The COTA Race Weekend

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. 763 for April 18th 2024. I'm Jim McDowell back from Kota and the Mad Dash to and from that requires for me to get there.

And of course, as always, Richard Jout is there with me from the UK. Richard, how are you this evening? Very good. Thank you, Jim. Yes.

Good evening to you and everybody listening. Just super excited to hear all about the adventures in Austin that you had last weekend. So yeah, looking forward to getting into that. Yeah, but I think first we need to talk about the subscribers, Rich, and a couple of new people who have joined us. If you could tell the folks what's going on there.

Absolutely. So again, raffling the coin tin, because it's proven to be fairly successful for us. And we do need more subscribers, paid subscribers to the show, as we've described on recent episodes. So yes, we've had a couple of new people come aboard. So thank you very much to both Gareth Locke, who's a listener from Australia, and Brenton Edwards, who I think is also in Australia.

I like to which we have existing and some recent subscribers. So we have Jacob Nercow, Carl Hun, Rick Taylor, Norrie Ito, Nick Saban and Alan Fleming on the PayPal side of things. And then going over to our patrons, we have Scott Baldwin, Ollie, Dennis Kindig, Jeremy Burnish, Jacob Rower, Darren Andrews, Paul Lang, Gary Shavit and Steve. So thank you everybody very, very much. As we've said before, thousands of people download the show, Jim, not many people put a couple of quid in the tin each month, and just a couple of pounds, a couple of dollars, a couple of euros, whatever it is, a couple of Aussie dollars.

We have lots of people listening in all of those territories, of course, that makes a huge difference to us and will allow us to do more and more. So yeah, all we can really say is lots of other shows generate lots of Patreons and PayPal subscribers, and we're trying to do the same. So if you can, please do, because it will help us a lot. And hopefully it helps us to bring you the content that you really like. And obviously, Jim, you've been at Cota talking to the big and the famous.

So this is part of the way that we're rebuilding the show as it used to be in the olden days. It's a bit harder now, although, interestingly, with Liberty coming on board, which we're going to talk about a little while, things will possibly change a little bit for the easier. We'll have to wait and see. We'll talk about that. But yeah, thank you to everybody that listens to the show anyway.

If you can leave a comment on the platform that you listen to it through, that helps with all the algorithm stuff, as you always say, Jim. I don't understand how it works, to be honest with you, but it obviously it's effective. And for those that can or will subscribe to the show in terms of a financial contribution, that is amazing. So thank you to those that do and hopefully a few more can come on board. So remember to go and to donate to the show, you can go to www.motopodcast.com.

The donate button is on the right hand side, or you can go to www.patreon.com forward slash MotoPod. So if you can, please do. If you don't, as Rich says, please go back to where you get this podcast and give us a grading and a review. And with that, we will move forward to the news. So as a Coda, the 1200 mile one way, 2400 miles round trip, that gives you some European listeners, some idea of how big the US actually is.

Wow. And it does take a little bit of time to get there. If you drove it straight through, it would be 18 hours, but I can't do that. So we didn't. We camped in the lot N, which is right behind the S's.

If you see the helicopter shots and you see all the RVs that are there, we're in there somewhere, guarantee you there. It was an amazing weekend of racing that was down there. Probably the best weekend of all three classes I've ever witnessed in all the time that I've been watching this. It was really that good. It's no joke.

I mean, if you want to know why I put the time and the effort in to drive the 1200 miles to get to see it, that's why. Because you're just waiting for that one magical weekend. And it seemed like this was that magical weekend that has happened for us. It was warm. You seem to get three seasons in Texas each time we go down there.

Friday was very cloudy in the morning, low cloud, relatively cool. It had a decent breeze going that just kept everything very nice. Spent some time at turn two and then made my way into the paddock to start doing interviews and finding people to talk to and whatnot. So all the interviews that I came up with are going to be a separate show. They will be out after this one.

So they'll be 764 for everybody who wants to know. Just a little taste of what's on there just to name drop a little bit. There's some time with Simon Patterson. You know him. I think all you guys know who Simon Patterson is.

No explanation there. From there, I spent time with John Hopkins, JD Beach, Promoto America. He popped in, spent time with the guys from Flat Rock, the new track in Tennessee, Eric Paredes. About 30 minutes with Eric. It's very good about what they're doing, what they're trying to do, and how they're doing it, which is really kind of cool.

Then the big one was talking to Don Rosamondo of Dorna. He's a chief commercial officer, the CCO. We have a pretty funny joke about that. When you listen to that one, it's kind of telling how that one goes. From there, did Joel Kelso on Friday after practice and then again on Saturday after qualifying.

It's very interesting what he says after qualifying about what the race could hold. When you hear it, you'll understand. It's worth waiting around guys for this interview because I still got to edit those and put those together. I had a fantastic time. I met a man named Dave who hunted me down on the paddock and said that he loved the show.

He loved what you and I were doing, Rich. He said many plaudits to him. Thank you, Dave, for finding me there. I really appreciate that. I did meet up with Grace.

She was on the podcast at the beginning of the year. She does the Park for Me, the Formula One podcast. She was there with her husband. We chatted for a long time, talked about a lot of things. I had a lot of fun with everyone that was there.

The weekend was definitely fantastic. Now, the crowds, I don't know. TV, I don't know. COTA is a big place. It's really hard to judge how many people are there.

I will tell you this. When I walked into Don Rosamondo's office on Friday evening at six o'clock, he was extremely ecstatic with the number of people who were there for a Friday. Take that for what it's worth, people. I don't know. To me, I thought there were more people than there has been at COTA in previous years.

I know there's a whole lot more people that were camping. I know a lot of people came in Friday night for camping. The two rows behind where we parked to camp, those filled in on Friday afternoon, evening, and a little trickled in that Saturday morning. Interesting. That seemed really good.

It's hard to tell with the grandstands because COTA does not sell for MotoGP a general admissions ticket. You have to have a seat. That's how they're counting, I think, how many people are actually there. I saw a lot of people in the pack who had the VIP experience tickets that they put in. I figured they probably sold somewhere between probably a thousand to two thousand tickets.

The number of paddle boards and people going by was always usually in a group of about 10. There was roughly about 10 people and they were going by with different people of those groups every 20 minutes or so like that while I was down there. That seemed to be nice. If there was more seats sold, I don't know. I can't tell you, but my best guess is that on Saturday for the sprint race, there was maybe 30,000 people.

My best guess was maybe 50,000, 55,000 on race day Sunday. I don't think those are bad numbers for motorcycle racing in the US, but it also tells you there's a lot left to be tapped into to get. A lot. Yeah, a lot. Can I just say interject, Jim?

Again, as we've said before in terms of access, thank you very much to Dawna because they finished you with a media pass, which makes, well, I mean, you can't do anything without that. Again, thank you to everybody at Dawna that assisted us with that. Jim, you were being prolific and we were trying to do the same on the Motopod channel in terms of the Instagram stuff. Lots of pictures went out. Again, I meant to mention it a minute ago and I forgot.

Please subscribe through the Instagram channel for Motopod because the more people we get on there. I mean, Instagram is really the, I would say the social media platform of choice these days. So if we can get as many people subscribing to the Motopod channel, as well as your channel and mine as well. But the Motopod one is obviously the important one because that's where we will generate other interest in terms of partners for the show. And you just build up more and more of a following the more and more people that you have on board.

So that's important too. And yeah, some great pictures. You managed to get snaps with a good deal of the people that you spoke to, didn't you, Jim? So yeah, all good publicity. Yep.

Got picture with Kenny Roberts, the King, which was funny story, paddock story. Jim's walking around through the paddock. I don't know if you saw this one on the Instagram, but I was running around through the back trailers and there are all these engineering offices. And so the one says, engineer, it says a brilliant engineering office. I'm like, well, I'm not allowed in there, but I got the degree, which I thought was kind of cute.

Right. So they're all sitting there. They're kind of looking at me funny while I was taking the pictures like, who's this idiot? But who cares? Made for a funny picture.

So I always like to find that funny little thing that happens. But I had found Alpen stars. And so Randy Momola and Henry Roberts Jr. were standing there. And I'm kind of waiting.

They walk off here. I'll grab them, see if I can get Randy for five minutes or something like that. Be interesting to get his take on, you know, arrow and rags and stuff like that. And lo and behold, who comes walking out, but Kenny Roberts, the King, and he sits down. It's like, oh, he's with his grandkids and Kenny Jr.'s wife.

And I'm like, okay. All right. What do I do now? This is a legend. I can't pass a legend up here.

I'm thinking, I'm thinking. So like I literally like in like racer mode, man, I'm like, suck it up and do it, suck it up and do it, suck it up and do it. I'm like, so I step in. I'm like, hi, Kenny. Can I have a photo, please?

Sure. Have you ever met him before? No, never. I mean, to me, he's such a legend just because of the fact that he was sort of the, he's not the first American to go to Europe and race to road race. Right.

I can't think of who it was before that. It's before my time of following the sport, but he, Kenny Roberts, when we started dirt track, people would always talk about the night Kenny Roberts won the Indy mile on a TZ 750 four cylinder two-stroke. And he did it because it was so fast in a straight line. He had to ride the cushion. And by the end of the 25 lap national, the cushion had been moved all the way to the hay bale.

So the last four laps, he's kicking the hay off the side of the bike as he goes down the straightaway. And each time he just barely gets past J. Springsteen at the start finish. So he wins the race, beats J. Springsteen.

And he famously at the end of it, they asked him about riding. He goes, they don't pay me enough to ride that, which is classic. Right. So that's sort of this like race of lore that everybody always seemed to talk about in dirt track. And then when Kenny left to go to Europe, he did it with Goodyear slicks on a Yamaha that was not the factory Yamaha.

It was his team. I can't remember who was running the show. I think it was Bud Asklin, I think, but I'm not a hundred percent on that one. But I do know that they got the Silverstone that year and they hadn't had a rain race. Well, of course it's Britain, so it rains.

Right. And nobody would sell Kenny a rain tire. So Kenny just dirt tracked it and cut his own tire and won. Now I'm sorry, that's legend material for any stretch of the imagination. So there was no good question I could have ever asked him anyway.

So I'm sure if I would have asked about what he thought about aerodynamics, he told me they were shit, but I'm sure he would have done. It would have been blunt or whatever. So that's my story. That's Jim's little story from the paddock for all that. But that's the experience down there.

If you could ever go to one of these, even as a fan, and just watch it, you will enjoy yourself. Namely, I think because there's so much that TV takes away from the racing and one of it is the elevation that actually is there. There's a lot more elevation to Kota than what you think. Yes, you can tell that the first turn is up there, but there's a lot of other little elevations that make that track extremely technical and difficult. When you listen to Judge Kelso, he'll tell you about that too.

He has a very interesting take on why it's technical. So I'll leave that as a, yeah, I'm dropping stuff hints in there. I shouldn't probably do, but you'll like that interview as well. It's a short one, but it's there. So I think that's one of the things.

The noise is the other thing that you really can't really truly comprehend from it and all that. And then again, I think the colors are way more, I think they're muted on TV for me. I don't know. Maybe it's me, my eyes, something like that. Everything is more vivid in first person.

I mean, it just is everything, the smell of the bikes when they go by, the sound, just the spectacle and the crowd, the reaction of the crowd when something exciting happens. You just can't, you get none of that. I mean, you can hear the crowd on TV, but it's just not the same as being there. So, and as I said before we started recording, Jim, the crowd from the TV did look thicker this year. Now I know that last year, I think there was general disappointment with the crowd level.

So you're starting from a low-ish bar in terms of expectations, it's true, but it did look to be more well attended this year, which is, you know, that's obviously a good thing. And we're going to talk about Liberty in a moment because it's a fairly major news article, although it's a couple of weeks old now. But, you know, they have, the good news for them is that they have a huge growth potential, don't they? Because for a variety of different reasons, MotoGP is not quite as popular as it really deserves to be. And certainly on the evidence of the three races that we had on Sunday, it should be bigger than Formula One, which is pretty turgid most of the time in terms of the racing spectacle these days.

