Greg Haines Returns To MotoPod

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long, and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk. Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 769 and I'm your host, Richard Jowett.

Now what you've happened upon here is one of our occasional deep dive interviews, this time again with great friend of the show, Greg Haynes. As many of you will know, Greg is the lead commentator for Eurosport on their World Superbike coverage and Greg's actually been doing some of the recent MotoGP rounds with the BT Sport TNT Discovery Plus crews. So hopefully some of you have a chance to see him on there as well. Now I actually recorded this chat with Greg back on May the 5th, just after I had got back from my trip to South Africa, because as we talk about in the interview, we're in the very long layoff that World Superbike has at the moment for various reasons which we get into. So I thought this discussion would drop quite neatly into the gap just as we get back into World Superbike action in Misano in a couple of weeks time.

And obviously we're heading into a short break of three weeks with the MotoGP as well. So hopefully this one helps to fill in a bit of the space while there's no actual racing going on. Obviously we talk about World Superbike in some depth, we talk a fair bit about MotoGP as well. The only other thing just to mention is that a talk that was planned to take between 40 and 60 minutes actually ran to just over two hours pre-edit. So much so that Greg's phone actually ran out.

So there is a slightly abrupt ending for which I apologise, we didn't get back and record an additional ending. It didn't seem really necessary to do that. So hopefully you'll enjoy the chat and here we go. Well hello everybody, it's Rich here. Sunday the 5th of May and delighted to be joined once again, although it's been a little while by friend of the show, Gregory Haynes from New Sport.

Greg, good to see you. How are you? And first of all, where are you? How are you? What have you been up to?

Thanks very much, Rich. I know it's been, we reckon, just under a year, hasn't it? Since we last met and spoke properly at the Adventure Bike Rider Festival in June last year. But all good thanks. It's been a busy start to the season, an unusually long break now for World Superbike.

So I'm at home at the moment in Spain. The weather is absolutely lovely. Best day of the year so far. We had a lot of much needed rain here in Catalonia last week with one day having the highest amount of rain in a single day since October 2002. Blimey.

But it was needed because we've got a drought going on here. But now it's very nice, 22 degrees, blue sky, sun is shining. So I would almost say it feels like the first day of summer today. Very much the same here. As you know, I've just got back from Cape Town so I've missed the last week but it's been pretty wet and yesterday was a beautiful day here.

Proper spring warm sunshine. Green, lovely. Yeah, absolutely great. Best time of the year. Really is.

And you mentioned, actually you alluded to something just a moment ago, which we'll touch on via one of my questions in a moment. But we've got this very long gap between the last round in Assen with World Supers and then the next round, which I forget where that's going to be. You will know of course. That'll be Misano in June. Right.

So we've got a very, very long gap. So basically the whole of May and the back end of April is bereft of World Superbike activity. What do you actually do to fill in your time? And I know you write quite a bit for Motorcycle News, which is a UK paper for those that don't know. What else do you kind of do to fill in the gaps?

Well first of all, the gap itself is a very long gap and top rat Razgatlioglu made a point of addressing one of the Dorner cameras directly at the end of an interview at Assen saying, guys, please, we don't want this next year. There's different ways of looking at this though, because as you say, Rich, there's no racing for the whole of May. The last weekend of April and the first couple of weekends of June is not till the tail end of June when Misano kicks things off again. So it's bad in terms of the momentum of the championship being broken up. Having said that, we don't have the long break in the summer this year that we've had in the past.

So it's something like eight rounds in 12 weeks or eight rounds in 14 weeks or something like that in the second half of the season. So that's good at least. But yeah, we could have really done with one round. It's really weird as well, because World Superbikes traditionally, a lot of people, Kevin Haven hand Jonathan Ray's right hand man in the past, his rider coach, or rider assistant, I should say, used to look after Jonathan's motor home and babysitter for the kids and make sure his helmets and gloves and everything were ready. I remember Kev used to say to me, the championship is won or lost in May.

So it's really weird. You know, Donington for many years, the Donington round was in May. So that's a bit strange. And then to answer the other part of the question, what am I doing? It's a strange time because you go from being flat out to then being on the other extreme and being back at home with the jobs you need to worry about getting the washing done, emptying the dishwasher, which actually, in my opinion, although they are easier things to do, they are more stressful to do because that's the sort of stuff that builds up in your head and stresses you out, even though you need to just get it done and it's done within half an hour.

Although it will be a bit easier for me because I am doing some MotoGP rounds this year. I'm doing three rounds with TNT Sports. So Catalonia and Maggelo are back to back. I'll be on site for both of those and then Saxon Ring as well. So I'll be filling in on some of the stuff that Steve Day is doing this year, which is some practice sessions, MotoGP warm up, Moto E races, I think possibly Red Bull Rookies races as well.

So that'll be an interesting venture with the TNT guys. And I know most of the people on the team, but I've never actually worked with them in what is the set up formerly known as BT now TNT. So that'll be interesting. But right now there's a little bit of downtime. But in my head, I know I've got to get going on preparation for all of that because although I'm following the classes and watching the races and the highlights, it's not the same as actually broadcasting them.

So I've got to get all the folders ready, all the notes, all the profiles. And that's another 150 odd riders because it's MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, Moto E, like I say, maybe the rookies. That's a lot of names. So I need all those stats fresh in my mind. So that's what I'm going to be getting down to this week and next week.

Gotcha. You're obviously a man hewn out of the same piece of granite that Murray Walker came from in terms of meticulous note keeping and preparation. Because it's important, isn't it? I mean, I can't do an interview like with you without having some notes in front of me as to what I'm going to ask. Try to remember a few key things that will come up.

But obviously you go because you're a professional, of course, you go the full mile then. Yeah, hopefully I'm a professional. Hopefully, Rich. But yeah, you need to know you've got the notes there, even if you don't look at them, because I remember Murray was talking with Jim Rosenthal once in the ITV F1 studio and Tony Jardim was there as well. And Jim Rosenthal.

So how often do you actually use these notes, Murray? He said, oh, never, never. But you know they're there if you need them. And I know exactly what he meant there because if you write them down by hand, a lot of which I do, it sticks in your head. So even if you can't remember the actual piece of information, you know you've got something on that person or on that team or whatever it is.

And it's also just peace of mind of knowing it's there just in case. Because if you do get a red flag, and certainly with what I'm going to be doing with the TNT guys, I'll be there with Michael Lavaty or Neil Hodgson, I think primarily the two co-commentators alongside us. It's going to be practice sessions. There is not going to be race action. So there will be more time for getting into in-depth conversations.

And that's the part I'm almost most nervous about, actually, because you always get nervously excited and I want to do a good job for the team, of course. But the fact it is more background chat, I mean, I really need to be up to date with behind the scenes gossip, who's injured, who's not, what's happened so far this season. So obviously I'm keeping on top of it as much as possible. But I'll definitely be going through all of the TNT sport coverage from Le Mans, which is the next Grand Prix before Catalunya, to make sure I know not just what's happening, but what the guys have been discussing as well to not repeat things as it were, and help to take, you know, carry the conversation on from where they left off. So it's going to be interesting.

I'm quite excited about it. I'm looking forward to seeing that. We're not here to talk about MotoGP, but I must, as you're going to be straying into that territory, and hopefully that's something you'll get to do a bit more and more. Because it was good to see that Steve, as you said, is getting a bit more involved as well as his BSB duties for EuroSport. But I've got to ask you about Pedro Acosta.

I mean, what's your thoughts on this guy as a, well, I mean, we knew he was a talent and he's a double world champion and I don't give those out for free. But have you been as surprised as I think most people have by the rapidity with which he has taken to the MotoGP bike, which is not exactly jumping from one class to another. Really, is it? Because the MotoGP bike is the absolute weapon of the world really in two world motorsport, isn't it? Especially when you consider the field he's up against with so many top riders on top motorcycles.

Yeah. The fact he's not in the factory team either. I know they're getting a lot of factory support there at Gas Gas, but he's not in the factory team and they won't get the first choice with parts and materials and whatever. Despite what people say, there's always a difference. No, he's incredible, isn't it?

And you only get a talent like that coming along probably once every 10 or 15 years. So you are looking at the people like Kenny Roberts or a Freddie Spencer or Yano Siren and Gary Hocking in the early 1960s is regarded by a lot of people as one of the most talented bike racers ever in his area. He was the 1961 champion. Mark Marquez, obviously, but it's only generally obviously Roberts and Spencer came quite close to one another. But generally a talent like that only comes along in sport every 10 or 15 years.

And it has been spectacular. It's the confidence as well, I think, and the belief that, yes, I do deserve to be here. I do deserve to be beating Mark Marquez and Banyaya and all the rest of them. And surely he will be winning a Grand Prix very, very soon, possibly even in the first half of the season. And also, I think, Rich, MotoGP needed in there because it has not been the easiest time for MotoGP.

On track, it's been difficult to overtake. They've lost that sort of USP. Thankfully, we got that incredible race in here, didn't we? Between Marquez and Banyaya, as well as all the carnage as well in the sprint, which was also, let's be honest, from a neutral point of view, we don't want people getting hurt. And thankfully, nobody was.

But a bit of action like that is always good for the TV and the trackside viewers. So, no, it's tremendous. Acosta is needed. And you can tell how much he's been needed because of the fact that putting out so many videos about him, so many Instagram posts about him. You can tell that within Dorna, that's a direction they've chosen to take.

And they've got to be picking up these guys. The only thing I would say, the only problem at the moment is that there are still way too many riders from countries being Spain and Italy. There's nothing against Spain and there's nothing against Italy because they are incredible riders. And the systems they've got in those countries with their national championships are out of this world and they thoroughly deserve it. But just from a neutral point of view, at the same problem with world super bikes, about a decade ago with too many British riders, too many of anything is not a good thing.

We need more variety. It's the only thing I would say. But I'm nitpicking, really. But I think for the good of everyone, you want as much variety as possible, which is good when you've got a top rack or an American rider comes along. It's good.

Joe Roberts is going well in Moto2 at the moment. Yeah, it's just better, I think, for the overall show. That's why Carl Fogarty was so popular. One of the reasons is he was the only Brit who was winning in world super bikes at the time up against all these other nationalities. Then again, that's not going to stop a cost of being successful.

It might be a problem for other Spanish and Italian riders, you know, another Spaniard with the greatest respect in the world. You're going to need to be even better now, aren't you? When attracting the attention of other teams, sponsors, because there are so many of them. So there's good and bad, I suppose. If you come through that route, you've got a great opportunity.

On the other hand, there are so many other riders like you in terms of nationality that must make things difficult in terms of finding sponsorship and making yourself more unique. Yeah. OK, so that segues Greg really neatly. Well done. You've done that completely unprompted.

I don't know where you're going to get it on, please, if it has. So we're obviously here to talk about World Superbike 2024. The first thing I wanted to talk to you about, as I say, these are not really race reviews or anything like that because we did that or we've done that in the past when we've spoken. I just wanted to pick on a few key kind of themes that have already cropped up or big pieces of news. So Liberty Media then.

Now, I know that doesn't directly affect in an obvious way World Superbike. Clearly, Liberty coming in. And again, as we've stressed on this show several times, this is not a done deal yet. They're trying to buy Dorner. Let's say the structure of the deal is agreed.

But whether it goes through, there's all sorts of competition law that has to be got through on that. But let's assume that this does go through. I think most people feel it probably will. Are you of a view that it is likely to result in World Superbike getting hived off and going into a different promoter, if that's the right word, or commercial rights holder to handle it? And if that does happen, I won't tell you what I think.

But would you see that as a positive thing for World Superbike or a negative thing? It's a big, big question. And I can't give you an actual answer, but I can give you my opinion. I can give you that's what I'm asking. Yeah, what I've heard.

Yeah, because it's very difficult to know for sure. I'm not even sure those involved behind the scenes know for sure. What I have heard is, though, and this was a topic I was desperately wanting to know more about when we got to Assen for the last round. And I did have a chat straight away with Greg O'Reilly, the championship boss. And he said, as much as I want to tell you, there's not much I can say at the moment.

And you may have heard I mentioned it in the commentary on Eurosport. I think it was in Friday practice when JT and I were talking away there. And the analogy Greg Livia has given at the moment is it's like being the tenant in a house and the owner decides to sell the house, but the tenant stays. So he says, just because the ownership has changed, it doesn't mean you've got to redecorate the whole house, you know, paint everything, get a new kitchen fitted and bathrooms and all the rest of it. So I thought that was quite a nice analogy.

At the same time, I thought Greg did a good job of sort of dodging the actual. But then again, I think I believe him. I think at the moment he probably doesn't know for sure what is going to happen. It's not him pretending, you know, I think it's a really interesting situation because, like you've said, and you guys have mentioned this in previous shows, it's not completely a done deal. Needs to go through all the relevant bodies and monopolies commission and all that business.

Far more complex than I can understand. But Bernie Ecclestone in the early 90s set up a company called Two Wheel Promotions, you may remember, and he tried to get the rights for MotoGP. And I know, having spoken to Freddie Spencer and people like that, that they were very much against this because their feeling at the time is that Bernie wanted to take control of the bikes commercial rights in order to keep it down at a certain level and stop it competing with Formula One in the same way that a lot of people said Dorne should not have had World Superbikes, even though I worked for Dorne in World Superbikes and it was good for me. I'm not going to lie. But a lot of people at the time and continue to this day to say they're just holding World Superbikes down at a certain level to let MotoGP flourish.

And I think to an extent that is true. MotoGP is Dorne's baby, always has been, always will be. I'm not saying they're out to sabotage World Superbikes. Of course, they're not. The people working within Dorne and World Superbikes are incredible.

I've worked with many of them firsthand, whether it's the press department, the TV department, the guys and girls who work in the TV truck. And I think the production, the television production has got a lot better since Dorne took control. I mean, I would say that, wouldn't I? But I honestly think it has since 2015. There's better camera angles.

