Misano Mayhem!

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Welcome to Motopod, the Internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 781 for September 24th, 2024. A lot of fours in there, Rich.

Rich is with us again this week, people. He's not anywhere. I was on busman's holiday for a while, but I did get the racing watch wrist, if you noticed, because I'm ready to go here. It was a really full weekend of racing for me. Yes, I did notice.

I was off at Indianapolis for the IMSA race, so a six hour race there. So I spent some time with the buds, my mates, if you will, good way to relax. It was kind of, it's different racing, racing that I like. I like cars. I like that kind of car racing, most of all, I think.

I've got the blur. I'm not really a Formula One fan anymore, but I'd much rather watch endurance racing. So it was a six hour event at it, which is ironic because I went and saw the six hour at Watkins Glen and the heat index was 106 and it was like 98 or 99 degrees there in New York in June. And it's like, oh, I'm going to go to Indy, right? Go to Indy.

It's 98 degrees. I didn't have it since late September. Autumnal summer. And I still deal with 98 degree heat at a six hour race. Anyway, it rained on Sunday, which made it really interesting.

But we're not talking about cars. That's it. Enough of that, right? No more car talk. No more car talk.

But Rich, I would like you to give a shout out to all the people who are helping the show out, if you would, sir. Yep, absolutely. Thank you very much indeed. So with the PayPal subscribers, we've got Gareth Locke, Jacob Nookout, Carl Hunn, Rick Taylor, Noya Ito, Nick Saban and Alan Fleming. And then our friends on Patreon include Michael Cowan, Brenton Edwards, Scott Baldwin, Oli, Dennis Kindig, Jeremy Bernich, Jacob Roa, Darren Andrews, Paul Lang, Gary Chavit and Steve.

So it's quite a nice long list. It has grown a little bit as we've reported over recent episodes. Always keen to have some more financial subscribers contributing to the show. And as I said, either in the World Superbike Interview show that I put out the other day or the intro that I've just recorded for the next one that will be out after this show, we definitely want to go down this road of encouraging the Patreons and the PayPal subscribers to fire in questions so that when either you or I or anybody else in the future from a MotoPod go to these events and we have interviews lined up with the superstars of all super bikes and MotoGP, etc, etc, that we can field questions from the listeners as a little perk of being a regular subscriber to the show. So thank you everybody.

Much appreciated. If anybody else can drop a few coins in the tin each month, that would be highly appreciated. There we go, Jim. All right. Appreciate that, Rich.

Appreciate everybody who is subscribed to the show or who is donating to the show as well. So with that, let's go right to the news, Rich. I think we'll go there. So the worst kept secret in all of MotoGP, the coveted last spot on the Primaq Yamaha team is gone officially to Jack Miller. We knew Jack was going to be the guy on the list.

We'd known it for weeks and he finally got there. I do think Miller is lucky for this lifeline. I think this is like the last who raw for Miller. Do you agree? I do.

And especially given that it's a one year contract as well. So I guess both sides maybe are just feeling this one out a little bit. I suspect Yamaha more so than Jack. I mean, Jack, as far as we knew, was out of the series for next year. So this isn't a lifeline for him.

As we've said, we don't need to repeat it too much. It's for me still a bit of a curious choice to take Olivera and Miller. But anyway, that's what's happening. So yeah, good to have Jackson in the series. He's a great personality and he loves him.

So that's a positive, I guess. But yeah, still think it's a bit of an odd choice. I agree. So here the next bit is that Yamaha have admitted they have a development of a V4. Now, is this the end of the inline four or will the new 850 rules and removal of the shape shifters and electronics make the inline engine viable once more?

Interesting question, Rich. I'll give you my thoughts here first. Interested to hear. You have to believe at some point that Yamaha was going to have to get to the V4. It's sort of now been defined as the proper engine to have, mainly because everybody's revving these things to the moon now and they're trying to pull as much horsepower out of them.

And aerodynamics are also a huge effect on the motorcycle now. So having a very wide front aero, with the inline four, you have to have a wider bike, right? You can't build it as narrow. You have exact number of crank journals and things that you could have. And when you crank bearings and stuff, and when you do that, you're going to be wide.

So that means it's a big frontal area, which is what I was looking for. Aerodynamically, it's a big frontal area that you're trying to push all this air through the radiator, through the oil cooler, all that kind of stuff. And it may not be the most effective motor for that particular part of it. When I first heard there was this Yamaha have admitted we're developing a V4, my first thought was, hey, we're going to go down that path for 850, which makes sense. You've got the time to develop now, to develop your 850, and then take that.

Now, given that you're going to make an 850 probably just because of the size of each particular cylinder bore is going to become smaller, it's conceivable that Yamaha would want to build an inline motor, because they could then make it smaller. Now, who knows what they may or may not do, but it seems to me like they're just headed that way. And I just think the 850 is going to be a V4 Yamaha. That doesn't mean it's going to happen, but I can understand why they're doing it. Fair enough.

I don't have the technical knowledge, I guess, when all things are said and done. I just like watching them going around in circles really, really quickly. I'm pinching this from, I think it was David Emmett, I was listening to or reading a couple of things from, and he was making the point that with the arrow being, air quotes, restricted, and we don't really quite know how this is going to work in practice, of course, but as you just pointed out, Jim, frontal areas, weight distributions are going to change significantly under the new rule set. So, it might well be that a V4 is or isn't, and Ditto and inline four, is or isn't a good configuration to go along with the fact that you're going to have different frames for different motors, less or different arrow, no shape shifters to confuse matters. So, it is going to be fundamentally different.

And he also made a very salient point, which is that if Yamaha do introduce this V4 as early as next year, potentially, because it's on the test bench already, they're going to have to have a different frame and a completely new set up for that as well. So, they goes to show just how much effort and money, more to the point as well, Yamaha are throwing at improving their performance. And you can already see, certainly in terms of the races last weekend, or we can just go on with Qatararo, had a pretty good weekend. So, the package is not completely done yet, although the V4 clearly in this formula is the one to have. So, yeah, just an interesting development because most or many, many people, and I think including myself, probably thought that Yamaha would never move away from the inline four.

And they may conclude that they still won't, but they clearly do have a development engine on the bench, and they're checking it out. So, just thinking this through a little bit more for me, you got to think, Yamaha had V4 500 two-strokes. So, they know how to build a V engine. I can't think of any road bike of Yamaha that had a V in it. There's a guy, okay, well, there's the VMAX, which was a V20, and there's a V4.

It's not without precedent that Yamaha hasn't had V-engined motorcycles, right? They're sort of known for the inline four, but it's not without precedent that they could make one of those. Now, what really could be interesting is what do they want to do with their Pramac team? Do they give them an 850 cc inline four and two bikes to do a development direction sort of that way? Or do they have a V4 that Pramac gets and they do development for Quattraro?

Or do they split it one and one, which would be completely crazy considering, like you said, the frame or David Emmett said, the frame's got to be completely different. But sometimes if you got to make a completely different frame for a motor, and let's assume that Yamaha all four of the bikes that Pramac get are all going to be a V4 next year. Let's just assume that for this argument. You build a chassis, you're going to make bigger gains faster with that new chassis than you are with anything else, because you've kind of figured out every combination that may exist there with your chassis. Because you've ran that chassis for so long that you may know everything about it.

I don't know if this is the right term. Jacob Browler might be mad at me, but it's kind of going to be like a serendipitous thing that you find having a new chassis because you're doing different things and you happen to stumble upon this magical ingredient, as it were, and you suddenly become very fast. It's one of those things where if you look at the rulebook, I think you almost got to believe that that's the way to go because everybody's kind of taking that form. Now, is it going to be a 90 degree V4 like Ducati's? Is it going to be the 88, or the L motors, if you will, like Ducati, with one cylinder basically almost horizontal out front?

Is it going to be the truly 90V like a Honda? Is it going to be 88 in some change like KTM have? Is it going to be like Aprilia's? You don't really know, but you can definitely build a bike that's well balanced with a V4 for sure. I mean, the risk that they've got, Jim, the risk that they've got is a well trodden phrase, but we have heard, how long have we heard that Yamaha is the sweetest handling bike out there?

It's the corner speed bike. It's the one that likes the corners the most. The risk that they've got, I think, is that they solve the engine problem, but then they lose their way in terms of a completely radically different chassis, different handling, and do they lose that particular sweet spot that they've got? It's a road strewn with peril really, I think, for Yamaha because they're going so far away from what they've known for so long that that won't be an easy transition. Just on your point about what Pramac run, I'm not sure if homologation rules on the engine would allow them to do something like that as a single manufacturer.

I suspect they wouldn't have that option. I don't know. I mean, could be wrong on that, but I suspect the technical rules and the financial constraints around the technical rules might prohibit that. Yeah, but it was just a thought. It was just like, if I'm doing that, which way do I want to go?

Kind of a thing. Anyway. Let's be honest. All of the manufacturers would do whatever they could get away with. It's only the rules and the financial constraints that stop them from getting into an arms race on money, which is what the rules were designed to stop.

Yeah, definitely. Let's see. Next item of note. India off the 2025 calendar already. I did not see where they were off the calendar.

I think you know more than on this one, Rich. I want to take this. Yeah, only insofar as I saw a tweet coming out. I think it was crash.net, so a reputable source indicating that the problems are already starting to rear their head again with regards to the Indian round. And I suspect that won't be the only one.

