The season is upon us!

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 761. Things back people, the short off season is now over.

That's Richard Joud on the other side of the Atlantic. Richard, how are you this fine evening? Well, all the better for having had a race at the weekend, Jim, and I'm looking forward to talking about it. No, I got my adrenaline fix of racing. I'm not like I haven't been watching any racing.

There's been Dakar, there's some Supercross on there. There was some Formula One action, we don't talk about that. And then we finally got bikes. Yeah. Yes.

Oh, but with that, Martin, we had Martin's interviews. I want to say shout out to Martin for all the Qatari interviews. Those were amazing. Martin, thank you so much for getting those for us. It was really great.

It was a different take on interviews that time compared to what you had, Rich. And I really loved how Martin's talking to Harry Lloyd, former host. If any of you remember Harry, what he's doing is amazing, how he did that. Martin, of course, talking flying with Lucio. So I had to Google Jefferson Chart.

And yes, I couldn't figure it out by looking at it. But hey, that's how it goes. But Rich, could you take us through the state of the union as it were as we start off this racing season? In terms of listeners, we're talking now, I guess. Yeah.

Okay. So before I do that, just a very quick apologies before I forget, because I put a note on the show list in here. I had a bit of a conflict with my Audacity editing software, which I only became aware of when a few problems came to light with the show that you and I did, Jim, the sort of the pre-season chat. I don't know if it affected everybody, but I appeared to have a conflict with two different versions. In the end, I just had to wipe Audacity off my computer altogether and reload and start from scratch.

So that worked fine. And luckily, I didn't lose what I'd previously done. So I was able to reissue a couple of things. So apologies to anybody that might have had some periods of silence or it was switching between mono and stereo. So depending on how you were listening to it, it might have been a bit disrupted.

So apologies for that. But I think we're sorted now. Yes. In terms of heading into the season, I mean, obviously we talked World Superbike, we talked British Superbike, a little bit of Moto America. And I think we'll probably hopefully do a little bit more Moto America stuff this year, because you've got Loris Baz back over there.

It should be a little bit more competitive again. And obviously the center point, which is Moto GP. I was having a quick look at the sort of the analytical bits, which is not an area of strength for me when it comes to statistics and particularly anything IT related, I start to glaze over a little bit. But on average, we kind of roll between three and five thousand podcast downloads per month. Obviously, it goes up and down.

It depends on content time of year, how many shows we put out. So there are obviously things that affect that number. But as a rough rule of thumb, say four thousand a month is about our average download level. Now, how can I put this tactfully and tastefully? We could do with some more paid subscribers, Jim, really is really where we're at.

So let's say four thousand people download the show a month. We currently have ten people that financially subscribe to the show. And we chat out the people that do that. And we'll do that again in a moment. And we're eternally grateful.

A lot of those people have been subscribing to the show for a long, long time. But it effectively means that we generate in terms of income. And this is not a profit making exercise, obviously, but we generate about fifty dollars a month, which is fine in terms of web hosting and keeping the lights switched on to use that old thing that we always say. But it doesn't give us a great deal of wriggle room to do extra things. And as we've alluded to on the past few shows, you've been to Moto America, Jim, I suspect you'll go to one or two races this year.

There'll be Kota coming up. I will definitely be at Silverstone Moto GP this year. I will definitely be at World Super Bikes in Donington. I'd like to get to another overseas race if I can. And whilst we're not looking for all of this to be funded by the listeners, nevertheless, we could do with a bit more to do a bit more.

So hopefully the content that we've created over the past 18 months, which has been a bit more focused around some race events and interviews and that kind of thing. Hopefully that opens the door a little bit in terms of what we could hopefully build upon. And so there's the people that actually download and subscribe to the show in terms of putting in a few dollars or pounds or euros a month because everything helps. And then my view and I think you share it, Jim, is that you put a shout out potentially for somebody to sort of help perhaps cover the Moto American a bit more depth because our time is limited for various reasons, work, family and all the rest of it. And it's a there's a hell of a lot of races going on when you talk about all of the series that we're talking about here.

Potentially we could do with somebody to get a bit more involved with some of the BSP stuff. And in particular, my view is that things like the editing of the show. So if you're the kind of person that would perhaps have some skills in that area or looking at the analytics and how we kind of grow our social media presence, some of this kind of stuff, backroom things where you don't have to be in front of a microphone and putting yourself under that level of pressure. But if you can contribute in other ways, please let us know because any help will be much appreciated, really. So we're potentially looking for a few people to stick their hands up if they want to get a bit more involved in terms of doing some stuff on the show itself, talking and certainly, as I say, some of the backroom stuff we could always do with a little bit of extra help there as well as some more people that listen to the show regularly, perhaps just trying it if they can.

And we know it's difficult times. It's always, you know, money's tight. But we can't really do more without a bit more coming in to the coffers, really. So that's the shout out that I wanted to make. It's not a grift.

I'm sorry if it sounds like that. That's not the purpose of the show. This has always been fan based. You know, we're what I always like to call sort of enthusiastic amateur journalists. That's kind of how I describe it to people.

And that isn't going to change. But clearly we can do more. And we're opening some doors with Dawn. They've been very supportive on both World Superbike and particularly MotoGP, as people have heard, which is a difficult nut to crack. So now that we have cracked it, it would be good to kind of like prize that shell open a little bit more.

Mm hmm. Agreed. Yeah. So if anybody out there can help, if you want to do something for Moto America or you can help Rich with World Superbike or as Rich says, anything in the back of the house that you can do, if you're willing to help out, send us an email at motopod.motopodcast.com. We'll take a look at it, Rich and I will get back to you and see what we can do.

But as Rich mentioned, we're going to thank the people that have been supporting the show. They are Alan Fleming, Nick Saban, Ollie, Dennis Kinley, Jeremy Burnage, Jacob Brower, Darren Andrews, Paul Lang, Garish V and Steve. You guys have been the backbone of this show. We greatly appreciate everything that you guys have given to us and continue to give to us. And we want to try to get better.

And as Rich said, a little more in will help us get a little more out. And if there's stuff that we're not doing that we should be doing, Jim, then we rely on the listeners to let us know. And if there's certain avenues for us to explore in terms of content, let us know. And we can kind of look at it from a feasibility standpoint. I mean, it's all done on our spare time or off work, daytime work times, let's say.

So, you know, we can't do everything. But if there are some specific things, then definitely. And just looking at this, it's a little bit difficult. So we have two people that very kindly contribute through PayPal. And then the other eight people go through the Patreon channel.

So we can see who pays money in pounds or dollars. Nobody contributes in euros. There's one Canadian dollars contributor there, I think, as well. So I can't really talk about it tonight, but hopefully within the next two to three weeks or certainly the next two to three shows, I'll be able to talk about some really exciting stuff we've got going on with BSB this year. And although I want to be careful that this doesn't turn into some kind of postcode lottery in terms of where you live and what you get out of the show.

But certainly I've got some stuff on the go with BSB, which will certainly benefit any UK subscribers. Now, I don't want to, you know, disenfranchise people in other parts of the world. But we're exploring different avenues and we're trying to build relationships and partners. We've got the thing going with Road Skin. We're looking to expand upon that this year with some stuff that we've been talking to those guys about.

And as I say, we've got a connection with a BSB team, which will hopefully be of interest, particularly to the UK subscribers or people that can get to BSB rounds or indeed anybody that's coming across this part of the world and can get to a BSB round. You know, and so it'll be a little trial for something we might try to roll out elsewhere. I mean, MotoGP is so difficult to get into, it's almost impossible. But with the national series, there's obviously a bit more flexibility. So hopefully that's something we can build on as well.

Sounds good. With that, let's do what we do best, which was talk about racing. Yeah, let's talk about Qatar. First MotoGP race of the year. Absolutely amazing, although I did I did find it quite interesting to.

Well, we should talk about it news as a news as the news part of this goes. I thought it was absolutely wild that it rained in the desert. Oh, those racing at night in the rain. I'd be in for it. I would I'd have to do it.

I would have to try it. I would looked it was one of those things where I've often wondered, like, what would be like if it would rain because of the reflection that the rain and would give you against light and puddles, things like that. Things like everybody sort of handled it or whatever. But that did did cause, I would say it hampered Moto to more than it did anybody else. Yeah.

But so in the news is the tire pressure rules. So the tire pressure rules were as we talked about in the preseason. Hey, you got a tire pressure sensor. You have a minimum pressure and you cannot be below that minimum pressure. At all.

We bemoan that they need to do something about that tire pressure rule, that this is absolutely ridiculous. And I think it kind of got reinforced by what was it, Marini or Mir talking with Martin in the interviews that Martin did, that it was, hey, look, you know, the tires got to be harder because you have this aerodynamic load that's pushing the tire in the ground. So you you can't do that. And so there was all these other things that were around it. I mean, and again, it was also said in Martin's interviews.

Listen to those if you haven't, that if you've got a low pressure, Michelin is fearing that you are going to rip the tire off the rim. You know, I've never really ever seen that ever happen. I have seen low pressure on the low side cause you to fall. But, you know, again, those are those part of it. But the important part is the rule had been amended.

So the minimums have been adjusted down. So we get to start lower in pressure, which is important. And the laps, the riders and the bikes have to comply with has also changed. So now instead of you have zero tolerance, you've got to be at or above the minimum pressure for the entire distance. It is now you have to only comply for 60 percent of the laps in any race distance over 15 laps.