So let's just talk about Liberty Media now while we walk up here, right? So Liberty Media, the people who own Formula One, who own the commercial rights, the Formula One, they have now bought, I think it's 85% of the actual rights that Dorna owned, and they're going to market it. Hence, Don Rosamondo, the American sort of leading that charge. And, you know, he says this in the interview, but he says, look, if you look at this, this sport should be the most popular motor sport in the world. There's nothing like it.

It's a product that is amazing, yet somehow there's something missing. And he said, the other thing is there is so much untapped potential in the US market. And you saw that because Formula One was kind of dry initially. It has been dry. And throughout history, Formula One becomes dominated by one team, one driver.

They sort of goes in waves. And then there's a rule shakeup and you get maybe something crazy happens and things like that. But the biggest part of the success of Formula One is the drive to survive series that somehow has encapsulated people. And it was lightning in a bottle. It happened at a time when the pandemic had hit, everybody was at home.

There was something to watch that was very different than a movie or a TV series or something like that. And somehow it gripped the American populace. Now the American populace is absolutely amazing. There was a statistic given out at Kota that said that 40% of all US Formula One fans are female. That's a wild statistic to me.

But the other thing about this with Liberty is that they've got so much power in the market that they got all the contacts, all the people to this. I didn't get this in the interview because I wasn't quite ready. Ricky mistake, you know, laid on the clutch, you know, laid on the record button. But I walked into Don Rosmano's office and the first thing he says to me is, hey, Jim, did you see the TBS where Shaquille O'Neal, Shaq and Barclay are on TBS talking about basketball during the basketball intermission talking about MotoGP? And he shows it to me on his phone.

He's so excited about this. And he said that, you know, look, the growth potential in Europe is maybe single digit. The growth potential in Asia is maybe one single digit as well. The US holds double digit year over year potential that you want to hook, that you want to grab into. And he thinks Liberty has the people and the tools that are going to be able to help make this sport phenomenal, that everybody's going to want to do it.

Now, if you want to say anything there before I rant on and Joe rant on Rich, let me know. Well, I have to I have some thoughts, but you keep going. Why don't you keep going and I'll chip in at the end. So I'm I'm old enough to remember back in the 90s when AMA Superbike was absolutely positively amazing. There was everybody was a factory team.

You had Hayden, you had Hale, you had Mellad and you had Spees. You had all of these. And Gobert was there for a little bit on off back forth, whatever. There was so much talent in that paddock. It was absolutely amazing.

It was great. It was growing. It was it was it was that double digit growth that you wanted to see. However, NASCAR was doing the same thing. They had double digit growth.

They were building all these super speedways. And what did you get? You had DMG, Daytona Motorsports Group, took it and bought AMA Motorcycle Road Racing away and then promptly destroyed it. Now, people some people will tell you that that was never DMG's plan to destroy motorcycle racing. Some people will tell you that's exactly what they wanted to do because their prized little possession, i.e.

NASCAR, was could see that the same demographic of people and slightly younger demographic of people were in to motorcycles and they couldn't get them to come to the NASCAR races. So to me, I see sort of my original thought when Liberty's when this leaked out that Liberty had bought Dorna was wow, Dorna Liberty owns Formula One. They have this amazing rip of the US population. And guess what? The same demographic that's watching Formula One is going to want to watch Moto GP.

Well, let's buy it and kill it. It just it just that way because I saw what happened in DMG. Again, I don't know what really happened, but whatever DMG tried or thought they could do, they knew nothing about bikes. Now, from what I was told, and you'll hear it in the interview again from Don Rosamondo, that Liberty doesn't want to screw with anything. They think that the product is correct.

They think that the format is correct. They love everything that's there. They just want to help make it help bring more attention to it by their technique of making it bigger. I hope that they're right. Simon Patterson, you'll hear in the interview, he agrees that Liberty is going to be the best thing that's probably ever happened to Moto GP.

Now, if that's true, great. If not, I'm still watching motorcycle racing. I don't really care. So that's my two cents on the whole Liberty thing. Sorry for going on forever.

No, no. Well, I could probably go on for two or three times as long. I mean, I think we've got to recognize that Liberty's involvement is purely going to be from a commercial marketing point of view. And they have no say over the rules or anything. No, no, the rules, that all stays as it is with the manufacturers association with ERTA, with the MSMA.

Dorner stay involved in terms of the running of the sport, which I think is a key and crucial point, because in terms of the actual logistical running of the sport, I think Dorner have done a fantastic job and will continue to do so. I mean, just point the principle, Jim, Liberty haven't bought it. They've made an application to buy it and it has to go through various gates in terms of competition law in various parts of the world. Well, primarily in Europe, because Liberty had this problem when they bought Formula One. Also, I recall there were some issues that they had to negotiate around.

You know, one interesting point in terms of them taking on this 85, 86, whatever it is, 80 something percent stake, probably they will get hit some hurdles there because let's not forget that Dorner own World Superbike as well, although they criminally don't do anything with World Superbike. And it's quite likely that they may be forced, and this is probably a good thing, actually, to let World Superbike go to a competing commercial rights holder, as things used to be in the olden days. And hopefully that'll be a bit of a kick up the ass that World Superbike needs in terms of, you know, promotion and stuff, because Dorner really don't do much with it. And, you know, the racing is very, very good in World Superbike. So that's a couple of things.

I mean, yeah, I agree with you from a Formula One standpoint. I mean, let's remember Liberty Media, the clue is in the title that this is what they do. They are a media company. And obviously we live in, you know, the 2024 now. It's all about media, as we were talking about with Instagram, just on our little channel and stuff.

So they know what they're doing. And I think they kind of, I don't really want to use the term lucked in with Covid because that's not really what I mean. But Liberty had owned Formula One for a couple of years, and then the strive to survive thing came on. Then you had a captive audience during Covid, of course, and it kind of really caught on. But I think equal to that, and possibly more crucially, if we go back to the Bernie Ecclestone days of owning Formula One, if you'd looked at MotoGP and Formula One in those days, MotoGP was miles ahead in terms of digital media and stuff, because Bernie just didn't want to do anything.

And those roles have kind of switched in the intervening period because Liberty have taken Formula One on, and it has gone into the stratosphere with them. And Dorner's handling of it almost looks antiquated, well, it doesn't look, it is antiquated by comparison now. So I think what Liberty did with F1, and they will definitely do with MotoGP, is they will stop all this nonsense about not being able to film something and release it on the web or through a social media channel without their express approval. You can't do anything under the Dorner terms. And we know how hard we had to fight just to get a media pass because they didn't consider a podcast to be a kind of a form of media.

And this podcast has been going since, what, 2007 when Bob first started it? Or 2006 even, I think it might have been. So it's been going a long, long time, and yet Dorner's still a bit sniffy about podcasts as a sort of a form of media, because it's not legacy media, it's not printed. So I think Liberty will revolutionize MotoGP in that way. Now, the only, I think it's going to be great.

I think it's exactly what the sport needs. I think it was Simon Patterson, but it won't only be him that has said this, I read this on X. He made the very salient point that what they must not do is just purely try to market to people that ride motorbikes. They need to go after the car audience. And I think this cross pollination with the F1 crowd could be a big kind of part of that.

One of the things I don't like about F1, which I don't really watch very much anymore anyway, because the racing's rubbish, but I hope they don't go too much down the glitz and glamour route with MotoGP, because I'm a bit old fashioned, a lot of that sticks in my throat, but it will be more of interest and more palatable to the younger audiences, I suppose. Having influences, whatever the hell they are, walking around on the grid, being obnoxious and ignoring everybody and just acting like assholes, but not all of them. But that's kind of often what you see on the Formula 1 grid. So we'll have to put up with a certain degree of that, I'm sure. But if the overall net effect of this is that the sport grows, I think that's good.

And it shouldn't interfere with the technical sporting side of that, because that won't really be under the purview of liberty. So I think there's lots of different elements to this. And I'd be interested to know what people think about this in terms of good, bad hopes, fears, etc. But that's kind of my take on it anyway. I think you're right.

I think it's going to be better. We're not going to see anything until it actually becomes final. I think everyone believes it will be final. There may be a few things that have to be negotiated. And it's going to be roughly around Coda next year that you're going to start to see Liberty do what they do to promote what's going on.

I joked with Simon Patterson. I said, as long as these guys understand you cannot take a motorcycle to the center of Las Vegas and race it there, you're fine. That's sort of the problem is where are the races going to go. They're going to try to find more races or more places for races. And that's a little tougher with a motorcycle.

So that's why the flat rock thing is so front and center because people found out what they were doing and who was behind it. This was all hush, hush, hush, hush, hush stuff. I've been chasing these guys for over six months to try to talk to about it. And it was one of the first questions I had when I had a quick phone call with Tim Chandler was where's the money? Because that's the obvious question when you're building a racetrack.

Where's the money? Because I go, don't worry, man. Money's covered. Well, okay. Now we know where the money came from.

It's that. So I think that covers Liberty media as much as what we know and what we think we know and how that's going to be or whatnot. So we'll leave that there and go forward here now to the news that broke from a MotoGP standpoint, which was that Fabio has resigned with Yamaha for 25 and 26. Question then being where does Jorge Martín go? So let's first break this down.

Fabio resigns with Yamaha. They have hired in one of the Ducati engineers that somehow has swayed Fabio that they're going to make things better and everything is going to become good. Conversely, the question is where is Fabio going to go anyway because his seat, the way he was going to go was probably to the Aprilia. Now I think it's well known that asparga has said, I'm at the end here. I'm looking at more of that test roll.

I'm looking at more of, hey, here's a wild card here and there kind of a thing. So that would have left the door open for Fabio to go there, but he either, Aprilia couldn't afford the money that Fabio wanted. And so Fabio did get a raise from Yamaha and decided to stay. But as a fan, watching how far behind the Hondas and the Yamahas were at Cota, it is just, God bless Quattroraro for doing it because man, I don't know how he does it with a smile on his face. I really don't because it's depressing to see.

But your thoughts there, Rich, with Quattroraro. Well, I think 10 million euros a year probably help to sweeten that particular pill because that's what is being talked about as his retainer for the next couple of seasons, somewhere between 10 to 12 million euros per year. I mean, clearly Aprilia went after him, but there's no way that they would have been offering him anywhere near that sort of money. I mean, again, just listening to other podcasts and stuff with people that, you know, more tapped into this than we are, unfortunately. I think probably Aprilia might have struggled to even get to four, you know, so it's a big difference in the money.

And, you know, all along Fabio's thought for the last couple of years since he won that championship and things went, have gone sort of pear shaped at Yamaha. He's been asking for more of a European style of team and they are making and they have been making big changes and will continue to do so. And obviously things won't change overnight. So one would assume that his re-signing is on the promise of this change continuing. And as you alluded to, Jim, there's other personnel coming in now.

Interesting, I was listening to a podcast with Carl Crutchlow earlier on today and he was talking about when he started his test role with Yamaha a couple of two or three seasons ago, was that it wasn't really a test team in the way that European test teams for MotoGP teams work. It kind of just did its own thing. And there's very little communication between it and the race team always to the point where you think, well, why bother? Whereas now that has completely changed. They're now deeply integrated into the whole structure of how that Yamaha racing outfit works.

So these things just take months and years to filter through. So I'm sure Quattro has been promised and is evidently believing that things will improve significantly, particularly as they run up obviously to the new rules in 2027. And a big dumper truck full of dollars landing on his driveway at home probably helped to make that decision a wee bit easier. But it does believe the Aprilia seat is a very tantalizing sort of rumor hotspot at the moment, doesn't it? Yes, it does.

So the other hot rumor was that to go sort of along the lines of this Yamaha thing was that PreMac may be changing manufacturers and not being a Ducati team, that they would become a Yamaha team and that the PreMac bikes would move to Valentino Rossi's team. So there was a little blurb on Instagram that said, Martin said, doesn't matter if you switch brands, I'm not going to be here. So apparently Jorge Martin is done with PreMac and he's going somewhere. Now, is that somewhere a Aprilia? I think that's where he's going.

