Awesome Assen

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 772.

I'm Jim McDowell with me from across the pond, Retro Jollet, fresh from Mrs. J's birthday dinner, sir. This is a dedicated individual. He takes his wife out to dinner for her birthday, then shows up to do a show, folks. Yeah, 11 o'clock in the UK now in the evening.

I might hasten to add. So yeah, it's been a good day. I've had a few too many drinks, so God knows what I might say tonight, Jim. I'll try and keep it clean. But yes, it's been a very nice day.

Thank you. Yeah. So let's get into it. Yes. I'll let you start, sir.

Yeah. Well, I think with brevity in mind, we're going to sort of jump straight into the news. You did a shout out to the various subscribers. The list is the same. And we've had some feedback from Gary, which I think we'll get into in the next show.

Yeah, Jim, because post-Saxon ring, we've got the mini summer break as it's going to be now. So well, we had spring break and now summer break. So exactly. So we'll catch up on some housekeeping as we go along. Just given the air of the day.

So getting into the news, we had the well, not really news, I suppose, but what we all kind of suspected was going to happen, which was that the Yamaha Pramak deal is now official. The bit that kind of caught my eye and I think I messaged you about was the fact that it's a seven year deal. So two years of the current formula and then five of the new regs when the eight fifties come in. So I mean, that is a very substantial, possibly even unprecedented deal and really shows Yamaha's commitment. What do you think about it?

Yamaha means business. I think that's true. They probably snagged the best independent team available. I, I hasten to say that tech three is probably the best team, independent team, but they're really not. They are really tied very closely to the KTM factory in a way that's far more than say LCR is to Honda and in the way that, you know, Pramak is to going to be the Yamaha, although I suspect it's going to be much closer to that tech three KTM kind of a combo.

I, I'm really surprised that they did go. I mean, you had the best bike. You had a guy who could ride that bike and you've decided to walk away from that to go to a struggling manufacturer, but I guess money does talk because I'm guessing that Ducati was asking for a vast sum to, to take the bikes and to keep all the parts and pieces and everything of that. So the Yamaha deal is probably financially better for Pramak. It's also a, probably a better deal because of stability, right?

They know for the next seven years, but they've got Yamahas and I don't know the details of the contract. Perhaps maybe you do, Rich, but I'm suspecting they are going to have the same spec of bike as Quattroraro and whoever is Quattroraro, Rens if he's re I heard that they want to resign Rens. Yeah. So I'm assuming that they're going to be essentially four factory. Was it YZR ones or whatever?

And ones. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, the days of the old Alliance for tech three on the Yamahas, which was a proper second tier bike arrangement, those days are long gone. I mean, clearly Yamaha has, you might say rather late to the party, but have seen the light and seen just, you know, the magnificent things this has done for Ducati in particular, having let's call them semi works satellite squads, you know, with all of the, it's the data, isn't it?

That's the really the key thing. So I think this is, well, I think there's a few components to this and I know we mustn't go on too long about it tonight, but you know, seven years from a financial standpoint for Pramac in a uncertain economic world ever was it thus, but I mean, it is difficult at the moment. That is obviously from Pramac's point of view, that's almost a deal that they could not refuse. I think secondhandly was kind of relaying what I'd heard that effectively, I think they get the bikes for free. So that is a lot of money saved from Pramac's point of view as a independent team.

And if those bikes are pretty close to what Quattroraro and let's say Rins and all probability are going to be riding, we don't know who's going to be riding them yet, but that news will emerge, I'm sure over the next couple of weeks, then it really shows massive commitment from Yamaha to stay in this championship for the long term, because that was something we were, you know, applying some worry about. And not only that, with Yamaha making that level of commitment, I think it kind of, for me, it removes any mild worries about Honda and HRC, not that I really ever thought that they were going to go, but if they became the last Japanese factory in MotoGP, then that would have been a difficult situation almost for them as well. So, you know, I think there are various facets to this that really are very, very good news, alongside the surprise that Pramac would leave Ducati, but you know, they couldn't get Marc Marquez on the bike, Martins gone, you know, and with this economic situation, and you know, there's no guarantee that when the 2027 regs come in, that Ducati will stay at the front. I mean, you know, they got Dillenia there, so probably he'll come up with some magic, but you know, Yamaha are improving, and that's a trend that's likely to continue. So it makes sense to me on all sorts of different fronts.

Yep. If you hadn't mentioned that this showed that Yamaha has the resolve to stay in MotoGP, as the result, to stay in MotoGP, I was going to, because I think that's a very poignant issue. Hey, look, we thought Yamaha may be willing to bail on this. The board may not be wanting to spend the money. Well, apparently the board is willing to spend the money on it.

It also, I think if Yamaha is there, there's no way Honda will back out. I don't think Honda was ever going to back out anyway, although I do think that at some point Honda is looking more towards 2027 regulations than they are to win another championship here. I think they're looking to build a better chassis, have a better handling package, and then they want to put that together with some minimal wings and no ride height assists and stuff and go back to a more, I'll call it a basic motorcycle, although that's not necessarily true, but a more basic setup kind of a bike where now the rider's going to work around things and he doesn't have gizmos to help him. So all in all, good there. Let's move on in the news with this one.

Alex Marquez has been confirmed for two more years at Corsini. There are three works Ducatis next year. Obviously the two that are in the factory Ducati squad and then one more factory Ducati is available. As you have correctly pointed out, Rich, I believe it will be at VR46 is where it's going to be. It's not going to be at Corsini, that's for sure.

The question then is who gets that bike at VR46 or who's there at VR46? I mean, that obviously is something that we don't know. We know Alex Marquez stays put at Corsini. My belief is stays that I think possibly Aldegaard will slot in there because he doesn't have a contract that says he has to have a current bike. Obviously Buzeki is leaving VR46, so there's a vacancy there.

I think it's quite likely that Morbidelli switches across. Then it's a question of whether Digi Antonio stays in place or goes somewhere else. I think he would be a prime target for the Pramak Yamaha. I think we expressed that when we were doing our speculation show last time out. Who gets the works bike out of...

Let's assume that VR46 get that one spare works bike. Actually, that's an interesting thing in of itself Jim, isn't it? The Ducati are only committing to three 2025 spec bikes. What do you make of that? That surprised me a little bit.

I thought with Pramak going, Ducati might push on a little bit and make sure they still had four fully up-to-date bikes on the grid. I think we knew that Corsini wasn't going to get one, but it's a surprise to me that VR46 don't get two. I don't know. I'm not trying to draw any thoughtful conspiracies out of this, but I was a little bit surprised by that. I've always felt that there's always ever only been three factory Ducatis on the grid.

Pramak had one and the other two were in the factory. That one good Pramak bike was Martins, despite the fact that whoever was riding alongside Martins at the time was on essentially a year old bike with probably the most up-to-date specs. They would have gotten the spec of Benya's bike at the end of the year. They would have had his 24 championship winning bike, let's say, in that configuration of bike. That's the second bike at Pramak where, hey, here's the 25 bike.

I'm not surprised by that. It's very demanding of the factory to be able to produce four fully fledged factory motorcycles and support that over the course of a year. It doesn't surprise me really. My point is that if you take Tech 3 as an example, now I realize they are not bang, bang up to date to the extent that say the full works bikes are, but they're pretty close as opposed to a bike that's a year old. You're going to have four bikes like that from Yamaha, four from KTM, let's say four from HRC, even though that's not necessarily a bike you'd want to be on at the minute.

It remains the case that they are pretty close, I would think, between the works HRC squad and LCR. It just strikes me as slightly odd that Ducati wouldn't make that jump to be kind of the same with the one main satellite that they've got left. Grissini is a customer team, so they get the year old bikes. I'm assuming, when we talk about a year old bike, I'm assuming that that bike doesn't really get much development through the year, but there might be a few things that can filter down. If it's not the current spec of bike, I'm assuming that some of the stuff that they're developing just can't be transferred to the year old model.

I'm just a little bit surprised by that. Well, I think there's two other things that you could have to look at in that one. One, and if it's not a Brocata, no, a Fixita. This works, so why change? I think the second thing on that is Ducati is a small company.

They're not as big as KTM. They don't have the resources. They're not HRC by any stretch of the imagination. To some extent, they're not Yamaha. Their race shop is probably pretty stretched to build enough world super bikes and build all however many Desmondesicis in a 2025 spec.

Again, I don't think that that's really anything that's there. KTM is a huge, huge company. Their R&D budget is ridiculous. If it isn't ridiculous, Red Bull will simply make up the difference to make it ridiculous. You could have quite the staff to build everything that you want and need.

KTM in the middle of a year pulled out carbon fiber frames, which I would have thought that would have been a... It wasn't that they just pulled those out. They pulled them out and raced them. It wasn't, hey, we brought carbon fiber frames to Mazzano. No, we brought them for you to race them.

