Game, Set, Match!

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 785 for October 9th, 2024. I'm Jim McDowell in the US.

Across the pond in the UK is Richard Jowett on dodgy wifi tonight. Or at least dodgy IPS, let's say. So how are things over in the UK this evening, Rich? Well, apart from the wifi, which is shockingly bad tonight for whatever reason. Otherwise, very good.

Thank you, Jim. Not three scintillating races to talk about, but some interesting news to get into. So hopefully we'll keep this one reasonably short. Yes, three on the trot is a lot of work in between. I don't know how the crews do all this, to be quite honest with you, through time zones and everything else, because I get to sleep in my own bed every night.

But as you said, there is interesting news and all that stuff. But I'd like to start us off with listener feedback. Gary Chavit has written in, Rich, and give us Gary's thoughts on Motegi. Well, I think we were opining as to the fact that the races weren't the best. So Gary, in his own in an inexorable way, kind of said boring races, to say the least.

Moto2 did add about five minutes of excitement, but that was all. And then it goes on. So I think Acosta was feeling the pressure, realizing that this might be his last chance to win a GP as a rookie, which I can take the point. I agree with that one, too. Yeah, they're both.

Well, Gary says stupid mistakes and he knows it. I'm not sure that they were. I would characterize it quite that way. I mean, somebody made the good point, I think, about this, Jim, which was that when you look where all the other KTMs are, you know, for Acosta to have crashed out of the lead on a KTM, he was pushing that thing, you know, about as far as you can push it. And obviously he did push it just that bit too far in the end.

So just doing a scintillating job. But anyway, as always, just to finish off on the bright side, Vignales is still maturing, although I'm not quite sure how, because, you know, just disappeared from trace in both races, didn't they? But he's right to his right height. His whole shot device didn't work in a sprint and he went way back and he didn't try to wreck the bike or blow the engine up and he calmly rode on and, you know, then arrived in the pits and didn't throw his helmet or gloves or anything like that. So we've got to give the guy credit.

I'm always going to stand up a little bit for Maverick, I'm afraid. And I know because I, you know, Gary is probably the least Maverick friendly person that I've ever encountered, probably in the world. But the one thing I will say about Vignales is that on a good day, when everything works, I mean, he is a dream to behold on a bike. It's just that those days are very, very infrequent. We're going to be talking about Aprilia, obviously, in the context of the news in a couple of moments.

So we'll kind of part that one for now. But yes, thank you, Gary. As always, very entertaining. And there is a second piece of listener feedback. This one is from Joshua Tattel.

This one goes back to my trying to figure out how many tires have actually exploded on a motorcycle. And, you know, we had like the two from Daytona still looking for the rider that had the tire explosion in the late 90s, first part of the 2000s. I still haven't found it yet. I have been very busy at work. So I've not had as much time to research it as I want it.

But Joshua did remind us of this one of the three that we had. There is a fourth and that fourth is Sinji Nakano. Now, this happened at where it's an old article. I think this was back in like 2004. It was at where it was.

He was Mugello. Yeah. So Sinji Nakano and his ZXRR were, this is World Superbike, sorry, I didn't mention that. They were sent cartwheeling down the straight finish as a tire failure, leaving his machine in pieces. He would eventually tumble to a halt after a brushing with the trackside barrier.

So that was another one. I completely forgot about Sinji Nakano and his tire coming apart on him. Yeah, me too. Back in 2004, that is one that I did not remember. So thank you, Josh, for adding that one to the list.

So now we've got four tires that we know that have gone astray. Two of them in, let's call it world level racing, as opposed to racing in America on high banks. So I appreciate you adding that to the list. So Mugello 2004. Jim, can I just say, very embarrassingly, I just realized that with regards to the listener feedback with Gary, I was actually reading your reply rather than his original email.

So it was you that said it was a stupid mistake by Maverick, not Gary. So just to put the record straight, Gary actually said a boring race on Sunday afternoon is bad. Getting up early on Sunday morning to see a boring race, clearly that is worse. And then he said, what a disappointment about Pedro, but at least Vignale has got nowhere from his front row start. So still very much the typical Gary, given the love to Maverick Vignale is.

Next stop, Phillip Island. Yay. Well, I think we'll endorse that one. So sorry, Gary. That was your email and I was reading the wrong bit of the notes.

And he took away my thunder that I think it's a stupid mistake. Great. Awesome. I will get into depth as to why I think it was a stupid mistake. And explain myself when we get to that point in the racing.

There we go. I think with all the listener feedback, I now all sort it. Hopefully let's move on to the news. We'll start in MotoGP land. Now, Aprilia's Romano, is it Albasino?

Albasano, I think is how you pronounce it. Is moving to HRC. So Aprilia's technical director is left and is going to be technical director at HRC. Is that a fair statement, Rich? He's nodding people, so you must be right.

Now, that's interesting to me. It shows that HRC is absolutely positively serious about making their bikes better. If you had a doubt, per se, of this, this just should tell you that they do mean business because they're hiring a team that has a very good bike. And I think you will see that next year with Martine on it. That bike will be at the front consistently.

Now, I think it'll be fighting for podiums most of the time. Wins will be there as well. But still, it's going to be harder than if you were on a Ducati to do it, right? Especially considering the tandem of Marc Marquez and Peco Benyaia on a factory spec bike. But because we only have one other factory spec bike, I can see Martine being in the podium hunt all the time with that Aprilia.

We know that that bike's good. We know that their aero is very good. So you know that that knowledge is going to come over to HRC. So that's kind of very big news. But it means that...

Is that Sterlici? Is that one right? Or is that got... It's tough. It's Italian.

I'm never going to get it right. Yeah, I think I didn't put his first name in the notes. I think it's Andrea Stellacchini, I think is the correct name. Yeah, I mean, he's another of these behind the scenes wizards who, as I put in the notes there, was kind of formative in Ducati's resurgence of recent times. Then switched across to KTM and is now going over to Aprilia.

Now, what we don't know in all of this, Jim, is who moved first or what kind of happened first in terms of these movements. Was Romano Abassano kind of poached by HRC and then Aprilia jumped to bring somebody else in and managed to get Stellacchini? Or, you know, was... I was going to... Did he sort of jump once he knew somebody else was coming in?

Because obviously you can't deny the fact that at the beginning of the season, everybody was raving about Aprilia, certainly saying it was the second best bike and they were podiuming, you know, Vinali's walked on water at Cota, didn't he, this year? Yeah. Sorry, Gary. But he did. He was just absolutely classic maverick there.

Since then, it seems to have stalled, if not gone backwards. I mean, everybody else has gone forwards for sure. So something's gone wrong at Aprilia. So whether that has led to Romano Abassano sort of being shown the door or, I don't know, I mean, obviously we don't know what's happened, but that is a big change. And as you say, Jim, I think the really significant thing here is that HRC now have Takenakagami confirmed as a test rider.

They have obviously Alessio Spargro, who signed a contract to be HRC test rider. Now his kind of partner in the good times in terms of the technical direction is coming across to HRC as well. So it does very much prove a change of a total change of mentality in terms of where they get in their talent from. So I'm going to go with this theory, and that is that HRC with some nudge, nudge, wink, wink from Alessio said, go get him. It's possible.

And I think that's how it happened. I mean, I have no clue, but you don't have to be scooby-doo in the gang to figure out that if you've got Alessio and he knows what the bike is supposed to be like, why not get the guy who built the bike that Alessio was on and put him in your team to build your bikes or set them up or be that man behind the scenes and tweak the arrow, tweak these other things that are going on. So I think it went that way. And then that left the Prilia kind of holding the bag. And this deal may have been done much earlier, but there could have been a, hey, guys, Ducati can't, KTM can't say anything that this is happening, right?

As a backdoor agreement handshake among frenemies, if you will, that look, you can't say anything about this. And they agree to, right? Because I mean, sometimes riders have deals and they're not stated until the other rider has another position or another place in another team. So I think the same thing might be here or it could have been, oh, the Jetta F1 comparison, they put Romano on gardening leave for a little bit, right? So that he did, so, you know, his knowledge doesn't technically directly transfer over to Honda's bikes or whatever.

So anyway, all big changes, all I think are very good changes for HRC. They still have a hole. They still have Mount Fuji to climb without a doubt to get out of this. But you can see where they are moving in the right direction. And I think starting to make some very strategic moves to get the proper people into the team to get the results that they're looking for.

And I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that Al Passano goes so far back in Aprilia that he was there working under Gigi De Lina. And that's like way back when they first came in, when the four-stroke rules came into place. So 2002. Because De Lina was behind the RS3 Cube, if you remember. And it was shortly after that, around the time that Aprilia kind of started to really put away from and then ultimately pull out of MotoGP back in the 990 era when De Lina went across to Ducati.

And look how long it was taking Ducati to get up to where they are now. Okay, they've been winning the championship for a few seasons, it's true. But it's a long road. Aprilia have been on it and now HRC are on it. So bringing somebody in like Romano Al Passano does make sense in that context.

But it's going to take them quite a while. Although of course we have the 2027 rules reset. So again, he'll be a fundamental part of drawing up their plans for that one would imagine. Yeah, very much so. This next one, Rich, I'm going to let you roll with this one for a second.