Because where else can he go and get he isn't going to get on a Yamaha. He's not going to get on a Haunt and a right. There's no room at the end at KTM and the only other decent bike, and we know it's really probably pretty damn good, is the Aprilia. So I think Martin's headed that way. Yeah, well, we were dropping Instagram WhatsApp messages about this at the weekend, weren't we, Jim?

Oh, yeah. I mean, there is a seat potentially vacant at Yamaha because I think Rins is only on a single year deal for this year. But they'll retain Rins. I think they'll retain Rins. I think they will as well.

I mean, it would make sense to because he is, you know, a good development rider amongst other things. HRC, okay, they could do a, you know, the same thing that Yamaha have done with Fabio and offer him a colossal amount of money, which might be enough to tempt him over there, I suppose. But I kind of struggled to see it happening myself. As you say, Jim, definitely no room at the end at KTM. And Ducati, well, he's obviously he wants to be Bagnari's teammate or team leader there, doesn't he?

But I suspect Bagnari will have a bit of sway there. Bastianini is doing pretty well. And I would have thought from Bagnari's point of view, he would rather have Bastianini there than Martine. So maybe Ducati don't want to rock that boat too hard. And with the Aprilia performance, not just not just at Austin, I mean, let's face it, Maderick won the sprint race in Portimao and had the technical problem, the gearbox problem in the main race, in which he was doing extremely well.

So the Aprilia seat does look to be a, you know, very good one to jump onto. Martine's quandary will be that you won't get paid a lot of money to go there. But if he wants to be a works rider and he wants to be on a winning bike, does he overcome that by, you know, going on to, you know, because Ducati don't pay big salaries, they're all about sort of win bonuses. So maybe Aprilia will be doing the same sort of thing with him. I mean, I don't know, I've never even heard a rumor about what, say, Espagro or Vinales get paid at Aprilia.

I mean, maybe we could try and find that out, but I know there's a bit of test, this will be a test of Martine's kind of, what's the word, ambition, I think, to win a championship if he doesn't do it on the, on the Prima. Yeah. So they had the hero walk where it was, they, you know, prayed the riders out. They had a little talk with Jack Applegate and they had some lady who was a former Harlem Grove charter. Did you see that part of the- I didn't.

From, okay. So she asked Jorge Martinez how much he makes. That was her question. And Jorge Martinez is like, I can't really tell you. And she's, she kind of said, well, come on, you can tell me.

And he's like, well, why don't you take a guess and I'll tell you whether you're right. She throws out 5 million and he says close. So it's possible that he's got that much money. Now that to me is in line with what I think Aprilia could pay Martine. So if he's happy at Prima for that, but gets a bike that's a factory bike for the same amount, I think you can draw the, you can, there's a straight line between the two of them, right?

And you get there. So, all right. I think that does up for that part of it. Real quick here, get better, get better soon out there for Dovey and Patrucci and Brad Bender. So what was Dovey's issue?

I didn't remember. I don't remember seeing that one. Tell me what that one was. Yeah. So both Andrea DiVizio and Danilo Patrucci had pretty serious motocross accidents.

Oh, they were both motocross accidents. Both. Yeah. And so was Brad Bender's. It emerged after the main race on Sunday at Cota that Brad Bender had, I won't go so far as to say broken ankle, but certainly quite a badly damaged ankle, which I understood from another podcast was, yeah, that was another motocross related thing.

So I mean, motocross is a dangerous way of training for these guys, isn't it? And Patrucci is really badly beaten up. And so was the initial reports on Andrea DiVizio, who obviously doesn't compete in road racing anymore, but both of those guys have been really quite seriously injured. They're going to be in hospital for quite a while. I mean, not life-threatening injuries, but I mean, Patrucci has broken his jaw, teeth have gone.

He's really beaten and battered up. And Brad Bender's underperformance at Cota can, to at least some extent, be told about because he had a seriously damaged ankle or foot. I think it was an ankle, which obviously wasn't revealed to the media until after the event. So yeah, I mean, just wish those guys speedy recoveries, obviously, but it's not really relevant to sort of use MotoGP wise, I suppose, that Andrea and Danilo, but yeah, don't like to see people getting hurt. Yeah.

Yep. So the last thing on here is we have Trackhouse and we have Justin Marks owns Trackhouse. He also owns a team in NASCAR and he is an accomplished racer. He's an accomplished businessman and he has his own team. Now that's an American team and they are not shy on those bikes about the fact that that is an American team.

It's actually, you'll hear this when the Dan Rosamondo thing, but it is the right person in charge of the right team at the right time. There's more to it. You'll hear it later, but he's an underbashed fan of the sport, Justin Marks. So as I found out while there, apparently he was invited somewhere, saw MotoGP instantly in love with it. Like I got to be a part of this and was working with Dorna to get the, what is there?

There's one factory slot, one slot left open for a team, right? Cause it's 22 teams, 23. There's one factory spot. Yeah, there's one spot, three, whatever it is, whatever the number is, doesn't matter for this story. He wanted it.

He's why I want it. I want in, I'll get bikes. I'll do, I want in, I need in. And it just so happened at the exact same time, crypto data falls apart with R&F. Thank you.

I decided to go down the R&F route there. So that's how he got in and took that, right? The thing of it is, is I think, I think we can all see the handwriting on the wall, especially after this weekend, that Trackhouse is going to want an American rider. I think you think, I think most people think and go, Hey, Joe Roberts has a chance to wind up riding in MotoGP next year at Trackhouse. I believe that to be wholeheartedly possible.

Now I spent a lot of time in the paddock. I saw a lot of time. Let me try to paint the picture of it. If you were standing, looking at all the hospitality units, it went from, from my left to right. If you're looking at it, Aprilia, Trackhouse, OnlyFans, and Joe Roberts was going back and forth between Trackhouse and OnlyFans most of the weekend.

I'm only saying I can, I can tell you that they went in and out a lot of different times. That's all I can tell you. Now, the other interesting thing that goes with this is that right after, like OnlyFans is like the last of the sort of, I'll call it like semi-permanent structures. And then it was tents. The first tent is BOE Motorsport, who we talked to Joe Kelso.

I watched Joe and his dad, Joel and his dad go in and out of OnlyFans a great number of times too. So is Kelso going to Moto2 on an OnlyFans at American Racing and is Roberts moving from the American Racing team to Trackhouse? Take it or what you will. I think again, to use your terminology earlier, Jim, we can start to draw some lines here, I believe, because I mean, serendipitously and perhaps, well, maybe not as coincidentally as it might seem from the outside, because clearly a lot of this has been going on for a long time, but Liberty comes in and you've got this flat rock coming on board soon and that looks like a mega, mega facility. I mean, that is a race.

If anybody wants to go to an overseas race in the future, that would definitely be one to go to because that track looks awesome. Anyway, clearly Liberty are going to want to push MotoGP in America hard. And as we've said many times, and not just us, lots of people have kind of lamented the fact that there are so many races on what's classed as the Iberian Peninsula, so Spain and Portugal. I mean, four races in that area is too many. It's heaven for you if you're living there, but for the rest of us, hey.

Brilliant. And Dawn is Spanish-owned company, so you can understand how that happens. So now the balance power politically and all the rest of it shifts a bit. And West Coast, kind of East Coast, and somewhere in the middle, maybe not the Gulf Coast, but you can see America is the biggest economy in the world. It can easily support three races if you can have tracks there, but they will need American riders, plural, really.

I mean, but at least one. And so Joe Roberts's performance at the weekend could not have been better timed. I mean, lots of things could not have been better timed really in terms of how things are kind of shaped up in terms of news and what's actually come to pass. So it's very easy to see. I'm just going to say it because I mean, it's not as if I'm going to ruin any relationships.

I think Olivera is almost certainly going to be out of that team because as much as I like him, he should never have kind of left or passed up the chance to stay within the KTM family. I think it was a mistake to leave and he hasn't really performed consistently well on the Aprilia. And given the pressure to have an American rider in there, I think it would be unfathomable for me not to see Joe Roberts on that bike. Now, you can make a reasonable argument that of all the Moto2 candidates, he's perhaps not the most deserving of a seat in MotoGP, but that's not the world that we live in. There's commercial considerations here and he is easily good enough to warrant a place in MotoGP and he might well win a bunch of races this year, which makes that candidacy even more relevant.

So I just think it's going to happen, Jim. There's no scenario now, assuming this Liberty deal goes through, but I'm very sure it will. I can't see why it wouldn't. So yeah, it just makes sense to me. The interesting one is Raul Fernandez.

He didn't have a bad weekend actually, when you look at the actual results, but again, he's another person that's going to need to step up a little bit because he's under pressure there for sure. Yeah, he is. The only caveat is that I think there is a lingering, potentially a bit of a lingering, what's the right word, dislike or there's a slight shadow over Joe Roberts on the Aprilia side of things because let's not forget he was offered a ride in the works a few seasons ago and he turned it down. I think it was the right decision at the time, but I think there's a little bit of ill will there. But Trackhouse is not Aprilia.

Yeah, there were other circumstances with that because there was supposed to be this guarantee from Aprilia to have 250s in Modo America and all this stuff, which never happened. There is some beef there though, Jim. I don't think I'm betraying any confidences and I didn't mention it at the time, but if you remember, I spoke to Joe in Qatar last year, so that was one of the interviews I put out. Obviously, I arranged it through his press officer and I was instructed not to mention the Aprilia situation from a few seasons before. I wasn't going to anyway because I understood that that might have been because at that point he was not doing all that well at Atal Trans.

For all I know, he might have been thinking, I made a terrible mistake not going, I don't want to talk about it. It was never on my radar to ask him about that, but I was instructed not to. Clearly, there is some lingering after effects from that episode, but hopefully that can all be put right by him jumping on a Trackhouse bike. He has the right passport to be in that team. He's doing well, hopefully.

Yeah, absolutely. He showed at the weekend that he's got every right to be off of a position. Yeah, I agree. I also think, I don't want to go back to Liberty Media, but I want to go back there just because of this because I just remember this and some conversations and things that I heard. I can't say from who or where.

Sorry, guys, it's just not going to happen. But there is a belief that you're going to see some changes in Moto America as a result of Liberty being head of MotoGP. Now, does that mean Liberty is going to give some airtime to Moto America? Don't know. But if they want and they do want an American rider and they want a succession of American riders, they know how Red Bull works for their driver development for Formula 1.

They've seen how Valentino's camp works. They know what's going on and it's believed that they may force a strong word, but we may have a more similar Moto 3, Moto 2 CEV style of class that shows up on Pirellis at Moto America. Now, that's all pure speculation. It's pure rumor. That's why I'm not going to tell you who I heard it from, but it would be nice if it did happen.

I mean, all of the Talent Cup series that exist around the world and well, I'm going to have an American Talent Cup, right? There is an American one, isn't there? Or there was last, was it last year it emerged? I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, it's going to be impossible for us not to keep referring to Liberty Media because that is a, you know, a bigger sea change in the sport.

I think so. It has happened for quite some time, I'd argue probably since the four stroke change came. Probably. Yeah, I would say yes. Obviously, it's not a technical thing.

It's a commercial thing, but anyway, I mean, it's still a huge significant. And, you know, they are, well, I don't want to use the word ruthless, but they are ruthless business people. They want to make sure that they have got interest in each market that we go to. So Southeast Asia, you know, Australia. Are we going back to South Africa?

That's a question I have, right? Yeah, we should be going to South Africa. Yeah, absolutely. And there are some venues there that maybe they need a bit of work to get them up. But again, Liberty, I can say this from the Formula One standpoint, made sure that Silverstone stayed on the calendar.