There are a couple of other races on the calendar, which I think are probably quite likely to remain troublesome in terms of whether they can go ahead or not. So I don't think it would be a big surprise if India does not appear on the actual list next year, even though it's on the provisional one. And clearly there is a news article going around at the minute that, yeah, there are still problems. I mean, our understanding from just again hearing on the sort of the wind is that money has never been paid by the organizers of that race to pay the sanctioning fee to run it. So this is a money game at the end of the day.

So if the cash doesn't show up, then the event doesn't happen. So I suspect that will continue to be the case. So I feel very sorry for the fans in India. I think the first race there, the one in any race that we've had was quite well attended and went down very well, other than the stifling heat, which was a problem for the riders and the teams. I think it was a very good event.

And I feel for the fans out there that probably won't get to see the bikes again, which is a shame for them. Yeah. And it's a very important market as well. Very. So speaking of the calendar, Hungary is supposed to be on the counter 2025.

Now it's not the Hungar ring or like Formula One goes, oh gosh, car reference. Sorry, folks. But it's the other. What's the track called? Can't think of the name of it off the top of my head.

I had it for a minute, but I lost it. Anyway, that has to be good. Doesn't it? Is it the ball time ring or something like that? Something.

But either way, that track has a huge amount of infrastructure that has to be changed to bring it up to the grade FIA grade for the racing that's there. So then if you believe that Brno is on the counter, if you believe that Argentina is on the counter, if you believe Kazakhstan is on the counter, if you believe Hungary is on the counter and India is on the counter, there's three races right there, as Simon Patterson said, that are no way, shape or form probably going to happen. Argentina is not going to happen. Kazakhstan is not going to happen. More than likely, Hungary is not going to happen because I don't know how they could make all the changes required of that track to make it possible for the bikes to go there.

It's supposed to be there. It's on the World Superbike calendar and it's also on the MotoGP calendar, which will be really interesting because it's the first time that, well, I can't think of like, I know that World Superbike goes to like, Haaretz or whatever, but you have another track where you can compare the difference between things and there is kind of a big straightaway, long straightaway on that circuit. So it'd be interesting to see kind of where the lap times fall out between super bikes and MotoGP bikes there. But yeah, not too sure what's going to happen there. I'm just looking, it's the Balaton Park is the name of the track, I believe.

Interestingly, just one thing, and I do need to dig into this a little further, Jim, but you know we were talking about Manny Core and in relation to the accident Toprac had there a few weeks back. Subsequently, I was listening to something else and I said I might be getting the facts slightly askew here, but they were talking about a kind of ABC designation that a track has. Only A designation tracks will accept or can host MotoGP, whereas World Superbike run at some more, if you like, B category tracks. That's why World Supers run at Manny Core, for example, and not MotoGP. So I guess Balaton Park in Hungary must meet the criteria for both.

But again, other events have been cancelled in Hungary because, you know, politically, without wanting to stray into the dodgy area, but politically it's a bit of a tricky place to go as well currently. So I don't know if that's fed into some of the problems there. But as you say, it's on the calendar. So but again, I would suspect it's one with a fairly large question mark against it, as things stand just at the moment. Yeah, I was looking at it more from the standpoint of for the angle Simon Patterson was going down.

There has to be some upgrades for the MotoGP bikes. Now, do they have to have it for World Superbikes? No. So there is a possibility they could still remain on the World Superbike calendar, but they may not have the A grade required to get MotoGP bikes there. But either way, it's going to be interesting to figure out where we're going.

I don't care as long as we go back to Brno, I'm happy. Let's just say it that way. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. So the next item on the list here is the new Michelin front has been delayed yet again, and will not arrive until 2026. What's the reason for it this time, Rich? Because I haven't read this one. I don't know the full details behind it.

It seems weird because they had such a test and everybody seemed to think it was a good tire. Benya thought it was reminiscent of a Bridgestone near uncrashable. So I'm like, is it a production issue? What's the deal? My understanding is that I just don't think Michelin are ready with it.

They haven't got enough data with it. The testing on that tire, okay, they did do some testing at Misano, it's true. But that has been about, I think, the only time that they have tested it. And as Simon Patterson pointed out on the race podcast this week, which many people will have heard him say, this really lies squarely with the organizers who could, for example, be mandating that people use it in free practice one on a Friday morning, which is a bit of a throwaway session often anyway. And if everybody was running it, then there wouldn't be disadvantage particularly.

And then they start the business of the weekend proper from practice two on the current type. Because the problem we've got now that it's delayed again, this is a tire that's designed for the current set of regulations in terms of the arrow and the shape shifting and all the rest of it, which is causing, depending on your point of view, causing so much trouble with the racing. You know, if it's delayed till 2026 and who's to say that won't slip again. Yeah, it's only got a year. And then it's potentially not, I mean, okay, you may still use it because I think it would continue down that path.

That might. Yeah, but it might require a different sort of time once the 850s arrive on the scene. So, you know, the rate they go and it's not going to be of any use to have it. And in the meantime, we're left with the front tire that most people think is not suitable a lot of the time. So it's just very frustrating because this is an avoidable problem or wasn't avoidable problem.

Arguably, it's not really solvable now. So just a shame. But yeah, again, sorry to be the harbor of bad news, but it's all right. I mean, yeah, I mean, I got to believe that at some point they have to mandate that people, they either, they either limit a test at Sapaing or they limit the testing at the other tracks that we're going to go to in the winter and they dedicate an hour of time and everybody's got to go use that tire. So it's the only way we're going to get one.

And I think we need one. I think we agree. I mean, the racing has been good. I'm not going to lie, but there are some races it's not. And if you can build a tire, then let's have the right tire.

I mean, I don't, I don't, yeah, I mean, again, this is kind of odd to me because Bridgestone is, it's weird. Michelin's, Michelin's like this, their deal with tires is like black magic, right? Like it doesn't seem like there's like an engineering idea of like, well, we're going to put a tire together that does this, this, this, and it's going to do work. And it's like, oh no, we just feel we want to use some of this and we want to sprinkle some of that on it and da da da. And suddenly they come up with a recipe that works and they sort of copy it.

You know, Bridgestone, when they were there, there's, you know, there's all kinds of things that they were doing that they knew exactly what it should do in some way or form. There was a very, you know, engineering, we always talk about what's called design of experiments, right? I'm trying to figure out what affects the other thing and can I correct that thing by isolating out the parameters that are in there and you solve yourself down to this solution. It seems like Bridgestone was very good at that, at least in my opinion, they were. And then Michelin just sort of like, yeah, well, you know, kind of here.

I mean, I don't see how you, I mean, as good as their tires are in car racing, that's, you know, especially endurance racing, you think that there would be that, but I mean, there's what is Michelin involved in world endurance or is that a Pirelli dominated thing? I don't know if it is or isn't. Pass, don't know. I know it was like Suzuka, they've got many different tires there because some people got Dunlap, some people got Bridgestone, some people have Michelin and whatnot. So, I don't know.

Anyhow, I don't know, I, you know, I feel for the tire manufacturers because in a way they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. And you can perfectly well understand why Michelin want to have a tire that they're 100% confident in before they let people out on it. Because the minute you start having failures or underperformance, you know, who gets, you know, lambasted for it is the tire manufacturer. So, we saw this on Sunday with Bagnard on his rear. So, it's an extraordinarily difficult position to be in.

But on the other hand, I mean, they tended for the bleeding contract and they obviously wanted to win it. So, that's, you know, careful what you wish for. But yeah, just a shame that tires will continue to be a talking point and an issue, you know, around this issue of tire pressures and overheating. And yeah, just a bit boring really to sort of have to keep returning to it. But that's the news.

So, yeah, that's what it is. Okay. Also from the Mizano test, there was trials of pit to rider radio. Your thoughts on this first, Rich, before mine? I'm deadly against this for a whole host of different reasons.

I don't know what's driving it. I think it might be being pushed under the auspices of safety. I think that would be a misnomer when it comes to motorcycle race. And I mean, there's several people who already pointed out. You had Jorge Martín at the first Mizano race getting distracted by a message that came up on his screen, let alone somebody screaming something in his ear.

I just don't think it has any place. There are all sorts of issues around hardware going into helmets that aren't really designed for that kind of use. What happens in a big crash if you've got other equipment inside a helmet? You know, if race control are using it and they want to use it for notifying yellow flags or incidents on a track, how does that work? Does everybody hear it?

Even though somebody might be on the other side of the track. There are so many operational and safety issues around this. And the cynic in me kind of thinks that this might be getting driven from a kind of desire to have a drive to survive kind of deal going on with the riders during the races and stuff. And I can't think of anything worse than hearing riders whinging and moaning and telling on each other. I mean, it's become an epidemic of mediocrity in terms of the behavior in Formula One with pits to car radio.

And I just don't think we want to see or move to the point here. Any of that in bike racing. So I'm vehemently opposed to it on just about every metric you could measure. So yeah, I think my position on this was fairly clear, Jim, but interested to know if you differ. I do slightly.

I in no way want to hear any kind of winching and tattletaling on another rider. I have no place for that at all with this. I am of the opinion that having someone say something in your ear is less distracting than a dash light or my attention being brought to my dash to read something that's been put there. Because to read it requires me to focus there as opposed to keep my eyes on the road as I'm going 150 miles an hour. If they use it, I would hope that it is only one person's voice.

