The Austrian GP Review

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. Episode number seven hundred and seventy six for August 20th, twenty, twenty four.

And you might recognize this voice if you listen to the show for a little while. My name is Skyler Vickory. I was a host here on the show or maybe maybe three years ago now because time flies. And Jim was just cutting his teeth as I was getting out of the business. So we kind of the torch handing out.

But Jim is actually joining me here as well. Jim, how are you doing today, man? Man, good. It's great to have you back, Skyler, even for a sub in for riches on holiday. I know everybody was probably expecting to hear either my voice or Richard's.

But that was a great intro, man. It's like you can just like you never left, man. Yeah, you know, you do a couple hundred of those and I think it sticks after a while. Oh, yeah, I agree with you, man. Too bad the racing is not better to talk about this weekend.

But I'm sure as we usually have done in the past, we will rant on about something as this thing gets cranked up without a doubt. So all right, guys, with that, we're going to roll into some of the news that showed up from this weekend. The first thing we'll talk about is Moto GP and riders, where they're going. So DG Antonio signed with VR 46 and he gets a factory 20 his reward. He gets the factory 2025 bike.

What say you about this, Skyler? I mean, where else is it going to go? Yeah, I mean, yeah, he's, you know, staying there. That's the key thing, not getting out of the loop, because once you're out, you're out. It's hard to get back in unless you're special.

But definitely decent bike to get on as well. This year's shuffle has been interesting. And with the next couple of years, any bike you're on now, I don't think it really matters because things are going to change a lot. You got a big shuffle of riders coming up next year. And then you've got the rule change coming in in a couple of years, too.

So we're going to see, you know, where everybody lands by then. And I think we're going to start getting that. It's a little weird because we've seen Alashius calling it quits. But that's like technically the big quotes here. Old guy of the field.

Right. And even Fabio is starting to get up there and be one of those guys now. Right. Which is weird because a few years ago, he was the one that was coming in and bugging Mark Marquez, who's the other elder statesman, all of a sudden here. So, you know, who knows?

I'm 32, I think. Right. So we'll see where like any more of those guys go. There's going to be a lot of shifting and with Pramette coming over. So, I mean, you just got to stay put for now.

That's the key thing. And that's what he did. So that's good. So let's talk about people who are special. Right.

One, Morbidelli kind of goes home to VR 46. Right. He's always been special to with Rossi. So he takes the other seat alongside of Digia. I mean, that's a pretty strong lineup, I think, because Morbidelli looks to have found form or more form on the Ducati.

He didn't get any testing this year with the bike at the beginning because of the leg injury he had and surgeries and stuff. So he started to show improvement. And I think not being at Pramac, which I guess I think you are up against it there with Martine. And I don't think that Morbidelli really had a true factory bike there, but he's going to get a factory bike when he's there with Rossi. I think it's a pretty strong lineup for Rossi.

That team was probably destined to become the second factory Ducati team, regardless of whatever happened. It's an Italian team and Rossi's name has got to be worth something to him. It's kind of a shift from what they've had as values before. Before they were kind of the, hey, we're going to bring our Bodo II guys up into MotoGP so we can give these guys a shot at getting towards the factory bikes, the big bikes. And now he's bringing in more experienced riders.

Digia has been around for a few years. Morbidelli certainly has been in MotoGP for a while now. And he's a guy I think his confidence got knocked a little bit. Just not having a great bike at Yamaha, again, getting put up against someone like Fabio Quattraro, who's a MotoGP champion in his own right. And it's very quick on his day, especially when the bike is working well.

So getting that confidence back, getting recovered from those injuries and getting back to what we call home, right? Being there with your VR46 brothers that he came up through and through those ranks. And he was definitely first part of that first initial wave of VR46 riders with Bagni and Morbidelli and a few other guys that were coming up through the ranks. So I think a good stop, but it is a double-edged sword because this is kind of like you have everything in your favor now. You've got the factory bike.

You're on the team you want to be with the boss that you want. You've got a good teammate. If you can't make it work here, you're probably not going to make it work anywhere. And this might be your final stop if you're not careful. Yeah.

Speaking of final stops, it's wildly rumored that Jack Miller takes a seat at Pramac. There's been no official word, but it's believed that that's actually happening. And I think I'm surprised if this is true. Let's just go with it's true for right now. If it's true and Miller gets on that Yamaha, that shocks me.

Given the other talent that's available out there, for Miller to go there surprises me. Especially given the fact that I think Miller would be better in maybe the world super bike paddock. He's got a young family maybe doing the Australian super bike thing would have been a better fit. But staying in MotoGP, again, like I said, you got to stay there. Right?

You got to find a spot and get somewhere. I mean, I'm not sure which way this one's going to fall out, but if Jack stays, I think MotoGP is probably better for it just because he's just a different voice. He's just got that I don't care Ozzy attitude that I tend to like. Yeah. And this is, I think, more beneficial for Jack.

Obviously, like you said, mentioned, didn't really see him sticking around just because the results haven't been there as of late. But this is a good experienced rider to bring in to Pramac and get them kind of going with the Yamaha. And a guy that's ridden multiple bikes, he's ridden the KTM, the Honda, and the Ducati. So maybe that's what they were looking for as well is as they shift over into a new bike, they need someone who's very adaptable and Jack can definitely deliver that. I don't think he was ever going to consider World Superbike and certainly not Australian Superbike.

Well, an Australian Superbike is not going to provide the financials that you need necessarily. Right? It's very much in a similar spot that MotoAmerica is where it's like good for club, now not club level, but local club. Yeah, it's super club. Yeah.

Let's look at it that way. Right. And I think World Superbike is kind of always there, but it requires a lot of the same travel demands that MotoGP does. So he may be looking like I want to squeeze as much juice out of this MotoP ride that I can get. And then I might just go home and take a few years off motorcycle racing, because taking, then you got to step into World Superbike and let's be real, unless you have one of three bikes that are there, you still got to go up against players there too.

It's not just you walk in and hey, I'm from MotoGP, I'm going to win. Because when you've got guys down there who can really impress and then we've got what's his down, the mind is escaping me. But as a guy, I'll go when he's down there, right? Top rack, he's good luck, you know, beating him. He's winning on everything and should be in MotoGP, which maybe that's where we're kind of thinking of where you're going, Yamaha, that was like your guy to get to Premac, maybe.

Hard to tell, but I think this is good for Jack and good for the sport because it keeps it more of international, again, flavor to the top as well. Because he would probably get replaced by an Italian or Spanish rider if he left. True, true. Let's look at the shuffle going on in Moto2. So even Ortolo gets to go from his Moto3 ride to a Moto2 ride.

He's basically been promoted to the MT Helmets MSI team. And the main reason that that happened is because Ayagura signed a deal with Trackhouse to race in MotoGP. I think Agura is a great talent. I think he sort of got overlooked. He had the wrist injury, all that kind of stuff happened.

It took him a long time to get back from that. And I think he's gotten back to where we've seen some brilliance on him. He's on the right chassis in Moto2 this year because he's got the Bosca Cora. He's got it with Pirelli. That seems to be just magical, at least at most of the tracks.

But it's to Trackhouse. It's to Aprilia. It's not to the fabled Honda, but it's a two-year deal. So does that open up the door for when, in your opinion, does that give Ayagura a couple of years of seasoning in a low-pressure situation with a good bike, the Aprilia, and then he flips that script and winds up being an LCR or maybe he partners one of the HRC guys at Honda in 27? Yeah, this is a solid move.

When you're jumping onto a team that's new like this, the expectations are very low. They are going to want to stick with the rider for a couple years because the team needs to gel. They need to figure out what's going on. Now, there's going to be a lot of MotoGP experienced guys on that team. It's like they just went and fired everybody.

They're going to bring in people that know the sport, know how it runs, just going to be probably a pretty factory of guys, roaming around, getting them all set up, so on and so forth. So they really want to get him focused in before they can start pointing fingers at riders saying, you're not doing a good enough job. They've got to get everything settled in. So if he does good there or better than what's expected of him, there's a good shot to move up into more factories, even that factory of Aprilia. I mean, you're going to have Martin there, but that second seat, anyone can come in there and get that because you're going to have to go against Martin.

So if someone's not cutting it, they'll be quick to find someone else to fill into that role, as we've seen before. But again, this is a guy that might not send shock waves when you hear his name as one of these big guys. But honestly, when it comes to the move to MotoGP, it's hard to know who is going to be that person unless they are someone who is significantly above everybody else when they were coming up. Your Pedro Acosta, your Marc Marquez. But if you go and look at the track record, let's look at Fabio's track record of Moto2.

It was not a Bizzle, but it wasn't flashy. And this was the Marquez killer that came in and he won like seven races total, I think in Moto2 over his couple of seasons. Then he got to GP, I think, what, in like 2019. And then by 2020, he was on fire. And Peco is similar too.

Peco's Moto2 reign wasn't all that impressive, although his team wasn't that great either. So you can't always say like the guy that wins are always going to be there. There's some guys that just need to have either a different team behind them or their style fits better to GP. And we'll see how that goes in the next couple years, especially because they're downsizing the engines again to what? 800s again or something like that?

850s. 850s. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I got a little something on that here at the end of the news to talk about there. So we'll do that. But yeah, you're right. They're downsizing. They're downsizing from the thousands to the 850s because well, it's just too damn fast now.

And they decided to take away a lot of the arrow on the bikes and all the wizardry of ride height. Yeah. Good. Yes. I don't get me started on that Blackwoods craft, man.

No way in hell, man. Do you feel sorry for Joe Roberts not getting a shot at Trackhouse? I mean, he can line himself up for it in the future. I understand what moves are making. He's kind of an ignimah sometimes because again, we've seen him run right to the front.

We've seen him win races. The consistency of the shine isn't there enough, I think, for him to garner that attention. And honestly, he may need to bring in some big sponsorship as well that he may not have at the moment. But he's got to be real careful because he's getting into that Moto2 realm of like, this is your Moto2 rider now. Because I think you get about two years in Moto2 to impress, to maybe grab a MotoGP ride.

But the problem is in those two years, there's guys coming out of Moto3 in the next two years that might get up there. Okay, the guy that was beating me all the time, Pedro Costa, he's gone. It's my time to shine. Oh, wait, wait, we got some new kid here. Vietti's figured it out.

So now he's going to run to the front. See you later. Like, oh, shit. And then if you're going to sit off of Vietti, guess what Alonso's coming too. So yeah, he's got to get it going and maybe next year.

And then Trackhouse being here definitely gives him a better opportunity to get into MotoGP. But I can't say I feel either way about it, him not getting that seat. Yeah, there's a part of me that says it's an American team and you have somebody there who could be an American rider and be at that top level. And then I go, but why Joe? Because he does make these mistakes.

He just has tracks that he doesn't chill with for some reason. He can win one weekend and be 15th the next weekend. And it's like, well, that's not what gets you there. What gets you there is constantly being on the podium, knocking on the podium door or something like that. But again, you look at like Quattroraro or Outagher, they kind of, you know, Outagher wasn't anything until he ripped off like five wins in a row at the end of last year that got him a contract with Ducati.

This year it's like hit or miss where Outagher is. But that doesn't mean that Outagher doesn't get on a Ducati next year and he doesn't go like stink, right? Just like Quattroraro, his Moto2 career was not that great. I remember we're like talking about who was going to get the second seat at Tech3 Yamaha at the time when Quattroraro was coming through. And you're like, I said, I'd take a punt on Quattroraro just because I think he's got something.

I just don't know what it is, but he's got something that works. Sure enough, you put him on that bike and he looked great. I mean, you can't tell all the time. And that's one of the true things about people who are inside that paddock and see everything. Because I mean, when they see the data that comes off the bike and they look and they can see the tires and all these other things, they can see what a rider is doing and nothing.