So that shows a level of commitment, personnel, manpower that really, dare I say, only HRC kind of has. So yeah, let's face it, the two biggest companies that are racing there literally HRC and KTM. Yeah. Well, I'd be interested to know if people agree with that. I don't know.

It's a question I'll ask if I can when I'm at Silverstone with a few of the journos to see what they make of the make up, the complexion of the 2025 grid as we understand it at the moment, because there's some interesting stuff going on. I mean, the only constant is change, as they always say, and Ducati's dominance won't last forever. And they've had a bit of a bloodied nose, I think, in this whole contractual thing, because they've lost. Well, not lost. They allowed Bastianini to go.

Martin walked because they effectively snubbed him. OK, they've got Marc Marquez, but he's, you know, in the last few years of his career, let's say, perfectly capable of winning a title on that bike next year, no doubt, or a couple, as you've just indicated, Jim. I totally agree. And Bazzacchi's gone as well. So they, in the kind of the game of cards, they have lost a few of the kind of winning hands that they previously held, haven't they?

Now they've got Aldegaard coming in. Who knows, he'll adapt to MotoGP. I'm sure he'll do well. But they don't strike me as quite the force next year as they thought that they were going to be a few weeks ago. That's my only point.

Really? I think they're probably in a better position now than they were previously. In the short term, I'm talking about sort of looking a bit further out, though, in terms of who they've now got in their stable. They can always find another Moto3 kid. Yeah, I mean, we know that there's, you know, Viya's coming through, you've got Alonso, there's always a churn of talent, but they haven't let a few of their key guys go in this kind of whole politics exercise with Mark Marquez, who effectively called their bluff and they jumped at his signal, really, didn't they?

And it had big implications for them in terms of the next couple of years, in terms of their rider talent pool. Yeah, yeah, but KTM is just as cutthroat in it, too. Yeah, you have to do what you have to do. You have to do what you have to do. So, yeah.

Next bit of news. This one's a shocker to me. I know you found this one, Rich, I appreciate it. Is Lewis Hamilton, yes, that Lewis Hamilton from Formula One, going to buy Grissini? You said this is not an April Fool's.

This is a real deal offers on the table. His representatives, apparently, I wasn't there, but they were asking over the weekend, sniffing this one out in a bit more detail. And a number of the permanent journalists in the MotoGP paddock have, you know, been tweeting about this or asking about it, whatever we have to say. So it's not a kind of made up story. And, you know, Hamilton is very much a bike guy.

I mean, he has lots of bikes in his collection. He's ridden an M1 before he did a Red Bull thing with Cal Crutchlow, I think, if possibly even Valentino Rossi a few years back and is known to be very much of a MotoGP fan. He's owned, for example, what was it, the E series, you know, the off road electric series. He had a team there a few years ago. He is vastly wealthy.

I think he has a stake in one of the American football teams, possibly, or the Broncos. Is that a football team? Or is that a... It's an American football team. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Hamilton has a stake in that team.

So, you know, he invests his money. And yeah, this story broke over the last few days that he has some interest in the Grissini team. And if you think about it from the perspective of the Liberty media thing that we believe is going to happen again, it's not official. So there's some hoops to be jumped through before that's ratified. But let's assume that goes ahead.

Then, I mean, Dawna would be licking her lips at Lewis Hamilton coming in as a sort of team owner, because he'll bring a huge, you know, millions of potential Formula One fans across with a sudden interest in what's going on in MotoGP. And somebody, I forget who it was, was pointing out that... I forget which MotoGP rider it was. I mean, Marquez has quite a lot of followers on Instagram, for example. But if you take one of, I don't know if it was like Mir or something like that, they've got a million, 1.6 million, say, followers on Instagram or something.

Apparently Lewis Hamilton's dog has a million followers on Instagram. And Lewis Hamilton himself has tens of millions of followers on Instagram. So if you can get... I know I'm a bit touchy about Formula One and MotoGP because I don't like too much crossover there because I don't want aspects of MotoGP to get kind of, I shouldn't say spoiled or tainted, but you know what I mean. Yeah, I do.

We do need more fans. I mean, we need more fans. I mean, there's no doubt about that. It would be helpful to have a bigger audience for a number of different reasons. And so that makes, you know, a lot of sense commercially.

But whether it just literally comes from Hamilton's love of bike racing and his desire to get into MotoGP from an ownership point of view, I don't know. But it's an interesting development if it happens. Yep. The one thing that MotoGP with Liberty, and if Lewis Hamilton comes in, the one thing MotoGP, in my opinion, cannot lose. It cannot lose the idea that we can get next to the riders and get autographs.

And if we put up all these walls and say, nope, it's only the corporate people sitting in the Piranha Club, Formula One-esque type stuff, and it's only the hobnobbers and the to-dos and the high-end people, it will not become a racing sport of the masses. Now, despite what anybody thinks, and you can yell at me and ride in and tell me I'm full of crap, but car racing is for the people who are the elite and the rich. And motorcycles have always been the people who are more down-to-earth, blue-collar types that are there. I've always felt that my entire life. I've always believed that my entire life.

And if we lose that blue-collar appeal of MotoGP, it's an over and done thing. Yeah, I agree. But I think the lining in the cloud for me is the Liberty approach, because I think they actually want to open up Formula One a little bit. They've certainly done that from a media perspective in terms of before under the previous ownership, you couldn't film anything and put it out. It would be taken down immediately.

Well, Liberty understand that to grow the sport, you've got to utilise all of the tools in the arsenal, and that is a social media game these days. And so they're very pro that. So I think, if anything, they will open up the paddock in a way. And a number of journalists in the past have said that the MotoGP riders, who are quite well-paid for what they do, and they don't have to work from a media perspective, they work bloody hard on the bike, no doubt. But from a media perspective, they don't work anything like as hard as Formula One drivers have to.

And so there's a lot more that they could do to help themselves, because that would reflect itself in their own salaries and sponsorship deals and so on. So I think, if anything, that will open up with Liberty coming along. And so the Hamilton thing would just help to shine more of a light on that, I suspect. But yeah, I'm a little bit kind of uneasy with certain aspects of that, but well, not that we can change it. So more pertinently, I mean, from an operational point of view, the sport seems to be back into shenanigans again.

Interestingly, this has not been reported on the MotoGP website yet. But again, a number of the journals that I follow online are saying that the Kazakhstan round that had come in to replace the Indian round that had been shunted into next year and may not actually happen at all anyway, has itself now been further postponed. And they were suggesting that Cata might come in with a second race this year to fill that slot. Now that is not official, I don't believe. It's certainly not on, as I say, it's not on the Dorner site.

But that was being widely reported this morning, because a number of journalists quite understandably who are freelance saying, you know, they've spent thousands of pounds on accommodation and travel to get to these places and suddenly it's off, you know, again, for the third time this year. Yeah, because Kazakhstan was supposed to be going, but they had some flood or something that washed out the roads to get to the track. So that pushed it back to, and then they delayed, they said, well, it's delayed, you don't know where it's going to be. But hey, India is not going to have a race because there's some financial problem that's there. Apparently MotoGP never got paid for last year's race.

Okay, so we're going to shove Kazakhstan into that time frame. And now apparently Kazakhstan's not, may not happen at all, which means why not go back to Qatar and have another night race? Why not? Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. Cata clearly is in a position for all sorts of different reasons in terms of the venue, the stability there and the money that exists there to suddenly do these things.

It can step in. So that's a good thing. But yes, I sympathise with people that have spent a lot of money on travel plans that are suddenly offended. And presumably there's not much you can do about that in terms of getting your money back. So that is yet to be confirmed for sure, but it looks as if that's what's going to happen.

The other couple of little bits of news that cropped up today. Again, this one is not a big surprise. This has been widely sort of tipped to come out as an official thing. But to date, Alessius Bargros was officially confirmed as an HRC test rider from 2025 onwards. So, so much for El Capitan at Aprilia.

There might be a few bloodied noses there, I would imagine. And the Exodus away from the CalEx frame continues with Elfmark BDS, I should call them properly. Team Immoto too confirming their switch to the Bosque Skura chassis from next year onwards. And I suspect they won't be the last. No, I think there's several more teams.

I think you may see, my guess you'll see 10 Bosque Kuras on the grid next season. That would be the number I would think that would be there. The Bosque Kuras are definitely the bike to have. They, for some reason, I think the Bosque Kura is a, go with me here, softer chassis. So I think it wants to wiggle around and move a little bit.

And I think that suits sort of the cushy Pirelli tire. Whereas the more rigid CalEx worked way better with that more stout, sturdy, stiff sidewall Dunlop. That's a question for you. I didn't put down that I need to. For your little list.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let me just quickly get through this and then we'll get into the ascent racing then. So just very quickly talking towards World Superbike. No racing this weekend.

And we're recording this on the 2nd of July, but next weekend it's World Superbikes at Donington Park. I'm there. I've got my press pass. So for any of the paid subscribers that we call out, mostly on most shows, although not tonight, if anybody would like to fire in a question, I'm going to be talking in terms of the official list of people I'm talking to. He says trying to hardly think from his brain.