Now, Silverstone didn't need to be upgraded, but it did need a much better financial deal to make it workable for the long term because it just wasn't before. So Liberty can take a lot of or deserve, I think, a lot of recognition for the way that they work with venues, with the teams and how they promote, you know, it's selfish self-interest, let's say. But I mean, fine, I don't care if that means we have a wider mix of nationalities in terms of people that are in the series. Okay, they've got to be talented enough to be there, of course, but they will be, you know, there's plenty of talent around the world. So, and I made the point in the last show, I think it was, and I wasn't looking to dump on the Italians or the Spanish, but there are too many Italians and Spaniards in the sport.

I mean, it's just simple facts at the minute. It's because Aldegrid got the seat at Pramac, I think. And, you know, he has a two year contract with Ducati. It's never been said that he's going to Pramac. Oh, I think it's, I think it is official.

I think that is official. But I mean, anyway, he's going into MotoGP. I mean, that's the point. Right. And I just, I just made the point.

The only downside to that, I suppose, in a way was that it's another Spaniard in MotoGP, Simon, you probably want to have some more nationalities. I mean, we desperately need another British rider. Yeah. And God knows where that's going to come from. Because there's nobody really that's, you know, anywhere close to looking like that's going to happen.

So again, hopefully Liberty will help with that because we don't have a system in the UK. It's great for going into World Superbike and we sort of dominate in World Superbike, but it doesn't help with MotoGP. So again, that's a different story for a different day. Otherwise I'll ramble on for hours. But I think this will be good.

And if one of the first good things that happens is that we get an American back into the MotoGP class, good. Cause we need that. All right. Let's talk about the racing that actually took place. How about that?

Cause we've gone on and on and on. Everything else has happened that weekend. Might as well get to some Moto3 activities. One thing I will say, Alonso in qualifying and in practice was by himself all the time. Never was looking for a tow.

He is working about what he was going to do and he put that thing on pole. Rurado was second in the qualifying session and then Holgardo, Vier, Kelso would be fifth on the grid. And then Rolstein, the other Aussie was going to be in six. Now what happens after that qualifying session later that evening is that Rurado winds up talking and says, you know, he's got some stomach pain, whatnot, and, you know, take him to the hospital. He's diagnosed with appendicitis.

He has an emergency appendectomy. Is it an appendectomy? Is that right? That sounds very impressive, Jim. I have no idea, but that sounds right.

We'll go with it. Blind squirrel gets another renowned then guys. He had had his appendix removed and he was unable to ride. That bumped everybody up one spot. Kelso would wind up starting fourth in the race.

That's how it sort of sets up in here. Interestingly, I've just, you know, his teammate Munoz was a few places back behind him and, you know, you always want to beat your teammate. And I think we've all thought Munoz was sort of like the real deal, but that seems to have somewhat cooled slightly. I'm not sure what's really going on with Munoz, but he- Well, tires, I would imagine a big part of that. Yeah, but, you know, everybody else has got the same trouble and they don't seem to have as many problems as he does, which is odd.

But then again, sometimes some people just do not gel with that particular brand of tire or can't figure out how to get around it yet. So there's, we'll see what happens there, but it's just, it's just an interesting note of what goes on there. He was quite hot and cold largely through last year as well. He's an elbows out guy. So you tend to notice him on track when he's up the front, but quite often last year he was quite far back.

So I think that plus maybe the tire thing is just, he isn't quite there at the minute, is he? No, not. And then, you know, Ortola was like way well down for the guy who won here last year. He was like, wow, you qualified 14th. Like, well, man, that's just not even, not even funny, but that's how it starts.

Now the race was a different story. It was interesting. Alonzo would get the whole shot. They had to turn one and well, carnage ensues at that point. Now, luckily the top four guys, I think sort of got through all that.

Um, cause I know Kelso had survived. I think was it Munoz who actually started it all? I don't quite. All I can recall is that there was kind of like the bowling ball thing happened. Right.

And Farioli went down. Yes. Farioli started it. Yes. The only person to go down, I think was Farioli, but there was a lot.

But that took everybody else wide and I think Munoz was wide because I remember I couldn't figure out who was the BOE bike that was running third at the time on that first lap as they came through the, as they came through the S's. So come to find out that was Kelso who had survived that turn. He was running well there. They go into eight and he just gets it all kinds of wrong. And Kelso winds up having to stand the bike up, runs wide, and that drops him back to like 10th or 16th.

Now, where about were you stood at this point of the race, Jim? Were you there when he did that? Uh huh. I happened to be. You're always in the right place, aren't you?

Somehow I magically am. I just know that a little secret about Kota, if you go, the grandstands are nice. Okay. They're seats. But one of the things I don't particularly like about the grandstands at turn 12 or the grandstands in the little Mickey Mouse set of turns or whatnot there is the fact that you are looking into the sun all day long.

That's what you're going to do. So I'd rather sit on the hill at the S's and particularly at the end of the S's, which is turn seven into turn eight, because then you can watch them go up eight, nine and disappear over 10. That is a great place because if you have made a move at the first term and you get through the second turn, no one's generally going to pass you through the S's. Although Moto3 guys will pass anywhere bullet for the general LTs here. Nobody will get passed, but that turn eight being 90 degrees after the last S, it gives the guys to run a little slightly different line, run on the gas just a little bit earlier to get a little more drive to straighten it out and make that little straight away just that little bit longer and allows you to break later into that turn.

Because you've stood the bike up earlier and it's a great place to overtake at that point. It's a great place to push people around, get your elbows out. And that's why I'm at that point. That is to me, is the best place to be. And the one thing I do not like about being there is the Jumbotrons are not turned the right way for some reason, and they're not as big as you would like them to be.

My old eyes can't even read the scoreboard of who's where, but I can see the image. So I happened to be right there when Kelso got that one all wrong. Now I know that Alonzo was out front and then he had Fierioli was running second. And this was like the dream. No, it wasn't Fierioli?

No, Fierioli went down at turn one, didn't he? Okay, Fierioli went down. Who was, who, who, Bertelli? Bertelli had three long laps he had to do. Who had to do three long laps?

I can't think of, I thought it was Bertelli, right? I think it, yeah, I should know this. I should have written this down. I think it was, yeah. Because you really, because, because- There was loads of penalties, wasn't there, for hanging around on the race.

Or was it Yamanaka? It was loads of penalties that went down or whatever. But suffice to say that the guy in second, I believe it to be Bertelli, had three long laps that he had to do. Now Alonzo was getting away because of the incident that happens at, at eight and he's got a guy in between who's got to take three long laps. That was like a dream start for Alonzo.

And in fact, you know, not to spoil any of this because we all know what happened, Alonzo winds up running off and winning the race. And, and I mean, it was a dominant ride. This was, this was like, okay, here's the stamp of this is my title, stomp. And he put that, firmly put that stamp on the grid. Now the rest of the racing was really good because now Kelso has got to come from the back.

I think he might've been as far back as 12th after that small incident, because, you know, it's a big pack. So before they ever get done with the first lap, we've got Kelso back to 12th, but then Ortola and NEPA come together at, is that 15, I think? Little Mickey Mouse section. Yeah, the Mickey Mouse section. Don't say that in front of Kevin Schwantz because he'll just stare you down and make you think that you've got laser beam eyes.

Like, what do you mean that's missing Mickey Mouse? It's not Mickey Mouse. Whatever, bro. I think it was there, but there's some people can see the stickers on the Formula One cars, but that's my opinion. Yeah.

But anyway, Ortola and NEPA go down. I think Ortola kind of, kind of tucked the front and was down and like, you know, NEPA has nowhere to go. And I honestly believe having watched the replay that, that NEPA actually does bump Ortola's helmet. Because when they're done, Ortola gets up and runs off to go get NEPA's bike and it isn't even his bike. And so NEPA's got to run over and when they first showed it on the screen, you know, everybody's like, and the crowd and all that.

And then he's running over like, oh, don't tell me he's going to go punch Ortola out here. Like that's wrong. And then I was like, then they cut it because I think they even thought that was what was going to happen. That's exactly what they thought was going to happen. Yeah.

And so there's going to be some dust up in Texas, like, you know, and have this fight over in the corner over here. And I'm like, what really happened? So finally they replayed the whole thing several laps later. And it's, you get to see that, oh, it's Ortola gets up and runs and gets on NEPA's bike was going to take off on that bike, which is funny. But then I'm thinking like, were you that, did you get concussed during that?

I mean, that was my next question. I was like, I've never seen anybody not realize where their bike went before. But if he had gotten dunked on the head, then maybe, I don't know. I don't know what happened, but the whole thing is just funny because everybody's fine. So, but I just think it was just a pure adrenaline moment, Jim, to be honest with you.

But let's not forget, weren't Ortola and NEPA teammates last year. So did he momentarily think that he was on last year's bike or something? Maybe, maybe. I don't know. He just, he jumped to his feet.

He just bolts for the first bike that he sees thinking that it's his. So I'm sure that's all it was, but it was just a kind of little kind of Keystone Cops comedy moment, wasn't it really? Yeah. So the racing then becomes really amazing between Horgado, Piqueras, Yamanaka, Munoz. That whole thing is just getting absolutely wild as it goes through.

Now, Vire is the guy who gets to be like in second and whatnot. And they're having a ding dong battle back and forth until I think where they, they had gotten down to seven laps or six laps or something. They were a little past halfway. I do not know what happened, but that the fight between Vire and Horgado, Piqueras is just really good hard racing. They're just changing it back and forth.

And it's great racing. They come through the S's Vires in second. And next thing you know, the back end just goes again. I haven't been looking that way. Haven't been seeing the whole thing.

Just I'm in the magic spot. I'm telling you. Hey, look to me like Vire got it just a little too far onto that sort of painted slightly curvy area there. And it all the back end just lit up. He was trying to get on it harder than he could or needed to.

And he tossed it away. Thank God everybody was able to miss everything that was going on. The bike spinning one way. I think he was going the other way. I know.

I think Helgardo, I think it was Vire, Piqueras who then slowed down and it all of a sudden, woof, there goes, there goes Horgado through because you can't see. Like everybody was like, Oh, Horgado should have been slowing down. He should have seen the accent. No, he didn't. He was behind somebody on the S's and he can't see through a bike people.

That was a bunch of people that were sort of sitting by us that were, well, he should have slowed down. Did he see the yellow flag? And he's like, he's not looking there. Okay. I mean, split seconds.

It's split seconds. But on camera, when you see it from Piqueras' bike, he, Piqueras is like, ah, one leg out. And he's just flying between and splits the difference and just barely misses everybody. So that was like with only a few laps to go, which made it even bigger gap to Alonso there was he goes on to win the race, but they re they reorganize themselves. Helgardo and Piqueras fight to the absolute bitter death.

I think if I remember correctly, Helgardo got Piqueras on the last lap to take the second place. Photo finish kind of territory. Yeah. And they had a photo finish between them, but Helgardo did get second. Then it was Piqueras, then Yamanaka, Munoz, Suzuki was sixth.

Kelso would race his way back up. All right. So yeah, yeah. He races his way back up to get seventh. I think he had another runoff somewhere or got in deep on one of the corners that was there, but it was a fabulous Moto3 race.

Absolutely positively fabulous Moto3 race. Anything else we need to add there, Joel, that we didn't touch or Joel touch their Grinch? Just an absolute masterclass by David Alonso all weekend, really, wouldn't it? Yeah. After a slightly tepid port of mouth by his lofty standards, where he, for whatever reason, it just didn't quite work out.

So he kind of came with his game face back on, didn't he, at Cota? And boy, I mean, he was, as you said, just on his own all weekend, just doing the laps. Yeah, I think that's how you should do it. That's the only little bit of interest up until the point at which that Viya crash happened was that that second pack were closing in on Alonso really quite quickly. That's right.

That is correct. We were speculating over WhatsApp whether or not he might have burnt his rear tire up a little bit, having shot out quite early because of that crash. And it was Yamanaka that Viya bag paper whip missed Viya's bike. I mean, he was incredibly lucky not to hit that bike as it was sliding along the track, but that broke Alonso out five, six seconds again. And so the last two or three laps or whatever it was after that were relatively straightforward for him.