It's so in a sprint in a Sunday Grand Prix, if you will, you 60 percent of the time, you must be above that minimum pressure. And in a sprint race on a Saturday, it's only 30 percent of those laps. Do you have to be above that? And they also make a statement that depending on the track, we will adjust the pressures based on that. So Michelin is going to give some recommendation.

They're going to change. If you want to hear more ranting about tire pressures, listen to Martin's interview with Simon Patterson. Yeah, Simon gets into the true rants of that tire pressure thing. I'll let you guys listen to that one if you haven't already, because I'll steer clear of that fight, because I couldn't have done it any better than what Simon said. I I've realized from those that Simon and I think a lot of like in MotoGP terms, I think.

It is kind of like, you know, you'll say that criminals are always one step ahead of the law and it's always the same in the sport, isn't it? Stuff happens. I mean, Aero being a perfect example, I mean, Simon's quite. What's the word strong in his opinion that the sport has allowed this to creep up and happen? And I don't think you can really argue against that, although what's the genie's out of the bottle?

It's very hard to put it back in again. So that really are conundrum. And wasn't it interesting? I think without exception, the riders that Martin spoke to when asked what they changed, it was Aero, you know, so Aero is not popular with the riders, which is you might say is a bit surprising. But on the other hand, I can see why they would think that, because it's obviously does make their life a lot more difficult.

So that was a very revealing set of chats that Martin was able to gather. Yeah, I mean, I'm torn. The engineer in me understands that to go faster, these are the ways to go faster. The idea of racing is to be the fastest person across a distance of time. How you do that is open to interpretation because the rulebook is literally interpreted there.

Has a rulebook should be it shouldn't be so black and white. I think there needs to be in there. But the fan in me looks at it and goes, wow, you can't sit here and do all this Aero development because you're going to spend a load of money that you are never going to be able to get back. And you're going to price everybody out of the out of the out of the playground. So we'll see how this works out.

There's we got some time here, but we'll see. So if you guys got thoughts on what these guys were saying, it was Martin asked that question to to every team boss that he had. He asked it to everybody, every rider he did. And their views were all very different in what they wanted. And I thought that was very interesting.

You guys get comments about those less know Motopod at Motopodcast.com. So next World Superbike round, that is March 22 to 24. They're in Catalonia there. So they're running in Barcelona as they were. The first BSB round, Rich is in Spain.

April 24 doesn't seem quite right, does it? British in Spain. Yeah, whatever. Go figure. But yes, that's a little way off still yet, but something very much to look forward to.

Yep. Moto America ran the famed ran at the famed Daytona International Speedway running the Daytona 200, which is, I don't know, you could say it's a shadow of itself because no longer super bikes are basically deemed to be unsafe because of the tires and the banking and all that. I mean, you are running around a 31 degree bank. It's you know, it's amazing how steep that actually is. But the 200 was won by Josh Herron.

He's a three times winner and he did it back to back. So he was last year's champion and this year's champion as well. Of note to maybe some of the British fans was that Peter Hickman was at DNF. Now, Hickman came in road. It was very interesting.

He was there. What did you say? Richard Cooper? Yeah, was there as well with a teammate with Peter Hickman. They were there.

There was quite a lot of influence of the British. It was sort of a British invasion. So apparently all this is starting to gain a lot more swagger again. You know, Daytona had a lot of swagger early on. You know, used to get the likes of Schwantz and Rainey and Lawson.

Spencer all race there. And now we're kind of getting back to bringing in some of the foreign foreign riders to supplement the class for down there. So interesting. Hayes also did have it enough. It's kind of become a little bit like Macau, hasn't it?

In that sense, it seems to be. It's it's kind of a I mean, I suppose it's a pretty dangerous event, given the bankings and the speeds that they're going out. And the reason why they got the super bike category in it. So it does kind of in a in a way, it lends itself to the road racing. Or the real roads racing community.

Which is why I think we're seeing that kind of influx of, you know, not just British, obviously, but with the Isle of Man and the Northwest and stuff, it does lend itself to some of those kinds of riders and Richard Cooper. I mean, again, I always say and I've said many, many times on this show and to anybody that will listen, he is one of the most underrated riders in the world. He really is. I mean, he's kind of been around quite a while now. Richard Cooper has.

But he pops up regularly in various subbing roles or races in a few different of the lower classes nowadays in British super bikes. I mean, he's the kind of guy that will jump on a super stocker or even on a full blown super bike in BSB. And he'll go out and he'll podium it, if not win a race. You know, he really, really is a fantastic rider. And he was doing really, really well.

I don't know if he crashed in the end or if he had a some sort of a mechanical. It wasn't really shown on the brief highlights. I watched the 200 on YouTube at the weekend, but really good effort from Coops because he was running up in the top six for certainly the first 20 or 30 laps until he sort of dropped out for whatever reason. So I don't know if it's his first time now, if he's been there before. But I don't remember him being at Daytona, but I would definitely try and catch up with him at some point in the paddock this year at BSB and have a chat to him about it.

So interesting little story for me. It's like I started racing club and CCS would hold like a club race around Daytona before the Daytona 200. I was like, oh, man, I want to get kind of decent at road racing and I want to go down and race on the banks. This would be cool. Right.

So we wound up going out to a race St. Louis that was ran on the Speedway Bank to Portion and St. Louis that they've had like NASCAR races and stuff there. And, you know, that is nowhere near the velocity of what you were going at in Daytona. And I was like, no, at that point, my my desire to go to Daytona is evaporated.

I literally that was one of the weekends. This is the only weekend of road racing that I. Did not try my best. I'm like, like, like, like, I look, I mean, I honestly, I don't want to say. I was scared because I don't think if you're scared, you don't do it right.

If I would say apprehensive, because it's like what got me, what really messed me up was that going into the turn is going downhill. That which makes no sense, I understand, but it was at least in St. Louis was right. So then it's like, oh, go around it. It's like, wait a minute, the G force is trying to rip my head off towards the other side of the bike.

And it was it was it was bizarre. I was like that instantly cured me of any desire to go to Daytona. So I have mad, mad respect for anybody who's raced down at Daytona. And when you look at the draft of those guys pick up on the bank, and then I mean, it's just it's insane, isn't it? So that's a really interesting perspective that you've just given there, really.

Because, I mean, again, watching on TV. I mean, obviously, a lot of people go track side to watch it. But watching it on TV just does not, I'm sure, does not do that justice. It's a bit like watching the TT. I mean, unless you go, you just can't even comprehend the kind of velocities.

Right. So they would they would the CCS people when we race CCS here locally in the region, Daytona was such a big event for CCS that they would bring down some of the officials and people from the region we were in and from other parts of the country to to to man the race. And I remember we were standing there and they were talking because it was like the first race of the year up here was in April. They'd come back from Florida and the guy said, yeah, you know, it's really funny because they were talking like, you know, hey, sort of, you know, it's the first race out, guys. It's a little cold.

Be prepared. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Be nice. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he said, yeah, down at Daytona, they would tell everybody that, like, hey, the first time you go into chicane on the backstretch, you better be sure that you start breaking way earlier than you think.

Because when you're going in there with three guys ahead of you, the front brakes are useless. Well, it wasn't like they're ineffective. The word was useless. And you will go straight on by. So that gives you some idea of the pull that's happening off of there, I hope.

I mean, it's like it's, you know, we've been on the interstate with a big lorry, articulating lorry for you guys, a semi truck here for the states. And you go along and you know how bad that will buff it you around a pole. And if you do kind of get behind it, it's like I did the brakes kind of hard. You don't really kind of stop at first. And then you do.

Yeah. Imagine that from a motorcycle perspective. So there's a story. Story's done. Story's done real, real, real time now.

Because the first actual super bike around of Moto America is Road Atlanta. That is April 19th and 21st. So we are literally like a month away from that one. So Qatar, we were in Qatar. Let's get to Moto GP.

Let's get to Moto three here. Yeah. Yes. I don't think there was anything that really caught my eye in qualifying in Moto three, except for QP, QP one. I will say this.

It was weird. There was only 11 bikes. The Moto three classes shrunk there. So I wrote it down. I was like, because I remember thinking, well, there's not many bikes out there for the first go around and there weren't, but nothing much there in that.

And to say that happened in their, you know, typical, I think, Moto three qualifying session that ended up with Helgardo being on pole or Tola second, Rueda third, Fernandez, Adrian. I really have to watch my Fernandez's this year, Rich. You got to be on. Well remembered, Jim. Well remembered.

Thank you. Starting this one off on a belter, man. Yeah. And then it was Bertelli and Kelso on your first six rows of interest, of interest for names that we think about this being the first there. Alonso would qualify eighth.

Vire would be tenth and Munoz was 13th. So those guys, you know, they're out of place. If you want to think of it that way, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So we get to the race. And Munoz stalls the bike. I was like, oh, man, he does what anybody would do. He hops off the bike, gives it a bump start. It started.

I was shocked he was able to actually get it started by himself. But he did. What was fun was watching the Moto GP officials yell at him that you need to go off the track to which place and Munoz is sitting there going, dude, I'm in my space. Well, it's running. Let's go.

