Tear-off-ic Racing from the Island

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. And welcome to MotoPod, the Internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 786 for October 22nd, 2024.

We have been to the island rich. Of course, I forgot there's rich on the other side. He is in merry old England. Are you on fiber or still old old Graham Bell copper? Let's ask that question first.

I am on fiber, Jim. Oh, yeah. Here where I do the recording, it did dawn on me that I'm still on wireless on a range extender thing. So my connection is probably just as bad as it always has been, to be honest with you. So yeah, not great.

Hopefully this will go reasonably smoothly. Oh, we will. So great racing from the island. I don't think the island has ever disappointed anybody ever. I certainly was not disappointed with the racing from this weekend.

That's what we're going to talk about. Talk about the race from Australia. But first of all that, I think we're going to hit a little bit of listener feedback that we need to take care of. So we had I had gone on about all of the tire blowouts and the aerodynamics and the contrails that we saw on Miller's bike in Motegi and all that. And Jacob Raller asked a couple of questions, which I thought everybody might like to know a little bit more about.

So I said I'd take care of it here in this episode. And Jacob basically says, hey, I hope you would expand on my memory of then speed, having a front come off its bead under hard braking. And it seems like the most likely problem Michelin is trying to prevent with a new tire with a new tire roll in question, as the tires rely on the friction between the tire and the rim generated by air pressure. Great point that so let's back up. This is like this goes back to Ben Speas and his World Superbike days because he was 2009 World Superbike champion.

He did it on Pirelli tires, having raced on Dunlaps in the US his entire time, switched to a Yamaha and from tires as Dunlap to a set of Pirellis. And I heard about this. This was one of those whispers that kind of leaked out on the Internet through like Superbike Planet. And it was like, OK, it was one of those like, did this really happen? Did they really have a front tire that Ben spooned off of a rim or not?

It's kind of like there was never any really hard evidence that this had actually happened. Well, fast forward to about see, Ben was in 2009. He went to 2010. He went to Moto GP and it's either 2010 or 2011. I'm at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the GP at Indy.

And at the time, Speed Channel was covering the race, was covering Moto GP in the US and they had a big, huge thing and they had riders that would come out and talk and everything. They had Ben Spees and Colin Edwards. So they're like, hey, anybody got a question? Why did? And of course, me being me, I go, Ben, did you really spoon a Pirelli off the front under braking in 2009?

And Ben kind of starts to giggle and he says, he goes, yeah, we had some problems. OK, that means that it's true. So now given time, I sent in research and whatnot. So this is what I understand happened. Ben was looking Ben was a notoriously hard late breaker.

That's what he was good at. It's him and Moulad and did that. But the Dunlap is a very stiff sided racing tire. If you've ridden a Dunlap or played with a Dunlap tire, you know how stiff the sidewall is. Hence, you can break incredibly hard on that Dunlap.

And there's no squish to it. And generally, that's what Ben was used to. So Ben then goes as a Pirelli, which has a much softer sidewall on it. And what happened was he was in there late and he went and he turned in. And you can do that on the brakes, beyond the brakes, turn in on a Dunlap because the sidewalls are really super stiff.

Ben was trying it really late as he would normally do and then turning in on a Pirelli. Now, the Pirellis have changed. We're talking this is 10 years ago with Pirelli tire, 10, almost 14. 14 years ago, roughly 15, I guess, actually, if I could do math in my head. It's been a long day of math, guys.

Sorry. So about 15 years ago. So the tires have changed a lot. But at that time, the Pirellis were really soft. So when he turned in, it folded underneath of itself and popped it off the rim.

Ben crashed. So what I've looked at and found is that basically at that time, Pirelli believed that it had more to do with the the slickening, I don't know if that's a word, additive that they put on the bead of the tire to pop it over the rim. And it wasn't allowing it to seat correctly to it. And when that happened, that allowed that. The area that between the actual sidewall on the rim to separate slightly because it was too slick, so Pirelli changed the the the lubricant, that's the word I'm really looking for, changed the lubricant that they would put on the beads to put on the tire.

Now, I'm sure they probably changed some other things, but that's all that I could find out to be true. Now, probably could have went back, added some more steel into the tire, into the into the beads. They could have changed some of the construction on the front tire to change the sidewall stiffness. But I don't think they did that much about it, because if you remember ever listening to Mark Miller talk about the Pirellis when he was riding the Moto Sizz bike, which was in that same time zone, Miller would always talk about how you could take a Pirelli and turn it inside out, but you could never do that with a Bridgestone or you could never do it with a Dunlap. So I think that's what they did to correct it.

And I think that's the only truth that I can find. However, I think they had to change the construction as well. So that covers what I know to be true about Ben Spees. Yes, he really did break hard enough to bust the bead. On a Pirelli front on a was it an R1 Yamaha in 2009?

I think he did it in Portugal. I think he did it at the track in Portugal. So I believe that's where they were they were testing or whatever. So that takes care of that one. He then Jacob then asked, he said, did anybody else see the strong similarity between the recent weird tangled bike crash at Motegi and the one at Aragon when Alex Marquez got tangled with Benyanya?

Yes, there is quite a similarity of those two motorcycles. And I think there's a similarity of a crash. There is what all that happens in Australia. Put it down to in my opinion, rich, I want your thoughts on this, too. When I got mine done, I think it has to do with the aerodynamics.

I think the the winglets or whatever you want to call them on the bikes are catching on pieces of the frame or exhaust pipes and are helping to drag the motorcycles along with each other. That's my take on it. What is yours, Rich? Well, I think that's probably my take as well, actually, Jim. I mean, I was being slightly glib when I wrote back to Jacob about this, just to say that the common denominator in a lot of these things seems to be Alex Marquez these days.

But, you know, he's having a pretty rough season. And, you know, as we surmised last year when the news broke that his glorious brother was going to be on the other side of the garage. It's a pretty tough place to be, Grissini, if you're not Mark Marquez at the moment, I suppose. So but I'm sure Aero is playing its part in that in terms of that kind of what would you call it, that empty bit of space behind almost sucks you in. Obviously, we're going to talk about this and in detail.

Yes. A P.I. So that could well be a factor, Jim. Yeah, I agree. Yep.

The last thing then that Jacob writes in about was the wings. He loved to hear me rattle on about the new air, newer airplanes. They have the tips at the end of the planes that turn up. They are called winglets. That is the official term.

I did not know that. Thank you, Jacob, for letting me know. So we got that there and it is there. So basically, I was trying to remember which way it was with the pressure to get the contrails and all that. And basically, it's like Jacob says, it's when air pressure.

I see where he's got to. The condensation happens when air pressure or temperature drops. The air holds more water as temperature or pressure rises. So in the case of the visible contrails, those result from the low pressure zone being created and by the aerodynamic surface. So it's low pressure creating that board to see the contrail or, you know, of it that we saw off of Miller's KTM.

Interestingly, we saw those at PI, too. If you watch closely, there was a couple of snippets of Miller having that exact same contrail on his motorcycle at PI as well. So whether those are whether that's there, whether they're wings or winglets or simply attack spoilers, whichever one you you want to talk to it from aerodynamically, it's just they are creating a low pressure zone because they're moving the air so fast over the top. So like an airplane wing causes you to cause it to go up. So the speed of the air going over the top of the wing is much faster than the speed of the air under the wing in an airplane.

That creates a low pressure area above the wing. Now, there's an argument as to whether the plane rises into that lower pressure area or whether it is sucked up because of the low pressure area. It's always been thought of originally, hey, it is an error. It's the it is pressure underneath the wing that's pushing it up. However, we have much greater data and wind tunnel technologies now that we tend to believe that the low pressure is creating a suction or a lift that's allowing the plane to be pulled up.

So think of it as flipping it upside down. And that's what's happening on Miller's wings on the front of his bike. The low pressure area there is being created, which then gives you a contrail of the moisture that's been in the air. We've been lucky to see it. We've never seen it before.

Remember it, folks, because when they take the wings and stuff away, we may not see it again ever. So I'm not sure they're ever going to get the genie back in the bottle, to be honest with you. Just incidentally, I had a little rice smile creeping onto my face there because it wasn't the only problem with wings that Jack Miller had over the weekend. Oh, yes, he had turned wildlife. He ended up with a seagull inside the fairing at one point, which is not a laughing thing.

And of course, that's led to a fair amount of uproar because PI has this problem every year. And they really ought to be doing something about this. But anyway, yeah. So, yeah, Jack had lots of wings on his bike at various points this weekend. He did.

So, Jacob, thank you for the information. Thank you for keeping me straight. And hopefully I added something to the Pirelli tire with Benspeed. So, yeah, that is listener feedback. So with that, well, if you are interested, folks, go to Simon Patterson's XFeed.

He has pictures of Miller's bike with parts and remnants of a seagull. That's there. And there's also a big discussion on the race about technologies that need to be employed around the track to keep the wildlife off of it, to keep us from hitting this, which I think they need to do. Just that I can't imagine smashing into a seagull. I over something close to 200 miles an hour.

I mean, this is not a car. It's not a V8 Aussie supercar that's just going to smash the windshield. And, you know, that's going to be it. This is a human that's going to absorb that impact. And I don't know if anybody out there has ever who's based like in Europe or whatever has ever seen the show Mythbusters on Discovery, where they tested all these things, where they used and created an air gun to blow chickens at windshields of airplanes.

The power and energy that that mass has at that speed, because that's the equation you're looking at. The classic one we all know, force is equal to mass times acceleration. Well, the mass is the weight of that chicken. And the force it implies is the acceleration that it's moving at, or the velocity that's moving at. So it's a lot of energy that's there.

So for Miller to stay on board, that's, you know, scary stuff right there. Jim, I hope they have the courtesy to kill the chickens before carrying out those experiments. Yeah, they do. They. Hey, they do it usually with just a store bought kind of a chicken supposedly.

This is rumor, but the US Air Force spends something like several million dollars on chickens because they shoot them at different fighter jets and jet engines and stuff like that. So there's like a couple million dollars of budget just for chickens. Wow. It's crazy. Anyhow, well, now we've been sidetracked on that.

Let's go to the news. Make me hungry. True, true, true. So the news, Fabio G.D. Antonio is to race this weekend in Thailand.

Then he will head off early to get shoulder shoulder surgery. The focus then switches to who will replace Fabio and Sepang in Valencia. Rich, your money is on Bulega, right? From World Supers. Yeah.

So that one, you might recall, Jim, last year, they again, he was injured. So he didn't really have a chance to really shine. But Bautista came in and got a guest ride. He wasn't subbing for anybody. I think they ran a third bike, didn't they?

Bautista, Sepang and possibly Valencia as well as a kind of reward for having won the World Superbike Championship last year. Well, I think they clearly need to find a replacement rider to slot into the VR 46 squad. And so Nico Bulega, who obviously is very familiar to the Grand Prix paddock and knows the tracks very well from his time in Moto 3 and Moto 2. Would slot in there rather well. The only thing that just is giving me slight pause for thought, although this would presumably be a GKAT's request.

