2025 MotoGP Rider & Team Speculation

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 771, June 17, 2024. I'm hosting, I'm Jim McDowell with me from across the pond, Richard Jallett.

Good evening to you sir, as it is the evening over there. It is Jim, yes good evening. It's 10 o'clock in the evening now in the UK, but enjoying some summery warm weather at long last because it's been absolutely freezing here all through June so far. So yeah, summer has arrived. Yeah I saw McGuinness had a tweet that said he had the electric blanket on in the middle of June and it was very cold.

That is not the problem here where I live in the US. We are in the heat wave and we were talking about earlier as like 98 today in old money. It's got to be like 31, 32C I think something close to that. It is wicked hot here, but that just means it's just time to get inside and talk about motorcycling. Absolutely, every cloud.

Yeah, so first of all we want to thank everybody who is a donator to the show including Gareth Locke, Jacob Nurkow, Carl Hun, Rick Taylor, Norey Ita, Nick Saban, Alan Fleming, Bernton Edwards, Scott Baldwin, Ollie, Dennis Kindig, Jeremy Burnage, Jacob Raller, Darren Andrews, Paul Lang, Gary Chavitte and Steve. And guys, we still have a lot of people who are downloading the podcast but aren't donating to the show and we'd really appreciate it if you guys could come on throw a little bit in the hat. It really helps us out with the server space and trying to get to some races to grab more interviews and do more things. So if you can, we'd greatly appreciate it. We understand that things are hard, times are what they are.

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Let's get into MotoGP speculation, right, Rich? Is that where we want to go here? Yeah. Well, before we do, a little apology to the MotoPod listenership because as you and I were discussing pre-recording, I bulls that with the upload of the episode from Mugello, which I thought I'd put out last week after the Greg Haynes show had gone out. Some reason I missed the fact that it hadn't properly uploaded.

So apologies. That only went out today and that contains me saying, for example, I'm pretty sure Vignards is going to stay put at Aprilia. What did I know? So we're going to get into the whole who's where. What do we think is going to happen?

There's still some big gaps to fill, although the grid is starting to come together bit by bit. So yeah, I think that's what we're going to be kind of having a wild speculation trip whilst we fill in the gap between this longish MotoGP break, of course, because of the Azerbaijan. Is that right? No, Kazakhstan. I always say Azerbaijan.

Kazakhstan race having been delayed until later in the year. Severe flooding or something had washed out the roads that would get you to the track. That is now replacing India on the calendar. So think what you will. Technically, India is a postponement.

We cannot call it a cancellation or rescheduling because that would be against the lawyer ease. That's somebody's contract somewhere. One or two brave people have pointed out what I assume is factual. And again, we don't want to get sued here, but I think money is a big part of the problem with the race. And some people suggesting that whatever money was due to Dorna for last year's race hasn't been forthcoming as of yet.

So yeah, I have some doubts about that race reappearing, to be perfectly honest. I hope it does because it is a very good circuit. I think it's a fabulous circuit for motorcycles. Severe challenge for the riders. Yeah.

I think there's enough there to make it interesting. There's a few corners that I think are difficult or challenging, and I hate to see it not be there. I think to be a world championship, I think you need to race on every continent, including the subcontinent. So we're not quite there. I do think we need something on the African continent, whether it is Wacom again, or if it's...

Kailami is the obvious one. Kailami, thank you. Went blank right there for a second. But that's all speculative as well. So since we are speculating, Rich, let's just start with MotoGP.

We all know that Martin went to Aprilia, and we know that Mark Marquez has taken the other seat alongside Benyaia. And a friend of mine at work walked in the other day, says, hey, what do you think about the whole Mark Marquez move to factory team and all that? And I'm like, it kind of explained my thought and views and whatnot, which you've heard in 770. And he says, well, when are they going to stop giving Martin updates? And I hadn't even thought about that.

So that's what we're going to speculate first is like, when do we think since Martin's leaving, when does Ducati say, nope, you're not getting anything more than what you have right now? Yeah, it's a tricky one, isn't it? This kind of goes to the whole thing that a number of other podcasters always make a big deal out of, but is most possibly true through history. And that is that satellite squads don't win world championships. But, you know, that Pramak Ducati 2024 bike package is so heavily supported by Ducati.

It's almost like the works outfit in there. I mean, it's not quite, but it's very close. And I just wonder whether Ducati might just take the view that they just want to keep this as much of a level playing field as possible and just let the best man win, even if that means that the number one plate goes somewhere else, which I personally don't think it will. I think Banyaya will do what he does and has played a long game and bit by bit he'll just kind of edge the championship again. I'm inclined to think they won't withdraw support, but they can always play that game if they need to.

I mean, I don't know if there's kind of like a lot of love lost now between the various factions. Clearly, there's been a divorce has happened and that usually means that people have fallen out to some extent, whether it's a catastrophic falling out. Obviously, we can only speculate, which is what we're here to do. My sense is probably that Ducati will try and play it reasonably fair at least through this mid part of the season and see how things pan out. I tend to agree with you that I think Ducati is going to want to try to keep it fair.

So we have this break and then we have a few races and then we've got the summer break, which is what end of August? Is it the gap leading up to Silverstone at the beginning of August? Okay, so it's the gap to start something again. I'd need to check the calendar, Jim, to be honest, because my head's a bit befuddled now with this enforced gap, which feels like the summer break, but obviously it's not the official one. Yes, it's not the official summer break.

Because my thought is that you usually have the San Marino test. I can't imagine that Ducati is going to let Martine ride anything new there. So I think when you get to that point in time, I think all the updates or anything that Ducati would bring are not going to show up on Martine's bike. There's still a good chunk of racing left to go at that point because you've got some triple headers. I think there's at least one triple header that's in there.

I think it's Thailand, Australia, Malaysia. I think that's the triple header there. So I see that as being where the updates stop for Martine. Now whether Benya gets anything new after that is questionable, right? You may not want to change it.

What I think may be the more important part of this equation is that how much more support will Grissini receive via, hey, Marquez needs these parts? Because I believe this is correct, that Marquez's 2023 Ducati is a very old spec. It's like sort of what everybody started with in 2023 and has only a few bits and bobs that have been added to it. Okay, that bike changed massively over the course of the championship. I.e.

Benya had no front feel, crashed to that Cota, everything else. And by the time we had gotten past the summer break, we did Silverstone, we did Mizano, that kind of thing. That bike was ultra quick. And I'm thinking if I'm Ducati and he's my, I don't want to say rising star, but he's the guy who was going to take the spot on the factory team and he's third in the championship with an outside shot. And if you want to keep things fair and equal with Martín and Benya, why not put the cat amongst the pigeons and give this guy who's riding the wheels off of something that's really old, give him a better bike or give him whatever level motorcycle Benya had at the end of last year and see what he does with it.

Because that's how you're going to keep the points off Martín. Yeah, although he might actually end up beating Benya as well, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad outcome for Ducati given that Marc Marquez is going to be in red next year. So in a way they've kind of got a winning hand there, haven't they? I agree with you, Jim. I think they're more likely to support Marc Marquez and slowly roll back on Martín.

I mean, clearly by the time we get into the final quarter of the season, Martín is not going to be getting the bang up to date bits because why would they do that? Historically teams never ever do that. So maybe their equation in all of this is that they're figuring that Benya will do what Benya does, as I said a minute ago, and he'll kind of just chip away at it and perhaps get stronger as the season goes on. And Marquez will be there playing rear gunner and might actually edge himself into second place by the time we get to the end of the season if he does get a bit of extra support. Martín's mind maybe goes somewhere else looking towards next year, et cetera, et cetera.

Who knows, but I can sort of see it playing out that way. Definitely. I'm interested to know what anybody else thinks about this one in terms of whether Ducati will kind of run interference to try and make sure that the number one plate doesn't go to Pridna, because of course they wouldn't want that to happen for a variety of reasons. But do people think that Ducati will play this fair or they'll try and perhaps, what's the polite way of putting it? Yeah, run a bit of interference, perhaps.

As much as Martín is, I think, invested in the idea of 89 as a number, much like Rossi's classic 46, Marquez's classic 93. I think if he wins the championship, he would put a number one bike on that Aprilia just to absolutely just tick the living crap out of Ducati. 100%, yes. I mean, he's just got that mentality, right? Yeah.

So that is the first part of the speculation. So I think with that, we know who's where in that respect. But there was, I'll call it somewhat bombshell news. It was not the level of Martín going to Aprilia, but it was in its own right, a rather interesting situation where Bastianini, seemingly the odd man out, winds up at Gas Gas Red Bull Tech 3. And that one, maybe you could draw the line and say, okay, that was a good idea because Bastianini is kind of getting the true factory bike.

We know that KTM kind of pretty much treats Tech 3 as their other factory bikes. And since they don't have a satellite team to support on top of that, KTM wouldn't have one more team. They're obviously capable of building four sets of bikes that are able to be equal. So Bastianini going to the factory there from a factory to a factory, okay, maybe a smidge of a downgrade, maybe. But Acosta makes that look good, right?

But then there's talent is a lot. So he goes there. Cool. But then we find out that Vinales leaves Aprilia. Now there's a question in there I want to ask, but he leaves Aprilia to sign to go to Red Bull Gas Gas Tech 3.

He pairs with Bastianini. The question, did Vinales jump or was he pushed? Jumped. Jumped. Okay, so he decided to go.

I'm surprised we've not had an email from Gary up until this point. I mean, I virtually fell off my chair when that news thing, and I WhatsApp you straight away Jim, didn't I? I am still flabbergasted really, but again, just listening to other people that are closer into the paddock and the true journalistic kind of part of the business, it sounds as if this is a classic maverick having a strop. Didn't like the fact that the Martin deal was done without his knowledge. He found out, I think through social media, which is a pretty bad oversight by the team, not to let him know in advance.

I know it happened very, very quickly, but even so, and maybe Maverick doesn't fancy going up against Martin is another part of that. It's hard to know with Maverick Vinales. He's such a complicated character. I mean, he's a great rider on his day, virtually unbeatable when he's on it, but those days are obviously very infrequent. Having said that, he has one on three different bikes now, and De Lure being the only person to win on four on what is a very, very good package, as you say, Jim, not going to be Gas Gas next year.

