The Heat Builds In Indonesia

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 783. October 1st, 2024, I'm Jim McDowell in the US across the pond in Mary Old England.

Richard Jal, good evening Rich. Crazy racing I think, definitely weird and different racing than what we see on the continent, if you will. When we head to Southeast Asia, things get wild. Yeah, good weekend of racing, lots of racing at the weekend of course. So we have GP, well supers, British supers, even some Motor America, which we'll just very, very briefly touch on in the news.

So yes, lots to talk about tonight Jim, as always. There's always something to talk about. Let's start off this episode by doing listener feedback that showed up. Had a great email from Jacob Rowler. He was asking about the tire pressure rules and without foreshadowing what happens in the race.

Basically he was saying, you know, hey, has anybody ever have any data of anybody actually having a tire problem with an underinflated Michelin tire, specifically a front? And there is no one who's ever had a problem with an underinflated Michelin front. He also asked if he said he feels that the rule is contrived. Well, it is kind of contrived because here's the issue. Like any good tire manufacturer, Michelin will show up at a track.

They will know what compounds, what constructions they've brought to that track. They'll look at ambient temperature, they'll look at the temperature of the track surface, they will have a recommended tire pressure range of where that tire should operate in. And that's what you do. That happened to us at club racing. If you went to the Dunlap truck to get tires, you went to Pirelli tire truck, whatever they had on the board, here's your pressure range for your front.

Here's your pressure range for your rear. Pretty much don't violate those guys. Those guys would literally walk out every now and then and take surface temperature of the asphalt. So I guarantee you Michelin's doing this in MotoGP. The thing is here, and the reason we got a tire pressure rule is the fact that the problem was you started having aerodynamics on the bikes.

You're starting to push the front end into the ground with wings on the front of the bike. When you put more pressure than what is designed onto that front tire, the carcass will move around, it will wiggle, and that creates heat in the tire, which more heat, if you heat air, air becomes more, expands more as you heat it. And when you heat it and it's inside of that carcass, that tire is going to balloon up in pressure. So the pressure of the tire is going to raise up. At some point, the tire gets to a tipping point where the traction that it provided previously is not good because the tire pressure has risen so much that it's either rock hard, if you will, and it doesn't really have the springy, sponginess, grippiness that it's supposed to have because it's got so much pressure in it.

So that's what was happening with the racing. The aerodynamics caused this problem. That's why Michelin has a new front that nobody wants to test, and they were delayed yet again for all this stuff, which is causing the problem because nobody wants to test what they're not going to use in the race and their testing time is short enough as it is. So Michelin, being who they are, said, look, we can't have these—sorry, let's step back. The crews, being who they are, said, look, if the tire pressure is going to raise by x, and we know what that is over time, we're going to start x below so that we'll get the tire pressure up to the range that we want it in for, say, the last two-thirds of the race.

Well, Michelin starts to find out that, look, these guys are under-inflating tires. Now, they're under-inflating by like three, four, maybe five pounds. We're not talking about a tire that's supposed to be run at—let's just make a number here, folks. I don't know what it is. 30 psi, these guys are not starting at 15 psi.

If it's 30, they're starting at maybe 25. So that this thing builds pressure, it gets into that operating range, which is, say, between 30 and 35 psi. Well, Michelin doesn't want to be responsible for what happens to anybody for an under-inflated tire. So they said, look, they cried foul, hey, these guys are under-inflating the tire. It's against what we told them to do.

We've got to keep this from happening. In the guise of safety, we got tire pressure sensors to say, look here, this is what's happening in the tire. That's why they say that 60% of the race has to be completed with the tire pressure in the working range that Michelin says it should be in. So they kind of concessed a little bit to let you be a little bit low, but you've got to be sure that you're actually into that range for at least two-thirds of the distance. So is it contrived?

A little bit, but it's done by the guise of safety. And the last thing I told Jake in my reply and his email was, I can only think of three times that a tire has ever caused a rider to crash. Well, okay, four, because I just thought of another one, but that wasn't the tire, it was a wheel. So I'm going to take that one out of the list. But due to a tire failure, I only know of three.

If anybody knows any other one, please write in, motopodcast.com. Let me know. The only three I can think of, one, Barry Sheen, very famously in the trio, Daytona, the tire blows and Barry goes for a ride. I think he broke both arms, both legs. A whole bunch of stuff happened.

The lot, right? He was a rag doll that literally got thrown. Barry went back and still raced after all that. That was a tire failure. The second one that I can come up with that was a tire failure happened in Daytona, again, in the late 90s.

I cannot remember the rider who was riding an AMA, Moto America, AMA Superbike, whatever you want to call it. At that time, if anybody knows who that rider was, write in and let me know because I looked quickly today and I couldn't find it. That was a tire that blew. It was a rear tire that blew. If I remember correctly, that was what caused Daytona to say, look, we're not racing Superbikes through both high banked turns.

We're going to take turns one and two out of it. Sorry, the NASCAR turns one and two out of the circuit and race only through three and four of the trios, which eventually led to, well, we're not racing Superbikes there at all. When we're racing 600 machines because of the tire wear, the tire failure that was possible there. I want to think it was Ben Spees who had that, but it's not Ben. I'm almost 100% positive it's not Ben, but I want to think it was somebody on a Suzuki, but I just don't remember who.

The only other one was I believe it's Loris Bass at Sapang, the back tire. It was a Bridgestone tire, but the back tire exploded on the straightaway and caused him to wreck there. Those are the only three tire related issues I can think of at all in this premier class of motorcycle road racing. That's it. If anybody knows of any other one that happened, and if you guys are thinking about Freddie Spencer in 1985, 1984, three, three or four.

It might have been four. It's four. He had magnesium carbon fiber wheels on his bike at that time. He had that bike at Daytona, and the carbon fiber wheels were on to that Daytona. All the G-Force from the track at Daytona caused a hairline crack in the carbon fiber wheel.

When they went to wherever they were in Europe for the first round of the 500cc world championship, that wheel broke. Because of the wheel breaking, the tire delaminated, and Freddie went for a ride and wound up breaking his wrist for the first time. That doesn't count because that's not a tire failure. That's a wheel failure. Hopefully that clears up the tire pressure and why we have it and all that good stuff.

Jim, am I right in recalling the very start of all this tire pressure problem? Am I right in recalling that Matt Oxley broke a story where he said that Ducati were routinely going under the pressure at the start, under the recommended Michelin pressure, and then they were obviously the tire was coming up to pressure towards the end of the race? I think it was shortly after that that this kind of minimum or monitored pressure came in, I suppose as the technology arrived and kind of the aero side of stuff and the sheer extremes of these modern generation bikes as they are at the minute has kind of morphed this into more of a problem there where depending on where you are on the track, if you're in the pack or whatever, the pressures can become such a big problem. Obviously this is something that we saw on Sunday just gone. It kind of started off as a sort of an innocuous, well maybe not innocuous is perhaps not the right word, but it's kind of grown into a bit of a monster, hasn't it?

And it's compounded by, pardon for the pun, but the fact that Michelin can't kind of get this new tire released anytime soon for various reasons, mostly we think because of the lack of testing availability and data and stuff. So yeah, it's just become a bit of a boring subject in a way, hasn't it? Not to say that Jake wasn't right to raise it because he was, because we talk about it a lot, but it's a shame when you talk about tire pressures often more than you talk about the races. You're right. Matt Oxley did start it because he did have an article.

He had kind of tiptoed around it at first and he kind of said that there are people in the paddock that are cheating. That's kind of how it started. And when Matt Oxley says people in the paddock are cheating, you got to kind of believe him because he wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. I guess it was like casual conversations with other mechanics like, hey, these guys are cheating. And essentially it was Zuccotti and they were cheating.

They're cheating the tire pressure rule part of it. So then that's when the teams kind of said, hey, look, what's going on here? And then they all started doing it. Because if one person was going to get away with it, everybody was going to get away with it. Well, then that's when Michelin stepped in and said, we can't do this under the guise of safety.

You guys are outside of a range that we believe it's OK. Then the teams kind of cried, well, look, we're only two, three, four pounds under what you're telling us. The tires are fine. Why do we why do we got to worry about this? And I'm sure at that point, lawyers got involved and now we've got tire pressure sensors.

And again, there was an amendment to it because before it was like, if you violated it at all, you were gone. You got DQ right now. But it got amended to look, it's 60% of the laps have to be at the minimum pressure or above. So again, you can still start a race again, magic number of 30. If they're under 30 and they're running 28 or 27 or 26 at the beginning of the race, if it's a 20 lap race, then they've got to have at least five laps after about five laps.

It better be up to where they expect the pressure to be. And it definitely is a difference because you see sometimes guys will lay back to cool the front tire, to cool it down so that they can get the grip back and then they'll charge back through again. It has ironically created a certain amount of aggression in races that we tend to like because everybody wants to get to the front to keep their tire cool. So that's why you see all the passing in the first five to six laps. They still have low tire pressure.

They still have grip and they can get those passes made. And that's why you see all the jockeying in the first five success. If you notice most of the GP races, this year's kind of the exception. We've had some that have changed because Bastionini is so good at the end of a race, right? That he just does his magic there as opposed to the other way around.

But in general, most of the passing that you see has been in the first five to 10 laps of a race. Yeah, good question, Jake. Yeah, good comment. Thank you for that. So then that leads us to Scott Baldwin, who I'll paraphrase Scott's email as well.

I appreciate both these guys writing in and talking to us. But Scott wanted to tell us more about, it's more informational I thought, really than purely a question. He was saying that you, as an American, this is the best coverage he's ever seen now is that true TV and HBO Max, you can get and see Moto GP. Apparently, true TV is showing you all the Moto GP sessions qualifying and racing. I've got that right from his email.

But HBO Max has everything as far as Moto 3 qualifying practice, Moto 2 qualifying practice, and then also Moto GP. He says it's very hard to find it. It says that the only way to find it all on Max is to search. So if you have HBO Max, you can search and find each class and then you can watch what you want to watch out of there. Or if you've got access to true TV, you can at least see the Moto GP racing there.

Apparently, that they show that the TNT, true TV is a part of TNT. And I think TNT is using the BT Sport coverage or something I think, is what I believe anyway. Yes, that's right. So BT Sport, which holds the rights certainly here is now known as TNT. Discovery Plus is also part of that conglomerate.

So I'm now watching like Eurosport and BSP through Discovery. Although interestingly, it still says Eurosport in the corner of the screen. It's very confusing. And BT Sport is now TNT. I wasn't aware of the link with HBO Max.

Maybe that's just a North American thing. Yeah, HBO Max is a part of now that whole Discovery programming, whatever. So that has morphed into that too. Now who bought who? I can't tell you.

I can just tell you it's all morphed in there, but I'm going to have to look through Discovery and see if I can find World Superbike and Eurosport. I'll have to check because I'm interested because if I can get through HBO Max, if I can get Superbike, sorry, World Superbike, I'm in. It's just in the last, let's think now, probably in the last two months, it's switched now. So I used to have Eurosport Player, which was very good. So now it's just been replaced by Discovery Plus and then the Eurosport platform sits within that.