The onboard camera technology is far superior to what it was before. Yeah, graphics. It's not up to MotoGP standards, which is frustrating sometimes because I'm sure it could be if they really wanted it to be. I know less budget is allocated to it there. So what will Liberty do to make a difference?

I've heard from a good contact I know from when I used to work in Formula One from 2009 to 2012, who has good contacts within Dorne and Liberty and all the championships involved that 2024, if and when all this goes through, we won't see much of a change. But 2025, they really want to put their own mark on it. The question is, will they keep it, as you said, with kind of the same reasons to keep it sort of under control or will they let it go? I don't know. I really don't know.

But I think whatever happens, I don't think it's going to be a bad thing. World Superbikes, if it goes to another promoter, which is something George Villegas, the FIM president, has said in the past, infamously, because he said that's the best thing that could happen for World Superbikes. And I do not believe the the head bosses at Dorne were very happy that the FIM president had come out and said that. But you can see why he said that. And Villegas is quite a production racing fan, actually.

And he's a big World Superbikes fan because, yeah, you know, let's be honest, if it was a different company, they would really put everything behind it to make it succeed as much as possible. I do think, though, that Liberty will do a very good job. And we know what they've done with Formula One. They've brought a much bigger audience to it. As we record this, they're racing right now in Miami.

There's three Grand Prix now in the States and after the Indianapolis debacle of 2005, it looked like F1's future in the States was absolutely finished, didn't it? Yeah. They got another couple of races there after that. But then from 2007, which was the last Indianapolis F1 Grand Prix until 2012, Cota, Texas, there was no Grand Prix again in the States. So the fact they've got it back to three Grand Prix is good.

You may argue the new fans are not the diehard romantics like we are. It's the drive to survive audience. Old fashioned traditionalist me does feel sometimes that that drive to survive thing has bled too much into the real races now. And I can see you're smiling and nodding there, Riz. Well, I hate that.

No, sorry. I was going to say I hate Formula One. I hate what Formula One has become in terms of all the off track. I mean, it's always been a razzmatazz thing. Yeah.

So since arguably the 90s, probably go before that. And there was less. There was no social media and stuff like that. But a lot of what goes on with Formula One, I find quite the distraction to the main reason for it being. And that is one concern.

And it's a mild concern or relatively minor concern I have about the Liberty MotoGP thing, but just coming back to the Superbike thing. So just to be clear, I'm speculating that because of, like you said, the monopolies in the competition law that will have to be very carefully reviewed. It might be deemed that Liberty getting their hands on MotoGP and World Superbike is just too much of a monopoly for them to have. And so I wonder, I don't think Liberty would willingly let it go, but they might have to negotiate it away in order to get the main MotoGP deal through. I think that's a likely scenario.

And part of me thinks, like you said, Greg, that Dawn would do a good job with it. But I just never have felt in the last few years, at least, given how good the racing has been and how good of a spectacle it is and how many big stars are there now, I just always felt it's very much felt like the poor relation and more could have been done to push it, particularly in the social media age in which we live now. So I just wonder whether it could be a, you know, a healthy injection for it to have a new promoter and a new commercial rights holder really pushing it and going head to head with MotoGP, which is obviously a very difficult battle because MotoGP is the preeminent kind of series on two wheels. But I think it would potentially be a really good thing. Well, I mean, I think it is the better product at the moment, if I'm honest.

And maybe that's a controversial viewpoint. And people might say, oh, well, you would say that because you're working in World Superbikes, like you say, writing for MCN, commentating for Eurosport. I've got nothing against MotoGP at all. I love all motorsport, you know that touring cars, the Formula One bikes, whether it's production racing or prototypes of MotoGP. But I just think at the moment, when you look at the races, the actual races and the characters involved, World Superbikes is the place to be.

Hasn't always been the case. So anyone who does start slating me for that, I'll say now it's not because I'm working there right now. I mean, when I started there, they were tricky times in a way. As impressive as Jonathan Ray and Kawasaki's domination was, it was very predictable. It was like the Shimaker era in Formula One or the doing era in MotoGP.

Sebastian Nob, dominating world rallying as action packed and great as it still is, is motor racing. It was very predictable. A bit like it was in World Superbikes with Batista last year, let's be honest. But right now we've got different people on different bikes, different winners. We've had nine different people on the podium this year.

But I do agree. Sometimes you think, oh, how frustrating that there's not more social media stuff, especially when you see sometimes MotoGP and Formula One in fairness to them doing a very good job. But making a big deal out of something that, to be honest, is a very small thing. But yeah, it gets everyone talking about it because they do get it out there on social media. It's really difficult to know what's going to happen because, OK, you could say why should Liberty be allowed to have both MotoGP and World Superbikes?

But that's exactly what Dawn has been doing since 2013 anyway, when they took the rights on, you know, you could also say, why should Liberty be allowed to have MotoGP and F1? People don't seem to be worried, though, from what I've read and speaking to people that they're going to start protecting F1 by keeping MotoGP held down. So I think it could be good. I think it could be good. I hope expand the calendars, get more international interest because they are very, very exciting.

You know, it's gladiatorial stuff, motorbike racing. And in this day and age of health and safety, it's probably one of the last few genuine international sports, motorbike racing, this is as a whole, that is really, really blooming dangerous, like it used to be in F1. F1 is still dangerous, but not like it used to be. And let's be honest, the danger does add to the attraction. I don't know what's going to happen.

I'm going to keep chasing this as much as I can the next few weeks and months to see if a Liberty will keep World Superbikes. From what I've heard, they will. I've heard they will into 25 and beyond, and they'll keep the whole thing. But it's going to be interesting to say, I know one priority they do have is to get the calendar sorted out, not just close up these gaps, but get more non-European destinations. So I've heard we're going to be in China next year, potentially with the Shanghai International Circuit, because of the interest from Kovy and QJ, Barber Motorsport Park, where we just had the IndyCar race with the mannequin Georgina falling onto the track the other day.

That should be on the World Superbike calendar next year. Istanbul Park in Turkey, for obvious reasons, with Toprak. Hockenheim in Germany as well. We may even have Hockenheim on this year's calendar, but I don't think it'll happen. I do think we're going to have Estoril in Portugal, though, to replace Hungary, because I hear Hungary is not going to happen.

That will be cancelled. So, yeah, we need to get more of international, though. That is for sure. And I believe the people at Liberty are already prioritizing that. It's going to be really interesting to see what they do, though.

The one thing I'll just add is they've got to make World Superbikes and MotoGP as different as possible. They don't need to be competing with one another, especially because it's the same promoter. They just need to look different. They need to be different. And in my opinion, Rich, a big part of that is going to different circuits.

There's no point having World Superbike races at Aragon and Haereth. And as good as these circuits are, they look empty. Because they don't attract the same crowds. They're not promoted anywhere near as well as the MotoGP races are. So let's make sure we keep going to Magny Cor and Donington and bring Imola back, Laguna Saka or wherever.

I think that's important. And a Japanese round, we've got to get back to Japan at some point, surely. Yeah. Kyle Army. Kyle Army would be really good.

I tweeted out the other day, actually, when I was towards the end of my trip there. I spoke to quite a few people, you know, about the podcast. And although I was there for work, but not talking about work all the time. And there's a lot of appetite for bike racing to come back to Kyle. Well, they come back to Kyle.

I mean, World Superbike did go there in the early noughties, didn't they? For a few years, as I recall. Yeah. And of course, we had Velcom as well, didn't we? For MotoGP.

And obviously, Kyle Army has hosted Formula One in the past as well. I believe listening to the WTF podcast with Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard. Recently, they were talking about South Africa, and I think it did get quite close to happening a few years back. But in the end, it didn't happen because of money related reasons. You won't be surprised to hear.

But yeah, you can't really call any world championship a world championship, truly, if they're not going to all the continents, can you? No, exactly. You really do need a race on the African continent. But I think you've hit the nail right on the head there, Greg. I mean, my personal feeling, I think, is that because I'm a bit of a completist, I think for everything to reside under the Liberty Dawn, umbrellas, let's say, I think would be a good thing, provided they make commitments to promote them, as you say, as separate entities and promote both hard.

And I think in that respect, Dawn probably could do a bit of a kick in the ass to say, look, you haven't perhaps done as well as you should have done. And maybe there is a nefarious reason for them doing that, to try and keep MotoGP as the more preeminent thing. I don't know. But I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head. They shouldn't race at the same venues.

They shouldn't have events on the same weekend, which does happen occasionally. Well, that was sorry to butt in, but that was silly recently. And I know they have to plan these dates. And I know the people in World Superbikes are trying their absolute best to have the best possible calendar with the most variety possible. But it was silly, you have to say, when you consider it's the same company running them to have the Barcelona World Superbike round and the Portimão MotoGP round on the same weekend recently, because I just can't see that has going to help either of them being so close to races on the Iberian Peninsula.

It's not the same as having, let's just say, the Australian MotoGP from Philip Island in the morning for European viewers, that is, and then Qatar World Superbikes. They've crashed a few times in the past. Yeah. Or, you know, that sort of thing or one of the early morning European races, as it would be in Europe. Like, let's just say Thai MotoGP clashes with MagniCore World Superbikes or something like that.

At least they're not on exactly the same moment. But to have two races in Europe on the Iberian Peninsula and World Superbikes will always suffer more because MotoGP is bigger. So more people will go as a spectator. You may well fly from Spain to Portugal. And given the choice, some people would go to World Superbikes because it's cheaper, let's be honest.

And the racing is, dare I say it, better at the moment across the board. Greg, I think objectively, the racing is demonstrably better. Not to say the racing has been bad in MotoGP. No, not at all. I think a lot of MotoGP's problem at the moment is this perception that the racing is not good because of aero and stuff.

And whilst aero has had an effect, aero is still a relatively young thing in MotoGP. And so I suspect that. And what happens is you get a disruptor like Acosta comes along and shows everybody that actually you can overtake. You might just need to do things a bit differently. And it kind of wakes everybody else up to some different possibilities, perhaps.

I mean, I don't know. I'm speculating, but. No, I agree. The last few MotoGP races have been good races, I think, as well as good spectacles and stuff. So there's definitely a place for MotoGP and World Superbike to coexist.

And whether that's under the same umbrella, who knows? We'll find out. One thing I want to add as well, Rich, sorry, is bearing in mind as long as the manufacturers are involved to the extent that they are, they will always want a production based championship, because let's be honest, although now because of Euro 5 regulations and speed cameras and health and safety laws and goodness knows what else, there are fewer people buying sports bikes. But things have moved on. We're into the age of TikTok now and Instagram and all the things you love spending time on, Rich.

And me as well for that matter. But, you know, kids of today are so interested. We really do sound like grandparents now. In motorbikes, however, there's still a big market for track days in particular. You know, within the R1, the Amahara R1 being discontinued in the UK, for example.

But it's still going to go on as a track day by sounds like it's something that thing might happen with the ZX10 now, the Kawasaki with the new Bimotor project coming in. And maybe we'll talk about that in a minute. But there is still a market for these bikes and the manufacturers, as long as they are involved, they will still want to be doing well in World Superbikes, confirmed by the fact that so much more investment has gone in from so many more manufacturers in the last few years. KTM are going to be in supersport next year. QJ have come in.

Kovia are involved in that sense. You know, it's in a good place. They're going to have to keep adapting the regulations to make sure they can adapt to the road machines, because if they stop making the road machines, they're not going to have any bikes there for the championship. But as the next generation supersport rules have proven already, they can adapt and they'll continue to adapt. So MotoGP is, I would say, the show.

It's got the bigger audience, but it's not to say World Superbikes couldn't have that audience. It's all going to depend on how it's marketed. They're going to have to just find a balance between the two. But, you know, it just goes to show that people like Yamaha, Jukati in particular at the moment, they can run successful teams in both. And they are, Jukati certainly are.

Yeah, I mean, Liberty's great challenge is obviously is to grow the sport in terms of audience ship, isn't it? And whilst I know we're going to have to kind of suck up looking at people wandering around in gold suits and with diamond studded teeth, you know, in terms of influencers on the grid and all this kind of nonsense. And strange people we've never heard of waving chequered flags. Yeah. And, you know, stars of one sort or another who know nothing about it, getting invited along for a nice day out and being, if not just the most ordinary folk, I mean, we just know that that is likely to happen.

We'll just have to swallow that pill. You know, you would hope that a bit of the magic, I mean, let's give the devil his due. I mean, Liberty have done a very, very good job since they got their hands on Formula One. Yeah. And I was sent to somebody the other day.

It's kind of weird in the Bernie Ecclestone period of F1, where he just was not having any of the social media. He thought it watered down the TV rights quality, which was obviously the big payday for him. But, you know, he took really F1 nearly to the edge, didn't he? In terms of not engaging with that sort of thing. And at that time, Dawna was like in a stratosphere of activity with regards to social media compared to F1.

And it's kind of switched now that Liberty have come in. So there's obviously a huge opportunity for them to make a lot more. And I think the group that's going to hate this the most is the riders, because they're clearly going to have to do a lot more. And we're going to have to work harder off the bikes, quite frankly. But for the Pedro Costas, the guys that know how to use social media and how to use personality and how perhaps to introduce a little bit of needle here and there, they are going to go through the roof in terms of international stardom if all this goes well.

Yeah. And they might not hate it if they get another zero on their contract. It might be an opportunity for those riders. OK, fine. I'll give them another 50 days of promotional work, but I want X number of euros added onto my contract.

Thanks very much. David Coulthard always used to say, I saw myself being paid to do that sort of work. And then I drove the car for free. And I thought that's quite a nice way to look at it, isn't it? Yeah.

Because generally, of course, they'd rather be riding or driving. Now, it's going to be really, really interesting, actually, to see what Liberty does and which direction they go in with it, because there are a lot of people in Formula One who look up to MotoGP and World Superbikes. Hamilton is a keen rider himself. Many of them, Lando Norris often turns up at the British Grand Prix, doesn't he? And he's a big Mark Marquez fan and Valentino Rossi fan.