It is that of a race control individual. And I would hope that it would be something to the effect of that they could send out a signal to a specific rider, like I'm sure everything would be on a specific frequency. So if you were to receive a long lap penalty that you would be told by race control in your ear and not anybody else's, that you have a long lap penalty that you have to take. Thinking of it from a safety standpoint, if there was a yellow in a certain sector, it could be used to alert all riders that in sector two, there's a yellow. Something to that effect.

I don't have a problem with that. However, it is as with all things that are of a good intention, it will get misaligned and confused and it will be used for things that it wasn't used for and people will figure out some way to cheat it and all that kind of stuff. I do think that if you do have it, most of the Formula One guys, I'm not 100% certain how much equipment is truly in their helmets. I always have believed that their earplugs were made with a speaker in them so that the only thing that they had basically was a mic that was in the chin bar of the helmet, which wouldn't be extremely difficult. But then again, I don't want to have riders winching about things.

So if it was just some earbuds, essentially you know, that ran down your suit, plugged in to say the hump in the back where the accelerometers and things are for your airbag in it, I don't have a problem with it. But it's a very specific use case for me. Yeah, no, no, fair enough. I mean, I personally, when you see a lot of the stuff that flashes up on the screens, okay, admittedly, some of that is coming from the teams themselves. I ride as such and such, you know, rider such and such is in front of you.

So yeah, they can see it. Why do you need a message to tell you that? I mean, some of the stuff is really banal beyond belief. And as you say, these things, you get mission creep with these things. And as you say, they start to get used to stuff that was never part of the original intention.

And again, I am sort of a 52 year old cynic, you know, with Liberty potentially coming on board or probably coming on board, you can kind of sense that they would want to sex the show up, to use an unpleasant but often used phrase. And that would be one area where they could try and create a bit more kind of, yeah, TV friendly content, I suppose, in terms of the personalities. I'm not the only person that said this, you know, having been along to a few races, you know, these riders are not sort of overdoing it when it comes to some of their media commitments. So, you know, I think, as I think I tweeted the other day on this particular issue, the riders could be made to work a bit harder off the bikes, in terms of the public facing aspects of them and the, you know, developing the personalities and making more of some of that, that stuff, before you need to start having, you know, live chat. If it was restricted purely to race, you know, safety, critical race control calls, in the manner that you're describing Jim, okay, maybe.

But even there, I think there are some issues with that in terms of how it would actually work. But I'm, yeah, interested to know what the listeners think on this one, because it's going to be a proper Marmite kind of issue this one, it'll be a love it, hate it kind of thing. Some people will not potentially like the razzmatazz of it if you went full kind of discussing tactics. But I mean, for me, again, I'm old fashioned. I'm a purist, the pit bull should be enough.

That's how it worked for a long, long time. I don't really see why we need to change it. Agreed on that one. Bow Ben Schneider and in his team, what I pronounce that one for me, which is there's a lot of vowels in there for me on that one. Is it the pre-canos?

I think it's pre-canos. Yeah, something like it's a strange spelling, isn't it? I haven't happened across it before. So when I was thinking about it, I was thinking, oh, blimey, how are we going to manage that? I think it's pre-canos.

Yeah. Though he has left the team and they parted ways with the team. And what was, if you saw the press release was an absolutely unedifying dressing down of a rider. It was, well, it's just there, all the dirty laundry and put it out in a press release kind of a thing. Like, shocking.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, wow. I mean, that was just really kind of crazy. And then they sort of continued with that when they were, when the, I think it was the owner was talking about it to, was it to Jack Applegate, I think.

It was laid out that like, well, you know, hey, you got to perform. And it was always, well, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Well, tomorrow never got there. And we're tired of languishing down the grid, if you will. And wow, that's, I mean, I'd much rather just had a press release that said, hey, we've parted company.

You know, that would be much better way to put it because, you know, the thing of it is like, if you read the press release too, what really kind of confused me was they talked about how, like, you know, you're always welcome back when you get your stuff together. And I'm like, and we believe in you. So it's like, okay, I'm going to dress you down. Yeah. I'm going to dress you down.

I'm going to yell at you. I'm going to tell everybody, pretty much you suck. And then I'm going to say, well, by the way, if you ever get it, you're acting together, come on back again. I was like, you do that. I don't think anybody wins because who's going to want to get a ride for you.

I mean, okay, somebody's going to, but that it just hold the whole thing is just wild. And my opinion is like, but hey, that's what happens, I guess. The whole chronology of it, Jim, I don't quite know. So we must not stray into areas where I'm selling stuff that is not true. My understanding though is that Ben Schneider was kind of running his mouth off about areas of the team and the bike that he was dissatisfied with.

And that's not unusual. I mean, riders are always wanting more and they're quite critical. They're, you know, alphas and highly competitive and all the rest of it. So they want the best. And Ben Schneider has not had a good season and a half couple of seasons.

I seem to recall him being quite good when he first arrived into Moto2. So things have clearly gone wrong. But as you say, Jim, normally the kind of political party line is, you know, both parties have mutually agreed to part ways and, you know, each side will wish each other the best and off they go. Whereas this was a kind of an extraordinary war of words really. And yeah, very kind of unpleasant really in tone.

So just a bit bizarre. That's normally wouldn't really have mentioned it in the news, but it was just those emails with the press releases coming out. I was reading this stuff and thinking, flipping heck, you know, this is really, I mean, when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong. And that one certainly did. So it was just noteworthy.

So if anybody can figure out the spelling and the pronunciation of the team, go and find their press releases and have yourself a few minutes of amusement. Although, I mean, not good that the team have fallen out and the riders have fallen out in quite such a spectacular fashion. But yes, I mean, from a spectating point of view, reading this stuff, it's quite illuminating. So Walter bike, we'll move into Walter bike, is what I should say. Is that the Cremona circuit where they were last weekend?

Yeah. And Aragon is this weekend. Is top rack going to be back or not after that very scary incident in Magna Corp? Obviously, the intention was for him to be back for Cremona. But I think probably a lot of people felt that was a little bit ambitious.

So in the end, a few days before the Cremona event, which is in Italy, by the way, it was announced that he was going to stay put. And I think he's in Austria at the Red Bull High Performance Institute, where they take all their top sports people. So he's recuperating there. I mean, in terms of just very briefly, I don't want to spend too much time on this. First race at Cremona, very sort of short, tight, slightly nudgey track.

But the racing was actually very good. And I mean, the big takeaway of the weekend was that Danilo Petrucci won his first World Superbike race and then his second and then his third. So he did the treble. And he's, I think they said the only the 18th rider to win a MotoGP race and a World Superbike race as well. So that's quite an accolade, as well as the other stuff that he's done.

The thing about it is, you know, on the Dakar, of course, we're on a stage. Right. He's the only rider to be able to win at MotoGP, at World Superbike, at MotoAmerica, and then a stage of the Dakar rally, which is pretty phenomenal for the guy. It's amazing, quite honestly. Even more so given that he was in a hospital bed.

You know, from everything that I've read and heard about it, pretty close to, you know, not where you want to be, having had a huge motocross accident earlier in the season. Most people thought, myself included, that he came back a bit too early. But I mean, like all these guys, they're just, you know, just incredible the way they can recover and push on through the pain. But yeah, so to see him do the treble in Italy, of all places as well, just to, you know, put an extra cherry on top of the cake was amazing, really. And the significance of it was, though, was that it prevented Nico Bulliger from maximising the points, because had Bulliger won all three races, he would now be leading the championship, whereas he's 13 points behind Toprak.

So it's very, very close again. And a bit like MotoGP, World Superbike is now very busy in these last few rounds. So they're coming thick and fast, which is obviously not ideal for Toprak, given his injury position. But I suspect he will be back at Aragon, given how close the points are now. As to how well he's going to do and how he's going to fare, obviously we'll find out if that is what happens.

As of just becoming, before we came on to record in this gym, there was nothing I could see online saying he is or isn't going to be riding at Aragon. So that one, I guess we'll find out in a day or two's time. But yeah, so that's kind of well, Superbike. The only other thing to mention, I was talking about young Ryan Vickers in BSB the other day. I was, you know, he spectacularly sort of crashed out of the lead and had a bit of a rotten weekend at Cadwell Park a few weeks ago.

Well, he's actually, it was announced that one of the guys in supersport, I think it is, is coming up to that OMG Yamaha team next year. So everyone's thinking, oh, they've sacked Ryan Vickers, but it actually transpires that Vickers has signed a deal to go to race on the Moto course at Ducati in World Superbike. So he'll be replacing Michael Ruben Rinaldi in that squad. So yeah, fair play Ryan. He's going up to world levels.

So as a lot of Brits do, of course, from BSB into World Superbike. So he's very, very, very fast, but he is a little prone to pushing a bit too hard. So also fair play to him. Not many people get to ride in World Superbike. So that's a great move for him.

And then just on BSB very, very briefly, we got Donnington Park this weekend. So that's the penultimate round of BSB. And I was waxing lyrical with you last show Jim about the point scoring system. I did have it wrong. So just to clarify, I looked at the rules and for the main part of the season up till the final three rounds, the scoring has been top 15 score as is normal, but the winner was only getting 18 and then second for 16.