They're withdrawing that sub-brand. It's just going to be Red Bull KTM Tech 3, I think, or more emphasis on the Red Bull part of it, at least anyway, and the Gas Gas sub-branding will disappear. But as you say, Acosta is showing that that bike is every bit capable of winning the race. I mean, he hasn't done yet, but I'm sure he will do before the end of the year. I'd be surprised if he didn't anyway.

And he's by far and away the fastest of the KTM. So there's nothing wrong with the bike being in that Tech 3 setup. So it's a question of whether Maverick can adapt to the KTM because it is well known to be a pretty brutal piece of equipment. And he is ultra sensitive and finicky in about things and took a long time to adapt to the Aprilia. Now, as somebody else mentioned, and I hadn't thought about this part of his transition, you know, the length of time it took was just kind of 18 months before he really started to perform on that Aprilia.

Part of it was due to the fact that he'd only ever ridden inline four cylinder bikes in MotoGP before. And so the Aprilia was the first V4. So he'll be going V4 to V4. So there'll be aspects of that that will be, I suppose, somewhat similar in terms of bike behavior, weight distribution and stuff like that. But I don't know, I'm a little bit concerned about how that potentially goes.

I don't know. What do you think, Jim? Do you think he's going to do well or do you think it might be a bit of a toys out of the pram job before too much longer? Kind of a Johann Zarca. I mean, remember how he got on the KTM?

Well, that's a great question. I really don't know. I mean, this shocks me that he goes there. I mean, there's a lot of talent that's in Moto2 right now. And I just don't understand why you don't at least take a rookie to go beside Bastianini.

That just doesn't seem to gel with what they want to do. Now, maybe because they think Maverick is a great setup rider, perhaps maybe they want him to become finicky with that bike to find the ultimate sweet spot. Perhaps. Right now, Gary's having probably a seizure. I said that.

But you have to admit that when Vinalas has the setup and nails it, it is almost unbeatable. Yeah. So I will give that to him. And it's easy for me to sit here and talk about his setup or how he's good at this or that or whatever. But there's probably a whole bunch of other stuff that we don't know that maybe intrigues KTM for wanting to put him on board that motorcycle.

But I still think that there's got to be somebody else that you would want to take out of Moto2 like Garcia. I think Garcia would be an excellent choice to have put alongside Bastianini. I mean, the worst part of it is, is there's really no continuity for the team because they're starting over with two new riders next year. In of itself, that tells you we know a cost of left to go to the KTM factory, if you will. Where's Augusto Fernandez going?

Well, I don't see any room at the end in MotoGP for him, to be honest. Well, I mean, that's where the other part of the speculation all has to be, is where does he go? Right. So speaking of people and where do they go? What does Ducati do with Outagr?

Well, just before we get to that, Jim, can I just say about the Vinalas, Bastianini team up at Tech3? Because, I mean, clearly if Mavic Vinalas has a strop and goes banging on the door asking if there's a ride going, they're kind of going to want to say yes, if they're getting them at good value. In the back of my mind, and I don't know, this is probably complete bunkum, but KTM famously over the recent seasons have kind of got themselves into bother by having too many riders and not enough bikes and having a difficult path for their talent to come through. So I wonder, maybe not so much Bastianini because he's kind of relatively young in MotoGP. I mean, what will this be his fifth or sixth season?

So whereas Maverick's been around a lot longer and you would have to kind of expect that maybe one or two seasons more and he might be looking at retirement, he said he isn't going to need the money, put it that way. And I just wonder if they're creating a gap so that when David Alonso makes his way through the ranks, there's a undisputed place for him to go as one of the more mature outgoing riders disappears. Don't know, I mean, that's again wild speculation, but kind of strategically, maybe KTM are just trying to not get themselves into quite as much of a rider pickle as they found themselves in before. I don't know, maybe Vignola just fitted the bill for that reason as well. And Augusto Fernandez, he's having a torrid year, can't adapt to the carbon frame by the sounds of it.

And it is tough on him, though, because, you know, it's only his second season and he's the Moto2 championship or champion rather from a couple of years ago and finds himself potentially out of the paddock or back in Moto2, which is not a great situation really for him or for the championship really, because I mean, it's not good when people win the championship and end up back there a couple of years later. But some people put it in MotoGP and others don't. I mean, that's just the law of the jungle, isn't it? It is cutthroat. With Alonso, if I'm pit buyer and the boys at KTM, I look at that kid and go, there was an Acosta and now there's an Alonso.

And at some point you want both of them on your MotoGP bikes. OK, yeah, there's no way around that. Like, I cannot imagine them not having some piece of paper in front of him with some right of first refusal to ride for them in MotoGP, because, I mean, they could easily take Alonso at the end of this year and put him into the I.O. squad and let him learn Moto2 for a couple of years. And as you said, hey, Maverick, bye, thanks.

Hey, kid, you go here. But I think, and this is me, that there will be six KTMs on the grid next year. Really? Where are the others going to be then? I think PreyMax switches to KTM.

Oof, blimey. Because the whole talk started because Yamaha was wanting them as their team. OK, we know KTM wants another team. And now all that talk about Yamaha has gone quiet, which means one of two things to me. Either the deal's done, we're staying on a Ducati or there's another Fox in the henhouse.

Or the deal's done with Yamaha and they just can't announce it yet. OK, yes, fine. That you are correct. That is a possibility as well. But if I'm Yamaha and I signed them, I would want to say it, unless there was a contractual obligation that they can't announce that we're leaving Ducati until X time, right.

Which is always a possibility that there's easily there could be non-disclosure agreements that have been signed. This is, well, you can't say anything about this and we can't say anything about this. But you just think that if it was a done deal, people who are in the know in the paddock, the Simon Patterson's, the Matt Oxley's, the old people would hear some chatter somewhere. They're like, hey, this is pure speculation or the rumor is flowing around that this or this is happening. It's not yet, far as I know.

Well, I think the rumor mill is beating quite hard as to the fact that if Pranat were going to leave Ducati, then Yamaha would be the way that they would go. It's an interesting suggestion. And I mean, we know that KTM want more bikes on the grid and they'll pay for that to happen because they do have a lot of riders on their books, you know, potentially coming through. I mean, I don't know with Pranat, it's a little bit complicated, obviously, because there's riders involved as well. And that is not clear.

And much of this hangs on what Pranat decides to do and when that becomes public knowledge. I mean, my view would remain, I believe that they'll go down the Yamaha route. But until it's announced or something else is announced, again, speculation. But that's why we're here. And, you know, my list of potential riders on a Pramit Yamaha is a bit embarrassingly long, really, because people would be queuing up, I think.

But we'll come to that. What did you start going down the track? Did you say VR46? I haven't said anything about them yet. So I've lost my train of thought.

Then you kind of moved on to another squad. My path was taking like because we were discussing where does Augusto Fernandez go and who's going there? We had Alonso coming in and you said Aldegaard, didn't you? Yeah. And so it's like, well, where does Aldegaard slotted all this?

I mean, there was a poll that was done by the folks at MotoGP and they said, well, where do you think he goes? And the last time I looked at the poll, everybody had him at Pramak with the Ducati, which I think that's like the logical one. My vote was for him to go to VR46. So I'd put him in Brasini on my list. I mean, we've talked about the stuff that we know, which is the Martin to Aprylia we know obviously what's happening, Mark Marquez.

We know that the Bastionini and Vinales are now at Tech 3 next year. So do you want to get into the pure speculation thing? We'll just go team by team and we can say what we know and what we don't. So because I prepared a list earlier on. So let's start with HRC, you know, which is potentially the most difficult question of all, as in, you know, the full HRC squad.

Obviously there's LCR as well, but we'll come to them. So, and again, I hope I'm correct in some of this. So as far as I know, Marini has a long term contract with them. So he is due to be there next year. And he's stamped on any rumors that he was trying to buy his way out of the contract.

So I don't think any of that's true. So let's say Marini is definitely there next year. Mir is out of contract and clearly does not want to stay. So there's a vacancy at HRC next year. I see two candidates for that ride and it's not going to be a long queue of people looking to jump on that bike.

Let's be honest. So it's going to be people that are getting nerfed out of other rides and maybe just want to cling on. And if it's the Honda, that's what they'll take. And there's probably some decent money on offer as well. So shall I say who I think the candidates are on my list?

I would have either. And the first one is the one I think probably would be the person, either Miguel Oliveira or Jack Miller for HRC. Okay. Or anybody else that comes into your mind. I know you're sort of doing this slightly on the hop, whereas I sat down and wrote this down earlier on.

If it was me, I'd throw Augusto Fernandez into that mix. Either at take your pick, LCR, HRC, wherever that's happening. Well, he's another free agent. Let's put it that way. We know because he's obviously lost his bride at Tech 3.

And what happens to Gigi Antonio? Because he seems to be the odd man out there. I have him elsewhere in my speculation 25 grid. Okay. I mean, for me, I think Oliveira probably is out of track house.

He's a three time MotoGP race winner. I think he's won three races. Pretty sure. Yes. Yeah.

I think two of them were at his home track, right? Yeah. And then he won the Red Bull Ring when he was in the Tech 3 squad on the KTM. Oh, okay. So one at his home track, one at Austria.

Then the other one was in the wet in Thailand. No, it could have been. Or that might have been the other. What's the new track in Indonesia? Mandeliki.

Buriram. It was Buriram because it was wet and he won that race in the wet. Somebody with a great mind for stats will let us know. But I'm pretty sure he's won three races. So I mean, he's a pretty kind of rarefied company to have won three races or more.

Because of track hours. You know, he's a pretty steady rider. He's been injured to be fair to him for pretty much all the last season after Mark Marquez torpedoed him at Portimao. And things aren't really working out for one reason or another at track house this year. I see him being let go, but with his experience and with his clear pedigree, he would be a good candidate, I would have thought, for HRC to try and help them through the development hell that they're going to be in for the next year or two.

Whereas Miller, who is out of a ride, clearly, because there's no room at KTM for him. Because all of the seats are now confirmed elsewhere. I suppose that might make some sense, but you know, somebody else rather uncharitably pointed out that the day he's great at starting races and rubbish at finishing them. So perhaps that is not what HRC need at the minute. They need laps and a bike that can hold onto its rear tire.