But it might be a kind of region specific thing in terms of what you get to see and where. But worth checking out, Jim, because World Superbikes, I mean, it's more hours of racing to watch, which will annoy the family. But you've got to get your fix, haven't you? Yeah, well, that allows me to do it during the week as opposed to making sure I have everything done for MotoGP so we can do a show or whatever. So I think also you had said this, Rich, and your reply back to Scott was that that's a great way to get in for price point.

I mean, we use the Dorna feed and we see all that. Now, if you're an anorak like we are about this stuff, I think the Dorna coverage lacks a little bit in who's doing the presenting and who's a color analyst and all that. I think it's a little lax. I will agree with any. I will argue that point to the death.

But what you get is the ability to look at all the old races and through the archive, which as the anorak that I am, that makes it a lot better for me. I'm willing to take that price point hit to get that other information to go back and see races from long ago that are quote unquote classics. Particularly when you're in the winter season, not that it's very long nowadays compared to how it was in the past. I mean, blimey, we're virtually to the end of November before MotoGP finishes and then it's back up again sort of February, March time, isn't it? So there isn't.

Hey, with the new calendar, yes, but we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So there's not much of an off season, but certainly the archive on the Dorna MotoGP online coverage is superb. It really, really is. I might be picking up as part of my home telecoms deal.

I might be switching over to being able to get the BT sport coverage or the TNT coverage as it's called now, because it is, I think, as you say, Jim, they have a lot of experts on this. You've got Neil Hodgson, Sylvan Ghintoli, Michael Lavaty. I'm assuming this is the coverage that Scott's referring to, that he's able to see through HBO Max. I'll be interested to know if that is the case. I'm sure it must be because they are reputed to be, you know, a really, really good team.

They have other people as well. Susie Perry kind of takes the helm in terms of anchoring it and stuff. So yeah, I'd be interested to know that. And I may well start to watch some of that stuff through BT myself, although I probably will still retain the Dorna stuff for the archive, as you say, Jim. And the point I was making to Scott was that, you know, although it's, you know, a couple of hundred pounds, bucks, whatever, a year, which is a lot.

I mean, it's not a small amount of money, but for the level at which I use it, which is constantly and, you know, virtually all the sessions I do get to watch. And the fact that you can go back and watch them on catch up is just, that's one aspect of the modern world, modern tech that I really, really, really love. So I used to hate missing stuff when you're out for one reason or another. So that's great. Same with Discovery, obviously in the world, super bikes and British super bikes.

It's value for money for people like us and probably for most of the people that are listening to this, but I think, you know, for the casual or the potential viewer, they're never going to spend 200 pounds on something that they don't really know what it is. And because MotoGP has such a low profile compared with soccer and ice hockey in North America, I'm sure, you know, F1, we tried to get through a show without mentioning those two or that letter and number, don't we? But we never do. It's very hard for the sport to naturally sort of organically grow and pull people in. So my point was it just, I'm kind of curious to know good or bad, what Liberty does as and when it comes into the mix on this to attract more people and whether they'll kind of mix it up a bit in terms of the price point and perhaps giving people a lighter version of the Dawner coverage.

So maybe you only get to see the races or perhaps you only get to see the sprint and you can best pay, I don't know, 40 quid for a year to see the sprint. I don't know, something like that. You know, just anything to try and capture people that become higher paying, longer term customers, basically. So we'll say, but yeah, good point. And then Scott goes on to talk about one of your love affairs, Jim, as we were talking pre-recording about Steve McQueen, Any Given Sunday, which I haven't seen.

Sorry, hands up on you. I'm going to watch it. It's on my winter watch list. Yeah, we're going to have, we'll have to dedicate an episode to a review of On Any Sunday. So I think that will force you to watch it.

Yeah. Or me to watch it again for like the 3000th millionth time. And we can talk about how it is truly a masterpiece of the motorcycling realm. You have to watch On Any Sunday, Any Sunday, the next chapter, you have to see fast, faster, and the kid, the kid, the tornado and the doctor. Yeah, Kentucky kids.

Those are required by any buddy strategy as a race fan. You should be watching those. Anyway, that's the end of the feedback. A little long there, guys. Sorry.

It was really good feedback. We felt it deserved to be mentioned and talked about so everybody else can perhaps maybe benefit or, you know, show a friend. Oh, Jim. Yes. Can I just say one other thing that Scott fed back, just the last thing was about the ships to shore radio comms that we did.

Which we were obviously talking about last time out. Scott's opinion very much is that the screen information that the riders get sent to them is enough and that he doesn't think there's a great safety argument. In fact, probably the opposite in terms of somebody screaming into your ears when you're riding the bike. The other point actually that occurred to me because I was out on my bike the other day and, you know, I'm not traveling at 200 miles an hour. I'll hasten to add on the British roads, but even at 80 to 90 miles an hour, which is still not allowed to do, it's very, very loud.

And I do wonder how they would actually manage to get a system like that working effectively so that you could actually clearly hear it when you are going at that kind of speed. Because it is very noisy, isn't it Jim, on a bike when you're kind of in the wind and traveling through at high speed. There's a lot of raw involved. I know modern helmets are quite good at sound suppression and stuff, but even so, I just don't really see how they could make it work effectively all of the time. That would be the issue.

Anyway. Yep. I always racing, always worn earplugs. And my, yeah, I mean, I have to, but even then it's still quite loud. It's still loud at that point.

Yeah. But it's there. I mean, if you think they're doing to do a system sort of like a race car does, those are like a form fitted plug made to your ear with a small, small speaker inside of it. And, you know, I mean, we're not talking about putting somebody's Apple earbuds in or whatever, you know, and, and putting your helmet on and having somebody talk to you. The argument for safety could go either way for me.

I can say that I don't think it would be as much a distraction if it's used for just certain safety aspects. One being a red flag. I think that would be super important. Other than that, I really don't know if you really should have them other than that, but the problem is going to be that it's like anything else there that way. You know, gosh, be careful what you wish for, because there is a law of unintended consequences that will come with that.

If you don't believe me, go through F1's lineage of radio, no radio, scrambled radios, non-scrambled radios. You take your pick. It's there. I'll let you guys all go find it and we'll worry about this if it really does happen. And then we'll wait.

This will be a bit of an ongoing discussion, I suspect, as they trial this stuff out and there's arguments for and against. I suspect that will go on for a while. All right. Let's move to the news, Rich. Little bits and pieces here that we like to talk about.

I think one of the biggest things that came out of the weekend was the fact that Olivera has broken his right wrist. He is out for about two rounds minimum. He did have surgery on it back in Spain. I don't know if it was Dr. Meir or not.

I didn't see who did the operation. But the question is, should Pre-MAC Yamaha be concerned that Olivera has this broken wrist? Your thoughts? Well, it sounds as if it's pretty bad, first of all, which is obviously terrible news for Miguel Olivera, who's been, you know, poor guy's been pretty well injured on and off for the last, what, two or three seasons. Ever since really he got onto the, well, what is now the track house bike.

Of course it wasn't at that time, but the R&F Aprilia and got torpedoed at Portimao by Mark Marquez on a rather out of control Errant HRC at that time, which really injured him very badly. And he never really recovered fully that season. And then it's been a bit of a horror show for Olivera ever since, hasn't it? And yeah, so I won't even attempt the medical terminology of this, but it sounded like a quite a serious break of the wrist, the right wrist as well, I believe, which is obviously a throttle break kind of hand, which is again, not the one that you would want to damage if you had a choice. So yeah, it's just very unfortunate.

I mean, I think two rounds being out sounds optimistic to me. I wonder whether that might be him done for the season, to be honest. I mean, these guys are incredibly fit and they do recover well and quite quickly, but Miguel's been at this for quite some time, hasn't he? And he's carried a lot of injuries through his career. So obviously the main reason I would contend is of him getting the Pramak Yamaha bike is to really push that thing to the max and to help with the development.

And an injured rider over the long term is obviously going to struggle to do that. So it's a bit of a bad timing thing really. So I mean, time will tell and I'm sure he'd be giving it everything to get back fit as quickly as he possibly can. But you do worry if that's going to be a kind of career affecting kind of injury for him with a guy that's kind of, let's be honest, probably getting towards the latter part of his MotoGP career. He's been around for quite a while now, hasn't he, Jim?

So thoughts from your side on it? I mean, I agree that Olivera is sort of on the back nine of his career. There's not a whole- Mostly put. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I live with one, but she's not that kind of a doctor anyway. But I don't know.

I mean, they can do wonderful things now. Physical therapy, reconditioning, reevaluating is so good now that perhaps it really isn't as big an issue as we think. I think he's done for the season without a doubt. There's a very short off season. I don't think he'll be anywhere near 100% for any of the testing that's going to happen before race season starts.

Wrists are funny things though, aren't they? There's so much going on in the wrist. And I think of people like James Tozland, who again was kind of getting into the hinterland of his racing career, it's true, but kind of injured his wrist several times and got to a stage where he did in my view, a correct and courageous thing. And he actually retired on the spot when he knew he was actually going to present a danger both to himself and more importantly from his point of view to other competitors, because he just didn't have the movement any longer in the wrist. And it was meaning he was just becoming a bit of a liability.

It's not really the right word to use, but you know what I mean. And he took that decision himself that if he couldn't compete at the top, he shouldn't be out there mixing it and getting in the way. So I'm not suggesting that's what's going to happen with Miguel Oliveira now, but it's just yet another injury on top of many others that he suffered over the last few seasons. So it's a setback for him. And it's a worry, I would suspect, for Cramac.

I mean, the only silver lining there, I suppose, is they have got Jack Miller, who's a very experienced rider. So perhaps that was part of their thinking that they weren't putting all of their eggs into one basket. Because if they had a sort of Moto2 horseshoe coming up on the other bike and the potential Oliveira out or forced to underperform for a while, that wasn't likely to help their cause in terms of getting the bike development pushed forward. So again, time is obviously of the essence on this one, but time will tell in terms of how that recovery goes. Let's move on to the next bit of news here.

This one I think is really interesting. Aki Ayo is to replace Francesco Gaudotti at Red Bull KTM Fashion Racing team manager at the end of this season. That one I am intrigued by because I have the utmost respect for the team that Aki Ayo has built up over the course of, say, eight, nine years. I think he is a very level-headed guy. Is he a Finn or is he Swedish?

I don't know which way that one is. I don't remember. I would need to look that up. But he has that calm temperament. And I think his ability to develop riders and get the best out of them is quite amazing.

Look at what he is doing with Enchu on the Moto T bike. Look at where he is with Vietti on the Moto T bike. I mean, it is a lot to be said about him and his team and how he organizes things. So think about it. This is also the guy who had Pedro Acosta and coaxed him to his Moto 3 championship because he rode an IO for three.

He is a Moto 2 champion underneath IO. I think that there is, I personally think, given some comments that Acosta made, particularly after qualifying, that this is Pierre Babel group listening to their wonderkin and giving the kid what he wants, which is IO running the show. That is pure speculation by me. But when Acosta got off the bike after having qualified where he did, I don't want to spoil that part of it, but he got off, he talked to Simon Kreyfar or whoever it was. It might have been Jack Applegate.

I don't remember. But he said, yeah, things are better. The teams worked hard to get what I wanted and they've given me what I need. I am paraphrasing. It is something to that effect.