I've got Scott Redden. I've got Garrett Gerloff. I've got Olly Bayless, Troy Bayless' son who's in super sport. I've got Brad Ray again. We've got Taron McKenzie.

Who else have I got, Jim? I might need to come back to this in a moment. Fine. Any questions for any of those guys? Just let me know.

Oh, I've got Alex Lowe's. I've got Sam Lowe's and I've got Axel Bassani as well. So that's the two Works Karasaki riders. And obviously Sam's on the Elfmark VDS entry in on a Ducatian World Superbike. So those are all confirmed at the minute.

I'm waiting to hear on Ica La Cona from HRC and a couple of others. So if anybody's got any World Superbike specific questions that they would like to throw my way to ask when I'm there next Thursday and Friday, then please do so. BSB, I don't know how quickly we're going to get this out, Jim, but on Thursday this week, so in two days time, I'm going to be at Snetterton. Well, on Thursday and Friday in actual fact. So I'm going to be spending some proper time kicking off things in a bit more detail with the Tag Racing Honda team, which I've been trying to get to all year.

So going to be talking to the riders there, a couple of the team members. Pete Jennings, who's one of the crew chiefs there. That's the questions that you fire through to me, Jim. So I don't look like a complete idiot when I'm trying to think of technical questions without having a technical brain particularly. So again, any of the subscribers that pay into the pot each month, if they want to fire some questions in for any of the riders or the team members, you know, and again, I can build some of this stuff up for future rounds that I attend as well because I'll be getting to some more BSP rounds this year.

Moto America, just very quickly mentioned that there was some good racing at the Ridge last weekend. Do you want to talk about that, Jim? Did you manage to see any of that stuff? I didn't get a chance to see that one yet. There usually is good racing at the Ridge generally because that track kind of has a bit of elevation to it, which is always nice.

It's a great track. I would love to go see racing there, but unfortunately that requires an airplane ride or two weeks of vacation out west to go out there. Which state is that in, Jim? It's in Washington state. It is on the west side of, I think that's called Puget Sound.

We're in the big, I don't know what you call it, a gulf or lake, whatever. Virtually into Canada. Yes. So you have to go to Seattle and go way down to the bottom and around to get to it, but it is a fabulous, it's one of the places I think that if given a little bit of money, they could build a little more infrastructure. I think Moto GP would go there.

I think it'd be a great track for them. I think obviously Flat Rock is going to have a race and Texas will have the race at COTA. So I think you'll see those three tracks holding Moto GP, but Ridge would need a little bit of infrastructure. I think the track is fine. I don't think there would be need to, you may have to do a few things to meet grade one standard, but it wouldn't be very much in my opinion.

It is a stunning strip of time. It is. And that the bit, the Ridge bit that gives it its name is really something else. I mean, it is up there with the corkscrew as a kind of unique feature. So interestingly in Moto America, I mean, unfortunately the coverage that I was watching, more extensive coverage on Eurosport seems to have disappeared this year, which is a shame, but YouTube do show condensed highlights packages.

And it's interesting as a Cam Peterson on the Yamaha, Jake Gagne's teammate has really come on strong this year. I'm not sure if he's leading the championship. I suspect he might be because he's putting together a really, really strong season. Whereas Gagne, I think he's having all sorts of arm pump issues. Cam Bobie had a crash, I think at Barbara Motorsports Park a few rounds ago and kind of got himself quite badly injured.

So he's kind of not up there. So it kind of looks like a bit like it's sort of Cam Peterson, Josh Heron on the attack war horse Ducati squad. I think it is. Yeah. Is that right?

I know it's war horse Ducati. I'm not sure if attack is attached to that or not. Sorry. I might, I might be getting the brands confused there. Sorry, American.

I'm doing my best with them. I mean, I love motor America, but I just don't get to see very much of it with the reduced coverage on the YouTube side of things. But so Josh Heron won a race, Cam Peterson won a race and just quickly to turn back to the TT, because we didn't talk about this on the last couple of rounds. I think it just bears mentioned that, well, the first piece of good news with the TT this year is that everybody made it to the Island and made it home again, which is great news because it was not a good year last year. There were quite a lot of people that didn't get to make it home afterwards.

So this year was a safe event for me, though, most part, you know, pretty good weather event. And of course, the big piece of news was that Michael Dunlop broke Joey's record and ended up on 29 wins overall, I think, as a result of the other couple of wins he got as a week went on. So yeah, I mean, that guy's going to just keep writing the history books I think for the cause. He could be racing on the island for another 10 years, probably because the road racers tend to go on a bit longer than the track racers a lot of the time. So I mean, Michael Dunlop really something else.

And the last thing before we get into Aston Jim, and I promised I would do this. As I told you, I bought a new motorbike the other day, secondhand, I bought myself a BMW. And I just wanted to say thanks to Liam Fletcher, who has a little company called Liam Fletcher Transport, who went up to the north of the country for me, because I wasn't able to do it myself for various reasons, picked up a bike and brought it back in his purpose built truck is a UK guy, obviously, but shout out to Liam Fletcher Transport, info at Liam Fletcher Transport.co.uk for anybody that wants to move a motorbike around the UK because top top quality service, nice guy, pure biker through and through I can tell. So yeah, thanks, Liam, really appreciate it. So with that, I guess we get into Aston.

Well, let's go to Aston. It is the last weekend in June. Where else would we be other than at Aston, the cathedral of speed? We'll start with Moto3 qualifying. In the first qualifying session, it was the odd name out was Rureta.

Rureta was in that session, which he's sort of the person who shouldn't be in there. Bratelli was there too, as long with the Rollstones, Suzuki, Rossi, Fiorioli. They're all there in Q1. But Rureta, Bratelli, Esteban from the CF Moto, Alonzo's teammate and Suzuki all got out of that first session to get to the second session. Now, Vier, who is the Dutch boy, the Dutch teenage sensation was on fire this weekend.

Now, he was literally on pole, had another lap going that would have probably taken him much farther, gapped much farther his pole position advantage that he had at the time. However, in the Tidmouth Chicane, he had one of the wickedest high sides on a Moto3 bike that I have seen. It was amazing that he actually stood back up. But the first time I watched in total awe that he smacked the ground and got up like he did. And then when it got slowed down, you realize that the airbag and the suit had inflated and he landed squarely on his back.

So he didn't hurt his shoulders or his collarbones or anything like that, which he could have. But I was trying to think back to another high side of that magnitude in the smaller class that I could think of that was similar. And the only one that I could come back to, and this is a long time ago, there has to be something in between. Somebody else has got one. Please let us know.

MotoPodcast.com. It was Juan Garriga on his 125 back in about 1988. And it was at Assen too. It was the old track at Assen and it seized on half throttle and just flung him. So you're going back a few years, Jim.

I am old enough to remember these things. So that was what I was coming to. I'm sure there's somewhere in between. There was another one, but that one jumped into my head like, whoa, that was it. Maybe because it was Assen, maybe it's why it stuck in my head, but that's how it was.

Needless to say, Vier's bike was destroyed. Vier was shaken up. He was in sitting for the rest of it as we went through. But it was a great bit there. But Picaris would take the pole position followed by Furusato, who Picaris pipped.

Both of them only barely pipped Vier. And then it was Otolla, Yamanaka, Nepa, Rueda, Fernandez, Esteban, and Lunetta for the top 10. Munoz was 11th and David Alonso having a very undavid Alonso weekend was 13th. Yeah, I must admit, I didn't get to see the qualifying. So I hadn't realized that Vier had the crash, Jim.

But obviously I did spot the fact that Alonso was a long way down on the grid. So that was just relative underperformance. And I do use the term relative, advisedly in his case. So nothing else that caused him to be that low down then. No, there was nothing that was there.

It just seemed like for whatever reason, he just couldn't put it together. But I think we've seen Alonso, I mean, he has been so dominant. We just expect him to be at the top of the top of the time sheets. I mean, he had dominated, I think, every session and won the last three races. So now suddenly he's 13th and now panic has ensued.

If you watched him on the start of the race, he very much was cool, calm, collected, joking, smile on his face. So we should see what's going on. Oh, I should make a mention of this. Those of you who follow the racing on the MotoGP app, for whatever reason, and I don't know why, I'm sure it was some technical glitch. But come Sunday afternoon when I decided that I can't find a time to watch the races, there was no Moto3 or Moto2 race available.

And I thought it was me. So I did the whole refresh the app thing and I thought, okay, but it was still not there. Tried later on, still not there. Eventually it did show up today, which is Tuesday. So even Monday night, US time, it showed up and they had Moto2 and Moto3.

So not sure what the deal was there, but that's not a good look, especially when you have millions of paid subscribers who are looking to watch that race or whatever. But anyway. Same for me, Jim, as well. We talked about it before we came on air, but yeah, that is not really very good because the MotoGP race was there. Yes, Sprint was there.