Because I was in a hole at work and I didn't hear any of this. But please explain if you would. I will. Okay, so we need to do this rather sensitively because I don't know ultimately who and where people will listen to this show. Effectively, just to bring this kind of ball this down to the nub of the issue.

I didn't notice it. I think on the grid before the race on Sunday, it was Manu Gonzalez. Well, the QJ Motor, the QJ Motor is a Chinese brand of motorcycles. I suspect they do all sorts of automobiles as well. But they are the title sponsor of the QJ Motor team in Moto 2.

And Gonzalez wore a traditional Japanese headband with the rising sun on it or the sun. And then there's various kind of inscriptions on it. Now, that is a piece of headgear that is, from the point of view of the Chinese, closely associated with the Second World War. And I mean, you know, the Second World War was quite a long time ago, it's true. But I think from a European perspective, I'd be interested on your take from an American perspective on this, Jim.

But I don't think probably people know an awful lot of detail about the Second World War, particularly in terms of the Pacific arena. I would say that would certainly be the case for Europeans, possibly less the case for Americans, given that was where much of the war was fought for America, initially, at least. So people, I don't want to stray into dodgy territory here. You know, what went on between the Japanese pre-Second World War and during the Second World War all across Southeast Asia. But, you know, Manchuria in China is a notable example, but South Korea too and elsewhere.

You know, the horrifying things happen there. And so the Chinese are very sensitive to this, particularly given the political situation in China at the moment. So anyway, having worn this piece of headgear rather innocently, it must be said, today, I think, or yesterday, QJ Motor, organisation or company, whatever it's called, have basically demanded that Krasini Sak, Gonzalez for this action. Now, I think Gonzalez probably has not already, but will say, well, I'm sorry, I didn't know. And he will be very apologetic about it.

That it's kind of shone a light on this whole issue of teams being reliant on their sponsors, particularly their title sponsors, and some of the tricky sort of diplomacy that goes alongside this. And Krasini got themselves into a bit of hot water early in the season with a tweet that went out, which was something to do with Lewis Hamilton. It was a little kind of riff on the notion that Hamilton might be sort of looking to buy his way into the MotoGP paddock. There was a sort of a cultural appropriation kind of argument that blew up. And now, you know, I'm like you, Jim, I'm sort of old enough to let a lot of this wash over me and think guys, you know, calm down.

You know, we're making trouble where perhaps it's, let's not get too far into this because, you know, we'll go up a blind path, but, you know, people are very, very prickly to certain things that happen and they can get blown out of proportion quite quickly or get very heated very quickly. So anyway, this thing has erupted over the last day or two. Now I picked up on it because I was reading a couple of tweets that come out from the usual journos and David Emmett on the Moto Matters website has got a very good article, which goes into this in a little bit more depth in terms of why a QJ motor is so incensed by this seemingly innocent action. And let's be honest, I think David Emmett points this out. A lot of the riders for the Motegi round have special crash helmet liveries, which pay homage to the Japanese culture, to the flag.

I mean, Zako famously had a rising sun emblem on his crash helmet for many, many years. But, you know, the Chinese who are particularly sensitive to this are becoming more and more preeminent. You know, you've got CF motor, you've got QJ motor. Others will come because the Chinese motorcycle industry is a growing force in the world and they are taking more and more of an interest in motorsport and motorbike racing in particular. So, yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell.

I think the likelihood of Gonzales being sacked is rather low, but, you know, on the other hand, QJ motor obviously pumping a lot of money into that team and Chrisini, like everybody else, can't afford to lose a title sponsor over a sort of diplomatic incident like this, let's call it. So I think that's kind of what's going on, Jim. What's your take? I know a lot about what happened in the Second World War. You know, I'm an American, so the war in the Pacific was a bit more upfront to us, right?

More in the center stage. Like I said, my grandfather served on an aircraft carrier during that. So I've read a lot, studied a lot. I know of the atrocities that were committed. So I totally get where QJ motor could be offended by what was done, but at the same time, it's one of those where, yeah, guys, we got to, the world is in a different place.

I think if this was 10 years ago, I don't think it would be a big deal. We're not where we're not, definitely not where we were 10 years ago. And somebody should have been maybe a little more aware or a little more, Hey, can we just not do that here on the grid? Or, you know, if we want to do it back in the pits or something like something to that effect, I would have thought. But I think everyone should go read David Emmons article.

I'm going to once I get done with this because I have not read that. But that's my take on it there. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, it's an interesting one. And it does rather make me wonder whether going forward, not just in motorbike racing, across all sports for that matter, to be a PR officer in a team or press officer, whatever the role would be marketing, you're going to need to come with some kind of knowledge about world affairs and political niceties and historical perspective.

Because these things are important. And so I'm not belittling both the strong feelings on both sides of the argument. It's just something that just blew up slightly kind of out of the blue and unexpectedly, as far as I was concerned. But, you know, these things do happen like this very quickly sometimes. And it's how you deal with it.

But it's a tricky one because I don't think Gonzalez deserves to lose his ride over it. But clearly, Grissini need to do something to placate their title sponsor as well. So it's an awkward situation. It'll be interesting to see what develops over the next week or so. Okay, so the last bit of news from MotoGP is the there is a big new MotoGP brand identity reveal that's coming November 17th at 7 p.m.

Central European time. Was that six for you and England, Rich? Yeah. What are they doing here? They just going to give us some new flashy logos and intro songs?

Or is this the beginning of Liberty Takeover? Well, I think it's probably a bit of both. This, again, is just a piece of news that's cropped up today. No detail about precisely what they're going to be doing. This must be in and around the, what we call it, the awards ceremony that happens, you know, right at the end of the season in Valencia.

I'm guessing that's the correct date for that. I'm pretty sure that's a Sunday. So, yes, I'm assuming it's new logo, perhaps a refresh on the look and the feel of the website. Hopefully not more kind of slightly filmy type music coming. That's bad enough what we have already in my opinion.

But again, that's just a personal thing. So that's about all I know, Jim. But yes, I suspect this is somewhat of a lead-in to the Liberty side of things and just a bit of a refresh. I mean, to be fair, they haven't changed the look of the, you know, the trademark, the logos and stuff like that for quite a long time. So perhaps it's due a bit of an update.

But, you know, I'm sure it'll be somewhat divisive when it appears. But we won't try and second guess. It will just wait until mid-November and we'll see what they come up with. All right. So let's move to World Superbike.

The penultimate round of the series of the season is at Estoril this weekend. That should be interesting. We'll see how Top Rock does here at Estoril. Then, okay, so from the last episode, we were going through everybody who was a MotoGP winner and a World Superbike winner. So I think we had a few of these.

We had Biagi, we had Baylis. Duhun, I did not realize he had won a Superbike round. Where was that? At the island? He actually won three.

Really? When I'm pretty sure when I was listening to the, well, I'll call it Eurosport. It's still Eurosport to me, Discovery Plus coverage. And Greg Haynes was saying about the dual winners. I'm sure he said 14 people, but I suspect that was people that had ridden in modern day MotoGP.

So four stroke onwards. Whereas some of these people go way back into 500cc two stroke, of course. Sure. Duhun being obviously a notable example, which certainly got my attention. Because of course, I'd forgotten this, but he came from Australian Superbike originally.

And then early on in his Grand Prix career, he did some, well, I guess you'd call them wild cards. So apparently he won, I'm pretty sure it said he won a race at Sugo in Japan. Okay, I remember that. Two races at Oran Park, which was one of the old Australian race tracks before kind of Phillip Island became the predominant venue for everybody to go to. So yeah, Duhun's actually won three, well, Superbike races on that basis.

Did not realize that. Yeah, it was a big, big shock to me because I must admit I don't remember that. Well, then from there, we got Melandry, Hayden, Checa. Crutchler was an interesting one. I did not realize Crutchler.

Can't believe I didn't think of that. Yeah. I didn't know that he won a did not know that he won a World Superbike round. That's interesting. I know he had Super Sport victories.

Yeah. I didn't know he had a Superbike win. That's that's interesting. Spees, which I had caught there at the end. You said you thought that he hadn't won.

I thought Spees hadn't won, but apparently he did. Apparently he won an Assen. He won an Assen one. He did, didn't he? See, I was thinking of Valencia when he got nipped by Stoner.

So yeah, he did have that Assen when I forgot about that one. We had Kaczynski, Tomada, that one I wouldn't have come up with. Chile, Frankie, wouldn't have thought of that one. Vermeulen is too. That's another one that we missed.

Oh, Lucianelli. That's a good one. Barros. Okay. Yeah.

Then Petrucci, McCoy did it. Okay. Lacony, McGee. Wow, Kevin McGee. Yeah.

Yeah, that's definitely back from 500 days. We're going back a ways. I remember McGee because it was him at Laguna Seca in 89. He stopped on the Lucky Strike Yamaha because he was teammates to Schwantz. He stopped on track over the crest of turn one, I think, and he was doing a burnout there.

And Bubba Schobert, who was my dirt track hero, was riding in Grand Prix, was congratulating Eddie Lawson after the end of the race, and he plows into the back of McGee's bike. And Schobert suffered severe head injuries. And if it wasn't for Eddie, who had stopped immediately because he had witnessed it and stopped and threw down his Honda and ran over to Bubba and instructed them to cut his chin strap of his helmet but not remove it, Bubba probably wouldn't be with us right now. So yeah, I totally forgot about McGee. But anyway, sidetracking.