It is the effect of, hey, whatever was missing, I said I need it and they now decided that I get what I need, which shows that they decided, whether you believe it or not, the golden child of Brad Bender having won their first race on a KTM, he is always going to be on that pedestal. But this is the beginning of Bender being pushed out the door because here is this kid, this wonder kid, who essentially at some point is going to be teamed with the other wonder kid who just happens to be real close to a Moto 3 World Championship, will slowly slide in to create what could be one of the greatest teams ever in MotoGP. That is how I read it. Do you see it differently, Reg? Reg Bauer Yeah.

Well, I think the slightly more cynical aspect of me thinks that probably Francesco Griddotti has been there, what, two and a bit seasons, I guess, and the team have made progress, but they have continually stalled and they haven't continued to move forward. If anything, this year, if it wasn't for Pedro Acosta, most people would be saying that that bike has gone backwards in actual fact. I think this is just KTM doing what KTM does, which has been extremely ruthless with people that don't perform. I definitely think, however, Jim, though, that where they might have perhaps thought, certainly in the first part of the season, that Acosta as a rookie wasn't going to be in a position to dictate what was needed because he didn't have the experience. Obviously, he's got the skill, but he didn't have the experience.

I think that view clearly has changed now. I don't think it's a coincidence that he starts saying, I'm getting what I want. Then he starts putting the bike back in elevated positions again, because he had a tremendous weekend. So yeah, a lot of this, it's not conspiratorial. I mean, it makes sense to reteam him with Aki Ayo, who is finished, by the way.

I just looked him up on Wikipedia. Yes, he's finished. It makes perfect sense to put them back together because you can't argue with the record that they had in Moto3 and Moto2 together. I mean, World Championships say everything that needs to be said. So Ayo, as you quite rightly say, Jim, does have this aura of a person that can coalesce a team.

He's very calm, very psychological, keeps everything level. Might just calm the KTM camp down a little bit because we've heard reports that they're prone to throw in bits at the bike and losing their way if they're not careful. I don't think that's been the case perhaps quite so much this year. There was certainly criticism of them before and they need a bit of a reset, don't they? I mean, Miller's on his way out.

Binder is having a very peculiar year. It's really hard to understand and I would imagine he's probably scratching his head as much as anybody else because he's a class, class rider. I mean, that talent doesn't disappear. Something has gone wrong somewhere and he's lost his way a bit and I'm sure he'll find it back, but he's going to have his hands full next year with the Costa in the team. That is for sure.

So I think this is just a reset for 2025 to try and calm things down and make use of the talent that they've got, which is immense, both in terms of rider talent and all the technical side of things as well. So obviously you feel sorry for Griddotti, but I'm sure he'll find a spot somewhere else. I mean, he came from Pramac, I think, if I'm not mistaken, when he moved across to KTM. He was the Pramac team manager prior to that. And I'm sure like all these guys do, they'll slot in somewhere else fairly quickly after a little bit of a holiday perhaps.

So I don't suppose he's going to be feeling it in the bank balance too badly as a result of letting go a little bit early or not retained. So yeah, excited to see what this brings and what this means for next year with the wonder kid, as you say, getting up to the top table. Exciting times ahead. The next bit of here is all the movement that's happening for Moto2. Stop me if you have anything to add to any of this.

Ivan Artola is going to Moto2. He's going to replace Iyagura at the MT Helmets MSI squad. He will ride alongside Sergio Garcia. So essentially that's a promotion for Artola. Vier goes to Red Bull KTM ION M2.

He will be alongside Anchu. That two lanky kids on Moto2 bikes can't possibly miss, right? Then Manny Gonzalez will switch from Grissini to Liquid Mali Husqvarna intact GP. He'll be alongside Senna Aegis there. CF Moto Aspart team is all new because they'll have David Alonso, champion elect of Moto3.

And then Danny Helgardo goes there up from his ride on Moto3. Celestino Vietti goes to Speed Up Racing, the actual factory Bosca Corobikes to replace MotoGP-bound Aldeguer. He's alongside Lopez for there. The JQ Moto Grissini Moto2 team will be Albert Arenas and Darren Bender. The Tal Trans will be Diego Marrera and probably the 2024 World Super Sport champion Adrian Huertaes.

Huertaes. I should have known it in Spanish. That is everything in Moto2. It's just basically where we know everybody would be going so far. There are lots of seats that are still open and are not confirmed for Moto3.

There usually aren't and we usually don't know until testing starts. So when we have something about that to talk about, we will put it into the show and let everybody know who's going where on that. This brings us to the final bit of news for MotoGP and that is the calendar, Rich. The calendar is all shook up here. Quickly, let's just go down just the order of the races because I think it's interesting how things have changed and where everything is.

We start with the Thai Grand Prix on the 28th of February. Then we're going to go to Argentina, then to go to Cota Numericus, to Qatar. Qatar becomes the fourth round as opposed to being the first round. Then we go to the Spanish GP. That one is at Jerez.

Go to Le Mans for the French GP. May, we are in Great Britain. I'm sorry, I can't agree with that one, but I'll let you have a ramble on that one. Then we go to Aragon in Spain. We go to Italy.

So Mugello is way back to June instead of its usual May timeframe. Then we go to Assen in June. We go to German GP in July. So we're at the Saxon Ring in July. Then the Czech GP, we're going to Brno.

That's in July. Australian race from Spielberg Mountains is also now in August. Then the Hungarian round. Then we have the Catalan race at Barcelona. Go into San Marino.

Then to the Japanese GP, the Indonesian GP, Australia. Then to Malaysia, Portugal, and then Valencia to finish out the year. Quick observation, there are no triple headers in this one. There are back to back double headers, but they're sort of confined to Europe or where it's very same time zone, if you will, for the races. It spreads the calendar out.

It starts it on the 28th of February. It doesn't end until the 16th of November, but compared to that other series that has four wheels that travels all over the globe, they're there to get you to the point where they're racing into December, if you've seen their calendar. It's like, holy crap. Next thing you know, I'm going to be opening up Christmas presents with my kids watching a Formula One race. Oh, that sounds good.

I thought you were going to say MotoGP race, not Formula One, but MotoGP would be good. Well, either way. I like the calendar. I like the fact that there are no triple headers. Triple headers are difficult.

It's tough on the guys. It's tough on the travelers, tough on the teams. I think this is a lot better schedule working around. I do think some of the flying around is a little awkward. I'm trying to grab my head around being in Thailand, then going across the Pacific to get to Argentina, to go north to Texas, Dakota.

Then you're going to continue over to the Middle East to get to Qatar. That just seems weird. I would have put Qatar at the back end. Like I would have done, I would have maybe said, go Thailand. Go to Argentina.

Go to America. Go to Portugal. Then go into the races on the continent, if you will. But then put Qatar as the next, where Portugal is now, second to last, put Qatar there. I don't make the schedule.

I don't fly people around. So it's not really like this. Well, they're working around other championships as well. So obviously you can't have, let's say, what you want. Can I just quickly fly through this list as well, Jim?

Please. Thai GP, no comment. Yeah. Okay. It'd be nice to start somewhere different.

Argentina. Won't happen. Not sure that'll happen, to be honest with you. Yeah. Dakota.

Yeah. Great race. Qatar. Yes. Harath.

It's a classic. Le Mans. Keeping it in May. I mean, that's a weather problem potentially, but then we do like a wet race. I'm sure the riders don't like the cold there.

British Grand Prix. I kind of get it because people have made the comment, and you can't argue against it, that the August slot that it's enjoyed for the last few years, and prior to that, it was back end of July, just hasn't worked in terms of crowd numbers, whether it's because people are on holiday. Obviously Britain doesn't enjoy the greatest of weather throughout the whole of the year. So people do escape during the summer holidays, typically overseas. There tends to be other big sporting events often in that part of the summer.

So moving it makes sense to see if they can generate a bigger crowd, but the weather will obviously be a concern, and it can be very cold and pretty windy at Silverstone. So jury's out for me. Aragon. Yeah. I love the track.

Italy. Bit disappointed to see that 20th to the 22nd of June, Jim. Not that I necessarily have plans to go next year, but I'm planning to go and see Iron Maiden on the 21st of June, which is my birthday next year. So in Birmingham, so I won't be in Italy for that one. And then Holland, Saxe Ring, they're well established, aren't they, and great races typically.

Bruno, delighted to see that back on the calendar, and that is definitely one I'm going to try and see if I can get to next year. What else? Austria. Okay. Yep.

Hungary, again, is another one which has perhaps a smaller question mark against it for me. We talked about that last week, so we won't go back over it. I would happily see the Barcelona race drop off the calendar for me. I was not a track that I particularly enjoy, but that's just a personal opinion. And then, well, I mean, San Marino, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, and then, oh, you know, the insistence on finishing off in Bloody Valencia.

Another Spanish round. I mean, they have the temerity to... Where is it? Spread it out at least. Well, yeah, they have the temerity to kind of pass one of them off as the Catalan Grand Prix.

It's a Spanish Grand Prix, isn't it? You've got four races in Spain still there. I don't think that's acceptable, to be honest with you. Yeah. Valencia is never going off the calendar.

It's never going to go off there. It's the end part because everybody wants to go party in Valencia. All the wives and girlfriends want to be there. You can party anywhere in the world, can't you? I mean, Valencia is a fantastic city.

Any Spanish listeners, don't get me wrong. Valencia is a superb place, but as a racetrack for MotoGP bikes, I just don't think it works. Anyway, again, personal opinion, people can disagree and write in if they want, but I'd far rather we finish somewhere else than there, just as a change because they mixed up where we start the season over the last few years. So why not do the same with the end? But the only other thing to mention, which is the note that I put in just below.

So yeah, Argentina and Hungary, I think probably question marks there. Kazakhstan has vanished now, not even provisionally in there. So the flooding is obviously worse than they thought. And no sign of India either, although that one has been announced as coming back in 2026. But as I put in the notes there, Jim, yeah, right.

I don't think that one is likely to happen again. I mean, again, I hope it does because India is an important market, lots of enthusiastic fans there and it appeared to be a good race. But I just think so many series of struggled to establish themselves there for a variety of reasons. And I think MotoGP is kind of in the same boat at the moment. So hopefully that'll change for 2026, as they have rather optimistically reported.

But they've reported an Indian Grand Prix incessantly for the last two years since we first went there and it hasn't happened. So we'll see. Obviously, it's not on the provisional calendar for next year. It's yeah, as I say, they're saying 2026. But anyway, watch that space, but don't hold your breath.

Yeah. OK, let's head to Super World Superbike real quick. The race was in Aragon. Three second place finishes for Top Rock, who was returning from the injuries he sustained at Maine-Nicor. That takes his lead back to 39 points over Nicolai Bouliga because he didn't have a great Aragon.

The bike quit on him on a warm up lap or a siding lap. I did see that as like, ooh, that's never good. So that gets us through World Superbike. Rich, if you want to take on BSB there because it's your forte. Well, so we've just got one round to go in BSB now.

So we had Donnington weekend just gone. Brands will be up here, not this weekend, the following weekend. So effectively, the title is now down to Kyle Ride, Tommy Bridewell and Glenn Irwin. I won't belabor the point situation. Tommy's four points behind Kyle and Glenn Irwin's a bit further back on 46.