It's going to be very, very interesting to see what happens. But yeah, I will just say for Dawn, I mean, we're talking about how maybe they could have done things a bit differently with World Superbikes. But I agree with you. Dawn really did lead the way from late 90s, certainly early to late early 2000s in terms of online content. The television production, the graphics, the way they would cut between onboard cameras.

I always think of Lorenzo and Rossi in the last corners of Catalina 09. The way Sergi Sendra, the TV director at Dawn, who was cutting between the front facing camera on one bike, the rear facing camera on the other. It was an incredible TV experience and the graphics as well. But like you say, only the last few years, Formula One has caught up and now gone way ahead. They've got a much, much, much bigger budget.

But MotoGP has always been the people's championship in a way, hasn't it? That's the one problem MotoGP has had in the last two or three years with this advanced aero, this Gigi Dillinia led technology that was very much Formula One inspired with ground effects and wings and everything else. The USP of MotoGP always used to be the one where they can do the overtaking, didn't it? And that's what they've lost in the last few years. So I reckon with the new ruleset coming in in a few years down the line, that's what they'll they'll take a lot of that back off again and bring it back down to rider skill.

It goes in cycles, doesn't it? We've seen great BSB seasons. We've seen more professional BSB seasons. We've seen very, very predictable and quite professional world Superbike seasons. And then the most amazing racing you've ever seen this year.

And 2021 was a particularly good season. MotoGP is the same. And this is what happens over time. It ebbs and flows. And it's always done that.

And it will continue to do that. OK, Greg. So that, again, nice little segue sort of. You mentioned the new rules that come in for MotoGP in 2027. I heard somebody say the other day that we may even get something official coming out around Le Mans in terms of what those rules are going to look like.

I think we know reasonably well that it's going to be an 850cc engine. That seems to have been confirmed by a few different people as to whether we lose the rear ride height devices if they try and pull back on the air and stuff, we don't know precisely. We'll get to see that detail. But and kind of with the whole kind of social media, the world Superbike versus MotoGP thing still kind of in mind brings me to top rack Rascati Dioglu and BMW in particular as a manufacturer and the persistent rumour about whether or not if they can be successful in the world Superbike, whether they may then look towards going or may even be looking at going to MotoGP already. I mean, A, what's your personal view?

And then B, you're in there around the paddock and talk to all of these people all of the time. I mean, what's the perceived wisdom at the minute, given the progress that BMW have made since they've actually put well, I don't want to be rude to the Scott Reddings of the world and so on. But when we spoke at ABR last year, the top rack thing, I don't think it was announced at that point, but it was hotly rumoured. I mean, it's been the right call for them, hadn't it? Let's be honest.

I mean, the guy is just sensational. So where do you see BMW now and in the future? What I do love about it, which is the fact that it proves how much of a difference the rider still makes, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, whatever anyone wants to say, top, Rascati, ugly, whatever he touches turns to gold, whether it's a Pachetti Kawasaki satellite bike on which he can race with and beat Jonathan Ray, who at that time was a four time world champion.

Just about had already won 50, 60 odd races in World Superbikes. Top rack beating with a satellite bike. Then he goes to Yamaha and everyone says, what the hell? That's he's doing the wrong thing there. That's never going to suit his riding style.

Bearing in mind, he joined Yamaha in 2020 and then only won one world title in World Superbikes in 2009. With Ben Spears. Yeah. By the end of the second season, he was world champion on the Yamaha. And then he goes to BMW, the most outrageous of all the moves.

And yes, it was for big money. We know that. But I believe every word he says when he says I wanted a new challenge, to be fair to Yamaha, they came up with an offer that was pretty much just as good as the BMW one, more or less, from what I believe. But he wanted the new challenge and he's gone to the BMW. And look what he's doing.

James Tosen worked out when he was sat in the media center asking that Toprak himself is bringing half a second a lap on most circuits at the moment, half a second a lap. And you do feel sorry for people like Scott Reading because he's not looking very good at the moment. And I really hope Scott, because he is the people's champion in many ways. He's a great personality. He gets sometimes a bit of stick for is he more interested in Instagram and TikTok than he is in the actual racing?

Maybe that's warranted. Maybe that's not depending on the day and what's actually going on. But he's a great rider and he's great for the championship. And he's a great personality. He speaks his mind.

I think he's been proven absolutely right about the whole weight limit thing, especially the fact the other day a document went out which proves that he is still 20 kilos heavier than Alvaro Bautista. Can you believe that even with the weight limits in terms of rider and bike? Anyway, I'm digressing there. But I just hope Reading can salvage a ride somewhere. You know, there's rumors about him going to Mark VDS, rejoining the team he used to race for in the MotoGP paddock if they are to run a second bike next year.

So maybe Sam Lowe's and Scott Reading or Sam Lowe's and Alex Lowe's is another rumor, of course. But in terms of BMW and Topra, I think it's brilliant how the rider can make such a difference. I think he is the best thing that has happened to bike racing in general for a very long time. I really believe talking to mechanics, crew chiefs, team bosses, fellow media people, and most importantly, riders, whether current or ex, that he is right up there on the same sort of level of natural talent and ability as Mark Marquez, Pedro Acosta, Pekka Banyaya. I think Toprak is right up there in the top five, top six riders globally at the moment.

If he had enough testing, let's say they could give him a year of testing on all of these circuits, he doesn't know, because that will be the big thing. I really believe he could do it. And he could actually become the first rider ever to win MotoGP and World Superbike titles, which would be amazing. Yes, he'd be 30 by then. But I did an interview with him at Assen and he said, yeah, BMW is thinking of going.

There's making no secrets about it. The board want to win World Superbikes first. Let's not run before we can walk. So they're thinking of 27. But Toprak said, if I win two titles in 2024 and 25, there's nothing stopping me from going to MotoGP on a satellite, GKATI or something in 2026.

I mean, he might even go not with BMW. Liberty will be, by the looks of things, very much in control by then. They'll want him. MotoGP probably needs him. They'll get extra interest from a Turkish broadcaster to sell some nice TV rights.

The dollar signs coming in there. They'll probably get a Turkish Grand Prix back again at Istanbul Park, most likely, which is just had a brand new track resurfaced, by the way, recently. So the place is looking in good shape, apparently. And it is a great track, isn't it? Istanbul Park, as we've seen before.

Fantastic. I mean, so Travesti is not on the calendars at the moment in F1 or World Superbikes or MotoGP, so hopefully it will be very soon. BMW itself, we know that their new boss is just taken over, is a big MotoGP fan, and he will try and persuade the board. So the better they can do in World Superbikes in the meantime, the easier his job is going to be in getting to MotoGP. It's going to be interesting, though, because Toprak could well be a double World Superbike champion with BMW, three in total, by the end of next year.

If he wins it this year and wins it next year, and who the hell would have believed that this time last year, that a BMW? With getting the title, I mean, it's by no means over. And I think Baptiste is probably still the favourite at the moment for various reasons. But Toprak could be a double World Champion by then. And he keen as a fog, who will be talking with everyone in MotoGP, whether it's KTM, Ducati, whether they want him is another matter, because, yes, it's risky, I guess, when you could just get a rider from Moto2.

That is the route that they tend to go down these days. But surely someone somewhere will think of the marketing dream this could be to have a Turkish rider, not the usual Spanish or Italian. He's come from a different route. He could be the first to win both World Super and MotoGP. It could be incredible.

So whether he goes is one matter. But whether he's actually going to go with BMW is another matter altogether. I do think if BMW were going to do it, though, they'll want Toprak to go with them. Yes, I'll absolutely be convinced they'll want Toprak to go with them. So it's going to be interesting, isn't it?

I guess it's in BMW's interest to get this sorted because it's not very far off. 27 is not that far off when you think they've got to get a whole team put together testing the whole logistical. I mean, it's a huge effort, isn't it? A huge, huge effort. So they're going to be needing really to be making that decision sooner rather than later.

I don't know whether it's going to mean winning the World Superbike title this year to be able to convince the board, because then if they're going to do it next year as 25, they're really going to be wanting to confirm it, I guess, next year at the latest, really. In my moments of contemplation sat on the sofa looking out into the garden with a nice cup of coffee. You know, in my mind, I think about things like the new regulations, as we've said, are going to come out in terms of precisely what the detail of that is. And then in my head, I kind of see, as you say, Toprak either winning the championship this year, which I personally think he will, even though Bautista is going to be hard to beat. I don't normally put bets on, but I was going to pre-season.

I didn't. I don't know what the odds would have been at that time for Toprak on the BMW to win it, because I remember last year talking with Bautista and various other people saying, do you reckon he could actually win the championship next year? And Bautista looked me in the eye and said, yeah. He said, trust me, that BMW is a much better bike than it shows. So, yeah, you might be right.

I don't know whether you've got money on it, Rich, but I hope you have for your sake. Well, I haven't, no, because I'm not really a betting person, but I'd happily put a 20 pound bet on it with you, Greg. And, you know, the winner puts the 20 quid into their charity of choice. How about that? We'd both be agreeing.

You just said Bautista was going to win it this year. Yeah, I did. I think Bautista is still the favourite. But Toprak could win it. Toprak could win it.

It's difficult to know, isn't it? Because the next few rounds will tell. We could get rain, we could get incidents, we could get some technical problems. It only takes a couple of bad races for somebody to be 60, 70 points behind. And then it changes the whole dynamic again.

Well, you might get Budiger versus Bautista. You might get Bautista versus Toprak. You know, God forbid somebody could hurt themselves and be ruled out for a few rounds. You might get Budiger versus Toprak. Bautista reckons it's going to be the three of them together.

And I think he's probably right, especially the fact Ray's had such a difficult start with Yamaha. I think you probably will get Bautista, Budiger and Toprak. It might even go down to the wire. At the moment, I still think Bautista is the favourite just because there's more consistency there. He's already started winning races now.

There's still some uncertainty for Toprak and BMW. Having said that, this is Toprak Razgatlioglu we're talking about. He is one of the Gary Hockings, Mark Marcus, Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer of this world to, you know, compare him with some of those greats we mentioned before. I honestly don't know. It is impossible to predict.

And that is what is so good about it. It's fantastic. Yeah. You know, Max Verstappen is going to win the F1 World title and can let something outrageous happens. You don't know who's going to win World Superbikes.

It is absolutely brilliant. I suppose the caveat I would put on the Toprak thing. And we saw this at Phillip Island, didn't we? Where he had an engine let go would be that as BMW push, push, push, does reliability just become a bit of an issue, which you kind of don't feel that that's ever going to be a problem. Exactly.

With the Ducati. But I know to finish my thought, I hope, you know, if the new regs break cover, I'm hoping that might be swiftly followed by an announcement by BMW that they've got an 850 prototype already somewhat well into development. I mean, without wishing to be too sort of conspiracy theorist sounding about it, I always took the view that when Dawn had kind of held firm and didn't allow KTM and other two bikes on the grid to replace Suzuki and that they were holding that open for a manufacturer. I never always hoped that that was BMW. Yes, there are some Chinese manufacturers that are starting to come to the fore now.

And that would obviously make all sorts of sense commercially as well. But I kind of feel like BMW coming into MotoGP would be the right way to go. And so I'm hoping to see Toprak out testing a prototype, you know, in 26 with a view towards going there in 27. And whilst, as you said, I mean, he's kind of one of the older riders now. But what people don't often mention about Toprak and touch wood because they'll jinx the guy.

But he's not an injury prone rider, is he? He's not a guy that falls off a great deal. So physically, you would say probably he's one of the guys that could race a bit further in to his 30s and approaching the 40s, possibly even, because he doesn't have an awful lot of wear and tear on him as a lot do. Yeah, and also he's mature as well, because he is an old head on young shoulders. And, OK, 30 is considered old, but there's plenty of riders race on into their 30s and race very well, don't they?

Yeah. You know, how old Mark is now? He was born in 93, so he's 31 now. So there you go. There's your proof.

But it will just be necessary for Toprak to have enough testing, as you said, if they're already going to roll out a prototype. Oh, it's exciting, isn't it? It could be really, really good. Can you imagine? Yeah, it would be so nice for him to do it as well.

He's one of the most humble people I have ever met in any facet of life. He's just such a nice person. And he's the kind of person, Toprak, that is genuinely interested in you and what you're up to and how your family is. And he's not doing it because he's trying to be friendly with the media to play the game. He doesn't need to play the game.

He's that good. He doesn't need to play these silly mind games with other riders, other teams, the media or anyone. He doesn't need to. He is a real legend. I think it would be brilliant.

I would be so pleased if he did. The only thing I would say is it would be bad news for World Superbikes to lose him. I think it's worth the try for Toprak because he knows he could always go back to World Superbikes if for any reason the MotoGP thing, if it happens and it doesn't work out, and let's hope it would work out. But if it didn't, he can always go back to World Superbikes. And we know another target of his is to win the World Superbike title with various manufacturers.

You know, I could honestly see him winning it on a Honda one day, winning it on a Ducati, going back to Kawasaki and winning on that or a Bimotors as it might be by then, or as it will be by then. So, I mean, the excitement there, provided he keeps safe, which is, as you say, that is, you know, that's the one big difference with bikes and cars. There's a genuine chance a bike ride is going to hurt themselves. Whereas in cars, it would be much more unexpected. But provided he does, I mean, good news, only knows what we might be saying about Toprak in 10 years time.

He's a very, very exciting prospect. And it will be so nice to see that people going between different championships, because they used to do that, didn't they, in motorsport, when we had shorter calendars, you know, back in the day, we'd have Stirling Moss, Jim Clark and others going between all sorts of different car championships and the same with the bikes as well. Well, Sertis and Helwood. Exactly. Exactly.

Well, exactly. Doing cars and bikes. So that's why I think John Sertis, to go off on a real tangent now, is one of the most significant people ever in motorsport history, because that may well not ever happen again. It's amazing. No, I think it will.