It would have been possibly a slightly more exciting finish had that Viya crash not happened, but we'll never know. Yeah, you'll never know. You will get some insight from Joe Kelso on what maybe did happen. I ask a question about tires and he has an interesting answer about what was going to be there. So I do think that Alonso, not to spoil it, but I do think Alonso was in tire trouble or had at least back the pace off to potentially save some rubber to get there.

Now, I got to put a shout out to Pirelli because there has been essentially a seamless transition and they have made the competition in Moto2 and Moto3 fantastic just by changing rubber. It has been absolutely amazing and they've broken track records. And how many times have we heard them beating a track record with Dunlap or with Dunlap tires in Moto2 or Moto3? Not really. Shout out to come in cold as Pirelli did.

Yes, they have plenty of data from WorldSuperbike. These bikes are not the same. The chassis are so much stiffer than WorldSuperbike, so the construction has got to be slightly different to take care of that. They have done a fantastic job. So all props to Pirelli, even though we do see some guys using up tires and whatnot, it seems as though it's that perfect.

Just make a pick and decide whether you want to do ride hard and get out and save it for the end or do you want to take the harder tires? It seems like there's some really great options right now that Pirelli have provided and the racing has been spectacular. Now, Moto3 is always spectacular. I cannot complain about Dunlap whatsoever. This is not a hit show.

Hit job on Dunlap. Please understand that, folks. But there is a definite difference with the Pirellis, that's for sure. We know, Jim, sorry, just the last thing and I need to move on, but we know that you, to some extent, you have to manage tires in MotoGP. So it's good that in the lower classes, you also have that element of tire management and that will be varied by track, by condition, by rider, by setup, all sorts of different things.

And so it's a key skill that they will learn, which will help them later on. So as good as the Dunlaps were, they were known to be pretty hard and unbreakable. It's not really the right word for tires, but they didn't really wear out and affect races like this. Whereas we have already seen that if you get it wrong with the Pirellis, you will pay a price for that. So there's a degree of management that goes on, which I think is another area or level of jeopardy that makes it interesting from a viewing point of view.

It's a bit frustrating from the rider's point of view, no doubt. But if you get it right, you're going to really benefit yourself. So I like it. As you say, great plaudits to Pirelli for doing an unbelievable job. So far stellar in my mind.

Brilliant. So let's look at the championship real quick. Hulgardo is on top at 65 points. Alonso with that win is only two points behind on 63. Kelso, the Aussie, is on 28.

That's 37 points behind the front too. Anything can happen. It's third race of the year, people. Let's be real about this one. But Kelso in with a shot.

Then it's Otoro Azuzuki-Veyre who really needed a good race and needed a second to kind of... I don't want to say his championship is over. No one's over at this point. But wow, 44 points down now already. That's not a good look to start your season.

For somebody who I think was a championship contender in Moto3, after that you have Rureda in seventh, Piqueras, Estaban, and then NEPA. And that's Moto3. So a great ride by Piqueras as well. Yes. That's true.

I'll tell you it's the third ride. Shout out to Piqueras. I agree. Yeah. Really, really, really good.

But I think it's pretty clear already. On a Honda, no less. Indeed. Yeah. Yeah.

Although we know that Leopard thing is pretty quick in the straight line and there's quite a long straights in Cota. But that was a great ride. But yeah, I think Holgardo and Alonso, who we're looking at for the championship this year. I think so. I do think...

Veyre may put a couple together here and he may tighten it up, but I don't. Small speculative right now. We'll just enjoy what we have. So Moto2. The interesting part about Moto2 is that Joe Roberts had to go out of Q2 or Q1 to get to Q2.

The pressure was on and you could kind of... If you saw Joel earlier here that... Or Joe earlier, Joel and Joe talking, yeah, I'm going to mess this up. Plus one of my mates is named Joel, so he was with us down there. So it's guaranteed to be all messed up here for this first show.

But Roberts seemed to have the weight of the world on him. It's America, it's Texas, it's his track, he's an American, he's on an American team. No, sorry. Yeah, OnlyFans is... Yeah, OnlyFans is...

Well, it's American racing, isn't it? Yeah, it's a racing team. This is American if you're going to get. Yes, this is American if you're going to get there. So it did seem as though that there was that smidgen of pressure that was on him, which he worked through and he was able to get to that second qualifying session.

Now, he did leave it late to put in a good lap, but he did get a lap that got him to fifth place. Kinet would be on pole carrying over his Porto Maio victory. Outaguer was second on the Bosca Cora, then Garcia on the Bosca Cora, Arenas Roberts, as mentioned, Ramirez, Foggia, Lopez, Gonzalez, and then Bo Ben Schneider. Poor Arbolino. I don't know what's happened to Arbolino because he's 11th.

I'm like, I just don't... I'm like, what, what, you know? Pure speculation again, Jim. But I mean, you have to imagine, he just can't get his head around the tires at this point in time because there's no obvious other reason, is there? He's on the same bike, same team, same crew, I think, for the most part.

Yeah. Yeah. Bit of a head scratcher, really. But he and the team, I would imagine, are concerning actually. Yep.

We were tagging him as a motor GP prospect midway through last season. Yeah. I mean, are they, do they have the latest Kalex? Is that Kalex? I mean, if they have the latest Kalex, maybe that's the one that's tuned for the Pirelli.

Maybe this one they have isn't tuned for a Pirelli. Maybe he doesn't like that one. I don't know. Speculation. But it's definitely different and it's puzzling.

I'm just going to put it down as it's puzzling. Dixon, back from his horrific crash in qualifying at Qatar, learned he had a bruised lung, so he had to stay for a week in Qatar. He couldn't fly, can't fly with bruised lung people from a medical standpoint there. So he was 14th there. And then, you know, he's 15th, Ayagura was 17th.

Like, wow, it was like sort of this weird upside down. Topsy turvy grid. Yeah. Fodger, I mean, where did he qualify? Do you say fifth or sixth?

Seventh. Okay. I mean, that's kind of like from nowhere really since he's been in Moto 2, isn't it? Cause he's really been one of these guys that came up for Moto 3 and has really struggled. And then all of a sudden at this weekend, and it would be reflected in the final result as well.

Yeah. Great. Great ride by him. Yeah. So that's how that's where everything was.

So I was interested to see like, wow, is Agur going to get a start? You know, can Roberts on that second row get close to the front and stay with the front guys? Didn't really know exactly what was going to go on. But when the light turned green, I believe that it was like, Kinet, what happens at the beginning of the Moto 2 race? Cause they had a a good start.

Got a good start. Aldegaard got a pretty good start, but pretty well, just about took the front going up the hill into the braking zone, saved it. But that kind of pushed him and a few other people quite far wide. And that was involved. I think Kinet and Aldegaard go wide as a result.

So Garcia leads down the hill if I remember correctly now. Yes, correct. Then it's sort of a toss up as to where sort of everybody else is, it's all scattered at that point. Now the race continues on and then you watch Roberts make progress. Like he progresses up through to try to get there.

But it was a slow, slow walk to get from where he was like that fifth. He didn't have like the greatest start that was in there. Aldegaard, the thing messed him up, right? Well, no, the outcome of the Melle in the first time was that Roberts actually was in second going downhill. Okay.

He was followed by Foggia. The other thing that's just ironic is that having qualified 14th, just with my British hat on a minute, Jake Dickson, who is famously not very good at getting that bike off the line, ended up something like fourth or fifth, I think, or maybe sixth on that first lap. Again, he made it his way through that kind of mess up in the first turn. Shame about sort of smelling the roses in the early laps anyway. So it was a bit, yeah, a bit of a kind of topsy turvy start to the race.

Garcia would literally almost be non-challenged all the way to the end. Now I had thought that Aldegaard would wind up winning this race despite the fact that Aldegaard was having trouble qualifying. I really thought Aldegaard had that pace that he would get there. I thought I had predicted that Roberts would be second in the race. I felt like he had a podium in him.

It turned out that that would be the case. Now Garcia rode a great race, wasn't really headed. He got that race there, but that race as watching Roberts come through and Aldegaard come through the pack from Joe was there, right? But Aldegaard is the guy who's coming. So my attention was sort of watching Aldegaard because I thought for sure Aldegaard is going to win this.

It's like it's the boss of Cora that seems to work well on the bumps and all that good stuff. But Joe would dig deep to keep Aldegaard behind him and would step onto the podium in second. He actually, at the end, towards the end, Roberts actually did sort of close the gap slightly to Garcia to give you that false sense of hope that maybe this might be possible. But when the pit board got close enough for Garcia to see like, hey, this is too close, I just turned the wick back up again per se. Or at least I imagine that's kind of what happened because it sort of stabilized it.

When we ran home with Garcia, Roberts, Aldegaard then finishing for the podium, and then Alonzo Lopez being fourth, Ramirez, Foggia, and Ayagura would race all the way up through the pack from his 14th starting place to get to seventh. And then there was Alcoba and Canet was down. Now, did Canet have some trouble at some point other than the first lap? I don't think so. For whatever reason, the race just didn't pan out.

I mean, to fill in a few gaps, because again, bone in my gym, you were sat in a deck chair on the side of the hill. That's true. I was in the deck chair, the side of the chair. So this one was harder to follow for some reason. Yeah.

I mean, Garcia was for the most part doing a Davide Alonzo out front, just keeping a steady pace and didn't really look challenged. There were a couple of things that happened. I mean, on lap, well, laps seven and eight, Aldegaard and Lopez, teammates in the Bosque Esquerra speed up team, they were at it a hammer on tongue again. And that did delay Aldegaard quite badly. He did eventually get through on his teammate, but Lopez really does get his elbows out with everybody and certainly doesn't do his teammate any favor.

So that delayed him a little bit. And then on lap 13, I don't know if you caught this on the big screens, but Roberts was closing in on Garcia and then at the end of the back straight, he said in the post race interview, he hit a false neutral. So he went wide at the end of the back straight, which allowed Aldegaard to go through to second. So then, and this was, I think with about probably six or seven laps to go. So Joe then did a brilliant job of getting back onto Aldegaard's tail very, very quickly and getting straight back past him.

I think possibly at this point, Aldegaard burnt his tire again, as he's sort of been apt to do elsewhere in this season so far on the new Pirelli. He's obviously a bit aggressive on the way he treats his tires at the minute. But, and then as you said, Jim, Joe got probably what, within a second of Garcia at the very end there. Yeah, I think so. But it didn't, it never really looked as if he was going to get past him with a lap or two to go.

And he certainly cost himself the chance by going wide. And I mean, I mean, he went way off track at the end of the back straight there, loads of runoff, but it did lose him probably four or five seconds, I would suspect. So again, what could have happened? Who knows? But I mean, it's still a great result to come second on your home race.

Yeah, yeah, really good. I mean, he sort of, he did give it all and everybody really, I think appreciated that he did, did what he did and got to where he was on there, which is, you know, again, you know, John Hopkins talks about this and it was, it kind of came true, kind of came to fruition with what John says. Now we'll, we'll see what happens, but it was, this is a harder race for me to follow this because all the action that happened, happened by me for Moto3. So you know, kind of the story, this one, despite watching the highlights or whatever, I think Sunday night, I think we spent most Sunday nights sitting out watching the highlights and stuff. I just didn't remember all of what had happened there.

So I appreciate you filling in some of the gaps of what happened. I might have taken a small nap during that moment in the hammock chair I have while we were watching that one. But it was a great, it was a great race because there was a lot going on and you had, it was a great race. It was a great, I mean, it wasn't Moto3 race, but it was a great Moto2 race, which was like, wow, two races in a row have been fantastic. Now we've got this hour break to wait for us to get to the MotoGP race, but we will talk about the points standings that we have here.

Now, Garcia goes into a rough with 51 points. Roberts is only two points behind on 49. Consistency, I think, is going to be what's going to win this championship. If you can keep your Pirellis underneath of you all season long, not make a mistake with that and finish on or very near the podium plus get one or two wins, Joe may be in with a shot to win the world championship. That's a lot of pressure on the kid, but it looks to be that way because it looks like Kinet is going to be up and down given what happens that's going to go on there.

