gets a three second penalty because he's got under inflated front tire. There was never a more true tweet in my mind than Maddie Patterson.

And she tweeted it. She says this tire pressure rule will kill the sport. She's right. You may not like her as a journalist, whatever. I don't care, people.

She's right. She's 100% right that this tire pressure rule is going to kill this racing. It's going to kill it. So the revised order was Benya, Zarco, Bender, Digia, Antonio, Raul Fernandez, Alex Marquez. And that is how the race finally gave up all the drama, all the secrets race over.

Yeah. Although, as you say, the Digia thing, I think I'm right in saying he was on the podium and then we found this bit of information out later on. Now, I mean, we're stuck with this rule as things stand for next year. But the change next year is obviously if you infringe the rule, you're disqualified from the results. So I think what Maddy's getting at is that if you follow people, but you don't necessarily follow it all the way through the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever, you might think your favorite riders won the race and is leading the championship only to find that the next race, they're not even in the points.

So that could become very confusing for the casual watcher. And if you want to turn people off, that's a great way to achieve it. So, yes, we can only hope that either they modify the tire pressure, because I think a lot of the riders are saying the pressure point itself is not correct. It's dangerous. So there's that.

And well, I mean, yeah, I don't know what they do. But I mean, if they're recording this data or monitoring this data live, then they have to address it when people ride into Parc Fermé rather than two hours after everybody's sprayed the champagne because that's just a nonsense. So, you know, I don't want to be pessimistic because we want to be optimistic about next year because there's much to be optimistic about. But that is a real concern at the moment. It is.

All right. Well, let's just kind of refresh where everybody is in the championship, then we'll go to testing here. Yeah. And so Benyai is, of course, your world champion. Martina's second.

Bizecki is third despite not finishing. Bender was fourth. Zarco, Aspargaro, Vignola, seventh, Marini, eighth, Alex Marquez, ninth, Quattrararo, Miller and TG Antonio in top 12. So that is how the world championship ended. So let's go to testing.

One thing, since we're on tire pressure, we're on tire pressure rules and whatnot. Yes, the tire pressure, 1.88 bar, is going to be maintained. It will be disqualified if you go over that, or if you're under that for more than 50 percent of the race. Tire pressure monitors. However, at the test, Michelin did bring a new 2024 compounds.

These compounds are supposed to help cope with the heating of the tire and the air pressure problem that they have. But there was positive feedback for the compounds. I believe it was a soft and a medium compound that they brought. I think there was also a, there was a hard compound available as well, but the riders, because of it being cold, neglected to use it. But that is of the 2025 construction, which is the Vallejo tire that we want for Michelin, that's supposed to be designed to take on the aerodynamics, the ride height adjusters, all the other stuff that's now causing us these other tire issues.

That new tire won't show up until 2025. It will be available at the test in Malaysia. It will be available at the test at Qatar. And it's going to be tested at the other tests at Jerez and San Marino as well to be prepared for 2025. So we're finally going to get that tire.

So maybe this is all going to go away, but rarely do rules ever disappear. So that's the tire situation. Let's put that to bed, if you will, unless you have something that you want to say about that, Rich. Well, I do, but I don't know what to say because I just am aware that there was some controversy about the new tires that Michelin brought. Something, I overheard it in another podcast, but I was working so I was concentrating on something else.

So I need to revisit that and perhaps we'll try and pick it up next time out. But I was under the impression that Michelin kind of shot itself in the foot somehow or in some way. So I'll need to dig into that a little bit and perhaps we'll try and pick that up another time. I hadn't heard any of that. So interesting.

I think it was somewhat inevitably Simon Patterson sort of having a grumble about something. I'm sure completely justifiably so about the new Michelin tires that were available in that Valencia test. Anyway, we'll have to come back to that. We'll come back to it. We'll figure it out.

The bigger part of the test is Marc Marquez gets on a Ducati. He gets on the Grissini bike. He gets on the 2020. Yeah, they didn't roll a 2023 bike down there, did they? He had the 2022.

I'm guessing he just jumped on what was left from the Sunday. Yeah. He comes in. He's forbidden to talk to the press about what he thinks about the bike. However, he comes in.

I think David Emmett tweeted this. He sits down after his first ride, takes the helmet off and that smiles back. And I think David Emmett captioned this. It's the it's going to be okay. Smile.

Yeah. And then copy, you know, Marquez finished as the fourth fastest rider in the test. Vinales was the fastest. I'm not sure who else was in between. I don't remember from the test because it was testing the day after.