You might argue that Valentino is kind of having a stab at it now. But in terms of the sort of the premier levels of each category. No, I just can't see how it could happen now. No, I mean, for one thing, the calendars are too long. Yeah, and that is a big problem.

I know you had a lot of money within their own parish now, whereas the guys used to jump around from different series because they needed to earn the money, didn't they? Back in the sort of 60s and 70s and so on. Yeah, exactly. Which was why they would do, you know, street races on the Adriatic coast of Italy and go and do the race of champions here or whatever it was. Race of Aces at Snetterton or whatever.

They used to pay good money, didn't they? Yeah. Unless you got rich, unless you got someone like a Mark Randistraten, who's involved in both bikes and cars, decides it could be a great bit of PR to, you know, train someone up. Someone said recently on social media, if anyone's ever going to do that, it might be someone like a Zane Sofoglu. Anyone who's not seen him, have a look on Instagram because it's it's outrageously incredible.

Zane Sofoglu, Kenan Sofoglu's little son. Some of the stuff he's doing is downright dangerous, but also incredible. You probably do the bikes first, I guess, and then the cars, I would imagine. Well, maybe not. Maybe it will be cars and bikes.

It's difficult to tell. I reckon you'd probably do the bike thing first and then go to cars. As Sirfies did. But you can see someone like a Zane Sofoglu, if he starts his professional career at the age of seven, which is looking very likely the way things are going, he could do it. Who knows?

I wouldn't put it past one of those doing it. It's going to be anyone. It's going to be one of that Turkish mafia, surely. So moving on from BMW, then, or this sort of stuff does apply somewhat to top rack, I suppose. So in World Superbike this year, we've had the weight limit thing.

And so the combined bike rider weight, you just mentioned it a minute ago. So we know that it's been a problem for the Scott Redding is obviously the one that always gets mentioned, because I think he probably is the biggest, heaviest rider on the grid. Yeah. Top rack is not a small or lightweight guy. By any means.

And there are a few other people up and down the pit lane that would have benefited from this. The competitive order overall doesn't appear to have been massively shaken up. I think the Alvaro Bautista question has been a bit clouded by that neck injury that you picked up and that has probably held him back. I mean, if you looked at, again, just referring to a race as we go along, if you looked at Bautista's sprint race in Assen last time out, I mean, he was virtually untouchable, wouldn't he? Rocketed through the field, got out front and just disappeared.

So, you know, the weight limit on his bike in terms of ballast and stuff didn't appear to be a big problem for him on that particular occasion. So what's the perception in the paddock? I mean, is it generally despite a bit of moaning here and there and Bautista was a little bit vocal about it? I know. But he was the only one I think that I heard sort of really kind of dropping hints that he thought it was unfair, quote unquote.

What's the general perceived wisdom that we're a few rounds in? Bautista was the only one basically said it was unfair and not correct. But then again, he would say that because, let's be honest, he was him. They were targeting in the same way they were targeting Jonathan Ray and Kawasaki a few years ago when they introduced reverse grids and other such things in the sporting and technical regulations. The general feeling in the paddock is it's perfect.

I mean, we have already had nine different riders on the podium this year from nine races across three rounds. That's only one less than the riders on the podium for the whole of last season. We've had five different race winners already, which is one more than the four we had in the whole of last season. And one of those wins of the four was Michael Rinaldi. The rest was all the Titanic trio of Ray Toprak.

And in fact, Ray had one last year. Rinaldi had one. All the rest were between Bautista and Toprak. We already had five winners this year, one more than the whole of last year put together. We've had, like I say, nine on the podium.

We've had two riders coming in and winning their very first World Superbike race with Boudegas and Spinelli. Both amazing stories. I do think, though, Bautista has not helped himself in the fact that he let them off the hook in some cases. He crashed out of the first race in Australia when he almost certainly would have finished on the podium had he not done that, if not challenged for the win, but definitely at least a podium. They had poor qualifying at Barcelona when he was only 14th on the grid for the first race with a penalty and then 11th for the next race.

But sure enough, he was on the front row for the last one and dominated the race pretty much, didn't he? And then, as you say, what he did in the sprint to Assen was well my incredible. Actually, I was watching that race back just the other day and crikey. I mean, he was down to seventh or eighth place at one point, wasn't he? Early doors.

Yeah. And he picked them off one by one. But as Phil Maron, Toprak's crew chief said to me when I chatted with him the other day, he said, I was pleased to see that Bautista wasn't just pulling five, six bike lengths on Toprak coming out of turn 12 at Assen. The Hodge Hyder and that quick stuff, the Mavenmere on the back of the circuit. So he's definitely lost that advantage, which was impossible for anyone else to keep up on.

I think it's also highlighted, Rich, that it wasn't all about the advantage that Bautista had last year. The Yamaha is down on power as well, as we are seeing this year with Gardner, Ray, Locatelli, Brad Ray and Agata. The Yamaha is a bit down on power. The Giacchetti had a particularly outrageous advantage. They combined the two things together at places like Porton-Hall last year.

And it did look a bit ridiculous. This year is not the case. You know, the Honda and the BMW are right up there with the Giacchetti. What we got this year, we got fuel allowance has been reduced. So I don't think it's made too much difference in terms of fuel, but it has allowed people to run smaller fuel tanks on the bikes, which therefore allows the seating position to be lowered.

That's improved the center of gravity for most of the riders and bikes on the grid. OK. Bautista, I think, went the wrong way with a setup and a few things, early doors. He's still struggling there for rear traction. He's still spinning up at times.

Philip Hyden was an exception because there was a new track surface. It was very, very grippy, too grippy, really. But that'll calm down in the next few years. It's just a brand new surface. But Bautista is still struggling with a few little bits.

I think generally it's really quite even at the moment. And I do think that the best team rider package is winning races. But it depends on the race and the weather conditions and the circuit. I think it's really good. I think they've got it just about right at the moment.

And from a purist's point of view, I mean, I went through a few differences of opinion when this weight thing came in, because it had been talked about and called for by a number of noisier critics, like Scott, for example. So when it came in, I'd always kind of thought it through a little bit, because I think we knew it was coming and it had been an open discussion for a while. And where are you from a sort of purism point of view? Do you object to the idea of ballast on principle? I mean, I would personally object to things like success ballast, for example.

That is not an area that I would want to see the sport get into. But given the wide disparity between the tallest, heaviest riders and the smallest, lightest ones, for me, I can deal because I do class myself as much of a race empiricist as I think you can reasonably be. But having a kind of a midline position that some people are still below, some people still above, but it just evens it up a wee bit. I'm sort of OK with it. Are you kind of of a similar mind?

Yeah, I think it needs to be as simple as possible for people to be able to understand. For example, the Super Sport 300 class, the fact it's called Super Sport 300 is a bit silly because they're not 300s anymore. The fact the third race of the World Superbike Weekend is known as race two is utterly ridiculous, in my opinion. I know what they mean. It's race two in terms of long race, too, because the sprint race is essentially a qualifying session in the form of a race that also gives out points.

But just call it race three, for goodness sake, or feature race or feature race two or whatever you want to call it. But, you know, someone sticks World Superbikes on and they're looking for the sprint race, which is the second race of the weekend. And you see race two on the screen. That just seems silly to me. So let's make it as simple as possible.

And then in terms of rules, let's do the same drop scores, for example, is always a very complicated system. It's something they've had in British touring cars before. And the most famous one, of course, was Formula One, when Alan Prost actually scored the most points one season. But Senna won the championship in 1988, this was, when they were in the Clarence team. It happened to him in 84 as well.

Lauda won the championship, but Prost scored more points. True, and Lauda won it by half a point, didn't they? True. So that's at least two occasions it's happened then. And obviously they know, it's the same for everyone.

They know the rules when they start the season. But I think we need to avoid that. I remember F1 did double points at the end of 2014, if you remember, when it was Hamilton v Rosberg in Abu Dhabi. That's confusing as well. So let's keep it as simple as possible.

And then in terms of the purist point of view and what you were talking about. Yeah, I think success ballast can work in something like touring cars, but it's a very different kettle of fish. On a motorbike, you know, the ballast has so much more of an influence because the rider, generally speaking, is a movable mass, isn't it? And the rider equates to approximately one third of the overall weight of the whole package. But it's moving.

It's not like in a car where they're locked into the cockpit, whether it's a single seat or touring car, they're not moving. Whereas on a bike, they are moving. So it's a much more complex state of affairs on a bike. So no, I agree with you. We don't want success ballast.

I think the combined weight is fair, actually. And to be honest, I've spoken with a lot of people about this, Rich. And I think the fact they are adding on half a kilo for each kilo is fair, really, because different people are different heights and different weights. You can't control that. You know, do you hear the basketball world saying we're going to lower the net because we've got some shorter players coming?

Exactly. Being a taller person lends itself to being, generally speaking, a better basketball player. Being a shorter, lighter person, I think it's fair. So you can have more chances of winning the Grand National than if you are a sumo wrestler. I wouldn't want to see a sumo wrestler on a horse, by the way, because that could be a really bad, really bad situation, not least for the horse.

But I think you've got to come to a point where common sense takes over and you think there's certain things in life that you can't control. And there are some advantages to being taller and heavier, as we said before, with riders. I think the problem Scott Renning's got, and I completely agree with Scott. And I feel sorry for Scott in the sense that he's been going on about this for years. And he's been known as the one who's moaning about things.

People calling him a sore loser, which I think is really unfair because there was a big weight disparity. It has a massive difference. I think they've probably found a fair solution now, though, because you can't put too much weight on Batista. If you put another 20 kilos on him, that's just getting to a point where it's dangerous because let's remember how physical these things are. I've got to throw these bikes around.

So I think the problem Redding's got at the moment, though, is that he's got no leg to stand on now, really, has he, from a neutral point of view, because he's not the top BMW. If and when he's the top BMW, then he's got more of an argument. But at the moment, unless he's beating Gerloff and Toprak, most importantly, and Van Damark on a regular basis, what can he really do? That's the problem he's got at the moment. Batista, I think, is a very clever guy.

Well, I know he is. I do believe him. I do believe him when he says this is not fair because they're targeting me, because I believe that to be true. They were targeting him. Then again, it's nothing to do with him being our Batista.

It's just the fact he was winning. You know, the best rider at that time, or some would say he's not the best rider, but best rider on the best bike. Unfortunately, you will be targeted. We've seen it so many times before in production racing, whether it's, you know, Ducati's in the past with their 1000cc bikes were given restrictions. We've seen it in touring cars with Audi given a weight penalty when they ran a four wheel drive car in 1996, 97.

At the end of the day, they've got to find a balance between the technological race, deciding who's the best rider. But it can't always be about the best rider, because this is a formula that is also teams and manufacturers, not just riders. If you really want to know the best rider, what's your one mate championship, whether it's the Renault Clio championship or the Mini championship or in bike terms, the talent cups, they're all on Hondas or the Red Bull Rockies or whatever it is, the BMWs at BSB. That's all about the rider. But this is a manufacturer team and rider race.

And that's why we love it. It's about the technological advancements. Who's the best team? He's got the best strategy combined with the rider. That's what it's all about.

I think they've just about got it right at the moment, if I'm really honest. And I think Ducati as a team bike rider package thoroughly deserves to be winning things as they have been the last few years. However, top rack is coming and Jonathan Ray is not yet completely comfortable with the Yamaha. You'd like to think he's going to improve as well. I think it's brilliant.

You've got all this variety, different people on different bikes, winning races and finishing on the podium. It's unpredictable, but I generally do feel the best teams and riders do tend to come out on top on any given day. And we can't really ask for much more than that, can we? And in the interest of balance, I mean, Bautista is actually leading the championship despite his moaning and groaning. Yeah, exactly.

So it can't be too bad. And also in terms of balance, and you and I have definitely discussed this on the show before, and I wrote one of the very few blog pieces that have gone on the Motopop website. We need to see more of that actually note to self. But I did write a piece last year, as you know, I think I sent you a link to it, perhaps where I said that, yeah, Bautista and Ducati appeared to have an advantage, but that advantage was the same over the other Ducati's. Yeah, that was a Bautista thing.

That wasn't just the Ducati thing, because he comprehensively beat his teammate, Rinaldi, last year, and all of the other Ducati's as well as all the other bikes. I think that has been a problem in MotoGP recently when you've got Ducati's dominating everything. I mean, so thank goodness. No wonder they're making such a big deal of Pedro Acosta on the Gas Gas and Maverick Vinales in Texas on the Aprilia. I mean, goodness me, the championship needed that.

I personally don't mind if it's all Ducati's at the front, because if they happen to produce the best bike at this moment in time, well, fair enough, they've done the better job. But from the point of view of the championship, obviously, you don't want Ducati's winning every races or whatever it happens to be at that point in time. You need variety. You need unpredictability and variety as well as a good race. You know, world super bikes, despite some of the domination about East Rhonda Ducati and Ray on the Kawasaki in recent years over the last decade or so, there's always been good races, but unfortunately, they often get overshadowed.

For those who haven't watched live, who might come to watch the highlights. If they read Ray wins again on the Kawasaki or Batista wins again, they might not even bother watching. And that's why it's good sometimes to have that variety. So at the moment, F1, you pretty much know Verstappen is going to win the race before the red lights even go out, don't you? That's nothing against Verstappen or Red Bull.

They've got Adrian Newey, Max Verstappen, I nearly said Yoss, Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Honda. They're the best combination at the moment. But you need variety, don't you? You need that variety. And I think World Super Bikes, to be fair, has struck a really good balance now.

And I think Batista made a few mistakes himself as well in adjusting to the weight. As Yoss said as well, he was probably still injured. I think Boudegas is another one we need to watch, Rich, because Boudegas at the moment, the races he hasn't done so well in, it's all only down to a lack of experience, whether it's poor tire choices, pushing too hard on a certain tire, weather conditions at Assen. You know, he's not had much experience in the same way Jonathan Wray doesn't really know the Yamaha in the wet. Toprak doesn't really know the BMW in the wet.