When am I not sidetracked by some story from the past? And then Ian Oney. So wow, dude, that's a list. That is quite a lot. I would have thought that it was been 10 max.

I wouldn't have thought it was this many. Yeah, because it reminded me, for example, that Regis Laconia, he won, I think, a couple of races on the Red Bull Yamaha back in the 500s. Yeah, McCoy definitely did it. McCoy did it on the 500. Exactly.

Yeah, also on the Red Bull Yamaha, Peter Clifford's team. Yeah, Peter Clifford, that's it. Yeah. So yeah, no less. And yeah, blast from the past on that list.

It was interesting. So yeah, just did a little bit of research. And so as I say, I think that list is a bit longer because of the GP 500 contingent that are in there. So I'll double check that with Greg next time I have a little kind of WhatsApp exchange or chat to him. But because I think that's the basis on which he came up with the 14 riders that he he didn't mention who they were.

He just said that there were 14 that won MotoGP and World Superbike. But yeah, I can only assume he means from 2002 onwards. Little British Superbike for you folks. Fun around at Branch Hatch this weekend. Rich, will you be in attendance?

Not sure. I'm not sure. It depends on the weather. I've got a few things going on at home this weekend as well. Annoyingly, we're not annoying because I'm very much looking forward to it, but we're going out for drinks on Saturday evening with some local friends.

And so that means that it would be a bit of a rush to get home on the Saturday to be at the drinks party in time. And probably the head might not be in the best state Sunday morning for getting up and driving three hours. So we'll see. Heaven forbid a three hour drive to go see a motorcycle race. It would be more the hangover that would be the issue in terms of being on the correct side of the law.

So I will let you slide for the hangover, but I will not let you slide over for a three hour drive. No, I know. I don't expect to get away with that these days. Anyway. All right.

So that fevers the news. Let's get into the race and that happened at the weekend. We'll start with Moto3 qualifying here. This qualifying in the first qualifying session, we had Munoz, Nepa, Firasato, Ogden, Rolstein and Carrera. I don't think Munoz is that guy who's maybe not necessarily out of place, but he's there a little more often than not.

And I think they were talking about how they simply can't seem to get the best out of him until it's Sunday on race day. It's like, you got to qualify good sometimes to be there as well. But in the end, we wound up having Munoz getting a conduct warning because he had parked it in the chicane and blocked somebody. There was arm waving. I think it was might've been Firasato who or whatever.

It's one of the Japanese riders. I know that. Yeah, I think it might have been Firasato. It's like, oh my gosh, guys. You know, it's like, oof, you know.

But Munoz, Nepa, Firasato and Rossi all get out of that session. They get to the second qualifying session. Now, at this point, the rain, which the weather affected everything over the weekend. And I don't know if that helped the racing, if it hurt the racing. As Gary put in his comments, it gave us five minutes of excitement and moto too.

But for the qualifying session, the second one, the rain was getting a little heavier. And you could tell everybody wanted to get out. Everybody wanted to get that banker lap in. At eight and a half minutes to go, Ortola was on pole followed by Viet, by Vier, Alonso Picaras, Munoz and Adrian Fernandez. Now Alonso got a new tire and he headed out.

But did you notice that he could not get his visor to close correctly? Did you see him playing with it? So I was thinking to myself that, wow, he can't get it closed because he kept riding down the pit lane using his hands to try to close it. And I thought about it. I know like, shield technologies and anti-fog and everything do have changed and they're way better than when I had.

I remember when fog cities came out and you could put that clear anti-fog strip on the inside of your visor, which was absolutely fantastic for racing in the rain. But I know that my Rye had a rain button on it and you would push it forward and it would latch it up and it would lock in and be slightly open so that you could get an airstream to go through the visor and keep it and help to keep it clear. And I thought maybe that was what Alonso was having trouble with, was he was trying to get it to latch in that, like, I'll call it cracked open a little bit to help airflow. But he was constantly pulling a plane with it. I'm like, well, this is not going to...

That's like the last thing you want to do is have that problem kind of lingering as you're trying to ride, you know, especially if it was going to open up on him. Now, Alonso did wind up getting a lap in, but as soon as he got over the line and turned his head sideways a little bit in the airstream, it did flip the visor completely open. So if he had it out there on the end, it was just a little bit. It wasn't much. But at the very end, Vier had pull, I should say, but at the very, very last second, Ortola, last man, sort of who had a chance to have a lap, took the pull from Vier.

So Ortola would be on pull, Vier would be second. Alonso qualified well enough to be third. Then you had Piqueras, Yamanaka, Kelso with a good run to be in sixth. And that was that for the first two rows of qualifying. Now, this now starts all the permutations about how Alonso can potentially win the world championship.

Simply put, you have, including this round, you had four, after Japan, you have four rounds left, 25 points for a win. If you're 100 points or better, you are world champion. However, the other math, the other easy math is that if Alonso were to finish second and not win the race, then he could have anybody but Danny Holgardo win. So Holgardo was going to be starting eighth, or sorry, not eighth, I'm sorry, where is, Holgardo was ninth. He was going to start ninth.

So, you know, there was going to be some, some bunch of get your calculator out for all this to figure out what's going on. But the simple math, Alonso wins, he's a world champion. So we would move into Moto, we would move into the Moto3 race. My gosh, I've lost my notes, Rich. I'm going to go through without, there they are.

Oh, good grief. So with all that, we go to the race. Now it was dry. It was, it was probably very overcast. I think it was overcast like the entire time.

But this race was very odd to me because they started out, it was Ortolla, Alonso, and Vier there. Then Noah Dettweiler had a major high side. He's off the bike. He's like, he was up, he was okay. But it was Ortolla, Alonso, Holgardo, Picaras, Fernandez, and Yamanaka.

And then Holgardo got by Alonso, you know, he was from ninth all the way to second within like two or three laps, which is pretty impressive for Holgardo. Again, I think Herve had the conversation. You got to go out, you got to be aggressive. He's now doing that. He does it all the time when he's on track.

He's very aggressive. So it's kind of starting to pay dividends. But for some reason for me, Rich, in this race, I don't know what it was. I didn't find it to be interesting. I did not find it to be an exciting Moto3 race here.

And my notes show up because I really don't have much going on. And I don't know if it was because I was focused on Alonso, where I was just trying to figure out where he was in the pack or exactly what was going. Maybe it was too early in the morning when I was watching this one. I have no idea. But for whatever reason, I just could not.

It didn't excite me. I was not into this. I mean, the racing is good. And you've got a group of 16 riders out front that are racing for the win. But, you know, we got with 10 laps to go.

It was Fernandez leading or told over Piqueras over Holgarda over Yamanaka. But there was like three tenths of a second to Alonso. So like these front six kind of had a gap on Alonso. And it was like, OK, what's up with Alonso? Is he just going to take what points he can and just sort of whittle this away and go to the next one or something?

I wasn't sure what was happening. But then all of a sudden, bang, Alonso just starts snaps in the fastest lap as if the kid just turns the switch on and says, well, OK, now it's time to race. It's reminiscent of Rossi from, say, like the early 2000, the 2002 to like, to like maybe 2003 seasons because 2004 with Yamaha. It's like, yeah, I think I got that right. Where Rossi had that V5 Honda and he just sort of lingered around in the pack.

And it was like at some point and you just didn't know when Rossi just to say, well, I'm going to go and win now. I'm sorry. I just don't want to play with you guys anymore. And it was fun. But, you know, bye.

It just kind of had that feeling that that was what Alonso was going to do. There was a point in this where there's a bit of an edit. What's the word? I'm over in a bill. And you know the word here.

Smiling. Tell me, Rich, what's it called? Inevitability. Thank you. That's because I'm terrible at words.

So that's my problem. But you just kind of thought he was going to get there. And basically, from that point, the race has gained some interest because Alonso basically races his way to the front. And with six laps to go, we got Alonso basically out front. Although you have to admit there was good racing by Fernandez and Artola to try to push Alonso back down to third.

But none of that was so that changed. You're trying to think about all the permutations that are going with that or whatever. But Picaris would fall down in the list to 10th, which is weird. And then all that because I think Picaris had crashed at 10, sorry. And then he got up and he was in the wet grass.

And so he throttled out of there, hit the track, and then promptly dumped the bike again. So it's crashed and crashed again, which was crazy. It was just wild. But Alonso seemed to be back in control because he was leading with four to go. He was ahead of Fernandez.

He was ahead of Artola. He was ahead of Vier and Holgardo. And the top five now had a big enough gap to where it was going to be these five were going to settle the race for who was going to be winning it. With three to go, Alonso was back out front. And that was looking like this is going to be it.

But Fernandez got a track limits warning with two to go. Like, hey, you got to keep there. Artola went down at turn 10, sort of had the same kind of accent that Picaris had. Like the front just didn't stick and it just sort of fell away underneath of him. Not too sure where that was all going.

But with one lap to go, I mean, this gave Alonso four tenths of a gap, four tenths of a second. And he just rode on to the victory. So Alonso wins the race, thereby clinching his world championship. Vier would finish second on the podium. Then it was Fernandez.