Who knows who's riding what or doing what or whatever, right? We don't really know. But the thing of it is that Marquez had some debriefs. He said one, the rear grip of the Ducati is absolutely excellent. The other thing he said was that the bike was so much easier to turn.

Than he thought, which I thought was interesting. There's a couple other things that he had said. I just read it today on crash.net about what he said. And the thing that you said, where they're already sharing all this data and people are already looking at what Marquez can do with a Ducati is scary thought for what's going to happen next year. Just having Marquez in the mix among Benya and Martin Bizecki Bender.

Yeah, that's going to be pretty phenomenal racing, I think. So we all stand to gain from this. And hey, if the kid wins another world title on another machine, further submits the fact that he's probably one of the best that's ever thrown a leg over a motorcycle. Would you like to take on a cost and what happened with him, Reg? Yeah, well, again, it was a kind of a funny one, wasn't it?

So because I, although I was at work, I kind of had the little thumbnail running down in the bottom of the screen. So I was kind of semi watching it. And obviously, there was a huge amount of interest around Marquez's first run. But in amongst all of that, yes, Acosta went out. And I think in his first run, he did probably something like eight laps.

And immediately within two laps, he looked very comfortable. And it was kind of red sector after red sector after. Now, he wasn't setting lap record times, of course. But and again, when he came in, it was another one where he took his crash helmet off and he turns his crew chief and just see him say, wow, you know, because the who knows what it feels like to gas it on a 300 brake horsepower motor cheap beat by it with ride height and squatting devices and God knows what. But he clearly enjoyed himself immensely and was just did a lot of laps.

I think he did sort of 50 or 60 laps during the day, which is quite a lot for a rookie. Yeah. And was consistently fast and going faster all the time. He did have a little crash, which is never a big deal in MotoGP, let's be honest. And what happened was he had been following Maverick earlier in the day.

I think it was earlier in the day. And Maverick had come out at turn one, had a bit of a went up onto the curbs, had a bit of a wobble and then just kind of threw it into turn two and got round. Acosta went into turn one, had a bit of a wobble, threw it into turn two and lost the front and crash trying to do what he'd seen Maverick Vinales do. So, you know, it's going to take time to learn the intricacies of the bigger bike. But that little faux pas aside, he looked brilliant, I thought, and clearly had a really good day from his demeanor.

So I think he'll be a factor next year at certain points. The question is, how good is KTM? That's what it boils down to. They've got next year to really hone the bike in and they better have something strong right out of the box in 2025. But Acosta isn't going anywhere.

I mean, he's not going to jump ship to someplace else. No, no, no, no. I think they realize this is their moment, right? Yeah, he's the sort of the mercurial talent that comes along every sort of 10 to 15 years. I mean, again, sort of overdo it because the guy's under enough pressure as it is, but he kind of feels as if he is the next Marquez, you know, is the kind of the Rainey, Rossi, or I suppose Dumez in there, although he was more of a grafter, I think.

But, you know, Marquez, maybe Lorenzo, you know, they don't come along, these talents all that often. And the KTM, I mean, it's not as good as the Ducati, but it is very, very close, I would say. And maybe, you know, with half a season learning under his belt, maybe Acosta will just be one of those guys that adapts to the big bike. And I mean, I noticed when I saw him in the paddock in Qatar, he has physically got quite a lot bigger now because he's obviously, what was he now, 18, I think. Uh, 19.

19 now, OK. He'll be 20. Thank you. So he's kind of getting to full size, I suppose, in terms of growth now, and he'll be bulking out a bit, I guess, in preparation for the bigger bike. And because, you know, he will get bigger riding that bike just because it's more of a physical task.

So, you know, he's going to take him a little while, no doubt. But by the time he gets to 2025, yeah, I would imagine he might be the guy that makes that little extra bit of difference and will be certainly pinching Jack Miller's seat, I would imagine, at some point. Guaranteed. Not pinching, graduating. Yeah, he will go to the factory team and it will, I, it's going to depend on how good is, you know, where they think things are and whatnot.

But yeah, Acosta is not going to win a world championship. The first MotoGP world championship in gas, gas colors. It's just not going to happen. Well, it's pretty unlikely, I would say. Given the level of competition.

Right. I mean, you know, it's just not going to be that way. I really don't think there's too much more from testing. Would you say, Rich? I mean, we got to catch up with Moto2 and Moto3, but.