And those are not things that Jack Miller has tended to be terribly effective at since he left Ducati, at least, and even sometimes whilst he was at Ducati. So, yeah, this is all speculation. We're not putting any money on this, but I would probably go Daniel Oliveira if I was HRC at this point and if he became available. And would probably be quite good value as well as a rider that needs a ride. Yeah, I can see that because I think you've got somebody sort of similar to Zarko in that respect to do the development, put the laps and figure out what's going on and try to make HRC better.

Although, in all honesty, I don't see HRC being any better until we go to the 850s. Well, I'm sure they're going to be putting a heck of a lot of work into it. Yeah. I listened to something the other day with Neil Spalding. Do you remember he's sort of the technical gear guy and he made the interesting point that when MotoGP went 800cc and Honda kind of got it rolling, then tires really kind of screwed them up as well with the changes in the Bridgestone rubber.

He says, and he was on the ground, so let's take this as being factually correct, that Honda just about threw every single bit into winning that final 800cc championship, which they did. And he was kind of saying that they're going to do the same with 1000cc before it goes to 850, but that is a hell of a hill to climb to get anywhere close to lifting the title with the Honda at the moment in what, two years time? Yeah, I can't. Sorry. I, yes, I know that they threw everything at it for that last year, 800.

But as much as this pains me as the Honda fan, I mean, I bleed HRC red, white, blue, but they're not going to get there until they get to the 850 motors, because that way you go back to a frame that's just a frame. There's no ride heights, not even for a whole shot, right? There's nothing except for a couple of wings that you're going to be able to bolt on the front fairing. And that's it, which is kind of like how Marquez won like the last one or two championships that he had with HRC. So to get back to that formula where the rider is more of the input than the motorcycle, it's not going to work.

I mean, yeah, they got the 800 wrong, which surprised me. But when they went to 990s, Honda came up with something totally brilliant with a five cylinder. Yeah. And they're going to want to do the same with the 850 clearly. Correct.

And I wouldn't put it past them to do the 850 correct, because your limit is they limited you on the bore. They said that's it. But they didn't say anything about stroke. So you don't know what Honda is going to do or how they're going to do it. But anyway, that's completely speculative.

Let's continue down with where riders go, Rich. OK, well, let's jump to LCR then as the other Honda. OK. Now, Zarko, I believe, is on a long term contract there as well. So he I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that Zarko wouldn't switch up to the HRC work squad.

But let's assume that he stays put at LCR because he's a contracted HRC rider, even though he's riding in the LCR squad. Nakagami, I mean, given where Honda are, you could potentially see him getting yet another sort of stay of execution, which is a slightly unkind way of putting it. But he's been kind of clinging on now, although in fairness to him, when you look at the timing sheets and the results, he hasn't been doing badly this year at all, compared to some of the others, Mir in particular. But if Nakagami was going to be kind of put on test rider duties alongside Spargrove, who appears to be going to HRC to fulfill that role as well, you know, Nakagami could do Suzuka, 8 hour and kind of the stuff that Honda royalty does. Could you see Aguirre perhaps taking the inverted commas risk of jumping up this time, particularly if he gets top three in the championship in Moto2 this year, which looks like he will.

He'll go. Will he take the risk? Yes, he'll go. I would think he partners Zarco. I mean, it would be a good pairing.

It's a good pairing. But I think I may be wrong in this, but I feel like a Japanese rider on an HRC bike is the equivalent of an Italian driving a Ferrari. Yeah. They all want to do that. They want to race for big red.

So I don't think he's going to turn that down because again, if he does take it, it would be like a two year deal probably like, right. So that'd be 25, 26. So do what you can with the bike, learn it and then guess what? You're into 27 with an 850. Yeah.

And he's been in Moto2. This is what his third or fourth season now. So if not more actually, so he kind of needs to get out of Moto2, I would say sooner rather than later. Otherwise he kind of gets locked into just always being there. All right.

So we're going to go Zarco and Aguirre, perhaps Nakagami doing test rider duties. Okay. Let's move on to Yamaha then. Works Yamaha. Now we know that Quattroraro has signed a multi-year deal to stay put.

So they persuaded him that there's stuff coming down the pipe. Rins was only on a one year contract and I just had a quick flick onto the MotoGP news site today and a top of the list that says Rins is saying he hasn't been offered a new deal yet. I had heard separate to this the other day, you know, he's got a young child, I think now his leg is still a real problem. And I think there's genuine concern that if he broke that leg again, it could be really very bad for him. So there were one or two people speculating as to whether or not he might kind of just decide it was better to hang up his helmet and do something else.

But that article makes me think perhaps that Rins wants to stay. So on balance, I would go with Rins as staying put. Any reason to doubt that one, Jim? No, I can't doubt it. Yeah.

I don't think Yamaha is going to change. They're going the right way. I mean, I could see him saying I've had enough and I don't want to break myself anymore, but of all the bikes, I don't think he's going to have. That's hard to talk. I mean, if he was like on a V4, it would be, I think, a harder go.

Like Yamaha is one of the better handling bikes. So I think he stays. Yeah. And I think they try to push it forward. He kind of outperformed Rattararo through much of the Lamar weekend, as I recall.

And he was very quick in the Friday sessions at Mugello and then both Yamaha's kind of dropped away. So although they're making progress in some areas, I think that, you know, they still got a long road ahead of them, which would favor something like Rins staying put if he's fit and healthy and wants to do it. So let's say that they're both staying as is then. So that kind of brings me onto the thorny issue of Pramak. Do we, I mean, it's, clearly it's a different setup if they have KTMs under them or Ducatis or Yamaha's.

I personally believe it'll be Yamaha's, which is what my list is kind of based on. So can we go with that for now? Yeah. Let's see what you say here. This supposes Pramak Yamaha.

We know that they've got Martina Morbidelli this year. Well, Martina's going to Aprilia. We know Morbidelli, I think would not be terribly keen on the idea of getting back on the Yamaha. So he goes somewhere else. In which case I see Digiantonio as a very good fit into a Pramak Yamaha.

Okay. That's good. Again, this is perhaps slightly wild speculation, but if Pramak Yamaha was fulfilling that semi-work satellite squad plus bringing one or two riders in to really sort of get them to the point where they would go into the full work squad, then I would see something like Sergio Garcia as an excellent recruitment into that setup. But on my list for potential Pramak Yamaha riders, I had Digiantonio and Garcia, obviously, Jaimir, Remy Gardner is out of contract with Yamaha and World Superbikes, and I think deserves another shot in MotoGP, having been jettisoned from the KTM squad after a season. That's probably a bit unlikely, but Aguirre would be a fit and so would Augusto Fernandez, because they're all the sorts of riders that you would think would do well on a Yamaha for the reasons that you were saying a moment ago.

But yeah, I've got Digiour and Garcia anyway in my speculative Pramak Yamaha squad. Garcia I'm not so sure about. Given his talent, I think he... Okay, I'll flip this slightly. If there's a KTM in that garage, Garcia.

Okay. If it's a Yamaha, I don't see that. And I see Garcia showing up somewhere like Trackhouse. Interesting. Cause let's remind ourselves that Garcia is leading the Moto2 World Championship at the moment.

I'm not suggesting he's going to win it, but he's certainly going to be in the hunt all year and he might well win it because he's got really strong form. So Moto2 champions hopefully get to go up to MotoGP, don't they? So you'd hope he'd find a seat somewhere, but yeah, Trackhouse, you could see that happening. Cause I think that Garcia, even as a rookie, is a better upgrade than what is there. Cause you could keep Raul who has shown flashes of brilliance.

Not that we're jumping to Trackhouse here, but my reasoning is maybe you keep him and you put a rookie behind him with talent. Yeah. The Garcia deal may be, hey, one year at Trackhouse, then you go to the factory. But brilliant. There can be that contingency there.

I don't think he would go to a Yamaha, but that's me. So part of the question though, part of the equation is would Yamaha want him? Cause if that's the only call that he gets, then obviously he'd be interested. I, well, yeah, I would assume. All right.

Okay. Continuing. So that's Yamaha done. So we've already dealt with tech three. We know what's happening at works KTM.

That's Binder and Acosta. We know what's happening at the works Gcati squad. So let's move on to VR 46 then. So currently we're with Bizecki and DiGiantonio. Now I think DiGiantonio is going to be cut from there because they kind of took him under duress anyway, although he's having a much better season than Margot Bizecki, it must be said.

But as I say, I think he would be a big target for a, you know, a Yamaha satellite to take on board. So let's assume that DiGi is out of there. Kind of the big question really is Bizecki because he's been tipped to go to Aprilia for a while and obviously there is the slot alongside Martin now that Vinales has decided to go in the Aprilia squad, but let's just remind ourselves that this is the Margot Bizecki that turned down a move to Pramac because he wanted to stay at VR 46. So does he kind of want to stay in the camp for another year? I kind of think he does.

I don't see Bez going anywhere. I think he, for whatever reason, he does not gel with that 23 Ducati. Whether it's parts, pieces, setup, I don't know. But if Pramac to Yamaha or to KTM is a done deal, then I think Ducati's most logical step is to put more support behind VR 46. So Bez gets a better 2024 version of the bike.

That solves his problem. And then who rides alongside him? Well, Garcia, possibly, right? Because that's coming from Moto2. That would be my guess there.

Although you could speculate that if Roberts wrestled the title away from Garcia, he might have the pick of going to that because Rossi does tend to like sort of that is dirt tracking kind of American types, right? He's got the camp and all that kind of stuff. So I could see that being a possibility. Slim, slim, but yet still a possibility. But is there anybody else moving around that would go there?

So the question then is, is what happens to, what's he know? What Marine, Morbidelli's got a contract with Pramac or is he done? Not if it's a Yamaha Pramac, I would imagine. So if it's a Yamaha Pramac, then Morbidelli would probably slide into that spot as well. So I'd say it's either Morbidelli or Garcia, depending what happens at Pramac.

Yeah. I mean, I've got next year Morbidelli and Bezaki at VR 46. Just at this moment, a little bit of wild speculation for the future. But I really liked the symmetry of this and I'm sure it's occurred to other people. But if BMW come into the championship in 2027, which I think is becoming more and more of a strong possibility, because I don't know if you saw World Superbike headlines from the weekend, but Toprak did the treble at Mozano.