But of course, Bulega used to be part of the VR 46 camp. And I'm pretty sure kind of chose to leave that kind of organization. And that kind of was, I suppose, part of what saw him leave the Grand Prix circus altogether and head over to Supersport, where he won the World Championship last year and has just finished runner up this year. So I would put some money on the fact, not on the betting man, but put some money on the fact that perhaps Bulega might be a good shout to go in and replace Digia. I think we can say friend of the show, Fabio Digia, Antonio, can't we, Nigel?

I think we can. Yeah, as a guy who's on form, you know, he's spent the year on a big bike. He's familiar with the tracks. OK, he's not familiar with the Desmo Ducati Moto GP bike, it's true. But is it a Desmo still?

Can I call it a Desmo? I think you can. I'm sure it has the mechanical valves of the Desmodromic. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Don't think that you might.

Anyway, you know what you might be. The Pentagon's got it in World Super for sure. Now, whether it's air that's running in. I don't remember Ducati running air on there. But who knows?

Somebody right in the snow now, because I might be calling it a Desmo. And I think he's probably a good shot. I mean, Desmo De Sichi, isn't it? Well, I thought so. So is it still the Desmodromic valves?

I think so. All right. That's sad that we don't have the answer to that one. Right. Us Moto pod of Moto podcast.

Let us know. Straighten us out because we're off. So you're reaching right now. Put these two flailing old guys out of their misery. Oh, yes.

So let's see. Moto GP engine specs are now frozen for 2026. That means that the 2025 engines will carry through until the eight fifties arrive in 2027. Now, does this mean Yamaha will debut their V4 next year? Although the concession rank of D class D rank will give them more freedom in 25 and 26.

Do you really think Yamaha is going to put a V4 out there? Yes, because I wonder if they haven't been working on that engine for quite some time. Now, it is true that the concession D is obviously the lowest tier of concessions that Yamaha, you know, from their point of view, unfortunately find themselves in, along with Honda, of course, as well. It mustn't be forgotten. Will allow them, I believe, to run.

Well, I don't know if they're allowed to run a completely different engine or whether they have some flexibility around development of an engine in 2026 or 2025 and 2026. This is obviously aimed at what would you say controlling and limiting spend. Somewhat as we run towards the new 850 formula, because obviously the factories are going to be spending big. Yamaha and Honda do have some latitude here because of their concessions category. But I think from Yamaha's point of view, well, I mean, I don't know what they'll be thinking, but I would have thought it would benefit them to get that engine out on track in anger as soon as they possibly can.

So I do wonder whether we might start to see it appear if the rules allow them to do it next year. Don't know. Well, I mean, we'll find out. But anyway, the piece of headline used really was that in the interest of tailing development and speed, Jim, and certainly cost, the Ducatis of the world, the Prilliers and the KTMs will have to homologate their engine, I suppose, in 2025. So next year.

And then that is the engine they will have to run in 2026. And they will have no choice in that matter because their concessions do not allow them to do anything else. Yep. Well, that'll be interesting to follow. All right.

For 2025, the Moto2 and Moto3 sessions will change the change to mirror MotoGP in terms of free practice sessions. This means that all classes will have two free practice sessions that do not count towards entry to Q2 and one practice session on Friday afternoon that will decide the entrance who do get to go to Q2. Good idea, I think. These kids and the people in Moto2 need a little more time on the track. And a little less pressure to go fast right away, I think.

So I'm all for it with that one. Particularly, Jim, given both of those classes lost their Sunday morning warm up, so they need that extra time for race setting prep as well. With that, we move to World Superbike where we learned that Toprak is now the 2024 World Superbike champion. So he did continue on. BMW has won a world title there, which is pretty amazing.

That bike was nothing and basically Toprak made it something and has won on it. He's won a world title on the BMW and then he had the world title on the Yamaha. So he's got two world titles on two different makes. It's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, we should just reflect for a moment on the fact that, well, as you just said, I mean, they keep referring to him in the YouTube video.

I mean, they keep referring to him in the alien terms now. And I think that is correct. I mean, Toprak is a very rare and special rider, in my humble opinion, but I think probably you won't find too many people to disagree with that. And he has been that, you know, it's a bit trite to say he's all that extra tenth because he's actually more than that. But he has been that last little bit that they lacked.

But actually, Michael Vandermark, who's been pretty ordinary for the last few seasons, certainly when he was teammates Scott Redden and Scott Redden didn't do particularly well on the bike either. Toprak has dragged that whole squad forward massively and even Michael Vandermark had some podiums in this last few rounds. So, you know, it's amazing. And I'm pretty sure I heard this right, Jim. This is amazing.

So I think I'm right in saying that BMW as a company is 101 years old, something like that. I mean, there's got to be something close to that. Yeah, I think this is the first motorcycle world championship they've ever won. I believe that to be correct. Yes.

But it's a pretty amazing milestone for them as well. You know, let's not underplay that one. They put a lot in and this is good news for me because like you, I'm sure, Jim, I really, really hope the BMW come to play in MotoGP as well with 850s coming along. And I think they might. From a corporate standpoint, they had always made it very clear even before their new kind of head.

I don't know if he's the head of the entire company or if he's specifically the bit around, you know, motor ad, you know, the M bit, let's call it and the motorsport division. But they had clearly said they weren't going to go even thinking about the sort of spend that would be involved in MotoGP unless and until they had won a world superbike championship. Well, that box is now ticked. So I'm hoping that that now encourages them to keep pushing forward in world superbikes, which by the sounds of it, there's a lot of big things coming as a newer version of the bike, which is meant to have quite a few big upgrades on it. So that'll be interesting to see that break cover in Aragon in testing in a couple of weeks time.

And then, yeah, hopefully we might get some news that we're all praying for that perhaps they might be looking seriously at MotoGP. The interesting question then will become what would top rack be too old to come along and have a go? Because I think top racks 27 now. So he would be barely senior to come in as a rookie in MotoGP, although he's done a couple of rides a couple of seasons ago, if you remember, but the Yamaha one or two, I think as a substitute. But I still hope that happens.

I really do. I still think he could cut it pretty quickly in MotoGP, particularly in a new formula. If they came in with the eight fifties when everybody was starting from scratch, more or less, I mean, they would obviously be much further behind than other people. But in principle, everybody would be starting from the same base. And that would be intriguing to see what would happen there, both in terms of the brand and the rider.

If top rack was involved, I've got my fingers crossed. Let's hope. Scott Reading is to remain in the World Superbike with the current team that he's in, but it's going to be rebranded Bonneau. Well, it is. It's the Bonneau action, I think is what the squad is called now.

A bit of that is changing because it's the guy who owns that team is actually leaving, but the team itself, albeit in reduced form, is going to stay put. They will switch from running satellite BMWs or semi works BMWs in fact. To the single Gucati Panigale V4R entrance for Scott. So Scott's going back onto the Gucati and next year will be a make or break year, I think, for Scott really in terms of his longer term future in World Superbikes. I still think that he will have a stint in Moto America before he hangs up his helmet because his wife is American.

They've just had their first child and they got a base in the States. She's got in the States a lot in the off season on his Instagram account. Racing in Moto America would make a lot of sense. I think you might have that to look forward to if you've got a reading plan in America. That would be interesting.

I could do that. World Superbike is out testing already. They are in Haereth. The new Bumoto KB998 has broken cover. If you've seen the pictures on Instagram, it is a seriously killer looking piece of kit.

It is basically all the unobtainium that you could possibly want rolled into one motorcycle, which is what a Bumoto basically is. I'll put it that way. It sounds good too and looks good as well. Have you seen the clip on the World Superbike website? I have not yet.

If you have a... I think it's the same password and stuff. If you have a donor account, you just have to log in on the World Superbike site. But then you can get some of the free clips and stuff. So there's a two minute video clip of...

I'm trying to think. It's Florian Marino, I think is the test rider who's been out on it today. I'm only several seconds off the pace, but he's not one of the main riders. I think they're out on track probably tomorrow. The thing looks really nice and it sounds really good.

Kind of reminiscent of early MotoGP bikes or sounds really pretty raucous. Yeah, it's a tasty bit of kit. But I'm sure somebody said at the weekend, because obviously they have to homologate that. So they have to have what? 200 is it to sell to paying customers a road going version.

I think somebody said they're going to be somewhere around the 40 to 50,000 euro mark each. So you can see the strategy is they're going after Ducati at their own game now, doing the really trick thing. It's going to cost a lot of money to own one, but makes it eligible to run in World Superbike. And they can do a bit more than what they've been flogging to death in terms of the old Kawasaki. So yeah, that's going to be interesting next year as well.

All right. Why don't you wrap us up with news with the BSB stuff, Rich? Yeah, not too much to say really, the championship crescendoed at Brands Hatch. Really tense couple of races or three races in actual fact. And again, I know I say this a lot.

It sounds like a bit of a broken record. But I mean, BSB rarely fails to deliver. And if you can watch race three, so the second race on the Sunday, which was the showdown, the decide either Tommy Bridewell or Carl Ryde was going to win it. And whoever beat the other was champion. And it was just ding dong passing like you would not believe.

Brands is a hell of a track anyway. And to be passing like they were and safely and the trust they were putting in each other was just mega. It was a great final race. Carl Ryde is BSB champion by just a few points. I think it is in the end.

I haven't written the points difference down. But really nice to see the two guys embracing each other afterwards and just full of praise for each other. It was sad that Tommy lost his championship, but he was the reigning champion. And Carl is a very deserving, worthy winner. So they'll be duking it out again next year, I suspect.

Well, Carl Ryde stays in the same team on the R1. And I don't think Tommy is confirmed to stay at Honda just yet on the Fireblade, but I'm pretty sure he will do. So, yeah, they'll be getting the gloves off again in April next year. But yeah, congratulations to Carl Ryde and that same team, the OMG Racing, they will be welcoming back Brad Ray, who after a couple of difficult seasons in World Superbike on the Moto X Yamaha R1 hasn't really worked out. I don't think it was a best funded team.

And I think he's struggled along a little bit. He's had some points finishes, but he's coming back to BSB for hopefully a short stint in 2025. So he'll be back in something of a super team because they'll have Carl Ryde champion on the other side of the box. They were teammates together there a couple of seasons ago when Brad won the championship himself. And then a new rookie coming in called Joe Tolbert, who's coming up from one of the lower classes.

So there'll be a three rider team next year. So yeah, lots to look forward to in BSB next year. And Carl, a subscriber, I haven't forgotten about you, sir. I will be getting in touch with you over the winter and we'll make some plans for what we're going to do BSB wise next year because BSB is so good. I've not been able to give it the attention I planned that it really demands and deserves.

So we'll try and do something a bit more well constructed for next season. All right. With that, let's go to the island. Talk about what happened. Great day at the island.