There's one more highlight or headline, I guess, would be, um, even to my eyes, relatively untrained eyes, it's true, a pretty radically different looking Honda. Yes, that's true. Yes. In fairness to Luca Marini, first time out on the bike, quickest Honda. And I think he was eighth or something at the end of the test.

Now again, it's a test. So you don't know who's pushing and how hard people are pushing. But again, he was another one that looked pretty good on the bike, pretty much straight away. He was first out of the gates, you know, because it was a chilly start on the Tuesday morning, but he was out. He was definitely first out on track and was taking it steady.

But by the end of the day, I've done a lot of laps and yeah, I mean, he's going to be a good test rider along with Zarco. So and that Honda does look very, very different. You swing arm, you know, everything, I think. And again, anecdotally, from having read other and heard other people's reports from the day, one of the happiest people in pit lane on Tuesday evening was Joanne Meir because he's got a bike. He said that he can ride at last.

Now we have heard this before. Polis Bargrove waxed a miracle on his second season on the Honda when they found some rear grip and that pretty quickly went sour. But you know, with the test team that they've or the rider team that they've assembled at Honda for next year and through the preseason, as well as the concessions that we're going to come on and have a talk about in a minute, which is a massive, massive, massive thing. Yeah, I would say that HRC will have come out of that test pretty happy. Yamaha less so because their big engine upgrade or development doesn't come in until the supine test, I think.

So I think Quattrora was a bit kind of it's all the same as it was before. An interesting, an interesting little tip on the Yamaha Jim. Okay. The bike was a bit heavier than it should have been, which would have kind of dented their performance a little bit in terms of the timings. But the reason I found out and again, I think this was a Simon Patterson thing is that the the new aero fairing that Yamaha ran was not fiberglass, it was plastic because they didn't want to spend all the money on the fiberglass version if it didn't work as expected.

So they were running a sort of a cheaper version just to trial it. And it was heavier. So assuming that they go forward with the it's a very Aprilia looking aero kit on that Yamaha as their new development, which they'll obviously have to homologate. Although again, they get some concessions on this next year. Yeah.

So Yamaha was a little bit more muted, I think. A lot of talk about all the chatter is picking up again about the Rossi VL46 squad being on Yamaha's in 2025 as well. Yep. I mean, that's one for another day. But one for another day.

That came up over the weekend as well. So, you know, I think Yamaha will make some steps next year because of the concessions and because they're working towards going down the now well trodden route of having a proper semi works squad on board. And obviously, VL46 are the obvious way to go there, aren't they? Yep. All right.

So let's talk a little bit about some other off track news here. This came out today and that is that the R&F Aprilia team now becomes Trackhouse Racing. Name unfamiliar to almost everybody. I think this kind of came out of left field, but Trackhouse comes from NASCAR. They originally started as a NASCAR team.

It's an American team, which I'm okay with. But the guy who I forget the name of the man who actually is fronting the money, who is the head of the team, he's just a lover of motorsport. The guy is a true, true gearhead. And I think this may be because I don't know how they showed up here, but you got to think that this is that relationship that Dorna has with the guy who's from the NBA. He's doing all the promotional part of it.

Dan Rosamundo. Yes. Thank you. Perhaps maybe he has been in this guy's ear that, hey, you need to come do this and this opportunity arrived and maybe that's part of what we're seeing. Don't know.

There's going to be a lot more that's going to come out of this. It was very, I didn't see much in the press release. I got a very quick chance to glance at it at lunch today. I want to delve into this a little bit more later considering it's an American team, but the bike, the Aprilia looked great in stars and stripes. I loved it.

I thought it was brilliant and reminiscent of Nicky's time when he was at Ducati testing and he had stars and stripes on it. I thought that was really cool. I'm glad that there's a new team. I'm glad that they've got the Aprilias. They're not changing riders.

They still have. It's the R&R. Yeah, it's still R&R. It's still everybody. Yeah.

It's just that team. Nothing changed. Well, this unfolded, well, I guess right on the end of the Valencia weekend when it was, or possibly even before the weekend started, when it was announced that Razlan Razali was out as the team boss. Yep. So we've got a decision to make in some of the Qatar interviews that we'll put out over the off season because I did a short interview with Razlan.