Why don't you get off the track? And they don't wishful thinking, wishful thinking. But no, he essentially lost that one. It is the rule. You have caused the delay.

Therefore, your bike must be removed from the grid and you will start from pit lane. I if I remember correctly, he went off the grid at pit lane. He had he was since they were had not gotten to this. The warm up lap that he was able to start from the very back. He has to go from the pit lane after everybody left, then start at the very back of the grid for the actual race.

It's a 16 lap race around Qatar, long straightaway, lots of drafting, right? Orgardo gets out front from the whole shot or toll is right behind him. Then Rueda, Fernandez, Rossi and Alonso. Now, this whole race, Helgardo, I think, did the donkey work for it all, right, Rich? He's out front.

And what was amazing to me was despite like, I will call chaos behind him, no one could pass him. And if they did throw a pass on him, he went right back to it, which I thought was a show of strength from him. Would you agree? Well, I know we sort of disagreed slightly on this when we were kind of reviewing the 2023 season. But this is very much reminiscent of how Holgardo started last year.

Very, very strong. And he, you know, his championship went completely pear shaped in the second half of the season. And I think that kind of is what most people will remember of Holgardo's 2023 campaign. But whether he's a Qatar specialist, I don't know. But it was, as you say, Jim, it was very revealing that nobody seemed to be able to draft him down the main straight or maybe they were unwilling to do so.

But that's not really Moto3, is it? No, it's not. Normally people do. And he was passed a few times. And as you say, he was doing a sort of the best Troy Bayless impression I've ever seen of, you know, hitting back straight away.

First call, you know, through again. So, yeah, he has started off very, very strongly. And that was a very, very impressive race that he rode, I thought. I mean, ultimately, as we'll come to not the result that he wanted, but nevertheless, yeah, that's a quick bike in a straight line. You can certainly say that.

At that point, sort of the next big thing that happens in this race is that Rueda and Ortola are down. It was a major high side by Rueda. I think he got in onto the curb just a little too much, perhaps. It caused him to sort of check up in a way that he was not prepared for and the tire sort of ungripped on the painted curb. The rear tire.

And then as he got back on it, it was like, oh, there's a whole lot more grip that wasn't there, I think, as a rider, he was thinking, hey, I'm going to gas it up and finish the slide off and power slide myself out of this one, which is where I would have been with it. Given the wiggle the bike had created, that would be my instinct would be, hey, just turn it right back on. Let's just finish it off dirt track style and we'll be OK. It didn't work that way. The Pirelli gripped a lot more than what I think he thought it was going to.

It caused him to go over the high side. And of course, who's on the outside of the turn for him? Or old or poor or told his race got robbed, I think. I don't know where all told I would have would have finished. It's a speculative exercise.

But our total did in a for the few laps and qualifying or told it did seem like he was could be in the championship and his first race out. It's not there. Yeah. I wonder, Jim, I might be talking complete rubbish here, but I remember somebody over the weekend saying that there were no track limits. Correct.

That is true. Because they had implemented these much more severe curves. So I'm guessing that there's a much bigger sort of tooth drop off between the teeth on the kids or whether that was a contributory factor in Ruaida's crash, maybe in terms of no grip grip, no grip grip, you know, that kind of thing. So who knows? But as you say, or told, well, he was second on the grid.

So I mean, he was quick all weekend. And so I think he would certainly would have been in the fight for the podium. Had he gone full distance? Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Uh, that sort of shook things up a little bit, but it was it was like, oh, so and here comes Suzuki and for a Sado, they were on the moon. You know, Suzuki's on the KTM now from the Honda. You've got for a Sado who's on the Honda. And they were just like, looked like two freight trains coming through.

Like, I don't know if it was a draft. I don't know if they just were on it, but they were moving to the front, which made the race interesting because they're the guys that are doing the passing. I mean, it was really good. I thought of camera work that they actually sort of left the front to be and showed us the guys that were coming, which is one of the things that I've kind of complained a little bit about in the Moto3 coverage is like, if somebody's coming, show me them coming because I want to see what they're doing, not like magically, hey, someone appeared, you know, which is which is kind of how I feel about that one. What was Alonzo finally did get by Orgardo, but as we talked about, Orgardo just went right back.

It was the and I loved your analogy. It was the greatest Trayvon Troy Bayless moment that you could see. It was like, dude, you had him on one corner and right on by Orgardo went right back again by all by all that. Vire works his way up. Kelso starts to fade off about nine laps into this.

And Kelso qualified very well. The Australian qualified very well. He raced well. I think he made a bad decision. He went for the softer of the two available rear tires that Pirelli are providing.

I think they're SC1 and SC2. I don't we're going to it's going to take me a while to understand their nomenclature for what they're doing with their tires. But the one thing we'll talk about it here with the tires, there wasn't an effect. I really didn't feel like there was that big of an effect in Moto3. Like just because it was Pirelli, I was expecting something would weird would happen.

Like, you know, the pack would be broken up somehow or something. You know, people just couldn't wrap their head around them, if you will. I would need to double check, Jim, but I think the lap times were quicker. So, yes, I think Pirelli is clearly a lot quicker than the Dunlops were. But there wasn't, as you say, there wasn't a big disparity between different riders, different bikes on the same tires.

You say Kelso, I think, was pretty much alone in that time. He was that he went with. And I think that obviously didn't pay off. So, you know, lesson learned. I mean, that's just the way it goes sometimes, isn't it?

But, yeah, overall, it was a pretty good race. Overall, you wouldn't have really known that there'd been a tire change, I think is the point that you're making. And I totally agree. Yep, yep, definitely. Alonso kept messing up turn one.

Like he was in the draft. He was in that three, four, five spot. And he just kept going deep into one. Like it was a sloppy race from Alonso. It really was in my mind.

Like it's up to this point. He was up and down the lineup, forward, back, forward, back. It just like make up your mind, kid. I mean, the only blessing to it all is the fact that the factory KTMs are orange and Navy. The tech three bikes are gas gas and the ASPAR bikes are CF Moto.

Yeah, so at least you can tell them apart now. Again, even the guy, the Jack Applegate and everybody we're talking about, you know the difference between the teams now. So you're trying to pick the difference out between the little bit of green versus the black between tech three and and the factory bikes or whatever. So it's all there. Furusato would move to the front.

He went all the way from 18th to the front and Alonso started going backwards along with Vire. I thought this was a tire issue all of a sudden. I thought, OK, the Pirellis are temperamental. Maybe guys are riding. I thought maybe Alonso's style versus Vire style.

Those are two kind of tallish kids. They're they're they're a little taller than the other ones. Maybe not so much Alonso, but Vire is definitely a tall chap. But yeah, yeah. And I thinking, well, maybe they're burning the back tire off of it.

I even wrote, is there is there are there tires? Are they having a tire issue like Kelso? Even though they were on the harder tire, were they having that tire issue was where I was with it. You know, again, everything that's racing behind now, basically like Alonso is like behind everywhere. And it's just, you know, it's just the racing is crazy good at this point with five to go, they're all over the place because Alonso had made his way back up.

And despite the fact he went backwards for about three laps, he just went back the other way again and went to the front. Nepa showed up in this one. He showed up again. They didn't show us him coming. But, you know, hey, you can't see everybody all the time.

But Nepa was sixth and he was looking good. It was a lead group of 10 falling down to the end. And then with a couple of laps to go, Forasato gets by Helgardo at turn one. But guess what? Helgardo just goes right back by again, which sets us up.

So Yamanaka had a crash with two to go. Yamanaka had a crash. If I remember correctly, Rich, he sort of got out of the seat a little bit on a high side, caught it, fell off. The scary part was he himself physically slid across the track and hit an inside retaining wall, which goes to show that regardless of where you think walls should or should not be, somebody somehow will create some crazy incident that will cause them to go against that wall. Knowing that the Qataris have bucket loads of cash, I wonder if that wall doesn't get moved back or if there isn't like a tire or an airbag placed there for next year.

I would hope that they do that. It was I I understand that he had slowed down significantly in the speed that he was carrying, and I realize he did just brush it with his shoulder. I'm sure he's bumped and bruised from it, but he was OK, which is the most important thing. It was just scary to see someone hit a wall. And again, story time.

I remember this is one of the most I can't remember. I think it was Cameron who was, but they at the time, AMA Superbikes were racing at the Charlotte Motor Speedway again, a track designed for stock cars. They're racing on it. And I forget. I want to say it was Scott Russell, but I don't think it was.

But he fell off in a shakira in an area at high speed, went sliding into the wall feet first. And when he spins back out of it, his leg is not in the right proper orientation and he's pointing to his leg as he's sliding. That this is not right. So I just when that happens with the walls, that snaps into my head every single time. That's why I'm sort of adamant that there needs to be an airbag or the wall needs to be moved back or something, because I just that visual still just in my head, I cannot forget it.

No, no, not forgetting. This leads us to the last lap, which was probably one of the best last laps you're ever going to see, because it is a knockdown drag out fight because Alonza starts that lap in one, two, three, one, one. Hold on. Let me count one. He starts it in fifth place.

I thought Alonza is out of this. Fifth place. This is the whole Gardo has this. I mean, Rossi was there for a sawto was there. I'm like, this whole guard has got this.