It could be no bad day at the island. Lots to talk about. Lots to talk about. So let's start with Moto3 qualifying. And key one, there was Furusato, Carrera, Munoz, Adrian Fernandez in there, which I thought was interesting.

Rossi and Rollstone as well. Basically Almanza was down to turn one. He had a low side, but that was a big one because that's a lot of speed and that's a lot of slide and a little tumble there in the garage. He was OK. Rollstone had pulled off his own Marc Marquez-esque save with the front and turn 11 because that's on the fast sweeping left coming around there.

But Rollstone, Adrian Fernandez, Munoz, and Furusato all get into the second qualifying session. Now, the second qualifying session is interesting because Vier is all by himself and Alonzo is in the pack, which seems sort of backwards for those two for some odd reason. It's upside down there, Rich. I'm going to go with that, right? It's just what are we going to do?

Right. Nice. Nice logic, Jim. Yeah, that's the best I got. So he's there and they're running.

And then Orktola is running by himself. Now, Vier falls at turn four and with five minutes to go, Nepa is actually the fastest, followed by Fernandez, Yamanaka, Vier, Orktola, and Rollstone. With three minutes to go, Kelso jumps to pole thinking Ozzy Pride coming out here now. Right. But then Lunetta goes down with a high set at turn six and Alonzo is back in 11th.

The kid couldn't seem to get it together. It was just really crazy. And it's like everything's happening at the end because Munoz gets towed by Alonzo to go to the pole at that time. But that only held up for a little bit because red helmets were coming through with everybody having a red helmet. And when it all finally shook out, Orktola would take the pole, followed by Vier, followed by Adrian, Fernandez, Munoz, Ogden, Nepa, Kelso would be seventh for the hometown crowd.

Picaris eighth for Asado. Alonzo would be tenth on the grid, which was pretty wild that Alonzo is that far down. This is the world champ. And then Yamanaka and Lunetta making it the top 12. I think all this is interesting because there was also the fact that it was the drying track because there had been the rain that had happened overnight that the MotoGP guys sort of dealt with.

Then you get into here, but everybody was on slicks. Nobody was on wets. But it was definitely an upside down topsy turvy kind of qualifying with everybody where they were. So it was going to make the race look fantastic for sure because what was Alonzo going to do? That's sort of where the big question came from.

But when we get to the race day, it's a bright, it's sunshine day. It's like the sun finally showed up. It's still cold at the island, but it is a bright, sunshiny day. There's no more moisture on the track. So things are looking up in that respect.

We know that NEPA has a double long lap penalty for slow riding and practice. So he, no matter what, has got to go to the long lap of inconvenience twice. So that's where we're starting with. Now, interestingly, tire choice was a split. Not everybody was going with the soft rear Pirelli.

However, a few people are going with the hard rear Pirelli. One of those being Alonzo. Now I was like, whoa, that's sort of the... If I'm back in the grid and I'm 10th, I don't think I'd exactly be pulling on for the hard tire. It just didn't seem to sit with me.

I would want the soft tire, try to be aggressive, try to get to the front, hold on to the guys in the front and that lead group save my tire, conserve it at that point, make a run at the end. That's just the gym strategy. But this is what we're faced with. So it's like, okay, let's just figure out where what's going to happen. I thought it was a genius move, Jim.

And did you at the beginning, did you really think it was genius? Yeah, I did. And the reason why I thought it was a genius move was because I'm pretty sure Alonzo figured correctly and he's probably has been doing his homework in terms of past seasons, that you virtually never get a breakaway at Phillip Island because the toe is so strong down the front and it's such a fast flowing track. It tends to always deliver a big kind of pack race. So I think he knew that he could just preserve that tire in the early running and then have the tire at the end to make that tiny little bit of a break when everybody else started to struggle a wee bit on the softer rubber.

I think that's what he planned and hoped would happen. And if he did, he nailed it again. So I'm jumping forward. I think that was probably the thought process. I didn't think he felt that he had to get out front really early to get after the one or two or three guys that you might see break away in other races because that just doesn't tend to happen at PI.

I know somebody can point me towards some other races in the past where you have had two or three guys five or six seconds up the road and uncatchable by two thirds race distance. But by my memory, which is not great these days, it must be said, I think that's probably what he and the team kind of figured might happen. So that's just my take. You can't be like. That's fair.

It's fair. So at the beginning, Ortolla gets the whole shot and they were like, then he was wide at turn two and then Munoz would jump into the lead. So it's Munoz followed by Nepa, followed by Ortolla, Kelso right there, Fernandez and Alonso, Alonso making a great start on the hard tire. Then Almanza goes down at turn six. Then there was a six rider lead group with Vier seventh.

They were second or two roughly there between them. But then Kelso went to the front, followed by Munoz, followed by Fernandez or Alonso Picaras. Ogden crashed at turn nine. Now, Ferraro crashed too at turn 12 and now it became a pack of 12 bikes. So again, as you said, Rich, that toe pulled everybody together.

So what was like a six pack rider became a 12 pack group as it compressed itself into it from there. Kelso was still leading and still looking good. But really, it's whoever is wherever. There's passing all over the place. But at this point in time with 15 to go, Munoz was second, Alonso was third, Ortolla was there and then it was Forasato, Fernandez and Hulgardo.

Now Carrera and Nepa come together at turn four. They're down. And then where do you look? Because there's great racing throughout the entire pack. Somebody's passing somebody, somebody's cutting underneath somebody.

It's just a fantastic race to watch. But with 10 to go, Alonso is out front and he's leading for a while. And it looked to me like Alonso was trying to stretch the field because he was running some red helmets, running pretty quick. And I kind of thought back to the idea that he had, you know, go back, check my house. Hey, he's got the hard tire on.

And I realized what Alonso was doing because this, I think, is the genius of Alonso. Now, again, the guys on MotoGP were in the same vein as me. This kind of happened at the exact same time. I got to thinking about this. I thought, holy crap, Alonso is making the guys on the soft tire work harder than they want to right now in the middle of the race because he's pulling away on a hard.

So since he has the hard and he's got the speed, he's going to force them to ride harder than they want to on their rear to stay with him. It's like literally Alonso is playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers because it was a brilliant, strategic move by the kid to put the hard tire on and do what he did. He forced everybody to use up the tires that they had, which is, I mean, we say this all time, the greats have an amazing ability to think, to have enough brain power left over to think about what they're doing while they're racing because I guarantee you to Alonso, it's going by in slow motion and he's got enough time to think in his head about whatever else he wants to do, which is fascinating. He, well, no, I was just going to say he definitely, we spoke about this at length in the last show. Yeah.

He definitely reads the race brilliantly because it's not by luck or chance that he keeps ending up in these sorts of positions and he's been doing it consistently for two seasons now. So it's definitely his mind working in the race and then you put a bit of tactical now into that in terms of tire choice. I mean, for all I know, Jim, or for all we know, he might have been playing around on that hard rear in qualifying, which is possibly why he was a bit lower down, but he was getting the data that he needed. Who don't know on that one? I mean, we're not in the paddock, but yeah, I just think he figured that it was better to have a tire at the end and at the beginning and he was definitely able to start really stretching the field in those last few laps.

And as you said, you could tell that they were just running out of grip and he wasn't. So it was a tactical masterclass really. It definitely was. So while all this is going on around a mini-mobile, Alonso is leading for a while. Vier and Otola come together and they both crash.

And then, or was it Vier or Otola crashed again? I can look at my notes here. I think it was Nappa that went down several times. Yeah, I was thinking one of them spun it on the wet grass and lost it, but I guess I'm thinking wrong here. But either way, I'm not so sure who was really at fault between Vier and Piqueras, but Vier was in there deep and he was on the inside and he did take him down.

They gave it no penalty. Sorry, it was Otola. It was Otola, Jim. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. He picked it back up. But anyway, I mean, that's a subset of what really was going on. The idea is that Vier was in deep and Vier knocks off. Knocks off.

Otola. Otola. Thank you. I just couldn't make it make sense there. They didn't get a penalty.

Now, was that the right call? Well, I thought it was on the footage that we saw, bearing in mind that Race Direction see a lot of different footage than we do as just TV viewers. To me, it looked as if Vier had just gone up the inside a bit too hot and had just taken Otola out. But you probably saw what I saw, which was a little bit later, which was Vier going into the pit box and having a chat with Otola to sort of apologize for what had happened. But both of them basically pointing the finger of blame at Picaras.

So whether he did something which caused Vier to then go into Otola, I'm assuming that is actually what happened and might be why there was no action taken against Vier or Otola because they were the ones under investigation. Now, whether subsequent to that, and we'll find out in Thailand this weekend, whether Picaras has been investigated and picked up a penalty for his part or not, because I don't know. But that one we'll find out. But they were certainly indicating to each other that they were holding him responsible. And he was, I mean, Picaras was doing what Picaras does throughout the race and was being, what would you say, robust in some of his moves.

Yeah. Agreed. So after that, Fernandez is now leading and we have eight bikes that are only separated by one second because now Linnetta and Nepa have joined the fun. Nepa having had double long lap penalty and he still has now with the aid of the draft and Linnetta been able to put themselves together here. At five to go, Alonso is out front followed by Fernandez, Hulgado, Yamanaka, Linnetta, Nepa and Furusato.

This kind of stays that way. Alonso leads the last couple laps and again, you get down to three to go and you go, is Alonso really trying to break up the pack? It seems as though that he was. Nepa was going wide at four and he lost a numerous number of places. He went back five, six, seven different places.

But Alonso was back out front with two laps to go. He had a half of a second lead on Munoz and Fernandez and Hulgado, who then had another 1.3 seconds on Yamanaka and Furusato. Hulgado was wanting Munoz and Fernandez to stay in line because they wanted to try to run down Alonso, which, well, that was never going to work because it's Munoz and it's Fernandez. So I don't think they were going to help anybody anyway. But the battle for second is really absolutely, positively crazy.

But as it turns out, Alonso, in his stroke of total genius, wins the race. But Hulgado gets second on a great move to get there. Then Fernandez was on the podium third, then Nepa, Munoz, Yamanaka, Furusato, Linnetta, Rueda, Piqueras finished in top 10. Kelso on 11th place. He dropped way back.

I don't know what happened. Did he burn the tire up? Not really sure. Was it wrong to be on the soft? Maybe he should have been on the hard.

Who knows? I know he was started on soft. Felt bad for the Aussie. Then Riccardo Rossi, Jacob Brollstone, the other Aussie, then Bratelli and Tatsuki Suzuki getting the last point for 15th place. So this is truly a masterclass by Alonso.

That is 11 wins in a season, four in a row. The 11 in a season ties Rossi. And the four in a row hadn't been done in MotoGP at all, but it had been done before in 125s by one Mr. M. Marquez.