Holgardo was fourth. And then Rueda, Yamanaka, Zazuki, Munoz, Firasato, Nepa, Bertelli, Almanza, Fieroli, Rossi. And then Esteban getting the last point in all this. I thought it was great that a lot of Alonso's rivals all stopped, what, the first turn or second turn somewhere there and congratulated him. And they all looked like they were all sort of having fun.

Alonso, I thought, had the great celebration. He is the baby goat, which Rossi was the goat. So he's the baby goat. I thought that was clever. I do like a good celebration afterwards.

Write in, people. Tell us what your favorite cellies are. Because next show, Rich, I want you to think about your favorite victory celebrations that have been done over time. And I want to know your top three best ones. I've got mine already, because these are the ones I love.

But think about it. And everybody else, write in. Tell us your favorite victory celebrations. I want to know. ModoPod at ModoPodcast.com.

Anyway, the reason he was going to be the reason he called himself baby goat was the fact that this now gave him 10 victories in a season. Okay, that's one short of tying Rossi's record of 11 in one season. He did that on a 125, a two-stroke 125. So this now makes with he or sorry, Alonso also has 14 total victories in the Moto3 class, which makes him the winningest rider in Moto3 history, beating Romano Fanati, who took years to do this. And that, my friends, gives you probably one of the greatest talents to show up here recently to get to the championship.

It is going to be, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Acosta versus Alonso is going to be magic when it happens in MotoGP. It just will be. Those two, I'm beginning to wonder, and I want your thoughts here too, Rich. Is Alonso better than Acosta?

Oh, Jim, that's a tough one, but I want to hear it. That's a tough one. But I want to hear it. Acosta, I mean, I think you can certainly say on a Moto3 bike, he's definitely his equal. And that's high praise because Acosta was very, very good on it.

I mean, we tend, you tend to forget these things, don't you? But do you remember how we used to wax lyrical about, you know, the front end antics of Acosta on the Moto3 bike? And he was doing things with the bike that you just looked at it and you thought, wow, nobody else is doing that. And I haven't seen anybody else do it, not to that degree. Now, Alonso's not kind of sticking out for those sorts of reasons, but his race craft is just something to behold.

And he has a lot of spare capacity in terms of lap time and thought process, as we talked about at some length, I think, on the last show. So, yes, I mean, like you, Jim, the idea that Alonso gets himself into MotoGP, maybe 27, 28, whilst Acosta's still relatively young in his career, it kind of has that feel about the one that we missed, which was the Marquez versus Stoner battle where Stoner had been in the class for a long time or quite a while. And then Marquez kind of came up and we just wanted to see that, didn't we? And we were just robbed of it because of the early retirement. So it would kind of slot into that kind of a gap of a nice thing to happen that we missed elsewhere earlier in the decades, so to speak.

So is he better than? I don't think we can say that yet, but all the signs are that he's at least as good in different ways. And it just sets up a sort of tantalising battle between the two of them in years to come, assuming that everybody stays fit and healthy, which hopefully will be the case. So yeah, but like you, Jim, it was a good race. I mean, there was some decent dicing there, but it was just a bit kind of subdued in a way, whether it was kind of just the whole waiting for the championship to be decided and just waiting to see what Alonso did and the tension that went with that.

I don't know, but I think the trouble with the teggy is it's kind of like fast straight stop, accelerate, fast straight stop. It's kind of one of those that's a bit kind of repetitive, I find. I mean, I like the back, the long back straight down into that sort of downhill right-hander before they go into the bridge. That's a pretty cool bit of the track, but the rest of it, no offence, my teggy, but give me Sazegra any day of the week, which I know is, from a safety point of view, is difficult now. But yeah, so the race was just a bit, you know, and the real interest was really, you know, would Alonso seal the championship here?

Would it have to go on to the next round? Because him winning the championship has not been in doubt for pretty much since round three. So it was really just a question of where, when and what style would he do it? And boy, did he do it in style. So yeah, I mean, there's nothing more to say, really.

No, no, I will give you, render my judgment of Acosta v Alonso as of right now. And this can change. But as of right now, I will say that Acosta is the more gifted rider, but Alonso has superior racecraft. It is to me, the comparison I can give you is it's like Schwantz versus Rainey. And I give you Acosta as Schwantz and I give you Alonso as Rainey.

Yeah. Because that's just sort of how I see it right now. It could change in a heartbeat. I have no idea what this kid's going to do on a Moto T bike, but wow, I just want to watch. I know that.

Yeah. I mean, I totally take your point. You know, it's the Santa Pros thing. You might even say the Rossi Lorenzo thing. You know, there are quite a few that you could pick out.

But yes, I definitely take your point. I think that is actually correct. Doby Marquez, if you want to think of it that way. They're all real. I mean, you know, the first one that came to my mind was Rainey Schwantz because I'm old.

Acosta is, I mean, he is spectacular to watch. Oh, he has been on every bike that I've seen him ride so far. Okay. We've only seen David Alonso on the Moto 3 bike and not to say that he's not spectacular because he is spectacularly good, but he does it, yes, in a rather more refined, calculating. Methodical way.

Devasting method. Yeah, exactly. So the way. Sorry, Rich. I didn't mean to cut you off there, but the way Alonso wins from being in the pack and riding through you and being like, okay, I've used up my tires as much as you have, and I'm still faster than you.

And, you know, in the way he decimates people on the last lap, he's so good at destroying you on the last lap. You can ride what you think is the best lap you've ever ridden of your life, and Alonso will find some way to slide up the inside of you. And, okay, that's one thing to make a move, all right, and bump a guy off the line and take a victory. But Alonso slides by without even touching you. It is just this wild precision.

Oh, I, you know, like I've been thinking about that move for the last eight laps because somehow he has the chessboard figured out that everybody's move is going to be here, and he knows how he's going to finish it off. For a kid of, is he 19? No, 18. I think he just turned 18. For a kid of 18, that's really incredible.

And I think they, I've heard somewhere Al, they want to go, really, really want to be in Argentina because I think the termo, is it what, termo, Honda circuit in Argentina is very close to the Colombian border because it's sort of in that northwestern part of there. So we'll see. Anyway, that's, it was a great win. Congratulations to Alonso on his world championship, that is for sure. So it was great to see at least the first one be clenched because I think the other two are going to take to the end of the year to give us an answer.

One sneaky thought that I had, Jim, I don't think this is going to happen now, but given up until the last two rounds, how poor Ethan Guevara has been on the Moto2 bike, I was starting to wonder whether if Alonso wrapped up the championship reasonably early, as he has done, whether they might just stick him on the Moto2 bike in place of somebody else or the outgoing Dixon. Yeah, contractually, it might not be possible to do that, but, you know, the more time, the quicker he gets onto the Moto2 bike, the better, I would suggest. So my final thought just when we move on to Moto2, what's going to be really fascinating in terms of this whole Alonso across the comparison, and I think that's the thing that we'll be running with a fair bit over coming seasons, assuming we keep going, and if we're spared, as my dad always says, is how quickly does Alonso make the transition and how does he adapt to Moto2, which is a very, very different formula of racing compared to Moto3, let's be honest, it's not pack racing, generally speaking, it tends to get a bit more spread out. You know, he's got consistency to some extent in the tyres, okay, they're different, but they are the same brand, so he's not jumping brands or anything like that. So there is some consistency there, but we know that Acosta went out, what, in the first test on the Moto2 bike and was quickest, then had a sort of a slowish transition into the the racing side of it, he crashed a fair bit as he figured out the front end, but he was winning by the end of the first season.

But didn't Acosta crash at Le Mans and he crashed at Le Mans and that kind of really... He crashed out of his first potential win and then shortly after that he crashed on a motocross bike in a training accident, broke his leg, so then he missed a few races then. Correct, correct, that's what I was trying to put together, thank you for finishing. I knew he broke his leg and I was trying to remember, I didn't think he broke it at Le Mans, but I know he crashed at Le Mans. It took him a little bit to get it figured out.

Now, given the fact that then his next year he pretty much ran rampant over top of everybody in the pack, because he basically demoralized Tony Arboledo, which is... that's saying something. All the superlatives I have for the kid we'll have to see what he does. Yeah, no, it's going to be great to watch and he's a great Moto3 champion this year, so huge congratulations to him. Right, so as we said Alonso wins the World Championship.

He's on 321 points, he is second place. Danny Helgardo is on 212. It's 109 points behind, therefore he has the title with only four rounds left. But the race for second in the championship is still up for grabs because Colin Vier is only three points behind Danny Helgardo. Artola is 18 behind second, so that's still to play for.

So anyone between Helgardo, Vier, and Artola. One of those three will be left off the championship podium, if you will. My guess is that it's Artola, but I don't really know which way that's going to go. But then it's Munoz, Fernandez, Picaras, Rurayda, Calso, and Yamanaka from the top 10 in the championship. Onto Moto2 qualifying.

Let us take a shout out to Sasaki who got a two-year deal to ride in Moto2 with... what is the team name, Rich? I misplaced that part on my note. I'm trying to remember now. He's the teammate for the RW Rogan, which is he's going to be the teammate to Barry Balthus, right?

Oh yeah. Sorry, sorry. Vande Gerberg. Yeah, and Balthus is leaving the team. Yeah, Balthus is leaving Vande Gerberg.

So yes, he will be a teammate to Vande Gerberg. So we shall see how that goes. But at least he is in Moto2 next year, which is a good thing. So when we go to qualifying, we look at who's in Q1. So Vande Gerberg is there, Garcia is there, which we're kind of beginning to expect Garcia to be in that position of the first qualifying session.