He's led this thing the whole way. Or Gardo has this. Somebody else had different intentions. Alonzo winds up getting past Fernandez, Adrian. And then he gets rich is smiling at me because I got the Adrian's right.

I got Adrian right this time, too. Anyway, so he got that was the brilliant move. The brilliant move was getting by. By by Alonzo was to get by Fernandez. That was crucial.

He got by him. He then stuffed for a sawto blew past Rossi and had himself in second place right on the backside of Helgardo. And he held there. He had done this by half a lap. The second half of the lap, there are two places to pass.

And Alonzo did not pass. I thought, well, geez, maybe Helgardo has the speed to hold him off. Nope. Alonzo pulled off the magic goes up the inside into that final turn, takes the victory, a brilliant race by Alonzo. The boy is definitely my pick for world champion.

I think he's unstoppable. Although I'll say this, Rich, and I'll let you comment. In the post race interview, Helgardo was like pointed to his head and was like, we need to be smarter, which is definitely what Alonzo was. Brilliant race, though. Brilliant race.

Yeah. I mean, Alonzo is some sort of special talent when it comes to the last lap battle, and I mean, he young kid. But how many times does he won a race from, say, third, fourth or fifth on going into a last lap and comes out on top? I mean, he is spectacularly good, isn't he? To have that kind of level of racecraft and poise.

And I mean, a whole Godo, you know, going into that last turn, I mean, who am I to criticize and not criticizing? But it was very clearly the case that he left a huge gap on the inside for somebody to have a dive bomb at him, which is kind of what Alonzo did. So I think if if I'll go to close that line off a bit more, it probably would have won. But that's racecraft at the end of the day. And he was outfoxed by Alonzo, which, you know, I'm pleased to see Alonzo win.

Whole Godo would have been a worthy winner because, you know, he virtually led every lap of the race, if I think. I think he led every lap of the last one, the one that counts. Damn near. So, yeah, it was just, you know, we all say with Moto3 tracks with long straights somewhere, they're always cat and mouse effects because it will always come down to the last lap. And Alonzo is deadly on the last lap.

I mean, so if he continues to do that, which I suspect that he will, it's hard to think of anybody else for the championship this year. Alonzo is the winner. Elgardo is second, Furosado third. The Hondas were nowhere in testing. They're actually good enough to be third beyond the podium.

Fernandez was close enough to the front that he was there as well. But Rossi was a fourth via Nepos, Azuki, Kelso or Tola. And then I'm sorry. And then there's a new guy. There's a few new names to get to.

Rolstein was there for your top 10. So because I admittedly or Tola was down in that first turn, I did the new collected to mention he remounted and continued. Yeah. And came in came in in ninth. A mouthwatering concept for you, Rich.

Pedrosa, Alonzo, MotoGP beating on each other because they seem to be the king of. Passing and last lap wonderment. It's mouthwatering, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we always think about like at some point, Marquez has to stop racing.

I mean, Ross Rossi should have stopped earlier. I think we both agree that the bluster kind of was off of Rossi. Yeah, I think Rossi would even admit that now. But I'm speaking out of turn, potentially. But there we always fear like there isn't going to be this other great racing battle.

There is. It's just coming. It's you can see where Alonzo is going. He's he's he's destined for Moto to next year, I think. And then he's destined to get to, you know, maybe one, maybe two years at Moto to because I think he's only 18.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, he's probably going to follow the across the path and a couple of years in the class, you know, hard to see him. Well, he's certainly going to be in contention for Moto three this year. You're never quite sure how people will adapt in Moto two. I mean, it took a cost to, you know, half a season to a season, arguably, to really get to grips with Moto two.

And then he blitzed it in his second year. So that kind of I suspect is the sort of path that we might see David Alonzo on, but he is a special talent. I mean, he is. So there are a few. I mean, Moto three is a wash with talent at the end of the day.

But he does stand out a bit above everybody else. Certainly in terms of my memory from last year. And based on that performance, although it was a bit up and down during the race, as you say, but first race of the season, bit rusty perhaps. But yeah, I mean, it's one race. We can't draw huge conclusions and Qatar is always a bit of a an old circuit for various reasons that are well known.

But so I think we can probably draw better conclusions after three or four races. Yeah, I think Alonzo knocks off two or three wins in the first sort of third of the championship, then I think we can start to see the pattern. Yeah, I think we'll I think we'll know a lot after we get back from Kota. Yeah, because then we had to Europe and kind of see where everybody's kind of shaked out, but obviously the championship is the way they finished in Moto three. So there we are.

Anything else for Moto three, Rich? I think it's pretty much covered, I think. I think I said, yeah, good race. Good start. Yeah, definitely a good race.

So Moto two, just some quick qualifying notes. This is kind of interesting to me, like in the first session of QP one. Was Aranis, Joe Roberts, Anshu, Sasaki, Dixon and Moss. Yeah, and Fodgett. Now, Dixon's an outlier here.

He was in there because of the absolutely wicked high side that poor man had. That was a throwback 1980 high side. That was scary, Rich. Huge. Yeah, really, really big.

It was very, very, very lucky. I mean, unlucky to crash, but very, very lucky not to break, you know, a leg in that accident because he came down you know, from a long way up. I don't know what speed he was doing when he, you know, departed from the bike, but he must have been well over 100 miles an hour. Easily. I think that's a very fast turn 13, which is a very fast right hander.

It's one of the faster right handers. So I think they said it was I think they said it was like over 200 kph going through there on Moto two, which is a scary one. So what one I want to say 160 and old money. Something like something close to that scary accident. Very scary, scary, scary.

Not not to break a leg or an arm or that's like 140. It's close to like 140, I think. That's right. I said it was right around 200 through there. Now, where is that the apex?

I have no idea. But yeah, it's about 140 miles an hour getting off of a motorcycle. That is not the place to do it. So Dixon would be ruled unfit for the rest of the week. And yeah, and I'll back up to Moto three just for one bit.

It was a class touch by Alonzo to mention Jake in the post race interview. It was, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a very classy move. Very classy. Yeah.

A nice little tight knit team that. Yes. Asparte team. Yeah. A lot of time for that.

Yeah. I have all the time in the world for stuff like that. And praise to Alonzo for thinking that way, because you could tell. You could tell it wasn't something that he was told to say. Well, you could very much tell.

He's like, oh, yeah, I wish Jake was here. Kind of a thing. Yeah. And I know I know it's a little bit more common to see this, but also he found Govara on the grid, had the little sign on the on the bubble. Also sat on the grid, you know, get well soon.

So, yeah, it's a nice, nice close knit team that Asparte team. A lot of respect for that. Those names are obviously the rookies to the class. A lot of those are the rookies to the class that I mentioned earlier. But I just you think about those guys.

Those guys are heavy hitters of Moto three and they're not there, which shows you how tough it is to be really good at Moto three and then jump the Moto two. Although I did think onto look the best of the rookies, if you will. He seems to fit the bike. He seems to be confident on the bike. He seems to be riding with a different kind of boys, if you will.

There's no expectation of him. Right. So he's a little freer, I think. I don't think he doesn't have that thumb on him. Sometimes.

Yeah. And let's remember he's got Aki Ayo in the box with him, you know, just saying, keep it calm, learn, no expectations. So we know he's a bit hot headed. Yeah. I don't say he rode a steady race.

He didn't really get to see a great deal of it. Yeah, for obvious reasons. But he I mean, he finished quite strongly in the end. And no, I thought it was quite a mature opening weekend for Montu in particular. From the Moto3 graduates.

So quickly, the top six for the race, Kinet Lopez, Arenas Gonzalez, Arbolino, Valtis there. Now, Aldeguer starts seventh because he got a penalty for irresponsible riding. Because I think he was actually three places higher than the ninth that he was. Or than the, I'm sorry, than the seventh that he was because of that. So, you know, it was going to see what was going to happen when the lights turned green.

So when this turned green, I was like, Arbolino had a great start. It's just like, he was off like he was a rocket ship where he came from. Because he's off that second row and was just gone. It was like Lopez, sorry, not Lopez. Kinet went backwards.

Like he fluffed the start so bad. I don't know. Did you know what he did? I was thinking, did he miss a gear somewhere? I have no clue.

It was just. No, I don't know. I mean, he was red hot favorite going into the race. He'd been really strong through preseason testing. That the Moto2 had had at Jerez and Portemar.

I think it might have been. I'm not sure now, but he was, yeah, looked like the guy to be going into the weekend. And up until the point from Paul when the green light came on, that remained the case. And then as you say, just whatever happened, whether he just bogged it, I don't know. He went badly backwards, although as you're about to tell us, he quickly recovered for a period.

So I want to pause here. Again, we've got this Pirelli issue here in this race. And Jim, a wet practice as well, which would really sting some people. One of the things that we have to take into consideration with this is the fact that their previous testing that Moto2 had been rained on in wherever they were, Jerez or wherever, was pretty much obliterated by rain. They had the test at Qatar, which seems as though Kinet had figured out the Pirelli quicker than anyone else.

Then you got into their practice sessions for the race weekend and the rain hit. So there was very little dry running and there was very little distance running on dry Pirellis to even have an idea of what you were going to take for the race. So some people had the softer option of Pirelli, some had the medium tire Pirelli on it. It was all mixed up. It depended on who was there.