But there are 35 points times three races available at Brands when we go to the final showdown, inverted commas round. So very much all to play for. I mean, all three of those guys are deserving of the championship. Tommy is the reigning British champion at the moment. Kyle and Glenn haven't won the British Superbike Championship yet.

I think momentum is with Kyle, but I have to say Tommy Bridewell has really impressed me this year because I think most people's eyes were opened and their jaws were agape when the news arrived that he was going to HRC because nobody thought. Well, first of all, the Blade has not been a bike to be on really for quite some time. And Tommy is how should we put this tactfully, quite an individual character in the way that he goes about things. And I think a lot of people and probably myself included thought that that might be a bit of a clash of cultures there. But the bike's been great.

He's obviously worked with the team and the team have worked with him fantastically well all year. And yeah, I mean, he's firmly in contention to retain the championship if things go his way a little bit. Well, they don't even need to go his way really. I mean, he's great at Brands and he's only four points behind. So, you know, it could go either way that one.

So yeah, I mean, BSB always delivers and here we are again. I mean, the showdown, the point scoring system is obviously designed to create this kind of final round drama and it will be dramatic, I'm sure. And of course, mid October in Britain is quite likely to be chilly and highly likely to be wet. So there'll be some jeopardy thrown in there as well. Just on World Superbike, Jim, I got to say, I mean, top rack is just amazing.

But when we were all on tenterhooks to see if he would ride, he was past fit and then they were going to review it after practice one. So I actually tuned into the Discovery Bureasport coverage for Friday morning practice and they were sort of, as you would, they were kind of concentrating on him a little bit in the pit box beforehand. And I have to say, he did look like a guy who had, you know, had a big accident. He looked really kind of a bit gaunt and drained, as you would do, because I mean, that was a serious accident that he had. He was incredibly lucky to get away as relatively likely as he did, but you could tell that it had taken the wind out of him.

But to come back and interesting, he's never won Aragon. So I think it's the only track that he's competed at on the World Superbike calendar that he hasn't won a race at. But to come away with three second places was an incredible outcome really. And for my money, although there's still two rounds to go, they've got Esther Rill and Hereth coming up. So obviously there's two full races and two sprints each.

So there's a lot of points up for Grabb still. So he doesn't have a huge points lead, but he has extended it back out again, as you said. And for me looks like he's going to be very hard to beat. And I think even Nico Bulliger kind of hinted at it himself that he's feeling a bit odd about having kind of closed the points whilst Toprak was out for six races injured in the way that he was. So I think credit in heaven sort of dictates that Toprak really ought to lift the title this year, I think, because he's been stellar.

chip I agree with you there. And speaking of people lifting titles, in Moto America, Josh Heron has dethroned Jake Gagne for the 2024 Moto America Superbike Championship that was wrapped up in New Jersey, as it were. So with all that, with all that, we will move on to the weekend in Indonesia. That track I love because it is a spectacle to look at. It is like stunning, like Phillip Island is stunning.

Although I have one small complaint about that circuit, Rich. If you look at the, I can't think of which turn it is, but it is where they finally turned to head back to the final turn. They have a little rock area there where they've built some, I'll call it like viewing houses or something there on top. And I'm thinking, why did you cut through all that rock to put the racetrack there? Why didn't you give it a little bit of big elevation there?

Like 12, 15 feet of rise to a slight dip to a corner that turns you around and goes back up over a rise would have been insane. They did. That's a small criticism of it. I hadn't spotted that, but yes, I mean, like you, I love elevation on a track. I love elevations.

And most modern tracks don't really have it. Although, well, Portimao, Cota, they're notable exceptions to that. Yeah, there's Istanbul Park, notable exception there too, because that goes up and down quite a lot. So, I mean, they are there, right? But we tend to really love tracks that have elevation.

Majello, you love the scenery, you love the up, you love the down. I mean- Phillip Island. Yeah, Phillip Island, because you see them going up over Lukey Heights. It's just insane. You love sort of going to the Austrian Grand Prix because it is uphill and sort of back down and whatnot.

But anyway, all right, sorry, we're distracting ourselves again from the main purpose of why that we are here. First qualifying session for Moto3, you had Bertelli, NEPA, Ogden, Rueda, Rossi, and Rollstone all there. NEPA and Rueda were sort of oddballs that were out there or whatever. Oh, by the way, did you know, this is the first time I've seen this and I'm sure it probably maybe has been known, but it's the first time that I saw it. All the KTMs were starting their Moto3 bikes with a handheld cordless impact.

Did you catch that? I didn't spot that. Now, the Boeing Motorsport team was using the little rollers and the battery, but the factory bikes, the two Husqvarna's, the two KTMs, the two Gas Gas and the two CF Motos were all being started by essentially what looked to be a cordless impact. And it was up, the motors in those bikes, they actually lay forward. The front cylinder is actually laying forward.

It's almost parallel to the ground, which it's not vertical. If you've ever seen a lay down Speedway bike, that's what it looks like, sort of, because it's tilted very far forward. So it looked to me, judging by where they were plugging in this impact, that they must have an extra gear on the clutch or in the gearbox that's driving this. Because it definitely isn't being driven off the cam and it was definitely not the crank because that's not where those are in that location. So it must have been off the gearbox or spinning somewhere else.

So I just thought that was really cool. It was different. It caught my eye. I just wanted to make mention of it. If you haven't seen it, go back and check it out.

It's very cool. Anyway, as I said, there's not a whole lot going on in this first one. We learned about a bunch of penalties that are already going to be delivered for the race on Sunday. We'll cover those quickly here. NEPA is going to get a double long lap penalty for slow riding.

Raredo was going to get a single long lap for slow riding and Autorolo was going to get double long lap for slow riding. It's like, good grief, people. This is just getting ridiculous again in Moto 3. But anyway, the interesting thing was Bertolli crashes. He goes back into the pits, picks the bike, changes tires, and then promptly crashes in the pit lane as he pulls away from it.

I've never seen that ever happen. I'm giggling and I shouldn't be because it's not funny. But then he goes out and crashes again at turn one. It was like, park that one, sunshine. Park it for the day, sir.

Crazy. Absolutely crazy. It was an extremely messy session with people riding slowly, people in the way, people running on, running off, short cutting everything. It was just terrible. But in the end, Ogden, Rueda, NEPA, and Rossi all moved into the second qualifying session.

The second qualifying session was notable because Piqueras pulls off an amazing Marc Marquez-esque save. Literally the bike is gone, front's gone. He pushes it back up off of the elbow and on the knee and then puts it back upright. Absolutely brilliant to see. Halfway through, you had Ortola who's going to have a double long lap, is on pole, followed by Alonso Vier, Fernandez, Piqueras, Suzuki.

Everybody was waiting to get out at the end. Everybody was trying to back time it for that last little bit. With about 3.30 to play, people finally started to get out. Ortola, Vier, Fernandez, Alonso, Suzuki, Piqueras. Then Lunetti was properly out of the seat coming out of, I think it was the last turn.

Vier had an amazing save as well. But it was the final finishing order pole position for the Moto3 guys. Ortola followed by Vier, fired by Furosado who came in just under the wire to get that lap in. Then Adrian Fernandez, Alonso. The boy was slipping rich.

He's fifth on the grid for gosh sakes. Terrible, terrible luck for Alonso. Followed by, I'm in jest, people. Luca Linetta, then Suzuki, Kelso with an eighth place start there. Then Piqueras and Rueda have been calling through.

We would move then to the race on Sunday. This was a slightly, it had a very different feel. Despite the fact of what happens, it's a very different feel. Things are, for some reason, when we leave the continent and we show up in Asia, things go differently for some reason. I'm not sure why, Rich.

I don't know if it's a different feel, if it's the time zone change and riders are sleepy because your biological clock is messed up from the time zone. I'm not sure what it is. I have a thought. I've been to that part of the world for a few times. It's amazing for a European what a big effect the temperature and the humidity in particular have on you.

It is crushingly hot there and the humidity is off the scale. It drives you a bit crazy. Bear in mind, these guys are sitting on hot motorcycles in full leathers and stuff. Perhaps you dehydrate so much, it does mess you a little bit. Whether that might play some part, obviously these kids, all of them are incredibly fit and as well prepared as they possibly can be.

Nevertheless, it's still a big change, a big body shock to go from the relatively cold European dry climate to places with 90% humidity and mid-30s heat every day. Maybe that's part of it, Jim. I don't know. I just know the racing is different, that's for sure. Anyway, first auto would get a whole shot.

He'd be followed by Ortola and Vier and Fernandez and Suzuki. Alonso was sixth there. By the end of the first lap, Vier put himself out front, which is a different tactic from Vier. Usually Vier is in that mid-pack hanging out with Alonso, like their buddies or something back there, but this thing was all moving on from there. It was relatively calm, there's some passing going on.

When Ortola goes to take his first of the long laps, he drops down to 19th out of all that. With 16 to go, Holgardo had worked his way from his lowly position up to 7th. Vier was in command, Fernandez had charged up to be second with 15 to go. First Sato, Alonso in the mix, Munoz, Linetta are all there. Ortola has made his way to 11th and that put him with a four-second gap between himself and what at that time was a 10-rider pack for the victory.

So I was like, that's not an insurmountable gap considering that Ortola had the fastest lap around the place. So it's like, let's keep an eye on this one. Where's Ortola going to wind? I actually have in my notes that it's been a relatively calm race at this point. It's as if every rider is asleep because it's Moto3 and you expect chaos at every turn.

But it's like everybody had behaved themselves. Again, is it the heat? Is it the humidity? Is it time zone change? I don't know, but these guys were riding a non-Moto3 race, if you will.

It was very calm by this day. At the front, I would say Jim, it was, but it was more scrappy back. I mean, there were quite a few crashes early on, which is a change to what we've been used to and commenting on recently. I mean, last few races has been one or two people that have crashed out maybe on average. Whereas here, you had five or six at least that went down in the first few laps.

Yep. Agreed. And again, that's different too. But with half the race done, Ortola got another long lap penalty. So this is five times through.

It should be called the Ortola turn because that's where that boy is the whole time. He did that last year too. He cannot keep the bike on the track, apparently. And from what I've seen, it doesn't look like it would be that hard to not have a problem here. I mean, he was, of all the Moto3 guys, I think there was only like one or two other guys that had a track limits warning other than him.

I was like, this is ridiculous. I don't know what it is. He's fast, but apparently he can't be fast. He can be fast and follow the line, right? Because he qualified on pole.

They didn't take his lap away for track limits. So what's missing? Trouble is, having had two long laps for the slow ride in fraction, is that the correct word? I guess he was kind of just chasing the lap time, wasn't he? And there is that one turn, turn eight, nine, I think it is, before the kind of the slow right-hander where all the kind of action and trouble generally occurs.

And that was catching a lot of people out, people shortcutting that bit of green there. And I suspect that's probably where he was looking to gain time. And yeah, poor old boy. Yeah, it was a shortcut at turn nine. They're going to have to call that the Ortola loop, aren't they?

That long lap penalty. Yeah, I think so. Yes, very much so. With nine to go, Vier had a major crash. That boy was, he had, basically he was leading.

He was, looked like he had started to pull the pin as it were. He wanted to get away. He tucked the front and slid off at 13. The problem was that when he did it, it destroyed the Husqvarna. That thing just dug in, flipped in.