They're getting more data now. But you just watch Nicolo Boudegas go towards the end of the season and next season. He will be a big threat. Hey, let's not forget, we're talking about Batista and Toprak. Boudegas could still threaten this year as the season goes on.

There's another test before Mazano. He'll be quick there. You know, he didn't have a test before Assen and it showed. It's the days when they can't win. I think that might be the days that win the championship this year.

It's the day you have to settle for a second or a third or even a fourth or a fifth. That's what's going to make the difference. Scoring decent points for fourth or fifth place is a heck of a lot better than ending up in the gravel. And those probably will be the moments that decide the championship this year, because it may well go down to the wire. I hope it does.

And I think it will. Well, we must move on. But yeah, so last corner Barcelona, Toprak does a Valentino Rossi and makes the overtake on the inside. I mean, do or die effort. But as always with Toprak, he has what I always describe as otherworldly skill on a motorbike and where it looks like a crash is about to happen.

It just never seems to happen with him. So I've got to say, Greg, and I know we communicated over WhatsApp all it was at the time. It was a piece of commentary gold from you and James Tosland as well, because it was just so exciting and so audacious, wasn't it? We can't move on without just quickly talking about that. But first of all, thank you very much.

I really appreciate that, Rich, especially coming from you. It was a truly amazing moment. It was astonishing and a moment I'll definitely never forget. I think none of us will ever forget it. So actually one of the moments as well, I remember being there in the moment because a lot of these commentary moments you watch back and you remember the moment as a viewer.

You don't often remember actually saying it or being there, living it. But I do remember that one clearly. And I feel a bit sorry for Avro Bautista. That's the first thing I'll say, because A, he had actually pulled a very similar move the day before in race one into that last corner on Andre Janone, if memory serves me right. That's the first reason I feel sorry for him.

The second is we'd had two brilliant overtakes at the first two rounds of the year, and they both happened to be on Avro Bautista. Alex Lowe's around the outside of him at Lukey Heights in Australia. That was another incredible moment. That was major, yeah. It was.

And that, again, it's easy to forget there, but Lowe's had already done that twice to Bautista the year before. So that wasn't a move we hadn't seen before. But to do it for the lead on the last lap of the last race was pretty special. And then, of course, the third reason I feel sorry for Bautista is the fact it was him again on the last quarter there with Toprak coming through. It was amazing because James started saying Rossi.

And it's funny because when we got to Atom, the number of people who came up to us in the paddock, he's going Rossi, Rossi. I mean, that's become, I think, James's famous commentary moment. He'll always be remembered for now. Whatever happens in the rest of James Stoneman's broadcasting career. I think that's what he's going to be remembered for.

It came from the heart and we knew it could happen. I was expecting a move at the end of the back straight. It was too far behind. And even the BMW team on the behind the scenes videos that the great Will Hussey does for the World Superlight website. Phil Maron was captioned on the pit walls, a second place.

Good job, guys. And what did he do? He drops it back to third gear into the last corner, exactly as Rossi had done in 2009. Oh, it was incredible. He didn't even seem to have the big moment on the front end that Rossi had had either.

You just know when Toprak's in the vicinity. You cannot give him an injury. There was not really anything bad Easter could have done there, because if we closed the door and gone really defensive, it would have completely compromised his line and lost it on the run to the line, because there isn't the advantage you had last year. And it's a pretty short run to the line there in relation to what's a matter, for example. I also if you listen back to the commentary as well, I also shouted.

And we were shouting because it was we try not to shout, to be honest, but you couldn't help it in a moment like that. That was what was great about Greg's. It was one of those moments where just pure emotion and excitement takes over professionalism. And that's not to say what you did wasn't professional, because it was. But it was just an unabated moment of joy.

Yeah. You can't buy that sort of stuff. It was that it was it was you just felt proud to be witnessing the moment and the amazement and the the admiration for Toprak and for Bautista for giving in the room and carrying on and fighting down to the wire like that. And I also said, you can just about hear me saying, where's Andrea Yanoni? Because I knew he was going to appear somewhere in the shot as it was happening.

I was thinking of Austria when Miguel Oliveira went through and took Miller and Polisbargaro. And I was thinking any second now that yellow flash is going to appear from the right hand side and take both of them. And he slotted between them. I mean, you could have scripted that a thousand times and it never would have happened to get between them was incredible. Toprak had already won the first race on Saturday, which was amazing as well when he came through and took Boudegas in the closing stages.

And yet it was it was just it was pure emotion. Hopefully we were getting out some actual English words at the same time as well. But that is what it's all about, is that. And this is what I mean. You can, you know, prepare for the commentary, get all your notes ready like we were talking about before.

But you can't script moments like that. And that is what is so good about it. And to be honest, I imagine most people didn't even hear the commentary at the time because you just know everyone back home was doing exactly the same thing we were doing. It's only after all the repeats that they've actually heard more what we were saying. Apparently, we're quite famous in Turkey at the moment, because the moment keeps being played over and over again.

It was Toprak himself who told me that they just keep playing that moment over and over again. And the guys at Dawn are doing a great job as well of doing these videos, which I'm sure you've seen. That's why I'm just going to go watch, actually, in a moment that they've done for her ethno to GP with all the reactions from all the different commentators and broadcasters and all the different languages from around the world. OK, and I really like that. It just goes to show how sport brings people together, doesn't it?

Doesn't matter where you're from, what your religion is, what your background is, what your views on politics are or anything else in life. In a moment like that, we all react in the same way. And it's just pure excitement. And that's exactly what it should be about. And we've already had some amazing moments this year.

And I'm sure there's going to be more as well. And at that moment, you just kind of that's just down to the riders and who wants it most, isn't it? Really, that move in that particular race on the last corner was very reminiscent in terms of how it made me feel and how clearly lots of other people reacted, yourself included. It kind of reminded me a little bit of Rins going around the outside of Marquez at the British Grand Prix, a few seasons ago on the Suzuka and just kind of like nipping it at the line. Yeah, just a moment of it.

Is he is he is he is he? You know, it's one of those it just built and built and built in there. And then to actually pull it off and for everybody to get out of it, you know, a bit bad, a bruise, maybe. But and a couple of egos, you know, that are taking a bit of a hit. It's just brilliant.

I mean, there was one moment in that commentary as well. I didn't I wasn't even talking. I just went, I just went, oh, I thought, oh, he's not going to go down. Are they both going to go down? Is you know, only going to take both of them?

Is he going to run wide and Baptiste is going to come back? You just didn't know. It was like, oh, my goodness me. What is going to happen here? And you don't.

Oh, incredible, isn't it? Absolutely. I just always think it's amazing when you think it's a 21 lap race. Well, in that case, a 10 lap race, because it was the sprint race. But all those motorbikes, which you come out of different factories in different places, completely different design philosophies.

Sometimes different tire choices, different riders from different countries, totally different ages and background. And despite all those variables, they're in exactly the same part of the track at exactly the same moment in time. And anyone of certainly in that case, three, maybe even four riders could have won that race or finished second, third or fourth. And that is what it is all about. You know, you can't it's impossible to know.

You could run the same motorbike or car race in the same weather conditions twice and the same thing wouldn't happen. Michael Schumacher used to say that. And that is exactly why we love it, isn't it? Because whatever you've got going on in your life, you know, we're all stressed out with whether we've got the washing up needs to be done or you've got to get the washing in or the washing out or your tax return or mop the floor in the bathroom or take the car to be clean or whatever the hell you've got going on, goes to the supermarket. Moments like that, you completely forget about all that, don't you?

And that's exactly that is exactly what sport and live sport is about. And just to reinforce it and, you know, to continue to big up well, Superbike, which is brilliant, pretty well all the time. We then move on to Asun and another three races. I mean, we've touched on a couple of them already. And another great moment of Murray Walkerishness, I pointed out to you with the he's off, he's off, he's back on again.

Which people with long memories might remember back to Dijon with Villeneuve and Renierneau, wouldn't it? I think. Yeah. But Murray commentated and you doing a sort of similar thing as those people going every which way in Asun. Was that Andrea Yunoni I did it with?

I think it was. Yeah, I think it was. I was just so much action again at Asun. It was hard to know where to look, really, wasn't it? And I mean, we're talking about World Superbike, but equally some great racing going on in World Super Sport as well.

And just to pick up on something you said, and if anybody from Dawner marketing is listening, which one was certainly they're not the Super Sport 300 Championship does need to be renamed, but I think they really ought to call it the X-Wielding Maniacs Championship to be a little bit more precise about things. I mean, it's not as scary to watch as it was a few years ago because the riding standards have improved, but it is scary because if someone goes down at any moment, they're in the middle of a pack like that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You doesn't really bear thinking about.

I mean, that was outrageous on the last lap when Ruben Beiman tried that line at the inside of the Ramsuk and touched the grass on the inside and then bounced off Galang Hendra and flew through the air. I mean, that could have been really quite nasty. But in terms of entertainment, let's be honest, it's brilliant stuff. It's second to none, really. I mean, so is Mate 3.

It's very dangerous, but it is very entertaining. I can't get away from that. Yeah. Yeah. Whether this will be the last year of that class remains to be seen.

I think it probably will be. I think we're going to get like a sport bike category introduced next year, which BSB is already revealing this year. Then you'll have the prettiest 660, the Amahara 7 and things like that. Mid-range sort of bikes. So that will be interesting.

I think that will probably replace the 300 class next year. Which in a way will be a shame because of the great racing we're seeing. And that Super Sport 300 class has taken some criticism for not producing good talents. Having said that, though, Manuel Gonzalez is doing a pretty good job in Moto2. Adrian Huertas is doing a pretty good job.

Glenn van Strahl has just won a world Super Sport race, having come through the 300s. Yeah. And a few others we could mention. So it's not like it's been total failure by any stretch at all. I just think the fact Alvaro Díaz had a difficult Super Sport season and then Jeffrey Bous as well.

That didn't look so good on the 300s. But, you know, do all Moto3 world champions become MotoGP world champions? Not all of them. Most of them go on and have a pretty good career. But there's so many variables, aren't there?

There are so many variables. There's always a Lorenzo Della Porta, though, isn't there? Wins them that three world championship and I don't even know where he's riding. And then you've got others who become sort of career riders in those classes like the Romano Fanatis of this world. You know, John McFrey spent a decade in Moto3.

Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Anna Carrasco spent a long time in the 300s. Some people are saying they should be moving on, but I don't know. I mean, Angel Nieto is famous 12 plus one in Spain.

All of that was on small bikes. He never really was competitive on a big bike. And does it matter? I mean, the man is a national celebrity. Bless him.

He's not with us any longer. I don't know. And does it matter? I think that's one of the things with bikes that is a bit different, actually. It's not like in cars when Formula 2 and Formula 3, they're not regarded as world championships in bikes.

These things are Super Sport 300s, World Super Sport, Moto3, Moto2 and others in the past. They are all world championships. Confusing in some ways, but nice in others. It's just different, isn't it? Yeah.

OK, Greg, already running over time. So let's do a couple of quick fiery ones then. In terms of the last couple of things I just wanted to mention to you in terms of your thoughts, your opinions and anything that you're hearing or talking to people about in the pit lane and paddock. What's going on with this Karasaki Bibota thing then? Is this an existential threat in terms of Karasaki moving out of world motorsport or motorcycle racing, I should say?

Or is this an interesting development that's just pooling resources and isn't going to be a kind of a let me say a sort of big material change, although clearly it is when you're using another brand name to come in. What is actually going on as far as you understand it? As far as I understand it, Rich, what is going on there is that almost off the radar, Karasaki parent company purchased the motor in 2019. And what's happening there is that, as we know, World Superbikes is a class based on production based machines. So for anyone who's listening here on MotoPod for the first time and is used to, say, sports car racing or touring car racing on four wheels, those are vehicles, cars made as road vehicles, which are then converted into race cars.

The bike racing equivalent of that is something like World Endurance or in this case, World Superbikes, when they are road going machines converted to become race bikes, as opposed to MotoGP or Formula 1, which are made to go racing from day one, aren't they? What's happened in recent years that Ducati in 2009 have turned out with very much a MotoGP inspired motorbike, the Panigale V4R, which cost 44000 euros to buy, which I think it's fair to say most people could not afford. Yeah. And if you're pretty wet off and in a pretty comfortable set of financial circumstances, that bike, even on the road, isn't too far off some MotoGP technology. In fact, the Panigale V4R that you can buy and ride on the road or take for a track day, whatever you want to do with it, is pretty much identical to the bike that Casey Stone raced to the 2007 MotoGP World Title.

That's the amount of technology that's gone into that bike. That's like saying you could go and buy the equivalent of a Kimi Raikkonen 2007 Ferrari and drive it on the road. So that's the sort of level that bike is on. Now, how on earth does someone like Kawasaki with their very stable, very safe, let's say traditional perhaps, and certainly traditional Kawasaki ZX10RR, even though it's the double R, the racy version of it. How can that compete when it's being sold for way less than half the price?

The answer is it can't really as the last few years have shown, despite some of the rules equalizing things. And also, it's an old bike that bikes 11, 12 years old. That's another thing that shouldn't be forgotten. So Kawasaki bought the Moto in 2019. So my understanding from talking with various people within Kawasaki and just around the paddock in general since Assen, because obviously this was announced after I have to say, by the way, great job by everyone there to keep that under wraps, because there weren't really any whispers about it.

Most of these things, you know, for example, KTM going to World Super Sport next year. I saw one of the websites has just published something on that in the last few days. But we've been mentioning that on Eurosport ever since September or October last year when Jeffrey Bous went to KTM in the 300 class. That was always a two year deal. They move up to Super Sport.