So that means that Alonso is truly riding around in some pretty high company for being in Moto2, which is wild. I wouldn't put it past him to win the next three either, Jim. To be honest with you. He's on a great run of form. I mean, there is nothing that he does wrong.

I mean, it's just gold. He kid is just absolute gold. Did you see him walking on the grid for MotoGP? He just like a kid in a candy shop thinking it's like, oh my gosh, it's like all my heroes on this is, you know, and everybody, you know, he's, you know, he's Benyaya Marquez. They all talk to him.

They all acknowledge him, which is really amazing that those guys do. I think it's great. It's what I love about this sport that these guys look at these younger kids and see value in them and put time. Not that they put time with them, but they treat them with respect. They they're looking at the accomplishment of what Alonso has done, which is pretty spectacular.

And they they see talent. They also are trying to keep sure they keep an eye on him. I was just as much better to know. They're going to get a job by the time you get into the top class. Yeah, that's probably what some of them are thinking.

I mean, like you, Joe, it was, you know, well, it was a typical, brilliant Moto3 race. And again, the Phillip Island is always a classic virtually, isn't it? So like like you, I've written on my notes two thirds of the way down what page and a half worth of notes just passes everywhere. You just couldn't really keep track of it. Now, I was getting excited about NEPA earlier and accusing him of being caught up in that crash, which of course he wasn't.

I was sort of watching him come back through the pack after those two long laps. And at one point, I think he was back up to fifth and then he went wide at Miller Corner and dropped down to 13th. I think it was. But amazingly, he got back to fifth again. I mean, had he not had the long laps first of all, and then that mistake, not a huge mistake, just went a bit wide.

But, you know, this is costly Moto3, you know, he was really on fire. I mean, he was another standout rider for me. It's just a shame he kind of scuppered himself with the long laps. The other thing I just wanted to mention about Alonso in his qualifying form on the Saturday was, I don't know if you caught it, Jim, because I didn't see much of the practice because it's such a horrid time of the night for me. I can only really do that with the races.

But on the Friday in the wet, Alonso had a pretty vicious high side, I think, in turn two. I might be wrong on that. But I'm not sure which turn, but he did have a very big high side. So he was probably feeling a wee bit sore come the Saturday. Clearly, he was improved on the Sunday.

And but yeah, I mean, it's tempting to say he's making it boring, but I mean, he's really not because he's a pleasure to watch. And it's one of those deals where you kind of trying to remember who it was. I think it was when Bautista was kind of just winning everything in World Superbike and people were starting to get a bit, you know, this is boring, you know, somebody made the sort of salient point that you should take pleasure in watching a master at work. And that's kind of how I feel about Alonso at the moment. I mean, he is just so good.

And it doesn't seem to matter where he qualifies. Now, Moto3, the small bikes, you know that they can run in packs and it's all down to the last few laps. But he's just a master of his art, really. So yeah, and he's this is going to sound wrong. And I don't really mean it like this, but watching him on the MotoGP grid is sort of kind of adorable as well, isn't he?

Because he's got that sort of young, cheeky, sort of wide-eyed sort of thing going on for a couple of years to come. And then he'll turn into the wise and cynical, vicious kind of Mark Marquez, Valentino Rossi kind of prodigy, no doubt, his success and a bit of age and wealth kind of turns people into those eventually, most of the time, not all of the time, but most of the time. And so it's a joy to watch this young kid. And, you know, he's waving the flag for Colombia, which I think is great as well, because Colombia have not, I mean, there was Yoni Hernandez a few years ago, but I can't think of another high-profile Colombian motorcycle race. Not a motorcycle racer.

No, I cannot. I can think of several Formula One racers, but I cannot think of one motorcycle racer. Which Formula One racers? Montoya. Was Montoya Colombian?

Montoya was a Colombian. That's the one I was thinking of. And the other one I was thinking was Pastor Mononado, but that's Venezuelan. So sorry. Yes.

Sorry. There was a- I'm in the right part of the country, right part of the world, just wrong country. There was a very good, I think he did pop up in Formula One, probably in the 70s. And he was certainly a very good touring car driver. Johnny Chicotto.

I'm trying to remember if he was Colombian. Somebody let me know. I might be wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure he was from that part of the world. So yeah, just, yeah. What can you say?

Moto3 always delivers. Yeah, quickly, let's look at where the point stands. Obviously Alonso's world champion. No one's catching him. But Elgardo moved past Vier to be in second place.

He has a 20th- Vier is 23 points behind Elgardo. So Elgardo's looking okay-ish for second in the championship. Still plenty to play for. And then Ortolo is now fourth because of his non-finish. But he's only 18 back of Vier.

So it's going to be what it's going to be. Then you have Fernandez, Munoz, Picaris, Rurito, Calso in the top nine, which is pretty good for Calso. I'm pretty good about that. A little bit of help and he can jump past his teammate. And then Yamanaka in tenth.

So that was Moto3. So let us go to Moto2. Sorry. So we learn in first qualifying session that Vietti has a collarbone problem where he crashed and so he's not fit to ride. Unfortunately, Robert has broken his right scaphoid bone from a crash.

He's unfit to ride and unlikely to ride Thailand or Malaysia. Now I had to ask my wife for this one. So I got this one right. The scaphoid bone is if you're looking at your hand, you have your thumb. If you follow your thumb to your wrist, the scaphoid bone sits underneath your wrist right at the bottom of where your thumb goes into the wrist joint.

So it's the part that helps you to articulate your thumb. It is a small kidney shaped bone. I'll get that right. And he has fractured it. That is a very difficult one to recover from because there's such little blood flow to that particular bone.

It is a six week recovery for a normal person. Let's just say that, which means probably three weeks roughly for a MotoGP athlete. I have heard of some people having the bone screwed together, but I do not know the severity of Robert's break. Is it a crack? Is it a true break?

Is it in pieces? You don't know what he has, but that's the injury update for everybody. And we also found out that Jeremy Alcoba is going to World Supersport, having left leaving the MotoGP paddock. Now, let's go back to the qualifying. Again, this is the last qualifying session on the day on Saturday.

The track by now was completely dry. There were no damp patches whatsoever. Despite it being brutally cold, the wind has done magic to dry the surface. And so everybody in Moto2 is out on slicks. In the first session, it's Aegis, Balthus, Sasaki, Alcoba, Salak, Van de Gerber, technically Roberts, but he was declared unfit.

So he wasn't going to be there. There's not too much that's there. Artigas did run off. He did fall over on the slicks and the wet grass, which that happens. I mean, you go from some place that's very hot and sticky to something that has no grip whatsoever on a slick tire.

Things like that happen. But Aegis, Senna, Aegis, The Ozzy, Fagia, Sasaki, and Barry Balthus all get to the next qualifying session. In the second qualifying session, there's really not much in here, but halfway, Kennett is ahead of Artigas, who's ahead of Aegis, who's ahead of Lopez, who's ahead of Morbidele, who's ahead of Fagia. With a minute 48 to go, Kennett was still quick. Artigas was second.

Dixon had jumped up to be third. Then it was Ayagura who had a good qualifying run. This is not Ayagura's best track. He just doesn't seem to gel. With the high speed corners here, I'm not sure why, but Ayagura has never done well here.

And he even said that a top 10 would be fantastic, in his opinion, for the weekend. So Ayagura was looking good. Aegis was still looking great. Then you had Ramirez. Now, at the very end, it was Artigas who had come in with a great lap.

But he got, sorry, he was on a great lap. He was turning every sector red, but he got balked at MG. And then there's hand waving that ensues after that. Okay, put the head down and get past these guys and go for one more attack, which in a moment of indiscretion, he finally, Artigas put it together, got his act back together again, and he did qualify on pole. So one lap, one chance, put it on pole.

Ahead of Kennett, he would start second next time. Lopez would be third. So the Vazca Curas were going to be on, sorry, Kennett was a sandwich in a Vazca Cura between the sandwich between the Vazca Cura bikes, Alonso and Artigar. I will get it out, guys. Sorry, little tongue twisted there.

And then you had Ramirez, Baltis, González, Moreira, Arenas. Ayagura would be ninth. Dixon was tenth. Then you had Arbolino and Foggia. So all of that was looking pretty good for Ayagura.

He qualified inside the top 10 and hopefully he was going to be able to race well. In the top 10. So Ayagura has a chance to actually be a world champion at the end of this race. And the simple math is that Ayagura had to be on the podium to win the world championship. Now, you could put different people in different places on the podium with him, but it'll suffice to say he needed to be on the podium and then figure out where everybody else is going to be.

You got to do some math, but there's no point doing math unless Ayagura is going to be on the podium. Now, González would get a long lap penalty because he had indiscretions in practice. I think he got slow riding with Slava with the slow riding. Or was this one different? He was the guy that built Aldegaard on that.

That's right. He was. You are right. I forgot about that. Jim, can I just point out before I forget, did you notice the Grissini bike is sponsorless?

Yes. I was going to ask you if I was seeing things and I was going to save it for the race because that was when I noted it. And that's when it went into my notes was, hey, there's a red stripe and there's nothing in the Grissini bike. Well, of course, this is as a result of the controversy from Ategi with QJ Motors demanding that González be sacked and have now gone off on a huff and presumably withdrawn all support. So hence no signage on the bike.

Looks weird, doesn't it? It's nice to see a bike with not plastered in sponsor decals and writing, but very odd. That's odd. Yeah, it was odd. It took a little bit to recognize that as well.

So anyway, we're at the race. So at the race, Bajia and Dixon were down at turn two. A short race for those guys. I never saw what happened. Did you see it, Rich?

I don't think there was any camera coverage of it. But Kinet would lead followed by Lopez, Ategaard, Ramirez, González, and Iagura. So Iagura had a great start because that puts I got Iagura six. So he grabbed three off the start and was like, well, that's pretty good for Iagura there. There is a great battle between Kinet, Ategaard, Lopez.

That's a really, really good battle. They went back and forth. Ategaard would lead. Then a little bit would happen where Kinet would lead. Lopez kind of spent a little time at the front.

So this is actually a pretty good Moto 2 race. There's a little bit of action there to keep everybody entertained. Iagura would go wide at turn four. So that would let Arbolino go by because you kind of got by with 19, 16, 18 laps to go, something around there, you get the feeling Iagura was starting to ride super defensive. He was trying to make that motorcycle as wide as he possibly could be.

And that was what was really going on. At lap 19, González took his long lap penalty, which I thought he took it late because I thought he was going to get another penalty because they had completed three laps and then he took it. So I guess as long as you take it on the third lap, you're okay. That was a little weird to me just how that rolled out. I think, and again, I don't know the technical rule, but well, I don't know it at all.

But I'm pretty sure what happens is after a lap or two, the penalty comes up on the rider's screen. And it's from that point that they have the three laps to take the penalty. So I think that's probably what it was. And yeah, and I guess, Philip, I don't know what it is with pack racing. You're going to leave it as late as you can in the hope that there's a little bit of spread that's developed so that you don't lose any more places than necessary.