It was done there. So, but he was trying to make a break. So you really can't argue with him for trying it or whatever. But hey, with seven to go, Fernandez is leading. Looked pretty strong.

Colgardo had worked his way to second, believe it or not. Then it was Furusata, Suzuki, Munoz and a half a second gap to Linetta and Alonso. Like, oh, this is not looking good. In fact, Fernandez wind up pulling out a four tenths of a second lead within the next couple of laps, but that didn't last long. And it is Moto three.

Everybody eventually decides that we're going to get back in line and chase down whoever is out front. Which is exactly what they did. At four to go, Fernandez goes from first to fourth as Colgardo leads with Furusata and Alonso. Then Alonso went to the front. So first time he'd been there.

Then Furusata was just completely out of shape. And he's basically out of it at turn one. It was just amazing that he actually survived it and held onto it. It's pretty amazing. With three to go, Furusata goes down at turn one and then it was on.

Like, okay, it's as if we all woke up from our nap and we are now racing for a Moto three victory because chaos has ensued at this point as everybody is taking a go at everybody, depending on whichever turn it was. Take your pick. Somebody was stuffing somebody somewhere they shouldn't have and on and on and on. So it became the fact that with two to go, Fernandez is still leading over Munoz, over Alonso, over the net or Piqueras. But Alonso gets by Munoz.

You had to keep your eye on Alonso because this kid is special, Rich. And then Alonso wound up moving by Munoz. Alonso wound up moving to the front ahead of Fernandez and Munoz and then he would go on to win the race. Alonso would win the race. Fernandez would be second.

That was his first podium in the Moto three class, especially since he'd been dumped and given a lifeline last year at Leopard. Munoz would get a podium in third. It's the first time he's been on the podium and I don't know how long. It was a great ride for the Bully Motorsport bike there. Piqueras was fourth, then Linetta, Helgardo, Suzuki, Kelsa with an eighth or Tolo would get to ninth.

Nicolo Carrera in 10th, Rurata, Bertelli, Ogden, Esteban and Nepa rounding out the point. It was a fantastic ride by Alonso. I think Alonso only led the last two laps. It's the only two laps he led and that's all you really have to. I got the impression that this kid, everything is super slow to him.

I think it's as if he's riding around in slow motion with everybody because I think he actually has time to think through everything. I think he analyzes everything and he realizes, oh, hey, Fernandez is weak here, Munoz is weak here, Piqueras doesn't like this turn here, because he just passed anywhere. In this race, you could really see it. I don't know because it's camera angles because a lot of shots are from the outside as opposed to inside out as we see sort of at the European circuits. I don't know if it's that, but you could see Alonso just simply like, oh, yep, you're gotcha because you go wide there every time.

Yep, you run wide there. I got you now. It was stunning to watch him do this in my opinion. And it's without saying he now has nine wins on the season. That's got to be close to some single season record.

It has to be. It ties him with Fennady with 13 total wins in a class and Fennady's got like five times the starts in that class that Alonso has. I'm out of superlatives for this kid. I mean, if the way Acosta won was amazing, I think this is almost even more impressive because Acosta's title was a lot of wins at the beginning. He had a soft drought sort of in the middle where he got soft, but then he got hard again.

He got himself into the mix again at the end, won races and won a title. This kid is just winning races the whole darn year. He's a machine. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, let's face it, Piqueras, Olgardo, Suzuki, Kelso, those guys are not slouches by any stretch of the imagination. So you can't say, well, Acosta didn't run against these people or Alonso isn't racing against the cream of the crop. I don't care. The kid is absolutely positively amazing. I'm looking forward to seeing him run on the Moto2 bike.

And I will now stop waxing poetic because I'm a big Alonso fan. Well, yeah. I mean, we've said it so often that it's getting boring, but then, you know, that transition to the Moto2 bike will be intriguing to watch. I think you've hit the nail on the head, Jim. He does appear to have a lot of kind of reserve capacity, doesn't he?

And the word I find myself writing often in my notes when describing what he's doing is lurking. He kind of lurks in the pack, doesn't he? The only race that he's kind of become a bit of a cropper really was the first Mizano race where, you know, the rest of them, maybe I don't, they didn't spy, it wasn't by design, but he just got duffed up in the last lap. And that hasn't really happened. I mean, he has that uncanny knack to avoid trouble.

And equally, his competitors haven't been perhaps quite as rough with him as perhaps they might have needed to, to kind of shuffle him back out of the way a little bit, because he's deadly in the last two to three laps. And again, this is exactly what we saw. And what caught my attention in particular, thinking of the reserve capacity kind of thing was, all right, it was probably what, 0.4, maybe 0.6, but he did pull a gap on that last lap. I mean, he hit the front with two to go. And then he absolutely put the hammer down on that last lap.

And he actually, again, I'm doing inverted commas with my, you know, which is not great for a podcast, but he, you couldn't say it was a comfortable win, but he didn't kind of just nick it on the first, sorry, on the last turn, he really pulled out a bit of a gap. So he just has devastating speed. Now, whether he lurks in the pack to save his tire a little bit, just not overstressing things, pulling off the crazy kind of moves. He's very clean. You know, I don't really see him out of shape very often, do you?

So obviously, I mean, it sounds almost trite to say it, but he is the real deal. So I can't wait to see him on a Moto2 bike. I'm really fascinated to see how well and how quickly that transition goes. He's very Rossi-esque, right? He's kind of like Rossi in his prime.

Rossi would lurk in that three, four spot in a MotoGP race, right? Yeah. And then he'd be like, oh, five to go. Okay, fine. I'm going to go race now.

Yeah. No panic, just methodical, backed up by talent. Yeah. Every pass that he makes is so surgical, so precise, so smooth. He's not out of shape at all.

And he's not duffing everybody up, right? I mean, there's one thing to go in there deep and knock a guy out of the way, right? There's a whole nother way to do it, which is skill and putting yourself in a position where the other guy can't get to his apex. And that's what Alonso does. Yeah.

And that again, speaks to your point about the kind of things being kind of slow to him in the way that he perceives it probably in that kind of reserve capacity. So I give you kind of as a good counter example, somebody like Danny Holgato, who's a fantastic rider, but has been told to get more aggressive and is pulling moves that do push people wide or cause a bike to wobble. You know, the various things, you know, they're on the edge passes, whereas you don't really see that with Alonso. They're surgical, all of which bodes well for the bigger bikes really, because obviously they will be harder to tame. There's more power, there's more speed, et cetera.

So if he has that redundant capacity, you know, in his makeup, then he'll be able to sort of eat into that a little bit and that will help him a lot. So yeah, looking forward to seeing him next year. Yeah. I'm out of superlatives for the kid. Let's move to Moto 2.

Yeah. We haven't done the championship positions yet. Not that there's really much to talk about. I mean, this is about as close to a done deal as a done deal gets, I think. Yeah.

So Alonso now with his ninth win is on 296. Holgato has moved to second. He is 97 points behind. Here's the simple math. If he wins in Motegi, Alonso is the champion.

So essentially he needs a hundred points because there's after Motegi, he needs a hundred points because there's four rounds left. There's five rounds after Motegi. So that's simple math. I will not put against him winning. The only thing is you could have potential of rain or a typhoon rolling through.

That may put him off a little bit, but this is literally one hand firmly holding on to the Moto 3 World Championship. Ortola is third. He is on 191. He's eight behind Holgato. Then Vier is fourth.

Munoz is fifth. The Keras, Fernandez, Rueda, Kelso and Yamanaka to finish out the top 10 for the championship. It is all David Alonso and there's pretty much nobody who's going to stop them. So that's done. All right.

Now that I'm fully out of superlatives, we'll move to Moto 2. The first qualifying session really, these qualifying sessions for Moto 2 were really boring, but Garcia is in that first session again. Okay. And then Arenas, Guevara, Ramirez, Baltas, Solatich, Sasaki and Binder are all there. Van de Gerberg as well, but Arenas, Garcia, Binder and Barry Baltas all move to the second qualifying session.

The second qualifying session, Vietti was down at turn five. Halfway through, Kinet was on pole followed by Outager, Lopez, Chantra, Ayagura and Binder. Then Anchi with a crazy exit of riding a bucking Bronco out of the last turn kind of a thing. It was pretty wild to watch and they said he was pretty much doing that all throughout practice as well. Vietti had not set a time and would not set a time because they couldn't get the bike fixed.

The crew gave it their all. They gave it their best shot. They could not get the bike back out in time for him to complete a lap. So we wound up with Aaron Kinet on pole, Jake Dixon with a great last lap to get there. I believe he followed Kinet.

I think he got hooked up behind Kinet and followed him there. Then Ayagura on third, so he's on the front road doing what he needed to do. Then Gonzalez. Outager slipped back to fifth. I was really thinking Outager may have got things together there, but apparently not exactly all the way yet.

Strange case of Furman-Outager this year. I'm not sure. I think the Pirelli is messing with him more than what we know. Then Lopez was sixth. Then it's Arbolino Roberts Chantra with a nice ninth place in Alcoba rounding out the top ten.

We will then move to the race on Sunday unless you have something you'd like to add after qualifying, Rich. No, nothing. I didn't actually see the qualifying if I'm perfectly honest. Thank you for the summary. That's okay.

In this 22-lap race, Ayagura gets off to a whole shot fall by Kinet, Dixon, Lopez, Chantra, and Outager. Then chaos sort of happens. Roberts wheelied off the start, which put him way back in the pack from where he was. That was the first part. Masiha then was down at turn one.

He was forcibly helped by Van de Gerberg, which later led to a long lap penalty for Van de Gerberg for aggressive riding. That one was pretty much deserved. I don't think anybody would argue that one. That was pretty rough. It was a nasty crash for Masiha as well.

He came down vertically, which is never nice to see. He face planted onto the track. Which was gnarly. He did walk away, so thankfully for that. Yes, even Ajus crashed as well.

At that point, Kinet would lead by the end of the first lap, or with 21 to go. He would lead, followed by Ayagura, Dixon, and Gonzalez. Now Chantra was in the pack, suddenly was off where he rode off at a turn. We had another person who had crashed at the same point, but it wasn't connected to what Chantra had happened. I don't have in my notes who fell.

Do you have it, Rich, who fell in the same turn with Chantra? Because it was a separate incident. I can't remember who it was. I didn't write it down because I was worried about Chantra. If you find it, let me know, Rich.

I don't think I noted it. No, it might come to me in a minute. That turned 10. Just all weekend long, people were going down there. What Chantra appeared to be in physical pain almost instantly, because he didn't have a foot on the foot peg.

He did not have his right foot on the foot peg. It was dangling out there. It was very interesting to me. We finally got a replay of it. We find out that Chantra had his right leg run over by Aldegar.

He clipped him because, as is the style, you fling your leg out there. Chantra wasn't throwing it as far as, say, Jorge Martín or Jack Miller, but he had it out there and his foot ankle got ran over, which a sticky tire, a MotoTube bike in its weight, that had to have hurt. Chantra was able to ride the bike back to the pits. He was in the pits. Simon Crafer was headed that way to see what was going on.