So that's one of those sort of worst kept secrets. A bit like Mark Marquez leaving Honda and that sort of thing. Jonathan Ray going to Yamaha. We kind of knew it was happening before it was officially confirmed. No one really knew about the Bimotor ones.

So well done to everyone involved there in keeping that quiet. They did a great job. It has to be said. So I think what's happening, Rich, is they'll use the Bimotor, which is a hand built motorcycle coming out of their factory in Rimini. But with the Kawasaki engine, very much like we used to have a Bimotor Yamaha, as I'm sure you will remember when World Superbikes started, the very first pole position, actually, and race or race win rather, was a Bimotor Yamaha in World Superbikes in 1988.

So it's going to be pretty much the same engine. I'm sure with a few updates, but they'll be able to, I would imagine, produce what we call a homologation special. So for anyone who doesn't know the phrase, because you have to make a certain amount of bikes, don't you? In the three regions, Japan, Europe and North America. They'll produce the minimum required amount.

A bit like Kawasaki has already done with the ZX10RR, but this will be a much more highly tuned bike from the word go in order to compete with Yucati. That's basically what's going on here. It's also interesting because we did say at the time when Jonathan Aray left Kawasaki, does he know something that we don't? And there was already rumors of Kawasaki putting out, you can bet your bottom dollar he already knew that was going to happen. And that's why he left.

You know, there was a lot more to it than just leaving. He knew further down the line that things were going to change. I know Pera Riba, who is now Alex Lowe's crew chief, is very much involved in the development of this new project, along with several others. That's something I heard the other day. Pera Riba's name was mentioned.

And that's a good move, of course, because Pera is a good developer. Having been a rider himself, we've seen what he's done with the ZX10 already. Yeah, used to be a serial tire tester as well in Japan back in the day. So he certainly knows what he's doing. It also makes you wonder whether Axel Bassani was signed on the basis they knew they were going to have an Italian bike, doesn't it?

That just occurred to me the other day. I thought, I just wonder now that's tied in. That's either a very nice coincidence or was that all part of it all along? Probably a bit of both, to be honest. So it's basically going to be a big motor with the Kawasaki engine, but they're going to be able to have a more highly tuned bike, I think, from the off to be able to try and compete with this Cicati.

And I'm sorry, because that wasn't really the quick fire answer that you were asking for. Well, no, but it explains a lot of the things that I didn't know. And I'm sure, you know, a lot of the listeners wouldn't have known because I have to actually put my hands up and say I had absolutely no idea that the Kawasaki had bought the Bimotor brand. And I'm not going to lie. I didn't either.

And we're people who are working in the industry and living and breathing it, aren't we? And if we didn't know, that's another thing, I think. It hasn't had the exposure they wanted it to have to promote the Bimotor brand. So that's another reason they're using this, as we've seen so many times in the past, win on a Sunday, sell on a Monday, although it's not quite to the level it used to be. It is still a thing.

You know, BMW are very much proving that at the moment to promote that Bimotor brand even further. Just to complete it till I've heard that the Pichetti team are now going to be having more extended conversations with Kawasaki, potentially about being a factory in inverted commerce. Kawasaki team next year, because Provec will run the new Bimotor project. That'll basically be the current Kawasaki team with, I think, pretty much all of the same people still involved. I'm sure there'll be some new ones as well.

I don't think if Pichetti run a Kawasaki team, it's going to be factory to the level that the Provec team currently is. But it might be a higher level than what Pichetti currently has, if that makes sense. I think Kawasaki itself as a parent company is going to pour more money now into the Bimotor World Superbio project. But you may find that Manuel Pichetti keeps running some. I'm just speculating here, but let's just say he might be able to run this year's factory bikes of Lowe's and Vesani with some extra support.

I'll have to see what happens with that one. Yeah. OK. Thank you for your explanation and sort of bring us all up to speed on that, because I haven't appreciated the whole homologation, exotic special covering that helps them to jump through some hoops that they couldn't easily do as a Kawasaki ZX10RR. It will basically allow them to put some more racingy features on the bike as a road bike like Jukati's done with the Panigale V4R to be able to really have a greater level before it even gets converted into a World Superbike machine.

But yeah, let's not have any confusion. That bike will be developed, yes, as a road going and track going bike. But that will be developed with the goal being to win the World Superbike Championship. OK, so using the old adage, if you can't beat them, join them kind of thing. In terms of that special homologation, expensive, exotica, etc, etc.

OK, and then the rest of the team, by and large, other than natural kind of organic change and movement and recruitment that would normally happen. The team set up itself kind of stays the same, because when I first heard the news, like a lot of people would have reacted probably, I thought, well, does that mean that Kawasaki are out? What happens to Alex Lowe's? What happens to Basani? You know, all those people that have jobs there.

What the hell happens to all these poor people? But it sounds if it's not quite as kind of momentous as that. It's a clever way of getting around a stubborn problem. They find themselves. I mean, you may have some change, of course, because some of those people are contracted to Kawasaki, the manufacturer, as opposed to Bimota.

Having said that, Bimota now is owned by Kawasaki. So I guess it won't cause too many differences. But there's bound to be some new faces because the Bimota bike comes out of the Bimota factory in Italy. That's already there. It's in Rimini, actually.

We're actually thinking maybe of going and filming something there with Eurosport, bearing in mind it just plays in very nicely that the next round is there. I'm sure it's not a coincidence that it's been announced just before one of their home rounds. Yeah. I guess you'll have a little bit less involvement from some of the Japanese at Kawasaki. You'll have more Italians.

So there will be some changes, I'm sure. But ride a liner. I don't know. It's hard to tell. I mean, will Alex Lowe's go and join his brother at Mark VDS?

That's a strong rumor. You can see where it's come from. I could actually see that happening, to be honest. I guess Basani will stay. He's wanted a factory ride for a long time.

And if he's now going to be an Italian in what is essentially going to be an Italian Spanish team, that makes sense. But I don't think it will change too much from the Provec level, because the current format of World Superbikes is very much manufactured teams anyway. You've got FIIL Racing, which is an Italian team running the Zucattis. Shormule Racing is a British team in collaboration with BMW. Crescent with Yamaha.

The Honda HRC is obviously pretty much full factory. And as we've said, Provec with Kawasaki, which will now be Promota. It's also a really historic name. That's won races before with Anthony Gober. And certainly in the early days when World Superbikes started.

So it's nice to see an old name like that coming back in, actually. I agree. Now I feel much better about it now that you've explained to us all what's going on there. And in terms of riders and stuff, I mean, perhaps you and I can sit on a park bench at Donington if the sun's shining a little further into the year. Hopefully.

Well, obviously you'll be at Donington. I'm going to hopefully be there as well. I'll get you a nice ice cream with a flake. That would be very nice. Thank you, Greg.

Perhaps we can have a little talk about silly season, which will be getting into gear a bit by then, I guess. And we might know a bit more about rider movements. But to finish off, then. OK. One of the biggest movements, arguably not the biggest move, but one of the biggest moves from last year, of course, was Johnny Ray going over to Crescent and to the Yamaha.

Let's be charitable. It's been a difficult start to the season. How am I going to try and phrase this without wishing to sound like I'm dumping on Johnny Ray? Because I'm not. But he looks like a man who has some of the wind taken out of his sails at the moment.

Now, is that in your opinion and for anything you've spoken to him, is that just a bit of bad luck, which inevitably I think he has had a bit of bad luck here and there in the first few rounds? Or is he perhaps wondering if he made the right decision to go there in the first place? I mean, although he would never say that, I guess the thought must have crossed his mind at one point, not least when he was being stretched away from a very heavy accident in Australia while the national anthem was ringing out for Alex Lowe's and Jonathan's old crew chief, Para Evo, stood on the top step of the podium. That must have hurt. So I actually feel a bit sorry for Jonathan Ray, because Jonathan Ray has been hated upon in the past, very unfairly in some ways.

But unfortunately, it happens. It's one of the byproducts of dominating something. You do get people saying, oh, he's just winning everything, giving everyone else a chance and all that sort of thing. Very much a back end of compliment, isn't it, when you're dominating something? Yeah.

But no one really wants to see Jonathan Ray struggling in the same way nobody would have wanted to see. Let's just say Bad Seastra been struggling all year this year with the weight thing. We wouldn't have wanted to see that. We want to see everyone up there having a chance. But the fact of the matter is they didn't score anything in the first five races.

Jonathan made a real rookie error, as he has said himself when he selected third or fourth gear off the start and burnt the clutch out in Barcelona. I mean, you don't expect that from Jonathan Ray, do you? You're a six time world champion. He'd be what he was the first to say he came out and said it himself. But again, it's a team and a manufacturer and a rider under pressure.

It proves how good top rack is. Let's not be too hard on Jonathan Ray in the sense that it's early days. But I guess it's made more difficult by the fact that Bad Seastra could jump on a Ducatian and did what he did. Top rack's on the BMW and he's doing what he's doing. Let's also remember the level is much, much higher now.

Chas Davies has said to me, I could have an off day in 2014 or 15 and I'll probably still be on the podium and certainly still fourth or fifth. Yeah, not anymore. You're going to be 12th or even at the points now. I mean, look at some of the BMWs, look at Gerloff and Redding and Honda as well. With respect, they are nowhere at the moment.

I have to say, I hadn't even thought to mention Honda. And that just tells you everything you need to know. I mean, they're utterly forgettable at the moment, aren't they? I mean, yeah, I mean, it's I think we shouldn't underestimate how important it is when a rider is injured. It happened with Michael van der Mark in BMW last year.

The fact that Kona is injured pretty much all the time at the moment. You can have the best manufacturer, the best rider, the best bikes, the best mechanics, the best everything. But if the ride is injured, well, you might as well forget it. So that's one of the biggest problems they're having at the moment. But yeah, back to Ray Yamaha, they had no points in the first five races.

They finished eighth in Barcelona race, too, but he was still behind Remy Gardner. Just put the pressure on. He had some more no scores at Aston, didn't he? With the collision, which was not Jonathan's fault, we've got to say, it was Alex Lowes took him out. Ironic, wasn't it, that he ended up in the same gravel trap as he had with Toprak on a Yamaha and a Kawasaki in 2022.

And it was also ironic that Alex Lowes crashed and took a Yamaha out again because he did the same thing with Toprak in Australia, if you remember last year. Yes. And that was also quite damaging for Alex Lowes, his championship this year, I have to say, because he was only six or something points behind when that race started and he's fallen a bit further back now. I think Yamaha's made mistakes. The team have made mistakes.

Jonathan Ray has made mistakes and they kind of go hand in hand. You know, they also made a mistake. We heard on the grid at Aston in the third race, sorry, the first race, Locketetti went with an intermediate front tire and a slick rear, which actually at the time was not a bad thing to do. But it was a mistake, apparently, because in the confusion, there's only a certain number of tires you can get on the rack. And apparently they just forgot to put a front slick on the rack.

Got it out on the grid and there wasn't enough time. I know this sounds silly, but there wasn't enough time for somebody to run back and get a slick front. So they had to put the intermediate in and it worked for the first few laps. But then obviously it backfired. Well, the engine blew in the end, didn't it?

And that's what caused the red flag and ironically signaled the wind for Spinelli. So let's say I hope Jonathan Ray does come good. He did. Let's not forget he did take pole position at Aston. And that was a really important psychological thing, even though they didn't get a podium.

And he really could have done with the podium. The fact he took pole position, I think, gives them a little bit of leeway. Now they've got a nice test before Mizano, at Mizano and another one at Cremona, the new Cremona circuit in Italy, where construction work has just finished, incidentally, to modify the end of the lap to open it up a bit because it was way too tight before. So that'll be interesting. Let's hope he's up there.

I really hope he is. I we want Yamaha doing well. It's a shame to see Yamaha in the doldrums. And we say in the doldrums, using the word advisedly, because they're not too far behind, generally speaking. It's just the fact the level is so tight now, the depth of field is incredible.

You don't need to be that far behind to be, you know, battling for 10th place. That's the other problem. It is so close at the moment. It is amazing. Do you think the team kind of collectively, psychologically took a bit of a hit with Toprak going as well?

I mean, that must have been tough. Definitely. I think Paul Denning's reaction above all, and Andrea Dossoli and everyone involved, but particularly Paul Denning. Yes, you could just tell they were devastated, weren't they? Because as he's proven on the BMW, I remember somebody at Yamaha said to me last year, even Toprak doesn't realize the difference Toprak makes.

And it wasn't just Toprak, it's the fact he's taken five or six people with him as well. Russell, Phil Maron, the crew chief. So no wonder Yamaha was annoyed. He's taken half the team with him. So they've had to find new staff.

They're all trying to integrate with each other and a new rider. Andrew Pitt is on the other side of the garage. And Locatelli's got Tom O'Kane, who's a new crew chief as well. Put all these things together. And there are your few tenths of a second that you're lacking.

They are down on power in comparison with the Ducati, the BMW and the Honda, you know, the Kawasaki and the Yamaha. OK, they'd wipe the skin off for rice pudding without doubt compared to a road bike. But in relation to the competition, they are down on power. Yeah. But it's all these little things put together, isn't it?

It's just minute things, really. But then obviously the human side as well. And you would be feeling quite down after the way it started in Australia, because in comparison with what we expected, they had a disaster there. And they've even said that themselves. Yeah.

But let's not forget, Gardner's doing really well and had a particularly good Assen, didn't he? He really sort of seemed to find something there. And Locatelli has been doing what Locatelli does, which is kind of steadily sort of getting on with things and perhaps not quite hitting the heights that he and everybody else would hope and expect. Domi, I guess I had a good ride at Assen as well. He shot right through the field to the top ten in one of the races there.

And let's not forget, Domi missed through a weird stomach virus all of the Haereth and Portimao preseason tests. A total of four days of running, which is an enormous chunk in comparison with the testing they've had overall. It put the onus on Remy Gardner. He had a lot more work to do as well. So you can see that Agata had two podiums in Haereth at the end of last year.