So whether we've been able to get a little bit of a better look at it, that one or not, I don't know. But anyway, that's part of the pie. Then this kind of rather extraordinary press release came out from Dawn or Erta, the FIM, to say that, effectively to paraphrase it, crypto data are not welcome in this paddock anymore. Their slots on the grid are being taken, but it will remain an Aprilia team. So this has obviously been, and they were citing various contractual you know, missed obligations or whatever the technical jargon is.

So there's obviously been quite a bit going on behind the scenes for quite a while. But this was headed to court at one point. And apparently they came up with an amicable solution to both of them, which might have been like, you stay away, we'll stay away, we're gonna take your team, by the way, and we'll just all call this even. That's what I read between the lines, whether that's right or not, I don't know. Well, they certainly had somebody ready to slot onto the bike with the team.

On the Stars and Stripes pretty damn quick. Yes, they did. You know, that was all well orchestrated. So yeah, I mean, bit of a skull dug read perhaps behind the scenes. Who knows?

But overall, yeah, you know, because that team has been sort of cited as being in financial trouble for quite some time. What was it? We always used to joke or the joke was R&F was Razzlan needs funding. So that's been a bit of a standing joke. You can go back into the Petronas Yamaha time and that team was not supported by Yamaha.

I don't think to any degree at all. So yeah, but you know, if it's well funded again, Aprilia, you know, obviously solidly behind it. But and it's great to have, you know, some American presence in MotoGP that will warm the hearts of people like Joe Roberts, I'm sure who, you know, could have been on an Aprilia couple of years ago, probably better that he didn't. But you know, if he has a good season in Moto2, maybe, you know, I don't want an American back in the top class. They need one.

The strategic thought planning going into this and it's no coincidence, as you say, that Dan Rosamundo has appeared on the scene this year and, you know, one and one does add up to two quite often. So that's the case here, I think. Maybe this motivates some of the people in Moto America to want to try to go that way. You know, could you get it to where you're looking at maybe one of these kids that's Rocco Landers is the one that comes to my mind that, you know, he's really good on a 600. Hey, maybe you put him in All American Racers Moto2 team with this go option of like, hey, look, you have a path to this American team.

Maybe that's what we need. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to watch. My thought. That's just that's just my take.

Well, and the director of the travel has been the wrong way. I mean, it's Joe Roberts is the only American, I think, because I think SDK is back into Moto America somewhere. And obviously, we lost Cam. I have not heard that one yet, but then I haven't been looking for it either. So, but I'm pretty sure his time is done.

Yeah, that was mentioned on Greg's GaragePod. Well, it's now that Greg knows it's SDK is back into Moto America and obviously Cam Bobio went back, you know, last season. So it's only Joe Roberts flying the Stars and Stripes at the minute. So, you know, it's a tough position to be in, you know, from an American fan. Yeah, make sure that the flag stays tucked away.

Oh, yeah. Locked away for now, Jim. But as Formula One is shown, there's an obsession. Obviously, it's the first economy of the world, as you know yourself, you sat there. So if MotoGP wants to grow and grab more of an audience, it's got to be more focused on America.

The problem is that there's not another FIM Grade One circuit in the US. Other than, I believe Indy has it. It would have to just be re certified. Are they building a new track in Tennessee or somewhere? There is, there was a new track that was built in Missouri.

In the land of the Ozarks. But it's a club track. It's not going to hold any, to my knowledge, it's not there to hold major racing bodies. I think MotoAmerica may show up there at some point. It looks brilliant, I mean, from what I've seen.

But I don't, you know, it's not like, look, let's be honest, I think Texas is a great track. Great track. But if you've got MotoGP bikes, I'd much rather see them go to Road America, but you'd have to move heaven and earth to try to create that as an FIM Grade One circuit. I mean, that was, Road America was bandied about in the early part of the 90s. They had an idea for reconfiguring it to make it work.

And the idea is not bad, I will admit. But I mean, you could maybe revive that, but I don't think there's not the infrastructure around it. The hotels and everything else that you would need based on where it is. Well, I've just looked it up again, because I picked this one up, because Greg and Jason Pridmore were talking about this on the GaragePod some weeks ago. So I've just looked it up online.

So a new track in Knoxville called Flat Rock wants to be America's next great road course. And they're going for, what does it say here? Yeah, MotoGP and IndyCar homologation by 2024. And that is going to have a lot of infrastructure, hotels, roads, the lot built around it. And that's in Tennessee.

I don't know how many days driving that is for you, Jim, but it's not that one up. I did Knoxville in six hours. Okay. Yeah. Flat Rock Motorsports Park.