Simon saw the pain that was in Chantra's eyes and immediately asked Ernie to get medical attention over to him. It looks as though, from the pictures I saw on TV, I have not seen or heard any confirmation of this, that he probably has some form of tendon slash ligament damage in his knee because I think it twisted that thing viciously. Maybe it's just going to be a water on the knee thing. It's not going to be anything that requires surgery. I don't know.

Do you have an answer, Rich? Did you know a result of his medical posture? No, I have not seen any follow-up notes to that. I think it's pretty unlikely that he'll be out this weekend in Mategi, given how distressed he looked. He did ride back to the pits, as you say, Jim, but barely.

He was just sauntering along in front of the medical car, which is going obviously around as part of its usual procedure on lap one. Very reminiscent, actually. I was trying to think where it happened. I think it might have been Argentina, although a different track in Argentina. World Superbikes.

Alex Lowes ran into Loris Baz, who's another of the leg danglers, in a fairly extreme version of it as well. Exactly the same thing happened, completely innocently, but Alex Lowes just went up the inside or missed his braking by a millisecond and just ran into Loris Baz's leg. On that occasion, I'm pretty sure it broke his ankle, because again, he was out for several races as a result of that. There's nothing you can do about it. As you say, Jim, a Moto2 bike is a fairly heavy thing.

When it's moving at that speed and hits soft tissue, it's going to do some damage. Poor old Chandra just came off worse there. By the way, I did make a note. It was Senor Aegis that crashed in that turn when that incident happened, albeit it was separate. Yeah, it was separate.

I had him crashing, but I didn't denote that it was at the same time in my notes. I'm pretty sure that he went down in that same turn. Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense.

From there, Dixon would fall. He's down. Then now you've got Kinnett that is basically out front already in five laps. He's out to a 3.3 second lead. I'm not going to sugarcoat this one for you folks.

Kinnett just runs off into the distance. It just makes everybody else look stupid. He was super quick. Nobody believed in him for the weekend. He believed in himself, and he proved that he was the quickest guy there.

Kinnett will run off. He will then lead the race. It is a long time. There is a battle for second that is going on. It's basically Ayagura, Lopez.

They're going after each other. They're doing block passes on each other as they go through with Lopez, Gonzalez, Binder, and Roberts are all there in the 6-7. Eventually, the second place is settled where Ayagura goes on to be second. But then Lopez is running around in third. Again, that battle of say three, four, five, six heats up at this point.

It's pretty good. At least this time, Rich, we can say, thankfully, the director said, there is no racing at the front because Kinnett is gone. Ayagura has cleaned off. We're going to focus here on what's going on with Lopez. Lopez was riding defensive with about 13 laps to go.

He was riding very defensively, taking the lines and basically messing everything up for everybody else. He was fighting tooth and nail to maintain the podium. However, our friend Outagur, who was in that mishap with Chantra, was making his way to the front. At points, he was the fastest man on circuit. He was charging through there.

Now, Garcia was down and out and he crashed and lost it. Again, no points for him this weekend. That was now a chance for Ayagura to inflict massive damage on him in the championship standings. But the whole idea was with roughly five to go was Kinnett, Ayagura, Lopez, Gonzalez, Binder, and Roberts are all right there. You're 3, 4, 5, 6 race is kind of looking for that last podium.

But Outagur is chasing them all. Outagur is coming hard and with like a lap to go, I was wondering, could Outagur get to the podium? He could not. He would get to fourth. Lopez would go on to the podium and then Binder, Roberts, Arbolino, Gonzalez would finish out that 5, 6, 7 battle.

Anchu finished his ninth. Ramirez 10th. Baltis, Vietti, Alcoba, Arenas, and Salach finished out top guys. Now, that was the race. It was a lackluster Moto2 event to say there wasn't much that was going on there.

But I was happy to see Kinnett win a race from beginning to end. He didn't inherit it. He didn't fight for it or have somebody run wide or knock somebody out. He simply dominated. I was glad to see Aaron actually win a race that way.

The bigger news is the fact that Garcia crashes and Iagura finished second, imposing a fair amount of damage on him in the championship standings. If we look at that, Iagura heads to his home round in Japan at 208 points. Garcia is now 42 behind him. Kinnett is now 52 behind Iagura. If something happens to Iagura, who does tend to injure himself and does tend to fall off and knock wood, that doesn't happen to him.

But he's almost got a two-race advantage over him. He's eight points short of having a two-race advantage. He is sort of taking control of this championship at this point. Lopez with that fine podium is fourth in his point standings. Roberts is fifth.

Altegr is in fifth. Then Altegr, Celestino Vietti, Dixon falls to eighth because of his crash. Then Gonzalez and Arbolino finish out the top 10 in the points championship. As I said, Rich, a lackluster race. At least they showed us the good racing, which was the four or five, six position.

Other than that, I have nothing for Motto, too. Yeah, it wasn't a classic. The only things I got to say is that Kinnett is just a bit of an enigma. He spends most of the year sliding down the road on his backside. That's how it feels to me a lot of the time.

He just qualifies well, but just goes backward in races. Then it turns out a performance like that. In fairness to him, it's not dissimilar to one Celestino Vietti. What happened to him this weekend? He's been really good the last few races.

Where was he? 13th, I think, in the end. He didn't really feature in the race in terms of what we were watching at any stage. The only saving grace in the race, and I did watch it all, although I did start to find myself hitting the plus 30 second button a few times. Same on you.

I couldn't help it. You non-fan. There's more than the whiff of the pantomime villain about him, but you've got to love Alonso Lopez, haven't you? Because he just never ever gives up, and he is super aggressive. Again, it's a little bit touch and go sometimes.

His spirited defense, as you might charitably praise it. Thank God for him being in the race, because he did make it a bit more entertaining than otherwise it would have been. Other than that, not really a great deal to say. I was up very early in the morning UK time, but I was a little bit 10, 15 minutes behind, I think, by the time I put the Moto2 race on. So I did get tempted just to fast forward it a tiny little bit to get to MotoGP.

So yeah, sorry for that, but it wasn't a classic. You guys are well-ish hours apart, right? I know Singapore is 12 hours from the UK. I know that. I'm thinking that part of Indonesia is close to that.

It's in that kind of region. Yeah, I think the Moto3 race went off 5 AM UK time. We're on British summertime at the minute. Here the clock's changed at the end of October. So yeah, it's quite a big time.

I mean, I like it. I like the whole thing of getting up early, watching the races, because then you kind of got your day carry on stuff. Although I didn't, because then I was watching World Superbike and British Superbike all through the day as well. Super fanning. Okay.

Oh dear. Yeah. But anyway, yes. In summary, Moto2 race, I mean, I, Gura, you'd have to say nailed on favorite to win at home this weekend. In which case that starts to look like, yeah, more than a few fingers on the title as we were joking about last week.

That starts to look like one and a half hands really sort of starting to hug that title winning trophy, doesn't it? Yeah. I will say this about them being in Indonesia for me, being in the Eastern time zone of the US. I either got to stay up like way late because I think MotoGP race happened to like 11 a 11 PM at night. So it's like in that midnight to like 3 AM portions, like, sorry.

But not good when you're in your fifties. Yeah, exactly. At least I can sleep in and wake up at like my normal time and come down and all the races already completed. So I have my pick of whatever I want to watch in whatever order I want to watch. So yeah, I kind of enjoy that.

All right. Let's move us to MotoGP. So in the first qualifying session, there's Zarco, Renz, Bender, Alessa Spargera, which I thought was interesting. The Aprilia down there, Miller, and then Alex Marquez as well for two times in a row. Now in that first qualifying session, I was like, Oh, okay.

That's very interesting. Halfway through Alex Marquez and Renz are in position to move forward. But then, then Alisha goes down at turn one. Bender has some sort of a bright brake problem. He rolls the bike and then if you looked at it, he showed them that he had no rear brake at all.

Okay. That's interesting. Alex Marquez would then go down. He would have a crash, but Zarco and Raul Fernandez go through. It was a rather interesting little Q1 session.

You just, I didn't think Zarco nor did I think Raul Fernandez would come through. And yet both of them did. So props to them to get out of the jungle, as they say. But this is one of the things that I don't like about the triple headers is that there's a bike problem for Bender. Now we're all human and it could have been anything.

And I'm not suggesting that any mechanic didn't do his job or his due diligence for that brake system. I'm not saying that. What I'm getting at is they're human. They're trying to go through this time zone change from Italy to there. You've got to be tired.

You're not as sharp as you are. Maybe somebody just kind of maybe missed a little something. And if we get to the point where we can get a week in between and let people get their body clock situated to that Asian time zone, I think things are going to be a lot better. So that's another reason I like the calendar. And again, I'm not saying anybody did anything wrong on Bender's bike.

It could have solely just broke. Who knows? But the point of the matter is that's my biggest fear is the people that are taking care of the motorcycles are running low on sleep in a time zone change and they've got to set up their pits and put bikes together and out of the crates and all that. You're human. You're tired.

Something can happen. That's all I'm saying. And I was just going to say, the risk of sounding like an appalling European snowflake. Again, that heat and humidity does mess you up a little bit. And because you're sweaty and you're sticky and you feel horrible in the heat getting in your head, I can quite understand how that would lead somebody to make a tiny little mess in terms of one little procedural thing.

So these things definitely do play their part alongside fatigue, tiredness, jet lag, just the general pressure they're under all the time anyway. Not like they have an easy time when they're in Europe, let's be honest. And so this just compounds. And so I totally take on board what you're saying, Jim. It's easy to see how that could inadvertently and innocently happen.

So in the second qualifying session, Mark Marquez is down because he's trying to go with Martin and that wasn't working. So he threw it away at turn 15. Bastianini would crash at turn 16. Now this screwed everyone because so many people were on a quick lap and he was at the head of the queue. So now everybody's like scratch that lap, scratch that lap, scratch that lap.

Oh, good grief. Martin then who was ahead of it gets to keep his lap and ripped off a 129 dead basically. So 129.08. It's like, woof, that's a great lap time that he threw down there. I mean, Martin is fabulous in this time attack.

He is without a doubt one of the best qualifiers I've ever seen. He somehow magically gets everything and then some out of himself, out of the track, out of the tire, out of it all. And it is quite magic to watch. It is amazing to watch. I do enjoy watching Martin on a time attack, but Mark Marquez would go down again at turn 10.

He was chasing Benyai and went down. Bizecki then goes down at turn 16. So that basically really pretty much everybody was done or I thought so because I started writing, well, Martin's on pull, Acosta is second, Benyai is there. Oh, wait a minute. Bizecki somehow magically got through all the carnage of crashes and got a clear lap.

I think Bez got across the line with a second or two left in the session and he snuck into second. So he broke between Martin and Acosta. So it's Martin, Bizecki, Acosta, Benyai on the fourth row, then Bastianini, Quattroraro, Zarca with a seventh on the Honda, then Fabio G. DiAntonio, Morbidelli, Benyai, Enrelo Fernandez. I'm not sure why I put the top 11 in there, but I did.

Anyway, that gets us then to that afternoon's sprint race. So Martin takes off. He's in front followed by Benyai, and Acosta, and Bizecki, Mark Marquez, and Bastianini. And lo and behold, Martin is down at turn 16 on the first lap. Very odd low side.