I believe Kinet had the medium. I think Lopez had the softer option, which might have been the… He had the softer tire and it was up and down the field. Different people had different tires. Kinet blows back to the front as if he was shot from a cannon. I'm like, well, okay, he's going to finally maybe win one of these things.

He was just flying. I thought Aldegar was going to race to the front. He doesn't. He stays mired in the pack. This is a guy who had four on the trot, would have been a record breaker if he could get got a fifth one on the trot.

I'm going, well, okay, maybe the boss Kakura doesn't work well with the Pirelli. Little did I know, I look like an idiot because here comes Lopez to the front to run with Kinet for a good chunk of the race there. I'm like, okay, obviously the boss Kakura seems to be good, but Kinet then starts to go backwards. Apparently the tire that he chose just didn't work. It was weird.

It took a little bit for everybody to cycle this out and figure that, oh, the people who are dropping like rocks were people who were on the medium Pirelli rear. The people who were on the soft Pirelli were going to the front. Aldegar, the other boss Kakura of Agora who looked good on that bike. So you had he's who was going to the front. Sergio Garcia was going to the front.

Those are the guys that were making a run at it. Roberts was making a run from his lowly starting position. He's sort of a Qatari expert if you want to leave it that way. So the race gets really, really kind of flaky because you're not too sure who's going where. Because it was instant.

It was like somebody turned on a light switch and things went flip flop. And you were like, what happened? Was it did he run wide? Did Kinet run wide? Did he miss a breaking point?

What happened? Was it tires? We no one knew. But Sasaki was down at turn one at this point. Arbolino had gone back to ninth from his great start.

It was just crazy. It was only like I said, after halfway through, it was finally, we sort of got the details of it that anybody on a soft rear was going fast and was going forward. Anybody on that harder medium tire was going backwards, which again, if you don't have the data to make those choices, you were going to have these things happen. But it wasn't just the softs that would have a, the softs would eventually have a problem because as it got down to it, Gonzales and Lopez are going after each other. Balthus had suddenly picked up his pace.

He was coming to the front. Garcia is on a rocket ship ride to the front. It was like, holy crap, who's going to win this race? People were just coming from nowhere to the front because the tire difference was starting to become staggering. However, Lopez, I think, rode one of the best races, Rich, because he spent the last five laps in a defensive mode from Balthus.

Balthus was very, very quick. He had been tipped early on that Balthus had race pace. Like they had concentrated on going the distance with the new Pirellis in the limited dry time that they had. Balthus was right there. Garcia was right there.

Basically, they were trying very hard to get away from everybody. But it came down to a straight fight of Lopez versus Balthus. But Lopez did hang on with the Bosquecora. Balthus was a K-Lex. Garcia was on a Bosquecora there.

Aguero was then fourth with the Bosquecora. Fifth was Gonzales on the K-Lex. Then Ramirez has a K-Lex. And that's your top six there. Amazingly, of the four Bosquecoras, three of them are in the top four, which shows you that obviously the Bosquecora is good, regardless of whatever tire you put on it.

Great race, though. Bosquecora in a medium, sorry, a soft rear was the optimum bike combination to be on, clearly. I mean, my thought all through the race was, can Lopez keep this going? Because, I mean, he got into the league quite early in the race and he was going at it hard. You could tell he was putting an awful lot of stress on the front end of that bike all the way through the race, which is why Balthus just couldn't quite nip through on him.

Although he was quite clearly, Balthus' mid-corner speed by the end of the race was way faster than what Lopez had. But he just couldn't out-break him. So he's a funny one, Lopez, isn't he? I mean, I'm trying to remember back now, but I'm pretty sure I tipped him for the Moto2 Championship last year. And he was very good on some Sundays, but over the course of the season, he was a bit erratic.

He was a bit inclined to get caught up in silliness, let's say. And over the latter part of the season, obviously, Albauga really kind of put him in the shade. But yeah, it was quite a reversal of fortune in that squad, wasn't it, the official Bosquecora squad? Because Albauga clearly had issues with tires. He was looking very intently at the front of the bike when he crossed the checkered flag.

So not quite sure, but it was just a stunning ride by Lopez. And as you say, with the... Now, the team that... So Garcia stays in the same team. Aguirre has come across.

Correct. That is what was... Golly. Pons. It was Pons.

It was. It was Pons team. MPI helmets, MSI. Yeah. And I think the switch to the Bosquecora chassis was a bit of a late decision and it caught Aguirre by surprise and his management a bit by surprise.

But you'd have to say on the balance of Sunday, again, it's Qatar and it's only one race. But yeah, I mean, that has been building and building that chassis, hadn't it, for quite a while now. And it does look like, you know, it's not a disadvantage to be on anything other than the CalEx now. But I think that is clear. So it's going to be a fascinating season for that reason.

Well, for many reasons, but that's one of the primary ones. I mean, I think to me, the interest is the tires still. Was this just a one-off thing or is this something that will exist in other races with the Pirellis? I mean, they're a great tire. Pirellis is a great tire.

They have so much World Superbike data. And essentially, a Moto2 bike is a World Super Sports slash mini World Superbike kind of bike. So, you know, I'm sure they're going to be phenomenal tires. It's just if everybody picks like this and these tires do have this sort of degradation to them, degradation, I think, is how you actually said. It's going to put up some fascinating racing, I think.

I mean, plus we've got guys like Arbolino who just couldn't make it go. I mean, he was doing like 204s or something at the end. It was like four or five seconds off the pace. Yeah, it was just amazing that they just could not get there. So it really kind of, you know, it's going to get figured out.

And again, they had very little dry running. So nobody was able to really get it sorted. And I think things are going to be different. I am very much wanting to watch Moto3 and Moto2 at Cota through the bumpy bits because I want to see how the Pirellis react to that bumpiness of that track. It's going to be interesting to me.

It's one of the things I want to look at, try to analyze, try to see if I can understand what the riders are feeling through there. I think, Jim, you hit it on the head really when you kind of said that Moto2's preseason was very heavily disrupted by weather. So was the practice in Qatar. Either they were running in the daytime, which is different to the race conditions at night, or they had the wet session. I think Portimão, assuming that it stays dry across the weekend, that will be a much clearer indication, I think, of how this is going to start to go.

Qatar, I think, for Moto2 was just so up and down and so hampered by lack of data from the testing, preseason testing, that it was just pure guesswork for some of them. And clearly some people just got that right and some people were on the wrong end of a bad decision. So that's the way it goes sometimes. But of course, social media lit up lambasting Pirelli for making rubbish. That was like, oh, please, come on, shut up.

Do your research and understand what's happened beforehand. But anyway, that's social media. But as you say, Pirelli make damn good tires. They are much softer construction. So your point about how they cope with Cota, they are quicker.

So yeah, all good as well as I'm concerned. And it made for a very, very interesting, if a bit, off-kilter race. Like I said, I think the tire change is going to do everybody good. I think they needed something. I'm not knocking Dunlap here.

This is not a Jim hates Dunlap rant. OK, it's just Pirellis are just different. And they came out of the box with a good tire. Moto3 was almost a half a second faster, I think. The time distance over that race was definitely a minute or two quicker.

Moto2 was definitely way faster in qualifying. But the race pace was, again, skewed in a different direction because of the lack of dry running. So it sets this up for being quite fabulous. I mean, there's people out of places that we don't expect them to be there. And it's going to take a little bit for everybody to figure this out and sort it back around again.

It is going to be interesting. Yeah, and let's not forget when Michelin came back in and took over from Bridgestone, you went from the un-crashable front tire to the crashable front and too much rear grip as opposed to the Bridgestone that preceded it. So it took the MotoGP crowd a season or two to get their head around that change of rubber. And so this is just normal. Some people get it right, some people get it wrong.

But over time, people will start to get it more and more right. I mean, that's just racing. It's racing. But a really exciting, interesting race as far as I was concerned. And that jeopardy and that lack of data actually made things a bit better in a way.

All right. Unless your name's Tony Arbolino. Correct. So obviously, first race, championship is how they finished. So MotoGP.

So we get into MotoGP. I thought the first qualifying session was interesting. You had Ralu Fernandez on the Trackhouse bike. We're just smiling again, people. Knocking it out of the park tonight, Jim.

I had to really work on it to be sure that I get these right. The Trackhouse boys almost both made it to Q2. Right out of the box. I thought for Trackhouse, starting, I was brilliant. OK, I saw the, again, OK, Jim's going to play the track.

I'm going to play the track. Again, OK, Jim's going to Jim's going to pull the flag out of the drawer here and wave it for a minute just because of the standpoint that the bikes looked good when they displayed them. I think they look even better in motion on a racetrack. I think the white and the blue are just fabulous on that bike. And Jim wants a pit shirt that's got Trackhouse on it.

I thought those shirts the mechanics had are absolutely cooler than anything I've seen lately. And Jim's got to find one at Kota. Yeah, it's a good looking bike. I think we're used to seeing sort of a black carbon colored Aprilia and that white. I'm a sucker for white on a motorcycle, Rich.

To this day, I still think it was, what was it? It was the it was in the 80s. It was like an 85, 86 Honda Interceptor. It was like it was all white. And I remember it because the question was, you know, red looks great on a bike.

But what's the second best color on a bike? How about a refrigerator white? And it was I just remember that's what they call it is like refrigerator white. Remember Cycle World had that on there. Just remember that.