So you can see what this does. It keeps the points table very close through the sort of two thirds of the season. And then for what are actually rounds nine and 10, round 10 being the penultimate round, you're then scoring 25 for a win and 22. So you start to get slightly bigger gaps in the point scoring. And then for Brands Hatch, which will be the final round, round 11, there you will be scoring 35 for the win and bonus minus three races each round as well.

So there's lots of points to score here. So that's how they've constructed the points table just to give it a bit more detail. If you Google BSB point scoring system 2024, you can go and read it for yourself. So that's how they tinkered with the sort of the showdown format. And I know you were quite positive towards this in terms of producing a bit of jeopardy and incentive and allowing other people that were there or they're about to catch up a bit, you know, in these last vital three rounds and nine races as it is.

So yeah, that's the detail anyway. Cool. That wraps up all the news. That puts us into the second Mizano race. And we'll start out with Moto3 as we usually do.

Now, one of the things about this one was that what Thursday it rained or Wednesday, Thursday, it rained at Mizano and what part of the track was underwater. I mean, it just apparently bucketed it down. So yeah, so all the bugs were out because I mean, any view you saw, what it reminded me of literally was the TT with all of the the the Nats or whatever they have there that lie under the trees as the sun tends to go down because they sort of race a lot of those races on a week night. And they, you know, everybody gets home from work, if you will, and then they, you know, go through there. It was funny.

I mean, you could tell it was bad because if you looked at most of the riders, they had tear off nubs on each side of their helmet, both left and right. And generally they don't do that. It's because you only want your right hand or whatever, because you can reach across or whatever, pull one. But I was just, I was shocked with all the bugs, but that's neither here nor there. If we looked at Moto3 from a qualifying one, Rurata was in qualifying one, which kind of surprised me.

After having had a win and everything, he was back to sort of the standard Rurata, which is I can't go fast enough to be able to be out of the situation. He was joined by Rossi, Forosado, Carrara, Rollstone. I think those are some of the guys that we're kind of used to seeing in here, but Rurata is sort of that stand out there. But he did go through, he was quickest. Almanza, Forosado and Ogden all went through to qualifying two.

When we got to qualifying two, halfway through Alonzo was the quickest followed by Ortola, Forosado, Picaris, Adrian Fernandez, Rurata and Holgardo. Vire was 10th and I thought, well, Vire is going to put one hot lap in here, but Ogden was down, which created a yellow sector. And it was 30 seconds to go on the time when that happened. I didn't know where it was going to fill out because it was really hard to figure out who was or was not in the right area so they could get a clean lap. Alonzo had a golden lap going, but he wind up falling as well.

But Forosado took his first pole, a blistering lap he did. Alonzo was still quick enough to be second, but Picaris was third. Then Ortola and Netba Vire who jumped up four places there. Then Fernandez, Adrian Munoz, Rurata and Joel Calso in the top 10, this time having gone directly to Q2 as opposed to having to go through Q1 his own volition. Things were looking fairly well there as we got into the race on Sunday.

Now, at the beginning of the race, we knew that Munoz would get a double long lap penalty for the irresponsible riding from the previous race that we had. So, okay, cool. So, green flag, start second turn, Munoz is down. He tagged the rear of another rider. I think it might've been Alonzo that he tagged.

He did tag someone there. It was a blue bike, that much I had. I wasn't sure exactly who it actually was, but he was down. He would remount. He basically ran enough laps, did his two long lap penalties so he doesn't have to carry that again through.

But Forosado was out front with Alonzo and Artola, Picaris, Vier and Nepo and Holgardo. Alonzo would jump to lead and hold that for a little bit at the end of that first lap. But it gets to this race where literally Holgardo, Picaris, Fernandez, Forosado, Alonzo, Vier are all at the front. They're all in some order of what's going on. Alonzo is doing his Alonzo thing.

He's in that four or five spot. Forosado goes rushing through the pack and takes the lead for a little bit, but gets a track limits warning. He still had a good 20 lap race. It was a lap 14 that he did it on. He still had 13 laps left.

So, you're expecting a track limits warning there. Nepo's got a track limits warning. Picaris was nearly down from a massive front end slide that he had at the last turn on the track. He's leg off the whole nine yards there. Alonzo had got himself back to lead, but any time he did, Holgardo retaliated.

Forosado just dive bombed Adrian Fernandez. I'm going, why on earth was he doing that? They were all together in the pack in front. There was no reason to dive bomb Adrian Fernandez. That move could have came a lap later or two laps later, but I believe, if I'm correct in saying this, that Forosado got a long lap penalty for the irresponsible riding of that incident, which is a shame.

Anyway, things kind of at this point settled down for about five, six laps. It's a really calm Moto3 race. Pretty much, I decided, look, we beat each other up for 12.5, 13 laps here. Nobody's getting away from each other. So, let's just cool it for a second and let's just go to the end and settle this like men, for lack of anything better to say.

So, they just tool around until we get to the four laps to go. Four to go, Alonso's out front, Holgardo, Piqueras, and Vier. Then there's one over like 1.1 seconds to Rotola because Rotola was trying to get from the bad start he had, try to work his way up, but could he actually get there? And then everything holds station for the third lap. And then with two to go, chaos breaks out.

All hell breaks loose. All hell breaks loose. Holgardo dives by Alonso, then Piqueras came through because that pushed both them wide. And then Alonso goes back by and then Piqueras goes by. Holgardo goes by.

They swap back, they swap forth, they go this way, they go that way. It's an incredible race. You can't really take any kind of a note. But at the very end, it finally works itself out to where Alonso wins this crazy clash of titans. And then Piqueras was second, followed by Holgardo and Vier who got on the podium.

Then it was Holgardo or Rotola Lunetta for your top six. Kelso had a seventh. Then Fernandez, Bertoli, Rareda, Suzuki, Faroli, Ferrisato after his long lap penalty. Nepa and then your last finisher was Yamanaka at 15. An absolutely amazing race that just kind of was crazy at the beginning, settled down, then just became this purely chaotic pass you, pass me, back forth, run over to curbs.

It was just, you know, it was typical Moto3. It's what you love. It's what you live for within one of these races. It wasn't quite the cracking race we had last time at Mazano where Piqueras comes from the two long lap penalty to win. At the very end, it's a surprise.

You knew the guys who were going to be there were going to be there. Thank God Alonso won because that two race losing streak of not winning is just terrible for that kid. I mean, I don't know what's throwing him away. It's not even giving him a Moto2 ride. I mean, the kid's just obviously unworthy given that lackluster performance over the last two weeks.

But I thought it was a great race, Rich. Well, it certainly was. As you say, Jim, really, it was a race of the first few laps and then the last few laps really, wasn't it? I mean, as soon as Alonso got to the front with probably six or seven laps to go, he really put the hammer down and the pace picked up big time. So yeah, I mean, he really meant business this time.

You could tell that he wanted a bit of revenge for what happened last time out when he did get kind of punted out of the way. And I mean, he didn't even finish on the podium, which is very unusual for him because let's not forget after this weekend's result having won, I think he's now only one race off being the winningest, which is not to my like very much, but winningest Moto3 ride of all time. He will overtake Fennati, of course was in Moto3 for four or five times the time that Alonso has been in there. So I mean, it's an amazing record that he's got. Is he going to win single season?

Will he have the most wins in a season? Two, right? He's close to that. I wouldn't be surprised. I think he is.

I think he's real, real close. He needs one or two more probably, because I think this was his eighth win of the season. Yeah. I mean, it's phenomenal. So a lot of races to go as well.

So I mean, yeah, it's very awesome. And you won't rule him out winning a handful more. No, no. So it was a cracking, cracking last lap. Very tense, very exciting.

I've got to say I'm impressed with Danny Holgado. I mean, he's not winning races still, but he's certainly taken on board the, in good measure, the criticism that he got from his birth boss, Herve Pontreal, who was quite critical about the fact that he wasn't being aggressive enough. So he, you know, fair play to him, credit where it's due, he is certainly mixing it right up the front. But again, Jim, and I keep saying it every race, like a broken record, this can't get over how clean the racing is and how few crashes there have been this year in the races. I don't think maybe one or two people at the back early on, but certainly in terms of the top 10, for Asato's ambitious punt on Fernandez's side, which didn't result in a crash, nobody went down.

And that's been the case pretty much all season long. So it's a, yeah, unusual kind of trait of Moto3 this year, whereas you're used to seeing, certainly on the last lap, you know, some hair raising maneuvers of people panicking and trying to get the job done and high siding or taking somebody else out. You know, we just haven't seen any of that this year. It's really impressive, really. Yeah, I agree.

A couple little things for me here. Alonso won the race with the track limits warning. The kid could have easily slid across anywhere and he didn't. Nerves have still. Yeah.

It was, I mean, I'm not saying that he was not fazed by it, considering what Martín had said. Hey, I was distracted by seeing a lot of track limits warning on my dash or whatever. The other one, I'll give all credit, as you said, to Hulgardo. And so I think we'll leave that there. But I thought Picaris had another great race.

He's on the Honda and he made it look easy to be there. And so, and to some extent for Asato as well. For Asato probably would have been in it with a shout. He just hasn't learned how to calm down yet. Yes, exactly.