Gonzalez was there. Now that was his very first appearance in Q1 for the entire season. So that was the oddity out there. Then there's Balthus, Bender, Santa Aegis, Masiya and Bender all there. When I was all set and dead, Gonzalez, Vande Gerberg, Balthus and Garcia do go to the second qualifying session.

The second qualifying session, Salak had a huge moment out of turn nine. Then he went off into the pits to maybe change his undergarments or something because that was a wicked little ride that he had. Then we got into some rain that was slowly becoming heavier. It was getting darker. But with eight and a half minutes to go, Dixon had pole position, followed by Vande Gerberg, followed by Kinet, followed by Roberts, followed by Guevara and Moreira.

Now everyone was there and no one's exactly sure what's going to happen. Is it going to rain harder? Is it not going to rain harder? Then with 350 to play, everyone was still in, but some people were starting to go out now. They were going to try to get one more lap in, which with 128, everyone was going out.

Could you have made it around in time to get a lap? Some people barely got there. Some people didn't, but most everybody didn't get it right. They were on slicks trying to get them warmed up in the rain, which didn't work. Their lap times were slower than what anybody had previously put in.

You got to go get that banker lap. The banker lap paid interest for Jake Dixon because he would wind up with the pole, followed by Zanta Vande Gerberg in second, followed by Aaron Kinet, then Joe Roberts with the fourth place, then Guevara, Moreira, Baltis, Lopez, Iagura, and Tony Arbeluva in the top 10. Vietti would be 11th, which is kind of wild. Aldeguer 15th. Garcia would be 17th.

It was kind of a mixed up grid. A lot of it had to do with the rain. People didn't time it right, so all of that was in play for that whole section. We would move on to the Moto2 race, because that's how we came out of all that. With the Moto2 race, again, this one was kind of crazy because we had the Moto3 race and it was getting darker.

Basically, the race took off for Moto2. Dixon hopped out front. Again, there's potential for rain, but again, the Moto3 race ran under the same potential. We started off, we got Dixon out front, followed by Guevara, followed by Vande Gerberg, and then there's a tangle. Now, this tangle of bikes and stuff lets Iagura through into second place.

Iagura snuck into second place. Vietti was the big loser in all this tangle of everybody that was there because he went off track and then he was trying to get back on. Then he was almost last or very close to dead last. Then there was rain coming out of turn three. It was pouring rain.

If you came out from underneath the oval that Motegis built in and you're heading through the fast flowy section, they had rainflags flying. People were starting to put their hand up. Kinet almost wind up high siding at turn three. He just barely hung on to it. It was definitely pouring through seven, eight, and nine at that point.

They decided to red flag the race. Now, okay, here's where things get interesting at this point. The question was, what was people going to do? Because it was like, are we putting wets on the bike? Are we going to go on slicks?

What are we going to do? They were talking to Brad Bender, who was in there. Brad is obviously a guy who's really good on these changeable condition thing. Brad goes, as of right now, it looks like you got to go with rains. A guy who's really good in tricky conditions wants to go on to rains.

Yesterday, in the rain during MotoGP qualifying, Simon Krafar was talking about, well, yeah, it was a brief shower, but the track's not wet. It's wet between the rocks, but the track's dry. If it isn't going to rain anymore, and there really wasn't a forecast of rain for race day in, why would you want to even try this on rains? Because rains are going to give up the ghost so quick. But it appeared, given all the action that was happening, that almost everybody was going to rains.

Dixon's bike was changed to rains, and Kinnett's bike's going to rain. And in Van der Berger, I don't know what they were doing, but almost everybody's changing over to wets. They're all going to wets. And then it's like, okay, we're going to restart the race, but we're going to use the quick restart procedure. And because we already had a then even complete lap, we shuffled it down to two thirds distance.

So it was going to be a 12 lap dash for the points to get this. And it looks like we got bikes, wets are fitted to almost every one of the bikes, but Ayagura is on slicks. And he's really the only person that we can find who's on slicks. And you're going, what is this? Now, this is courage of your conviction.

The hometown kid decides that no, we're going on slicks for this. So either it's knowledge of what it's like in Japan where weather patterns are kind of crazy up on the mountain, or it's a wild gamble, or he's just brilliant, and this is going to be absolutely wild. So okay, this is really cool. We got to figure this out. And this is where the whole drama comes into it.

We restart, 12 laps to go. Dixon's goes out front, followed by Guevara, followed by Canet, followed by Lopez and Morbidelli and Arbelino. Now remember, in qualifying, you had Ayagura starting ninth on the grid. So he goes back to that ninth place starting position. He winds up going backwards because he's on slicks all the way to 14th place.

It appears as though Ayagura has done wrong, because everybody out front is pulling away. They're on wets. But believe it or not, in two laps, Ayagura has made his way to seventh. Now, it's not only is he going fast on slicks, he's going faster than anybody is on a wet, because the track has dried. The humidity, there wasn't much temperature, but there was so much humidity that apparently it was just drying the track or it wasn't getting anywhere.

It was like, essentially, a heavy mist that was hanging around. So everybody's trying to figure out who is or isn't on a wet tire because Ayagura now has just blast himself into the lead. So in three laps, Ayagura goes from 14th on the grid to leading and not only leading, but pulling away from Dixon like Dixon had thrown anchor and was dragging the chain behind him. It was an impressive thing to actually watch. What was crazy was that it was who else had slicks.

We learned Alcoba had slicks. We learned that Gonzalez was fifth and he was on slicks. And basically, everybody who had gambled and Van de Gerber was on slicks too. Everyone who gambled on slicks was going to the front. The reins were destroyed and everybody who had a rein had picked wrong.

And basically at this point, the race is over. If you had slicks, you were going for the podium and podium places. If you didn't have them, you were going to the back of the grid. No questions asked. So basically, we were trying to figure out for the rest of the race who's on slicks.

Well, we knew Solach was on slicks and he was in third. Gonzalez was from fifth to second, but Gonzalez did go by Ayagura with four laps to go at turn nine. And not only had he caught Ayagura quickly, he then pulled away from Ayagura. Ayagura playing the long game knowing that Garcia, who is his teammate, was on wets simply rode home to second. So the winner is Manuel Gonzalez.

Who wins, Ayagura is second because he's on slicks and takes a cool 20 points, right? Then Solach, Alcoba, Van de Gerber and Artigas, the top six guys, are all on dry tires. They're all on slicks. And the first person to come across the line on wets was Celestino Vietti, followed by Marrero, Lopez Guevara, Arbolino, Aldiger, Dixon would be 13th. Garcia would get two points for 14th, meaning an 18 point gain for Ayagura in the championship.

And Bender got the last one. The only thing that made this race interesting was the fact that we had a disparity of who was on slicks, who was on wets. And the guys who gambled and went with slicks, the guys who went with slicks went to the front and they are the top six guys in this race. Everybody else was on wets, which was the completely wrong thing to do. And that was the entry because, as Gary said, the first five minutes of that was pretty wild watching the guys on slicks come through everybody who had reins.

Wild race. Well, yeah, I mean, it was just one of those funny races, Jim, where it's always a little bit of a sprinkle of rain, isn't it? What was so surprising to me in all of this was that all weekend there'd been this kind of, as you described, this sort of misty, hardly rain really, just kind of that confidence sapping little bits and bobs on the visor kind of rain. And I think during MotoGP qualifying on the Saturday, the day before the main races, a couple of the riders had said, it's really weird. You know, you can see rain on your visor, but there's absolutely no loss of grip.

So it was just surprising to me that so many people did go out on the wet tires for the 12 lap restart. You would have thought more people would have taken the gamble. Now, as to whether or not it was Igeri's choice or his crew chief, I think there's a little bit of debate raging about that one. But I was particularly heartened and pleased to see Chaviar Tigas. He's had a pretty wretched time since he came up to Moto2, finishing in sixth place.

And again, just a no brainer really to choose the slicks for him. Because those are the days when you can really kind of get a result that you badly need. So it was entertaining, but not in the way that we would normally expect a race to be entertaining. But I would say it was the kind of the most exciting race of the day really for just because of the fact of what happened with that rain shower on lap one and then the oddities of the tire choices for the restart. But other than that, nothing too much to say other than the fact that Igeri marches towards the championship.

Yep, and that's about it. And since we're talking about Igeri in the championship, he is now on 228 points. Garcia is on 168. That is a 60 point deficit. So there are two race wins between him and Igeri.

So Igeri now probably has three fingers on this championship. It's not a full hand yet, but he's at least got a couple fingers on this one. Lopez is now on 163. So he's only five behind Garcia. So this race for second place is heating up.

Kinet is only seven points behind Garcia. So there's nothing there given the way that he's riding. Then Joe Roberts has now climbed to within, well, he's sorry, I should say Kinet is 12 behind Sergio to get there. And then Joe Roberts is now a 15 behind to get there. So yeah, it's kind of falling off a little bit at that point.

It's definitely Igeri's championship to lose. The question, and we've seen Igeri make mistakes at Malaysia and stuff. I just don't think he's going to do it this time. I think he's riding a much more strategic type of race and is riding for the championship because he wants that one because he's going to move on. Well, you know, and it was his home crowd.