I thought that bike was beautiful. So I have a soft spot for for white bikes. That being that being said, you know, we go forward here. I think everybody everybody was where we expected them to be in qualifying. Except for Miller was in the first qualifying session, which that would foreshadow.

Sort of the problem was that he was going to be in as you went forward or whatever. I think the interesting thing in Q1 was the one name that was missing from Q1. Acosta. Did you think Acosta would get into Q2 in the very first time? Yeah.

Did you? Yeah. I didn't know if he would. I honestly thought Acosta would be right on that edge and he would just get pipped. That's what I thought.

That's what I thought was going to happen. It didn't happen, but I found that interesting. I mean, I think through preseason, he's already shown that he's going to be a solidly top 10. Well, I mean, I didn't know how good the bike was going to be either. That's the other issue.

Yeah. Again, I'm just going to sort of just chastise myself, perhaps being a little bit too belong because it's Katta and they had a test right before the race week. Well, fairly close to the race weekend, let's say. So he did have that advantage. And again, let's just engage history and memories a little bit, which is not my strong point.

In my 50s, my memory is shocking. But I think I'm correct in saying in the first or second season, the Jorge Martin came up. He had a very good first race in Katta, went to Porto Mare, crash broke his leg, and it kind of ruined his season, although he was very strong towards the end of that season. So we need to be careful that we don't get too caught up in this hype with Pedro Acosta and that he turns up at Porto Mare, which is a devilishly tricky track. And we saw some big crashes there last year, don't forget.

Up and down very fast. If you crash, it's always going to be big there. So having said that, I'm sure we're going to talk about as we were talking before starting recording Jim about how level headed and sort of switched on the guys. So hopefully he'll keep it under control and understand his limitations. But so it mustn't draw too much, but certainly through the Katta test, I mean, he was sensational all the way through that.

So I personally felt that he wouldn't be struggling in qualifying. Yeah. I don't think anything really super shocking happened in qualifying to Martin would take pole who didn't think he was going to. Alash I thought was not a real big surprise, but the Aprilia was showing, I think, a little stronger than maybe we thought they would. At least that way, I thought it.

Bashanyi would be finishing off the front row. Then it was Binder, Benyai and Marquez on the Ducati. The smiles back on that man's face. It remains to be seen what assistance Ducati will give the third ranked satellite team for this season. I think it should also be said, Jim, that Mark Marquez is not a fan of Katta.

He's he has won a race back in the sort of dominant HRC days, 2019. It might have been perhaps. I can't remember. I think that might have been the only one he won at because I thought Dovi was always beating him to the line in that last corner. Yeah.

I think it's a la Australia, a la Austria. Yes. I think it's fairly well known that he doesn't particularly like Katta as a track. So with all of that, Ben. I still thought it was great.

He had a pretty strong weekend, really. He's obviously still learning the bike. There's a lot of room to grow. So no wonder he's smiling. He made it on the first two rows.

Like we say, if you want to win, you got to be on the first two. Acosta would qualify eighth. Okay, cool. That's where we are. All right.

The race will go to the sprint happening on Saturday evening there. Martín gets the whole shot. Binder with a flying start. Binder off the second row was like he was shot out of a cannon. That thing was just crazy good.

I thought he jumped. I really thought Binder jumped that one. I mean, the drag racing terms, he cut a great light. That was just insane that he was there. Acosta had fallen down three places.

He had gone down to 11th. And then Martín's there with Binder and Elish. They're sort of back and forth. Digia went down during the race. I don't know what happened to Digia in that one.

It just was weird that he was down in 10th. It was odd. It was a very odd crash to me. I just don't know. I just don't understand what he did.

It didn't hurt him or whatever. It was there. Martín still off front with Binder and Banyaya. Things were looked like. I thought things were going to start to heat up here a little bit here with seven laps still to go.

Or because they were starting to close up a little bit. Marquez did get himself up to fourth place. Martín inched away. Marquez would go wide. He's having trouble turning the Ducati.

It's a longer wheelbase than what he's used to. Muscle memory, I think, kind of showed up a little bit here. He started to ride it like a Honda, which is not how you ride a Ducati. And Elish got by for that one. And you finished up the sprint with Martín winning.

Binder was second and Elish with a third. And the Aprilia came on at the end of that race. The last five laps, Elish was really flying on it, which that sort of tipped some people to say Elish may be in for the long run here and perhaps maybe he's going to win tomorrow for the main event. But other than that, I don't think there was too much there other than noting that Acosta would finish eighth, which is he fell back three places and worked his way back up. And that's really all that's there.

The Japanese, I'm sorry, the first Japanese bike is 12th with Quattrarro. It's just... I get where they are. It's a long road back. It's a very long road back.

And it's going to take some time. I just don't think that Quattrarro is going to hang out long enough. But I don't know where he's going to go. I think if he's got a chance at anything, he's got a chance at a track house, perhaps. Or he's got a shot.

I mean, not unless Yamaha decides to come up with their own satellite team, which is possible, that they could. But we don't know. Anyway, is there anything else? Well, what's going to be fun? Nothing really to say about the sprint.

It wasn't box office, but I don't know that we necessarily thought that it would be. I think the point... Considering last year's sprints were kind of crazy, this was, can I say, relatively calm? It certainly was, yeah. Whether Quattrarro's a track lends itself perhaps a little bit more to that.

And maybe people were being a little bit cautious. It's the first race of the season, one thing and another. But we certainly saw some examples again of how aero makes life difficult for people in terms of the draft and then when you pull out and stuff like that, it makes... Yeah, I mean, it's a difficult period in that respect. I just wanted to return to your point about the Yamaha and the Honda situation.

I mean, they looked all right at various stages through testing. But it's when the race weekend arrives is when you really find out what the competitive order is. And clearly they are still a long way behind. But what I think is going to be fascinating this year with the new concession system and the amount of testing that they are going to be allowed to do, both Yamaha and Honda, is whether or not that does enable them to make some gains. We've spoken before about Yamaha and Honda are recruiting heavily and they are diverging from the traditional way of doing things.

A lot more Europeans are showing up in there and engine gurus from here, there and everywhere. Aero experts. So, you know, they're doing all the right things. But, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day, as we've said before. But it will be built quicker now with the new concessions rules.

So I'm just curious to see where we land in the final third of this season. I'm going to go with an interesting statement made by Quattroro. I'll paraphrase because I don't think I have this right as a quote. He said something to the effect of the motor is much better, but you can't tell because our aero is so bad. Yeah.

Maybe there's hope. You know, I mean, I really, really you're not going to work a miracle here. It's going to take a year or two of this more for the Japanese factories to get back to the front. However, if you consider the two more years after this, that takes you to 26 and 27 is all the new regs. So when the real question then becomes, where do you spend your money to develop yourself if, and this is a big if, if they somehow said, all right, we are banning aero, except for a set of wings on the front fairings that are X wide, X distance from center wheel center line to end.

And this is all the bigger you get. They sort of standardize the aero in that way. If they ban all the shape shifting and whatnot, who knows what they're going to do for 27. But I can't, it doesn't, it doesn't fit with a Japanese mentality or Japanese philosophy of let's spend all of this money to make this bike fast for maybe what could maybe be a victory in 26, 2026 only to go into 2027 with a crap ton of rule changes, which one of the things that's interesting to me, and we'll talk about it here now just real quick is if they're changing the motor displacement and we're going away from a thousand CCs, if they're going to go back to 850, are you going to limit the revs? Well, this is the point that Lucho was making in his chat with with Martin, isn't it?

Yep. To me, if you say it's a 10,000 RPM cab, because that's easily obtainable with conventional coil, coil steel or titanium valve springs, you can easily get to 10 grand, which means if you only got 10 grand, you're going to make a bike with a much, much better torque curve so you can maximize what you have. Now the game is going to be played differently because the bore and the structure are going to be different because people are going to think differently about what they want to do because of that 10,000, if it's a 10,000, I'm throwing a number out there, people, I don't know for sure. I think that's what we got to watch. This is a developing thing.

Yes, they need to figure out some other things because I do caught a show them how to do things differently. But anyway, sprints over. Well, the the cynic in me says that without a kind of a hard cost cap rule in place, the teams will spend the money that they've got available to them on something. So my view is that the Japanese factories, Honda and Yamaha, will spend big this year and next year irrespective of the potential rule changes coming. It might be that they don't change their own rules.

I mean, they might say, no, no, let's keep going down this path. I mean, I doubt it, but they could. That is one potential outcome. I think for those factories, the desire and the need, the urgency to compete at the front is so high that they'll just go full chat at it. That's my expectation.

Even if come twenty seven, you got smooth sides again and, you know, like proper looking motorcycles, the old fashioned me, you know, kind of thinks of it. So that's my view. And the new rules will open up new possibilities, new loopholes to exploit, and then they'll spend their budgets on those things if they can't spend them on the things that they currently spend. That's kind of how motor racing tends to work, isn't it? Unless you have a mandated, you can't spend more than this.

And so people then have to start making very hard choices. I will counter with this Honda. I fully expect them to do that. Be exactly as you said, they'll spend every dime to make their bike faster. Does Yamaha have enough in the coffers to do it?