BMWs do not perform at Mozano and he just absolutely nailed it. So Toprak is barring injury or some very odd scenario. I think Toprak is going to be World Superbike champion this year. Now, Toprak is contracted to BMW and World Superbikes next year. But a bit of wild speculation that I really liked was BMW enter in 2027 with Toprak probably in a work squad.

Bearing in mind, there are two works slots on the grid vacated by Suzuki for BMW to take should they want them. BMW would be highly likely to want to have a satellite squad as well. And VR46 would be a very good fit, because who does Rossi drive for in endurance racing? He has a very strong link with BMW now. BMW is M4 or whatever they're running on the GT class.

So, I mean, I like the idea in the future just for, again, symmetry and not having the Ducati Cup that we used to moan about. You know, in that scenario, you'd have four BMWs, four Priolus, four Yamahas, if the Primaq thing happens, or KTM and four Hondas. Yeah, which would be a nicely rounded off grid, I think. That would be a very nice rounded off grid. I did read that BMW said that they would not come to MotoGP until they won a World Superbike title.

Well, that's going to probably happen. It's going to happen. It's going to be the end of this year. Right. And next year, quite likely, if things go on.

And you can conceive in kind of quietly in private Toprak starting to put some test miles on a prototype 850 BMW kind of test mule as part of his preparation for coming. Because he's going to be quite old Toprak. You know, he's 30 now, I think. So that would be quite an old age to come into MotoGP. But as I mentioned when I was having the chat with Greg Haynes the other day, the thing about Toprak is that he very, very rarely crashes.

And so he's not one of these riders that's going to hit sort of early 30s and be aching in places that you never knew he had sort of thing. You know, like a lot of riders, by the time they get to 30, they're so injured and sore that they kind of can't make a jump like that. Whereas I think he really can. And there's even been some wild speculation kind of linking him to HRC because he probably would ride around that bike's problems because the things that he can do with a motorbike are just insane. But I still think the BMW to MotoGP with him is the most likely outcome.

And then this VR46 thing got mentioned at the weekend. I thought, yeah, that makes an awful lot of sense, really, with the Rossi connection there. Yeah. I can't argue any of that. There's that's probably very valid.

It's speculative. But OK, who's next on the list? And let's go on the basis, Jim, that if Pramak go away from Gcati, then VR46 is probably the most likely to get the works bikes instead. Yeah, I can't see Grissini getting the works bikes or the works bike or whatever. Let's go to Grissini then.

OK. So we've done VR46, Gcati's, Panel, Grissini. Obviously, Mark Marquez and Alex Marquez this year. We know Mark's moving. Alex Marquez, I think, stays put.

Yeah. For a continuity reason. And I think that it's probably the environment that Aldegaard fits into, because, again, second, third hand, I heard somebody the other day say that Aldegaard's contract is that he doesn't get a 2025 bike next year when he joins the grid. So he will be on a year old bike no matter what in his first year. So Grissini would be a good, slightly lower pressure environment for him to spend his first year on a year old bike.

He's not part of the VR46 camp anyway, so he would be a bit of an odd fit into that structure anyway. So to me, that will add up to Grissini probably being the most likely place if it's not a Primark Gcati. Yeah, I think Grissini is correct for him, for Aldegaard, given the other stuff that's going on. So I think that's the fit. So I can't argue.

That's pretty good. I like that one. All right. Well, that just leaves us with Four Aprilias then. So we know Martin's on one of them.

There's a space that's vacated by Vinalis, and then there's the thorny issue of Trackhouse. I think Olivera is out. Now Raoul Fernandes, as we know, is there this year. So the question is, who's at Trackhouse and who's on the other works of Aprilia? I'll let you go with this one.

Well, because I know you have a hope for at least one of those seats. Yeah, I hope that Roberts gets on the Trackhouse bike. Right. With that said, though, Trackhouse has been very much adamant that it is not a team that is there because they want an American rider. They want to be a competitive team.

I think that they would be very competitive if they kept Raoul and put Joe on the bike. That's what I would want. And if I'm running the show, I would want those two because there's enough there. I've seen enough from Fernandes that like he's getting it because he didn't have the same bike Olivera had last year. It was a different spec or something, I think.

Yeah. I think this year, the spec of bike, albeit less than what is at the factory, are equal among the two guys at Trackhouse right now. I think Fernandes is still on a year old bike. I think he's meant to be getting a 24 bike midseason. But up until this point, I think he's been on last year's bike.

OK, so he's still on the 23 bike. I still would keep him, though. I mean, he's shown better than Olivera has. So you got to kind of say, OK, yeah, let's do that. But are they willing to put a rookie on the team?

That's the question. The problem Joe Roberts has got is passport. I was going to say Joanne Meir because I think Joanne Meir. I think he gives the factory team, though. I think he rides alongside Martine.

Well, yeah, I mean, you could see that happening. Obviously, there's a kind of a romantic realiance of Meir and David A. Briveaux at Trackhouse that would kind of work. And let's not beat around the bushes. Meir must be mentally destroyed at this point in the HRC squad, because, I mean, he spends most of his time upside down.

So he's going to need to go somewhere into an environment and with some people around him that are going to rebuild his confidence and not rebuild his skill. I mean, the skill never goes away. But clearly he has a lot of soul search. And what I'm trying to say, Jim, he is going to have to take a bit of time and need a bit of nurture to get his form back and his confidence back. So in that sense, Trackhouse probably would be a better environment for him.

But if I like you, I think probably they stick with Raoul Fernandez. And I just wonder if the Joe Roberts thing isn't going to happen. Romantically, I want that to happen. But realistically, I don't think it happens. Right.

In fact, it might be very hard for anybody from Moto to to crack into the Moto GP paddock, just given where things are. Yeah. Given how much turmoil and movement is going to happen in the HRC in Yamaha. Again, would I love to see Joe Roberts there to track us? Yes.

Is he going to be there? Highly unlikely in my mind. Mir, being there alongside Raoul Fernandez is more likely to happen. Right. So you have that scenario, but then you still are looking for someone to be alongside of Martin.

I think they desperately want an Italian. I've got a name for you. So who is your Italian? Andrea Iannone. You thinking Iannone comes back to Moto GP?

Back to the team that he was with before he got booted out with his band. Doing pretty well in World Superbikes and he's out of contract at the end of this year. Huh. That's a good one. I mean, I could see it happening.

Just does it. That's the question. It's a bit out there, even for me being speculating. But the thought did occur. Would you put Miller on the Aprilia?

I could see why they possibly would. But Miller's problem is his track record. He doesn't finish enough races. That's his problem. And Aprilia, given their limited resources and the fact that they won't want any more crash damage than they really can put up with, Miller probably isn't.

I mean, I don't get why. I like everybody. I don't know. There are many people in the world that don't love Jack Miller. I mean, he's great.

And I think he'd be box office in World Superbikes. And I'm kind of hoping that that's where he goes. If Bautista retires, which looks 50-50, but wouldn't be a surprise if he did. And so Miller would be a brilliant fit into there. Agreed.

I see Miller in World Superbike. I mean, that's been speculated long ago that he's gold for them. Just the character and whatnot that he is. Yeah. But like you say, Jim, they do kind of want a fast Italian, whether they admit it or not.

I'm sure they do want a fast Italian in Aprilia. First, it was going to be Bascinini, then it's not because he's at KTM. Bazzacchi, as we've said, we think probably stays put at VR46, although he is the obvious person to go there. True. I was thinking, what about Morbidelli?

If Premac is a Yamaha squad, he could easily go and be on the factory Aprilia team. Again, his problem is probably one of form, though, isn't it? Although he had a good Mugello and there's a few races before this stuff kind of pans out. I think it's coming around for Morbidelli. I don't think he's forgot how to race a motorcycle.

No, and I think he's been very injured for quite a long time. He had a huge injury, a crash, a very serious crash in actual fact in preseason, which ruled him out of all of the preseason tests. So the first time he swung a leg over that Ducati was at the first round, which was not ideal, and Mugello, there were some green shoots of growth there. Not at long last, because we're not that deep into the season. But people keep looking at him thinking, when the hell is he going to start performing?

And he's been facing an uphill battle. So if he sort of has a good few rounds now, he might come onto the radar of Aprilia. It's that homey team atmosphere that you believe. And he puts him back on a factory bike. Yeah.

I mean, like you, Jim, you could easily see Mir going into it. I mean, it would be a favored spot, I guess, from an ego and a financial standpoint to go to the work squad rather than to track house. Yeah. But does Aprilia have enough money? I mean, they had to have spent a truckload of euro to put Martín on that bike.

Do they have any more money? Or does Mir have some hole with some relatively deep pocketed Spanish sponsor that goes there? Right. Because I was trying to think of who is the oil and fuel sponsor of Aprilia. I can't remember a sticker on the bike that denotes who it is.

Was it a Jeep or something like that one in the Italian? I thought it was the Italian company, but I'm not positive that that's the case. Yeah. I'd need to go and check some bike decals to see who's written on there. Somebody knows.

Tell us, people. Aprilia is kind of one of those bikes famous for having, you know, like a shotgun of stuff over it, because it's all kind of like tiny sponsors. Whereas what they need is we were talking about in the last episode and might come with Martín as one big kind of flagship title sponsor that dominates the bike. You know, I could see Mir going there. And if you had Martín and Mir, that makes a pretty strong team to have as a Repsol sponsored motorcycle.

Yeah, it's just it's very Spanish, though, in an Italian team, which would be super tough. Yeah. But you have the riders. And so you would have that, which I mean, think about it. HRC has been sponsored by Repsol for decades and they've always had a Spanish rider, you know, so if they don't have a Spanish rider, which is kind of kind of looking that way, right?

Yeah. You know, the Repsol are pulling out from HRC. That news came out. That came out now a few weeks ago. Yeah, they're kind of out of there in a season or two once their obligations are fulfilled.

I know that the amount of Repsol branding had been decreased and decreased. What they call a staged withdrawal. Yes. But I could see Aprilia doing it. I could see Aprilia having both Spanish riders and having Repsol as a partner.

I wouldn't put it past them. I mean, they're looking for money. They need money. Yeah, they need a deep pocket. I'm sure Repsol's payments to Honda were quite substantial to get that.