Again, why he ever decided to punt. They weren't getting away. Nobody was getting away. That pass on Fernandez could have came a lap later, two laps later. It really didn't matter, which I thought was a bit of immaturity on for Asato.

But it will happen. I think he'll win a race before it's over. But let's look at the championship standings as it stands right now. You give Alonso another 25 points. That puts him on 271 points.

He is 82 points ahead of Hulgardo. But Hulgardo is level even with Vier at 82 points behind Alonso as well. So they're tied essentially for it. But I think Hulgardo has got what, more podiums? Because I think the tiebreakers wins and then podium finishes.

So he must have, I know Hulgardo hasn't won yet this year and I don't think Vier has either. So it's got to be podiums that is making the difference there and the standings. Then it's Artola, Picaris, Munoz, Rueda, Kelso with a pretty decent ride. Again, he seems to lose at the end of the race for some reason. Then Adrian Fernandez and Yama Naka are your top 10 there.

A great, great Moto3 race. It's why we watch Moto3. It's why we love Moto3. And again, another shout out to Pirelli because there's not as many crashes. Now that doesn't mean it's all Donlap's fault.

Don't misinterpret that statement. It just seems as though these little bikes seem to gel with the Pirelli tires in a way that maybe perhaps Donlap didn't. And it doesn't mean the tire wasn't fine. It's just a different type of tire. And these kids obviously have taken to it pretty well because the racing this year, I think, has been absolutely phenomenal because no one has gotten away from anybody at all.

It's been tight races. I mean, even on the tracks, we would expect someone to get away. It really hasn't happened. So yeah. And the other point that's worth making, if you think of Picaris last time out, yes, I mean, he had to ride hard through the field and make up some gaps as well.

So you can, you can punish these tires in the way that it was harder to do, I think, with the Donlaps. You could easily burn them out. I mean, okay, you saw Acosta do it in Qatar where he started in the bloody pit lane and won the race there, if you recall that first race that he took. So yeah. And you cannot ignore that correlation between lack of crashes, great racing, and a new tire coming onto the scene.

I mean, that has to be linked. So good point, Jim. I hadn't necessarily made the connection with the tires and the fact there were less crashes, but there's more grip, clearly more grip and more feel. Yeah. Cause they're setting lap records everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but still very impressive given how relatively young and inexperienced a lot of these kids are on the world level. So yeah, no fantastic race. You know, I mean, are they really that far off?

Because a lot of these kids are junior world champions. They are Red Bull rookies champions. True. But they're still very, very young. They're still young.

I'm not going to lie there. They're still very young, but I think the level of what these kids are now is a lot higher than what it was when we were in our twenties kind of a thing, you know, that there's another level of maturity. And I think a portion of that has to go to Red Bull and the rookies cup and these, the mentoring that these kids are getting, you know, the identifying these kids at an early age and helping to mentor them through is probably a lot of it as well. So, I mean, it hasn't been without problems because we know there's been tragedy just not too many years ago. It was like, well, we got to, we got to do something here.

We have changed the age limits for the class, but either way, still fantastic racing and we'll move from there to Moto two. Now Moto two in the first qualifying session, Marrero is there. Guevara is there. Aegis is there. Alcoba, Anshu and Bender, Van de Gerberg and Lopez is kind of there.

That's sort of maybe the oddball that Lopez was there. You know, given that he's Aldegar's teammate, you just didn't expect to see him really there in Q2. He was. Van de Gerberg, Foggia, Senna, Aegis, Lopez all get through to get to that second qualifying session. Now halfway through the second qualifying session, Arbolino is quick on the Mark VDS bike.

He seems to have the capability now to qualify on the Pirelli that he sort of couldn't do previously. He's gone back to either some setting or found something or has got himself a setup that works for him and how he wants to ride the bike with that, with those tires. Kennett was second quick. Dixon was third, then Alonso, Van de Gerberg, and Foggia. Agera was seventh.

He was very far down the pack. Garcia was 14th. Well, at least he wasn't in Q1. Let's give him some credit there. You know, we're slowly moving ourselves forward, but Roberts was 16th.

And then Chantra fell at turn nine and then Roberts from absolutely nowhere with literally just barely seconds left on the clock, but maybe 30 seconds, 20 seconds left on the clock, went to the top of the heap with a lap that I just, I did not see that coming from anywhere because Roberts had not made a lap at all in the first half of the session. He never left the pits. He had not set a time. He did that on a one flying lap and he went to the top. Now, Arbolino did get by and Roberts fell, or sorry, not Arbolino, Kennett got by at the end and he did take pole away from Joe.

But that was still a great moment for Joe. I was shocked. I just didn't see it happening. But the starting grid was Kennett, Roberts, Arbolino. So instead of having a pole, which Tony the Tiger probably deserved, he was at least starting on the front row.

Vietti would take the hold of the second row with Dixon in the middle and then Outagher kind of right there like, Ooh, this is different from last weekend, which we never talked about the last time the racing was kind of, I don't want to say predictable or whatever, but this is had, usually we've seen before like in the COVID era, if they raced at a track previously then came back to it, it sort of repeated itself to some extent. This was completely different. Like the grids were all shooken up and in different things, which was kind of nice to see. I get, I don't know if the rain washed away the rubber and that changed things and made it different or whatever it was. But then that was your top six.

So that's where we were going to go as we went into the Moto2 race. Now, Arbolino got a heck of a hole shot and Kennett and Roberts just leaned on each other as they were heading to turn one. As they get out of one, there's a bullet that goes flying by on the outside of everybody named Agura. Now, Agura had started seventh from qualifying. That was one of the best moves at the start of a race I think I've ever seen happen because it was so quick, so fast and so unexpected.

But he was starting, as you're looking down to make sure, he was starting to riders left. So he was able to cut the corner early. It just roared past her. I didn't think, I really didn't think when I first saw it, I thought Agura had missed his brake marker and was going to trash it going into two. I just didn't think it was possible for him to hold on to it.

It was that stunning of a moment because, and your attention was taken away from what he was doing because Roberts and Kennett are just banging off of each other, elbows out, and you're waiting for those two guys to hook a bar and fall off. So your attention isn't even anywhere near Agura. Then Agura just goes right up to third place. It was like, whoa, that's just crazy. So it was like, huh, kind of like a, it was sort of like a foreshadower of things to come in this race because it was like, whoa, that was not expected in a Moto2 race or whatever.

But it settles down a little bit to where it's Arbolino, Vietti, and Kennett. Those guys are sort of settling into the lead. Now Garcia crashes at turn one. Dixon also had a crash at turn two, but he remounted. It happened at the same time.

Garcia crashed at turn one, then Dixon made it one corner farther and fell off too. Both those guys tried to remount. Now basically Arbolino, Vietti, and Kennett are out front. Nobody's near them. One of the three guys is going to win the race.

Tony the Tiger does the donkey work. He's leading almost every lap that there is. Eventually we see that Vietti had a serious rear end snap and Kennett would get by him because it was, again, Arbolino, Vietti, Kennett. Wow. Going to that last turn, Vietti had one of the wildest bucking Bronco moments I've seen in a long time and he caught it.

I was like, whoa, there must be some severe tire issues with Vietti because it looked to me like the rear had let go and then it gripped and pushed the front and then the front tucked and he pulled it back. Then it's this oscillation of front grip, no rear grip, front grip, rear grip, rear grip, front grip, rear grip, and he eventually just rise the thing off. But by the time he got it all collected back together again, he had lost. It was in third place. It looked as though that the race was going to be Kennett against Arbolino for who was going to win.

But Arbolino was running an absolutely fantastic race. We got down to basically the last three laps of this race and these guys are absolutely going at it. But Kennett and Arbolino are right there. What's weird about Kennett, he's never really made a place on anybody unless somebody made a mistake because Arbolino goes wide, Kennett goes to the lead, Vietti's off the pace, if you will. His moment that he had trying to wrestle up the bunking Bronco had put him four or five tenths behind the two guys out front.

Figured Vietti's got a sure podium. That's it. They get on to the last lap and Arbolino's leading and all you're thinking is Arbolino's going to win one finally. He's finally got the priorities figured out because his late race pace was wicked and he's rolling around this place. Always got to just not make a mistake.

Do not make a mistake and Kennett is not going to get by you. It looked like he had this covered until we got to the last two turns and Arbolino out braked himself. Big time. Yes, sir. I think he was having gear selection problems because if you watch the replay and he did it on or it happened on lap 19 as well where he lost a bunch of time in the same corner on that hairpin at the end of the very long back straight, you could see him fishing on the gear lever trying to get it into gear and it just cost him that little bit and sent him out wide.

But that was game changer really, wasn't it? Because on the last lap, there was no way to recover that. You're right. I do think he was having gearbox problems. Initially, I thought he just out braked himself.

It looked like it. But you're correct. I believe what you're saying because that probably fits the scenario a little better than Arbolino just simply out braking himself because I never really thought about it that way. So well-spotted, Rich. Well-spotted.

But Arbolino's wide. That allows Kinet to get in front and all of a sudden out of magical, here's Vietti who gets Arbolino as they're heading to the last turn. This is Kinet's race. And then everybody's sort of decided that Kinet is going to win this thing. I was like, wow, he's going to have a second win, except for Vietti had some different magical power of some kind that allowed him to rail around the outside of the last turn and literally just beat Kinet in a drag race to the finish line.