It should be said that race day on Sunday, heavily overcast. It was very overcast. The Moto3 race happened at 11 in the morning and I still had a hoodie on because the wind was blowing and it was only about 70 degrees. So it was very cold then. It had gotten to maybe about 72 to 75 degrees when the Moto2 race happened right after the Moto3 race, but I still had my hoodie on for that one.

So I don't know. Yes, your road skin. My road skin hoodie. Yes. Yes.

Anyway, I tell you what, you'd have got good odds on that top five in the championship after three rounds, wouldn't you? Yes, you would have. Garcia leading the championship. We've sung his praises and I certainly have sung his praises in the latter part of last season and boy, he's doing really, really well, isn't he? He's looking like that unusual thing, which is a quick transition in Moto2.

His first year was not that great, but everybody seems to struggle coming from the small wheels of the Moto3 bikes to the big wheels of the Moto2 bikes. Even Acosta did too. I beg to differ. I think he had a good first season and certainly towards in the second half of last year, he was very, very good. I'd have to go back and look at it again, I guess.

To the extent that I felt that he was likely to do really well this year, but I didn't think he'd be leading the championship after those three rounds. I'm going to say even I didn't think that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So Lopez's third and Kinet, fourth, Agurra and Gonzalez, Outagurri, Ramirez, Baltis and Vieti. I think this might be the best championship this year, might be Moto2. It really might be. I just got that feeling. It's going to be good.

It's going to be good, but I just think it's going to be that little extra because I think it's going to be more people in different places and a lot more different podiums and people on podium, people off podium. It's just going to be a mixed up mash that's going to make it more interesting. To sort of deepen to sports psychology, but Aldrich has got that MotoGP contract in his back pocket and hasn't had a great start to the season. So for me, the interest now is can he, you could argue on a thing reasonably that he's had a little bit of bad luck. I mean, for example, you know, he went very, very wide.

I mean, it's his fault, but it wasn't as if someone pumped him. That's a very tricky first turn on a parade. Absolutely. So he's had a bit of an up and down start to the season, whereas we all thought he would just come out and start ripping the winds again, as he did four times on the bounce at the end of last season. So the interest for me with Outagurri, who doesn't appear in the top five in the championship standings at the moment, is will he knuckle down?

Will he start to really, I mean, he tried very, very hard on Sunday, didn't quite work out, but he's still not third. But how much of his motivation to try and lift this title before he goes up, knowing that he is going up, that's the interesting thing for me. I'm sure he will do everything that he can. I see it differently. Oh, good.

Shock, right? I'm going to be the guy who's going to be the opposite. No, but I felt that at the beginning of the year, Outagurri was like lost in space, right? But sort of everybody was at Qatar because we really had very minimal running on Pirelli. Okay.

Let's just push that aside for a second. And it's like, well, what happened in the second race? Here we're at where I thought for sure Outagurri would be right at the front, sharp end in Porto Maio. Everything would be fine. Normal operating procedure resumed.

It didn't. Right now, then it leaked out sort of after that, hey, the kid's got a ride. He's got a two-year contract with Ducati. And I felt like, okay, the pressure is off now because I felt like in qualifying, he was right there. Like, okay, the pressure is now off.

Hey, look, I've signed. I know where I'm going to be. Let's relax and go race. And I thought maybe he was going to win just based off of that, that having knowing where you're going to go releases that pressure on you and you just perform. And I thought that's what was going to happen.

Maybe it won't, but I felt like getting rid of that was going to help him, which I felt like it did in qualifying because his earlier qualifiers were terrible in the first two rounds. But I could be wrong and he's just going to, he's not motivated, but I would seriously want to be, would want to show everybody I am worthy of that two-year contract that I signed. And I'm going to show you because I'm going to dominate you. That would be my motivation as the racer. Yeah.

I mean, my personal take, and again, what do I know? But I just think he's struggling to keep the rear tire alive at the moment because he doesn't know the Pirelli. As you said, they didn't have any testing. The first round was a wipeout really. He, again, he got in broad and a big battle with his teammate in Portimao and had to come back from quite far down.

Didn't he get a long lap penalty as well? He jumped the start, didn't he? So yeah, Aldegard did jump. That's right. So he's kind of been battling adversity in the first three rounds, which is kind of skewing his position in the championship.

And he certainly fought through very hard on Sunday to get to third. But again, I think he probably had taken the best out of his tire at that point. So it didn't really have much left in the last five laps. So I'm going to reserve judgment on this one. I think he probably is motivated and he's just been a bit unlucky or just a few little error judgments, you know, getting the long lap, the jump start, his fault, nearly tucking the front and going wide at turn one on Sunday, his fault.

So it's not as if he's been lucky because he's been wiped out by other people's crashes and stuff. But he's been having to fight through from quite far back. And we know that the Pirelli is sensitive to being abused when you have to do that. So the next few rounds will be interesting. And I'd be surprised if he didn't win at least one of the next three races.

I agree. He might put three on the trot on everybody. He very well could do. It's very possible. Just a side note before we go to MotoGP.

Did anyone see the, it was posted on X. It was a picture looking up to the first turn from the grid. And they were talking about how great it was to be going to the Kazakhstan GP. Yeah, I didn't see that. Yeah, it was like, what?

I'm like, what? And then David Emmett was right behind, he goes, you are 133 feet too far up and 1500 kilometers too far to the east. I'm like, okay, who screwed that one up? Because it was official at Kota that, hey, we are going to go to Kazakhstan for the race there. That didn't happen last year for reasons we all know why.

But yeah, I just thought that was funny. If you look it up, it's in David Emmett's Moto Matters. It's in his feed. Find him on X and roll through his feed. You need to be able to do cryptic if you're going to follow David Emmett.

I've decided he's quite, yeah, what's the word, sardonic in his humor. So yeah, anyway, right, Moto GP. Let's see, what was it? Miller and Alex Marquez came out of the first qualifying session, I believe. It was like, wow, that was like the two big names and you kind of thought they were going to go through or whatever.

But the qualifying was super interesting because it was like, wow, man, Acosta was just fast the whole time. Being in the paddock and you watch Herve Ponterell walk through, that guy's got a smile tattooed on his face because he's got this kid. And you can see Pitt Beyer wheel by and he's got this big smile on his face because he's got this kid locked up for a while. And all I can say is the guys in Austria better not screw up the design of next year's bike because this kid is wholeheartedly amazing. So some observations that I saw trackside that for this one, Ducati still has the best ride height adjustment of anyone.

It drops the bike, it drops the rear end the fastest, and they're usually the first people to be able to drop on it because it seems like they somehow have it made to where it's very progressive. You could throw the lever on as you are accelerating out of the corner, throw the lever to activate it, and it initially goes slowly and then just drops like a rocket ship when the bike becomes vertical, which was all the Ducatis are that way. It was very noticeable on Benyaia's bike, very noticeable on Marc Marquez's bike to me. Another thing I saw from the MotoGP things with Acosta, Acosta seems to be the master of taking his bike on the exit of the corner and standing it up onto the center of the tire faster than anyone. He gets up off the knee, gets back up vertical, gets drive going, and then drops the KTM down.

The Aprilias have the second best ride height adjustment because theirs happen a little bit quicker than the KTM's, but not as quickly, not as progressively as it. It's like the whole thing just drops once they get out of the corner, whereas the Ducatis are sort of stale there and then it slowly goes down, but it does drop very quickly once it's sort of stood up. I don't know, maybe they've got some weird compression dampening in that hydraulic system. I was going to ask you that. That was coming to mind when you said that a minute ago, Jim.

I was wondering if there's any, because we know it's a mechanical system. Yes, it is a mechanical system. Interference with this thing. So you can't have actuators measuring the lean angle and stuff, I assume. That's not allowed.

Unless the DG's got something special in there. I mean, you could have some sort of check valve that works off the gravity of where it is maybe. I don't really know what those are, truly are about how mechanical it is, but essentially it is a computer that's analog because it's all done by a hydraulic pressure. My question or thought was, as you just said, was whether the rider has some degree of damping that they can initiate with that system to make it. Yeah, I mean, it could be in the lever itself, right?

You could actuate it and then the lever itself has some accumulator of pressure that's there that it releases slowly and then it's got a big spring and as the pressure bleeds off, then the spring pushes faster to extend it back out or something to that effect. I don't know exactly what's in there. I would have loved to have been inside of a garage, but we are not allowed there, so I didn't even press that. But it was good to see some of the cool kits, some of the brake monoblock calipers and things that were hanging on stuff and torn out KTM 250 engines and things like that. So the nerd in me was going crazy.

Jim was leaving trails of dribble everywhere that you had. Yes, I was. I hate to say, I hate to use this expression, but it's very much engineering porn. Your point about Acosta just made me think of Danny Pedroza, who was a rider. You mentioned before we started recording about how small he was.

He is very small. Not Danny Pedroza small, because I mean, unless you're a four-year-old child, nobody's quite as small as Danny Pedroza. But he had a very, very prominent pick the bike up hard and quickly onto the part of the tire style, didn't he? Yep. And Acosta seems to have copied that style.

Now, again, Pedroza is the test rider for KTM. And if Pedroza's, I have no idea if he's coaching him. I have no idea. But if he is, you kind of see the same style happening here. Certainly leading hand in the bike.

Correct. So to give everybody some reference to how tall he is, I stand five foot seven, and Acosta only comes up to about where my ear is. So he's got to be 5'5", at the most. That's small. And I think Danny was like 5'3".

He was barely over five feet. Super tiny. Yeah, it was easy to pick out Acosta's leathers on the rack of Alpenstar leather, because this is the shortest one. There's more distance between the bottom of his, the bottom of the pant leg of his leathers to the ground than anyone else's. It's like, he must be the, I'm going to bet he's the shortest of all the active MotoGP riders in the paddock today.

I'll make that wager. And I'm pretty sure I'm right. I'm the youngest as well, isn't he? So yeah, he's 19. Yeah.

Although I guess he's crazy. Most of his growing is done now, I would assume. I think vertically, yes. I think, I don't know where the muscle is on that kid, the Muscle MotoGP bike around on. I mean, I realize there's a thing where you're going to have too much muscle and whatnot.

And the idea is to be toned fit and race ready, which he is, that's fine. But wow, the way he rides that bike, he just can throw it around. It's interesting to watch on TV. You watch it in person and you're just, you just want to step back and go, there was, I, I can't remember the cameraman. I can't remember what his handle is on X.

This guy caught a Costa going over 10, full front end, full tuck and just kid doesn't care. Just insane. The Aprilia's we were talking about their ride height. The Aprilia ride height is the, is in the middle of it, right? It is definitely Ducati is the best.

Aprilia is probably second. KTM is third. The Hondas are hideous with their ride height adjustments. It just, it's so bad. I mean, the Hondas are just horrible all the way around.

It looks like they've made absolutely no improvement whatsoever. It's terrible to even begin to watch. It's just, and then Quattroraro, just they're so, the Japanese bikes are just so far behind. Just so, I mean, they're just left for dead. It's sad.

It's very, very sad to watch, but they have their concessions. They've got to use it wisely. They'll get back and they'll get back. But as it is right now, it's that way. So we go into, to the qualifying, like I said, I think Miller, Alex Marquez come through, we talked ride heights and all that stuff and riding styles, which I wanted to mention, but Vinales would take the pole position ahead of Acosta, ahead of Mark Marquez, then Benyaya Bastianini and Martín.

Now Martín had two crashes in the second qualifying session, which was really wild that Martín had crashed twice. I don't know if he's missing something or what, but Martín doesn't seem to be the Martín of last year, or at least he didn't appear to be this weekend at Cota. Now we can say Cota is a very different track. It's very bumpy. Certain sections were repaved to try to eliminate the bumps.

Predominantly, I think like 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, that section of the track, I think was probably the most predominant. I think they did repave a little bit going downhill from 10 to 11 and around as well. So I don't know if it just didn't agree with Martín or something was just off there, but for him to qualify as poorly as he did was shocking because we think of Martín as being sort of the one lap wonder of the class and it just simply did not happen. Again, one of the other podcasts I listened to was suggesting that all of the 2024 Gcattas are suffering this year with chatter. And interestingly, I think they're suffering with chatter, which I assume you can have this on the rear more than the front.