Is my question. Well, I think that goes to your point about whether they want to keep Quattraro and Rins for that matter. I mean, you know, that's a very, very strong rider lineup that they've got. But I mean, you literally could have been forgiven for not realizing Yamaha or even in the races at the weekend or qualifying. I mean, you didn't really see him on track at any point.

Or I didn't really see him. So Honda was Honda was literally bank it from anyone's talking point. Yeah. Other than the Castrol bike that Zarca is on is just absolutely stunning. Again, sucker for a white motorcycle.

It is a great color scheme. That Castrol. I mean, Marini went down, I think in Q1, you know, so we saw him picking the bike up. But I'm being glib and I don't wish to be unkind. But yeah, I mean, you just didn't really see Honda or Yamaha pretty much all weekend long, did you?

So I mean, that's the problem that they've got. So they have an urgency to turn that around really for a multitude of different reasons, one of which is pride as well. And that's obviously a big factor for all of the teams, but particularly for them. I mean, think about the color scheme change on Honda's. There's that big Honda logo above the Repsol logo.

Yeah. So Repsol is definitely not putting in the cash that they were before. Well, yeah, I mean, reduction in presence normally equates to reduction in, you know, finance. Well, actually, Simon Patterson was talking about this and he I think I might hope I don't misremember this, but he was intimating that probably the amount of money that reps are putting in is diminished. It's just the fact that Marquez isn't there anymore means that perhaps they're not so bothered about that level of marketing presence.

But who knows? I mean, but we'll never know the details of that. But I know I returned to my previous point, which is that the concessions should really help them. And it will be interesting within this season. It's a long season.

I mean, we're going all the way through to November again. So they've got a lot of time and a lot of test days with their factory riders to try and start to rebuild. And clearly they're not going to be winning races this year, any of them. But if they can start to sort of solidly show up in the top 10, at least for a portion of the races, that would be good progress from where they are, which is really dire. Mir and Zarco kind of echoed this a little bit.

They were amazed at what Honda accomplished in three months. Yeah. So and they're all going a lot faster. What step are they going to make in three more months if you've got concessions? Exactly.

And unlike over the pre or last year in the preseason, Ducati and KTM and stuff, they can't make that level of progress because they're prevented from doing so. So that is the fascinating sort of equation in all of this to watch it play out. But the gap is between where Yamaha and Honda are to where Ducati is, is huge. Please do not underestimate how big that gap is. It's monumental.

But anyway, all right, we got to talk about the actual Bodo GP race. We could rattle on here in some weird respect. But 22 Lap Affair, Raul Fernandez's bike stalls seems to be something in the air for whatever reason. So he winds up having to push his bike off. It was definitely before the siding lap, before the warm up lap.

So they regrouped it. They were working on it. They were trying very hard to get it to go. For whatever reason, they couldn't seem to figure out what was wrong with it. And at the last minute, Raul does the 100 yard, 100 meter dash down the pit lane to get to the second bike, whips down to the end of the pit lane.

And then he's allowed to start at the back of the pack for the Moto GP race. So having all that in the delay that happened in there, that meant that the race went to a 21 Lap race because there was a delay. You have to take one lap off of it because of the fuel. You don't have enough to make the distance, et cetera, all that's going on. But everything's going to be good.

At the start, Martin gets the whole shop. Bender gets another blinder. I mean, that thing looked like it looked somebody had hit the rewind button and just showed you the start from Saturday night. It was crazy how close that was. Again, I thought, Jesus, Bender didn't jump the start.

He's got amazing reflexes, I guess. I really don't really know what's going on there. But what really shocked me was the aggression that Benya showed at the beginning of the race. All of a sudden, Benya is now out front. He got to the front at the end of 21 laps to go.

At the beginning of the 20th lap, 20 laps to go, Benya was out front. And I hate to tell everybody this one, but Benya runs off and wins the race. Correct me if I'm wrong, Hirich. I thought it was a statement win by the world champion. It really, really was.

And you talk about Bender, but Benya got a mega start as well. He went down the outside and he, because I forget where he was on the grid. He started fourth or fifth. But he went barreling down the outside. And so he was kind of like second or third, going into the first turn.

So I mean, he had a really, really strong start, but this is not the kind of aggression that we have historically seen from him. But in this modern era where you get stuck behind another bike with the air and stuff, I think he knew he had to make a move. And by me, he did, didn't he? No, honestly, at that point, while your attention was seemingly on Benya, because you're expecting Martina and Bender to sort of go back by Benya and make this kind of a race, your attention gets diverted, sort of a magician's trick. Don't pay attention to the red bike disappearing over here.

Pay attention to the red bike that's coming fast. The red bike coming fast was Pedro Acosta. Now, as Matt Oxley said on a tweet, I guess it's still a tweet, he said a quote, direct quote from Pedro Acosta about MotoGP. You strap on your balls and you go. I'm like, whoa, the boy's got it.

He's got the one line quotes, man. That was brilliant. And he did. He strapped them on and he went for it. The boy raced his way from eighth to sixth.

He wound up racing all the way up to where he was past Marquez in fourth. He was racing the eight time world champion. And the kid did not look out of place at that level at all. That boy looked like he'd been doing that his entire life. We had a little chat about this earlier, Rich, about how Acosta is in talent and the mind that he has.

If you really watched Acosta as much as you could, you realize that he literally used the sprint race to figure out how the bike works around other bikes in the draft, in the aero wave. And he used that to his advantage and he blew past people where people weren't even thinking it. Now on the flip side, the pace was slightly slower because it was believed that it was going to be a bit of a tire saving race, which I don't know how much of that was really true because Benyaya went for it and got out front. Yet he defended Martin. He defended advances from Martin.

He defended advances from Bender. I mean, Bender got frustrated with Martin at some point during all of this because he wound up running deep on him a couple of times because Bender saw Benyaya slowly going away. Meanwhile, Acosta is doing what he's doing back there. Now, did Acosta burn the tires off that bike? Sure did.

Did he go backwards at one point? Sure did. But I guarantee you this, the boy knows exactly what's going to happen now with his tires. And that problem he had will not happen again. He somehow can consume data and then just completely changes himself.

You have thoughts on Acosta, Rich? He lived up to the hype in my book. Oh, he really did. I mean, we've said numerous times and I'm sure we'll see this many times again and people will get fed up with us. But I mean, he really is box office both on and off the bike.

I mean, off the bike is in some sort of crazy regards, even more impressive than on it in a way because on it he's in his natural environment. But a lot of these superstars are ill at ease with everything that goes on in the paddock and with the media side of stuff and particularly in Acosta's case, the sheer amount of pressure and expectation on him. So to compete and go through the weekend as he did was really mesmerizing in a way. I hope that I'm not been too hyperbolic about it, but he's just really, really is a superstar already. And what I find interesting is, and Jim, you might have some thoughts on this because it kind of occurred to me over the course of the weekend.

Obviously, as we said before, these kids sort of spend quite a lot of years on Moto3 before they even turn up in the MotoGP paddock necessarily, I'm OK, Red Bull rookies and stuff. So he was, although he was a sensation when he appeared in Moto3 in what was it, 2021, I think. And obviously he won that second racing cat off and pit lane. And we all remember that 20 or 2021. And then he was a little bit slow to adapt to the Moto2 bike, although, of course, he broke his leg mid season in a training accident in that first season in Moto2.

So that did hamper him. And he was strong by the end of that season. And then obviously he romped it last year, but he's immediately made the switch in MotoGP. So my question is, obviously, the jump now to Moto2, given that it's a bigger engine, a bit more complicated, the jump from Moto3 to Moto2 almost seems to be bigger now than the jump from Moto2 to MotoGP. Would you agree with that?

Because he's made the transition almost immediately. Because even right from day one in Valencia, he looked really, really good on that bike. So I'm kind of curious. I mean, I question only these people themselves can actually answer, I suppose. I think that it might be a smidge easier than what it has been.

Because Triumph upped their game to give them more power, more torque. You can spin it up a little bit and they gave them a little bit of traction control to play with. Not a lot, a little. I think having that little bit of electronics helps you get in tune with the electronics that are going to be on the MotoGP bike. I think that now we know, if you've read any of the articles from Maddox and stuff over the off season, how much the riders are turning the traction control down on a MotoGP bike and using their own throttle hand to control everything.

I think that's more in tune to how Moto2 bikes are being ridden. If you look at how Acosta was handling the bike, the MotoGP bike and how he was throwing it into corners, it was very much like he did it in Moto2. It had that same back end out a little bit, a lot of trust on the front, sliding it in there, making it all work fabulously. I do think when it was way more electronic, I'm going to make a word up, electronicized, earlier on, I think it was harder because there's a hard part about trusting the electronics that are there because the electronics disconnect your feel away from what the bike is doing as a rider. That feel is what you're looking for and it's disconnected from you.

Colin Edwards said it best, oh hell, you just sit there and whack it wide open at the middle of the apex and just hope the electronics get you out. That statement was volumes to me. I get it. There's a different level of electronics out it now, but that was back in the day. Maybe it's a KTM trait because we see Binder backing it in quite a lot.

And certainly that's more than Acosta. Yeah, but Acosta is showing that same kind of technique on the bike. I'm being very romantic now. Rose tinted glasses, I know, but it's slightly reminiscent of the early days of the 990s where they were really backing it in a lot. Now, whether that was because they were rear grip limited or whatever it was, I don't know.