We only get to see how that guy's performing on the track. And we simply judge most of what happens based on that performance indicator. Well, hey, they won races, they were on podiums. They finished here in the championship. Well, they deserve it of a chance at a next level up.

But we don't see the other parts like, well, how well does this person work with a team? Does this person even give any feedback that's even creditable? He has no clue what to tell the guys how to change the bike. He can't tell them what they feel or whatever else it may be. Partially, is he not a sponsor's dream?

Is he not this guy who's playful and can go out there and be in front of the camera and wine and dine sponsors and what? Which is weird because it costs us this odd throwback to a 70s 500 GP rider because he just says what he wants and just gets away with it. But I think there's a part of everybody who's around the sport goes, yeah, that was pretty cool when he said it. I don't know what to think about Roberts, but I kind of feel sorry because I think he's done a lot. But then again, I look at it and go, he hasn't done much.

And I'm thinking he's got a year, maybe two in Moto two left. And I think he wants to come back to join Bobie and Gagné and everybody in Moto America because the Moto America talent pool is getting better, but it's these sort of ex GP riders that are kind of. It's getting old is what it's getting. These guys, these are all guys on their return trip home. Bobie is international twice now.

He's back and now he's got a kid and he's bought a house, just chilling. Gagné has gone to World Superbike, done the dance, come on back. He's doing his thing. He's got good teams. Heron's gone to Moto two and he's come on back.

He's kind of doing his thing. They're your top guys. Everyone else is trying to catch up to them still. And there's not a lot of young talent that is catching up to them. So it's a little bit concerning on that front, but I think Roberts might take a step.

He might be the one that takes a step over and joins a Garrett girl off in World Superbike, perhaps. That might work. Yeah. And even Garrett's kind of kind of get into those mid-pack teams there. So he's even maybe starting to venture his way back towards the United States as well, which maybe we get all those guys back.

It turns a series into something worth watching, but I could really go on the rant about their streaming service costing is more than World Superbike and providing half as much races, but I don't need to cause yeah, that's not that kind of podcast right now. But the one thing I wanted to add on to your bit there when we're talking about all these things you look at into to get these riders into the next level. And one big key factor is an intangible one is your timing because you may come in when there's a group of aliens that are on their way out. When Rossi left, Lorenzo left, Stoner left, Vizio. So that these are all guys that were in MotoGP for a long time and you weren't going to touch the factory seat because they were just going to jump between them.

You're going to take those guys. And now it's kind of starting to go to that point again, where it's like, Peko is an alien of the group. He's going nowhere anytime soon. Martín is not going anywhere anytime soon. Even the guys that are around for a while, Mike is still really good.

He got a couple of years off. Then Fabio is going to be there for a while. And the young guys are coming up. So now you've got Pedro Costa coming in there and a few others. They're going to lock out the top eight seats for the next six years, maybe more.

And so that makes the next row of seats are still really good guys, but they're not moving away from a GP. They're staying in MotoGP. And so maybe if he had a really good year, prior to that, before these big wave came in and while these seats were getting tossed up, then sure, have a chance. But you're going to lose maybe only three guys here in the next couple of years unless someone decides to call it quits or they have a really bad performance. But it's going to be harder to get in.

And it's going to be hard to get in for a while too. Yeah. Oh yeah. True. True.

Oh, let's see. Colin Vier gets the primo Moto2 seat on the KTM IAO squad. That's a good move for him. I mean, he is part of that whole KTM family, but he gets to go up. Garcia stays at MT Helmets MSI.

So he's going to, if he's world champion, he'll defend his world championship in Moto2. Chantreau may go to L-Seat R to fill that vacant seat. That's a rumor, but yeah, I mean that fits. It's all in Dementzu and Asia talent. Yeah, okay.

Maybe so. I don't know if Nakagami is ready to actually walk away yet. So I'm not too sure where that one's going to play out. Moto3, Picaras may move to a KTM based team, breaking his Honda deal. It was kind of a bit of a, what do you call that?

Honda kind of stole him away from the KTM team. And for them to pick him and get him on that bike, he has looked fabulous at times on a Honda, especially here this past weekend. He looked pretty decent because the Honda is not good on a stop start circuit such as this Red Bull Ring is. So that's going to be interesting to see what comes out of that little circle there. Munoz is supposed to leave the Bowie Motorsports team and go to the Husqvarna team on Moto3, which that'd be a good move for Munoz.

I mean, he's been there or thereabouts most of it, but I think if he got to that to a more, I don't want to say more professional, but a more talented team or a team that can work with his talent and sort of focus him in a little bit and sharpen him a little bit, he probably not going to not be off of too many podiums that's there. So that's all of your things from Moto3. There was a rumor floating around that the Buriram circuit in Thailand may be the first race of 2025. I saw that. Not Qatar.

So they would tentatively, what I heard was Buriram, go to Qatar, go to Texas. So we'll globetrot, which is kind of crazy. Yeah. But I don't know if that's going to happen. We talked about moving like one down from Indonesia and then going into like another Asian event to start the year off as well too, I think was the other proposed one.

Yeah. And we've talked about it. Where was that? I forget. It was go to Buriram, then go to Malaysia and then jump to Qatar.

Yeah. Well, I think it was the peng was the second one. Yeah. Which of course, they want to get in before monsoon season. So yeah, definitely want to get there for.

So I think it's, we've talked about before getting these schedules. It really hasn't made sense. We've seen it in Emojie, PNF, on our teraboard. It's like, yeah, we're going to go back and forth, back and forth. And it's like, just you have like both of you are really good at saying you have a world championship now.

You know, there's a lot of rounds outside of Europe when it wasn't in the past. And you can like run the Gambit continently at points. You guys always talk about, well, we go back to Europe. Like, why don't you do that with the other ones too? Like, oh, this is our, we're going to be in the Asia weeks now.

Okay. We're going to be doing all the Asia rounds for the first like five weeks. Then we're going to slide over and go to the middle East, knock a couple of those out before we head to Europe. And then we'll go back to like the States, Southern Canada or Mexico. You know, when you have the other tracks of the places, you can start to do that.

Maybe we're headed towards that direction. Tanner Iskra Let me ask this question of you. Liberty's, Liberty, Liberty more than likely is going to own MotoGP. Well, let's just assume for the argument sake that they own it now. Liberty, love them or hate them.

They've ridden the wave of Formula One fandom in the US to three races on absolutely two of them are absolutely, absolutely appalling circuits because one is inside of a round of football stadium. The other one is in a city of goods and glam that I don't think it should be in, but Hey, that's whatever. Fine. I don't care. Where does in Europe, if you had to guess where does and how many more races does Moto Liberty, why I want to say Moto Liberty, just because they're an importer of race bikes, I guess at some point in the nineties or something, where is it?

Where are they going to put MotoGP bikes? Besides Texas, because really that's the only place. Yeah. Well, we only have one like that grade of track right now, except for maybe Indianapolis and going back to Indy because unfortunately, Roger Penske owns it now. Yeah.

And there's no way two wheels is ever going to show up there ever again. No. And this actually goes into a big problem in the United States motor sports is that our tracks are outdated and not getting updated. And the only thing we're building is country club tracks now where you get a private membership and you build a house next to the track. There's one, I think, now being built in Tennessee.

We've got a couple here in California and it's like, okay, cool. And like, we might host an event. It's like, no, because what you do is you host these events. Like Kota's kind of was like, I don't even like Kota for that matter. It's like, yeah, you come out here and you touch a guard rail and you're going to pay $2,000 to fix that.

What is the point of a racetrack? I go on a football field and tear up the grass. I got to mow it next week. Like, no. So yeah, there's some issues.

We have some great tracks, but the infrastructure is very poor, especially getting in and out of these facilities. So first thing they'd have to do is get the interest back up of motorcycles in the United States. That's taken, well, not maybe motorcycles, but the sport bike has taken a massive hit in the last decade or so. I mean, had a massive spike when MotoGP actually came back to the United States. That's one of the reasons they could is because there was a huge interest here in sport bike culture.

Whether it was going out and hitting the mountain pass on the track or what was really driving the sport bike industry at the time was all the stunt boys. They were out there buying jixers like crazy, right? I haven't seen a jixer in, I don't know, three years now, right? Granted, there's not a lot of roads for them, but still. So they have to get the interest back up, and it's not going to be easy like it was in Formula One that kind of did it for themselves.

They had the Netflix deal. They had COVID. Everyone sat at home, watched TV all day. Hey, what's this F1 stuff? This looks like real good drama.

Let's all bombard the track. And then it became a cool thing to go to F1. It wasn't just about the race. It's because Lebron James might be there, right? So it became a star-studded event and it became more than the race itself, which a lot of people don't like, but it really did help drive those numbers.

MotoGP in America does not have that. It does not have that kind of interest. And motorcycles are already very niche here, and they've kind of gone back to being a lot of Harley riders. And the adventure bikes is where the new explosion is in the United States. So getting people to another event is going to be tough because you're going to have to put it somewhere either slightly outdated like Laguna, and you're going to need some infrastructure put in for that.

Or you're going to have to get real creative and try to bring it to a newer facility that might get on board. And as you're putting this facility together, build it big enough to host an international event. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Yeah. I've talked to the guys at Flat Rock, what they want to do, how they want to do it.

They won't say it, but they're talking to bring a MotoGP there. Now, again, the guy that owns Trackhouse, Justin Marks, is the guy who's the money man, who's putting this Flat Rock thing together. So I can see the push there to bring MotoGP to his track. It's kind of like the Roger Penske thing. Oh, I own a Indianapolis.

I want NASCAR back. Yeah. He's come. Oh, sure. We're coming, Roger.

It's that whole scenario. So yeah, believe it or not, you know this as well as I do because you live here in America as I do. And I think this is the thing that puzzles Europeans to some extent. There are people who will not go to Texas to see that race, but you move it to Tennessee, they're more than willing to come. A lot of people in that Northeast corridor are going to flood to Tennessee, whereas they're not going to go all the way to Texas for whatever reason.

And travel is a nightmare here now. Because to fly to Texas from California, it is a three and a half hour flight. So it's not terribly long, but they want to on a MotoGP weekend too, because they will jack the rates up for those weekends. Find an Austin will cost you damn near $600 now. Economy, not first class.

And it's like, so you're going to pay $600 to get there. Your hotel is going to be about $300 to $400 a night if you stay in a hotel, if you can find one that's still available. And then you're going to pay how much they're trying to get. I mean, it's like three, four grand out of your pocket to go see these events. And you know, it's like I said, the closer they get to coast, the more likely you're going to get more people just because the coast house way more people.

And they're more willing to travel by car. If you can get that magical six hour window, I think, which is about the cap for most people on when they drive a day, they'll come down. It takes them a day to get there because even if they have draw family and that take four stops, still takes them eight hours. They can get in with that. You can't drive to Texas.

I did. Texas. Well, I mean, you can, but it takes you a day to get through Texas on its own because Austin is not at the top of Texas. Austin is down there a bit. So either way you come from the East side, it's kind of towards the middle.

It's a little more Eastern. But yeah, you're dropping in from either direction. Like I'm driving from Texas. I mean, it would take me three days to get to the event, not not six hours. So and of course, if anybody international wants to come, which isn't going to be a big draw necessarily, the coast is the only time they're really going to come in a lot of the times because they can hit those airports much easier.

And that's typically where their flight is going to stop. They're not going to have to do like a layover in JFK and then take a localized plane into a different state. For example, I think there's a possibility you could go to road America because you can get the direct flight London to Chicago and then you're not that far from the track. I think you're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.

That's it. America is my dream. I always fantasize like, man, if everyone like that billion dollar, making millions, I would see if I could buy that track and bring that up to F1 quality because that track deserves everything. Like you need to have like, we need to eight hour endurance race there. We need it from ends.