So I can only assume that's what was going on. At lap 20, Senator Aegis had moved his way to sixth. Aegis was looking good at his home race on his home track. We're here. Basically, the top three at this point were two and a half seconds, give or take a little bit leading over everybody.

Outager got by Kinet and then with a great move that was at 11. It was a bargy kind of move. It was aggressive, but it was good clean, right? Kind of what we like to see. And at this point, Outager kind of just maintains the lead here.

Now, they did go back and show us the battle with Balthus and Aegis and Iagura. Now, that battle was pretty good because those guys were mixing it up. You know, the rolling roadblock was sort of Iagura in this. And you're sort of just watching and waiting for Balthus to get by. You're waiting for then Aegis to get by Iagura.

And then you're waiting for Aegis, who's really, really racing well to get by Balthus or whatever there. Outager was starting to slip away with 13 to go. He had a half a second lead. Aunchu would crash and go down. But Aegis would get by Iagura with 12 to go.

Again, Outager is still out front, still Canet, still Lopez. Aegis has moved his way to fourth with a sniff of a podium here. So the Aussie fans cheering him on. Iagura fifth, then Balthus sixth. Then Balthus would finally get by.

And then Arbolino blows MG and is super, super wide. That was, he was, I don't know, he was going to go cut the grass or something. Go to the car park, find a way back to Melbourne. I don't know what he was thinking. He was completely way out of there.

He blew it big time. Iagura was wide at turn one, but he still maintained his sixth. And Canet would get by Outager. Like the half a second, six tenths of a second lead just evaporated. I have no idea what happened.

Outager turned like a lap that was like a second to a second and a half slower than what he was running. And Canet basically was still maintaining the same pace. I can test that Outager ran wide or balked a corner or had a front end moment or something that we just didn't see on camera. And no one knew what happened, but something happened out here. Now we know Outager has, is it Outager?

But not Outager, but we know that there have been some transmission false neutrals that have happened with Triumphs. I'm wondering if maybe that happened that, you know, Outager caught a false neutral, something like that. But something happened to put Canet back into the lead. I even wrote, did Outager miss a gear? Because that was the most logical thing to me, a false neutral, miss a gear, something in the gearbox going bad or whatever.

But was Aegis going to be on for a podium? Because he was gaining on the front three and he was kind of setting his personal best laps at the time that was there. Speaking of which, how fast the two guys out front were racing on the Moto 2 bikes was crazy. They were like smashing the lap record and what they were doing is really pretty darn amazing. We got down to five to go.

Canet still led Outager and Lopez. Then Aegis, Agurra and Morera. Three to go. Canet was wide at Miller and he handed Outager back the lead. Lopez crashed at turn four, never saw it front end tuck.

Aegis was on the podium. Agurra had been gifted fourth at this time. And then with one to go, it's Canet and Outager and they're back into the one minute 30s on used tires. Phenomenal, phenomenal racing that late for that lap time on those tires. Props, massive props to Pirelli.

I get it, Pirelli has World Superbikes slash World Super Sport tires that they kind of modeled these ones after for the Moto 2 bikes, but still absolutely fantastic job by Pirelli. Can't thank them enough for the work that they've done so far this year. But Outager was trying to put the move on and he was waiting to turn 10. It was like the last place that he could do because he tried at Miller. He was too far back.

He couldn't quite get there. So then he had to go back and try again at 10. Outager then goes super deep into 10, basically nerfs Canet out of the way. Basically Canet was on the paint and Outager was right up in there. I was wondering if they were going to give him a penalty or track limits or something there.

However, they didn't, which was great. It allowed Outager to go on and win the race. Canet to finish second. Aegis on the podium in front of the home crowd. Ozzy's going crazy.

Loved every minute of it. Iagura fourth. Marrera then Gonzalez. Baltis, Arbolino eighth. Garcia finishing ninth.

Then Marco Ramirez in tenth. Alcoba, Bender, Arenas, Solace and I.G. Mario, I.G. with the final point at 15. What is really is great is that this was a very fun, interesting Moto 2 race.

Yeah, so it's one of these kind of really great Moto 2 races. Now we've had a few really good races this year, but the last few have been a little bit by my recollection anyway, a little bit less exciting. But this again, I don't know, is it Philip Hyland, Jim? I mean, I'm never quite sure. I mean, all through the three races on the Sunday in particular, I mean, we'll come to the sprint, which wasn't quite so exciting to me.

But all through watching the races, I was thinking track designers, if you are out there, look at this track. This is the sort of track that you need to be designing. You need contours that needs to flow around a natural kind of hillside, whatever you want to call it. And you think of all the great tracks and a few of the recent ones, they tend to use elevation as much as possible. And, you know, Philip Hyland is just so good.

I'm sorry, I'm digressing, but I mean, yeah, I'll dig it. I just can't get my head around his season really, because he was just sensational this weekend. And this is the rider that we thought we were going to be getting kind of racing race out this year, wasn't it? And he just hasn't really sort of shown this form until this weekend. And as you say, Jim, I mean, on the last lap, they both were in the 130s.

I mean, mental speed, really. Now, true, those two were quite a long way ahead of Senor Ageres. It must be said, particularly after Lopez had gone out with a few laps to go. But nevertheless, I mean, it was really hard, but fair riding. And like you, I was a little bit, oh, I hope he doesn't get a penalty for that move.

Was it down into MG on the last lap? Turn 10, which I think might be MG. I'm not sure. It was a pretty robust move. And a year or two ago, you might have foreseen the dreaded message come up on the bottom of the screen in part firmer, you know, rider whatever number 54 under investigation.

But as certainly on the Dawner commentary feed, they pointed out that having allowed Bastia Nini to get away with his move on Martine in Mazzano on the last lap, a few races ago, they could hardly dish a penalty out to Aldegaard for that one. So luckily there was no investigation, no penalty. So a hard move, but he and Connet were busy sort of fist bumping each other down the main straight after the checkered flag. So all good there. But the standout really, and again, I always kind of, I've asked a few people in recent times about is there such a thing as home advantage?

And people tend to be sort of, well, not really every race is important, but again, Senna Agerz. I mean, he's been coming on strong throughout this season and he is, you know, tipped to be one of the stars of the future. It's true. But again, a sensational ride from him, just brilliant. And what a lid design, that kind of Dewan tribute, crash helmet design.

Do an ask. Fantastic. It was, yeah, it wasn't a direct copy, but it certainly was a modern rendition on that theme. I just loved it. So yeah, great, really, really good race.

Enjoyed it a lot. So let's look at the Moto2 Championships where this is. Agerz is on 241 points. He is 65 now ahead of Aaron Kinnett. Again, eyes got four fingers of a hand on this trophy.

It can be done in Thailand. This is the one that can be done. The only one that will be done before we get to the last race. Most MotoGP will not be settled until the very last race. I guarantee that unless something really crazy happens.

But Agerz is only one point behind Aaron Kinnett. Or second place. I think if Agerz finished second to Agerz, I think that would be good for him. Because even though he had a tumultuous season, he still finished second in the championship, which I think is important, would be important for him. Garcia has fallen now to fourth in the championship.

The tragic case of Sergio Garcia, he seems like he's better, but he's not what he was. And he's lost whatever it was that he needed. But he is level points with Agerz. And then you got Lopez, Gonzalez, Roberts, Vietti, Arbelino, and Dixon are the top 10. That's everything that I have for Moto2.

So I think we should just go right on to MotoGP. Now MotoGP qualifying takes place on a wet but drying track. In fact, at the beginning of it, you had in Q1 anyway, you had Miller Acosta. That's kind of an oddball, right? Acosta really shouldn't be there, I don't think.

Then Aleix, Relul, the Hondas were there, Bascinini. Wow, so I was thinking like Acosta and Bascinini, although Quattrorara was in there. And Quattrorara was the quickest of the people who were in Q1. So I thought maybe Quattrorara could pull something off on a slightly damp track to go through and get in there. So I was kind of really interested like that.

I thought everyone was on slicks at the very beginning. It wasn't really wet, but it was dry and there were wet patches everywhere on there. But actually Miller had gone out on wets. And a few of the other bikes had gone out on wets as well. Augusto Fernandez, Mir, they were on slicks from the start.

So they were playing a different game. They were trying to go at it with it being on slicks. With basically like 11 minutes to go, Quattrorara had swapped in and came to slicks. Acosta came to slicks. Miller had gone to slicks by that point.

And then Miller again has those small vortices that are showing up over his winglets on his front wing. Then Miller has the hit with the wildlife or has a hit with the wildlife. I mean, he had a small hit. Then Bascinini and Acosta gets kicked out by Zarco because Bascinini was at the top. Then Acosta was second, right?

So then but Zarco kicked him out. And now it was Raul. And then it was Marini. And then Bascinini jumped back into second place. Everything was all happening because the thing was is that you were trying to be the last person out there.

You wanted to get your last lap started with like one second to go. You wanted to cross start finish, have a second left on the clock. So that lap would take because that was going to be the best lap you could have because of the track drying conditions. So that's how you got those guys into the Q2 session. Now, QT, it should be noted that Jorge Martín started off on a hard front where everybody else was running on.

I think there's only the hard and the soft option of fronts or is it a medium and a hard? But either way, he was on the hardest tire available on the front. And everybody else is kind of running on soft, which was kind of interesting. Digia would go down at turn one. By halfway, Vinales was the fastest, followed by Martín, followed by Marc Marquez, Raúl Fernández, Benyaya and Alex Marquez.

Five minutes to go. Everyone went in for new tires. Benyaya came out with the 330 left to play. He was in there for quite a while. And then Benyaya had moved to the hard front.

So he had made that was why he came out so much later than everybody else. He had gone with his number one bike to a hard front, which to change the front takes you more time than to change a rear. So that was natural there. I thought that was a big gamble by Peco to go to that hard front. I mean, at that point, stay on the front that you know, maybe.

I don't know. It was a gambling thing to do for the guy who's trying to chase down the point leader. But I guess you kind of kind of are kind of forced to do what Martín does because he's got your bike, essentially. Wouldn't you think, Rich? Well, yeah, I just again, I think we said in the last show that this always felt to me like it was going to be a Martín weekend.

I mean, it didn't quite turn out that way. But whereas I just always had the feeling that Benyaya might struggle a little bit here. And I think he was kind of chasing it a bit, literally and metaphorically, really. And I just wonder whether that sort of switch in terms of the front was not desperation. It's not the right word, but just kind of searching for a solution that wasn't really there.

Because Martín is just so good at Philip Island and so good everywhere on a single lap. So, yeah, I just thought Benyaya was pretty much under the cosh all weekend, really. Yeah. Either way, Martín had a massive front tuck as he went up Lookey Heights. He did save it.