Remy's now had a podium and could easily have had two. Had he not left the door open, Vradek closed at that last corner into the chicane in the sprint race. By all means, things are not lost at Yamaha. It's only around three. You know, Rosano will be around four, only a quarter of the way into the season.

And, you know, look at the people have got to beat. They've got Batista, Boudica, Andre Janoni's on the Ducati. And by the way, this talking of silly season, like you say, we'll probably sit down at Donington, but Janoni and BMW. Interesting rumors going on there. So just watch this space to see what happens there.

But, you know, you don't need to be far off the pace to be where Jonathan Ray and Yamaha have been. And Jonathan Ray still got it. No, he's not as young as he used to be. But who is? Jonathan Ray is the greatest world superbike racer of all time, for a reason.

And I'm sure he will be on the podium very, very soon. I hope it's Mazana. I think it'll be great for him, for Yamaha. More importantly, from my point of view, the championship overall. And I hope we're going to see him winning a race sooner rather than later.

I really hope we do. And I would love to see Locatelli winning a race as well, because the only Chris Walker has won a race in World Superbikes with more starts beforehand than Locatelli. So if Locatelli wins tomorrow, it's the second longest way ever for a win. So he certainly deserves it. He's had a lot of podiums, Locatelli, and I'd love to see him win a race.

I think he really deserves it, too. OK, so just to finish up then, Greg, these are sort of like one word answers, I guess. I'm just sort of doing this off the top of my head. But bearing in mind everything we've spoken about. So what's one thing that you're most looking forward to in World Superbikes throughout the rest of this year?

It could be going somewhere. It could be, I don't know, a rumour coming true that you've heard. I don't know. If it's a one word answer, I'd just say variety, because I'm really excited to see how many more people can win races and get on the podium. I think you could see at least 15 on the podium and probably, I mean, realistically, over the course of the year, you could see 10 people winning races this year.

I mean, I may be wrong. I hope I'm not. And I think it could happen. I'm excited about going to Cremona. I was excited about going to the Balaton Park in Hungary, but that's not going to happen now.

Yeah, I'm generally just excited to see how it's going to pan out. And knowing every time a race starts, it's pretty much impossible to know who's going to win and who's going to finish second, third and the rest of the positions, because there will be more predictable races than others. I'm sure there'll be afternoons when we think Ducati are the ones to lose it today or whatever. But generally speaking, we don't know. And that's the best thing about it.

But I am looking forward to the unknowns. Cremona will be interesting. They will have had a test, as I've just said beforehand. Interesting to see what happens with the women's championship. You just see how competitive that is.

That'll be good for the sport overall. That will definitely get some good publicity. That gets going at the next round, does it, Greg? Yes, it does. We're not commentating on it, actually.

I believe EuroSport is going to use the world free commentary for now. So you'll be hearing Kiko Giles and Steve English on that one. But I'm interested to see just how competitive the field is there. Because there are some people saying there's going to be a lot of gaps and it's going to be quite open, open in the sense of margins between the bikes as opposed to unpredictable. I think we might get some pleasant surprises, though.

It'll be nice. And it will also be nice to see if some of those female riders could then, you know, move up to the other classes as well over the next few years. Because as far as I'm concerned, the more variety, the better. So girls, guys, nationalities, different manufacturers, the more the barrier, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm really loving the fact this year that we are seeing the best rider slash team combination on each day winning.

That's how it should be, I think. Yeah. OK, so that was what you most looking forward to. What's the sort of thing you would like to see happen this year? I mean, is it top rat lifting the crown?

I don't know. I mean, if there was a sort of a thing that you'd wish for, that would be pretty cool. Anything spring to mind? Definitely got to be near the top of the list, hasn't it? I mean, that would be one of those real fairy tale stories for BMW to win the championship would be.

Well, it will be amazing, right? I mean, you would have been labeled an idiot, wouldn't you? This time last year, if you said, oh, guess what? BMW is going to win the world championship next year. That's like saying now the QJ super sport bike is going to win the world championship in 2025 or Fabio Quattraro is going to win the world championship next year.

That's how outrageous it would sound. In fact, even more so than Quattraro in Yamaha, probably. So that would be a great story. I'm excited to see what happens with Liberty moving forward into next year and what the calendar is going to do in terms of some of these new races debuting. I think it's really important to be able to call something a world championship.

This is off the back of Covid and also two unfortunate scenarios happening at the same time. One of them was the change of government in Argentina. The other one was the fact that the Bandelica circuit were not paying for their race, apparently. So we lost two good rounds there, didn't we? Indonesia and Argentina and one fell sweep.

So they've got to get that sorted with the calendar. Other things this year, I think it would be great if Andre Yononi wins the race. He's really impressed me. I wasn't expecting him to be as good as he's been. I'm going to be honest.

A lot of people thought he would be. I thought it was going to be more difficult. He has made a few unforced errors and crashed in Barcelona in turn 10, didn't he? And then again, at Ascenden, turn two, three. But he's learning.

I mean, the level is so high. These mistakes will creep in every now and again. Yeah. 300s is impossible to predict. Super sport, wet ass.

I'm very excited about Adrian Weartas. That's one thing I'm excited about. Weartas, will he take Batista's seat? Will Batista carry on? That's another big talking point.

It might depend on how this year goes. Is he going to carry on into 25? And if he doesn't, who will replace him? I can see it being Weartas and Budegar in that team. So, yeah, that's certainly things I am looking forward to.

One thing that I'm not so pleased with is the fact we've got this gap in the calendar because it's not great for the championship. But I do really feel more than ever now that is a temporary thing and that will be sorted. We've lost the big break in the summer, which is good, but then gain this break in May, which isn't so good. Luckily, there's lots of other racing happening, but it's not great for the championship because it loses all the momentum. So let's hope they can get that sorted out.

Have you ever spoken about this? Because obviously the big summer break has been something that we've suffered. Let me use that word. So I think that is the right word for the last two or three seasons, I think. And so obviously we've got this weird gap now.

Have you ever actually mentioned that to a rider and asked how much that affects their momentum or their kind of their in season preparation and planning? It affects them a lot because in some seasons, such as 2015, 16, I remember being a really long one. That summer break was longer, can you believe, than the break between the last race of the season and the first one, because we were finishing quite late in Qatar at the time and then starting early in Australia at the end of February. That was maybe, I can't think, 10, 11 weeks or whatever it was. So longer than your season.

And wow, that's mad. One year we got a 12 week break or something, 12 or 13. It was mad. The 16 was a really long one. That might've been the longest of all of them.

There are some reasons for that. Obviously partly holiday, partly because there were so many MotoGP races happening, partly because World Superbike doesn't always get the first pick of the circuits because they'll prioritize F1 and MotoGP and whatever. But even so, it's way too long. And from a rider point of view, yes, our Suzuki was in the middle of there as well. And a lot of them would go off and do Suzuki.

But yeah, I mean, they'd lose all the momentum in the championship. And the worst thing is the fans would even forget there's a championship going on sometimes, but yeah, the riders need to stay race fit as well. One problem it can cause that it'll often tend them to go off and do motocross, which can hurt people. As we saw recently, very badly. We're very bad at with Dovizio and Petrucci.

I don't think they should ban riders doing motocross because it's part of their training. But if I was a team boss, I might consider that certainly at certain times of the year, because there is a high chance you're going to get hurt. We've seen it time and time again. I can understand why I think principle would stop that or at least want to stop that. So let's see.

But yeah, they do need to close the gap. But I know they're working hard and there's certain things that happen sometimes that are out of the organizers control, but the field is great. We've got brilliant teams with great manufacturers and phenomenal riders. Fantastic. Take that box.

Now we need some more international venues. I'm thinking people would probably prefer a three week gap between race weekends, but have them more regularly than a massive gap now. Because it's funny because then later in the year you've got some back to back. So I think it's Donington and Most are back to back, for example. I'm sure people would prefer to have a race now, you know, put Donington on now or Most or whatever, if they can, and not have the back to back later.

The good thing about it is, as I said earlier, we will have more momentum in the closing stages of the season. The bad thing for the riders there is they've really got to keep fit because the more races you have in a short space of time, any injury then, and you really are in a mess, Petrucci has been really fortunate championship wise to have the injury now missing only one round and having this massive gap. But I mean, wow, I can't tell you how lucky we were there, how unlucky Petrucci was, but how lucky he has said to me himself. And he said it on Eurosport. I am lucky to be alive.

We could well have been talking about the demise of Danilo Petrucci. And that sounds like a horrible thing to say, but we could have been. He said that himself. So thank goodness we weren't, because that was a very, very bad accident. Goes to show how dangerous motocross is.

Ball stop is a category and certainly how perilous it is in terms of the training methodology. Yeah, I think he had a problem with his throttle grip. So when he should have been off the throttle, he was actually on the throttle in third or fourth gear over a ramp, over a jump. And when I think he said 50 meters up in the air or something. Imagine not to be tried at home, but imagine jumping out the fourth, fifth story of a building.

That's what happened. He came down from that height and hit the face of the next jump. So it's basically like riding straight into a wall head on. Dead stop. Dead stop.

It broke the wheels of the bike. It was that bad. And James Tozum just said to do that, to buckle both the wheels. He said, he said, I've never seen that happen ever before. Petrucci said to me, Rich, the fact he landed on the bike is what saved him.

The impact with Danilo's own jaw and collarbone into the handlebar of the bike that actually broke his jaw. Horrible, horrible, horrible crash. And it really, really shook him a really, really bad one. And I guess he'll be thinking twice about doing motocross in the future, won't he? Yeah, I was hoping.

Just put we go. I got a fascinating insight into the way these riders, well, not all of them, but one of them. So I spoke to Sam Lowe's in Qatar last November. Obviously, he was branding out his Moto2 career at that point. And I was kind of curious about, you know, the fact that he was coming over to World Superbike.

Part of his motivation for doing so was that last year they took away the warm ups for Moto2 and Moto3, and he was just fed up that he wasn't getting enough track time anymore. And so the allure of World Superbike was, you know, all the practice sessions and then three races in a weekend. So it's not that they want to do less. They want to do more most of the time. They know they're racers at the end of the day and they want to be out on track.

So it was kind of interesting. So having great big gaps like this must kind of mess with some of the sort of the mental side of it for some of them. And I just want to be out there racing. And as you say, if they could just space them out, the gaps a little bit more, even if you don't get more rounds necessarily. But I'm sure that would be better.

And, you know, this is an area where, again, going back to the early discussion, Dorna can do a lot better, I think. And let's go to tracks that we don't have MotoGP bikes going around. Let's have variety. That's what we want. And let's go to some different countries and some different continents.

And it's just annoying how a lot of this does come down to money, because the fact is, there's plenty of circuits around. I know it's difficult to get, you know, but you could go to. I'm just going to throw a few names out here now. You know, some of the circuits I'm about to name might not have the homologation or whatever, but let's just throw a few names in there. Rijeka in Croatia, for example, the former Yugoslavia, that used to hold races in Grand Prix's.

Brands hatch. You need to make changes, of course, it wouldn't come up to the homologation at the moment. You've got Vallelunga in Italy. There's places everywhere, aren't there? There's so many I could go on and on and on.

Unfortunately, though, they probably wouldn't be prepared to pay as much money as some of the others are. So that's part of it as well. So, yeah, I agree. We need more variety. It always amazes me.

We don't have a world super bike race in Japan, considering half the manufacturers come from there. Yeah. How good would Suzuka be? You know, you could could you not integrate it into the same week as the eight hour? That might not be possible or commercially viable or sensible from the circuit's point of view.

I don't know. But considering some of the teams and riders are going to be there anyway, even if it doesn't integrate it in the same week as the Suzuka eight hour, what the hell? Go if you go back to Sugo. I prefer not to see Matej, even it would be better than nothing than having a no Japanese round. But that's the Grand Prix circuit.

So take it to Suzuka, take it to Fuji, take it to wherever I either. There's all these venues. Suzuka would be the best, in my opinion. Yeah. Sugo is a great track and lots of innovation changes used to host world super bikes.

Plenty of title celebrations there over the years for foggy and others used to get the Japanese wild cards coming in and winning races, didn't we? Well, certainly Fuji would make a good case. Yeah, I would have thought because, you know, you have Formula One there. OK, I'm probably going back 10 years, but it's got a big, open, international looking track. So wouldn't necessarily have the same safety worries that you'd have at Suzuka or Sugo, perhaps.

Good point. You got big runoffs there. I mean, it's famous for the James Hunt title win. But like you say, in 2007 and eight, it was when they took over from Suzuka for a couple of years, didn't they? In fact, there was a really two memorable races there.

Lewis Hamilton winning in the rain. And then the next year when he had Massa collided, you remember on the opening lap and Alonso won in the Renault. You've got such a good memory. It's a great. I remember once in those religiously, actually, at the time.

Watching them live. But it's a great circuit there. And we need a Japanese. I mean, for goodness sake, how can you have a Japanese round? Germany, I'm sure, will be on the calendar next year at the latest.

Very likely it will be Hockenheim. Oxford Slaven was going to make a debut in 20 or a return, I should say, in 20. They got cancelled because of the pandemic. Hockenheim would be great. It wouldn't be the same as the good old old Hockenheim, which we miss very dearly.

But that parabolica at turn three, I think it officially is three or four, depending on how they class the corners. Imagine the round there smoking up the rear tires on that run down to the hairpin. That would be brilliant. And BMW, of course, will be pushing for a German round of that. There is no doubt.

So I think that will happen. But yeah, it would be nice, wouldn't it, to have just a bit of variety? You know, where don't we need races? We've got three rounds in Spain. We don't need three rounds in Spain, in my opinion.

They're all good circuits. Aragon, Barcelona and Jerez. But we don't really need three when you've only got a 12 round championship. Yeah, I remember we had 1994. World Superbikes had Brands Hatch, Donington and Silverstone on the calendar that year.