And Vietti wins the race over Kinet and over Arbolino. It was the wildest Moto2 race since the inception of the class in those early couple of years. But there could be one of those races that might have been a little bit better when the class first went four-stroke, but this race was spectacular. It's easily in the top three of great finishes of a Moto2 race. Fantastic finish, Rich.

Certainly the wildest last half a lap of a race ever in Moto2. Easily. Absolutely insane. As you say, you had two people that you thought were dead-serts for the win and the guy you thought was completely out of it a few laps prior won the race. I mean, that doesn't happen very often.

I mean, poor old Kinet. I mean, you have to feel for him, but he was understandably so defensive and tight going into that final turn that Vietti just pulled a master stroke, didn't he? Because he just ran the berm around the outside and just gassed it. A bit like Aguirre had done in turn one, actually. He just squared the corner and just let the torque do the rest.

Kinet was over longer, a bit slower coming off the turn, and that was just enough. I'm not quite sure what the winning margin was in the engine, but it was probably a couple of thousands, something like that, because it was very, very, very close. So, yeah. I mean, thank God Kinet has won a race already, because that would have been a hard one to take if that had robbed him of his first victory. So at least that didn't happen, but he must be pretty tired of finishing second.

So the official time difference between Vietti and Kinet is 29,000th of a second, 29 milliseconds. Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. Doesn't get a lot closer than that.

Yeah. No. It was a great race. It was a fantastic motu race. It was like you had to stick with it because the middle of the race is boring.

Nobody's really, nothing's happening. They're just burning off laps, but the last four are so worth the wait to get to that. Oh, good grief. Iagura scored big because he came home fourth. Aldiger had a decent race to be fifth.

I mean, we didn't see any of this because for some reason, they were fixated on the front. Yeah. In the middle of the race, I'm like, there had to be good racing happening in the back, but nobody seemed to care. It's like, well, okay, we're just going to sit here and watch these guys roll around. Why are we doing that?

I'm glad we did because it told the story all the way through. But anyway, Aldiger fifth, Joe Roberts would finish sixth. Aegis was seventh. Then Ramirez, Lopez, Slatch fell out the top 10. Then Gonzalez, Foggia, Guevara, Chantre, and Alcova get the last points of it, which was, again, this is a crazy race.

In the championships, Iagura is on 188 points. That puts him 22 clear of Garcia. Roberts is on 143. He's 45 back now. Lopez, then Aldiger, then Dixon.

Vietti's eighth, Gonzalez, and then Arbolino is in the top 10 for points. Looks like I's got at least one hand on the trophy. I mean, it's only 22 points. A lot can happen, but he seems to be the more consistent of everybody who is around him right now. Yeah.

He's kind of what I would say is he's asserting himself now. Well said. He's going probably, I would venture into a phase of the season now that is slightly going to favor him. I don't know why I feel that. I just kind of always think of him as very consistent and a strong finisher, both in races and in championships in recent years.

The only problem he has is he is liable to the odd crash and he does injure himself. If you remember a couple of years ago, he kind of lost the championship because he broke his wrist towards the end and that really hampered his title run that year. Hopefully nothing like that is going to intervene and mess things up for him. But Garcia is still only 22 behind. It's not a huge, great big gap.

If Garcia can start to find some of that form that he's had for most of the season, then there's still a championship fight to be had here. But if he keeps kind of just turning in these sliding sort of performances, going further back in the points or sliding off as he did this time, then I can't really see a Roberts or Lopez and certainly not an Aldegra at this stage. I find that a bit of a leap to see them closing that size of a gap with Aguirre being as good as he is. I think you're right, Jim. I think he's kind of got half a pinky on the title.

I mean, it's not quite there yet, but he certainly is asserting himself now. Two fingers. A couple of fingers maybe. I say a couple of fingers. That was a great race.

The only thing we had left was MotoGP. If we look at what went down in the qualifying, in the first qualifying session, Miller is there. So is Zarco. His teammate Binger is there as well. And Alex Marquez and Olivera.

Now, Renz had a stomach bug or was feeling ill. This guy is like the modern day Kevin Schwantz. Can't seem to catch a break anywhere. Apart from a broken leg. Apart from a broken leg.

You can catch that sort of break. Shouldn't laugh. Roll Alex. No. But Alessio is down at like turn one at the front, you know, throttle.

Halfway, Olivera and Mir were the quickest people there. Mir had probably his best weekend on the Honda of this year. I don't know if they found anything, but he a lot of time was the fastest Honda, which is saying something. It wasn't Zarco. Drackhaus made it a one-two for a little bit until Binder spoiled the party because Raul and Olivera were both there on top with about two minutes to play.

But like I said, Binder had stole the show. But then Augusto was down at turn three, lost the front. But Binder and Olivera get into the second session. The second section, Marquez would start on the bike that he did not crash in free practice. But it was available to him.

We knew that. But it didn't seem to matter because he crashed that bike because he wound himself into the gravel. Marquez is pushing it. I get Honda flashbacks. He's pushing a bike that's not capable of being at the front harder than it needs to be.

It's like, dude, you got the factory bike. Could you just chill and save this for next year, please? That's my words to Mark. Mark, if you listen, I know you do. Take it easy, pal.

Next year. Okay. So anyway, basically Benyaya would take pole followed by Martin and Bastionini. So Ducati's across the front. Binder was a great show right at the end to grab the fourth spot.

Then Acosta, the Zeki, Mark Marquez would be seventh because he fell down the order having not been able to go back out again. Funny enough, he went out, was going to go on the bike. He walked out, said, nah, put it back in. Then he went back out later on. I don't know what his plan was.

I don't know if he wanted to try to catch on to the fast guys and get a tow or, but that didn't seem to work because you're going out on a tire that was definitely going to be cold. It's strange what he did. I'm not sure. Didn't understand that strategy at all. So that was it.

It has been his MO for seasons long though, hasn't it, Jim, is to go out and catch a tow off people or a reference probably is the better term. So yeah, it's the one aspect of his qualifying behavior that I'm always a bit surprised about really because he's so quick, but he seems to like it having somebody to chase, doesn't he? Yeah, but he only ever did it when he was on a bike that wasn't quick enough. Well, he's been doing it a lot this year. Right.

And his bike is not quick enough. Yeah. Well, he's on the year old Ducati equipment, slightly inferior. It's still on a Ducati, but- Well, he's on an early spec 23. It's not even a late spec 23.

But it's not on a Honda. Yeah, thank God it's not a Honda. But I mean, when he had the power of Honda, they were winning everything. He'd go out and just throw a lap down. It looked like Casey Stoner out of the pits, wham, guys go chase that.

And he was good. I mean, he used to qualify while he doesn't now. He's becoming the enigma there, but I'm going to be interested to see how that happens when he's got a 25 Ducati. Things may change. Anyway, we'll move our way to the sprint race.

Martín had the whole shot. Bender was there next. Then it was Benya. Then it was Marc Marquez. And then it was Acosta.

Bender basically fell. You know what not. Martín was like, you know, seven tenths clear early on. Acosta would get by Bender. Then it was Martín, Benya, and Bastianini.

So they're going for- With about six to go, the fight was on. Martín got a track limits. He then blinked first because he seen the track limits, warning it upset him. That allowed Benya to get by. It was all over at that point.

Benya wins the sprint, followed by Martín and Bastianini. Marquez would go before then Acosta, Bender, Quattrarro. Quattrarro had been absolutely fantastic. I think Quattrarro had a great weekend all the way around. He's really right.

It's such a difference between how Marquez dealt with the problems at Honda and how Quattrarro deals with the problems at Yamaha. He rides within himself to the point where I'm going to push this bike, but I'm not going beyond the limit of where I know I can safely be. It's a much different scenario. Whereas the other guy just fling that thing down the asphalt as many times because he's just either, you know, either Quattrarro is not dedicated to winning the way Marquez is dedicated to winning or Quattrarro has a more rational, sane thought that eventually I will get a bike that I can win and I'm still young enough that I don't have to do what Marquez is doing. Kind of a philosophy.

I think I would just caveat that by saying that the Yamaha has a demonstrably better front end on it than the Honda for a long, long, long time. What Honda's ever had a good front end. Come on. Well, yeah, you say that a lot, but you know, again, you know, we know the Yamaha is a sweet handling bike, so it's not prone to throwing its riders up the road, but Quattrarro certainly is extracting everything and a bit more out of it at the moment. Yeah, definitely.

That's for sure. Either way, at the end of this, it's 321 to 317. Benyai has cut the lead to four points that Martine had going in. So I was like, okay, this is kind of becoming a, it's a Benyai weekend, right? So we get to the second race or the actual race.

I mean, whichever way you want to look at it. We're on Sunday's event. How's that? Yeah, and Martine gets a whole shot and Benyai got to the front. Bastianini was right behind him.

It's Bender and Acosta and Bizecki and Mark Marquez. Then Marquez gets by Bizecki. Bender crashes at turn four and the top three had an eight tenths of a gap already, just a lap and a half in. They were eight tenths ahead. So, okay, this race is going to come down to Benyai versus Martine versus Bastianini.