Right. And it's just not going to happen. Now, Honda's got enough deep pockets that they'll just go racing off the HRC budget and the bikes will be red, white and blue, which will be fantastic looking. And they'll be retro and that'd be super cool. Oh, that'd be brilliant if they had doings HRC sponsored colors from like, what was that, 94 or something?

It was 94. Yeah. That 94 NSR was the coolest thing, man. It was in between the Rothmans and the Repsol, wasn't it? It was the one year gap.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that was an interesting news story. I'd missed that, and you made me aware of it. Is this thing that's going on at Silverstone?

Is that what you're alluding to? Yeah, yeah. Everybody's running a retro livery. Now, I don't know how retro that means. It was just said retro livery.

So the first thing that happened in my mind is that you can wind up with Bumblebee Yamahas. Yeah, because presumably they're not going to be passing in cigarette sponsorship. Of course not, right? You could put a red and white Yamaha there and everybody would know exactly what you were doing, right? Such is the iconicness of those colors.

But I think it's more of a Bumblebee yellow and black Yamaha that's going to show up. Right. The first thought that came into my mind was that must have been agreed some time ago because presumably sponsors wouldn't want to find out that they're not on the bike for a round. You know, in most cases, a heck of a lot of money to have the presence there. Yeah.

Incorporate into that scheme, right? Yeah. Which is possible. So it's base colors with the same stickerage, presumably, or a version of. Right.

Because I don't know. I mean, like some of those teams didn't weren't there 20 years ago, right? I mean, I don't think Braemack was around 20 years ago. So how far retro is it? Right.

I mean, I could see LCR going back and doing the exact Castorall colors and everything exactly like Kaczynski had on his 94 bike or something. Which would look totally cool. How cool would it be if Ducati, bear in mind, they were mold responses when they first came into 990 in 2003. How cool would it be for them to have the like you say, the Marlborough orange and white, but with the Lenovo instead of Marlborough. Yeah.

To sort of play that game. That game I'm totally expecting them to have. Yeah. Which I think would be super, super cool. I'm so looking forward to going to Silverstone this year.

I can't tell you. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if they're doing their traditional liveries on Friday, Saturday, but Sunday race day is retro day with retro leathers and the whole nine yards or whatever. That could be it, can it?

Just going back to you sort of shaking the coin tin at the beginning of the episode. Jim, I've got press accreditation for Donington World Superbikes again, which is in three weeks, I think, from now. So I'll be there on the media there on the Thursday trying to speak to a bunch of people. Dawn are very kindly giving us another media pass for me this time. Obviously, you're at Circuit of the Americas this year, Jim.

So I've got official pass for Silverstone. So again, we'll get a lot of good content there. But again, this is all time and being away from home and stuff. So this is where the extra support from the listeners is so appreciated. And of the thousands of people that don't know the show, a very, very tiny fraction.

But even if it was just a pound or a dollar, I mean, half of the people that download the episode, put a pound or a dollar or euro in each month, it would transform what we can do, really. So, yeah, I just kind of reiterate what you said earlier on, Jim. And we've got Scott doing stuff with Motor America, which I'll talk about in a minute. You might even make it to a Motor America race possibly this year, Jim. I can't answer.

Unfortunately for me, there are work commitments that have to be taken care of. Well, work has to come first for both of us. That's what normally causes the blockages in the show, isn't it? So, yeah, I kind of want to go towards the Mid-Ohio Motor America weekend. I could roll up on a Saturday morning if I wanted to.

But I just don't know. There's some work travel that's in that area that I have to be cognizant of as well. Anyway, I'm just not sure. I would love to go. I mean, I'll probably wind up being there next year.

I personally don't have the greatest memories of Mid-Ohio. I raced there at time. And let me make this perfectly clear to everyone. I've never had any problem with the people who were the organization renting the track. So I think at the time it was the Lake's Road Racing Association.

They had the track. It was never had a problem with them. Didn't have a problem with the AMA when we were there trying to qualify for Super Sport. Never had a problem with them. All the problems that we had were all related to the people who were the officials, not the officials, but who were the, I don't want to say the police, but the people who were security, who were there for the track and whatnot.

And it wasn't just us who had a problem. There's a lot of people that has extended to, from what I found out, not only just people who were there for motorcycles, but people who were there for cars and whatnot. So, yeah, but yeah, I mean, time heals all wounds and things change. But I don't know yet. Long story short, too late, as Mark Miller would say.

What are those situations where you put a uniform on somebody and they suddenly become paramilitary in their behavior? Yes, that would have been a much better way to put it. We've all bumped into people like that at events. Yes. You know, we've got Scott doing that stuff.

I'm trying to re-engage and get my arse in gear with the Tag Honda team and BSP. I've also got Carl Hunn, who is now a subscriber to the show. He's put his hand up and said he wants to do some BSP stuff, which I need to get on with, so apologies, Carl, but it is coming. You know, we've got lots of stuff that we can do. It's just time, resource, people, limited.

Again, anybody that wants to get involved in a sort of more backroom side of doing things rather than talking in a microphone like we enjoy doing, there's always, you know, lots of editing to be done. Anybody that's sitting at a desk and has a bit of spare time can even help out with that if they fancy volunteering, so please do if you want to. Anyway, yeah, so coming back to our speculation, I think we've kind of done the speculation for 2025, haven't we? I think we have. Obviously, things will clarify as we run up to and around Silverstone a bit more.

But the key one is this Pramac thing. I think once that piece of news comes out, then many of the kind of dominoes fall into place. I don't think you're going to hear anything more on Pramac until you hit Mizano. Yeah, OK. Because at that point, something has to be official because they got to think about what bikes they got to build, right?

And that's usually when those are things are finalized. They go, OK, Ducati knows that they need eight bikes or whatever. And Honda knows they need four. And Yamaha is like, well, do they need two or do they need four? And it's somewhere around Mizano.

I think you're going to hear it. I mean, there could be something else in the next summer break. That's, you know, what, a couple of race weekends. And that's another three week break, I think. I mean, one of the things I heard the other day just about Pramac's decision to make with Yamaha and we touched on this in the last episode.

But let's just reiterate that they haven't got Martin. He's gone. They're not getting Marquez. He's out of the picture. So without, you know, one of those alien type people on the bike, they're not going to be chasing wins and it's certainly not going to be chasing championships and the speculation, probably not speculation.

This is probably true, just not official, is that Yamaha basically saying to Pramac they will give them the bikes for free. And that apparently is worth something in the region of 12 to 14 million euros over the three or so years that that deal would run for. That's a shed load of money in MotoGP terms that has got to be enticing. And they can bring on some young talent and they will potentially win some races as Yamaha improves, but certainly by the time we get into the eight fifties. So you can see why there's a lot of soul searching going on, but it may well be the case that letters of intent have been signed and it's really just working through details.

Yeah, I agree. So I am correct. We have two rounds. So 28th to the 30th of June, we go to Assen. Then July 5th through 7th, we are at the Saxon Ring.

Then you've got a three-way break before. You have British summer in August there at the old airfield. And then you're doing all that to your now September when you're Aragon, because that got tossed in now. So anyway, that's where things are with that one. So, yeah, anyway, that just keeps us up to date with what's going on there.

Yeah. The only other thing just to say is that following this talk, I was going to put them out as a separate show, but we'll roll it all into this. And then we're fully up to date. So, yeah, I just wanted to slot in three brief chats that Scott Bolton very kindly did for us at Barber in Moto America a few weeks ago. So you'll hear from Tyler Scott, who's on the Vision Wheel and 4X star Suzuki squad.

Dominic Doyle, who's on Yamaha in the Twins Cup and Rossi Moore, who I think we've had on in the past. He's on the Vision Wheel Suzuki squad as well. Then following that, I got a couple of quick chats. Well, one quick chat and one slightly longer one when I was at Donington BSB a few weeks ago. First one you'll hear is a very brief chat in the panel with Scott Redding, who I was lucky enough to bump into.

He's a big, big mate of Fraser Rogers, who rides on the Tag Honda squad. So Scott was there to support him. Interesting side note with Scott Redding. Sorry, I'm going off on the tangents again. News came out over the weekend, but confirmed today that the Bonobo Action BMW squad in World Superbike are pulling out at the end of this season.

Team owner, for personal reasons, doesn't want to continue. So that leaves Garrett Gerloff and Scott Redding out of work. And Gerloff will come back in Moto America. Well, that was my first thought. And Scott Redding will have options, I would imagine, in the World Superbike paddock, albeit most of the work squads are already confirmed with their riders, with the exception of Ducati, because Bautista is not definitely staying put.

But Redding obviously won't be going back there, having kind of had a slightly messy departure from there himself with a couple of seasons ago. Makes you wonder whether Scott will be willing to take a kind of second tier team ride in World Superbike or whether he might even come back to BSB or go to Moto America, got an American wife. That might work, possibly. But again, baby on the way, becoming a family man, heavily into his push bike ride in and does it at a very, very high level. So another of these guys that might just think, you know, he's been in the game a long time, time to do something else, perhaps.

So that's that. So anyway, I had a very brief chat with Scott, although it was obviously a bit difficult, his situation. I was hoping to be able to sit down and have a slightly more detailed chat with him at Donington in a few weeks from now. I will try to do that anyway, because he's very open, quite controversial things that he says sometimes, but that's why we like him. Anyway, following the brief chat with Scott, I was able to sit down with Phil Spencer from True Heroes Racing.

He, you'll remember, was my very first ever interview for MotoPod, my very first interview full stop I alluded to. I think it was four years ago at Browns Hatch. So it was good to catch up with Phil again, find out what they're doing with their veteran riders that they support, do a bit of coin tin rattling for them as well, because they live off a lot of grace and favor, very professional outfit, mind you. So you'll hear from Phil Spencer as well. So that'll follow this.

It's going to be a long show because I don't know how long we've been going for, Jim. About an hour. Hopefully people will enjoy that and that'll keep people topped up until we get to Assen MotoGP. Yeah, Assen is the 28th to the 30th. Yeah, and we're recording on Monday, the 17th of June at the minute.

So yeah, so that will come around fairly quickly. You'll be back on your holiday, Jim, and yes, yeah, we'll be good to go again. Yes, we will. With that, folks, ride safe. Thanks, everyone.