And obviously they had electronics, but they were very, very primitive back in 2002 and three and four, but compared to now, even with the restrictions that they have. But I think the point in all of this is that you would not have thought that that was from visually watching him on the bike. You would not have thought that that was his first full race weekend. And that speaks volumes, really. I would have thought he'd been doing it for a year or two easily.

Hey, let's continue on down the path. The whole battle between Martin and Binder, let's Benya just slide away here. That's what happens basically. Again, 10 laps to go, Acosta did get by Marquez. And then at that point, he got a little scrap.

Acosta got a little scrappy. That's where the tires start to go away on him. He tried to hold on to it, but he had pushed them over the edge. So that was definitely different. Marquez kind of rode a patient race for him.

He kind of sat there. He kind of looked at the situation. I think he was a bit shocked that Acosta came by because he sort of for a lap or two there kind of defaulted to Marquez, Honda style. It got frantic, right? But he pulled himself back together again.

He calmed down. He cooled the tires, went back past the kid showing that sometimes to be old and wise, first you got to be young and stupid. So Acosta's in the young and stupid phase. Marquez is onto the wiser phase, although that can be argued many different ways. And he wound up Mark Roundup coming in fourth.

I forgot to mention that Binder would finish second because he would get the better of Martín and all this. And Martín I think also sort of overused the tire a little bit. And I think the KTM I think is better maybe a little bit with the carbon chassis for them to be able to have the edge grip at the end that Binder needed to get by Martín. Now, Benyaya, that Ducati is built around him and his style and his cerebral approach to what he does. Martín I think is the old school raw just throw it in there hard racer kind of guy.

And Martín's and this again, I'm borrowing this from Martín's interview with Simon Patterson. Martín sort of just makes the wrong mistake, soft tire at Phillip Island. Although I loved it. I mean, the racer in me was like, dude, go for it. So I like Martín in that respect.

But he finished where he did. He finished there in third on the podium. It's a long season, so we'll see what happens. And again, Marquez there is all there. Bastianini would wind up getting a fifth.

Alex would finish in sixth. DJ Antonio rode a great race. I thought he was seventh. At times he looked really fast. At times he was going the other way.

It's going to take a little bit of time, I think, for him to sort of gel with the VR 46 crew that's there, which left Alessio Spargro in eighth. The Aprilia did not come good. He had a horrible start. Things didn't work. And you got Acosta then ninth and Vinyals finished his tenth.

That's how the race went. I don't want to say it was a lousy race. There was intrigue, but it wasn't the barn burner you were hoping to get. No, and I think maybe part of that is because they had the preseason test there immediately before. And so everybody knows what they're up to to some extent.

I know there was a bit of rain over the weekend, which disrupted things. But again, you can't judge what's going to happen all season on that one race and particularly not that race. So again, like you said earlier on, Jim, I think by the time we're on the other side of Cota and we're back into Europe, get those first few rounds in Europe as we get into spring summertime, then we'll really start to see. But I mean, it's pretty obvious if you're on a Ducati, you're in a pretty good spot. I think the really interesting thing for me as a person that's said many times on the show, that I'm by no means a particularly huge Mark Marquez fan, but this is a fascinating scenario with him in that team on that bike, you know, because it's a bit of a political thing in terms of, you know, if he starts to come good.

I mean, I definitely think he's going to be in the championship hunt. A few people on other shows have kind of likened it perhaps to the situation with Bizecki last year, where he'll be there or thereabouts probably for a lot, if not most of the season. And it might just tail off as the, you know, the twenty twenty four bikes continue to get developed and the twenty three bikes don't. Some of that will come into play and who knows, contractually, you know, Marquez's attention might shift to something else for twenty twenty five in terms of does he stay in Grissini? Does he go back to Honda?

You know, does the KTM thing ever happen? Probably not. So there's a few distractions that might come along, but the Mark is, you know, given what we said earlier on that he's not a particular fan of Qatar, coming in fourth and fifth across the two races or the sprint and the race, to be correct, was a pretty good result overall. So I think he'll probably be pretty happy with that. And Portimau is a track that he likes.

So, yeah, let's see what happens in two weeks. A fool and his money may soon be parted if you think that Marquez won't win at Saxon Ring. Or Cota, for that matter. You know, I've been thinking about that and thinking about that and thinking about that. And I just I just don't know, Rich.

I won't put it past him winning, but I think it's going to be one of those things where it's. Benyias falls on a bump, Martín does something stupid and it sort of falls in his lap. I don't think on outright speed he can beat, he can play with Martín. Well, Jim, I'm holding out for Alex Rins winning the race on the Yamaha, you know, because crazy things happened last year. They do.

It seems like crazy things happen at Cota, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. You never know. You just never know. That probably is beyond the bounds of wishful thinking.

But, you know, you never know. You look. Let's go back to the kid. Does he win a race this year? I don't think I don't think he wins a full race, but I could certainly see him winning a sprint because I think it's going to take him a good chunk of this year to get his head around the tires thing.

I know, you know, you will learn a lot from Qatar, but he had the preseason test there. Every other track he goes to apart from Valencia, he's had and that was only a day and it was the first day he'd been on the bike. So every other track is a voyage into the unknown for him. So kind of like every track is a new learning experience for him. And so it's going to be very difficult, but in the sprint, obviously, tires aren't really an issue so much.

So you could see him once he's really got the measure of the bike and he's already got a pretty good measure from what we can see. So it's not a hard to visit. If he could qualify, say front two rows, you could definitely see him winning a sprint. And I think it's beyond a certainty that he will get a podium at some stage. Yeah, I think a podium is there.

Definitely a sprint race. Maybe. But what I'm thinking is if you get a rain race, I think Acosta may win one. Yeah, okay. Well, whether only because I think only if it's like, hey, it's later in the year, right?

And hey, it's raining. It's raining pretty hard. He's going quick. And then Yaya doesn't have to go that quick. Kind of like when Miller wanted Asin, right?

Marquez was hunting him down. I was like, I don't need to. He's not a threat in this championship. I'm not going to go here. Kind of a thing.

But you don't know that there's so many great storylines to the season so far. What does Marquez do? What does Acosta do? Does Ben Naya just rattle off a third title in the row? Does Martin finally stop the bleeding and get his mind right?

What does Yamaha and Honda do? There's so many storylines that are already there. I mean, Bizecki had a terrible weekend for all these purposes. Still struggling to get his head around the 2023 bike, isn't he? He says it doesn't work for him.

Having trouble with the front pushing by the sounds of it in a way that the 22 bike didn't do. But interesting that Digi is making a much better fist of it. Okay, he fell off in the sprint and that was a weird crash. That might have been a mechanical thing for all we know because of where he crashed and how he crashed. But Bizecki certainly looks to be having some problems.

But I've turned that around. I'm sure he will. But it kind of rules him out of contention for the championship if he doesn't sort it out quite quickly. That's the problem for him. You can't afford to lose ground not in a field like this.

I haven't mentioned Jack Miller, Jim. It's one race. He crashed. And then even Miller admitted he had the fade. I was like, ugh.

His factory seat is going to be occupied by someone else next year. I hate to say that. But that's my prediction. And although he was lovely in the interview that Martin did with him and very humble and respectful of his new teammate, but Augusto Fernandez had a pretty torrid weekend as well on the other GasGas. So that's an uncomfortable position.

Augusto seemed to be really coming good at the end of last year. He had some good rides. He was consistently getting better. Things were good. And suddenly the kid shows up and now you are not the favorite son of that team anymore.

I mean, the disparity between the eighth that, no, sorry, the ninth that Acosta has and the 17th that Fernandez has is a chasm. Okay, outlier. Outlier that is Qatar. Where is that reality? But as we said in the preseason show, although I accepted some people might not have got to hear it because of the issues with the MP3 file that we put out, but we discussed in that the fact that both at Sepang and at LaSalle, Fernandez was really struggling by the sounds of it.

And again, he didn't really touch on this because he wouldn't, but it sounded as if he was really struggling to get to grips with the carbon chassis that the KTM now runs in the GasGas squad. So again, he'll figure it out. But when you've got somebody on the other side of the box like Acosta, it just adds another layer of pressure that you can sort of well do without really. So yeah, difficult times for 50% of the KTM squad at the minute. All right, let's wrap this up because we have prattled on more than we needed to.

Benyaya is your championship leader on 31 points. Bender is in second in the championship. Martina is third. Marquez fourth. Mark that is.

Bastianini, Asparguero, Marquez, Alex, DG and Tonya, Acosta and Vinales are your top 10 people in points. And that is the racing from Qatar. With that, is there anything else we need to say, Rich? I think we have covered everything we wanted to. I just want to correct one thing because I've been thinking about this whilst we've been talking and in actual fact, I'm pretty sure, I think David Munoz in the Moto3 race, he stalled at the beginning of the warm-up lap.

So I think he did start the race from pits. I think you're right. And he was like half a lap behind. And he finished 16th in the end. Whereas as you said, Jim Rauw, Fernandez who had a problem on the grid, that was at the end of the warm-up.

Before the warm-up. Before the warm-up lap. So he got to go around and join at the back. So yeah, just to correct one little thing that we said wrong earlier on. Yep.

Okay. With that everyone, I will remind you all to ride safe. See you next time.