But Martín would get the pole, followed by Marquez, followed by Benyaya, it was Bezeky, Benyaya, Fernandez, Modadeli, Alex Marquez, Alex Renz, Bastianini. Renz on the Yamaha, I mean, four cylinder bike in line, Renz goes well at the island on those kind of things. I mean, he was better than Quattroraro, which is, again, tricky conditions. But it was good to see Renz back on the bike and doing decently. Bastianini was in 10th, then Binder and DiGi and Cheney would fill out the fourth row.

So we go to the sprint later that afternoon. Of course, again, we've gone through Moto 3 qualifying, we've gone through Moto 2 qualifying, track's dried off, the wind's dried it. We're all good there. Martín gets a pretty decent getaway and then Marquez goes wide at turn one. I don't know if maybe the front ride height device hadn't disengaged for the whole shot.

Not sure what happened or just he got sucked in there. The wind was blowing, as Simon Krayfar was saying, the wind was across the track at one. So it was difficult to find your line and tuck it in and get there. But Martín was leading Bezeki, then Benyaya, then Binder. Bastianini, Marquez was all the way down to, say, sixth.

And then Marquez went to fifth, then he went to fourth. He made a couple of great moves. Martín got a track limits warning. There are 11 laps left. And I thought, oh, wow, to be here at this point in time is going to be really difficult for him.

But the interesting thing was watching Benyaya go to second because he got by Bezeki at one. Then Marquez was now into the 127.9s. He was sub 128 and he was chasing down best. So this is kind of interesting because it's like Mark got some speed on the old Ducati. He then got by Bezeki at turn one.

And then he was catching Benyaya hand over fist. It was weird how fast Marquez was catching Benyaya. He was just chopping seconds out of Benyaya. Like, again, I think Ben, as you said, Rick, Rich, that Benyaya was chasing it. He was chasing it all weekend.

It just it wasn't right. That's for sure. Alex Marquez would crash at the Miller corner. He was down. Mark got Benyaya with six laps to go.

And that way he did that at Miller. So that made him second. Then Bastionini went by Peco as well. It was looking like a bad, bad day at the office for Benyaya at this point. But Jack Miller would fall off.

Didn't matter. Martin was going to go win this one as it's going away with three to go. Again, Martina up front, Marquez, Bastionini, Benyaya, Bezeki, and Vinyals is now catching. Acosta would go down at turn six. He had an off-throttle high side.

That was pretty brutal on the kid. We would find out the next day that he was declared unfit to race with shoulder, ligament, and tendon, what did they say, like bruising or stretch or something. Hopefully he doesn't have to have shoulder surgery because that's a rough go. I heard on one of the other podcasts that when he kind of departed from the bike, let's say, he popped his shoulder out and then when he hit the ground it popped it back in again. Lucky.

Well, yeah, but that's going to hurt the following day. And, you know, that's always the concern because, am I right in saying again, this is one for your wife, Jim, but I'm pretty sure the shoulder is the most complicated joint in the human body because of its range of movement and the bits and bobs there. If you damage it, it's very hard to overcome. I give you as a case in point, Fabio DiGiantonio, who's going off to have his shoulder dealt with because, I mean, it's popping out routinely now. He's got some fairly serious corrective surgery and that's obviously why he's going off with two races to go because he needs recovery time.

You know, time is his enemy with such a short off season and testing getting going in, what, February, I suppose it'll be. So a bit of concern about Acosta because he's very young and he doesn't want to be sort of hitting serious kind of shoulder trouble this early because that's a problem that tends to get worse. It doesn't tend to sort of correct itself. So yeah, just a shame, but he was off the bike several times during the weekend, I believe, although I hadn't seen a lot of practice and just not really the sort of weekend we expected, really from Pedro Acosta. But, you know, still got a few chances, hopefully to turn in some good rides.

I'm still confident with him at Valencia, assuming he's fit. And it's possible. But back to the action, because now the big moment of the sprint race happens. Then Yaw's tries with two to go, drafts past Bizecki going into one. But Bizecki has an issue with the fact that there's no air on the front of his bike, locks the front end and then plows into the back of the Yaw's and both of the riders and bikes go tumbling off into the gravel trap.

Bizecki literally could not stop. And it's because it's the amount of air that's flowing over Bizecki's wings. There was a couple of things in all this that are there. See if I can break it down for you. If you're in the draft, you're in the low pressure area because all the air has been disturbed and it's either turbulent from the back of the motorcycle or it's that low pressure, which is why you get sucked along while you go faster because there's no air for you to have to break or cut.

Well, on the flip side, when you're going to a corner, now there's no wing to help you break on the front end, which what happens is Bizecki goes to his normal breaking point, slams on the brakes as he normally would, but there's no help from the aerodynamics to plant the front end of the bike. And literally the front locks up and he slides into Vinala's and off he goes. Should Bizecki have been cognizant of it? Maybe, perhaps. But with Vinala's going by where he did, it pushed the Bizecki out wider.

And if you look at turn one, as they come over that crest, if you were to rider left, if you were far rider left, there's a dip in the new asphalt that was upsetting the bikes as well. And that's where Bizecki went into that corner. So not only did he have the problem of there's no air on the front of the bike, the front suspension then collapses because it goes through that dip. And I'm sorry, you're doing nine on 200 miles an hour at that point. The suspension in any bump is going to basically collapse down all the way to the bottom.

And at that point, it's too much for the tire to take and off the races we go. Combination of bad circumstances for Bizecki, but this is the problem that you have. With the wings and the arrow and all this, you know, stuff that's there. It was a spectacular looking crash. Both riders were okay.

Both riders would make the start the next day. But it did add that last bit of twinge of excitement that the island seems to throw up at everybody for all of that. But given all that, Martine would win. Marquez, the second, Bastion, the third, Benyaya, fourth, Ben Morbidelli, Raul Fernandez, DG Antonio, Alexis Bargaro, Fernandez and Luca Marini getting in the top 10. We then head to the race on Sunday.

Bizecki was given a long lap penalty for irresponsible riding in the sprint race. I totally disagree with that, Rich. How about yourself? Oh, ridiculous, ridiculous decision. Yeah, I did.

I need to go back to the crash, but just for a second, Jim. I'm sorry. What happened? There was a suggestion that Maverick kind of braked and then came off the brake and then back on the brake again. They can work this out really.

I mean, it's telemetry, I know. But this happened in the blink of an eye, let's not forget. But to me, that was 100% an aerodynamics related crash. Yes, I agree. And I don't know how you mitigate it.

I mean, they're going so fast and you say the aero effect is so massive that that is wouldn't say it's an inevitable outcome, but it's a highly likely outcome with the bikes as they are at the moment. And the concern is whilst aero will be curtailed or contained, perhaps better word, with the new regs, the engineers will find a way to claw some of it back. You can just guarantee it. So let's say the genie's out of the bottle on that one. I mean, first of all, amazing that both of them weren't seriously injured because when you saw how vicious that crash was in terms of them leaving the bike, hitting the deck, and then that could have easily been a leg break and particularly for Bizecki.

And he was down for quite a long time. And at this point, I'm going to side with our friend Gary in my utter distaste for Maverick Vinales' behavior in the aftermath of that crash. Now, I appreciate- Letting Bizecki know he was number one? Well, yeah. So, I mean, okay, let's give this some context because in fairness, adrenaline will be through the roof at this point.

He's just been taken off his bike and he doesn't know quite what happens. He can just see somebody else in the gravel kind of, what, a couple of hundred feet away. But to kind of immediately jump up, flip the bird and then just sort of stomp off whilst Bizecki is down on the ground and not moving, I'd say, except in that emotions are running high at that moment. But this is the aspect of Maverick Vinales that reminds you of the sort of the petulant kid that stomped off and went home back in the Moto 3 days and is inclined to be a bit spit the dummy out. So I really didn't like that.

But anyway, Jim, to go back to your point about the penalty, what was utterly bizarre about it? And I am sort of pinching some thoughts from Simon Patterson from the race on this one. It's true. But as he pointed out and as it had occurred to me anyway, they took the penalty and then halved it. So technically, it should have been two long laps.

But Bizecki just got one long lap, which is effectively an admission that he wasn't totally to blame. So what was the point of the penalty and where does the other 50% of the blame lie? Well, obviously, it's in the bikes. So do something about the bikes. Do something more drastic now about the aero if it's that big of an issue that is causing those sorts of crashes.

Now, I'm sure that there'll be a segment of the listeners sort of throwing their hands up and saying, you know, it's prototype. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if there is a genuine sort of evidence based problem with going into that pocket of non air and the effect that has on a bike, which is designed around the fact that it's got a lot of front downforce, as are the tires now, as best as they can be, then you do have safety grounds to do something about it. Because, you know, one of those guys could have been critically injured in that crash very easily. Luckily, they weren't, you know, and both of them are on the bikes the following day, which is a miracle in and of itself, really.

But so, yeah, I just think I mean, I'm still a bit sort of pent up about it. It's true. But about the fact that Bizecki got the penalty, I just thought that was just ridiculous, really. But anyway, I mean, it kind of screwed his race on the Sunday as well, didn't it? So it's been a thoroughly miserable sort of year really for Marco Bizecki.

And as bad as the Aprilia kind of appears to be at the moment, I suspect he can't wait to get on the thing as things stand at the minute just for a change of scenery. Yeah, I agree. So we know that Alex Marquez is a long-legged palanquin from Japan. Which, again, most of the time, if you did it in Japan, then you had to do it in the sprint. Now suddenly you're doing it in the, I don't know, make I guess the rules are willy nilly.

Who knows? Anyhow, he gets a long lap. Then Acosta was declared unfit because of his dislocated but popped back in shoulder. And then Vignola and Bizecki, they are declared fit. So they're going to start the race and as noted, Bizecki is going to have to serve a long lap penalty.

Now, we also learned on Sunday that Digia had been hit by debris from the crash that happened with Vignola and Bizecki. And he was hit in the shoulder that he's having trouble with, his left shoulder. I've said it before, my biggest fear is these wings hitting someone and getting where it's going to be a vulnerable area. The neck where an artery is and it's going to cut that area and you're going to see a rider have a serious issue as a result of that. And again, I'm not for this.

I don't like it just on the grounds of safety. And I think we're starting to see these bikes tangle and hook and go together because everyone is racing hard, which I think we want to see hard racing. But I think it's just going to be a matter of time before someone, it's a matter of time it's it. I'm not trying to go nanny state here, people. I'm not trying to do that.

It's just there's a lot of risk in racing a motorcycle, especially at the speeds these guys are going. Okay. So to me, we got to look at it and I'm not trying to micromanage the risk. I'm just saying let's take the worst risks and reduce them at all as much as possible. So you keep walls away from the riders.

You put air fence in places where riders may potentially reach a wall and you get rid of things that would break or fall off a motorcycle that could potentially injure a rider. Look at the damage that a wing can do because Justin Wilson and Indycar was hit by an errant bit of wing that hit him in the head in a crash helmet. And I think Pocono was probably over over or close to 200 miles an hour, pretty much in the same speed that did you wound up getting hit by. And Justin, unfortunately, was killed. So we got a problem here, people.