MotoE race was there on Sunday. Luckily, I was a bit delayed watching the Moto3 race, but I went onto the live coverage, did the whole thing where I covered my face, put the TV on mute because I didn't want to see what was going on live because it was probably the MotoGP race at this point. Went all the way back, spent 10 minutes from the flipping finger on the back button to get back to the beginning of the broadcast and watch the Moto3 race, which is kind of live on playback, if you like. But wasn't able to watch the Moto2 race at that point and then jump to the MotoGP race. Yeah.

And then Sunday evening I thought, right, I watched the Moto2 race now. And yeah, it wasn't there. So as I said, I've only actually managed to see the seven minute highlights package of Moto2, but it's not very good. As you say, when people are paying anywhere between 150 and $200, euros, pounds, whatever, I know there's some differences in the relative values there, but it's thick under 200 quid for me, which is, you know, I don't consider it bad value because I do watch a lot of the coverage in terms of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, most race weekends. But yeah, if you want to attract new people, you've got to give them the content.

That's what I'll say. I completely agree with you on that one. So when the race went green, Piqueras had the whole shot followed by Ortala for a saute. Vire was off on third. Now got to make this statement upfront.

Basically everybody went with a soft rear tire from Pirelli except Vire who went with a medium tire. And to make it even more complicated, Vire went with a medium front. Now the second row of the grid, they went with a medium front, but a soft rear. And most everybody was on a soft soft, but Vire was his outlier. So it was the question in the beginning was, well, what's Vire going to do with this?

Because you know, late in the race, Vire comes good. This may be his idea. I should say that Esteban, Farioli, Rollstein, Watley, and three other guys all had long lap penalties, all for being slow as a result of either from practice or from qualifying, which was, yeah, if you watch that, there was guys just putting around every which way, which was just pathetic. So yeah, they've got to really have another talking to with the guys in Moto3 and MotoGP. Well, I was going to say it wasn't much better in MotoGP and didn't see many long lap penalties being dished out to those boys.

No, I think the schoolmaster is going to have to take the big boys to task and start giving them long lap penalties. And I think everybody would kind of straighten out. It was atrocious. We'll come to that. Yes, we'll get there.

So Bet Ortolla went right past Piqueras at turn seven. Great move up the inside. Classic ascent. Alonso had come out from 13th to eighth, so he made up a few places. Suzuki had crashed at turn eight.

Then Munoz had got himself up to fifth. Alonso came up to sixth. So those guys were charging through the pack. Well, meanwhile, everybody's there. Brasado went to second and then Vire was the third because he had got by Piqueras.

And Piqueras kind of had faded backwards a little bit. Ortolla's got the lead and pretty much he's there, but the racing now happens behind him. So Brasado is second, Ortolla is there, then Piqueras. But now it's either Piqueras, Vire or Vire Piqueras, or Munoz is now from fourth to third and then back to fifth. And then Alonso is back up.

And it's just great racing there for, say, the three, four, five, six, seven positions. Sort of classic Moto three as it's going through. At one point, Alonso got a must drop one place warning on or command, I should say, on his dashboard, which he did do coming out of the chicane. He did let people buy. In fact, two people got by.

So that dropped him. Instead of dropping one place, he wound up dropping back two places. But there was a distinct gap. Ortolla and Ortolla and Forosado had created a gap of about six tenths over Vire, who had now finally worked his way to the lead of the second pack. And at that point, we had 11 laps to go roughly and four tenths behind.

You knew Vire was coming at that point. He had set his sights. But the question was going to be who was going to come with him? Could Alonso come with him? Could everybody else come with him?

And at this point, the whole race kind of settled in for a few laps. Everybody realized Vire had the pace. So wait a second, I'm going to hang on to him as best I can and we're all going to go to the front. So what was the separated packs became, again, one big, huge pack like you're used to seeing in Moto three. It was very smart of everybody chasing Vire to just hang on and not try to go crazy.

And they just sucked themselves. They rode themselves right back into contention for the end of it there. With the roughly seven or eight laps left, I was wondering when is Alonso going to pull the trigger and just turn this thing on? He had been floating around still in this six, seven, eight place. And you just kind of felt, I felt, I don't know how you felt about it, but I felt like Alonso was just holding his tires and just waiting for the opportunity moment for him to just set everybody up and just strategically pick them off with like four laps to go.

I expect him to be sort of fourth, third, second, and then be first at the line. It was one of those, do you start playing the Jaws music now for Alonso kind of a moment for me. But where it was very interesting was that Vire had gone to the lead and I think Vire decided that he needed to pull the pin because Vire started to put pace on everybody. He had dropped Orturli, he had dropped Forasalo. Muñoz was there.

Then you had Picaris and Alonso's in this mix as well. But Vire at one point had a six tenths of a second lead, which is almost unheard of at Assen to be six tenths. I mean, I think what the average win is by, I think they said nine hundredths of a second or something. So it was like, wow, that's a lead. That's a big lead.

And I'm thinking maybe Vire has pulled an amazing job of strategy across everybody by taking the medium Pirelli. He bedded him in, stayed calm, and now he's just going to absolutely just pound laps in and nobody's going to get him. At least that's what I thought. But Orturli, who had gotten himself shuffled back somewhere to probably fifth, had turned it around in a few laps and had got himself back to second. And Orturli just started to put in fast laps.

Orturli on the 17th lap used soft Pirelli, started turning fast lap after fast lap after fast lap. He was the fastest guy. He was taking about a half to a tenth out of Vire a lap. And I'm like, oh, this is going to be mouthwatering here as we get down to the end. With that, Alonso versus Muñoz is absolutely crazy in the last part of the race, the last few laps.

Those two guys, if there was a millimeter of gap, Muñoz was through it. And just to make matters worse, Alonso would just come right back by again just because he could. Forisato ran off at 15 or 16 coming to the chicane. That's a very, very high speed section of the track. He ran off.

He was able to keep it upright in the gravel trap. We never saw it, but it was amazing that he actually kept it upright. I thought that was going to be a huge accident. There's a wall quite close there. So he did a super job to keep it out of there because that would have been a big one if he had straight lined up properly.

Yep. We had gotten to the very end and Orturli has caught Vire. So the last lap is going to have to be the lap of any of the best lap that Vire's ever going to race. And it was like, you think Vire's got it. He's got it all the way through.

They're getting to the last turn. They're coming to the chicane. All Vire's got to do is cover the chicane and he's got this. Vire does the right thing. He's in the middle of the track.

He blocks Orturli from getting there. But Orturli just shocked me. I don't know if you were shocked at this, but he just went around the outside of Vire in the chicane. Absolutely brilliant move. Like, okay, I don't care.

You got the inside covered. I got this. I'm going around the outside. He goes around the outside, but I think consequently he had to pull it in tighter, do not go onto the green. And so I think he lost a smidge of momentum.

Vire, who had braked early to cover, now was on the gas. And so the two of those guys are heading to the line to which Orturli just nips Vire by a hundredth, I think it was 12,000th of a second. So .012, 12 milliseconds is how much that he got beat. You move the finish line a foot and Vire wins the race, which it was amazing that was that way. So there's your top two.

Munoz had a great final chicane run to go from fourth to fifth, actually, to third, which was impressive. Rueda did get the better of Alonso because suddenly Rueda showed up and we didn't know because we're watching the front part of the pack. Alonso would finish fifth, which has been, gosh, that kid's worse finishing how long, right? Like utterly pathetic. Let's toss him off the track and find him money for not winning.

Then it was Linetta, Fernandez, Becerra, Sneppa and Yamanaki running out the top 10. A crazy great Moto three race rich. Anything to add to it? Well, just a couple of things. In my notes, I wrote Munoz, and this is towards the end of the race, certainly the last third of the race, I wrote Munoz getting dangerously lairy.

These little random things that I write down. But he was getting very close to getting his collar felt by the stewards, I would imagine, because he is a very, very aggressive rider. In the same way that Alonso is a very aggressive rider as well, but Alonso always seems to pull him off clean, whereas Munoz always looks a bit kind of marginal. Let's be kind in our language. So I think he was not lucky to get the third.

I mean, it was a brilliant last chicane that he rode to take two places. I mean, just outstanding. The other thing that kind of strikes me is that I think in that drag race to the line, Vaya's height and weight does count against him in a situation like that. I think had he been a bit smaller, he probably would have won that race. This has not been critical, this is just an observation from the comfy seat that I sit in when I'm watching the race at home.

But he kind of over defended the inside line going into the chicane in a way. And I think Ortona probably second guessed him on that one and just, as you say, Jim, just rode right on the outside of him. But for Ortona to do what he did on softs, front and rear, and to have been that fast out front in the first half of the race, because he led the first 11, 12 laps, I think. Oh, yeah. I don't think Ortona got past until at least 11 to go.