OK, it's Scott Bolton here for MotoPod Sunday Race Day at Barber Motorsports Park for Moto America Round 2 here in the M4 Vision Wheel X-Star Suzuki pits with Tyler Scott. Tyler, thanks for joining us. Yeah, of course. I'm happy to be here, man. Yeah, I tried to run him down at Road Atlanta, but he's a busy man, but he's kind enough to give us a few minutes here.

So Tyler, see, I guess second year on the Super Sport bike. And this field is stacked. It's like the Moto America version of Moto2 meat grinder class. How's it going for you so far this year? I know you rode Atlanta.

You ran good, but still looking for a better, a little bit better results. I know. Yeah, the year started off really good. Second at Daytona 200 was definitely a good point to start the year. Road Atlanta was going really well.

I made a very small mistake in race one and unfortunately ended up in the grass for the rest of the race. And race two is in the rain. We had some electrical problems, unfortunately. I managed to get six, get some points. And this weekend feeling really good.

We were in contention yesterday and once again, unfortunately had another electrical issue. But we got it all sorted out this morning and I'm super excited for race two. We're going to be at the front. It's going to be a good battle. Yeah, we noticed you when you come down the front straight away a few times yesterday, kind of patting the bike on the left hand side.

Is that what you were kind of trying to indicate to the team? Yeah, just kind of out of frustration because we've had these issues before and we just need to get them permanently fixed. Just a little bit bad luck to on our side and just like getting frustrated because once again, we were at the top and it would the opportunity kind of was just taken away from me and made a lot harder. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, at the bike ride, you've obviously showed you got the pace to be fighting for that win.

So what did you guys take out of Road Atlanta that you, you know, some positives that you was able to kind of, you know, bring over to Barbara this weekend? I mean, the team's good. It's third year on the team. The bike's good. It's just we just need to be consistent with the program, with the performance of the bike and we'll be good and we'll be up front.

Yeah, so there's not really a whole lot anything to improve other than that little niggling electrical issue. But so Tyler, I know most people that listen to our podcast familiar with us for some of our international listeners. You've been racing a long time. You got some pretty good flat track pedigree as long as your road racing skills. What's some highlights in your career up to this point that kind of stick out?

Yeah, so when before I came around, my dad used to be a flat tracker all of his life. He did a little bit of road racing, a little bit of drag racing, a little bit of everything. And I was introduced to flat track at a young age and I really liked it. And that's how my career started flat track. And when I was about seven, eight years old, we went down to New Jersey Motorsports Park and there was a little mini exhibition with kids on 50s doing donuts, dragging their knees.

I'm like, hey, it looks really cool. You know, I want to try that. And at the time, like flat track in the amateur local stuff, you get six laps, eight laps. And there's two minutes on the track. And when I went there, it was like we got 15 minute practice session, you know, 12 lap races and the tracks are bigger.

So initially, my love for road racing started off with just the amount of track time, because I just I love riding and more riding and more kids to ride with. It was just awesome. And we we did flat track and road race side by side for many years. Then there came a point where I had to choose what I wanted to do as a career. And up until like a few years ago, like three years ago, I was at the top of both.

I would say I could battle for championships in flat track and I could battle for championships in road racing. But like when I was 10 to 12, we had to pick which route we would more heavily go to. And we picked I picked the road racing and we went over to Spain for the Red Bull Rookie Cup tryouts in the 2018 winter and we got in. So 2019, I was sponsored by Red Bull and we went over there and we traveled with Mo GP. And that was a great learning experience.

Aside of that, in 2019, we also raced for the team of Glees in the Spanish series. It's just it's so competitive over there. You'll hear it from a lot of top guys that have been over there like Bobie and even Sean Dillon Kelly coming back from Moto 2. And it's a different world over there. And I learned a ton.

But coming back here, we won 2021, we won the championship. 2022, we won one race, I think just a runner year in supersport last year, second in the championship. So we went three, two, and this year we're going for the championship once again. So third year in supersport, we got pretty much everything dialed in. It's just we need to figure out some small problems.

Yeah. And that championship that was on the in the Junior Cup on the KTM. Is that right? Yes. Yeah.

So I assume you probably have some aspirations somewhere down the road and maybe going back over across the pond. Yeah, maybe in the in the future years, you know, I'm just trying to get my feet dug into the ground here and start winning some races, more like championships and really get established here before there's any thoughts about going back over. I don't know if anybody else has ever told you this. I'd be surprised if they hadn't. Me personally, I see a lot of similarities between you and Nikki Hayden just from your background and just the way you carry yourself on and off the track.

Just your your fierce competitive nature on the track. Has anybody else ever said? Yeah, a bunch of people said that. And I've actually been running as a replica helmet for the last almost three years now. So, yeah, yeah, I would have been surprised if somebody else hadn't mentioned that.

Well, Tyler, I'm not going to keep any longer. I know we got the fan wall coming up and you got a busy day ahead of you. But thanks so much for joining us and good luck today and the rest of the year. And I look forward to seeing you put this Suzuki on the box for all the Suzuki fans out there. Yeah, thank you for having me, man.

Cheers. Awesome. OK, we're here in the Giacomodo Yamaha Racing Twins Cup pit here with the South African Dominic Dole. Dominic, thanks for joining us on MotoBot. It's a pleasure.

Thank you for having me. Just for a little quick chat here at the track. Yes, sir. Absolutely. I've been wanting to talk to you before, but just finally got this opportunity.

So first things first, yesterday was kind of like South Africa Day here. Yeah, a lot of South Africans on the podium. I kind of messed up a little bit with not getting the third win, but that would be nice. Hopefully we can do the same thing today with the fellow South Africans. Yeah, so fellow countrymen, Matty Schultz and Cam Peterson in Superbike.

Dom, he was third on the podium yesterday, but obviously due for a win. I know those Aprilias are tough out there. You guys feel like you're gaining ground on them? Yeah, the wet race yesterday was a little bit of a just kind of let the race play out and see how it goes. I had a couple of moments where I almost went down, so I kind of played it safe and tried to bring it home.

And the other two guys in front of me weren't like aren't too close to the championship. So they don't really have anything to lose. So kind of just brought it home for the points and felt a lot better in the dry this morning than we have all weekend. The Aprilia does do usually pretty good here at Barber and we have struggled in the past, but we're definitely making steps in the right direction, feeling a lot better. So hopefully race two will be good.

And what Dom's alluding to yesterday was a rain race. Been looking rainy here all weekend, but didn't come till just right after the Superbike race, which meant the Twins Cups ran in the in the rain. But Dom, you seem to be a pretty seasoned wet weather rider. Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't have like, I guess the most experience, but we had a good result at Atlanta with the wind in the rain. But just try and be smooth and finish the race is the most important thing.

So you've got Sonja Lloyd as your teammate this year. Anybody in the flat track world know of the Lloyd brothers, her dad and her uncle? What's it been like getting to know them and with their legacy of in the flat track world? I mean, it's really cool having David in the pits and he's honestly brought a lot to our team and to the program as a whole. He's pretty involved with the bikes and stuff.

So definitely made a big difference in having Sonja. Just having another bike under the tent to get some more information on is huge. And she's an awesome teammate. And I try to kind of share as much knowledge with her as I can to get her up to speed a little quicker. So as far as in dry conditions, say when we move on to some of the upcoming rounds, how are you guys feeling on your progress so far?

Like say you're right there with the Aprilias. You guys think you're really close? Yeah, I mean, I think we're pretty close. I think track to track, it kind of changes a little bit. But these next couple that we've got coming up, I think should be pretty good for us.

Like I've been pretty well at Road America in the past. And yeah, I think Road America brand, they'll all be pretty good for the Yamaha. So you've been in the Moto America paddock now for five, six years? Yeah, about five years. I did two wild cards 2016, 2017 when I was still living in South Africa.

And then I've been racing here full time since the end of the 2019 season. So yeah. And what was your racing experiences in South Africa? I raced a lot of like club stuff locally at home. And then I did race the national series in South Africa.

They had like kind of a KTM Cup type thing, but it was a lot more stock. So I raced the national championship, like a KTM Cup type thing. And I raced 600s a little bit over there, but just mostly club stuff. Have you moved closer to Chuck in the shop here in Georgia? Are you still living farther out?

I actually moved to New York the beginning of this year, so I'm kind of a ways out. I work for the old team that I used to race for BartCon Racing as a construction company in New York. And I work for him up in the city. And then I just commute to all the grounds. Okay, well, I knew you worked for them.

I didn't know you still were, but that's cool. You know, you got to do what you got to do. Because I know obviously we're in Alabama, but I'm from Georgia. Chuck shops in Georgia. Sonja, her family are from Georgia.

So we'd love to have you down here, but I get it why you went there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how long I'll stay there. It's kind of just a couple years type of thing and then see what else presents itself. So if something presented itself in Georgia, I'd be happy to come to Georgia because it's closer to everything. I can ride more.

And yeah, I can get some good out of industry experience for the one day when the racing days may be over. But anyway, are you looking to just keep on with Twins Cup? Just see how things unfold before, you know, as far as next year's plans, just kind of depending on how things go this year? Yeah, pretty much just based on what's kind of available for next year. If it's twins, then we're twins.

But I mean, if we can get something better, then hopefully we will. But kind of not really sure quite yet. Right. Well, not going to keep any longer, Dom. I know you guys are getting ready for the race later today.

You know, good luck today. Maybe you can put it on top of the box and maybe Maddie and Cam can pull the double and really put a cherry on top of that South African weekend. They make it a South African weekend on just a day. Right. Excellent.

Hey, Dominic, thanks for joining us here on MotoPod. Good luck, buddy. Thank you so much. OK, here on the pit road at Barber on the fan rock. You're talking to Rossi Moore.

Rossi is his first year in Twins Cup. He's on the new Suzuki GSX-8R for Team Hammer. Rossi, how's it going on the Twins Cup bike since your move up from Junior Cup? I know I've really been enjoying it. The more power and the more powerful bikes to move up.

So far, the Suzuki has been kind of a it's a work in progress, I would say. So far, you know, we're getting there every round. We're getting better. We're improving. We're getting close to the front.

I think that very soon we'll be battling for the first positions every round. And really, this weekend was kind of a bummer beginning. We had some problems in FP1 and Q1, which put us a little bit behind in terms of practice and seat time with this bike. Since it's so new, we have no data and we have to make it ourselves. Yesterday was a rain race and today is going to be a dry one.