Very, very odd. We'd seen Picaris have problems in 16 and qualifying. Everybody was talking about how slick it was in 16. Now Martin got in there on it. He had made the apex and was starting to come back, but he hadn't quite got the throttle on.

And literally it was as if the front end was pinned to the ground and the back end was on a pendulum and it just slipped right out from underneath him. I don't think he had power on. Other people said he did. I don't think he even got to the point of beginning to touch the gas. I think it was a cold side tire on the rear, and I think that's why he was down.

But either way, he's down. Wow. Now this is a great moment for Benyai because Benyai comes in 24 points behind Martin, and it's highly unlikely that Martin is going to remount and get points. Yeah, he did remount. So that part goes on.

Peco then goes to the front. He's leading now. Bez is by Acosta, and then he's pushed wide by Mark Marquez. So Bez pushes Acosta wide, and woof, here comes Mark Marquez. But the kid, he doesn't give up because he goes back by.

They have a little battle back and forth between each other, and the beast also joins in there as well. Acosta kind of slides backwards a little bit in this sprint at that point. He's going backwards. I'm not sure, but for some reason Acosta was like a rolling roadblock I had written down. Everybody was sort of bottlenecked and choked behind him.

Bezeki was all wrong on the brakes, and he just missed Benyai going into, I think it was that tight turn 10, I think it was. I'm not sure which one it was. Exactly. But wow, he missed Benyai by inches, or sorry, by millimeters. Close.

It was close. It was close. I was like, woo, this is, woo, that was, that would have been just all wrong. And it was like, oof, that was just not going to be good. Benyai is still leading.

Marquez had made his way to second, but might as well hit the key to the shark music because here's Bastianini. Even in the 12-lap race, suddenly he turns it on there at the end. But Bastianini would get by Marquez. Benyai would win. Bastianini would be second.

Marquez is third, a podium, which is kind of great. Then Bezeki Morbidelli, Acosta falls to sixth from his third place starting position. Vignolo, Zarco, DG Antonio round out the people who score points. Wow. How do things change in this championship, Rich?

We had a 24, oh, sorry, I will add this. Martín did remount. He finished 10th. He was close to DG Antonio, but he wasn't going to get him, not in the short amount of time that he had. So he never got a point.

So wow, how things change. Martín comes in, 24 points up, Benyai in one quick stroke, cuts that in half. It's a 12-point lead going into Sunday. Is there anything I missed in the sprint, Rich, that you would like to comment on? I don't think so.

No. Okay. It was all right race. It's funny in the sprints are really exciting when they first started or when they first started doing sprints and have kind of calmed down a little bit, haven't they? And it's the main races that tend to be a little bit more exciting.

I find, I mean, again, I think you're right. I agree with you. Personal interpretation of things. No, nothing to add to that. Okay.

So we get to the race. The question is who's going to go on what front tire, basically? I think everybody's pretty much picked the medium. The question is who's going to go on a soft? Bez decided to go with a soft.

So, okay, that works. I think Digia was the only person who was on soft soft. Everybody else has got a hard front, medium rear. Benyai with a bad start. Did you catch the fact he was wiggling and playing with the handlebars right before the start?

No, I didn't spot go back and watch it. He's playing with the front end. I'm like, Oh crap, something's wrong on that bike. It's not going to start right. Sure enough.

All the way back from essentially, you know, the front row all the way back to sixth place on the first lap from my poor start from either a whole shot device, not engaging properly or not disengaging properly or something with the ride height. Like, Oh, I can't wait for that stuff to be banned. I just can't get here fast enough for me. Rich roll on roll. I could rant on, but I'm not.

I'm going to spare you people that one. Anyway, Martin's got the full shot. He's there. He bashing ease with him. Acosta's third and all that stuff.

Then there is a huge crash at turn three. There's a bunch of people down. Alex Marquez is down. Alisha's Alisha's down. Miller's down.

And we, you know, and Marini is also down as well. It was like bowling for riders. Somehow Marine somehow while Amir was able to navigate between bodies, bikes and other things to keep going, which was impressive. Now, granted, he was at a severely slow speed doing it, but still he didn't hit anybody or anything, which was great. If you look at it at Miller kind of screwed that turn up.

And did he get a penalty for the next race? Rich? I don't think so. I believe at the very end, they did tell us, Hey, it is a racing incident. I don't know about that one.

I'll go with it. It's first turn. I'll let anything first turn, first lap. I'll kind of let anything go just because I know how tricky it can be on a cold tire. It's hard for me to try to explain to you what it's like to try to start on cold tires, do a warm up lap, come back to your grid.

And some people are going to be slower than you are. Now you're sitting and you get all that heat's going away. I don't care if you had an entire warmer or not. The heat is dissipating and now you're going to take off and you've got to trust that front. It's super hard to do.

I have without a doubt the absolute most respect for Casey Stoner and the guys that go out and just hammer it on the first lap. Those people are my hero. Stoner was probably the best at it. Oh, anyway. He was on a Bridgestone front at the time, Jim.

I know. But he also rode on Michelin's before too. Because when he stepped into MotoGP, he was on Michelin's on the LCR bike, I believe. On the RCV. So he did have both sets.

It wasn't until he moved to Ducati did he get a set of Bridgestones. Yeah, that is true. It's just an unfortunate front end, first lap, turn three thing. And it just skittled everybody else. I mean, I don't see how he possibly could have got a penalty for that really, because it's just one of those racing things that can happen.

Unfortunate for everybody else, but nobody was injured and move on to Japan. I agree with you, sir. Acosta would get by Bastianini for second. Then Bastianini was kind of going backwards. Morbidelli got by.

So it's Benyaya, it's Marc Marquez. There's Benyaya, Marc Marquez, Digia. They're having their own little battle. That race there is pretty awesome. I mean, Martín is unfortunately starting to clear off, but Acosta made a move and like, huh, is Acosta going to be able to go with him?

Don't really know about that one. Kind of trying to figure it out. But with 20 laps to go, it's Martín, Acosta, Morbidelli, Bastianini, Benyaya, Marc Marquez, and Digia. Then Digia and Marc Marquez are just swapping the lead at every corner. They spend like a lap, a lap and a half, just every turn, the other guy was in front of the other guy.

It was really fun to watch those two guys go hammer and tong at each other. That was the kind of racing I liked when I was doing it. It was that kind of, you pass him and he goes right back by, oh crap, I got to do this again. You beat, do it. Yeah, it was really fun, fun racing.

I think the guys are probably having quite a fun. However, Digia would go down on turn three. He was definitely making the most of the soft tires that he had and perhaps maybe that soft was not the right choice. Perhaps maybe the hard on the front was the choice to actually go with, but you can't fault Digia for giving it a go. For a while, Acosta, Morbidelli, Bastianini, are all faster than Jorge Martín.

Ooh, maybe Martín isn't going to get away on this one, right? You hope springs eternal that Acosta chasing a win, right? We've said it. We said he's going to win one. Maybe this is the one.

Again, remember he said he was starting to get the things he wanted on his bike. He had the bat wings on the back, right? Does that make a difference? I have no clue. I do not know enough about aerodynamics to even venture a guess on that one.

I think it looks kind of funny, but whatever. Bat wings, if that's what it takes for him to go fast, then fine. Put bat wings on the bike. I don't care. He is the wunderkind, right?

Jim, it would be very interesting, which we will never be able to do, to get a talk with some technical people there because Acosta has been crashing a lot in the last, what, five, six races, pushing the bike beyond what it can do. Now, the best ones kind of do that to establish where the line is, but equally that might have driven his feedback in terms of what he needs on the bike to make it more stable, better performing, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, only time will tell on this as we go through the next few races, but I mean, all weekend long he was on top form on that KTM with the changes that they've made. Maybe that first win isn't out of the question. I mean, it would require, I think, a bit of trouble for some of the 24-spec Ducattas to occur to open up an opportunity, but if he stops crashing, he is fast.

And if the bike is getting better, he will definitely maximize it and take advantage of any little chink in the armory of the Ducati Armada. So I wouldn't rule out a win somewhere. I think it's becoming perhaps longer odds, but definitely not out of the question. And yeah, it'd be interesting to know just what the communication and development has been over the course of the last, what, month, two months, perhaps, to bring the bike to where it is now. I agree.

I'd love to know. On a side note, if it rains in Motegi, I would put money on Acosta to win. He has nothing to lose at that point. And you've seen deluges in Motegi, so weird stuff happens. Yeah.

And he's the kind of guy that will take advantage of, a bit like Marquez did at Mizano when that little kind of non-shower, well, it was a shower, but not as bad as most people thought it was going to be. The other track, I think that he has a chance to win at, and this is wet or dry, the island. That KTM is bullet fast in a straight line. It's left-handed, right? It's an anti-clockwise track.

I just, I wouldn't, I mean, we've gotten somewhere. It's possible, right? I get it. The Ducati is also going to be super strong there, but it's possible. Anyway, we're not talking about future races.

We need to get back talking about where we are on this one because Marc Marquez is suddenly on fire. Get off the bike, Marc, which he did, which he was trying to get a fire extinguisher by a fire marshal, but essentially he's like, no, I'm out of here and basically drops the bike. We go on board and it just went, ah, when is the last time you can think of a MotoGP engine packing it up and going south? I'm going to say Valentino Rossi at Mugello. And I'm going back quite a while when he was back onto the works monster Yamaha squad.

He had an engine go after just a few laps in the race and Lorenzo's engine had done the same thing, but in the morning warmup as I recall on that same day. So that's probably 2016, 2017, maybe somewhere around about there. I came up with the same incident. I came up with Rossi's bike going pop at Mugello. I couldn't come up with the year, but I came up with the exact same incident.

That is a long streak. It's a very, very rare occurrence. Interesting when Rossi's went, it was a big cloud of smoke job, wouldn't it? Whereas with Marquez's on board, you just heard the bang. I mean, it was a definite, oh yeah, that's gone completely.

Yeah. Crazy that that really unusual, very unusual man, but it, it went boom. That's not an electronics failure. Like some other classes, other racing series, like to classify things as that was purely a mechanical, we freed the rod from the piston and that thing. Okay.

That's things came apart inside. Yes, they did. And the fire was at the bottom, which I'm thinking the rod then proceeded to disconnect itself from the piston and poke a very nice hole in the bottom of the engine is what I think. Engine failures are rare, aren't they? All around really in most sports these days, but Sunday was a weird day because all the weekend was a weird one because you had the Marquez thing.

Sam Lowes lost an engine in the first race at Aragon and that went on his tire and spat him off and put him out for the rest of the weekend. And then Booliger's engine went in that restarted race after Lowes had gone out. So yeah, just a funny weekend of engine failures here, there and everywhere. I'm blaming it on the mini moon we have now. Ah, playing havoc with the oil flow.

Oh gosh, we got to finish this. I'm sorry if I got on tangents. So we are, yes, but it's fun. So basically now the beast is coming. The beast has figured it out and he's going, um, Bastionini and Morbidelli are battling and no one is giving up.

And that's kind of killing Bastionini's chance to get to the front. He's being held up there. Bastionini finally gets by Morbidelli. It takes him like four laps basically to do it, which is four laps too long. But either way, Martina is now out front.

He's pretty much gone. He's figured it back out. He's going fast again. Acosta is holding on to second. Bastionini will move his way to third.