That's kind of where this thing runs out because basically, Martine would get by Benyai at turn eight. We noticed that Benyai's rear is really snappy and the pace that they were running out front was super slow. Now, I never read anything about Benyai having a bad tire or a tire that didn't bed in right or if there was any kind of a problem with the tire. Did you read anything that would tell us different? Okay.

What did you see? Well, I won't say complaining vociferously because I wasn't in the media debrief, obviously, because I wasn't there. But the people that were said that he was just reporting that he had certainly in that first five, six, seven, eight laps, no rear grip at all. Absolutely none. And he was kind of insinuating or probably flat out saying, I had a bad tire.

I mean, you do get a bad tire in a batch from time to time. The tires are distributed around the teams randomly, so there's no kind of background, sort of nefarious stuff going on. I mean, if we remember. They're all hand built tires. Yeah.

And last year in Qatar, he had a bad rear tire. I think it genuinely was a rear tire problem and appears to be the case that that's what Benyai said from this time around. Although just prior to him exiting the race, he did start to pump in fastest laps. So it looked as if the tire came back to him. But certainly up until that point, he said, and I heard it on a couple of the other podcasts from the people that were in the debrief sessions, you know, at the end of the day, he just had said he had no grip on the rear.

So that was his problem. And you could clearly see that, as you say, Jim, visibly from the TV. And obviously, he dropped back quite a long way in that early stage. Yep. Definitely.

Because he'd fallen to third because Bashtiini or Bashtiini, the beast had just gotten by. So Martin and Bashtiini were clearing off. And there was no grip on his tire. One thing of note is like a lap 23, there was a great shot of Akasta coming off the last turn. Did you notice how fast the rear height height device dropped the back into his bike?

It was noticeably quicker than any other motorcycle that came out of that turn. The Ducati's will squat, but it's a very linear, very, and they're down. This is like somebody just simply let all the air out of that back end and just like, it was like within a second, that thing was dragster mode. It was crazy that it worked like that. It was one of the greatest shots I've seen of watching the rear end of the motorcycles collapse the way they do in the shape shifting era that we're in.

It was just amazing that, you know, KTM's device, rear ride height device works so much faster than everybody else's. Or they're able to tune it that way and that's just what Akasta wants. Take your pick. You know what I mean? It might be that he's just deploying it a little bit earlier off the turns as well.

So, you know, under that bit more lean and acceleration, it's just forcing itself down even more. But Jim, I know I keep saying it, but God, I hate those shape shifting devices. I do too. Oh, they make the bikes look so heinous. It's just, oh, it's a crime against everything I can think of.

I can't wait for them to be gone. I really can't. And I know, you know, it's a prototype thing and Alan will be tutting at me when he's listening to this and, you know, everything goes. And I do get that, but aesthetically, they're just abominations. Those things, they really are.

And when you see them dropping down to the speed that the KTM does, but most, I mean, all of these systems are highly developed now. Obviously, after so many seasons of running them, they're just vile, really vile. I can't wait for them to be gone. Yeah, I can't wait for them to be gone. I can't wait for at least some modified arrow.

So it's just a couple of winglets, if you will, on the front. Anyway, let's get back to the racing. So at this point, those, you know, it's Martin out front, you have Bastionini behind him. Benyai has fallen off, has fallen back because of his tire issues. Acosta crashes, trying to pick up the throttle on the front, maybe because he's picking up the throttle and deploying the rear ride height device at the same time, potentially, I don't know.

But definitely the kid was down there. Now, basically, the next few laps, suddenly, Benyai winds up grabbing some pace. So like the tire came in or got good or finally heated up, whatever happened, happened. And he's the fastest guy on the track. He's catching Martin, he's catching Bastionini, except for the fact that he wound up falling.

Oops. I think hearing what was said here, because I didn't know the piece of the tire issue with him. I suspected it was a bad tire. I just didn't know it for certain because I watched the race, I didn't get a chance to do all the other stuff because I was gone over the weekend. But at that point, when he went down, I felt like, okay, you were riding so hard to try to get to the front and win a race that I don't think you needed to win because there's plenty more races to come.

Take the points. I mean, I don't know. I'm not in his shoes, but I would have raced with my mind and said, well, third is the best I can do right now. We know Martin is liable to take some crazy tire choice at the island and not finish the race. There could be another one of these spotty rain events where Martin makes the wrong call or pits too early or whatever.

There's a lot that could happen in the races that are left. I don't think he had to really go for it because it's 25, 20 and 16. So that's five plus another four, nine points you're going to be down. You're only down four. You'd be 13 going into the next round.

That's nothing, especially with the sprints to add into that list. So was it an unforced error by Benyaya? I say so. He really didn't have to make that mistake. Perhaps there might have been something with the bike that we don't know about.

Maybe the tire went back off again and he didn't have the grip he wanted. But it was uncharacteristic of Benyaya to throw things away like he did, especially later in the season. We've seen him do it at the beginning of the season, different races. But usually by the time we get to Mizano, he's got himself sorted out and he's good to go. Although we did see Sepang in the very first year, he won his world championship.

But there's always those chances. So either way. He's always been a bit topsy-turvy, hasn't he? Let's be honest. He has crashed out a lot of races and a lot of race leading positions.

He's done it a few times this year. My take on this, Jim, just briefly because I know we need to push along. But he got some grip. He set the fastest lap. So was he just pushing like hell to try and catch up in the vain hope?

Not vain hope, but in the hope that he would catch the two out front. He must have been, I think, at this stage, what? Through a four seconds up the road, I think. So not drastically far away, but enough that he would have had to push pretty hard. It was a weird crash.

If you looked at it, the front just went with no warning whatsoever. I just wondered whether or not the way they skipped the rear under the brakes going into turns like that, whether that tire was just suddenly delivering a lot more grip, or if it just upset the front as it patted a little bit. It just took the weight off the front momentarily and down he went. There was no way he was going to save it. It was a very strange crash, really.

I mean, you look at a crash like that and you think, oh, something's broken. But clearly it hadn't. It just caught him out. But it was just odd because he's so good at Misano. And that was obviously part of the reason why he was pushing like he was because he didn't want to lose the home race for that matter.

So I don't hold it against him in a way. I think probably you're a bit more critical towards him than I feel. It was just an odd race that he found himself in with the lack of the grip. And then the grip came and he wanted to push on. But it's easy to be wise with hindsight, isn't it?

But as you say, perhaps given how far away Martín and Bastia were at this point, I tend to agree with you. I think that was the day to bag the points and just move on. The only reason I'm being as critical as I am of it is that that crash happened way early going into the corner. If he'd been at mid-corner picking throttle up, I would go that, hey, the rear had more grip. He wasn't used to.

And that's what unloaded the front knee felt. That was all on the brakes. That was all him going way late when he didn't have to. He wasn't going to get there. Hindsight is 2020 because we know what happens later on.

So it wouldn't have been even as bad as it could have been going into it. So again, I have too much old school American dirt tracker in me because you raced 36 races all summer long. And the guy who just consistently was near the podium or was in the top 10 had a great chance of winning those championships. Yeah, guys get on a run and put four or five race wins in a row down and whatnot. Yeah, I understand.

But still, consistency was always a key. Take the points that you can get and live to race another day. And that's just, I'm like you, I'm 52, I'm setting my ways. I'm always going to think that it just isn't going to change for me. But as we foreshadowed, there was drama left to be done.

As we got down to it, Bastionini starts to really put a push on Martin. They go after each other a bit, right? And they're really starting to battle it up. By the last lap, we got down to what is that the next to last turn, it's after all the fast, it was after all the fast rights. So I think that's like a 16, 15, like 14.

At 14 or 14, Bastionini just puts a wicked move on Martin, forcing him off the track, running wide, basically. Martin's way wide because he got lifted up. Because even then, even Bastionini didn't make the corner. He was so deep and so late, he didn't make the corner. So both of them never made the corner at the apex.

And then Bastionini goes on then to take the win. Martin throws up an arm in frustration and rides himself back onto the track and finishes slightly far behind it. This is the talking point of this race. Bastionini was not penalized, but we've seen people be penalized for that kind of discretion on the last lap. Do you think that move, considering the fact that Bastionini did not make the corner, was that a racing incident?

Should he have been given a three second penalty? What do you say, Rich? First of all, I think it was at turn four. Okay. I thought it was all the fast rights.

Anyway. No, it was in that first third. Okay. Okay. My initial gut reaction when I saw it was he's going to get a penalty for that.

However, I watched the replays over and over and over again. And I think the devil's in the detail here. It wasn't even an investigation, which I thought that was quite odd. Because normally these things flash up straight away, incident under investigation. But it was the last lap, so they had to make a quick call on this one.

And they obviously just decided that they were going to take a certain direction. But that's created quite a lot of controversy. The fact that there was no case to be heard. My take, Jim, is that it was an okay pass, but like only just okay pass. Because if you look at it on the various different angles, and particularly the replays, yeah, Bastionini throws one, but it's the last lap.

And we know what these bikes are like. They're not easy to overtake. And particularly Mazano is quite a tricky track anyway. So Bastionini throws it up front. You're slightly distracted by the fact that Martin's doing his usual thing.

And his legs virtually straight out. So it kind of looks as if Bastionini runs into him. But he doesn't really. It's just that Martin's throwing his leg right out into the track, as most of them do. I don't think Bastionini touches Martin's bike.