I don't think he wants to do anything really too crazy of there, but either way, it was an interesting race and it is Igeri's championship to lose with that rich. Let us move to the last bit last race, the Moto GP class. So let's go back to qualifying again. We are at Q1. It is a rain coming.

You know, there's damp patches that are offline. I'm telling you what's crazy is you're in this first session. You got Miller, you've got Morbidelli, Quattro, Alish, Rilo Fernandez, Zarco is in there. And it's, you know, Miller and Morbidelli are my picks to get out of this session. It's kind of how you think it's going to be.

But there's actually like rain falling. It's like halfway through. And it's Miller followed by Raul and Zarco and Alish. And it was there was a great shot, great shot of Miller's arrow coming down that long straightaway. And you could see the contrail coming off of the arrow on the side of the fairing.

And by my count, I know I didn't see everybody's bike, but his was the only bike that was doing it. I tried really hard to see if like Acosta's bike would do that or not, or whether Bender's bike was doing it. But what's interesting is I can't remember which way this is because I'm not an aerodynamicist, but I believe that you have a very good arrow system if you can compress the water out of the air, which proves that you're moving the speed of the air across that dynamic device fast enough for the weight of the water droplet to fall out. So apparently KTM has a very good downforce on their front of their bike, which was really kind of crazy cool. But on the flip side of that, there was also this great shot of Miller going through the 90 at the end of the backstretch, where that bike had some serious rear end chatter.

In fact, it was oscillating so much. It was one of those things where I had to think from the engineer and me stops and looks at that and goes, whoa, KTM runs a carbon fiber rear swing arm. And it seems to me like they have not weighted it with mass to produce a very high natural frequency. So when you build a tall skyscraper, it's going to be affected by the wind and it's going to move. But what you try to do is you don't want things to be excited by that wind.

So what you do is you try to build something to have a higher natural frequency than anything else. So you try to build the frame of your motorcycle to have a very high natural frequency so that it can't be excited by what happens on the track. And it goes to show you that just how high these vibrations get, that it was able to amplify. So the frequency of the chatter in Miller's bike happens to be exactly the frequency or very, very close to the exact same frequency that the bike is. And they multiply each other now.

And that thing was just all over the place. I realized it was a slow motion shot of it that made it look probably worse than it was. But I think that they've been saying how all the KTMs have been having a problem with that chatter on the rear. So I think it has more to do with the carbon fiber swing arm on the bike than it does anything else. I think one of those things where you either got to change the weave and create a more rigid style that has less ability to flex, or you've got to put some weight in critical areas to, again, change the resonant frequency that exists in it so that it doesn't become excited.

So I'll get off the engineering kick there. No, it was incredible to watch that. It was. Yeah. Like, I mean, as you say, it was a slow mode, but I looked at it and thought, you know, geez, it's a wonder that the fairing is staying in place with that amount of shaking going on.

And then just on the little air vortices that you could see coming off in his bike, it was the first time I've ever seen that on a bike. And I had very mixed feelings about it, I have to say, because it really shows we are in the age of aero, although we kind of knew that anyway. But yeah, it is curious because Miller's bike did it on three consecutive laps because they followed him on that run that he was doing. And like you say, Jim, I didn't spot any other bike producing the little contrails like Miller's bike was. So it was kind of slightly odd.

Either he prefers them to be rotated at a steeper angle so that they're producing more downforce. And he prefers that than maybe a costar or bender. But nobody else, not even the Ducati's, any of the Ducati's were making that kind of a vortice off the end of it. I mean, that's one of the fun things about if you ever get the chance to go by an airport and you can watch big jets land in a humid day, if you've ever seen an airplane wing, again, I'm diverging from MotoGP, but this is a cool thing of aerodynamics. If you look at the older planes that just have a wing and there's nothing out at the end tip of the wings, no curve upward, you'll see this very cool spiral that will wheel off the end of those wings in that air.

And that's turbulent air. It's a spiral. So that kills an aircraft because that is drag, which means that its ability to be fuel efficient sucks. But when they turn the wing up, that creates a laminar flow off the wing and you don't see that contrail anywhere. So that gives you less drag and you clean up the air and you get better fuel efficiency.

And you see almost every jet now has those turnups. And now even now the newer ones have another one that is down at about 45 degrees under the wing, but that cleans up the air that's under that area for them as well. Which is how the 777 gets its range, is how the 350neo from Airbus gets their range. They're literally cleaning up the air, putting air molecules, they're friends. They like to hold onto their buddy.

And when they get separated over the wing, the first thing they want to do is get right back together again. And if you can help them get that back together again, it's a more efficient set of air, which is exactly what cars do and what motorcycles are doing only instead of trying to pick up, we're just trying to push that back into the ground. So if you ever get a chance to look at it, if you're by the airport or see that, now you know what they're doing and what's happening and all that good stuff. But also go and look at a natural history program or photograph of the big birds of prey. Yes, because their wing tips are exactly the same.

Yes, they are. Yeah. So that's where man gets it from you look at what nature has created and you try to mimic it as best you can. Where were we? Oh, yeah, we're trying to figure out who gets out of the session.

As it came through, we got Morbidelli and Quattraro that went through. So go on Quattraro for getting a lap in to get out there. I think they were just risk taking more than anybody else. When we get into the second session of this, it looks even darker and you're thinking, gosh, it's got to rain here at some point. Everybody wanted to get out where the track had some temperature in it while it had some heat and it looked like a race start at the end of the pit lane.

I mean, everybody was out right now, right away. And you had Marc Marquez just basically just pulling his way to the front. He was pulling away from Benyaya. Benyaya was sort of looking back at his rear tire. There was something going on.

Good grief, he was just super slow. Benyaya would pit and get another rear tire, which he said later on that that tire just didn't work and just was weird. I mean, that's like two tires in a row that Benyaya's had that were sort of flops or substandard. I really don't know how to put it, but it's really odd that he got two, I don't want to call him faulty, but two tires that he didn't agree with in such a short time frame. So like I said, halfway to go and we had Acosta that was the fastest person there, followed by Bastianini, followed by Bezeky, then Marc Marquez, then Bender, then Martin and Benyaya was basically last because he couldn't get a lap in.

He couldn't make anything happen. Well, Benyaya got a tire and he vaulted his way from last to second. So obviously a different tire made all the difference for him. Then Marc Marquez flies through with a new lap record to beat Benyaya to pull. Martin was down in ninth.

Then Acosta turns in a lap to make him second. So that pushed Benyaya back one thing. Martin would go down. He had a front end tuck at turn nine and then suddenly we're thinking, okay, this is it. Marquez has got a new track record.

Acosta is going to be second. Benyaya is going to be third and suddenly they just wipe Marc Marquez's lap off the board. Like what happened here? Come to find out coming out of turn four, Marquez just nips the green. That means he loses his lap time, which promoted Pedro Acosta to pole position.

Benyaya was second. Vinyals came in at the end to get a third. Then it was Bastianini, Binder, Morbidelli, Gigi Antonio Bezeki. Marc Marquez would fall back to ninth. His brother Alex was tenth.

Then Martin was eleventh because he had fallen off and then Fabio Quattroraro would be twelfth. Was it fair, Rich, that Marc Marquez's lap time was stricken from the board? Well, yes, in the sense that he was on the green. Love it or hate it, that's the rule. The controversy around it was actually the amount of time that it took for them to wipe the lap.

Now, I haven't quite got to grips with what caused the delay. I believe they had to go and look at the evidence sort of manually, as it were. I don't know that it triggered a sensor, but somebody spotted that he'd been on the green. You might argue, well, if he didn't trigger the sensor, how was it a penalty? But the front-on photos, the side view, it looked very, very marginal, but the head-on view, he was quite clearly in the green.

Now, you can, with some utility, argue whether you should have that strip of green at the end of the turn. Because you're not, well, we don't need to go into that. It's there. He went onto it, so ergo, he got the penalty. It felt harsh, but we know what this rule is.

There was a bit of a spat between Marquez and the race stewards over the application of the rule and then the fact that they had taken longer than they should have done, with which to impose the penalty of cancelling out his lap time, which obviously lost him the pole, as you said, Jim. It was a bit of a handbags at dawn thing at the end of the day, but it did have a material effect on the race in the sense that it put Marquez a lot further back than he would have otherwise been. And of course, Martin crashing out, put himself back out quite a way back on the grid as well. So that made life a lot easier for a certain person that was looking to get some points back. So yeah, technology, I think there were some issues with the timing screens at various points over the weekend as well.

I mean, Japan's a funny place. It's, you know, this powerhouse of technology, and yet it does seem to be a bit kind of behind in certain areas. And they were having difficulties over the weekend with comms and stuff not quite working properly. Although I'm having internet problems myself tonight, I had terrible trouble with the tour I did with Didger Antonio on Thursday morning. I had to cut about three or four minutes out of that edit because it just was unusable because it was just completely broken up all the time.

So that was a bit frustrating as well because he was sat in the team garage or wherever he was in the team center in Motegi doing that tour with me last week. So yeah, but yeah, well, we talk about track limits so often, it's almost boring really, isn't it? But it was a shame for Marquez because that was a hell of a lap. It was a great lap and I don't want to call it sketchy conditions, but it definitely wasn't like a full on dry thing. So for him to break a lap record in that condition was pretty amazing.