We need to bring back in if we can. These cars already there for us. We need the proper garages in motor GP. Road America, the goddamn scariest thing you've ever seen. Because no, we'd have to start putting in some kind of chicanes or widen those turns to about another 300 yards to give them enough time to slow down because yeah, it's it's fast.

It's very, very fast. Do you remember in the 90s, there was talk of putting 500 Grand Prix bikes at road? America. You remember that? Do you remember any part of that?

Yeah. They were scary though. Oh yeah. That was the first thought that came to mind. It was like, Jesus Christ, you got these two long straightaways.

These things are going to seize like in two minutes. So they actually were going to there the way it was supposed to be, they were going to come halfway down the backstretch at road America, hook a left and go over the hill and basically drop into the carousel. So they would take conventional turn five, six, seven, eight, and nine out and then they would come back around there or wait a minute, hold on. That was a long time ago. So you got to give me a second.

Maybe they were going to go over the hill, come to the carousel, but turn and go back up, hurry downs and then come down to turn five. But they'd cut across and then conventionally race the rest of the way because there's a shortcut between five and 13 or whatever. When you come out of Billy Mitchell, I think they were going to do that. They were going to come back down that section backwards. Now, up, hurry downs would be really cool.

So I thought, well, heck, why don't you just do that same thing? Because I think it cuts the track from it's four miles. I think it makes it 3.2 if you do that or did that. Anyway, if you win the billion dollars, please let me be part of track design. That's for sure.

Yeah, no, that's one of those ones you give your friends the fake jobs. He's C.E.T. What's that? It's a chief engineering of track. What's that mean?

I don't know. He just goes over there and calls people and see if they want to put banners on the side and take whatever it is. Make that up. Here's your 1099. Let's do this.

Oh, yeah. Oh, well. So one more thing here in the new. Well, a couple more things in the news. This one, there were 26,000 fewer fans at this year's event than last year's.

The question is, why? Well, I have to be completely honest with everyone here. If I didn't mention it earlier, I've actually have taken quite a big step back in my viewership of MotoGP. The first part I would say is because watching every single session, every single race and every single moment for years kind of made me want to take a step back. We finally stopped hosting the show because you're like is an overload and but for me, I kind of started pulling back when it just became the Ducati Cup a bit at the front.

I wasn't too interested, but at the same time, other racing was getting good everywhere else. So I only have so much time to get dedicated to these things. I can only open it up. So I wonder if MotoGP is suffering from the same thing we talked about timing earlier is that when you're racing may not be the best or maybe you don't have the most interesting characters or there's something that's stale for somebody or something, obviously, that's not bringing people or keeping them. But the problem is other sports in your house, so F1, IndyCar, those kind of things, WC racing, IMSA, they've gotten much better over the last couple of years.

And most people tend to relate to auto racing faster just because I have a car. So it's cool to see my kind of cars go fast. Motorcycle racing, I would never do that. It looks scary as hell. So I think they may be suffering a little bit of that where there's maybe not so much there's disparity between the bikes or the riders.

Maybe there's just not that person to either root for or root against because make that important is like if you love everyone in the sport, people say, oh, I hate this guy. If you're a Lewis Hamilton fan, you have to love Max Verstappen. It gives the sport something you got your heroes and villains, no matter which one is yours. It makes a much better sense because you get invested into it and go, I want to see this guy win. And more importantly, I want to see that guy lose.

And that's just kind of how you go into it. And I think that's sport in general. You got to have your rivals. And I'm not sure. I mean, Motorcycle is working on it right now.

And I think next year we'll get to see a real good rival between Peco and we'll get to see Martin because he's on a different bike now too. So that's like, okay, we can that is interesting to me and seeing the cost is going to step up into the factory bike. So that's going to make things interesting over there as well. Right. Marquez has a factory bike alongside Peco, which that interaction in that pit box is going to be fun regardless.

Right. And that's if Marquez comes out and gets it going early. But I think Peco has been around and done so much now that if he gets a couple of wins on Marquez, right off the bat, he's giving me that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told you guys I'm not worried about him.

And that's, you know, that's one thing Peco can lock in. He locks in really well. It seems like he's pretty even killed. He doesn't really have like an up and down to his emotional writing. He just kind of focuses in.

He's kind of the most guys like today, second place. I'll ride a second place. Whereas Marquez has never been that guy, never will be that guy. It's a win or I'm going to just crash this thing. And lately we know which one he'd been doing more than the other, but he's you know, he's just he's got to get that feeling back and he's trying.

He's kind of he's kind of he's crashing the way he was when he was getting fast on the Honda. Now they'll depend on what they come out with next year and the following year if it's more toward his liking. We'll see how that goes. So I think there's less fans because the racing at the Red Bull Ring is worse ever since they put the chicane in. Oh, yeah.

I did want to mention that the chicane has ruined that passing opportunity. It's made passing actually very difficult there now and it made professional. And now that we've seen because it's even more stop start than it was before. I was thinking about that because I haven't watched a race there in a year or two. And I watched this one and I was like, hmm, that's a chicane.

We all understand why it's there. Zarco dang near killed someone. Hey, Dan, you killed the guy. He's the most famous motorcycle racer on the planet. Yeah, it's like a bad press of GP then.

Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe we just don't need to go back to this track anymore. I don't know. I think we need to go to that.

I don't want to go off too much on a tangent, but I really think with as many tracks that want to host these major events, we need to start going into rotations. Agreed. And do in regional rotations with like, OK, sax learning that doesn't need a GP every year. Neither does Austria. Let's switch them out every other year.

I agree. Yeah. Me, I'm like, again, we know why the chicane's there, but could you re profile it a little bit better? Like maybe move the move it the first section of it back and then open it up to where they get faster as they come out of it. So now you're accelerating from your two a point through to be heading to three.

Now you've presented an opportunity to pass because nobody really passes at three anymore. So those are those theories. There's a lot one technical thing here because we were talking about eight fifties. And I haven't mentioned this because I just haven't felt the right time to you. But I think you will get this more than more than I can bounce it off of you a little easier because you've been there, worked on bikes, wrenched that whole thing with the eight fifties.

Now I saw this on Twitter. Some people were talking about this with scarves F1, the guy who does all the arrow work and teaches you all this stuff about the cars, whatever he said, well, look, you're going to 850 CCs. What's going to happen to the V4 guys are going to do nothing to build a new cylinder head that's small enough to accommodate the board. You're going to have, he says, Yamaha is probably going to wind up building the whole new inline four, which is good for them because you've taken the cylinder diameter down, right? The piston diameter has gotten smaller as you to get to the CC size that they may be able to take one crank journal, one crank bearing out of it.

So now the motor is going to become almost, he said, I like theorizing like 25 to 30 centimeters smaller. That's big. That's huge, right? There's like a couple of inches, two and a half inches, three inches. They get smaller.

Well, that's going to them some advantage in that point. Now I started thinking about the guys with the V4s. Yeah, you knew Ducati is probably not going to do too much. They'll probably just build a different cylinder head, right? Sleeve the bores, put a cylinder head on it.

You don't mess with what's working, right? Aprilia, they don't really have a lot of money to really do a whole lot of true development. And they finally got that motor working fairly good. So I don't think they're going to change anything. So then it's like KTM.

No, hell, those guys got enough money. They could build a whole new motor if they wanted to. Don't know what they're going to do, but they seem to lose their magic after the first third of the season. And then I get to thinking like, okay, what about Honda? What are they going to do?

Because anytime you sort of change the motor regulations, you almost got to think Honda's going to come up with something far out and cool, right? Just think about it when they went to 990s. Nobody thought they'd build a V5. They did. And they dominated with that, right?

So here's what I'm thinking. BMW is the only motorcycle company that I know of that has a variable valve timing motorcycle. No one else does that I know of. Off the top of my head. If you're all yelling at your podcast player right now, email me.

Let me know because thinking about this. So we've always heard all of this talk that BMW is coming, BMW is coming, BMW is coming to what I've seen in the regulations of MotoGP for the motors. And they're kind of hush on the 850. Exactly what you can't do. Would BMW come because they could use variable valve timing with top rack?

Which makes me think, would Honda try that? Would they build a new motor and put their VTEC system in? Because that'd be a great way to produce a very torquey motorcycle that also had a very high end rush as well. And you'd have that connection by the throttle because you're basically eliminating almost all the traction control off the bikes. It would be the best of almost all worlds.

What do you think? Yeah, I think one of the things that we have to see what other things are in play because yeah, they make an engine smaller, but does that all of a sudden now there's more room? Does that change how you build your frame and how you're going to connect said motor into the frame to move weight around in the frame? Do you want it lower? Do you want to hire?

Because it's a little bit faster in the corners now. Where do you want that weight? So it could be that maybe you've got to build it differently to get the correct torque out of it because that's going to take a hit. And anytime you go smaller, you see your torque is going to go down. That'd be the first thing you lose.

And we're going to maybe, I don't know what the RPM caps are on these bikes that could play a big thing. What their fuel consumption is allowed on these engines that's going to play into like fuel tank design and where that sits in the bike. So I don't know if they're going to be, I think they won't step very far for the motors, but I don't think there's going to be as simple as just changing a few changes here and there to get the specs within what they need just because of all the other things that can change along well with that. I think they're also bringing in like a different minimum weight as well. I think that's inclusive.

They don't have an already of the rider. Just like they're going in moto two and moto three now. So that could change because you're going to need to have balance points and how that's going to affect the bikes. You want it low like the motors. So, I mean, that could all play into it as well, where they build a motor where you can even touch the balance to the back of it.

And maybe they use some smart thing where that like takes out the harmonics of it and helps that who knows there's all kinds of ways you can attach. So, you know, these are engineers and you being one. Yeah, you're not just going to let something get solved with a few changes. You're going to be like, Oh, what else can I do? Right.

And how many rules can I try to almost break along the way? Because they weren't very thorough in the explanation. So, I don't think they'll sit around too much. Maybe the first year, especially on teams that don't maybe have as big a budget like a pre-game engine, like, okay, what can we do while we focus on the frame? Or let's see where everybody else is.

Right. Maybe they don't, maybe they're okay and they don't need to make a big change. Find out. B&W, hard to say. Just because now they're having success and they found the rider to do it, but it took an extraordinary rider to get their bike there, which I've seen other bikes.

They haven't had the necessity to have an extraordinary rider. They've had good riders to get there, but the bike has been really good for everybody. Right. I think the biggest example would be like Tom Sykes and Johnny Ray. Right.

I think Johnny Ray was the exemplary driver. Tom likes is a world super bike champion. Right. Good bike, good rider, got the job done. Ray got on it, took it to another level, but then everybody copped Ray.

So, it just depends. So, it makes it easier for MotoGP to sell the dream to BMW. But on the other side, we just said, we're not going to open up two slots in MotoGP. You're going to have to buy out one of the slots that's already there. And that right there will take a lot of people out of the game asking Dreddy to say, you know what, why can't we just have our own slot?

It isn't like you guys are out here running out of space on the track. Well, no, we just, you know, this is our hard number for, you know, let's be real because they only want to split that pot so many ways. That's why. Yeah. I think it's more on MotoGP to sell it to BMW than BMW to come into MotoGP at this point.

Yeah. I mean, this is the part that I love when we get to technical regulations like this is like when they finalize them to read them and go, where can you find the unfair advantage, right? To quote Mark Donahue. That's what's fun about it. And I was just thinking, you know, like if you go down that path, if you're about timing, that's a way to put the two things that you can't do any other way, a motor that becomes torquey, but also still runs great on top end.

Like, okay, well, I know people who've done that. Well, that's Honda, you know, we throw that into the whole park. I mean, again, when you get to a smaller motor like that, mass centralization, like you're talking about, like, you know, Honda was kind of, they weren't the first, but they kind of really made a big deal about when they made the CBR 900 RR, right? It was mass centralization. This whole thing was so solid and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all that means something for the chassis and how that all affects it.