So I'm hoping to put on the box at least and fight for a win. So, of course, you and Rocco on the Vance and Hinds team are the only two that I know of right now of this new Suzuki out there. Are you guys able to collaborate any or is it just a different set up? And just don't really work or as of now, we haven't been really collaborating as a team, not that I know of. Me and Rocco go way, way back to Mini GP when we were just little kids.

So really, we've we've been talking together personally about some things, but not sharing too much stuff because we're not really teammates. We're like half teammates, just riders with the same bike, you know. So in the rain yesterday, was that your first? You had a rain race at Road Atlanta, I believe. So you had some experience on it in that.

So in the dry, you I mean, what do you think? Give you 95 percent. I know we're based chasing the Aperol is out there, but. Oh, you know, I think we've made some improvements and warm up that will put us definitely much closer to battle with the Aperol is for the dry race today. Thank you.

We'll definitely give them a challenge for sure. Yeah, well, I'm speaking personally as a Suzuki fan. I'm looking forward to you guys getting that thing up there. So anyway, don't want to keep you got some fans here and I won't let you interact with them, but appreciate your time. Good luck today and the rest of the season and look forward to see what you can do on that new GSX.

For sure. Thank you so much. In the British Superbike paddock and happy to say I've just bumped into Scott Redding. Scott, how are you doing? Yeah, good, actually.

Come down to watch the boys support Fraser Rogers. Good mate of mine. Yes, we on the Sunday, actually today just come back from Scotland. Last night, I was racing World Champs qualifiers in the gravel. So squeezing in a weekend with good weather.

Nice. Yeah, this is slightly unusual for Donington. How do you remember your time in the BSP paddock? Oh, mega is probably one of my best, fun, enjoyable years. I had in racing, to be fair, just mingling with the fans here.

The way it all ran, I was on free reigns to be the person I wanted to be. It was a bit outrageous at times, but at times it was good. That's why people love you. Oh, maybe that's why. But it was definitely suited me down to a tee.

The racing was great. And I think everything runs really well here for people to watch racing and good quality racing with no extra bullshit on the side. As you say, it's so nice how the fans can mingle in. You don't get that at the World Championship quite so much, do you? Yeah, I mean, they are doing a good job at WSBK on bringing the fans in.

But the vibes just different. You know, we do a lot of race, a lot of riding. And, you know, you see the fans, this stuff, I've got like 10 minutes and I need to eat. I need to have a 20 minute nap. I need to do physio and there's not enough time for it.

So it's a little bit stressful and you kind of hide away a little bit. Whereas here is a little bit more relaxed and the schedule now, you know, normally not doing anything in the morning. So you've got more time to spend with the fans. And I think it's a good balance. Making progress in multi positional progress, but the position is not showing it.

So lap time gets a bit closer, but positions the same. I feel better on the bike, but just the lap time is not what I feel I'm doing. You know, if I didn't have a lap time on front of me, I would think, you know, I'm top five and I'm not on 15th. And that's a it's a hard place to be. But we're still working to try and improve lap time because the feeling is OK.

It's just the lap time is not there. Obviously, we've got great reference with Toprac. You know, I've said before, he's a very, very talented rider. And if he can do the braking like he does, he'll go well. And he did exactly that.

And we're trying to understand how he does it, because it's something no one else is doing. You get to see his data, presumably. Yeah, get to see his data and seeing lines is one thing. Doing it on the track is another. But it's coming slowly.

And I mean, arguably, World Superbikes this year is about as strong as it's ever been. So it's a strong every year. Yeah, stronger, good competitive bikes, good competitive riders. The field super tight, you know, second, you're going down like 15, 16 positions. But that's good.

Makes great racing on the weekend. Wish you the best of luck. I'm going to be at Donington for the World Superbikes, hopefully with a press pass again this year. So I might try and sit down and have a bit more of an in-depth chat with you, if that's possible. And congratulations on the good news.

Thank you very much. And we'll look forward to seeing you. Cheers. Thanks, mate. All right.

Well, here we are at Donington Park. Very hot sunny day, which is like the news. And I'm delighted to say I'm sitting with Phil Spencer, who long term listeners of the show might remember. I think we were talking about this earlier on. I think it was Brands Hatch 2021.

Yes, it's been a few years that we've had our catch up to. So tell us where the team is now in terms of makeup, because obviously that's a few seasons ago. So we've been trying to have a catch up ever since. Yes. It hasn't worked out until today.

So thank you for giving us five, ten minutes. No, it's OK. Where's the team at? We've actually slowed down at BSB this year, reduced the number of riders that we're running. It's tough on natural climate for everybody at the moment.

And obviously the unique nature of what Juhio's racing is all about. We don't charge our riders to come and ride like the mainstream, too. It's about offering the opportunities for those in the service personnel and veterans to get involved in the whole concept of what we do. So it's all funded centrally. So we're running three bikes this year at BSB.

We've got the two Super Sport Ducatis again. We're in the Super Sport Cup this year. Only difference is not from a bike perspective. It's the number of rounds you compete at because the BSB went over to Spain for Navara. That was a round that the Cup couldn't do.

We've made the decision to not go up to Nokia in Scotland. So that's two rounds that we've opted out of. We only need to opt out of one more and we're into the Cup space. So that's what we've done. Technically, the bikes are identical to the Super Sport bikes themselves.

We've made some upgrades to them this year from what we did last year. There were some rule changes over the winter that allowed some chassis upgrades to improve the handling of the bike. So we've made some of those. We've not got the luck shift going quite as far as Wilfrid Moore has done with the Moto Rapido team and Ben Curry's bike, which is obviously very, very trick. But we're learning and picking up little bits and little changes here.

And rather than make all those massive changes and have that ability like the factory teams need to go and do massive amounts of testing to understand it, we're just doing it one bit at a time. We've had quite a lot of new listeners come on to the show since we spoke. Certainly. So in terms of the core mission of the team, can you talk us through the raison d'etre for Drew here in the racing? You know, what is it here to do?

Because it's very unique, isn't it? Yeah, so I set the organization up back in 2012 as a service person. Came back from several tours of duty in Afghanistan and wanted to do something to help those less fortunate from the battlefield and started raising money for military charities like a lot of the military guys and girls did to raise money to help those and ended up raising money and organizing hospitality events here in the British Superbike Paddock for injured service personnel. And one day just said, why are we stood on the sidelines? Why don't we actually use the sport to benefit these guys and girls?

And that was the concept behind Trios Racing and formed it back in 2012. And just grown and grown and grown. You know, we started 2012 season in the club racing. I should have to. You wouldn't expect to come straight into here.

We came into the BSP paddock in 2013 with a young lad called Murray Hambro. He was a double amputee. First disabled riders compete at BSP. You know, Tommy Breidwell claims he's disabled. He's missing half a finger.

Murray was missing both his legs. Yeah, that's a bit different. Yeah. Which meant we had to technically adapt the bike. Obviously, anyone who rides a motorcycle will know that you use your feet as well as your hands for the controls.

So the gear change and the foot brake had to be adapted so that you can control everything from the bars. And that generated a completely new riding style. And we obviously then became known as being able to adapt bikes for competitive use, because there's one thing adapting a bike to ride on the road. You're riding them a lot more softly, not under so much tension and pressure. On the track, it's very, very different.

So the adaptions have to work for the track use. And just as a side note to that, then, in terms of obviously BSP is a highly professional, world renowned series in terms of all of the classes that race on this card. So did you meet any initial resistance in terms of bringing disabled servicemen into this championship or were the rules adapted slightly to allow? I wouldn't say resistance. It was if you raised eyebrows because it was unheard of.

Yeah, that's my question. Yeah. But Stuart Higgs, the race director, was supportive of it. Clearly, he had some safety concerns because this was new ground being looked into and trail. So like any other rider, there was some challenges that were set.

You know, Murray had to reach a certain lap time around Bluban Tats Indy Circuit whilst being assessed by an ACU instructor. Yep. He achieved that and was given the green light to come in. Clearly, all the adaptions that we had on the bike had to be cleared. We were given a little bit of dispensation because obviously they're not classed as performance enhancement.

They are adaptions to actual enable riding. But we still had to fit within the rules. So everything we did had to be approved, had to be checked and cleared by the scrutineers. Yeah. And how does it work in terms of the riders then that come and obviously they come and go like riders do.

But do you have a sort of certain policy that you want to bring you people in on a certain turnover time in the championship or can people stay if they want to? I mean, how does it generally pan out? Yeah. You know, the way that we operate is and it kind of feeds into what you were saying earlier. We started off in BSB in 2013 with just the one bike.

Now we're running a program that starts from someone who has never been on the track. And we take them through, mentor them through getting on track days, getting their ACU license assessment done to in their first race at club level and building on through. And this is why we've moved back into the F 900 Cup this year at BSB, because it's the feeder championship in BSB. So we've always been in that feeder class, whether it was the Triumph Chippewa Challenge, the Ducati Tri Options Cup. Last season we didn't.

We had a gap in our program so we could take someone who'd never ridden on the track before, bring them all the way up to the top level of club. But then they had to jump into the one of the premier classes because we were running Super Stock 1000 or Super Sport last year. So we've gone into the F 900 Cup this year and that's given us that pathway right the way through. So we take people at all levels of their ability and bring them in. It's down to them if they decide that they want to ride.

So Dave McKay, who you'll know, has ridden with us since 2013. He's not a BSB anymore, but he's now running that grassroots program for me at club level. Right. The Stock 1000 bike he was racing here last year. He's now what he races at the club level and uses for the ACU instruction that he does and stuff like that.

So we keep people in the organization for as long as they feel they're benefiting from it. I keep coming up with questions in my head now that we're talking. So it's always as if you have like a, I won't use the term, like an academy system. But it is, you know, the Haslums have started. And how do you, again, wrong word, market within the military?

I mean, how do you make the veterans or current service personnel aware of this opportunity? It is a lot of it's through word of mouth. We engage with the DMRC Defense Medical Rehabilitation Center, close to here at Stanford Hall. We've always been closely linked with those, whether it was Headley Court back in the day down in Surrey and obviously the new facility up here at Stanford Hall. You know, we've got patients and staff here with us today as our guests to be able to see what we're achieving and inspire them.

And it may not be that this is what they are inspired to do, but it inspires them. If someone out there can be doing what they're doing, I can go out and do something else. It's a rise to possibilities. Exactly. Yeah.