Now, Benya tries to get by Bezekia and Morbidelli and that, you know, but he's not getting anywhere. He's trying, but he's not getting anywhere. Bastionini then is about a half a second quicker than Martina. So, whoa, wait a minute. Is the beast going to pull off some magic like he did in San Marino and run down, you know, run down everybody for the win?

Maybe because Bastionini is faster than anybody, but he does. The reason he's so fast is because he tucks the front end at turn one. So Bastionini then takes what was a great ride and turns it into a pretty crappy ride because he fell off. But I will give credit for the guy to try. And so I'm not mad at him.

Benya finally gets by Morbidelli with like five laps to go. And basically, folks, this is where it ends right here. Nothing else happens. And so Jorge Martín wins the race. Ironically, approximately four seconds ahead of Francisco Benya, who claimed, gee, Martín should have won by four seconds in the sprint race, but he didn't.

So Martín decided he would beat Benya in the main race. By four seconds, which he did. I wish I would have taken money on that in Vegas because it would have been great. But Martín, a win. Pedro Acosta, first ever podium on a MotoGP bike.

He's been on the podium in sprints, but he's never been on the podium in a MotoGP. Oh, well spotted. Okay. Right. Thank you.

Actually, I'll give the credit. I'll give credit to the guys in the booth for that one because that's where I heard it. Then Benya for the podium, right? Then Morbidelli, Bizecki, Vinales, six. He's maturing and he's doing better.

He's now sixth. Helped by a lot of crashes, helped by a mention blow up, but he's maturing. And that's what we want. Sorry, Gary. That still lives rent free in my head, Gary.

And I love you for it. I really do. Anyway, Mr. Bender is now a Sarco. Or sorry, I forgot.

Quattroro, seven. Quattroro. I almost want to give Quattroro like rider of the race because my gosh, he's doing almost magical work on that Yamaha. Then Bender, Sarco, Fernandez, Nakagami, and Alex Renz. Okay.

That should be everything, right? No. We get to this tire pressure problem. Acosta, Nakagami, and who? Bender.

There's one more, right? And Bender all have are under investigation for low tire pressure. Acosta and Bender were cleared of any wrongdoing. I believe I'm right, correct Rich? Correct.

Okay. And then Nakagami was given a 16 second time penalty for him being illegal. So it was interesting to hear how Simon Krafar talked about what they were going to do with that. The first thing they were going to do was run down and put an absolute gauge, which is extremely accurate, measure the tire pressure on Pedro Acosta's bike. Then they were going to look at what the transponder said for that and do those match?

And does it match what's being told to the Magneti-Marelli system that's then being transmitted? So they went through and going to check all of that. And then they were going to make the determination as to whether or not he deserved a 16 second penalty. Apparently all that passed muster and we didn't have it, but I did think the technology of how they were going to go about sorting through that was really kind of cool and whatnot. But that is the race.

The tire pressure issue, we sort of covered that in beginning with Jacob's email. So I don't think we'll belabor that anymore. We will move, unless you have anything else about the race that you want to talk about, we'll move to the championship. Well, the only thing I will mention, and this does actually apply in the sprint as well, Joanne Zarco on that Honda, was that a pair of eighth place finishes? Yes.

Across the two races? I believe so, yes. Something like that. I mean, very, very- A ninth and an eighth. Okay.

Nevertheless, very credit worthy, I would say, because nobody else on a Honda has got anywhere near that level of performance all year. Well, I shouldn't say good old Zarco. I mean, he's one of the more senior riders now, it's true, but he's extracting a lot out of that bike just at the moment. And although the glimpses are only fleeting and relatively minor, there are, nevertheless, signs of progress starting to show themselves, I think, at HRC. I mean, we're waxing lyrical about Fabio Quattraro, quite rightly so, and, you know, Jan-Hark clearly are on the upslope now, but there are signs that HRC are digging themselves out of this hole, even more so in World Superbike.

MotoGP's are still in a challenge, given the regs and the techs and all the rest of it. But yeah, I think that one shouldn't pass by unannounced, really, the Zarco rides at the weekend. And again, let's see if he can continue that run of form, because it's very impressive to me. I agree with you. It is very impressive and well spotted with that as well.

But let's look at the championship. Jorge Martin is on 366, Benya on 345. That is a 21-point lead. Remember, Martin came in at 24 points, had it half to 12. Benya got gifted a podium, essentially, when Bastianini crashed, and now the race is 21 points.

And with 12 and 25 giving you 27 or 37 on a weekend, this is all to play for here. And it shows that we've had numerous ups and downs in this championship of who's leading, who's not leading. But I think Benya is in the preferable spot. I would much rather be chasing than leading right now. That's me, and it's my opinion.

Bastianini is third. He is a full 75 points behind Jorge Martin, so three race wins there. I don't think Bastianini is more than, well, not three race wins. It would be three regular race wins. But I don't think Bastianini is even anywhere close to this one.

It's Martin and Benya. Then Marquez, despite his engine trouble, is fourth still. Acosta with a great ride now jumps up a little bit, becomes fifth. Binder is teammate at sixth. The ever-mature Benya is in seventh.

Valesha Spargro at eighth, and Bizecki ninth with Digi Antonio at tenth. And that is the racing as we move to Motegi to complete the first of the triple headers, oh, thankfully we get a weekend off. And then we do what? Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, or Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, whatever. It's those three.

And then we go to Valencia. So not much left. Not a pair of MotoGP races that will fest along in my memory, Jim. I don't know about yours. I mean, there was a few interesting things that went on.

But by far and away, the most impressive MotoGP moment of the whole weekend, I think, was the volume of Pedro Acosta's belches in the post-race, sort of pre-podium waiting area where he was downing a can of Red Bull, which I'm sure was very well needed. And good God, can that boy burp? Yeah. Very impressive. That's what we remember this one before.

Yeah. Well, I certainly will. Yes. Just I love Pedro Acosta. I mean, I know we wax lyrical and quite rightly so.

And as you say, you run out of superlatives about a lot of these guys, but he just off the bike, he's just great. He's just absolute magic. Okay. People have a certain kind of, what's the word, disposition might find I don't care. that level of stomach acid gas coming out, a bit repulsive, but I don't, I whatever.

I don't care. There's a lot that can be made of him in terms of the social media side. And yeah, he is, well, you'd argue he's already a superstar in our eyes, but he could genuinely go quite global. I think he's sort of going to be the next Rossi that funny odd saying. Quirky.

Yeah. Quirky. Yeah. He is that. He's PR speak, but he's not PR speak.

I mean, come on. Well, yeah. I freaking found my balls. I mean, he's, he's the old throwback of what you want. And it's just, it's, it's just gold, absolute gold.

Oh, okay. Wait, wait. This is a long enough show. Let us get out of this one, Rich. I'm going to tell everybody to prepare for Matage.

It could be rain, could be a hurt typhoon, could be anything happening over there. Never know what's going to happen. Is it a rain race? Who knows? I think if it's rain, I think Acosta's got a shot at it.

If he's not, I think he's on for another podium. Probably we'll see how it works, how the KTM works at a more straight up and down, hard breaking kind of a circuit, which I'm interested to see what it does there. And with all that said, Rich, everybody right safe. Before I go, Jim, I'm just going to put a call out. I have to do it.

If you can, and I recommend to you go and investigate whether you can get hold of the world super bike stuff through your discovery avenues. Cause if anybody hasn't seen race one from Aragon world super bikes last weekend, whoa, that is a race for the ages. Go and find it. It was just brilliant. And again, he's a level or hating kind of pantomime villain, but Andrea Iannone gets his first win in world super bike and joins that rather exclusive club of people that have won a motor GP race and a world super bike race as well.

It's a small club. So yeah, if you can find it, if you've got access to it, it might even be popping up on YouTube and places like that. Now you get my mind going. Who are the people who have done both? So let's do it together.

Cause I don't think I got it all. So the first one that comes to mind, Troy Bayless. Yes. Okay. Bayless next from there.

I give you Petrucci, right? And then you get from there, you get Nikki Hayden because he won that race in Malaysia. And then you get the one you just, and Aonny, right? That's four. I think there are 12, either 12 or 14 people that have done it.

So we forgot one. You've got Ben Speas in there. He won a motor GP race, didn't he? I don't think Ben did because he came close, but Stoner Nipty met Valencia. Okay.

And that was when he was on the Tex wall bike. Biagi definitely obviously won in both categories. Yep. Biagi. So there's five.

Carlos Checa. Checa did. Okay. There's six. This is fun.

Okay. I like this. Try to stretch the mind. Did John Kaczynski win? He must have won GP 500.

Yeah, he won 500. He won a world superbike title. There's that. So Kaczynski, that's a good call. I didn't think about Kaczynski.

Cause you have to go back your ways with some of these, don't you? I'm running out of steam now. Oh golly, who else would there be? People are shouting, I'm sure. Oh, everybody's got somebody in their mind.

They will be. Right in. Tell us who are everybody who's won a world superbike race and a Moto GP slash 500 Grand Prix victory. Be interesting. Yeah.

I'm stumped. A couple more will abound to occur to me, but yeah. Yes. Good stuff. Last thing then, Jen, just before we definitely, 100% sign off, obviously it'll be out after this, but yeah, I'll have to give a couple of shout out and thanks to Laura Beretta and Paul Bertran at Get This Right.

Pertamina Enduro, VR46 racing team. We've got a very quick interview with Fabio DiGiantonio on, or I have on Thursday morning. This has come about because when I went to Silverstone or before I went to Silverstone this year, I obviously did my usual writing out to all the press officers and stuff. Cause I had the media pass from Dorna. You never really expect to get any of the Moto GP guys when you're small media like we are compared to the, you know, the big guys and the legacy media and stuff.

Fair enough. No problem with that. But Laura, who's one of the press officers there did say, you know, we'll try and set something up for another occasion sort of thing. And I'm saying, well, you know, we only get to a few races a year between you and me, Jen, if we're lucky. Anyway, all out of the blue.

I got an email the other day saying Fabio is available for 15 minutes on a Zoom call if you're interested. So I was interested, definitely. So yeah, we put a shout out. I mentioned it mainly because, and I'll keep saying this, is obviously we want to attract more paying subscribers to the show to allow us to do more of this sort of stuff. And hopefully people can see that we are building up with what you did this year, what I've done this year and last year and so on and so forth.

So yeah, a shout out has gone out to the PayPal and Patreon subscribers to fire in a few questions that I'm not, can't get everything in probably in 15 minutes because that's not a lot of time, but you've got a great question about tire pressures, Jim, I've had one or two others that have come in in the meantime. So we'll look to feed those in. And, you know, as we start to get deeper into some of these products and talk to the, the stars of the future and the stars of the present, then, you know, hopefully that's just the little thing that paid subscribers get as an additional little kind of bonus that they get to, you know, get their name and their question put in front of a genuine superstar in this case. So I'm looking forward to talking to Fabio because I've never, I've seen him in the paddock obviously, but I've never spoken to him before. So that'd be good.

So yeah, well done everybody that's sending in questions and yeah, keep on coming with the paid subscriptions because it helps us a lot. All right. There we go. I'm actually finished now. This time I'm going to mean it.

Everybody ride safe. Cheers, everyone.