But yeah, it's going to be fun to see what happens, but that is everything that's news related, except for one last shout out here because we were talking about old people. Larry Pagrum at the young, young old age of 51 years old finished third in Saturday's Moto America Super Sport Race in mid Ohio. Then on the podium, he stated that the guys behind him should retire if they can't beat a guy who's 51 years old. Glad Larry still has his humility. And there's part of me that says he's not wrong.

You can't let a Larry Pagrum come on in there and get a podium. You can't let someone like Josh Hayes, who sets off for a couple of years and comes back and still runs you guys down. You are half, if not more than their age. And this is why we talked about that earlier. We're concerned that the talent we've had, we've had peak talent that is that still the peak talent.

Bobie was extremely good when he was 16. He is now 30. I was actually talking with a couple of guys out here because a couple of them live out here towards being the kid that used to race. So if I call him kid, they used to work on he's 30 now. I'm like, I'm sorry, what?

I'm like, oh, shit, I guess I'm old now. That makes sense. But yeah, he's like into his 30s and we're sitting there talking. He's traveling. He's got the sweetest job ever.

He's a bell representative. So they just fly him all over the world and he works with all these Bell sponsored athletes and takes care of them over the weekends. So he's never home. He has like four passport books from this year alone because he's been flying so much. Right.

But just talking to him, it's just he even he's talking about, he's like, dude, he goes, these guys, even the guys that are still there, like Gagne and Bobie, they don't have the edge they used to. They're family men. They've been in crashes. They're out there, but they have fun. Right.

And it's almost like you get paid. Yeah, it's not that much, but it's a super yeah. I mean, yeah, but it's the super club thing, like you mentioned, right? Where it's like, I mean, these guys might even be better served off just going back to super stock and doing that for a while because you need the numbers. And unfortunately, I think like most people here and the rest of the world feels that somebody think we see it really bad here in the United States is that just because you're fast doesn't mean you're going to do anything in racing.

You got to have money playing is simple. I mean, my kid loves jumping on my sim and looking at stuff. I was kind of just poke around a go-kart seem like the no touch stuff or anything else. It's not so much it really needs to be regulated down. It's not to tell you the truth, the go-karting itself is expensive, but it wouldn't be so shockingly expensive if it wasn't for the escalation that they allow to happen.

And it's like a semi truck should not be pulling up to a go-kart track or mini moto or motor cross. No semi trucks when you have the club level or fifth wheels that are 50 feet long and they roll out the eight extra motors. Like, I'm sorry, like this is a learning series. Like you get like, you should have to be able to break everything that you have to fit. It has to be in back of a Dodge Cummins and that's it, right?

That's it. At the maximum you're allowed to have, bring it in. Like we're trying to do some real like racing, but I think that's kind of what's happened to a lot of the American racing now is why we don't see that talent is because the talent, if the talent is attached to somebody that's rich, sure. But I think a lot of people, especially like we talked about earlier, just because you're good in one 25s or maybe just because you were bad at one 25s doesn't mean you aren't going to be great when you get on a motor three bikes or a motor because it fits your style better. Or maybe sometimes you have a growth spurt and you're out of racing in general, right?

But it, there's, it's, it's, it's all that's gotten on the hand in. So I think now we're seeing these talent caps come down and I do worry for that series because they, they need to adapt. And now they're in the very big pinch where it's like, we've got to charge a certain amount of money because we got to stay afloat. But same time that's causing people to not want to come because listen, I love supporting the local stuff, but dude, like if you're looking, I don't know how much tickets are, but let's say it's 50 bucks for the day. It's kind of like, Oh, you know, you guys might have a race that day.

I want to come down there, but that's kind of, you know, this is a tough economy. Yeah. Well, last time we went to Pittsburgh, I was trying to think of what it cost us for tickets for three days. So I was thinking three day passes, like 75 bucks. So it was like 25 a day.

That's not bad. I'm going to look at it. It's 400 to camp. Yeah. Yeah.

And I gotta tell you, I'm looking at doing a truck and travel trailer life. So that's, that's coming up here. Cause that the buying house life is, we're not going to worry about that. Superbikes at Texas, September 13th. What is the, so they, they're going to code it again.

Huh? Is this going to be the next one? Yeah. And 107 degree heat again. Cause they did it the first year.

It was like 107. And their race is like nobody out there. All right. So you know why they gave up, why they wanted their own weekend of superbikes at Coda? I'm sure Moto America was charging them an arm and a leg just to be there with them.

Huh? No, Moto America wasn't getting any of the gate or anything from being there with, with Moto GP. So like, well, we'll go and bring our own group and we'll take the whole gate. Because from what I understood when we went to barber that one year, that Moto America rents the entire facilities, like for that, for that 72 hour period, essentially Moto America owns it. They take everything, all the gate, they take all those camping, they take all of it.

Yeah. And they want it. That's what they want. And I was like, well, if you're going to do that, uh, either have that race in very late October, if not November or two in before may, cause it's just too hot in Texas to do it any other time. Okay.

So this goes back to, I got roasted complaining about this a few years ago because real super bike was very similar. I hated them when they split the races up and they would do it Saturday and Sunday, which forced you to go two days, but this is my thing. So you mentioned three day general mission, 90 bucks, Hey, 30 bucks a day. That's not bad, but let's go to two day now two days. It's 80 bucks.

So it's $10. So you can see what the discount for three is, but if you go to a one day mission and you want to just go for Sunday, the general mission is $70. So you're telling me that those two extra days are only 20 bucks, but that's not the thing. It's, I've got to find a hotel for two more nights, maybe a rental car for two more nights, or it makes getting out on a plane a little bit worse. So the costs are certainly going up outside of just that.

Right. So $70 for one super bike race and the supporting series, which you show baggers to me, I'm going to be in the concession area and you know, super bike or super sport. I don't even know who's out in super sport anymore, but you know, I'll check it out, but that's getting tough because you're at world super bike prices at that point for a single day. And yeah. So yeah, there are definitely benefits of staying longer.

It sounds cheaper. Your gate is cheaper overall, but that doesn't mean, I mean, like you said, what if you're camping? That's not, that's not going to work. And then, yeah, if you do not going to do camping for one day. So yeah, there's, but they're, they're, they're Dan, if you do Dan, if you don't, they got to get this money in to make it all work.

And if they don't get the money in, then it doesn't work. And their schedule gets smaller and they, they go to less tracks and they're doing pretty good. Now they're just too damn spread out. That's kind of their problem. I think.

I mean, yeah, it's not relevant because it's not happening like every other weekend. No, it's like it happens once a month, once a month, right? Yeah. Especially like now and all that, but anyway, we could get, we could have a whole modal America. What's what's it show forever.

Maybe we will one day at the end of the season or something. I think we should do that. Let's say, let's make a commitment. We're going to have them solve all motor America's problems. Show.

I think we did this once before we'll do it again. All right. Hey, let's get to, let's get to the Red Bull ring. Let's talk about what happened there and whatnot. Cause there's those five things.

Those five. We've only been doing this for an hour. Come on. It's like old times, my friend, old times, my friend. Oh, okay.

So Moto Jeep, Moto three qualifying QP one first Sato Adrian Fernandez, Suzuki and Lunetta all got out of that first session to go to the second session. Second session was could Kelso actually have pole? I was pulling for the guy talk to him at Coda. I mean, he was the first guy to do a sub 100 second lap around the Red Bull ring with a Moto three bike. Ruraita went down at turn 10.

Kelso went to pole with like a minute 30 to play, but our Tola came to pole with eight seconds left. Then Kelso was down at turn two when he had a chance to actually put it back right again. But it was Ivano, Ivano Tola with the pole. Kelso was second called followed by Viar followed by Hilgardo, Ruraita, Alonzo Bertelli, Picaris, Munoz and Yamanaka on the top 10. Now, when we go to the Moto three race, we learned early that morning that Ferrioli got a two long laps for slow riding.

Suzuki got a long lap. Lunetta would have two long laps. Picaris, he got a long lap penalty and Alonzo would get a long lap penalty as well. Alonzo specifically for slow riding on the line, which is something that we still can't fix. We've had that chat before, so let's not belabor that.

That worked. You had a chat last week too about it and yeah, it's a race track. You get out there at 85%, get off the track if you're not. Sorry. Yes, I agree.

I think they should have like a, the only thing I think that would be good for MotoGP that's Formula One related is they have those split Delta sectors for the, what do they call that? Virtual safety car. So it's like, hey, if you're on a qualifying lap, you've got to be within 110% of that lap coming back around so that way people can get by or whatever. Anyway, race day. We go through warm up lap, we're off the grid, we got the warm up lap, we come back to the grid and Ethan Vartola pulls a Harry Houdini move because he just disappeared from the grid.

He did. It was like, I was sitting there looking at the pictures. I'm like, wait a minute, something's, where the hell is Vartola? Where did he go? It appeared after replays and we had to go wait a little bit and we were on the tape because not even the guys in the booth knew kind of what happened.

It apparently that Vartola's bike stalled. He had to be pushed off the grid. They simply threw it back on the stand, the starter, sorry. And he rode down to the end of pit lane and would be absolutely positively dead last. I think he was like eight seconds off of last place when he got out or something like that.

Yeah, which was absolutely crazy. Kelso was out front followed by Horogardo, Alonzo Picaris, Munoz and he had Vire was down in eighth because he was kind of watching Vire. Vire's had a habit now of having mediocre starts, being mired in the mid pack and he sort of just rides his way to the front. So that was going to be interesting to look at. With 18 to go, Alonzo went to the long lap of convenience as Rich would say.

He went in in second or third. He came out in tenth. So he lost like seven places. It was about three seconds penalty to go through the long lap. Kelso and Munoz were having quite a little bit of a bash there.

They were definitely pressuring everybody that was there in the front. And the top three guys had all sort of pulled away there for just a little bit. They had gotten a little bit of a gap. Kelso, Munoz, Horogardo, Rurado, Vire and Alonzo were the top guys here. Kelso was starting to flirt with Traclyn.

It's 15 laps in. You could see he was just starting to touch the green. That last turn seems to be where a lot of people were doing that. The first turn, everybody wants to be on the green. And I think the other one is heading into nine or at nine.

People like to take that as well. And everybody was wanting to touch all of that. No center. Then he was flirting with Traclyn. That's Horogardo would get by Munoz.

Ortello had made his way to 18th by this point. And then Kelso got the Traclyn. That's warning. So I think his race got compromised there because Kelso really didn't do too much after that point. I think he was guarding himself so that he didn't have to go take the long lap penalty as well.

Even Ortola would wind up getting a Traclyn this morning as he was starting to come through the pack as well. What was a three rider battle became a seven rider train as all the others kind of wrapped back together against sort of Moto three. One guy, a couple of people get away. Everybody decides to just get in line and they just pull themselves right back up to each other. Yeah.

We can think, was it Horogardo for that? Because when it was Munoz and Kelso, they were playing teammate games. Anytime breaking Munoz would step to the inside to make sure nothing was going on there. And once Horogardo got past him in turn one, that's when everything kind of started like, okay. And then you start running Kelso.

Then Kelso kind of, I think, burned up his tires a little bit. And then the accordion started and that's, I think around about lap six, the rest of the field got sloppy. And about four laps later, these boys all got together and that's when it's like, oh, this is the start of the race now. Yes. Playtime was over and you noticed that that was definitely playtime over with 11 to go because Vire had moved himself to third.

So as per Vire's motive, he is roughly there now at the top three by halfway. He seems to save the tire strategically place himself within all of this. With 10 to go, it was Horogardo leading, Vire was second, Munoz, Kelso, Rueda, Alonso, Piqueras and Adrian Fernandez. Vire went to the front and Rueda just shoves Kelso off the track and just basically elbowed his way past him. It was a bit brutal there, but all's fair in love and racing.