Yeah. The first time Vaya took the lead. I mean, I would kind of try and think of this from the point of view of the team, the team management, thinking, why can't he do this every race? Because he is very up and down Ortona. He did that from back to the front at Cota last year, was it?

I think that was Ortona, wasn't it? For the first one. So occasionally he's just, he's outstanding in a way that we tend to talk about Alonso and increasingly Vaya as well. So it's a bit of a head scratcher, really, Ortona. The only other thing I was just going to point out was that Lunetta, that was a great ride from him and not the first time he's really shown himself this year.

But he was, I think, a little bit fortunate because he definitely infringed the track limit when he was on a warning and he didn't get a long lap for it. I don't really understand why, but he definitely went across the green several laps before the end. So that was a bit odd to me. But anyway, I mean, certainly worthy of his, what was he sixth, I think, in the end. I put a little asterisk next to his name, albeit with a question mark, because I didn't know if he was going to get dropped post race, which I don't think he did.

No, I'm not aware that he did. So all in all, and then very final point, bearing in mind that was Colin Vaya's home race and he lost it by, as you say, 100th or 1200th, whatever it was, you know, absolute whisker. An incredibly gracious sportsman-like interview, certainly the one that Simon Crafer does. I know other interviews will be aired depending on what service you watch the racing on. But certainly in terms of the official Dawner feed, an incredibly measured, gracious interview that he gave, you know, and bearing in mind this is part of a right after the race is finished.

So adrenaline levels are high, emotions are high and stuff. And he must've been incredibly disappointed not to win his home race, particularly in view of the fact that he'd had a big crash in qualifying, which I didn't see, Jim, you know, you've just made me aware of that. So it was all in all, it was a great, great performance by Colin Vaya. So yeah, best race of the day by a country mile. Agreed, agreed.

Oh, with that, let's wrap it up by doing the championship standings. Alonso still leads the championship. He is on 154 points. However, with Vaya's second place and Holgardo not having the greatest time at Assen, he now is, Vaya has now vaulted himself into second place over Holgardo. 39 points behind Alonso.

Holgardo is third, a further, what is it? 11 points behind. So for that, there are 43 behind, but only four behind Vaya. Sorry, looking at the wrong column of numbers. And then we have Ortola, Munoz, Yamanaka, Rueda, Fernandez, Joel Calso and Piqueras.

That's how the championship is. Not going to give it to Alonso yet, but he does look to be the de facto champion. But he's still a great, great champion. But Vaya is coming. He's coming hard and hopefully we'll see a really close race.

And hopefully this will go down to the end, which would be fun to watch as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 39 is the biggest gap, but it's not an insurmountable gap by any stretch of the imagination. One crash in the pack.

I mean, if Ortola could perform like that more often than not, then he'd be getting himself into the fight as well because he's a very, very good rider, a very, very good rider, that guy. He just doesn't quite do it as consistently as the others. So there's a long way to go in this championship and it's definitely not Alonso's quite yet, although we think he is the favorite. I do, but yeah, there's still plenty of racing to go yet. Lucky for us.

Yes. Well, let's move to the Moto2 race and the qualifying that takes on there. First things first, Joe Roberts in practice on Friday has a high side and breaks his right collarbone. He had it operated on, had surgery on it in the Netherlands and it's played it. And he is going to try to race at the Saxon ring.

Now I've got the thinking about this considering the Saxon ring is all left-handed. I was trying to think, is that going to make it easier on Roberts or harder on Roberts? I was trying to think and I'm thinking it's going to be easier on him because you do more work with the left hand trying to keep the bike and push it around with the left than you are there. Although I do think the transition to the waterfall is going to be a bit of a struggle. So here's my prediction folks, write in, let me know what you think about this.

I think Joe rides, I think he races, I think he qualifies because you can suck it up for a lap or two. I think he qualifies inside the top six. I think he's inside of the first two rows. I think he'll be at the front in the pack, but I think fatigue will get to him at the end of it. And I think he will finish inside the top 10, probably eighth or seventh.

That is my guess. That's very specific, Jim. We're going to hold you to that. Yes, please do. So that way I look like a fool when we come back.

Anyway, qualifying. In that first session, Arenas, Guilvaras, Sasaki, Masi, Van de Gerberg are all in there. Arenas, Van de Gerberg, Guilvaras, and Sena Aegis all get out of the first session to get to the second session. The second session was headed up by Chantra, who wound up crashing out at turn seven. But the thing was we finally saw Outagur become Furman Outagur.

The Furman Outagur we know and love has now entered the chat and has decided to put some display on. And he did by taking the pole position over Agurra, who wildly now has qualifying figured out, at least for this race, hoping that that continues on. Because having eye on the front row or in the front two rows is way better for us than it is if he's starting seventh, eighth, ninth in the back. So that was really good for Agurra. Garcia, his teammate, was there on the front row with him as well.

Then Manuel Gonzalez, Lopez, Arenas out of the first session. Then Arbolino, seventh, actually having a decent qualifying session there. So you had, of course, you've got Bosquecura, Bosquecura, Bosquecura. Fourth, you get to a Kalecs there at that point. So that is how they were all going to start in this one.

Candid had an off day. He was 13th. Dixon was ninth. I thought there'd be a little more out of Jake. I'm not sure.

Maybe the injuries at the beginning of the season still playing havoc with Jake. I'm not sure what Jake's problem is. You've got a clue, Rich? No, I don't. Other than to say there's obviously something's not quite right.

Well, I mean, he's on a Kalecs, which is not the combination to be on, it would seem. So that immediately kind of potentially puts him sort of fifth or sixth. And yeah, he was very, very badly injured in Catan. You just wonder how much of that is lingering. And I mean, by his own admission and very kind of maybe bravely is not the right way to put it.

But, you know, Jake has made no bones about the fact that he finds the kind of the mental management aspect of racing, particularly when you're on a bit of a downer, let's say. He finds that a challenge to manage, because he's very much a confidence rider. So his shoulders are down a bit at the minute. You can see he's just not quite ticking on all cylinders. Bear in mind, he won this race last year, let's not forget, in really quite audacious style.

So yeah, I don't know. It's a bit of a head scratcher with Jake. I filmed for him a little bit, you know, as a fellow Brit. Try and have a chat with him at Silverstone if we can and see, you know, how he sees the second half of the season panning out. So let's move on to race day.

Aguro would get the whole shot, followed by Altegr, followed by Garcia, followed by Arbolino jumping up from that seventh starting position. Basically, Altegr is out front, but the battle for the 2-3-4 is great, right? Between Agura, Garcia, Arbolino's in there just having a good old little race. It's literally still Altegr out front. And just pick whoever you want out of Agura, Lopez, Arbolino, Ramirez was in there.

You just whatever, take your pick. It was really sort of Moto3-esque how these guys were mixing up that the 2-3-4-5-6-7, at least in the opening laps, which made the race there entertaining. But Altegr was starting to slowly pull away. He had form and he was just rolling away with it. With 18 to go, Altegr already has a track limits warning.

I'm like, oh my gosh, we are just, this is, are you kidding me? Moment in the race. Now, it's like, okay, we've got to ride the rest of these. I think it's a 22-lap race to get to the end and not get a long lap penalty here. It's going to be somewhat difficult because Altegr had a lot of laps that were taken away in the qualifying sessions and in practice sessions that were just canceled because of lap track limits.

So Altegr had been struggling pretty much all weekend keeping the bike off of the green. But hey, things happen. We'll just see how this goes along. Oh yes. After the track limits warning, well, Vietti was way off the chicane.

I think he outbraked himself for something, rode through the gravel, got himself back on. Kinetic crashed with Aranis. Now they were separate crashes that happened. It was not the two of them going down together. Aranis had crashed.

He was there in the gravel sort of at the exit of turn one where then Kinetic crashed at the entrance to turn one. And Kinetic was down for quite some time in the gravel. I was a bit concerned. I have not seen anything about his condition. As far as I know, he was back up and he walked away.

But the scary part was he tumbled into the gravel trap and was motionless. And I'm wondering if he knocked himself out. Have you heard, Rich, did he go cold? I mean, for the reasons that we mentioned a minute ago, I hadn't actually seen the full race. I didn't actually.

I don't recall them showing that bit or Kinetic's crash in the very condensed highlights package. So I simply don't know the answer to that, Jim, at this point in time. I don't either. And I don't want to say he was. But I was very concerned because most riders, they'll hook the ground and they'll tumble to an end.

And then they either pick themselves up and arch their back and they're trying to bring air in or they're smacking them in the hand in the gravel or to some extent. He did none of that, which massively concerned me that potentially maybe he was knocked out for a moment. But doctors were there treating him for at least a couple of laps. And I know MotoGP does a very good thing about trying to keep that action away from us to keep us back on the track and not there. But it was odd that no one said anything else in the race when I watched it about Ayrton's condition.