And it's obviously a big problem because both Indycar and Formula One, which are open wheeled series, have some sort of either halo or a windscreen device to keep debris from getting into the cockpit. We don't have that with a motorcycle. With that, I'll rant over and I just want to echo what you said, because I mean, again, no, I appalled in any state. There's far too much of that. But if you have evidence that something is clearly causing unwarranted risk to people, then I think you kind of you have to do something about it.

You know, it's like the ride height devices. I know they're being banned in the 2027 race when they come along, but why not ban them now? Because we've seen multiple occasions where the things have locked solid or collapsed or whatever, and it is going to cause a crash and has caused some big crashes. And again, they luckily not resulted in very serious injuries or worse. You know what would happen?

You know, if a rider comes off a bike because the rear ride height drops in a critical place and he hits something hard where you wouldn't expect to hit something hard and the worst happens, then you know that the things are banned within a couple of races, probably at that point. You know, you can see the problem coming. So do something about it now. And you know, my sort of beef with this is that I'd rather see the riders in the race. I don't want to see them crashing out of the race because it spoils the race for them and for us, you know, and if they're crashing out for things that are potentially somewhat avoidable, I just think you should do what you can to take that unnecessary risk away if you can.

I know that there are big implications to saying, you know, all your aero is gone. That obviously create a lot of problems in terms of where the bike is right in terms of their setup, but everybody be more or less in the same boat and they work their way around it and work their way through it. So, yeah, but definitely not now. So because one of the things I kept writing down throughout the weekend and this is an era of nanny status, but I know why they're doing it. If you notice how this is very reluctant to show replays of crashes that have happened, particularly the, you know, so you'll get the thing that will come up that shows the riders, you know, picture and as they always crashed at T5 multiple occasions over the weekend, we didn't actually see what had happened.

I'm not suggesting that we want to be seeing people getting run over or, you know, grievously harmed or anything like that, but we've been sort of not shown stuff now and yet they're happy to glorify, you know, other things and repeatedly show things. It's just all a bit a kilter to me at the moment. Some of the coverage and again, a lot of people complaining about good racing up and down the field, which we didn't get to see. Where's the picture in picture? Bit of tech gone.

That wasn't really used very much over the weekend. You know, we tended to watch all of the guys at the front all the time and ignore a lot of the good battles that were happening elsewhere. So, yeah, they constantly want to go on about the show. Well, improve the show that you've already got as a first principle, you know, and I'll stop ranting now. I'm interested though if people disagree with me on this on the bike thing and on the coverage thing.

But yeah, I just think it's all a bit overregulated at the minute. Agreed. Oh, yes, we are at race day. Initially, everyone was on the soft rear tire, but that was how they came to the grid. There was time, ample time that they could actually change things.

Apparently, everyone did start on it. Now, as Simon Krafar pointed out to us, the soft tire this year is the equivalent of the medium tire last year. So the soft is a harder tire than that was there previously. But again, they talked to the head of Michelin. He says the tire is going to go the distance with a little bit of management.

Ooh, Bastionini, anyone? All right. You kind of think in the beast. He was looking really good there at the end of the end of the sprint. Guy who's, you know, five laps to go and your pit board says plus point five BAST.

You kind of get a little worried about that guy coming. Right. So kind of thinking maybe this is like a Bastionini type of race here. But we get to the green light and we have Mark Marquez with an absolutely huge amount of wheel spin looking like a pro dragster taking off from the line. Like what the heck happened in dragster style?

Like what was that? What was going on? And during the race, we've learned that Mark Marquez, having taken a tear off off of his helmet after this, after the warmup lap, dropped it on the track, which then he knew, oh, that might be close to the bike. He then went to slush it around to get it to move and inadvertently put it directly in front of his rear tire. Yes, Rich.

Apparently, it's just dropped on something. Okay. This is we're going to blame this one on ride height devices as well. Now bear with me on this one, Jim. Okay.

I'm pretty sure Mark has his ride height device. He didn't get it engaged in the sprint, which is why he overshot the first turn. I believe that to be correct. So fast forward 24 hours to the main race that we're talking about now. Where he would normally have taken that tear off as he came to the grid, he was absolutely determined to make sure he got that bloody front ride height device engaged before he stopped.

So he didn't take his tear off off because he had a big bug splat on it apparently. So he was stopped on the grid. Whereas before it would have been gone and he'd have thrown it a few yards up the track. So that's how the tear off came to drop, just bad luck right under his rear wheel. And this is one area where I will give props to the race director, as in the TV director.

Somebody spotted the fact that he was kind of looking down, trying to see if he could find where the thing had gone and get it out of the way. Because he obviously knew the risk of it being on the ground in front of his rear tire. Which is how we came to see that replay once they got into the race. And the fact that it was in fact, yes, I assumed like probably you did, or most people might have done, that it was an electronics glitch or something. In terms of the start line software that had caused that massive wheelspin.

Because again, he dropped way, way back, didn't he? But no, it was bizarre. It was the tear off. But it was the front ride height device from the previous day. And the worry about it not engaging that caused that whole sequence of events to transpire.

So there we go. Yeah. So a couple of things for me on this one. For me, I initially thought electronics glitch of something. Like he didn't engage something and just threw the clutch and it just there.

Um, then after a little bit, my thought thought, I thought, did he really actually get the tear off under his bike? Because I remember the tear off coming off and I thought maybe it was a tear off and it got under there somehow, but it hadn't been proven to us at that point. But the thought did come to my mind only, I guess, because being a racer or whatever. Because I know like dirt track and stuff, you'd go out, you'd have a, they'd water the track condition a little bit. I'd always have at least two extras on my helmet because you get sprayed down by somebody doing us doing them, you know, your warmup lap.

And I always made sure that I would take one off as I got out of four and would turn my head sideways and ride up to the, the, the starting line with my head sideways. So I could keep from getting splattered again, just not that it would matter on dirt so much, but you just kind of just didn't do it. So the thought kind of crossed my mind a little bit, but I thought, gosh, the odds are just astronomical. But what didn't we have Miller get a tear off sucked in at the Island a couple of years ago, I think. So, I mean, anything was possible.

Do you remember, I mean, it was never proven, but I remember Dennis Foggia claiming that a crash he had in Moto3 at Mugello. Yeah, I was on a tear off. He said he ran over a tear off and it high sided him and everybody sort of poopooed it and laughed a bit at the time, but it could have been. I had completely laughed at it because when we started road racing, this would go with this ties back into the whole, what we were talking about earlier was with John Ulrich and Chris Ulrich and whatnot, which was before we started the show. But either way, Chris always had this thing about with we're going like, how come I can't take a tear off off?

And we're as rule was you can have a tear off on your helmet, but they had to be taped down. You could not pull them off while you're on the on track. And that was that there. Then their whole thing was we don't want anybody to crash on a tear off. And Chris Ulrich would just argue that point every riders meeting.

Why can't we do that? It just it was to me, it was hilarious because I mean, I hadn't. I'd come from dirt track and I was so used to looking through completely splattered shields because you there's only so many tear outs you can put on a helmet before things get kind of fuzzy. Yeah, you know, because the plastic is distorting it, you know, your vision. But I just anyway.

So all that kind of made for a very interesting start with Marquez being very far, very far down in the thing. I mean, I think he made up a lot in the first couple of turns because by the time they got to the first timing split, Marquez was back to six. So Martin was out front. Bizecki was right there. Then Benyaya, Morbidele, Bender, Bastianini, Marquez.

We're waiting for Bizecki to go into the long lap penalty or whatever, but best crash to turn four with a low side. So I'm not sure if he actually took his long lap penalty afterwards or not, because they didn't show it. I thought he took the long lap and then crashed about a lap later. I didn't have it down in my notes that way, but I will. I'm not 100 percent positive.

No, I wrote in my notes lap four Bizecki takes the long lap that let Banyar through and then on lap five he crashed at the same that Miller's at where the long lap is. OK, all right. That's how I got. OK, thank you for that. We had Marquez getting by Morbidele at turn one.

He was at that point, he was one point seven seconds to Martin. So almost a full two seconds to the leader at that point in the race. Martin would continue to lead with Banyaya and Marquez in third. But then Mark Marquez spun up the rear tire by cause of the tear off. This is when we finally were able to see the replay and it was definitive.

Yes, it was a tear off under the wheel. I mean, the odds of that are just astronomical, but that's what we race, right? It's racing. That's what happens there. Marquez was doing one minute, 27 seconds, which was I think like broke his track record, sorry, broke his race lap record, which was the longest standing race lap record for a couple because he was that was back in I think they said it was like 2011 or 2012 that his race lap record was there because we had those Bridgestone races where they had to pit change bikes because of the that.

So it took a little, so there was some stuff that had happened in between, but Marquez actually finally beat his own track record. It was the last track record that had not been beaten in the Michelin era of that we're in right now. But it was amazing how fast Marquez was going. Martin was a little wide at turn one and that sort of brought everybody together and we're all right there. Binyaya would go to first, but Martin was then back by Binyaya and then Marc Marquez came through as well.

So, you know, Binyaya or Martin is wide, Binyaya slides through, then Martin goes back past Binyaya a turn later and Marquez goes through too because Binyaya had already been pushed off the line and you can't give Marc Marquez a gap and he will go for it and sure enough he did. So that left Martin followed by Marc Marquez, followed by Binyaya, Morbidelli, Binder and then Bastianini. Now Binyaya is losing pace. He was in the 129th where Marquez is in the 127th. That's like two seconds a lap that he's slower.

I mean, he, you know, there's, I don't know why Binyaya was not quick. I don't think Binyaya knows why he was not quick. It was interesting that he was that slow. I mean, there's something about the setup that he didn't get hold of this weekend for sure, but he was lucky. There was only 10 laps to go and there was a pretty big gap to the next group of guys.

So odds are Binyaya was going to be able to hang on and at least get a fourth place. Who knows what would happen up front or whatever. But Martin and Marquez have 4.3 seconds on Binyaya. He has eight seconds in turn on Bastianini, Binder and Morbidelli. Forward to go, Marc Marquez got by Martin, but Martin reacted by going back by a turn one.

Now that was some good little back and forth right there. When you're going, why is Martin racing this hard? I get it. He wants to put a real knife in the heart of Binyaya's championship, but dude, you're playing with Marc Marquez for crying out loud. Who has nothing to lose in this situation.

Yeah, exactly. He has nothing to lose in any of this. You have everything to lose in this. May I remind you of last year, Jorge? Just throwing it out there.

But Marc Marquez then would go by at turn four with three laps to go. It was a very hard move. He pushed Martin out of the way, but it was a fair walk pass style of attack that Marquez did place on him. It was a good move. I don't think there was anything over.