We like that kind of stuff. Alonso then moves into second or Tola has made his way up to 12th. Alonso was by Vire at nine, which was a really good move because Alonso decided that at this point now, after having gone through the long lap, he was going to just do what he does best, which is appear at the front with full five-ish laps to go. I'm just going to ride off into the sunset here, boys, because you've been telling me around. I've been saving tires and been plotting the strategy, which no one seems to catch on to.

I haven't figured out why Vire can't. Vire's got the right idea too. He's there in that pack, but maybe his height, his weight, something causes him to want to use that tire maybe a little bit more because Alonso is a diminutive little kid. He's a Danny person, a Drosser-sized person. He probably may have one gross per left.

I think he's like 19. So he may grow a little bit there, but it's kind of funny that we've seen enough information that you should know that Alonso is coming and somebody should put out the board. Alonso is coming. They were talking about even they knew because it was long that penalty, the teams were talking about it. This is what made what they were summarizing why Kelso started to fall back is that Alonso's not in it.

Go out there and just run hard as you can for the first nine laps or whatever it is to see if we can get a gap. And it didn't. And Alonso cut back in there. And that was kind of, I think, game over for some of these guys is that they were trying to pull away before Alonso snuck back up. And well, that didn't go to plan.

Nope, sure didn't. Alonso Munoz and Hologardo had three tenths over Vier, Picaris, Hernandez, Rueda and Kelso with four laps to go. That's a pretty good gap for Moto three tenths. Ortollo had made his way to ninth. Fantastic ride from dead eight seconds behind the last person to ninth.

Pretty fantastic. At three laps to go, it was back to a five rider group. So the three rider group became a five rider group. And then we get to Picaris going to fourth. Vier drops off tires something.

He goes backwards at two to go. And then the last lap craziness, which you just got to love in Moto three. These boys do not disappoint no matter what the track is. But as we start the lap, Munoz was taking the lead off of Alonso turn one. Then Alonso got back by.

So it was Alonso, Hologardo and Picaris. Then Munoz went by Picaris. But at the end, Alonso would win the race sneakily. Munoz was second, which is a great ride by him. I think he benefited from drafting along with Kelso in the early part of the race.

Then Hologardo finished on the podium in third. Picaris was fourth. Vier fifth. Fernandez sixth. Rueda seventh.

Kelso eighth. Ortollo with that great ninth place. Rossi was tenth and Bertelli's Azuki Yamanaka, Rollstone and Furusato taking the final championship point. A fantastic Moto three race of and quite frankly, the best race of the afternoon. These guys did not disappoint.

No, it was definitely the best race. And one of the guys I want to give a shout is is Picaris. He was so fun to watch, especially in that when it started getting a little boring, the middle he was coming up and he was making move after move on the brakes on the outside slide underneath. I mean, he had the best moves of the whole race. He just, it wasn't so much that he lost his speed at the end.

He just made the wrong move at the wrong time and got trained. And like four guys went right by him and that was it. And he was like, with like two laps to go, he tried to make it up coming back with, yeah, you just, you're just not going to get all of that right off there. So really didn't enjoy watching that. And something I've realized, if you take a year or two off of motive three, you won't recognize most of the names when you come back.

I think like I saw Stefano NEPA had crashed. I was like, Oh, that's a bingo for me. I know one of the, that name, that's been around for a little while, but somebody other guys, I'm like, who, what is this name? Like, Oh, I'm going to have to actually study some days before I get in here. But yeah, it was, at first it was looking like we weren't going to get a good race because it was like three guys split out.

And then when I saw them all come back together, I was like, all right. And then like the middle, they all kind of sat around, they jostled, they were like long distance runners. You didn't want to be at the back of it, but you didn't necessarily have to lead. And then, yeah, you can tell with about five to go. Then it was like, all right, now that's we got there.

That's when Alonzo was like, I'm going to pull this pen. You guys have fun balance for second place. I'm going to sit out here and I'm going to be the best on the brakes, the best getting out of the corner and the fastest in the middle of the corner. So, you know, good luck. Yeah.

Yeah. I rate Alonzo. I think he's really good. He, he, I'm, I can't wait to hear Rich's interview with him from Silverstone. Rich is like, yeah, he, he is the complete package.

And well, man, if you think about it, you could, you have this possibility of a KTM team. That is Pedro Acosta and David Alonzo, a Moto GP bikes. That is a mouthwatering proposition to me. If I'm pit buyer, I'm going, yay me. I have them in a contract.

Well, the thing of it is you have, I think Acosta is a great talent. I think Alonzo is a great talent. Yeah. He needs to season out some, right? Win a world championship.

If he stays, not a big deal. If he moves to Moto two, not a big deal. You know, they have a couple of years in Moto two, let him see what he can do for a Moto championships and then, you know, put him in whatever you want to call it. The gas, gas, whatever tech three wants to be called. Yeah.

That's the part of gas, gas, water to your pick. Put him in there, seasoning him up and then, you know, bounce Bender out of there and have Acosta and him running together. You have a power team. The boys from Austria need to get it together. They have got to get the bike right because they've got talent that can win races.

I mean, I think you and I, I think we would agree that Bender has talent, but he's really that elite alien level talent. I don't think so. That's such a tough one because when you go back and watch his Moto two and Moto three stuff, man, he was really, really good and his race craft was superior. That's what kind of got Moto three. He knew when to pull the pin.

Would I say he's generational? No, but I wouldn't sleep on him ever. I mean, that guy, he's definitely got it. And I think it's one of those perfect storm kind of people. Give him the right bike at the right time.

He will put a hurt on everybody, but that hasn't happened just yet. And the KTM, maybe with Pedro being there, it can get pushed a little harder and we'll get the data and then the bike can improve to get both of them there. Maybe, maybe. That's what I'm hoping. It's just so tough, man, when you're up there.

And that's elite level shit, right? We're talking three tenths a lap. We're not talking you're off the back. Three tenths. That's it.

Three tenths of somehow that's $40 million of development. There you go. All right. Who said it? I can't remember.

Speeds money. How fast you want to go. Yeah. And there's, there's some fun equations out there that people will show. Like I think drag racing was always the one they did because it's easiest because of all the rules.

And it's like, if you want to go from a 15 second car to a 13 second car, it'll cost you $300. If you want to go from a 13 second car to an 11 cent car, it'll cost you $2,000. You want to go from 11 cent car to a nine cent car, it'll cost you $20,000. If you go nine second to an eight second car, it'll cost you $300,000. And it's like, wait, what?

And it's just that getting that much more out of it. Yeah. You're stepping into some crazy things, but it at the top, it's even crazier. You got to be a little bit lucky too. And yeah, you got to hope that the brain drain doesn't come in.

And KTM might be having some of that too. Yeah. When you're doing, when you're having that rise, people want to know like, Hey, you've got good development. And when Honda's having things with it, maybe not, then it's like, well, let's get this guy over here and see what he can bring from that team. And then all of a sudden those pieces start to crumble.

And you're not, you know, you don't have that gel that you had of like, let's go forward. And you know, we all know here, we've all been part of corporate world, we get new guys in the top and they got ideas and we have to execute said ideas, even though we're telling them, don't do that. That shit don't work. No, no, no, we want to do this. That's why I got body here.

I got body here for ideas and you've wasted two years all of a sudden, but yeah, KTM, they, they, I think they're going to have a, now they've got a lot of time in motor GP. They've got really good writers. They have a whole stable of them. It is more important, baby, than any of the other teams outside of maybe Honda, but they've got champion pedigree to get the next rules right. Because that's the space to do.

Cotty has gotten this right over this time and they're going to sit there, but that doesn't mean when we get these next ones, they're going to be the same team. They've got good personnel in there and they're getting brain drain like crazy too. That's like, okay, then what happens? Like Yali said, Yamaha is the one that, well, we've always had the right frame. You just can't make enough power.

Now the power is not the issue anymore. We've got the frame also. They're back on top. Right. Right.

Oops. Who knows? But what's interesting is I'm wondering how KTM is structured. Is it because Ducati, Ducati is Ducati and they are what they are because they let one man, Gigi Alinia direct what they were doing. Now Gigi may not have came up with all the ideas.

Gigi may not have designed the audience, but Gigi understood what they needed to put on the bike or what were where they had the most gains or where they were going to benefit and what they were going to do. Now, I don't know who's running the show technically at KTM. I mean, I kind of get the impression that there's sort of like a suspension boffin. There's some sort of aerodynamic boffin and there's some sort of motor boffin. And if it's like any other Germanesque kind of car company that I've worked on, yeah, they didn't talk to each other about how this worked because the brakes and suspension don't go anything with like trying to put driveshafts and transmissions into either one of them.

Right. Let's take the whole car part to fix it kind of a thing. So yeah, I don't know. Like I said, it's going to be interesting. But if anybody could, I mean, of all the teams, I think that KTM has probably got the most money just because they have Red Bull on their side.

Now, Massa, DD, Massa, Massa, Massa, Massa, I guess. How you sound him being gone. He was completely a petrolhead. He was into anything with a motor. And now the Thai guy, there's, you know, you see all this crazy miss fallout, whatever from with the Formula One team.

Well, yeah, you know, I don't think it's going to happen with the motorcycle guys, but you know, you never know. But anyway, it's going to be again, at some point, KTM is going to have all this great talent and they're going to have to have a motorcycle that is going to prove the worthy of the talent that they have on the sign of the books. That's just what's going to come down to. Let's look at the championship real quick in Moto3. This gives Alonso, I think I heard a statistic.

He is the second winningest Moto3 rider with like 15 wins behind Fennati. It was something crazy like that. I was like, yeah, the dudes have been like, like either wins or he's not on the podium. Yeah. And Moto3 is coming.

It's easier to do that because guys don't last that long. Right. You're there for a couple of years and you're moving up or you're you're not and you're getting replaced. And so if you get hot, you know, that's probably we're not going to see any long streaks like that ever down. And that, because if you're making that many wins, you get moved up automatically.

Right. See if like you're out of here. You can't keep winning you down here. You're going to go. So yeah, but I mean, still very, you know, I mean, mentioning the same kind of company, you know, was a good, now that's where you mentioned to kind of see a Fennati.

It's like, all right, you're doing good here. Let's see what you do at the next one. Keep it cool. That'd be the first thing you should do. That's true.

But that puts him, that puts Alonso, I should say at 224 points, a cool 71 points ahead of Ortola. I don't want to say the championship is over. I mean, anything can happen. There's a whole host of stuff between now and the end of the years, all the three triple headers that have to go out. It's going to be where the, where this is one or lost.

But Alonso may have at least one finger on the trophy at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Holgardo is third. He is a on 149.

So that puts him only four behind Ortola. Vier has slid back with his last couple of races. He's on 142, seven back of Holgardo. Then it's Munoz, Yamanaka, Fernandez, Rueda, Piqueras, and Kelso. Now after a couple of good, you know, top five finishing has brought himself up to the 10th place in the championship.

That is everything from Moto3. Let us move towards Moto2. So in Moto2, it was Altegr, Vendigerberg, Arenas, and Senna, Aegis, and Bo Ben Schneider who got through from the first qualifying session to go to the second one. I mean, it was very weird to see, or gosh, I had to have Altegr there again. Again, he's hit or miss this year on whether he is in or out, but Agura could not take action in Moto2.

He was going to have to sit out the weekend because he broke his hand in a high side that happened early Saturday morning, I believe, at the dreaded chicane on this 2B part of it. He got away from me and flipped him over to high side, smashed his hand into the ground, and he broke, I think, two fingers in his hand. So he was declared unfit. No I Agura, which was like, oof, okay, well, we'll see what happens here. Garcia is kind of inching away here in this championship.