So hopefully he's okay. Hopefully he's going to be at Saxon Ring. And with that, we're going to move on. Really the race now becomes processional at this point. It is Altega, Agurra, Garcia, and they're just running around chasing Altega.

And lo and behold, we get to 10 to go and Garcia makes a mistake and he slips back and he's off the track. He kind of gets back and gets it back together again. With nine to go, Altega receives the long lap penalty that we're waiting for. With the long lap penalty, he's now going to come in and take the long lap. And I think we all know what happened.

Like what was it? Barcelona or Catalonia? So like, oh, well, we're going to see what happens here. So sure enough, Altega goes in, but he comes out right behind the two MTI helmets bikes. And it's like, well, what's going to happen here?

And Agurra is leading with Garcia, then Altega. Dixon has moved his way now to fourth with like seven laps to go ahead of Arbolino and Lopez. But you have Garcia slipping ahead with four to go ahead of Agurra, but then Agurra goes right back by. Like, Agurra won this race. Altega then gets by Garcia for second.

And then it looks like Garcia was like losing grip on the rear because he decided with about three each laps to go, Hey, this is it. I'm going to ride this home, take this podium, continue my championship points lead. And then with that, Garcia is now back down and it's an Agurra versus Altega show to which Agurra holds off Altega to win the race. Again, a race that Altega could have won a lot of five more points he could have taken into this championship thrown away by track limits, which is just stupid. Now, were they was MotoGP being stewards being picky about this?

I don't think they were, but he did finish second. Garcia was third. Dixon has the fourth, which is one of Jake's better finishes this year. He does well at acid. That was good.

Then Chantra, Arbolino, Ramirez, Lopez, Gonzalez, and they wound out the top 10. A not so great race. There just wasn't much into this one at all. It was not Moto. It started out great, but it did end on a low.

Yeah, I kind of had the feeling that having been forced to watch the seven minute highlights package, that was probably about all I needed to see, which is a not my high rated compliment. You could paint the manager two race, but yeah, it's just a bizarre season that Altega's having, isn't it? It's just racked with silly mistakes, a fair bit of bad luck, it must be said. Certainly at the beginning of the season, this thought that maybe he was, like many others have, struggling perhaps a little bit more than the others to get his head around the new tyres, but that was a little bit confused by bad luck and some oddities going on. He's a fair way back in the points, isn't he?

If he goes on a rip like he did at the end of last season and he starts putting back to back to back wins on the board, then you could see him getting his way back towards the sharp end of the title fight. It looks like a fairly steep hill to climb at the moment, but having said that, Lopez, he's very inconsistent. Where did he finish? I think he was eighth or ninth. He's a name that's been tipped to the Pramak Yamaha squad, which isn't a big surprise to me because he's a very aggressive young gun, so you could potentially see him coming up.

As you say, Jim, just to correct myself for a moment ago, I mean, Dixon finished in fourth, although he was eight and a bit of seconds back, it's true, but that was a good result for Jake, given how things have gone recently. Obviously, he's a bit of an Aston specialist and don't forget the BSB used to race at Aston as well. Jake's done a good few laps around Aston, so that would have helped a little bit. We won't draw too many massive conclusions from that. Otherwise, just a Boska Skura show again, wouldn't it really?

How would he conspire to just cheat himself with a win again, really, as he's done several other times this season? His team must be a little bit unhappy with that. Yeah, they have to work on that one. With the points standings, Garcia still leads the championship. He's on 138 points.

Iagura jumps into second. He is 14 behind. Robert stays where he was, 23 behind, but he is a place further down, followed by Lopez Outiger, who is on 83 points, which puts him 55 behind Garcia. Like you said, he starts ripping off wins. This is going to put the heat on Garcia for sure.

Hopefully, that'll happen here. Hopefully, he'll be able to turn it back around again here after we get done with Saxon Ring in another three-week break. Maybe he can get himself together and make a run of it. Gonzalez is sixth, Kaneda is seventh, Aranis eighth, Cobba ninth, and then Chantra is tenth. That's everything about Moto 2.

Let's get to Moto GP and get this done. If we go into first qualifying session, Acosta is in the first qualifying session with Digia and Bizecki and Augusto Fernandez and Quattroraro. It's like, wow, I didn't really expect Acosta to be in that qualifying session, but he was. The question was, yeah, Acosta is going to get out of this one, but the question is who's going to be the other person who's going to come out with him? Basically, Acosta had the first position.

Quattroraro with a great lap. He really did push that Yamaha with an absolutely barn burner of a lap. It's a shame to see that talent not be on a bike that is better than what the Yamaha is. Hopefully, they figure that bike out quickly. Although, it should be said in Yamaha's credit that they brought a new engine for both Quattroraro and for Rins, and both riders were very happy with the new engine.

I don't think Assen Bizarro quite showed the leap forward that engine is. I think it's one that's probably going to help them off the turns on the slightly slower tracks, whereas Assen's very high speed. There are positive signs continuing to come out from Yamaha. Quattroraro was pretty exceptional all weekend, actually. But a little bit unlucky not to get through to Q1 or Q2, rather.

Good effort. It was a great effort. With that 45 seconds left, Digia is coming and he does take second place off of Quattroraro. You think, okay, cool, everything's good. Acosta's through.

Digia's going on. Cool. All right, let's get ready for Q2. Nope. Acosta tosses the bike away.

Now, on what was an extremely weird crash, even Simon Krayfer looked at that and went, whoa. He literally looked like, it looked like, on the right-hand turn, that Acosta was just trying to light the back end up and square the corner off. But it didn't do that. It was very slowly, the back end just slid out from behind him and he just low-sided the bike away. Time had ran out.

There was no reason for him to be going fast or whatever he was doing. He had this mistake, which puts him on the ground again. This time, it's like, well, now the intrigue is that's the bike he prefers. That was his number one bike and he liked it way better than his other bike. What was the guys going to be able to put that bike together again and get him out for the Q2 session?

Well, they don't know where to figure that one out. Well, they did get Acosta out, which was a great effort by the team. The Gas Gas guys did and Tech 3 guys did a fabulous job to get the bike back out again. But in the second session with 10 minutes to go, Martín just bangs in a lap to get a 1.30.8, which was faster than what Benyaia had done. But then here, Benyaia pulls what I think was a blinder because he came in early and where Martín had done another lap chasing a time, Benyaia did a one and done and came into the pits.

That gave him the ability to get in, get a new soft rear tire and get out when everybody else was coming in. It gave Benyaia track position. He had nobody in front and Benyaia made the most of it because he went and pulled off a 1.30.5. That's a record around Aston. These MotoGP bikes are obviously super quick and they have basically now, I think, broken the track record at almost everywhere they went this year, which is absolutely crazy.

But Benyaia just basically just absolutely positively destroyed the lap time. Martín could not catch that lap at all. So Benyaia would take the pole. Martín was second, then Yala's third, and then Alex Marcares, Alessio Sparga, Fabio Di Antonio, Marc Marquez, who crashed in that session. He did crash his bike.

So he was seventh, then Morbidele Binder, Acosta 10th, Bastini and Rello Fernandes, all there in that session. We then move to the sprint. And let's not sugarcoat this, but Benyaia gets the whole shot and nobody saw which way Benyaia went. This race is pretty much over. Martín follows him and really that's how that's going to go.

Nobody was in the same zip code as the two guys out front. Those two guys were the class of the field on the fastest bikes and the best two riders, arguably in the world right now, literally just ran off and hid from everybody. Nobody was in the same zip code. It was amazing. The oddity here is that Marc Marquez crashed at turn two, running over the inside curb, which at first I thought, oh, he ran over the curb.

That's really weird. And he fell off. And then there was a puff of smoke that happens. So I thought maybe the rear ride height device had broken or was still down in the first turn. Or Marquez was making it collapse as he was heading through the second turn.

And maybe that drug on the curbing and that kicked him off of the bike, to which he crashed. He says he just hit the curb. He says it was just his fault. A guy who's won that many titles to make that mistake is in my mind odd. So to me, it's one of two things.

See if you agree or disagree here with this one, Rich. Either A, the guy's riding the bike well beyond the limits of what that motorcycle is capable of and therefore is pushing to a limit that even he can't sustain continually. Or there was a bike problem and Marquez covered it by saying, look, I was unsighted and I ran over the curb. When I watched it, and particularly when I looked at the replays, it kind of looked as if he caught his knee on the curb. He was way into the curb.

I mean, of that, there is no question. And I think part of his explanation that he gave was that he was very close to the bike in front and so he was a little bit unsighted and just took too much curb. And it kind of, whether his knee or his slider hit the curb, I don't know. But the bike appeared to sort of jump a little bit, at which point obviously the traction went and he went down. So it was a very, very strange crash and a very strange weekend actually, all told for Marquez.