We had lots of British circuits. It's good we go to Donington. It's a shame we've lost Imola, but at least we've got Cremona. But it is a shame Imola's gone. Yeah, it would just be nice to have some of these alternative venues.

I think Most is a great addition. Some people say it's a bit Mickey Mouse. It's definitely old school. There's a few dodgy areas of that. There is no doubt.

But it's great racing. You know, the races we've had at Most in the few years we've had so far have been really good. Twenty one, two and three. Brilliant action. And I think it's good we go there.

It throws something different up and people might watch. Oh, well, I don't recognise this circuit. Where's this? And it's just different, isn't it? Yeah.

I like Aragon. It's a great track. Simon Crayfar has always said to me when he used to do his Moto Voodoo track days, that was one of his favourite track in Europe for riding. And it's great. It's a great facility.

It's up and down. But the fact of the matter is it's in the middle of nowhere. It's a beautiful part of Spain. Don't get me wrong, but it is in the middle of nowhere. It's difficult for people to get to.

It's three hours from Barcelona, four hours from Madrid. It's very difficult for you to take your family out there for a weekend away. Indonesia was always a funny one. The fact they did it at Mandeleika because all this money was being poured in. When you've got Cental, for example, OK, they need to improve the safety, but it's right in the middle of a densely populated area, probably one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.

It would get full of fans really easily. That's another thing maybe they need to take into consideration. Get some of these circuits that are closer to the cities, not out in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, though, you've got to have this balance, then, between the commercial aspects and the safety aspects. You don't want to be going to really obscure places that are dangerous, obviously.

No. But it would be nice to have a bit more variety, I'm sure we would agree. OK, so in summary, then, I think we can conclude our much longer than planned, but as always, they are. Yeah, sorry. I already give you so much editing work to do.

Sorry, really. No, no, no, this is exactly what we want. So the conclusion is, I think a happy conclusion, the great championship again this year in terms of what we've seen in the first three rounds or so. Obviously, lots to look forward to. And crucially, I would say lots and lots of areas where the championship can be made better.

More variety, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And that's a great opportunity for Liberty if they do come in and buy Dawn as they are trying to do, and if they do indeed retain the World Superbike bit, if they don't have to give it up. Or if anybody else comes in for that matter, there are lots of areas of real improvement that can be made. And that's hopefully something that will happen and will only make things better. So I think overall a pretty positive position for World Superbike and a nice positive conversation that we've had.

I agree. I think the rounds could be better promoted as well. And I'm sure those who promote it would hate me for saying that. I don't mean it as a criticism, but we go to some of these places and some of them are half an hour down the road from the airport. Some of them might be two, two and a half hours away.

But I'm always surprised the lack of visibility the round seems to have. I'd like to think there's going to be banners all the way down the motorway or certainly at the closest airport and all around the region in the hotels and everywhere that World Superbikes is in town. Some places are really good, others you hardly see anything at all. I don't know whether that comes down to Dorner or the commercial and events and marketing departments, or whether it's down to the individual circuits, the regions or whoever the local government is paying for each round. It's probably a combination of all these different parties, to be honest, Rich.

And like I say, I'm in no position to criticize it as such. But let's be honest, if you're on holiday in Portimao, that's one of the better ones, actually. But if you're on the Algarve, you want to see signs knowing this is on to actually maybe attract you down off the beach and down to the circuit. Oh, actually, that's one thing I forgot about before about things to most look forward to. The new sunset races we're going to have this year at Portimao with seven o'clock local time starts.

Twilight races, basically a little bit like Abu Dhabi in Formula One. That's going to be interesting. Let's hope we don't get too many delays, otherwise we're going to have a shortage of light and they won't have to delay till the next day. But that will be really interesting. That will be peak time TV viewing.

It will mean because it's in the heart of the summer, it will be a little bit cooler. It won't be much cooler. It's going to be blooming hot. But that one of the reasons that's been done as well is to get some of those people off the beach. Because if you're away in the Algarve and you didn't know the racing's on, you're probably not going to be tempted to get in the car and drive for half an hour from Portimao or Villamora or Albufeira or wherever you might be staying and go down to the circuit.

But if that's happening in the evening, you can spend your day on the beach and then get down there. That could be a really good little format. I'm looking forward to that. I think that's going to be really interesting and it's good TV viewing time as well. Peak time.

I mean, I'm happy to be proved wrong on this one. I'm thinking of this from a UK centric perspective, of course, although I've traveled to lots of places in the world and wherever you have tracks that are somewhat close to a big population, I hear cities. Yeah. You almost always have like great big shopping malls and stuff in the area. Why not put a couple of World Superbike replica bikes on revolving platforms so people can look at them and think what the hell is that?

I completely agree. Because you have a massive audience. Very simple. They weren't driving around a road show thing not long ago, but I think you need more than that. You need, like you say, you need a Top Rap BMW or a Jonathan Ray Yamaha or one of each of them or even just one of them.

It doesn't really matter. The middle of Maryhill shopping center or wherever the hell it is, Petrol Station Four Courts for several months before the round. So people are like what's that there? Like, and then stop and take pictures of it. Somewhere where you get a lot of footfall and shopping places are always good ones.

And, you know, the kid tugging on my old dad's jacket saying, well, I want to go, you know, and so you give some free tickets away. Put dad's all around it so they take pictures of themselves with the bike. And not only that, but the best five pictures with the best expression on your face will be given VIP tickets into the paddock. You'll get to go on the paddock show stage. You'll get to go in the garages.

You'll get access to the grid. Not only that, why don't you get Jonathan Ray and Bautista and Top Rack on Good Morning Britain with Susanna Reid and Ed Bulls on a Wednesday morning on the run up to the Donington Round. So anyone who's watching who didn't necessarily know anything about it might think, oh, that's good. In the same way BBC Grandstand used to attract the casual fans who would not necessarily be watching because they've tuned in for another sport or they're waiting for the Antiques Roadshow to come on and they've caught the end of Grandstand and end up watching the British Touring Car Championship or the Snooker. You know, there's a reason why Jimmy White, Ronnie O'Sullivan, all the 90s touring car drivers and many other of these people are household names.

Eddie the Eagle, World of Sport and ITV. No one would know who Eddie the Eagle was if it wasn't for World of Sport. OK, those programs, it's not the same now because it's more on demand. You're not necessarily going to sit in and watch all through the afternoon like you did then when it was far less choice. But, you know, why don't you get these people on BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain?

Why can't you get Top Rack doing some stunts on Ant & Dec Saturday Night Takeaway the week before Donington? That would definitely get another few thousand on the gate. There's no doubt. I can't imagine that even being that difficult to organise either. Nigel Mansell made an appearance on Noel's House Party in 1998 in his Ford Mondeo overalls before returning to the BTCC.

Noel's House Party, peak time, massive viewing figures. So I agree with you, like, do that, get some bikes in some shopping centres, be outrageous. And I can't even imagine it would cost that much. I could rattle off a list of all sorts of things that you could do. This is by no means a criticism of BSB because BSB is fantastic.

This is a criticism of the World Superbike event at Donington, I suppose, if I'm honest. And I don't have figures in front of me. But when the crowd at BSB at Donington looks bigger than the crowd at World Superbike in the middle of summer, usually with reasonable weather, not always. But you've got to say somebody's missing a trick there. Yeah, I've got to say that the last couple of years at Donington, it's been really...

I don't know what the figures are either, because MSB don't put the figures out. But Donington's been very busy the last couple of years and all the banking's been full and everything. But I agree. Generally, BSB is busier. And the great thing about BSB, of course, is that they're all in the same country.

So you can quite easily follow the calendar around and at least get to three or four rounds, can't you, depending on where you are in the UK? And another thing I will say about BSB is that there's a lot of track action on a race weekend. There's almost constant track action, lots of different races. You can get around the circuit and view in different places. And it's a family day out.

It's affordable. You don't have to pay through the roof. And there's other stuff going on as well for those family members who come along who are not so much into the racing. You've got food options. You've got bouncy castles.

You've got fun fairs. You've got competition stage shows and the monster stage. And there's lots of ways to be entertained. Live music sometimes. There's lots of ways to be entertained at BSB other than the racing itself.

And that's nice because you can walk around and enjoy all of that. And I would say, last thing I'll say and then we move on. But BSB, I'll always talk about this. Most importantly of all, I think, other than what's going on on track, of course, is the fact that the riders are out and about in an open paddock, walking around, sort of come in to and from their motorhomes and stuff to the garages and stuff. They always stop and have a chat with fans.

And there's a sort of a level of, I think, a level of respect that exists in that paddock between fans and teams and riders and stuff, where it is open and people are willing to chat, but people don't overdo it. The fans don't overdo it because at the end of the day, the riders have got a job to do. So the mix just works really, really well. This has always been a criticism I've had of things like MotoGP in particular. It's far too closed off.

You know, people follow riders and the fact that they can't get anywhere close to them for the vast majority of people is just, I think, is again, it's to the detriment of the sport and its growth. And that's a area that I think Liberty will actually put their foot down pretty hard on. And that's, I think, one thing, to be fair, that MSV gets so right as well. You know, they own a lot of the circuits, don't they? Jonathan Palmer is a brilliant businessman and a racer because he is a racer.

He was the next British Formula 3 champion and European Formula 2 champion in the early 80s. So he knows what people want. Stuart Higgs, I mean, I've had a few run-ins with Stuart over the years. I think most of us have, but it's all generally done because we're all so passionate about what we're doing and we all want it to succeed. And that is the absolute truth.

Stuart can be a complicated character. I'm sure if you're watching Stuart, you won't mind me saying that. I could be a complicated character. But Stuart's a good guy and Stuart gets the racing and he works his backside off, whether it's in race direction and promoting the series. And he knows people want a good show and he puts on a great show, doesn't he?

And on and off the track. And BSV, you know, they're like national little celebrities in the racing world because of the actors. And as you say, I mean, Jonathan Palmer and his team, again, I often kind of make this point. You know, when you're in a non-MSV track in the UK, because it's literally like stepping back into the 1950s. And everyone said how good the facilities were at Navara, by the way, the other day, which is now MSV.

Everyone said they're excellent facilities, what they've done there. I mean, it's always room to improve things. Of course, they are. But what Jonathan Palmer and his team have done at those circuits that they now own in Britain has been fantastic from a spectator's point of view. Yeah, because you go through what some of the non, you know, Thruxton is owned by the BARC and Knock Hill has its own ownership.

Brilliant venues, fantastic racing venues. And you always get amazing races. But it's not, I hope they don't mind me saying this, but facilities wise, it's not quite the same as an MSV venue. You know, you go to... Not even on the same page.

No, exactly. I mean, Silverstone's BRDC and that's Silverstone. But and of course, there is no Silverstone this year in BSV anyway. But you look at Brands, Cadwell, Snetterton, Alton Park, which is where they are as we record this. And yes, things have been improved and just the look of the circuit in general.

Track limits has been an interesting thing in British touring cars over the last 12 months or so, because apparently Jonathan Palmer was getting a bit sick of people ripping up all the nice grass. Track limits has been happening. But that's all part of MSV having such demands and such high levels of quality for the presentation of how nice these venues look for the crowd when they go and for the television viewers. And they do. They, you know, you've got the red and white everywhere on the curbs and on the barriers.

And everything's very neatly laid out in where the safety cars are positioned and things like that. Talking of safety cars, I was going to throw in earlier and I forgot to get completely off topic, Rich. I hope you don't mind for two seconds. But BMW and MotoGP in terms of them coming in there, let's also remember that BMW and MotoGP already have a very close commercial working relationship because of the safety car fleet. And that's been going on for years and years.

So there's definitely interest for both of those parties to continue and extend their linker. We just wanted to throw that in randomly. The great thing is we are a minority sport motorbike racing, generally speaking, compared with the Super Bowl or football World Cups. And, you know, these are global things. I'm nowhere near as interested in that or the Olympic Games as I am in motorbike racing or motorsport as a whole.

But we should all just stick together more and promote the actual sport, because there's no point having to go each other and criticising. It's good to compare things sometimes, but there's no point slacking each other off in different products and things. It's just ridiculous. We're lucky to have the action we have. So let's make them all work together and make them as different as we can while enjoying all of them.

Like you, I love the ESP World Superbikes, MotorGP, the whole lot. Moto America. Yeah, lots of good stuff going on there. Australian Superbikes. I'll always try and watch it whenever I can catch it or, you know, whatever's on at the time.

Yeah, lots to be proud of and lots to look forward to and lots to be hopeful about as we go off into the future, particularly with the Liberty thing in mind, as we've said before. So I think that's everything I wanted to ask you, Graham. I mean, we could literally talk for hours and hours and hours. So we'll just have to try and catch up another time or two this year. But unless you've got anything to throw in as a final one, I just want to say thank you again.

I mean, you always so generous with your time. We're doing this on a Sunday afternoon of all times. So thanks, Greg. I mean, it's just great to chat to you and to get your very professional, valuable, knowledgeable kind of take on the sport and everything that's going on in the current season. Right.

It's very generous of you to say that, Rich. And I can say exactly the same back. It's always a pleasure chatting. I would happily go on for longer, but I've just realised my phone has gone down to four percent battery. So I've got to go and charge it.

Otherwise, this is going to go halfway through. And I don't want that to happen next time we do speak, though. I've got a question for you, which I don't know if I've got time now because of the battery. But next time we speak, I want to ask you about your experience in Qatar in MotoGP, having worked there on the ground. So next time, I definitely want to talk to you about that and how it compared with your expectations, because I'd be really interested as someone who's not really worked as much in the MotoGP panic in the past, but you follow it closer than most people I know.

I would be very interested to hear your opinions on that and how that went that weekend. Well, OK, no, I look forward to that. Well, let's see if we can catch up on the park bench at Donnans Park Paddock for World Supers in July, isn't it? It is July, I think, isn't it? Yeah.

12th to the 14th of July. So the 11th of July would be media day. So we'll look forward to catching up there and hopefully the sun will be shining again.