After Silverstone, when basically everything fell apart and the stars aligned for Garcia to get to the podium, I was like, wow, it's almost as if history is repeating itself here. But we got into that second qualifying. We also learned that Joe Roberts was probably going to stay at American Racing, which we kind of knew since he wasn't going to go to Trackhouse. But Arbolino was going to have a three grid place penalty no matter where he started because he had blocked Kinnett in practice. So that was not going to be there.

It was pretty much a lackluster qualifying session, but there was a fact that Gonzalez had gone down at turn two, which necessitated a red flag, which brought them with only nine minutes or so left in the qualifying session where it became quite crazy. But in the end, Vietti would get a pole position. He had a pole here last year. Lex Attracts got a pole this year. Then Kinnett, then Garcia, who was on that front row, making everybody look bad now.

Then you had Arbolino, but he was going to drop three places. Lopez, Dixon, and Roberts would qualify 11th, and Algar was even farther down the list as well. We would go into the race at the next day. Basically, everybody was literally wide at turn one. It just looked like everybody just fanned out and said, well, there's more racetrack out there past all the blue and green paint.

We're just going to go over there. But when they got it back together again, Kinnett was leading. Vietti was right there. Garcia, Lopez, Dixon, and then Ramirez. Arbolino was down to eighth.

Roberts was 16th, and Algar was 12th. I thought, okay, we'll see what these guys can do here. Vietti got by Kinnett. I hate to say it, but that was the last change of lead position that happened. Pretty much everything rode off there.

Dixon was working hard to get by Garcia, and he wound up getting past that with 18 to go. Gonzalez quickly into the track limits warning because there were 16 still to go on that one. At 15 laps to go, Vietti, Lopez, Kinnett, Dixon, Arbolino, and Garcia. Basically, Vietti looked like he was starting to escape at that point, and he was. He had a 1.5 second lead.

But then, all of a sudden, the guys were back on top of him. He had caught the false neutral in the Triumph engine at turn four. I think it was the downhill turn four, which was interesting because Simon Kriffer was talking to the guy who heads up Triumph's engine department. Maybe it was Applegate who was talking to him like at Silverstone. They said that next year, Triumph is going to change their gearbox so you don't have to go through neutral to get to first.

It's going to be like the MotoGP bikes. You can't get the false neutral. What was interesting was that they showed the replay from Vietti's onboard, and you can see him clicking down the gears and you see it go to neutral. Nothing happens. He's riding off.

I'm like, ooh, that's a bad news deal. He had caught the false neutral and basically got back in on there. But Vietti just put his head back down, stretched his lead back out again. That was all there. It got down to it where Vietti was gone.

He had like two seconds on Lopez and Kinnett, and Dixon was right there. Garcia got a long lap for track limits, so he was going to drop down. He lost two places. With five to go, he was 13th. Garcia is actually having a bad day.

If Iagura was there, given the fact that Iagura dominated the first two practice sessions, you got to think that he was in with a shout for the win, podium at the worst. But Dixon then came on with two laps to go. He did best Kinnett for third and got on the podium. The race finished with Vietti, Lopez, and Dixon on the podium. Kinnett, Arbolino, Ramirez, Darren Bender, and Somkat Chantra, who seems to love that stop-go circuit stuff.

He seems to do real well there. Robert's managed a ninth place. Solach, Anshu, Goubar, Gonzalez, Garcia 14th, taking two points. These may be crucial two points to be said. Vincent Agis scoring the last point there.

A dull and dry Moto2 race, which we've sort of come to expect from Moto2, but the guys have really had some barn burners so far this year. But this one, except for the Vietti false neutral, there was really no real excitement about the beginning at the front of the field. This is one of those weekends where we joked about it before the show. It's like, yeah, I'm going to come back and watch a full weekend of MotoGP. First time I've done that in a while.

We got one good race there, but this was subpar. Chelsea Novedi, like you said, he had everybody by a bunch. Even when he messed up things, he was like, okay, never mind. He didn't stress. He's like, no, I'm just going to keep doing what I was doing.

And then the gap just got even further and further away. I think Jake Dixon gets my rider of the race. He was quite a ways back of the battling front. And he just kind of kept his head down and took advantage of a couple of mistakes those guys made there at the end. And he had some really good pace.

And once he got by, that was it. So good on him for that. But one thing that I'm going to harp on, and I've always harped on a lot, is the camera direction still has not improved. I mean, if you've got guys, we focused on the top four guys from most of that race. And I know there was stuff going on with the other ones and they would cut back for a second.

And then you see a pass going like, never mind, let's go back to just a random rider by himself. I'm like, what are we doing? We don't have that much action. Find the action, put that on TV. I don't care if it's the 14th place.

The guys at front are processional right now. When they start getting, you can see the times when the splits get down to 0.3, bring it back on over. But until then, nothing much was going on. So it was, if you had chores to do this weekend and you only got to watch two races, I think Moto 2 is probably the one you were going to drop maybe. But it does give MotoGP a run for boring as well.

They have their phase. We'll get to that in a second. But not a whole lot to add for Moto 2. It was just a race and a guy won and some other guys didn't. And that was about it.

Yeah. Yeah. So with the points, Garcia is on 162. He is 20 ahead of Iagura. He really could have done some damage to Iagura here, but Iagura escaped with that.

Roberts is on 130, which is only 32 behind. He's touching distance to Garcia, but we got to find racetracks that Joe likes and we need some wins strung together if we want any chance at this championship. Then there's Alonso. He was on 120. He's 42 back.

Alonso probably doesn't have a chance at it now. I think he's done. Altegr has no shot now at this point in this championship. The guy who was so highly rated at the end of last season just is nowhere to be found at times. And he just can't figure it out.

I don't know if it's a Pirelli thing and it's a field thing that he just doesn't have with it or just can't find that setting that he needs, but he's won. He won at Saxon Ring. I think he won the opener. It was like, whoa, okay, this is Altegr's year. That's it.

He's done. But I was ready to take the entire season and ride it off right there in total domination of Altegr, but that's not the case. But yeah, 50 points back. It's two race wins, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe.

Then Vietti did himself a favor with the 25 points he got to jump to sixth. Then it's Dixon, Kenneth, Gonzalez, Chantreau, your top 10. That's everything I got from Moto2. Let's hit MotoGP. At least the qualifying is interesting in MotoGP.

Give it that. We knew at the beginning of qualifying that Gigi Antonio was not going to be raised. He was unfit. He had a shoulder injury from the crash he sustained. Amazingly, Pedro Acosta, who had basically trashed three MotoGP bikes in the succession, including a 190 mile an hour get off heading to turn four.

Lucky boy. Lucky boy. I'd rather be lucky than good anytime. It shows the boy at least knows how to push, man. He's not going to not push, apparently.

Yeah, he's no fear. No fear. No fear. Correct. Yeah.

He is still young and stupid and he has not become old and wise because he's not broken enough bones yet. That's true lore of the T-shirt and that's the God's honest truth, quite actually. In the first MotoGP session, you had Acosta, you had Miller, you had Augusto Fernandez, and both Trackhouse bikes. Trackhouse has had some decent qualifying here. I was thinking, well, maybe the Trackhouse boys are going to get out of this one, go into the next one and see what happens.

Paul Aspargo, he shot to the top with a great lap. He was wild carding on another KTM there. He was actually pimped by Miller and Acosta had one lap to go to try to get in and he missed it and wound up four. So Acosta couldn't put it together. So that meant that Paul and Miller were going to move on to qualifying two.

Qualifying two, we find out that Martin has a bad cut on his left thumb sustained by taking a shower in his motorhome on Friday evening. Okay. In the shower, in his motorhome. Now, I have a nice motorhome with a very nice shower. There is nothing in there that is sharp enough to cut me.

Now, hey, I'm not the multimillionaire that Martin is. So maybe he has some more fancy stuff in his shower, but I think it's a little weird that he cut himself in the shower. Do you think it's just a bullshit story? I don't know. Maybe it's not fancy enough.

Maybe he's got stuff with exposed burrs or something. That's why he needs to step up his motorhome game, for example. That's a weird one. I mean, but as I've gotten older, I've done a bunch of silly dumb shit to hurt myself. And yeah, so plausible.

But also, I also know racers that have hurt themselves and I've seen what they write in the articles and I know what you're doing. I'm not going to name any names, but there was someone that had a training accident on their bike and I actually know they were dicking around on a scooter and crashing and watered themselves up on a hill and got hurt. That's what really happened. What does it rhyme with? Yeah, well, maybe offline.

But yeah, there's stuff like that where it's like, okay, so yeah, you know, he maybe, you know, I think the one that us that had been around for a while, it's just a mosquito bite. That's all it is. Yes, it's a mosquito bite. Okay. So anyway, Ben Yaya rolled out and just went to a 128, 142.

He was like four tenths underneath the lap record. Just crushed it. First time out, first set of flying laps. It was crazy. The question would be, could he get us to a 27?

That was what we were wondering. Well, yeah, Martin got to a 27. He got to a very fast, very, very fast 27. Ben Yaya was a tenth slower. Pole then had a crash at turn three.

Lace would jump up to third and then Mark Marquez takes third back. But Martin would hold on to take the pole. Ben Yaya didn't get the best out of his second run. He came across line shaking his head. He kind of knew that he'd kind of botched it a little bit and he did not have enough to get back at Martin.

But he would start second. Mark Marquez on the front row with the year old Ducati. Then Alessia Spargaro, Miller Vignales, Bastianini, Morbidelli, Zecki, and then Pole Aspargaro tenth. Okay. Cool.

All right. So now we've got to go to the sprints. What do you think of the sprint? This is the first time you've watched a weekend with sprints probably. I'm curious what you thought of the idea.

What do you think of the idea of the sprint and the whole thing? Yeah, I've been watching the sprints for a little bit. But I know they put them in as a reaction, I think, to what I was doing. I think the one thing after a couple of years of watching sprints is while it's cool to get more racing rather than practice, it kind of spoils your Sunday because you kind of know what's going to happen because it isn't like they're going to make grandiose changes to the bike. So when you see the results, you're kind of like, oh, it's probably what's going to happen tomorrow unless someone made a mistake.

It's going to kind of help. We know who's fast, who isn't. And maybe tires will come into a bit of a factor, right? Especially because I think in the sprints are going to run soft. And we saw that with one of our riders when they switched over to medium compounds, their speed went away.

So there's a little bit of that. But do I like the sprint? I can't say that I do like the sprint. I don't hate it's where it's like, we need to get it out of here. But I also don't need it to enjoy a MotoGP weekend.

I agree. I'm wondering if it'd be better if it was like only at some tracks. Yeah, I see that instead of like every weekend having a sprint. What if it was half as many sprints? I'm a complete format change.

They're doing sprints. I don't know. Do something that's old school. Red Heats. I don't know if you want more racing.

I've had that idea with Moto3 and yeah, having this chaos in qualifying for Moto3. Screw it. Literally run. Literally take your free practice to say all the odd positions go to the first heat. All the even positions go to the second heat.

First heat runs just before MotoGP qualifies. After MotoGP qualifies, the second heat runs. It'd be great for the kids because they get more race time as opposed to qualifying. But anyway, we could go on and on about what we don't like about that stuff. But let's talk about the actual sprint.

Benyaya got out front with Martin and Mark Marquez. Alex Marquez fell down to chicane. Martin got by Benyaya. That's a tongue twister. Then Benyaya went right back at him again.

I think we were worried about the whole idea of tire pressures and being too low and having somebody in front of you and all that whole stuff. And then Martin blows his chicane on the next lap as he comes through. He had that bike every which way, including almost vertical stoppy trying to get by Benyaya, which then he just had to let it go. Benyaya saw it coming, cut back under him. And now we get the fact that Martin has blown the chicane and you have to lose one second.