I thought that the view from behind was the more damning of the two, right? Of all of the three views. My personal take is like- I didn't see the one from behind, I only saw the head on shot. But yeah, the rear was like, yeah, you could see the green to, since you're behind, what would be to the left side of the rear tire. Yep, there's green there, you're definitely off of it.

But yeah, again, we could go on about whether that little strip of green needs to be there or not. And let's just not do it because we've been over track limits ad nauseam. But I guess it was going to throw a little bit of a spice into the racing because everybody's sort of out of place in this one. I find it really wild that you take off and go to the Asia races and like the form guide doesn't hold up. It just becomes, it's not chaos, but it becomes unpredictable for some reason, which is really crazy.

Jim, did you pick up on this thing that again had a big effect on everybody riding the 23 Ducattis and that was the removal or the withdrawal, I should say, by Ducati of this now, is it an external flywheel, something like that. It was the deemed to be the cause of the blow up that Marquez had in Indonesia. And they removed that particular development from the 2023 bikes and it has had some effect on the level of performance. So I don't understand the technicalities of it. And there's perhaps something we need to pick up on in one of the future shows because it will be interesting.

You know, we're going to Phillip Island next. It's a kind of left hand track. So it's Mark Marquez territory. He was already kind of struggling in terms of the age of that bike, let's say. If that has pegged it back a bit more because they've got worries about reliability.

I mean, that would be the only reason why that they would withdraw something like that. What does it all mean? I mean, it doesn't really help Marquez, does it? Although arguably he's not in the championship fight, so it's not that big of a deal, I suppose, but he still wants to win races. What's your take?

I mean, I don't really understand the technicalities of what they've done, but I'm not sure that I understand. I would like to gather more information because I thought they were talking about a tire allocation from Michelin that affected the 23 more. I must have missed something along the way. So I would like to defer to the next episode and we can have a bigger discussion about it when I learn a little bit about it because I did not catch that. I did not catch that.

Was it in the in the Dorna feed somewhere on race day or? I'm trying to think it was a practice. I think I picked up on it a bit in terms of something that Simon Patterson on the race podcast came out on Monday and then I've read a few things on Twitter. It was one of the Delina or Ducati, but let's say Delilien is kind of little wizard ways around a rule, which allowed them to do something that was beneficial in terms of performance and weight distribution and stuff today. They changed something on the engine that's in the 23 bikes, but I think it was deemed to be the cause of the blow up and I don't want that happening again.

So they have kind of gone back to how it was prior to the change. Okay. All right. Well, I'll dig into that because you understand it. I have a note here.

Must figure out what made Mark's bike blow up. Okay. So with that, I guess we're ready to go to the sprint then because we have everybody where they're supposed to be. And now we just need to head to the sprint race. So with the sprint race, we had Benya blasting off to a start, followed by Bastigny, followed by Acosta, followed by Bender.

Now the rain had stopped. Let's put that out there. Then Martin, then Mark Marquez. Now, Vignalas, who was third, dropped like a stone. I was wondering what was going on.

Well, the ride, the whole shot device would not release. I'm glad that those are being tossed out in the 27 regs too, because we won't have to worry about that problem anymore. So that is the issue we won't see. But Bastigny was wide, then Acosta would move into second there. Then Mark Marquez would get by Martin for fifth.

And then Martin got into a track limits warning very early. Now Acosta got by Vignalas at turn five. It was a great move by the kid on the world champ. Now again, Vignalas is a smart guy. He knows Acosta's not who he's worried about racing.

Any points are better than no points. So there wasn't really going to be that big of a problem. But Bender then had another problem. He had something that happened to the bike. I'm not sure, never did figure out exactly what happened to Bender's bike, but it was not pretty.

That's for sure. Something was not right. But now I'm rooting on Acosta at this point. I was thinking, all right, Acosta's got this, right? Because he had been fast all week.

He's riding right. I think he's got a lot of confidence because the bike is starting to suit what he wants it to do. I think KTM is listening to what he wants and they're moving development and setup in a direction that he's very happy with. And it showed because he was starting to, not only was he going well and past the world champion, he was pulling away from the world champion in this sprint race. This was like, all right, he's got this.

Now, Nakano and Zarco, they go down. They don't go down, but they wind up bumping into each other, running Nakano off at turn one and two. And they gave Zarco a long left penalty for that one. That was well deserved. I mean, yeah, anybody you don't want to bump into, it's your teammate and Zarco sure broke that rule.

But either way, Acosta was leading. Marquez had made his way up to fourth. Martín was fifth, then Morbidelli, and then Acosta throws it away. Are you kidding me, kid? What were you thinking?

He tosses it and turns seven. He was six tenths clear of Benya. Were you not paying attention to your pit board? Were you not looking at what they were telling you? What on God's good earth were you thinking?

And this is where I put into my writing back to Gary was the fact that I think Acosta was riding at a limit he didn't want to be at because I think he felt like this is the chance to win a Grand Prix. I have the chance to win this race and be a rookie, be the third, well, he was the third youngest pole sitter behind Marquez and Quattroraro. He was going to become the second youngest winner because he wasn't going to beat Marc's year date. He aged out of that one. I think the kid had the pressure on himself.

I don't think he was put on by KTM. I think he'd put it on himself to win a race. I think he could taste it. I think anybody who's raced a motorcycle has been in one of these positions where you can taste that victory and you think you're doing everything exactly right for that victory and you screw up because you don't understand where the line is of going over the line. He just didn't know.

He just made that mistake. It's his fault. He went to the gravel trap at seven and before he ever stopped, he had his hands on his helmet. He knew what he had done. I can tell you that's what he was thinking and he wanted it and he wanted it just that little bit too bad.

There's a certain amount in racing about wanting and then you can over want and when you over want, you do something stupid, which is exactly what I think Acosta did. He's down. Well, that pretty much sealed it all. It gave Benyaya the win. Bastianini was second.

Marquez was third. Then Martín in fourth, followed by Morbidelli, TG Antonio, Alex Marquez, Miller, Vinyals in ninth with his whole shot device problem and Vizeki in tenth. I think what was it? A 20-some point lead or something that Martín had coming in. That got cut by eight points or something like that.

Cut by what was it? You get six. They gained six or seven points on them. It was like good grief. How many times are these guys going to go back and forth swapping all this?

But the lead got cut down, which is what Benyaya's intent was. We'd have a different day when we get to Sunday. Now, Sunday, after the craziness of the Moto 2 GP race, the sun came out. It was actually, I think, the brightest it had been the whole weekend and it was for the Moto GP race. Interestingly, everybody was on a hard front and the difference was the rears.

There were three guys who went for the soft rear. Everybody else was on a medium rear, but the three on the soft rear were Digia, Marini, and Mir. The two Honda riders in Digia were all going for a soft. You can understand why the Honda guys were going to that. I think probably this has already been caught by a bunch of people and it maybe happened earlier, but at this race, I realized, Rich, that the orange wheels are missing on the Hondas.

If you don't believe that the Repsol partnership is gone, the orange wheels are not there. Therefore, it is gone. They had a black slash navy blue wheels on the bike. I was like, whoa, okay. Definitely.

Yeah, yeah. Changes in the air all the way around here, man, with this for sure. So when we got to the race, 24 laps, Acosta gets a whole shot, but Benyai would lead into the first turn. Everybody else follows in after that. Benyai is leading Acosta, then Bender, then Bastionini.

Mark Marquez is there, then Martín. Bender was in deep at nine. He loses a place to Bastionini. Martín has gone to fourth, Miller's fifth. Alex Marquez and Mir are down in the last sector in a very bizarre crash.

I shouldn't say that Mir went down. He just was dragging Alex's Ducati for a ride. Never seen that happen in a motorcycle race that one bike gets stuck in another spot, but it did. And it was quite wild. That's for sure.

Marquez, as in Mark, would get by Miller for fifth. And then with 21 laps to go, Acosta is down at victory corner. What happened here? Again, I think he was pushing hard to get past Benyai. He was trying to keep pace with the world champion.

I think he was in there. I think he maybe touched the inside curbs a little bit too much, got a little paint, which maybe was a little bit slick. The paint's always slick for longer. I mean, who knows? Maybe there's a little bit there, maybe not.

And suddenly out the front end goes, awfully slides into the gravel trap. It's over for Acosta at this point. And again, I'm thinking, what were you thinking? I thought you got this out of your system yesterday. I thought you would have understood what you did wrong.

I would have thought that you would have put this together. And I'm not trying to buy me. I have no right to pick on Acosta at all for any of this because I am not anything close to his level of a motorcycle racer. But the fact of the matter is he kid wanted it. He wanted a victory.

He felt like this was his last chance because if you think about it, where else could he win? I think he knows he can't win Australia. You're going to Malaysia, you get the long straights there. Don't think he's going to win that one either. So from there, what's left?

Just Valencia. And Thailand? Is Thailand in there? Oh, sorry. Thailand's in there.

So Thailand is maybe, a maybe, but maybe not because they didn't go very well at, in what was, is that Mandelica? Where the other race in Indonesia is? Yeah. They didn't go very well there. So, okay, we're going back to sort of the same temperature kind of area.

So maybe the KTM doesn't work there. So does that leave you with maybe Valencia? Because everybody's going to be worried about the championship and may not be worried about trying to chase you down. I don't know. But yeah, the poor kid, I feel sorry for him.