You can have it in both places, yes. Yeah. So whether that was playing a part in Martín having a bit of a struggle, I mean, let's not forget he's also got an awful lot going on off track as well in terms of what's he doing next year. And he's being typical Jorge Martín. He's not exactly being backwards in his opinions, saying things like, I won't be here next year.

So clearly stuff is going on and we'll hear something fairly soon. So you don't know if there's some other distractions, but Banyaya certainly was vocally quite unhappy with the unpredictability of the bike at the moment in terms of this chatter issue that kind of pops up and they find it very hard to cure through a weekend. That's kind of the vibe that I've heard. So maybe that was leading to some of the instability issues that some of them were suffering. That's very possible because if you have chatter on the front end or on the back, okay, if it's on the front end, you feel it through the handlebars and you feel like it's literally the tires pogoing off the ground and it comes back down and it's just up and down, up and down.

And easily you can fold the front end in there. It's very scary because you just don't know what it is because there's no feel. You're always that feel of that tire going through the front you want. Now, rear chatter is you can't get traction. It's like, what do you guys call those things?

Is it sleeping policeman, a baller that you'd run over? That's what it feels like. If you know, it feels like that on the rear, but in between then it's the bike spins and then it bumps into it. Now it bounces up because of that bump and then you can't go anywhere because there's no traction and it's just real light and you couldn't get anywhere on it. I didn't know that they were chattering.

I could not see it if they were chattering it. And you can see front end chatter usually because you can see elbows or arms or something if you look closely enough. But I did not know it was rear chatter, which if it's rear chatter, that's really weird that they would have that. I mean, correct me listeners if I'm wrong on that. I'm sure that's what I heard, but definitely they've got issues with chatter.

I will agree that there's something on the 24 Ducati that is not as good as the 23 Ducati. Let's just say that up front. But all right, enough of that. Let's get to the sprint race. So the sprint race, I think this one was kind of boring.

There was, I guess what? So correct me if I'm wrong here, Rich. Did Vignales get the whole shot for the sprint? Yeah, I could hear the groans coming from Gary, but that rarest of rare things, Maverick Vignales got the bike off the line. Now, again, I have heard through the various different channels that there's a revision, not a new, but a revision to the clutch system on the Aprilia, because that's been something that Maverick has moaned about.

Now, Maverick does have a habit or a reputation for moaning about lots of different things. This is a bad weekend for Gary. I'll just say that. Well, maybe Gary's happy to see Maverick at long last making good on the undoubted talent, but he's for one, I'm pleased to see it because boy, has he been a frustrating rider to watch. Many, many, many seasons now, but anyway, some sort of revision to the clutch system on the bike.

Yeah, he absolutely did get the whole shot. So yeah, he was there. Marquez got away well, Martine got away well. I think Martine got to the front for a little bit during that sprint with Marquez sort of right there. Acosta was in the mix too.

And it was, I mean, Acosta is going to take anybody and take a try anywhere that he can, but it kind of settled out that Maverick had gotten out front and he kind of slid away to the victory. I don't remember if Martine had an off track excursion or he was wide at 11. He may have been wide 11, which allowed Marquez to get back in. I'm not 100% on that one. My recollection is that Acosta, Martine and Marc Marquez spent a good portion of the middle part battling quite hard.

I don't recall Martine other than overtaking and going a little bit wide. There was no kind of obvious off track moment that I can recall. And he did battle his way through to what was the second or third, I think. But I mean, the keynote of the whole race was that Vinales just really did show what he can do. When things were going well.

His qualifying advantage was ridiculous. I think I texted you, didn't I, or WhatsApped you to say it was something like a second quicker this year than the poll last year. It might have been 0.9 or it might have been 0.1. He had like two tenths faster than anybody because I thought it was down on the 2.01s and he did a 2.01, a 2 flat. I think it was a high 2.

Yeah, and he was ripping it all weekend, wouldn't he? Let's be honest. He was just on it. Yeah, you're sort of wondering when's this going to fall apart kind of a thing. But Vinales did win the sprint.

Marquez did finish second and then Martine was third. They did take the bikes and they went to the amphitheater that is there at COTA and that is where they had the post-race celebrations and whatnot that was there. It was really interesting. There was this one little kid that Marquez had brought up. Marquez looked to have fun.

He had a smile on his face at that. He was dancing around on the stage that was there. I heard this one from my friend Grace. She said, they had a meet and greet with Mark Marquez and one person said, I don't have a question. I just want to tell you, I'm so happy to see you smile again.

I think the smile has been missing for a long time on Mark's face. I think he really thought that this was his playground and he was going to do well, especially after having been second in the sprint. Now, Acosta had faded off to fourth on there. So he missed the podium, but Alessia was coming hard on the other Aprilia. So Alessia at that point, even a small race, he sort of worked his way through everybody else that was there and got going at the end, which was like, huh, I wonder what's going to happen.

Made me think like, well, maybe in the main race, he's got a lot more laps. Maybe he'll be at the front too. But again, if everybody's running on small on the softer tires, it's not going to be gone in 10 laps unless you're really running it hard. But that was the sprint, which was again, not the best sprint we've seen, but it had battles and it was a good appetizer for Sunday's main course. That is for sure.

A good way of setting it up. Yeah. So when we got to Sunday, Vinales now this time did screw the startup. He did not get away well. He was pinched, I think, going down in the corner, but Acosta did have a great start and was going gangbusters with it and Marquez too as well.

Now this became a huge battle between the kid and the old guard and Acosta was not having any of it. He had went to the medium tire. Did everybody go on mediums, Rich? I can't remember. Did anybody have the soft?

I don't think anybody did. I think one or two riders were reported as having had the soft on and then the tire list was revised to say that they were on the medium. I think. Yeah, because I heard on the loudspeakers there that Marquez had a soft going in. I think that was then revised.

I think he was on a medium too. But regardless, the Pedro Acosta-Marquez battle was so tasty because Pedro Acosta put it in the middle. See, we're talking about Pedro Acosta. This is not fun anymore. Be dyslexic like me, folks, and you'll do it too.

Anyway, the race was so good between these three guys and they were just moving around. Bastianini would ride. Benyaia was off there, but Benyaia would slowly start to go backwards. Martín, who I thought was going to be at the front, was riding, trying to get to the front, trying to be in with the mix. It was just back and forth action.

You're waiting for it and Acosta just goes for the move going through eight. Marquez cuts back under. I think Martín took a shot at going out of 11 on Marquez. Marquez got back underneath there too. It was a great race that's going on in there.

It's all for the lead because Vinales was as low as 11th. I'm like, well, I guess Vinales isn't going to win this one. Normally, you'd be thinking game over at that point. Oh, I thought it was game over. I honestly thought the podium was going to be some combination of Martín, Marquez, and Acosta.

I thought it was going to be Acosta, then Marquez, and then Martín. That's what I thought, but who knows what was going to happen. Acosta was just riding the wheels off that KTM. The kid was just attacked, tacked back. It was like if you got past him, he went right past you.

He tried again and again and again. It was just ... At some point, I think, did Marquez touched ... Was it Martín that he touched? Because it broke the wing off of the side of the bike.

There was Jack Miller who made his very good start. It was with Miller. Went into reverse. Yeah. I do know that Marquez lost part of the wing on the front of the bike.

Then Marquez, I think, by lap nine had gotten to the front or was very close to the front and was basically going for it. I think he finally had bullied his way past Acosta. Acosta kind of, I don't know, let him go or decided that where I am is where I am or something. I don't know. But heading down the hill from 10 to 11, or yeah, was it 10 to 11 where Marquez crashed?

Yeah. Yeah, 11. Going to 11. Going to 11, he tucks the front and he said they had some braking problems and the wing part didn't help, but it doesn't matter. I was still on the ground.

The crowd just went, ah, because you thought of all the places Marc was going to win and pull it off, it was going to be Cota. But it was sad that he went into the grass, went into went to the ground, slid off and then remounted himself back again, I believe. Right. No, he was. He called it.

He called it at that point. I can't remember if he got back on and pulled into the pits or if he'd stayed there. I didn't remember that. No. And I think to lend credence to the fact he didn't get back on the bike was subsequent to the race.

Again, sort of Monday, Tuesday, I had one of the reports that he had brake failure. So something on the front brake actually just locked, which is why he went down. Because it was a weird crash because he was sort of bolt upright, got on the brake. Maybe the bike was pulling a little bit because of the, you know, the unbalanced aero or something. But I think maybe the caliper locked on or something happened.

And it just went down without, you know, there was no warning to that and it was not a normal crash. So I think, yeah, that was the reason. That makes sense because if you study Marquez's left hand, he has it's off, you know, trying to stop him from falling, which would not be where he would be if it was a tuck. He would have still been on the bar and trying to go for an elbow or something to save that. So you're probably right.

There probably something was wrong with the bike. So that ruined Marquez's race. That was done. But now it was like, I'm like, oh my gosh, the cost is going to win this one. You know, the kid's going to win this one.

And it's like he had sort of taken care of Martini, kind of had a little gap. I'm like, this is it. This is it. Three races in this kid is going to win one. This is going to be fantastic.

Although somebody had a different idea. That would have been one M. Vanyales because Vanyales put his shit together and just started showing the pace that he had because he could consistently run the run. Where was the pace at? It was low 202s to high 201s.

I think he was like in the middle. He was in the middle to low 201s. Basically rode up through everybody looking like the most. I haven't seen him look that good since he won on the Suzuki and Silverstone. Yeah.

Which is the truth. And he just looked fantastic. He's a guy that you wouldn't in terms of the last, what, five seasons, 24 seasons, you would never put money on him to just sort of chuck it up the inside and see what happens. You know, we've, again, I don't like to say we've criticised him because I'm no position to criticise a rider like Maverick Vanyales. But if you can label a kind of frustration at him, it's that sometimes you think he just needs to send one.

Yeah. Now it's easy to say from the comfy seat that I'm sitting in, it's a whole different matter when you're on a 300 brake horsepower MotoGP bike. But on Sunday, he just made it look easy, didn't he? I mean, he's overtaking for fun. I mean, he had such a big advantage.

I suppose that obviously helped. Maybe he didn't consider them risky moves because of that. And he was just in that utter sweet spot, wouldn't he? But he came up like a freight train, didn't he? He really, really did.

And then once he got past Acosta, I mean, he was just gone. Acosta gave it a good go to stay with him. I think Acosta got him back at one point for a little bit. I think that was the only person he was able to repass Vanyales after Vanyales had passed him, which shows you where the KTM is and the GasGas is. It shows you the level that Acosta is riding at.

And then it also shows you how good Vanyales is riding as well, just in that one little section of watching them go back and forth for that little bit. I think Acosta tried to hang, but it was too much. And so Vanyales would ride away to the victory. Acosta would continue on to finish second. So he had a third, he had a second.

Her wrath is very likely to be where he wins. I think he might win a race there. He will win a race before Saxon Ring because he will then be still younger, still be the youngest to ever do it. I think he will. There's no question in my mind he's going to win one somewhere, just a matter of whether he's going to win.

It's not if, it's win. The only question mark in my mind, Jim, and obviously I don't hope that this happens, other than a little tumble, I think, on the first time we got on the bike in Valencia, I don't think he's been off the bike in any session in the first three rounds. No, he has not. And the worry with something like Acosta is that if he has a crash, it might just set him back a little bit, although I'm not sure that it would with him because I think he's going to be kind of the Mark Marquez guy that just gets back on and does it all over again. But you do just worry if there's something that just halts this progression.

But I would be fairly comfy putting a few quid on him to win the sprint race in her wrath because he just looks so good. Yeah. And he has so much confidence and skill. He looks like he's been riding that bike for four years. Honestly.

Yeah, he does. He does. He in no way, shape or form looks like a rookie. It's like when Marquez jumped on the Honda, right? And that was a proven bike.