Because I don't know if you saw, I did watch from the office, just a little thumbnail down in the bottom of the corner while I was pretending to work. He went out on Friday and he forgot to put his knee sliders on. I mean, there's all sorts of sort of oddities that went on during the weekend and had that crazy crash with the Spargrove in qualifying. Marquez looked to be chasing a lap time that the bike wasn't prepared to give him really all weekend. And as a result of that, he did come off a good few times.

And so it's a bit of a conundrum for Ducati this one, because as you were surmising last time out, Jim, I think the conventional wisdom is that Martín is going to start to struggle without any more updates coming his way. Whereas Grisini and Ducati can't really do much, they can't suddenly give him a 24 bike. Grisini aren't set up to take it. Marquez himself has said, I think in the pre-race press conference, as far as he's concerned, in terms of 2024, it's job done. He's got the worst ride for next year.

He's done what he needed to do. He's kind of won that particular eternal championship for himself already. So maybe it doesn't really matter what happens for the rest of the season. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the gap between the 23 and 24 bike is quite obvious. And Marquez needs to be careful he doesn't go sort of chasing it too hard that he starts to fall off and start hurting himself again.

Obviously, we've got the Saxon coming up this weekend and he's definitely going to be rampant there and chasing a result. So I don't know. It was just a bit of a strange weekend all around really for Marc Marquez this weekend. That's why I saw it. Yeah, I agree.

Leave it to Bastianini to give us some interest in the race. As he was in the back, he rode his way up to fourth with some brilliant passing, typical Bastianini. Yeah. But Alash did fall off on the last lap. But like, I think that's 15 or 16, I think.

Wicked fast crash with a big tumble in there. And he was already hurting from crashes earlier in the weekend. So that was not good to be. So you literally had the race. It was Bagnaglia, Martín, Maverick Vignales, Bastianini, and then you had Alex Marquez.

Well, hold on. No, Alex Marquez gets a three second penalty because he didn't do a long lap for a penalty that he had. Or I think it was track limits. So that dropped him down. Instead of being fifth, he was dropped to eighth.

So after Bastianini was then in the official results was Gigi Antonio, Bender, Quattroraro, then Marquez, Alex, and then Morbidela Anacosta won at finishing 10th in the sprint race. So that's how things finished off on Saturday afternoon. Now that takes us to the race on Sunday. Interesting take, Martín was on a medium-medium, whereas Mark Marquez was on the hard medium and Vignale was on a hard medium as well. Martín would receive a three grid place penalty.

So he would start from fifth as opposed to starting in third because he had a problem with slow riding on Friday. I think it was in Q2. He was a judge to have held up Raul Fernandez, which he most certainly did hold up Raul Fernandez. But given the extent of dawdling, this is what I was about to go off on the rant about earlier in the show, but I won't rant about it too much now, but there was a lot of this going on and it was ironic, wasn't it, Jim, just to sort of cut in on what you said about Q2, that Vignale outfoxed everybody by doing what he did in Q2 and just going out with nine minutes along the clock and just setting a blistering lap all on his own, whilst everybody else was just, well they were all behaving like Moto3 freshmen, weren't they? Just hanging around, really dangerous actually.

There was a potentially nasty incident on Friday between Miller and Martín where they just about collided. Miller didn't blame Martín for it. It was six of one and a half, a dozen of the other in terms of what actually happened. But again, all because people are hanging around, looking behind them, not looking where they're going. Other than the Martín penalty that applied to the main race and not the sprint, which again is something I struggled to get my head around a little bit, but anyway we won't go into that.

Everybody else was extraordinarily lucky not to get penalties elsewhere because lots of people, I would say two-thirds of the field were doing it and we don't really want to see this. It's all a bit juvenile to me and Banyai showed that if you just get out there, get your head down and just look after yourself, you can do a good lap, which is what he did. By the way, I mean he was on, that was the second fastest, oh well 0.932 I think it was faster that lap that he posted than last year. I mean blistering pace, Jim. Very much so.

Anyway, Alishe would not start because he has a broken finger in his hand, which I think it was his right hand. Yeah, he was kind of holding his wrist hand, wouldn't he, as he got up from that. That was a huge crash. Yeah, that was very, very unusual. If only a broken a finger is lucky.

Well okay, it's a 26-lap MotoGP race. Banyai gets the whole shot followed by Vignales and Martín, then Marquez and the other Marquez and then you had Morbidella there. Rins has a massive high side at the beginning of the race. Felt bad for Alex on that one. At least he didn't hurt himself at this time.

All we needed was him to have another trauma. Did he hurt himself? Well, he's damaged his hand as well to the extent I saw again. This is on X. I think it was, I just happened to look before we came on air, I think this was Simon Passan put this out saying that Remy Gardner is going to be subbing this weekend at the Saxon Ring because Alex Rins is not going to be capable of.

He whacked his leg again, although he hasn't re-broken it, thank goodness. And he certainly has done his wrist no good at all. So I think he'll be looking forward to the fact that other side of Saxon Ring, which he will miss, then there's the three-week break until Silverstone in August. So yeah, poor old Alex Rins, not getting a lot of luck at the moment. It is not.

Well, wow. Marquez did get by Vinales to be in third and I thought, well, okay, that's kind of where this is going to go here with Marquez third and basically the two other Ducati's that are 25 factory box are going to be out front, which it seemed like it was going to go that way. Bizecki was down at turn five, very slow, very slow, very slow turn five there. Wound up with the tuck on the front end and his whole bike just sort of fell over on him. He had a wretched, wretched weekend, Bizecki.

I mean, he barely got through a session without crashing. It's just really, yeah, really bad for Bizecki. I wouldn't say he's lucky to have got the Aprilia ride because did we mention, I don't know if we covered this on the last show, this was news that broke a little bit earlier, but obviously he's confirmed at the Aprilia alongside Martine next year and we'll see. We'll see. I think you had guessed that one in the 771 and you were correct, which I apologize for.

You are quite the team manager pundit, I would say. If only. Yeah. Well, okay. Bizecki was down.

Digia got by Acosta. Mark Marquez then got a track limits warning. There's 22 laps to go and Marquez has got a track limits warning already. Okay, moving on. Chasing lap time again, Jim.

Oh, yeah. Completely. He's chasing it big time. With 22 to go, it's Ben Jaya, it's Martine, it's Mark Marquez, Digia, Vinales and Acosta. Mir crashes out.

His wretched season continues. Then Digia got by Mark Marquez. It was like, how did he do it? It was a very, very odd situation that happened. There was a bunch of speculation that was running rampant.

I was like, what happened? Did he run off or did he have to drop a place because he cut a chicane, something like that? We weren't sure. But then Simon postulated that it was a tire pressure issue because he says, hey, look, there's a system on the bike that tells you you've done enough laps at the prescribed tire pressure. Yeah, you can bring it to a lower pressure and you can run like that or whatever.

The speculation then was, especially if you got a replay where you saw Marquez point Digia by and leave him have tons of space, that maybe there is something going on with the front tire and maybe it is a tire pressure problem. It was very much speculative at that point that maybe that's what Marquez was doing. But you can't put a guy like Marquez down for doing strategic thinking on the bike because he's pretty good at doing that too. He's made some shrewd moves strategically that he's very good and astute at doing that kind of a thing. You wouldn't have put it past him, but that was just an odd moment of the race as to what was going on.

Basically, it's just literally the same people in the same places for the good part of the race until about 11 laps to go where the beast is coming again. Again, we're late in the race. Here comes the beast. He's going to be coming hard again. We have 10 to go with Vagnaia Alfront gone, Martín, Digia, and Marc Marquez, then Vignales, then Acosta, and then Bastianini.

Olivera screws up the long lap penalty and doesn't do that right. So he's got to go do it again because he had one for track limits and had to go do it again because he ran off and didn't go through the prescribed thing. Bastianini has gotten to sixth. He got by Acosta. Vignales went to third, followed by Marc Marquez and Digia.

Then Bastianini is right there too. It's like, what happens to Digia? Digia is just falling off. He's got no grip. There was speculation maybe there was a spot of rain that was coming.

In fact, I think the KTMs were warming up bikes because there's a very dark cloud that it approached. Wow, that's going to put the cat among the pigeons here. I was thinking, whoa, Marquez to jump in early, grab a bike with wets and it's a downpour. He's suddenly the magic man because he seems to have, again, he does weird things that seem odd that somehow work in his favor. So I'm like, anything's possible.

It is acid and we're right there on the, it's the North Sea, right Rich there? Yeah. Or channel, the channel, the North Sea. Something like that. So then Bastianini went by Marc Marquez while Marquez went wide.

Then Marquez got by Digia and then Acosta got by as well because if the doors open, Acosta is coming through. That's just sort of how that works. Then it gets to the point that, well, is Bastianini going to wind up getting past Vignales and that's going to be third. And lo and behold, we wound up having Acosta on the last lap go down at turn seven, which was a crash there. Vignales was wide, which allowed Marquez through into fourth.