Otherwise, you will receive a long life penalty. So the question became, where was that going to be? Did Martin give up enough space? In my opinion, I think if Martin was smart, he should have just fallen behind Mark Marquez because he definitely would have had the pace to get back past Mark pretty easily. Then he wouldn't have been in the situation he was going to be in later.

Agree? I agree. So Benyaya is with Martin there. They've got a one second advantage over Mark Marquez. He's got a half a second over Lelais.

He's followed by Miller, Morbidelli, and Bastianini. Martin does get a long lap penalty for not heating one second. With seven to go, Martin goes through the long lap and he gets out just before Lelais to Spargeras. He's lost basically one place in there. But at this point, then really it becomes a processional sprint as Benyaya is ahead of Mark Marquez, ahead of Martin, ahead of Lelais, ahead of Miller, and ahead of Bastianini.

But then with five laps to go, Mark Marquez does the unsensible thing and falls off. Just think about where Mark Marquez could be inside this points championship if he would have just stayed on most of these sprint races and said, you know what? The motorcycle I'm riding isn't good enough to give me a win, but I can bank some points and make myself look a lot better going into the championship. What do we say earlier today? I know.

That's never going to be that guy. I would say, I mean, here's Mark, full disclosure, I'm a Mark Marquez fanboy. I think the man has absolutely insane amount of talent and natural feel. I would have thought after nearly destroying your arm, you would have come to the conclusion that I know where the limit is and perhaps maybe I do not want to cross it all the time. I think occasionally yes, but all the time, no.

Anyway, with that last little bit of drama having taken place, it gives us Benyaya winning Martin second now, and then Lelais, Bastianini, Miller, Morbidele, Binder, Bizecki, Espargo, and Acosta in 10th. Now that left us with both of our title contenders, Benyaya and Martin, dead level on 250 points going into tomorrow's race. Is there any little thing you would like to add to that, Skyler? Yeah, it's the penalty. It's such a weird thing to like, oh, you got to drop a second and you got to know what a second is.

That's kind of strange. And then, you know, did you gain an advantage making the move? And it's like, obviously not. He was in second when he went into the corner. He came out and he was in second when he came out of the corner.

But no, but then you have to think about it this way too. If that was sand there, you're asked what it came out in third, fourth, trying to dig that bike out or you might have crashed. So man, talk about like, I could see everyone's viewpoint on what works, what doesn't work, why mine's better than yours. And it's such a conundrum. But the one thing I will say that'll fix all of this, not building tracks with runoff room.

You have to have track with it till these gravel over there. I agree. It killed this race, though. The penalty killed this race. Yes.

And that was the biggest problem with it. It was like, and they took like three or four laps before they even announced the penalty was coming out. Right. If you know the one second rule is like flag it immediately. It wasn't going to make a difference, but you know, it's like, okay, he takes it right away and then maybe he closes the gap better.

But it just, they were the only two there out there. Marquez was off by this point because he was running about half a second, a lap slower than those boys up front. And then once Martin was there and it was just like, like they cut back to a shot and Bagni had a straightaway and everybody and it's like, well, cool. Can you fast forward? So that's what I started doing, skipping through a little bit like, all right, and kept some notes here, but like the notes were easy.

Bagni takes early lead. There's about three more points after that. And one was the penalty. So it's like, all right, cool. Anyway, so without much of that, we guess we get onto the main show.

Sunday. Yeah, we get to Sunday here. At the beginning, Mark Marquez botches the start. He tangles with more, but then he tangles with more Battelle and they're both wide in turn one. It appeared as though the whole shot device did not engage properly on Marquez's bike.

If you go back and look at the replay at the start, you can clearly see that there is a big gap between his front tire from front fender and his front fairing. And if you look at Benyaya's or Martins, there's a very little gap. So that wasn't working. So that box that Peco had Martins who had blasted into the lead was all good, but Peco blasted back by a turn one on the second lap to get that. So that was, that happened.

It was a bit of a ding dong with Benyaya and Martin. They're back and forth because they, again, they know they can't afford to be second because the tire rule, the air pressure thing is going to cause a problem here. So they did have a bit of a ding dong. It was slightly interesting, but with 25 to go, it's Benyaya, Martin, Bastionini who, okay, he's really good with tires. Maybe he's going to do something later in the race.

But at that point, the front three were gone. So Benyaya, Martin and Bastionini are gone. Behind them is Miller, Bender and Alessio Spargaro. Bender would get by Miller and that was all good there. Man, that was good.

Then you had Marc Marquez all the way down and all the way down in seventh, and he was trying to fight his way back up. We didn't get any movement at all from there. I mean, the beast at this point with 20 laps to go, he had nothing for the two guys out front. You could tell Bastionini did not have anything for these guys. So like, okay, what else is going to happen here?

Well, Marc Marquez wound up ramming his arm into Miller's rear at turn two. That was crazy. And that's the arm that you basically had broken completely in half and then put it back together again and then had to pay that broken and rotate it 30 degrees. And you use that arm to hit him with. We said it before.

This is not how the guys work. I mean, for being that, embracing that heart, I congratulate him. I really do because my brain would have turned off and been, no, I'm not going there again. Miller went down at 2A and then there was a question of whether there was going to be rain. There was a very big, dark, ominous cloud that was starting to roll towards that way earlier.

They had talked to the guys at Ducati. Their weather radar said that there's a real possibility of us having a sprinkle at the end of the race. Like, wow, okay, are we going to see Bender win on slicks again? It's like, it's happened before. Will it happen again?

Again, at that point, it's like we got to 15 to go and Benyai is now gapping Martine by about 1.2 seconds. Like, oh, wow. Even Martine has decided to actually give up here. And then there's a huge gap in the notes because there is nothing that happens at all until the end of the race in which Benyai wins. Then he's followed by Martine and Bastianni.

Marc Marquez would get his way. It would be at fourth, stay at fourth, then Bender. Bizecki would work his way past the KTMs and become sixth. Then Matri Venuelos again works his way up to seventh during all that, which we really didn't get to see. We just got to watch the processional happenings up front.

They did at times kind of give you the little box insert there to show you what was going on at the front when they kind of showed you what was going in the back. But again, there obviously was some good racing for say five, six, seven, eight place. Why couldn't we have watched that? Because again, watch the times. If Martine was getting close, you could cut back to that or whatever.

Where was eighth place is Vordeli, ninth is Alessio Spargro, tenth Alex Marquez, then Polo Spargro, Olivera Acosta was 13th, then Nakagami, and then Augusto Fernandez taking the last championship points. With that, the championship standings quickly. Benyai is on 275 because they were tied on 250, add 25 to it, and Martine is behind by five points because he only got 20. After that, Bastian is on 61 points. This championship is between those two guys.

Make no mistake about it. It's going to be whoever falls off least. Just real quick, but he's not on 61 points. He's 61 points back. There we go.

Just want to make sure because if that was the case. I read that one wrong. Just to make sure because someone's like, wait, what? Sorry. I read that one wrong.

That's my bad, guys. Yeah. Then it's Bastian Marquez, Vignola, Binder, Acosta sliding down the championship table now. Spargro, DG Antonio, and Alex Marquez in the top 10. That's it for Mastrilla.

That's all I got. I think the MotoGP race was very much like the Moto2. A couple of guys got out front and then one guy got away. Something after Peco's tires got warmed up, his drive coming out of corners was unreal. He was getting by Martine like he was on a whole different bike.

It was insane. He could just hook it up out of there and drive, drive, drive. That's really what got him out of the lead. Then Martine was trying to push on the brakes. I think he used up his front tire a bit.

We didn't see any more of that from him. I heard that Ducati turned the traction control down on Vignola's bike. That he's doing it all with the right wrist. If he's got that feel and he can feel that, more power to him, man. But that's the thing.

If you are riding non-reliant on traction control and you can feel what's going on, you're going to be faster because if traction control has to work, it's going to slow you down in some capacity. I don't care what method of traction control you want to use. Cut spark, cut fuel, whatever. It's going to cause you to not have as good a top end run at the other end. Every RPM that you carry off a corner is that RPM carried that little bit longer on that straightaway.

Stoner was famous for running with very little traction control. Literally he says, that's only there in case I get really far out of shape or it starts raining. Maybe Benyai is just old school and he can just feel it because it looks like it. Well, they're also saying too, the tires are a bit different for this round as well because they're heat treated because of the way the track was going to be in the weather. Maybe that helped out with the way their setup was going as well.

It was just a domination by Peko for the whole weekend outside of qualifying, which he just messed up his lap or else he probably would have got it there too. Even so, his race pace was undeniable. When they cut to, I think we had about three to go, they showed his lap times and he was like a 129.8, 129.8, 129.8, 129.6, 129.7. It was just hammering him through and he only did this like the 130s for like 15 laps. It was insane.

Even then he just basically from his best to worst time, there's a variance of half a second. That is just metronomical. It's crazy. This is where I think we talked about our discussions earlier with MotoGP. It's not that we have to slow someone down.

It's that we've got to figure out how to bring some of these other bikes closer because I think... What was it we got? Go back to the results here. It's Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, and then KTM in fifth. I think Brad Bender was 20 seconds off of the lead at the end of the race.

First non-Ducati bike. Then it's Ducati again. Yeah, then it's Ducati again. Then it's a Pellea. Then we started mixing up Ducati, Pellea.

But yeah, I don't even see it. Oh, there's a Honda. 14. Yep. That's the first Japanese bike on the list.

Yeah. It's also a lot to do with this track though. This track has always been Ducati's favorite. KTM was good here because they were fully focused on power to begin with before. You didn't have to have the best turning bike here.

Just good on the brakes, good on the gas, and all that good stuff. So yeah, again, not the most exciting race. But I think the most important thing here is the championship stays tight. Five points. That might as well be zero with the way these boys are trading things back and forth.

Five points is nothing. So I mean, maybe the end of the season it'll be something. It's so close. But I think it sets up for a really good finish here towards the end of the season. And I think going forward, I definitely try to pay attention for those two.

I think something else I wanted to talk about was Acosta coming back down to reality. I don't think he's gotten any slower. It's just that this is the rookie pain. You're going to have those races where you fly out there. And he basically has virtually broken his ankles the way Lorenzo did where he was flying, broke his ankles and slowed down a little bit.

And it's one of those things like, all right, you can go really fast. You just got to learn how to not cross that line. And he's obviously been through this week and he's still trying to find where that is. And when he gets there, I mean, we said you've quoted it. We said it a bunch on here.

If you rather have a rider that you have to slow down than one you have to try to make faster. And yeah, one of those is much, much easier than the other. And once you slow them down just a little bit, you need to give it another guy that gets it there. So the championship definitely has some interesting points going on for the rest of the year. There's two guys in it.

Bashtanini is not going to get there because he's at 61 points back and he showed nothing in this race. And this is one of those crucial points in the season. We've had a lot of racing. They're still racing to go. But by now, these bikes, there's not a lot of change.

There's not going to be a big change. There's not going to be upsets and people figuring out setups like this is it. So if you even got to buy now, you're probably not going to have it by the rest of the season. So these boys are going to battle out and we're looking forward to it. Oh, I am.

This is going to be, it's going to be good. It's going to be last. I think it goes all the way down to the end. The question, I, well, I mean, I don't know what Ducati is bringing to the Mizano tests. Oh yeah.

You want to talk about, let's talk about boring races. How badly do you, how bad do you think the Mizano races are going to be? Because once everybody's been there one weekend, then we go back to the next weekend, everybody's got to dial it in. It's like, we have to hope for weather weekend. You got to hope for weather.

You got to hope for the, because it's so close to the coast that they get something. Yeah. I'm more interested to see what like Yamaha, Honda, KTM bring to the test at test there after it, because it gives you an inkling of hope that they're going to be able to do something for the year. Does it though? Does it?