And I don't, he barely touches his leg actually. I mean, there probably is a little bit of contact, but I don't think there's bike on bike contact. And I think that is crucial in terms of how the stewards took a quick look at it. In the second phase of that overtake, Martin re-leans into the corner and suddenly realizes actually he can't do that. So he sits the bike up and he goes straight.

So for me, he was at least partly to blame for the fact that he went off track as much as he did. Now Bastionini, my initial thought was he'd run into Martin and he wouldn't have made the corner, but he didn't run into Martin, I don't think. And he did make the corner. He dropped off the curb onto the blue bit because he was looking around to see if Martin had hit the deck. I think and that caused him to go over onto the blue bit.

And again, the blue bit is crucial because that is not a track limits monitored corner. It's the green bits that are looked at for track limits. So he wouldn't have caught the last lap three seconds or drop a place penalty automatically as a result of that. And quite frankly, Martin did what Martin usually does is he immediately sort of spits his toys or throws his toys out the pram, starts gesticulating and stuff and drops back and cruises over the last lap. So even if Bastionini had been given a three second penalty or whatever, Martin wouldn't have been in range to take advantage of it and get the wind back.

So it was a bit sort of handbags at dawn really, although it calmed down on the cool down lap and they kind of pumped fists and stuff and it was kind of okay in part for me. Although there was quite a bit of moaning and groaning, I think again in the debriefs later on. So I'm rambling. In summary, it was an audacious move. It was borderline, but I don't think he hit Martin.

So I don't think he deserved a penalty for that. And yeah, you can argue that he didn't make the corner, but I think they realized that he would look behind him to check if Martin was okay. And so they probably just deemed that that was not a punishable offense either. And it wasn't a track limits corner anyway. So I think on balance, he didn't get a penalty.

I think that was the correct call, but it was, it's interesting how other riders have reacted now, because I think the key thing here is that race direction didn't even look at it. And so everybody's saying, well, if that's the kind of move I can throw on the last lap and you know, nobody's, there's going to be no case to answer, bring it on. So what quite what unfolds over the course of the next few rounds is going to be, yeah, interesting. And it might create a bit of a legacy, which Simon Crafar inherits to manage next year. The one thing, the example, if you cast your mind back, Jimmy, you probably heard this and thought about it yourself.

But an example that was brought to mind, which is kind of a similar style, that was on the first lap, I think, was Assen. I think it was in 2021 or 2022. Going into that tight hairpin at the first part of the Assen course, if you remember, Espagro and Quattraro came together. It was actually Quattraro was deemed to be at fault, pushed Espagro into the gravel. And if you remember, then Espagro did that amazing comeback ride on the Aprilia and got Miller into the final chicane on the last lap for the podium, I think it was for the podium.

Now Quattraro was penalized for that incident because he was deemed to have thrown it up the inside, maybe sought a contact, but not very clear. And it kind of sent Espagro off into the gravel on that occasion. It didn't crash, but that was penalized. And so there is this issue again of inconsistency. So that I think is probably the more pertinent thing that people might want to moan about rather than the call itself.

It's just, again, inconsistent kind of application of the rules. So can I say one more thing before you give your bit? Because Lewis Duncan, who's a MotoGP journalist, he's now on, I think he's on crash.net now, made the very good point that part of the issue here is that the rule around this is quite poorly written and is very ambiguous in its meaning. And what it says, I'll just quickly read it because I wrote it down. It says riders must ride in a responsible manner, which does not cause danger to other competitors or participants or gain an unfair advantage either on the track or in the pit lane.

Any infringement of this rule may be penalized by the FIM MotoGP stewards. Now there's some issues in that rule because, and I've underlined responsible manner. Well, that's open to interpretation straight away. Unfair. Again, what does that contain in terms of what do you deem fair or unfair?

And any infringement of the rule may be penalized, not will be, maybe. So it's open to a lot of interpretation. Now, okay, the stewards need some latitude, but at the end of the day, what the stewards say is what goes. So, you know, it's a bit baggy that and that needs to be tightened up to define what kind of incidents are unfair specifically, you know, under what circumstances. So I think it's been blown all out of proportion and we're already talking about, or I'm talking about it for five minutes straight, if not longer, so I need to shut up.

But yeah, for something that I think was okay, it's kind of become a huge, great big talking point, but it is going to have ramifications now that the riders are saying, okay, well, I can push moves like that out onto my competitors and I'll get away with it, which may well prove not to be the case because the stewards don't consistently rule on these things because of baggy rules like that. Okay. That's me. I'm a hundred percent with you. My only take is this.

I agree. Bascinini did not touch Martine. However, in my opinion, from what I saw, how I looked at it, Bascinini wasn't going to make the corner regardless. Even though he's looking over at Martine or whatever, that's just a natural reflex because he thought he may have hit him. He felt Martine's leg and decided that, oh, maybe Martine went down I don't think he could have made the corner on any kind of conventional racing line.

Now, that doesn't mean he should get a penalty for it. I'm just saying that's the difference that I see to my eye and from what I know of me having been on the track with other guys in situations, sort of something similar to this. From there, it's like, okay, if you wanted to assess the penalty, it should have been under review immediately. And then I was kind of hoping that they would throw a three-second penalty on him because Martine moped around just to let Bascinini win. And yeah, you could have won if you would have got your act together, boy, as a smack in the face to Martine.

Like, hey, throwing your arm up in handbags at dawn is not how we ride here. It's kind of petty and childish. I try to put it together, but it's kind of petty. I'm making a board again, Morgan, words for Jacob. Language.

Yes, language. So that's my take there on that one. The bigger problem is going to be what this has caused because if you, and this has happened in other series too, where people go, wait a minute, is that the definition of what's okay? Because if that's the definition of what's okay, I'm going to chuck my race car up the inside of you next time, or I'm going to chuck a motorcycle on the side of you. The worst thing you could do is give Marquez any kind of ammunition to chuck a motorcycle up the inside of anybody.

Because then he's got a defendable action. Like, look, this is here. You can walk in with your iPhone, show them the YouTube video and go, guys, you said this is okay, which that is a slope we do not want to be on whatsoever. So I think, I personally think that it should have been a Stewart's inquiry okay, that quickly would have gone to no further action racing incident. And I think everyone would have been a whole lot calmer about this if they had at least done that.

If I'm Simon Krayfar next year, and I see in a situation that is exactly similar to that, I am at least going to throw down that that is a, under an investigation. And as you properly said, he never truly hit Martins bike, they didn't make contact. He felt his leg there. And as you said, Martins legs, the farthest out of anybody's, which I have a whole big thing about the knee, about the leg dangle that I Rossi started, it was straight down. And I understand why I did it.

But Martins, everybody else kind of throw it out there as a way to, it's a way to block somebody or something. And I'm like, okay, guys, if you want to dangle your legs, that's a whole other side story. But my point is, if you're dangling your leg straight down, it's not out parallel to the racetrack surface. Okay. And so that's my take.

That's how I saw it. And guys, write in, tell us what you think about it, because that's where we are with this one. With all that said and done, Rich, Bastianity won, Martin second, Marquez got the podium because of all the other stuff that happened along the way. Then it was Bizecki, Morbidelli, Vinales. He didn't break his bike.

He rode it around and got a sixth place. So Gary's got to be absolutely excited. Now he's maturing even more that he's now finishing and finishing in the points. Love you, Gary. I'm still laughing about that.

Every time I think about it, I laugh. And then you had Quattroraro with another seventh place, which I think was fantastic. And then Aspargo, Alex Marquez, Olivera, Mir got points on the Honda. Marini got points on the Honda. And even Zarco got points on the Honda, which some of it was attrition there, but the Hondas actually looked halfway decent for once.

And then with that, we'll look at the championship standings. So Martin is on 341 points to Benyaya's 317. It's a 24-point lead. Again, if Benyaya had just rode to third, it would not be a 24-point lead. Now he had 24 coming into this weekend.

It was 23 that Martin led by coming into the weekend. This is not insurmountable by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just thinking, where would you be if you would have calmed yourself down a little bit and just carried on? So anyway, those two guys are going to settle this championship. I mean, Bastianese on the outside looking in and so is Marquez, but third, it's a two-horse race and it's going absolutely positively well down to the very last race of the year in Valencia.

It's just, that's where it's headed. It's been headed there since we started racing, quite honestly. So that's everything I can think of for this episode, Rich. Do you have anything else you'd like to add? Just one thing that you probably missed because you were watching another racing, Quattro should have finished fifth, but he ran out of fuel coming off the last turn.

So that's why he finished seventh. Yeah. They just use a bit more fuel than expected during the race, not as if he was underfilled, but yeah, no, he just ran out of juice and so dropped two positions, which was really frustrating for him because he had to say, I mean, seventh is still a great result considering where they've been, but yeah, it was a fifth really. So a bit unfortunate, but yeah, that was just a little detail that also happened. And a lot of this stuff was lost because again, it was another race where they really only watched what was going on at the front of the race.

And you're thinking, surely there must be something else going on that we could look at, but yeah, that's good old race direction again. That's how it goes. Oh, with all that, considering we've got one this weekend in Indonesia, followed by another one in Japan right after that, we're going to get out of here. I'm going to tell you to ride safe. Yeah.

And we'll see you next week.