I really do. He was just trying and I think he was just trying too hard to give them a win and we'll see. So that was- It's bad that he gets his crashing out of the way from these sorts of positions this year. Because next year, perhaps to say he's got a title tilt, might be overstressing it a bit, but he'll be flinching his chances next year, I would imagine. You all right there, Jim?

Coughing away? So I mean, I think you've been quite harsh on him, to be honest. But in terms of the crashes that he had, I mean, the one on Sunday seemed the clumsier of the two. The one on Saturday just kind of like, to me at least, just looked like a crash that came out of nowhere. I think would have been a bit confusing really.

But as I said at the beginning of the show, he's having to push so hard to get that bike into that position. You can kind of forgive him pushing it just that bit too far, really. But anyway, yeah, I mean, next year he's going to be hard to handle, I should think, provided KTM can make a bit of progress anyway. I think they will. But with that, Mark Marquez would get by Bender to occupy the, essentially, the third spot in there.

And, you know, the race runs out at this point. And, you know, Marquez was like way wide at four. And that gave, you know, Bastianini hope to catch him. Martin would go by and work his way up to second, which was pretty amazing. But Benyai was in command.

Benyai is in command. Martin works his way to second. Marquez has an error but keeps third place on the podium. Bastianini is fourth. Morbidelli is fifth.

Then it's Bender, Bizecki, DG Antonio, Alash, Miller, Zarco, Quattrar, Nakagami, say, well, look, Anne Marini, three Hondas in points. Who would say that, right? That really is all that there is to say about this race. This race was definitely not one for the books. There was maybe some excitement in the fact that Martin did get himself to second.

But once he got there, he knew he had nothing for Benyai. And so he just decided to go out with having lost a grand total of what? 14 points to Benyai, I think, over the weekend. Yeah. You got anything to add to the race?

The only thing that kind of got missed, because again, there's this slightly annoying fixation on looking at a guy out front for pretty much the whole race, even though he's not really being challenged. There was some pretty decent racing going on elsewhere, I think. Quattraro ran out of fuel again on the last lap. Yeah, it's a thirsty circuit. Yeah.

And again, just listening to a few other people that know a bit more about this. Apparently one of the ongoing problems of the Yamaha, whether this is an inline four thing, is that they just can't control the wheel spin. So the bike is kind of fooling itself into traveling. Well, it's not fooling. It is kind of the rear wheel is traveling further than it should.

And of course, it's burning fuel all the while. So it's not as if they brim the bike and it runs out of fuel. No, they kind of put enough fuel in to get through the race or so they think. And so they just didn't leave themselves enough margin for error. So I think had that not happened, Quattraro would have finished in front of Zarco, but lost that place, I'm assuming, coming out of the last turn possibly even, or certainly on the last half of the last lap anyway.

So that was a little bit unfortunate for Quattraro. Even Bagnari, I mean, on the Saturday sprint, if you remember Jim, on the last lap, he kind of gave up pretty much the entirety of his what, one and a half second lead. And I know he talked in the post race interview about having to change the fuel maps, or whether Ducati were a little bit on the edge with fuel. Because we know that Motegi is a very hard circuit for fuel, given the acceleration zones that they've got there. Or whether Bagnari was just managing the gap and just knew he could afford to let a second go.

But it was quite close at the end of the sprint. So he's got the wrong map, I think. I think he gets stuck in the wrong map. I didn't have as much power as I wanted, but I had enough. Because I thought he was running out of fuel towards the end of the sprint.

But anyway, that certainly did happen to Quattraro, who understandably wasn't very happy about it happening two weekends on the track. But yes, other than that, really not much to commend these races. No. See, I thought you were going to tell me that Quattraro ran out of fuel because of an inline four having to run the inner two cylinders richer to keep them cool. Well, I'm glazing over already.

But that sounds terribly impressive, too. It is true. Every inline four that I know of, when we're racing R600, your main jet is one step higher on the two inside cylinders to give it more fuel because it's so hot, the fuel just evaporate because there's so much concentration of heat in that area. Where like a V4, you've got each bank gets an airflow, essentially, because they're separated by that V and they can get to air. So I thought you're going to come up with that one, which has been like, I could see that too.

But yes, I mean, spinning is going to cause you to use more fuel than necessary. Now, I don't know why they're spinning more. I don't really have an answer for that one. Well, one would assume it's an electronics thing, perhaps. But what I was going to say was, and I know I'm again conscious of the fact I'm a bit of a broken record on this one, but I do lament the fact that we don't still get to see what Suzuki would be doing with an inline four at this point, bearing in mind that they won, what the last couple of races or couple of races in the last few races that they took part in before they exited the sport, what three years ago now, it would be interesting to see with all the development that's happened since then, if Suzuki was still around quite how competitive that inline four package would be because it certainly was very competitive when they bad out of the sport.

So yes, I still lament the fact that the blue bikes are gone. I have to say. Well, I thought the blue bikes went to a V4 for the last year. Last the last time. No, they're still in line.

Well, they're still in line across the payment. I thought they were. Okay. This is if he was a V4 when they first came into MotoGP. Okay, maybe I got backwards.

I thought they went back. Yeah. All right. I was backwards. They came in with a V4 and went back to an inline four.

Okay. All right. I thought it was the other way around. My mistake. Anyway.

Yeah, there's not much in this race. So let's look at the points chase and see what all this happened to with Martins dismal result in the sprint and his second place in the main race. Martin is on 392 points. He is exactly 10 points ahead of Benya. So Benya is on 382.

Now Bastionini is on 313, which puts him 79 points behind Benya and puts him 69 points or 79 points behind Martin. Sorry. And 69 points behind Benya. There's nothing to play. There's nothing there.

It's those two guys. It's Martin v Benya for the championship. This is going down to the last race and all the permutations are going to be crazy because of the sprint on top of having a actual race race on Sunday. The Bastionini v Alvia Mark Marquez battle is interesting as Bastionini is on 313 where Marquez is on 311. That is a two point difference.

That's going to be fun to watch. I think those two guys going at each other. Can Marquez pull off some magic and finish third in the championship on a year old Ducati having beaten two factory Ducatis, which would be impressive and would be somewhat ominous when he does get his factory Ducati next year. So I think we might see a different title chase between Ducatis. I think it might be a Benya v Marquez and I would not put money against Marquez getting underneath Benya's skin.

I don't want to say breaking him mentally but definitely getting inside of his head to the point where he might live rent free there. He's good at a mind game. He really is. He learned from Rossi. He learned from the best.

So after that it's Binder in fifth, Acosta sixth. He's only two points behind his teammate to be best KTM. I will venture a guess that when come Valencia, Acosta will be the highest placed KTM in the championship and I'm pretty sure he will be fifth in the championship. For his first year in the class that's pretty doggone good for a rookie. I know Marquez wanted as a rookie.

I get it. He was on pretty much a dominant motorcycle at that point too and he was pretty much at the zenith of his powers. Let's be true about that too. Vignola is the seventh. Eighth is Morded Vigdeli.

Bizecki is ninth and DG Antonio is tenth. That is it. We are now heading into a weekend off. I am greatly appreciative of that Rich. Here on the Trot is really tough.

I like the schedule next year. We talked about it. There are no triple headers. There are back to backs but they're sort of in Europe where travel is definitely not nearly as difficult. So I am looking forward to the weekend off.

Hopefully everybody else's final thoughts Rich. Wrap us up here. Well we're going into Philipp Island next which kind of has a Jorge Martín feel about it to me perhaps in terms of just edging the results a little bit and moving the gap out and the points. But then I think you know Thailand and Malaysia and well certainly Thailand and Malaysia I think probably lend themselves in the Bagnara direction. But I'm sure this is going all the way down to the wire in Valencia.

And as you say Jim a really interesting point actually. If Bagnara and Martín are really kind of looking over their shoulders at each other it could open the door to somebody else. And if Acosta is going to get a win I think Valencia might be the place where it's more likely to happen now. So yeah although I keep sort of moaning at what I do about how kind of poor in a way the racing itself has been in MotoGP this year. But you can't argue the fact that it's a nail biter of a finish.

So there's a lot of interest there still for me. Even though the racing is yeah I mean for me 2027 can't come soon enough really in terms of that whole reset with the rules package because there's nothing like that to sort of shake up the order potentially. So yeah I'm very much looking forward to that. Jim can I just say because I've just had a quick look of it and I know we mustn't talk about it too much now but I just wanted to double check I wasn't saying something completely factually incorrect. So yes Ducati have an externally mounted flywheel and it's used to smooth out the speed of fluctuations of the crankshaft apparently has all sorts of benefits with corner entry and so on.

And this is the little bit of magic that Ducati always work because it's external to the engine you don't break the seal by changing it and therefore you don't you get around the rules effectively by doing it. Frankly it is crucial. Yeah so that's what it is. I've sent you an article about it to have a read in depth so. Yes we will discuss that and see if we can make it make sense for everyone who's listening.

So I will do my homework for that one folks. Cool. I promise. Okay that's me done. They have a new depth engineering one.

So we are now done Rich. Everybody enjoy your weekend off. I know Rich and I will enjoy that weekend off. I well Rich might go to go to Brands Hatch but who knows. Anyway but in all everybody ride safe.

See you next time.