So I'm just looking at an image of it. It looks pretty decent. I'll have to look that up. Yeah. So that might be coming.

So again, a lot of this kind of lines up with the direction of travel that MotoGP is going commercially. So you can see all the bits kind of start to, all the bits of the jigsaw puzzle start to come together, don't they? Yeah. I mean, if they do, if MotoGP did do a race in Knoxville, my only thing is that via the size of the US, you're putting two races pretty darn close to each other. I mean, it's still, it's, you know, look, it's six hours for me to get to Knoxville.

It's 18 hours for me to get to Austin. I get it. It's still a long way apart. But you're thinking, if you're thinking in the lines of sort of how Formula One is doing it, there's a race in Miami that handles basically everything on the East Coast. It's very easy to get to the center of the country, goes Dakota, and it happens at a very different time, right?

There's a lot of time between those races that happen. And then they went to Vegas, for God sakes. But yeah, if they're going to do that, if they're really committed to trying to get there, I might, yeah, maybe we guys come around, try to find out who's behind that, try to get them on the block. Anyway, we can continue this down a rabbit hole a million times, but let's talk about concessions and then we'll wrap this one up. This is a long one.

I already know that. So the new MotoGP concessions is not based on wins or podiums. They now decide to do it on percentage of points. So as the example, Ducati, they have scored greater than 85% of points available. So therefore, they are only allowed 170 test tires.

They're allowed only one test rider for private testing. They can do GP circuit testing at three circuits. They have no wild cards. They have only seven or eight engines for the season. And their engine spec is frozen.

They're allowed one aero update. Now, there are no B, because this is broken down into ABCD categories. There are no B category teams right now, because that is you've done less than 60, you've done less than 85% of the points, but you have more than 60% of the points. No one's in that level. But you in that case, if you were there, you would only have 190 sets of tires, one test rider only three circuits, you could test that three wild cards, seven or eight engines, freeze your engine spec, and you are allowed one aero update.

Now, KTM and Aprilia fall into the category of C, where they've done less than 60% of the points, but they are greater than 35% of the points. So they get 220 test tires. They get one test rider only who can test at three GP circuits, but they get six wild cards. They get seven or eight engines, their engines are froze, but they do get one aero update. Now there's a little asterisk here for the six wild cards.

The wild cards are not subject to engine specification freeze. So if KTM wants to run a wild card, i.e. Danny Perdorsa, or Paul DeSparg, or both, they are allowed to have a different spec of engine than what they have frozen. So a maximum of three wild cards before the summer test band, and a maximum of three wild cards after the summer test band are permitted. So you got three wild cards you can do at the beginning of the year, three wild cards at the end of the year.

Now we get to Honda and Yamaha. They are in the D category of this. They're less than 35% of the points. They get 260 testing tires. They have free private testing.

I'm sure HRC is going, yeah. They can test at any GP circuit that they wish. They can have six wild cards, but they're not allowed to have a different engine freeze. Then they're not they're not subject to that engine rule like KTM and Aprilia have. They will get nine or ten engines for the season, but their engine spec is free.

That means that they can legitimately bring any engine they want, any time that they want, if they think it's better, they're allowed to race it. Which is why they don't have the asterisk. But there is a double asterisk at the end of this where it's aero updates and they are allowed two aero updates. But it must, the double asterisk says that it must discard a previous aero specification. So essentially you've got like a rolling two.

You could have the first one of the year, a second one for that year. Oh, well we found something. Now you got rid of the one specification. So you're using the two, three specification now. But then you can drop the two and have a three, four specification.

So it sort of rides through like that. Yeah. I mean, this is huge. It's big. This is big because you've seriously handcuffed Ducati.

Yeah. Well. But your success is. Yes and no, I would argue. I mean, they're not being, well, my view is they're not being penalized.

They continue as they are. But if they start to struggle, then they, you know, that is how the concessions have always worked. It's just that now, I think what's good about this, well, it is really great, this new system. But what they've addressed is this problem that Honda faced this year where they won a race unexpectedly and that ruled them out of concessions, which was, you know, that was a bit of a, it became a bit of a daft system, that one, because you would have just, I mean, if you won in a race where, you know, 10 people in front of you had crashed out, then you wouldn't get a concession. So it was just, it run its course, that old system.