So the race finished as Vignales, Bastianini, Marc Marquez, Vignales, and Digia Antonio. That's how it came out. However, hold on, wait, there's always a but. And that but is that Marquez did have a tire pressure problem and he was deemed to have been under the limit for an improper amount of time, thereby giving him a 10 second penalty, which would drop him down the order to 10th instead of where he had finished, which was fourth. So Digia Antonio gets promoted to fourth, Vignales is fifth, Binder is sixth, Marquez, Alex is seventh, Danzrelo, Fernandez, Morbidelli ninth, and then Marc Marquez finishes in 10th.

It was really weird because he even said that that's why he dropped behind Digia was to get the tire to come into pressure. He had it all under control and a plan and then that plan fell apart. Now here he is being stuck by this rule. There's going to be this rule is going to come into play more as we go down the rest of the year. Guaranteed somebody else is going to get burned by this.

It's not just going to be a Marc Marquez thing, but who all knows? An okay race, but a boring race because Vignale was just gone and Martine was just there with him. The fight in between there with Digia and Marc Marquez and Vignales was a pretty good little scrap that was going on, but that was really the only action that was going on in the race. I mean, as we say from time to time, Jim, they can't all be classics and you know, classics are classics because they're rather unusual. I wrote a note as I watched it said, incredible lap times, which they were, but not a terribly exciting race.

The excitement, and I used the term advisedly, was kind of more what was going on with Marc Marquez, this whole strategy around tire pressures. As you said, Simon Crafer called that one straight away. Absolutely, you know, bang on the money, wasn't he? As it turned out, I just find it a bit depressing when you've got a rider that's having to try and sort of manage stuff like that rather than just get their head down and race. I find that a bit dispiriting really, and that's me sitting in my arm, Jim, no matter what Marc Marquez must have felt about it.

And then obviously be, what was it, 0.1 of something, I think? 0.01 low according to Simon Patterson. Yeah, I mean, okay, you know, a rule exists and the rule has to be respected. And if you're on the wrong side of the rule, you know, you get a penalty for it. I mean, that's clear and it's understood, but it's a bit of a, yeah, it's just, it doesn't really sit well with me that we have this sort of silliness going on, particularly when it affects a race result hours after the race is finished as well.

I mean, we've talked about this many, many times before. I mean, because I'm pretty sure that Vignale has just touched the green stripe in the chicane on the very last turn, last lap. And so he and Digia got switched, but at least that was something that was done, you know, within, let's say seconds or minutes certainly of the race ending. So that that was a clear switch. And again, you can argue the whys and the wherefores of it, but he touched the green, just, I mean, it was by a millimeter probably, but he did.

And so that switch happened. And then obviously that later on the whole Mark Marquez thing came out with the tyre pressure thing. And in a way I'm surprised we haven't had more of this already. This is the first sort of big one that I can recall this year so far. A few people have fallen foul of the tyre pressure rule or came very close to it, but whether we'll see more of it this year, I don't know.

I mean, I kind of struggled to get my head around this whole issue around tyre pressures and the rules and how they're applied. I guess it depends what pressure you start the race with, but Mark was out in clear air and had to sort of drop back for a little bit, didn't he, to get his tyre pressures up, I suppose. Whereas you had Bagnar just blitzing it out front on his own. So he didn't have a problem. So obviously it was a starting pressure difference.

Maybe, you know, they might have been on different compounds. I can't remember, you know, what, say Bagnar and Marquez. Oh, they were on the same front. Bagnar and Marquez were on the same front. So it's a little bit, you know, hard for the layman to understand.

And that's something that, you know, again, is a bit of a problem with getting new fans into the sport if there are these kind of obscure opaque kind of things going on that are a bit hard to understand. Even to people like us, you know, that follow the sport, you know, avidly, that concerns me slightly, I must say. But overall, yeah, the MotoGP race was not anything much to write home about. And I was super disappointed and annoyed with Pedro Acosta crashing on the last lap because he cost me a ton of points in the fantasy league by doing that. So that wasn't great either, but at least he got up and wasn't too bad.

Because that was actually, that was quite a big crash as well. I mean, it was, again, he had a few big offs over the course of the weekend. And as we've said before, he'll go through this sort of crashing phase for a bit. It was interesting what Pit Buyers said about that. Not that crash, but he had said earlier in the weekend, he said that we're missing something and we don't know what it is.

And whatever it is Acosta needs, because that's that little piece that is the missing link to make Acosta there. You know, given all the fanfare of Acosta chasing this idea of beating Marquez's record of being the youngest MotoGP race winner, I don't see it happening now. Whatever's happened, the Ducatis have come good. And the KTM has, I don't want to say lost its way, but it's just showing that their rate of development is not as great as Ducatis. Yeah, I mean, KTM sort of have a bit of a track record of kind of losing their way for a little while and then coming back strong again, don't they?

And staying like that for a little while and then losing their way again. I mean, it must be said that throughout the whole of the weekend, despite the crashes, Acosta was again head and shoulders the best KTM out there. Yeah, it's amazing what he's doing with a bike that we now really truly know is not. It might be the third best bike. The Aprilia may be better than the KTM.

But yes, I think it's very close. I mean, I don't want to say anything out of turn, because he's had a pretty illustrious career, but it kind of feels to me as if, you know, having announced his retirement, Alessio is kind of counting down the races a little bit. I mean, he hasn't really looked like a guy that's going to bother the podium, let alone a win. I mean, Vignale is, I mean, doing what Vignale did, I can just imagine Gary, you know, pulling his hair out. We're going to read his email next time out, aren't we?

Because he's written a very long email to us, which we're going to pick up next time out. But, you know, Vignale is from what was he, second on the grid, I think, or third, he was certainly in front row. And, you know, just he kind of did nail the start in the sprint. And but again, just kind of got swamped. And you think, well, I mean, the KTM is a fast starting bike, but if he can't keep his elbows out, he's just going to get swamped all the time.

So, you know, Maverick, to his credit, he was very disappointed to be finishing on the third step on the podium, which, you know, I give him due credit for that. He wasn't satisfied that that was a good enough result. And arguably it wasn't. But Gcati is still by some margin, the best bike out there, let's be honest, particularly when you've got Bagnar and Martine on them. So, yeah, but what I'm looking forward to, Jim, is Assen was not a great weekend race in Moto3 race aside.

Saxon Ring is such a nudgey kind of odd outlier of a track. Plus the Mark Marquez thing from the MotoGP point of view. I'm really looking forward to Saxon Ring. I've been, I went to, I say this repeatedly, I know, but I went to the Saxon Ring race back in, I think it was 2007, possibly 2006. I would need to check.

And it's a, it's a great venue. It's a brilliant, brilliant event. It's a really tight little track in a very kind of small area. And it's just a, yeah, really, it's a hoot. If anybody gets a chance to go to the Saxon Ring, it's over in East Germany.

Yes, well worth a visit. And so that is going to be a good race this weekend. I'm really, really looking forward to it. And let's see if Mark can, you know, recapture, because let's not forget, it's easy to forget as time goes by, because you get so caught up in the moment, but 12 months ago, it was the old Mark Marquez, the head in his hands over the side of the barrier after God knows how many crashes on the Honda, wouldn't it? And that was really the point at which he decided that was it.

He was leaving at that point. So what, what a difference 12 months has made, despite the fact that he had a few crashes at Assen, but yeah, I mean, the whole map looks different, doesn't it? No. Sure does. Oh, with this, let's kind of get through the points.

Martine still leads on 200 points, but Vignale has now closed that gap down to 10. He's on 190. Marquez, Mark is on 142, then Bastianini, Vignales, Acosta, Binder, Digiantonio, Asparguero, and Alex Marquez found the top 10 in the points. Looking forward to Saxon Ring this coming weekend. It should be interesting.

You know what? The year old Ducati can win at that track, because if Marquez is qualified anywhere near the front row, he's probably got a really good shot at being out front. And from there, you can control that race pretty easily. There's really only one, maybe two places that you can pass and we shall see what happens there. But my only concern, Jim, is that he's going to be so desperate to win there.

You just hope he doesn't go into the sort of throw up the road, not from over exuberance. That's not really the right word, but kind of a desperation, a desire and a desperation again. Yeah. Desire that I think is exactly the right word to recapture that glory, because that would have stung last year. Because don't forget, he had gone, what, 10 years unbeaten at Saxon Ring at that point.

I think so. Last year, something like that. I mean, nine, 10, 11, whatever it was. But it was a long time that he had been unbeaten, I think through Moto2. Certainly all of his MotoGP races.

I don't think he didn't win a race there until last year, did he? And so that would have really hurt him last year. So he'll be desperate to get the win there this time out. So yeah, it's going to be compelling viewing, I would suggest. Can't wait.

Yep. I can't wait either. Well, with that folks, we're going to wrap this one up and we'll let Rich get some sleep because it's way past Rich's bedtime now. 21. Yeah.

21 in the morning. So with all that folks, ride safe. Night night.