But it also then potentially introduces people to say, oh, I'd like to get involved with this. We've got strong social media presence pushing it out through that way and just the public message. You know, the merchandise gets our message out there. You know, we've always had a strong following within the fan base of BSB and beyond that. The merchandise is twofold.

We price it right because we don't want to be taking money off of our supporters. But at the same time, it produces an income stream and it promotes our message. So people see it. You know, it's quite common for people to say, you know what? I've seen more true as racing t-shirts and I have PBM Superbike team t-shirts.

You do see a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I wear my hoodie with pride most weeks. And that's what it's about.

It's about getting that message out there because if someone sees that and goes, what's that all about? And they look on the Internet. Oh, I can chat to these guys or drop these guys a message. And that's what it's about. It's about promoting what we're here to do and engaging with that demographic that could benefit from being involved with us.

Yeah. So you've described what the sort of core purpose of the team is and how it came about. But this is a racing team. So, you know, the competitive element obviously comes into it. Do you sit down at the beginning of a season and set yourself some targets and aspirations?

Or is it not really about that? It's not. You go to a mainstream team and it's all focused on the rider. That's not what we're about. It's everybody in their team has a part to play with the rider to the mechanics, to the guy washing the pots and pans and making the tea and supporting our guests and team members.

Everyone has that key part to play. The riders facilitate what the organization is able to achieve. You can't have a motorcycle racing unless you've got somebody who's going to race your motorcycle. Yes, they have their part to play. But in the same vein, you can't have a motorcycle racing on the track if you haven't got a mechanic turning the spanners on it.

If you haven't got the support crews in the background or the people bringing the trucks to the racing. So it's that and it's that team ethos. Everyone has their part to play. Our riders are here first thing Thursday morning helping build the awning and the setup. They're not like the mainstream guys who just turn up Thursday evening and jump on a bike Friday morning.

They're part of the team and they'll be here till seven o'clock Sunday night taking everything down and packing it all back on the lorries. It's that kind of mentality. So we set ourselves goals. Yes, clearly, you know, this is competitive sport, but our goals are very different. You know, we went this weekend, you know, there's 57 riders to make 40 spaces on the SuperSport grid.

So our challenge was to get on the grid. We didn't make the initial cut. So through qualifying the top 38 go through automatically. The Remainers go into the last chance qualifying race, which we went into yesterday. Charlie started sixth, Leon started 15th.

Charlie actually won that race, which is awesome. For 12 years, I've been waiting to get in the winners enclosure. I don't care that it was a last chance qualifying race. We were in the winners enclosure. A win to win.

Congratulations. And that's put him on the grid. Unfortunately, Leon didn't quite get far enough up because it was literally first and second from that race made the last two spots on the grid. So we're on the grid in the SuperSport race. You know, we didn't make that at Autumn Park because there was 55 riders trying to get on.

We've got the factory World SuperSport Triumph team here this weekend. I won't say little, but you've got a little team made up of ex and serving military personnel trying to get on the grid as against those. Yeah, well, I was going to say, I mean, it must be said that I go to quite a few BSV Rans during the year. And, you know, the true heroes boys are always mixing it, maybe not right at the front, but certainly in the mid pack. I mean, they hold their heads high, don't they?

Competitively. So, yeah, I mean, it's great to see. And you mentioned a couple of the other riders. I mean, who've you got on the team this year? What's the backstory?

So in the SuperSport on the Ducatis, we've got Leon Wilton and Charlie White, the two guys that we've had for the last couple of years. They were in the Trioptions Cup when it was running and then moved into SuperSport like the next generation last year and then carried on this year. So they've carried on those bikes. For Charlie, it's progressing from where he was last year. For Leon, it's about coming back.

He had an injury last year in an accident at Silverstone and it took three quarters of his season to recover from that injury. So we've basically written off last year and starting afresh with him. As I mentioned earlier, we've gone into the BMW F900 Cup. So Scott McFarlane, Army veteran who raced last year with us a little bit at a club and a little bit on the stock thousands till the end of the season. He's in that F900 Cup this year.

So that's three bikes we're running here. We've got a couple of options to potentially run a fourth or even a fifth bike if we can. It's fun to hear and simple. Yeah. And, you know, it's not a cheap sport to be involved in.

Simple as, you know, if I did ping pong, I'd be able to. That's the old adage, if you want to make a small fortune in racing, you start with a larger one. Yeah, exactly. It's sick. I don't know how the boys up at the super bike end of the grid do it.

The figures they talk about just by watering. Dizzy. Yeah. And that segues quite neatly into a question, because obviously when you look at your team boards around the garage and stuff, lots and lots and lots of supporters of the team. So I'm trying to sort of lift the hood up a little bit and be a little bit nosy.

So kind of how does that work? I mean, is that a lot of that kind of people that are supporting the team with equipment and maybe not for a charge? But I mean, how does it work or do you have to pay for a lot of your kit through the funding you get elsewhere? We got a unique selling point. You know, we are unique in who we are and what we stand for and what we're doing in this paddock in the first place.

So that gives us a unique selling point. But a lot of companies want to support us because of that. Yes, of course. They're not the kind of teams or companies that would normally come into the motor sport marketing as there's some for their brand. But because of what we're about, they don't want to get in.

But we are quite successful in some respects in the product side of things. We are very clever at what we do in that way. If we need some pressure washers, we'll source a company that may well be able to supply those for us, whereas other companies would just spend money buying things. We try to source as much as possible free of charge or heavily discounted. And then that makes the pot of money go further.

Because ultimately there are things that have to be paid for in cold hard cash, entry fees, tyres, race fuel. Because everyone has to use the same control fuel, the same control tyres. No one's going to get a sponsorship deal because you open the door to one person, then everyone in the paddock wants it. So you're knocking on a very firmly locked door there. And with the way you approach certain firms to fulfil certain needs you have from the point of view of equipment, materials, etc.

Is that something that's got harder with the way things have been in the last few years economically? Is it much harder now than it was before? Yeah, we're lucky that we've got some long standing sponsors, well quite a lot of long standing sponsors. But even some of those have had to reduce their support to us because the commercial world is very, very tight out there. If you're having to make people redundant, how do you justify morally just giving money however worthy the cause is?

When you're putting someone out of a job it's a very tough situation. So yeah, it's difficult. We've brought on some more new sponsors this year, but all that's really done is compensated for some of the losses. We are down on where we were last year financially, but we've still achieved the fact that we're in this paddock. There are other teams that haven't been able to raise the sponsorship to get in the paddock in the first place.

Well, and you're running a big operation, four stroke five bikes is a big operation. Yeah, it's just it. It is, we've got four trucks in the paddock and it's a very, very big budget. We walk away from here with a tyre bill for £6,000 just for race tyres for every weekend. You know, the costs add up.

So cold hard cash always wins the day. So let's talk a little bit about how people can support the team then, because that's obviously a primary reason why we like to talk to each other. OK, you and I have obviously bumped into each other a fair bit over the last few years since you spoke at Brands years ago. Yeah, keen to help the team through our little bit with Moto Pod if we can generate a few extra donations and certainly on the team clothing. I mean, as you alluded to a minute ago, very competitively priced.

I have to say I'm in the hoodie at £35. That is a great buy. In fact, I'm going to buy another one because mine's got a bit doggy ears on the sleeves because I've worn it so, so much. Yeah. And so people should check out your store.

There's a website they can go to for that. So tell us where and how. Yeah. So, you know, we've got the merchandise on our website. Just Google True Heroes Racing and it brings up a plethora of stuff, as you can imagine, with 12 years of existence.

We've got the shop here actually at BSB and we sell a fair bit there. We've always tried to get supplies from veteran home companies, again, worked in that military veteran community and always been very hot on the quality of the products. You know, I don't want to sell cheap, poor quality products. It's not we want our people to want to come back. You know, listeners, I can attest to this because as I say, I literally have worn my hoodie pretty solidly every year since I bought it.

And that was a brand in 2021 when we spoke and I'm going to go and buy some of it to help the team out. And yeah, it's getting a bit frayed on the collars now, but that's after hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hours of wear. So it really is good quality stuff. The fact that it's kind of military, you know, it's got a bit camo. We tried to tie in with it.

It's really cool looking stuff as well. Really lends itself to bike racing, I think. But we've also this year, after being asked by a number of our fans, is to raise and start a supporters club. So we've launched at Orton Park two weeks ago, an official supporters club, which people can join. They get some exclusive merchandise for the supporters club.

You don't pay all up front. It's at stage payments. So it makes it more manageable for people, especially in the current climate. But it also gives us a regular income stream and they get some little unique bits and pieces. We've got support through Express Coffee that they can purchase a coffee mug, travel mug, which they can then come in the morning and get free coffee.

So it's a little exclusive thing for our club members and, you know, usual sort of stuff. Competitions we run and merchandise and opportunities to win tickets, actually spend the weekend with the team and stuff like this. So some little, little nice things. Excellent. Well, I think that's a little catch up.

As you know, I'm working a bit with TAG Honda this year, so I'm going to be at a few more brands. So perhaps we'll try and catch up. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Make sure I do it this time so that we can just see how the season goes for the team. And yeah, people just, you know, get onto the website, get onto the social media channels and support the team if you can, because it's a great operation, very successful at what you do and pleasure to talk to you, Phil, as always.

Yeah, and I think, you know, just to reiterate that, if there are anybody out there that wants to support the military community and the veteran community in a different way, please just drop us a message and we'll have a conversation and see what might be possible. And I know that obviously a lot of American listeners that we have, indeed my co-host Jim, put some dollars into the pot when we spoke last time, because obviously military veterans. America are very, very strong on supporting their military and veteran communities. Yeah, it's a real pleasure. I've been out there several times with my military service.

And, you know, even as a British serviceman, the way that the American public respects and treat their military is awesome. You know, followed that over to us as well. It was really inspiring to go into a bar and be known as a British serviceman and treated, you know, in a way, you know, we're from a different country. They've just got this sort of service of country mentality, sort of instilled in them from, you know, as a national thing. Yeah, well, that's a nice big way to end, I think.

Yeah, so we'll catch up again a couple of times, hopefully during the season and best of luck for the races today. Thanks. And see you soon. Yeah, really appreciate the time. Thanks.