And this has obviously been adapted for MotoGP 2023 forward for the next few years. And it just makes a lot of sense. Now, quite what Ducati, how hard their arms have been twisted on this and what they get out of this is hard to judge at the moment, because they've obviously given up a lot of ground here. So fair play to them, whether it was under duress or as I say, whether there's something that they get in return, who knows, but it's certainly going to be for the betterment of the sport in terms of allowing Honda and Yamaha to hopefully regain some ground. I mean, they still got to work hard and engineer their way to some solutions, Jim, haven't they?

The system just automatically mean that Yamahas are winning every weekend, not at all. It just gives them more of a fighting chance. So I think everybody should be applauded for making this happen. Yep. I think it's probably the fairest system of concessions that I've seen.

It's points-based. It's very clear who's got an advantage, the people at the bottom. It's catered in a way that it's not where you're just throwing money and bits at everything. You still have to, you know, engineer your way through it, as you said, but at least you can start doing a lot more testing in season to try to find solutions that you didn't have previously. Yeah.

And since now you can have your main guys, Marini and Mir, on those bikes at private tests, it's not like, oh, we got to do our testing while we're in practice. We can actually work on something, right? So it seems like it's a fair and equitable system. Again, Ducati got pinched in this, but we don't know what Ducati gets later. There could be, and you have no idea what this is.

I mean, but, you know, the interesting fact to me is that they've set it up where there's nobody in that B zone. Not a brilliant KTM or not in there. They're a step lower than that. So it shows you, just by looking at the concessions layout, you're like, well, where everybody is, like, holy crap, Ducati's head and shoulders above everyone by a whole level. Yeah.

It really does show you just the dominance. And one thing, again, I really should know this, I suppose, given that we did the podcast, but in terms of that points tally, I don't know if that is only based on the works squads for each of those brands, because obviously you've got a lot of Ducati's out there. So obviously they're not counting all the points of all the Ducati's because that would be stupid. But is it purely just the two works bikes in each of the works teams that compile this concessions thing and all the satellites are kind of taken out of this? I don't know, because I thought the way you game, we're going to have to search this to figure it out because that's the thing that we're missing here.

Again, this all just sort of came out right before the pod. So there's a little bit of detail we haven't got yet. But I'm pretty sure that when you're doing manufacturers championship, you only take the top two of your bikes that finish, whatever they are. So if Pignaya won, okay, he gets 25 points for that and Martín second, well, that's it, that's done. You're not adding Bastianini's points into this as far as I'm aware.

I mean, for the races, somebody knows, I mean, we just haven't found it yet. Because obviously the grid is awash with Ducati's at the minute. So they have the points, not advantage, that's not the right word, but obviously, yeah, a lot more people are likely to score points for them. So is it the first two Ducati's that finish in any race, whether it's a Pramac or a Grissini, or is it just the works bikes? Because it's the works bikes that will be generally speaking, running the brand new parts, such as they are allowed to use them within these rules.

So don't know at the minute, but we can find out that that's obviously a nuance of the concessions rules. And it's probably carried over from the past previous systems, just they've gone from wins and podiums to just points. So yeah, no, it's a really, really pleasing thing to see, because you need this unanimity to get a rule through this, you know, ratified is the right word, isn't it? Yep. You know, the fear has been that, you know, Ducati were going to sort of be akin to a Turkey voting for Christmas or Thanksgiving, you know, it's not really in their interest.

So we'll do a bit of digging for the next time we're up and see if we can find out perhaps what might have prompted them to say okay. And it might just be that they accept that they're streets ahead of everybody else now, and that it's going to damage the sport, which ultimately will damage them, perhaps not quite the way to catch it. But I'm sure Ducati don't want to be accused of just running around with no competition and winning because where's the value in that, you know, so it's fine for a season or two, because they've got to the point where they are, quite frankly, pretty much streets ahead of everybody by KTM at the minute. So I think it's probably better for them to say that we're winning a genuine championship where a Honda can win, a Yamaha can win, you know, KTM can win, and so can Aprilia on its day. So yeah, good on them.

All right, I think that's everything, Roofs, that we have to cover. Certainly enough for tonight, yes, massive, massive episode for this one. So with that, I think we will sign off here. And if you want to reach out to Rich, he's at Richard Jollett on X and Instagram, threads, I'm at MotoRGV, all same places as Rich. So if you want to reach out to us that way you can.

If you want to reach out to the show in general, just go to, go email us at motopod at motopodcast.com. And with that, I'll remind you all to ride safe in your road skin gear. Cheers, everyone.