Let's be honest, that bike had been pretty well sorted. I will give you that the KTM is a sorted machine, but it was not sorted the way the Honda was when Marquez got on it. I think that's fair. And there was nothing like the depth of competition when Marquez first jumped on the Honda. That is true.

And Marquez never looked like a rookie riding around on it. Acosta looks even more incredible. There has to be more adjectives or superlatives that have to be created to tell you how amazing this thing that Acosta is doing and that we're able to witness it because it is so incredible, amazing. This man is incredibly gifted at what he's chosen to do with his life. And he seems to understand the bigger picture of all of it.

And for some reason, somehow none of it gets to him. I don't know how he does it. He's just a supreme talent. I mean, that's just all there is to it. And actually, I don't want to sort of over the pudding on this one, but a little part of me does just wonder whether, you know, a little bit of the underperformance of the Martins and the Bagnars is, you know, they're faced with this kid turning up doing this early and they're thinking, you know, I won't use a bad swear word, but they're thinking, holy crap, you know, how are we going to deal with this?

And I would almost suggest that perhaps it might be getting into Mark Marquez's head a little bit as well because it is like the new Mark Marquez. I mean, we've said before, and I'm going to throw another name into the mix now that we've seen in three different venues. We've been saying he's kind of like the bastard child of Valentino Rossi and Mark Marquez. I chuck Casey Stoner in there as a donor father as well because he's kind of got that just hit on that one kind of element to him, isn't he? And he has other worldly skills.

And it must be getting into the heads of other people. It has to. I think I said to you, I don't know if I said it on the show or if I did it on a WhatsApp, but even as early as Qatar, I think it will hasten the retirement of a few people because they're being made to look extremely ordinary, except that they're MotoGP riders and none of them are bad riders. Of course, they're the absolute elite of the elite, but you know, you're more the delis, you're, dare I say you're Alacia Spargo, Jack Miller, definitely. That's a world super bike.

I mean, there's a lot of these guys that must be thinking we're in big trouble here because the other thing it does is it shines a light back onto the Moto2 quality again, you know, and we as in all sport, it favors youth, you know, so the young guys are going to get the preferential treatment and some of these guys that have been, and I'm using the term guys advisedly because there aren't any girls in the series before I get knocked on that, but some of these people have been around for quite a long time. And at the end of Qatar, I was saying to you, Maverick Vinales is under pressure. Well, he's probably not under quite as much pressure now, but I suspect Alacia Spargo is even more thinking about the test rider and wildcard role as a result of Sunday. I don't think he can cope with Maverick if Maverick can continue this form. And it's not just Kota, he had a very good port of Marist.

Yeah, I know. I could have a very good Hurrah too. You could do. I mean, if they found the sweet spot in that bike now, I mean, we know Maverick is a rider that needs everything to be right, but if he's in the sweet spot with the bike and if he's in the sweet spot with the bike, it kind of feels to me, you mentioned it a minute ago, that that Aprilia is now starting to feel a little bit like the Suzuki to him. Just a really sweet handling thing.

It's obviously a very well sorted bike and he is a supreme talent as well. So put all those things together and you get a result like the last two rounds. Well, let's try to finish up MotoGP. We had a Bastianini in third, he had gotten by Benyaya and Martini got by Benyaya late in the race. So Bastianini is third, Martini is fourth, Benyaya fifth.

Then it's Gigi Antonio in a quiet race. I mean, nobody was talking about that. Then Alis, then Vizecki, Binder with his ankle problem, Fernandez, Raul, then Olivera Miller, Augusto Fernandez, who now looks extremely ordinary on the other Gas Gas, unfortunately. Yeah, almost invisible really. Yeah, but I would have thought maybe he might have thrived in that because the attention is not on him.

But I guess not. Maybe it's one of those things that he just can't do with that kid can do with that bike. It's scary. But I mean, he'll be hoping that he can cling on to the ride for next year because he won't have Acosta as his teammate next year. That is absolutely guaranteed.

I mean, he might not have Acosta as his teammate all this season, the way things are going. I hope that that doesn't change because on the evidence that we're seeing, it doesn't need to because Acosta is beating the works bikes anyway. But I feel desperately sad for Herve Pontural if he lost this year in the sun because he deserves it. Him and Guy Coulomb just have these smiles on their faces that just they don't know how he does it. They have no clue.

They just marvel at it. Well, Herve Pontural at the weekend came out with some crazy, saying the kid's not normal because he just shouldn't be able to do what he's doing. So I know we've got to close the show out, but what I find hard to fathom, and I know Acosta won the Moto 2 championship last year and I don't give them out, you know, with a raffle. They're not in bubblegum machines, right? No, but maybe it's just Moto, the nature of Moto 2, but Acosta never really looked that spectacular on a Moto 2 bike.

He did on the Moto 3 bike. Moto 2 looked a bit kind of ordinary and a bit easy for him almost. Not boring exactly, but steady. And then he gets on the Moto GP bike and he's like, well, hell's broken loose. Pontural was the same way.

Yeah. Yeah, true. And Marquez was. So I mean, yes, it's not without precedent for sure, but it's just a breath of fresh air, isn't it? Yeah.

He's just moving the goalposts someplace else because of what he can do with the bike. I think he's, I'll say it this way, I think he is the face that they need that Liberty's looking and going, this is awesome because he's so likable. So many people hate Marc Marquez, but nobody hates Acosta. Yeah, but Acosta's going, well, yeah, I don't think, no, because I think, I think Acosta's like Rossi. He's got that bubbly personality that is kind of dorky, cool, that everybody loves because Rossi understood the sport.

He understood who the legends were. I do agree with you, Jim. No, absolutely. I totally agree with you, but let's not forget that the other thing, and this is again, this is manna from heaven for Liberty and the marketing people. He's got that streaking in like he did to Foggia in Moto 3 at the end of that season.

They'll just ride into the back of him in more than one just to get under his skin. Rossi-esque, you know, getting into people's heads. So he's got all of that in him as well. Yes, he does. And he will divide opinion in MotoGP because not only people like us and our listeners, you know, dedicatedly watch things like Moto 3.

MotoGP is a whole different ball game in terms of the profile that it has globally. And hopefully that's obviously going to increase. But yeah, so Liberty, I mean, talking about serendipitous, you know, that announcement comes out. You have three races like we had at Kota. You've got Acosta coming on the scene.

I mean, it couldn't be better, could it, from their point of view? They must be thinking we can take this thing, you know, up to Formula One levels. I mean, maybe that's a bit unrealistic because, you know, but it can certainly grow a hell of a long way over the next few years with a person like Acosta involved and all the other characters as well. So one thing about Vinyas, he is the first person in the modern MotoGP era of four strokes to win on three different manufacturers, Yamaha, Suzuki and on the Aprilia. He's only, I think, the fourth person to ever do it in history of MotoGP.

I know Eddie Lawson did it on a Yamaha. He did it on a Honda. He did it on a Kajiva. I think the, I don't know who the other two are. I'm trying to remember what they said because they said it on the broadcast.

I thought one of them was, it's not Halewood because he did all his stuff like on a Honda. It was, oh. No, I can't remember. I can't remember either. There's two other ones.

There's two other ones. I think I was trying to think the guy who wrote on the MV Agustas all the time, who had the championships for all those years. I can't remember his name. Well, Agostini won on the Yamaha. I think Agostini was going on.

I think it was Agostini. I think Agostini had had three different manufacturers. Lawson, I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure.

Yamaha and MV definitely, but I don't know about a third. Yeah. I need to look it up. I will look it up. Somebody will remind us.

It was said, it was said on the race track. You go way back, way back. You go way, way back. Yeah. It's way back for it.

And it's might've been one of the smaller classes where they were running fifties and hundreds and stuff like that. But anyway, that was the podium. That was the race. I mean, it was a spectacular race. I mean, incredible, incredible, incredible race.

This leaves us with Jorge Martin leading the championship on 80 points. Bastianini now is second in points on 59. Then Vinales is there and third on 56. Acosta is fourth on 54. Vinales is now on 50 points.

He's a full 30 points behind Martin at this point in time. It is anybody's race because this is all over the place. This is going to be, again, going to be another great championship this year. But if they, if Gigi Delaney cannot solve the chatter problem, if it is a chatter problem on the back of that 2024 Ducati, you got to think they're going to have to give Benyai back a 23 bike with a 24 motor, if that's even possible. I don't know if the chassis are the same or not to help him get back into this championship hunt because 30 points right now is a long, long way away at this point in time.

That's a lot of points to call back. Yeah. Although let's not forget the Banyai and Marquez went down and poured him out. So he lost a bag full of points there and that will happen to other people through the season. So it's very early doors, but yeah, it's not entirely looking like the happiest camp that works Ducati squad.

If anybody's happy, I would say it's Bastianini. Well, and Marquez. I mean, Martin is 21 points to the good. I mean, that's consistency for you, Jim, isn't it? Yeah.

But again, I mean, he does have a habit of checking it out the road from time to time. So that will probably change. And obviously he and Bastianini are locked in this battle for that seat next year. Yes. Unless Aprilia come with an offer that Martin thinks, yes, I'll do it.

I'm going to go there instead. Which I kind of hope he does, actually. I think that would be an interesting move. I think from Aprilia's point of view, they probably would prefer to have an Italian on the bike at this point in time. And again, rumor mill suggests that they've offered the ride to Bastianini, but he will possibly want to stay put.

And I think probably an outside charge would be Bizeche, although he's having a pretty quiet year so far, isn't he? Yeah. I mean, definitely having the 2023 bike seems to not gel with him as well as the 2022 did. Yeah. I mean, Digia is doing much better on the bike in that team, isn't it?

And there's also, I think you mentioned it earlier on with regards to Pramac and VR46, there's this who goes Yamaha kind of complication in the background as well. I think at the moment, the sensible money looks like Pramac might be tempted to cross. I think they're going to be most tempted to cross. I think Yamaha will make the offer that you will get full factory bikes because they're not going to dig themselves out of this hole unless they have more bikes. No, no, it's got to be absolutely full.

So they have to make a hell of a deal to get somebody of a quality team. Rossi may go because of his loyalty to Yamaha, but he's an Italian with an Italian team. And if he can take Pramac's bikes and get what they had, I think he would go there. Yeah, I agree. I don't think he'd go the other way.

But I don't know. Does Rossi care anymore? I mean, he's off racing cars. So does he? I don't know.

True. Other than the fact that his initials are on the team, but yeah. Yeah. But does he care? Does it really matter if it's Rossi or Rossi's Yamaha?

Yeah, no, I think it's probably a moot point at this point in time, but it certainly matters to Yamaha. I mean, boy, do they need a proper satellite team. Yes, they do. And quickly. Like a gas gas version of a satellite team, not a satellite with customer bikes.

They need another two works bikes out there. Yes. And if they're chucking 10 million euros a year at Fabio Cottero, there must be some commitment on top of that. They are going to spend bit. I think we'll find out that somebody else has already decided that they're going to Yamaha.

It just hasn't been said yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's where we are.

That's that. Okay. So we're out of here. This is the show folks. All right.

Remember one thing I will tell you to ride safe and look forward to next week when I get all the interviews edited and you'll be able to listen to all those from Coda. They're good. I promise you that they are. And with that, I'm going to say, see you next time. And I'm going to say thanks for everything at Coda, Jim.

Great job. Loads of great stuff coming out on Instagram. And I'm really looking forward to listening to your interviews with the various people that you've mentioned. Final note, World Superbike Assen this weekend, British Superbike gets going at Navarro in Spain, which is a bit weird. That's British Superbikes, but they have right one in Spain and Moto America kicks off at, would it be road Atlanta?

I'm not sure. Yes. Superbikes, America's Moto America's Superbikes kick off at road Atlanta. Yes. Loads of super bike racing this weekend.

And yeah, Assen will be good. Cause again, top rack will be ripping it on the BMW. I expect. So yeah, see you next time everybody. Enjoy.

Cheers.