We've been talking about hope for a lot. I mean, I still read MotoGP news a lot more than I listen to the podcast or anything else than I do watch the racing. But I mean, I can't even look at Fabio in the face right now. Cause I don't know like how much bullshit they keep feeding you every year that you're like, they're going to have turned around here in a couple years. I'm excited about the program.

You're excited to be in 17th again, but it's what you're signing up for right now. Like come back if they get better. But I mean, how many times have you heard like all these different Honda riders and like, Oh, we think we've gone back to testing. We saw something. We, this guy said, this thing has changed this into the same thing over and over.

They haven't found a way. And I think they haven't found the way to go. And they just are stifled right now. So I don't think anything they do at this point is going to cross such a massive gap. If they're not changing the engine and they're not changing the frame drastically, there's nothing that they can do.

That's going to get them to where they need to be in my opinion. You know, we've been here before. We've been here in world super bikes. What was it like? Uh, 99, 2000, 2001.

It was the Ducati cup. Oh yes. It was, it was, it was horrid. Nobody, I mean, nobody, call foggy days, man. Yeah.

It was, it was cause, um, they had the nine, well, the nine, nine, nine that Hodgson won his world championship on in 2000 or whatever. I think that was, there was, there was, it was bad. It was horrible. It was just like, Oh, this is just, you know, they, they went so far to like throw, I don't want to say it's horrible, horrible, but they threw like different size restrictors in the Ducati and there was rev limits and they tried like every year, everybody back on par. I think they even went to like, didn't they start throwing ballast on the twins or something and they had to wait not so much later.

I can't remember where I didn't really kick it into like the Bayless era. Yeah. Foggy was running there letting them boys pretty much run a bigger engine or anything else. And you could tell. And the only reason that you could talk all those restrictors and all that, they had the bigger motor and there's no replacement for displacement.

Right. Yes. And the read, that's why they dominated. And the only reason that's proven is Honda said, fuck it. We're not, you guys are not making the rules out of that.

Hey, just as four cylinders anymore, we'll go and build the RC 51. We'll make this V twin and then guess what they did. They went out there, won championships and were beating Ducati because they had a bike that was fair in the rules. So a little different, I think, than here in prototype racing. I get it.

I get it. But I mean, I think what I was what I was trying to say in some weird fashion was, look, you may not like all the races. Okay. There's been some good races earlier this year. Okay.

We've sort of, we skimmed the fat off the milk and the cream has rise to the top. Okay. It's Benya and Martina. I think we knew that was going to happen. These guys got the best bikes.

They got all this. But you know, on the day you can see Basinini win. Oh yeah. Silverstone, right? So you still have these inkling of things that are going to happen.

It isn't anywhere the drudgery of what we had back there in world super bike for a long time. You said to the point where Honda said, screw you, we're building a twin. Or not even that that long ago in MotoGP when we had the CRT era. Yeah. You know, we had different that.

If you also look to the front, there wasn't, I mean, there was like two bikes you can went on there and Ducati was trying to get it figured out. And now there's definitely more than bikes you can win on. It's just Ducati. It recently has stepped away. They, you know, you back it up for years.

And I mean, everybody was still there. Honda was still there. They're winning races. Yamaha was still winning races. It's of recently.

And it thing that really doesn't, what doesn't help optics is there's so many Ducati's out there. And when the bike is good and unfortunately, everyone's on the same bike, it's well, shit, they're all going to run towards the front. What do you want? You know, if they were all on Honda's, you'd have two Ducati's up front and then a bunch of Honda's. So yeah, it's aerodynamics that killed it.

Well, yeah, aerodynamics and ride high devices. I can't, I'm glad they're down. They're aerodynamics. I understand why they're not getting rid of them completely. And they're dialing them back because they do play a certain part and like, okay, cool, cool, cool.

The ride high device is just an unneeded thing. It's to specifically help like one thing and make it, it doesn't, it doesn't improve or anything in this sport. I'll say like, you know, whole shots. And then when they're really crazy, I see them like squatting out of corners and all that stuff. Right.

The shape shifting bikes would think what they call it now. So I even know I'd hide old, fucking thing moves. It's, it's an expensive technology that will never get out to a street bike. So there's no reason developing if you, that's your excuse. And.

I can see where there's, where it could be used in street bike applications. Right. I mean, so, so bear with me for cost wise. Oh, okay. No, the, this adventure touring segment is really popular now.

Like we were on vacation in Alaska and you've got these guys, I'll ride these big adventure tours. Well, most, I mean, the guys that I saw them riding, they'd roll up to a stoplight, stop sign or whatever. And they're like tippy toe in one foot. And I'm like, I'm like this guy, and I see him when they get off the bikes and this guy's like no taller than me. Right.

He's, he's, he's five, eight, five, nine or whatever. He's not six, four. He's not six, five. So if you had a way to roll up to a stop sign and hit a button and lower the bike, a couple of inches so you could stop comfortably, I could see it. Yeah.

I can, I mean, I get it. I get that that is a way that you could do it. But the other flip side to this coin is this is a prototype class. What are you here for? You're here to race.

You're here to make a motorcycle within a set of rules, be the fastest that it can possibly be to get around a racetrack. There's gotta be a balance somewhere. I think I just don't know where it is. And I think that hopefully with the new rules, we obtain a bit more of a balance than what we had previously. You want prototype racing.

You don't want blank check racing. Right. And I think it's like, Gigi said, you want to be able to take a set of rules and make things really fast and that's all good. But eventually someone can just do whatever they want. And you know, right.

Yeah. That's why these certain rules, because at the end of the day, it, the racing is the product you're selling, not the bikes, not the rider. You gotta have good racing because once the race is gone, no one gives a shit about it. I had advice six, no one's watching the race. So, you know, and then I think F1 is starting to learn like you don't have to have the fastest car all the time, breaking all the lap records when you go, because if your product doesn't provide any racing, who cares?

Anybody can go out there and go stand next to the freeway and watch someone drive faster than someone else because they got more money. Like that's cool. Let's actually see some, you know, some races. It's crucial more than ever now to reel things back in. The world economy is definitely setting itself up to take another step back.

The layoffs that are going on and everything else. The money is just not there. So we've all been through this before. Motorcycle racing takes a massive hit during recessions. If we go that far and just because of sponsorship and everything else drops out.

So you need to rein it in while you can before it gets out of control and just like, listen, let's just focus on racing here, take a step back. Plus if you don't have a rule change, it's just going to remain. You got to mix it up a little bit because just one team right now has got it a lot better than others. And you don't want Suzuki's. You don't want that.

You don't want them going well. If we're not going to rail in the cost, then we don't see why we need to be here spending this much money to do this. And now that you don't have Suzuki, Kawasaki in here, I've gotten some replacements having KTM coming in and such. We'd love to have those other ones, but if you make the barrier to entry too much, they're not going to come no matter what you can sell them. So getting in a rules that are less complicated and focus more on what we call the big quotes of pure traditional motorcycle racing, whatever that means, then I have two strokes anymore.

So if things that, you know, I think people can understand better, good engines, good suspension, good frame. And the other stuff is pile up for prototypes, but let's focus on making those good that everyone can get in and actually work with that before we get too crazy. I'm thinking of it this way. Honda won the Adidas Azuka. I mean, if you think Honda forgot how to build a motorcycle, how to make a motorcycle go fast or crazy, it's just, they can't figure out how to make it work with all the arrow and all the black art magic of shape shifting.

Tires are much different. Tires are different. Speed and weight. And, oh, there's a bit of a moving target in MotoGP rules change every year. Rules change mid-season.

Maybe the thing that you're working, people don't understand that if you've ever worked in racing, you could spend nine months engineering this thing. You're like, yeah, dude, this is going to give us a huge advantage. We got it. And then the rules regulations catches whiff of something like, oh, they're developing what kind of thing? Oh no.

And then the rule comes in. Yeah, we're not going to allow these new brake pendulums or some crazy shit you've come up with in here. And you're like, us, we're all over engineering with the last nine months and we don't even use it now. Yeah. So it's like $100 bills on fire.

Oh yeah. That happens a lot. I mean, that happens a lot. And then, or it doesn't get approved when you take it to the board and like, no, sorry, that doesn't work. So they try to get the boards involved early.

Things prove, or you were just straight up cheating. You had to, you never got caught, but you had to, you had to stop doing it in a way. There's plenty of cases of those. And I had a teacher that worked on the NASCAR team and they had figured out to make the car lighter everywhere where you had a connection in the roll cage where it will weld. They would put the piece up, draw around it and cut the metal out on the inside and then weld it together.

And so when they did this through all the welds ended up saving like 20 pounds on the car. Wow. Pretty significant. That's huge. So NASCAR caught with the, someone's doing this.

So that technically, especially, they started drilling the roll cages and sticking wire down to see if it would go through. And they had to scrap, they built the entire car, raced it one time and they had to put it in the museum because they couldn't race anymore. Yeah. So I was like a hundred thousand at the time, a hundred thousand dollar car. That was.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I get it.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. There's been a lot of talk of like, do you take my OGP? Did you put a BOP on things? I don't think so.

Cause it's prototype racing. I mean, if it was car racing or something, BOP, cause what's weird is like, I love British touring cars just because it's some great racing. These guys just basically want to just go bang into each other all the time, which is great. I mean, it's great racing, but there's BOP. Well, these guys are too fast.

So, okay, we're going to add 10 kilos, but you can only, you get, oh, they don't call it BOP. Sorry. Excuse me. It's success ballast. So you go really fast.

We're going to throw some kilos on you is what it comes down to. It's like, I mean, they've made it work and it's, it's, it's fascinating racing. It's like, do you want to do that to motorcycles? Man, where are you going to put the ballast? Yeah.

It's not really a good place to put it unless you are designing the bike to, to run with a ballast. Yeah. Or there's all that there's pluses and minuses everywhere here. Yeah. I think the only time the ballast is, is where the rules are going is to keep the riders balanced.

And so if you tell everyone you bike mini balanced, they can design bikes with ballast points and everything else, because I don't like combination of it. Yeah. Cause it, there's, something that's not in control, right? If you're a projosa size version of somebody, and then you've got someone who's four inches taller and has to carry on actually 20 pounds because they're four inches taller, that has nothing to do with them. And it shouldn't be giving an advantage to somebody else.

So I could see why that would be a performance thing, but you know, they have BOP and one super bite because they run so many different types of venues, but that's why it's cause it's supposed to be production. So like you said, prototype, I don't think we need a BOP because you're allowed to design what everyone else is allowed to design within that certain set of rules. But I think the one thing that you can't change, cause you all have the same tires, the same electronics, you could do different in, you know, slightly different engines, combinations, whatever, but you can't control your rider size and they can't control their outside of course, gaining weight, which is something you can't control. But I mean, if you're, if you're five two or you're five nine, you can't, you can't do anything about that. So yeah, that one, I could see why you'd want to do combo weight of bike and rider.

Yeah. And they have to, it has to be a minimum weight. So like if your rider's bigger, then the bike loses weight. I think within formula one have then formula one start weighing the drivers in the car, making it a total minimum weight. Cause some of the, some of the, some of the taller F1 drivers were like super scary thin.

Oh yeah. They were eaten. Yeah. And they still are. I mean, still are cause everything counts, but yeah, they do combine.

That's why as soon as they get out of the car, they got to go stand on the scale with all the gear because they got to take that and they got to weigh the car and all that. So yeah. So you don't get that. Cause again, you were getting, you know, horse jockeys basically to go do stuff. So.

All right there, buddy. I appreciate you coming on, talking, chatting. It was fun. It's good to catch up. Good to go over racing together.

So hopefully you'll keep watching. Hey, occasionally maybe we might have to have you back on. I'm going to hold you to a, we're fixing Moto America special in the off season. We'll do that. So we'll do all that.

And basically with all that folks, I'm going to tell you all to ride safe and see you in two weeks. Sounds good. Take care everyone.