It looked like old school circuit teens Marc Marquez. It was classic. It was on the edge, but clean enough to do the job and not cause worry in the student's office. Yep. At that point, I think Martin said, I've had enough of this.

I've been pushed almost off the track. I think second place is the better option. Marquez would win the race followed by Martin. Vinyaya would maintain to get on the podium. Then DG Antonio would be fourth.

Then Bastianini, Morbidelli, Binder, Vinyala's, Quattroraio the ninth. Then Raul Fernandez, Miller with his right along pal, the Seagull. Then Joanne Sarco, Renz was 13th, Marini and Alex Marquez taking the last point. An incredible race by Marc Marquez. That was vintage Marc Marquez.

Did you catch the smile on Gigi Delinius' face in the paddock area? Marquez is there. He looks at him and DG's like, in my best Italian accent, that's a my boy. You know? Nicely done, Jim.

Yeah. Thank you. I get the impression. I'm telling you, Marquez is on a factory bike next year in the factory team because that's what DG wanted. Gigi looks at the data and Gigi looks at what Marquez can do with a motorcycle and he wants him on that bike.

Trust me, if Marc Marquez had a factory motorcycle in this race, he'd have won that race by five seconds. At least. I'll be in conservative. It would have looked like Rossi circa 2003 when he got a 10 second penalty for passing under a yellow and said, fine, and ran off to a 40 second lead. Or whatever he had, which was the most dominant race win.

It still is the most dominant race win, I think, of the entire four stroke era, which was just insane what Rossi did. Again, I will sit here and tell, I will argue to the death to anyone that that was the only time Rossi ever rode an entire race at 100%. Because that's what would have happened for years if Rossi had continued. But he was a showman and he would just play with everybody and decide when he was going to go. It would be better not to go straight too far off the top of the hill.

Yes, let's do that. He was peeved all right on that particular day and just said, fine, okay. There was so much reserved capability in that bike rider package at that point. He could do it, but he did do it. That's the key thing.

My thought that's forming now, Jim, more and more, is that Marquez is clearly, let's say, back to his full fitness as he's going to get with regards to the arm. Agreed. He's learned to ride a Ducati, albeit a year old one. I'm starting to seriously worry about the fact that nobody's going to see which way he went next year, the way things are going. Now, I must temper that by acknowledging that this is Philip Island and there are a lot of left-hand bends on that track, so it suits Mark Marquez.

The amount of drive and what he would gain on Martin out of the last three lefts, incredible. Absolutely mind-bogglingly how quick that guy is around things that go left. That is older and is known to be, even as an old 2023 bike, let alone an end of year 2023 bike. That's really my thought, and I think this is why Gigi De Lina has that right smile because I think he can see a couple more championships coming their way. Okay, he won't necessarily care if it's Bagnier or Marquez delivering them, but as you say, Jim, I don't think there's any shadow of a doubt that it was De Lina that petitioned hard for the Marquez deal to get done.

This is major vindication for him to see a race result like that. If it has fit or fully fit Mark Marquez on a 2025 spec Ducati, which let's be honest, there is the school of thought that says, well, just because it's the new bike doesn't mean it'll be better, but it will be better because they always are year on year and particularly Ducati's. So, yeah, I can see him just disappearing off next year. I really can, unless he does keep falling into that trap of pushing too hard in qualifying and then sending himself a bit further back in the grid and giving himself too much to do on the Saturday and the Sunday in terms of the sprint and the race. But even that, I'm kind of thinking if there's redundant capacity in the bike rider package with him on the Ducati next year, then he won't need to push that hard that he's crashing that much.

And he's still going to be a lot faster than everybody else. I'm looking forward to seeing it because I think it'll be phenomenal to watch, but it does have the risk of getting a bit tiresome unless somebody else kind of pops up and really takes it to him. And there are a few people that you might hope and expect that that could come from, but there are not many. I mean, if next year's KTM takes a bit of a step with Pedro on it. That's the only person that I can see that may ruffle some feathers because- Bagnar should be able to take it to him a bit, but I don't think he's quite got that level of aggression and I don't want to say desire because I'm sure he's full of desire.

But he goes about things in a fairly sort of methodical study way, doesn't he Bagnar? Whereas Marques just, I don't want to use a bad word, but he just gets on the bike and he really gives it one, you know, and it's just like all action. And his desire to beat Ross is particularly with, we haven't spoken about it, but it all blew up a few weeks back. Ross did an interview and blew up the whole kind of Malaysia 20, when was it? I forget which year it was now.

No, it was much later than that. But anyway, you know, that thing that caused whichever camp you happen to be in, the respective fans went swivel-eyed bonkers for, well, they still are basically over that. Rossi launched that bomb back over the fence for whatever reason a few weeks back. And so that's all bubbling up again. And that will just serve as motivation to Mark Marques, it really, really will, because he definitely wants to get more championships than Rossi.

Let's look at it this way. If Mark Marques wins a world championship on Ducati, the Christmas card to Rossi is going to say, I did it on a bike, you couldn't. That's going to be the signature. That will stick in the throat in Tavula. Oh, because then that ties them on championships.

And you know, Mark would be super motivated to have another one. But think, I mean, I look at it this way, I don't know who's going to challenge him on a 25 bike, because legitimately, Mark Marques has made tactical moves that are off track as great as the moves he's made on track. He's got Martine to go to an Aprilia and no offense to Aprilia, it's a great bike. When it's together and running, it's a great bike. But Aprilia is a brilliant, no going to make a mistake.

Just it'll be the wrong tire or this or that or whatever. They're not going to be there week in, week out. There'll be spurts of it being great, but it's not week in, week out, not yet. So that's out of her. You check Bascinini, he's the only other guy who's fast on Ducati and threw him on a KTM.

I don't think so. The kid who's on the KTM, who's directing the development, is Acosta. But is the kid going to have a bike that's going to be the equal of a 2025 Ducati? I don't know. But it's going to be fun to watch.

Well, highly unlikely. The question then becomes, can with a year under his belt, and the extra support that he'll get in the full factory team, does Pedro make enough of a difference as a rider? I think he could. I think he will be able to do it sometimes, but I think Marquez is going to be brilliant pretty much everywhere. Unless he has a crash and injures himself again, which is always a risk with Mark Marquez.

But I think he's tempered himself. Well, I would tend to agree because I think he knows he can't afford to keep beating himself up that way, which let's be honest, is why he got off the Honda. He's why he bought himself out of that contract. He was. Well, he was going to certainly end his career a bit earlier than he would have wanted.

And he's vindicated in that decision this year, isn't he? Let's face it. He's vindicated in having that surgery and staying off the bike for three quarters of a year or whatever. If he comes back and wins a championship, it's going to be amazing. Because so few were slamming too many windows over the winter, he's going to be fine.

Exactly. But I mean, he's going to win on a title on a different make, right? When a championship on two different brands. I mean, that's a small list of people who've done that. Eddie Lawson, Springs de Mind.

You could say that. I think Rossi did it. Stoner did it. That's the only, I mean, okay, I'm sure there's somebody in way back that did it, but they tended to stay on the bike. I think maybe Mike Hailwood did it.

I think Hailwood's my guess. I think Agu did it on the MV. I thought he did everything on the MV, didn't he? He did switch to Yamaha, didn't he? He'd love to lead.

But I don't know if he won a championship on the Yamaha. I'm not sure on that one. Okay, it's a handful. It's five maybe, right? So there's very few that have done that.

It's very, very rare. And Marquez has got a chance to do it. If that isn't going to motivate him, what will? Anyhow, let's wrap this up by going through the points. Now, this puts Jorge Martin on 424 and Benyaya on 404.

So it's a 20 point lead. It's kind of ironic. Benyaya's at 404, so he's not found. IT guys will get that joke. Was that an error code or something?

Yeah. You ever go to a website and it says it can't be found? It's a 404 error. Okay, yeah, got it. IT guys will get that joke.

He's on 404, so he's not found anywhere. Ben Marquez is on 345. He's 59 off of Martin, or 79 off of Martin, and he's only 59 off of Benyaya, which is pretty good for him. Then Vashini, Binder, Acosta, Vinyala, Morbidele, TG Antonio, and Asparguro. I don't know about this.

After this weekend, I hope Benyaya has something for everybody in Thailand because at this rate, this is Martin's show right now. It's a 20 point lead. That's not a lot, but if you look at their past form of the past two to three races, you've got to say that Martin has the better form right now. He does, but I think I said in the last show that I saw this, Philip Island, being Martin territory. For me, Thailand and Malaysia feels a bit more Banyaya territory.

Valencia, who knows? That is going to be high tension and high drama because it's highly likely they'll still be duking it out. Sorry for the pun. I think Benyaya likes more stop-start circuitry. The flowing tracks of speed are not Benyaya's thing because he's a very good late breaker.

He's a very good hard breaker late breaker. The flowing circuits are not his thing. He's good on them. Don't get me wrong. The guy's a world champion for crime outlaw.

I would not put it past the possibility that Benyaya could rip off four wins in these next two races. Let's not forget, Marquez has just won. Bastianini won in Sepang in the main race, I'm pretty sure. In fact, he might have even done a double last year. He definitely won one of the races in Sepang because Bastianini had a hideous year last year and then won in Sepang.

It was like, well, where the hell did that come from? Although he had been badly injured if you remember from Portimao. The question that comes into my mind is do other riders pinch points potentially off Martín and Banyaya? It's true. Do team Morda's come into play?

I was rather surprised actually that Bastianini overtook Banyaya in the sprint and robbed him of third place. Bastianini's riding for himself. There's no way he's going to ride in defense of Banyaya. Dude, my ride's over there on the orange thing. I really don't care what happens over here.

I'm just suggesting that Ducati might, for fear of the number one plate going on to an Aprilia next year, which they won't want to happen, whether they might try and get some team Mordas going on. I'm not just talking about Bastianini. There are plenty of other Ducatis out on the circuit at any given point in time. Team Mordas is part of the game. I don't suppose Banyaya wants to get points or win races through team Mordas' Schalander guns because it's a bit embarrassing really.

It's a bit desperate really to my mind, but I wouldn't rule it out just at the moment as a possibility. You could certainly see Márquez with the win behind him at the minute, with nothing to lose and plenty to gain going out and nicking some points off Martin. If Banyaya can get seconds and thirds and Martin's a bit further back, 20 points is not a lot, is it? I mean, there's what? 120, 130 left on the table?

Let's do the math real quick because you have Valencia, Thailand and Malaysia left, right? So that's 12 points for a sprint win times three for 36 plus another 75. So there's 111 points at play. There's a lot left to go here. So has Márquez got three wins this season though?

Because he had Aragon, he had Mizano, one of the Mizano rounds and he has this one. If you were told Márquez would win three times on a year old Ducati, would you have believed it at the beginning of this year? Yeah, I would actually. Okay, that's fair. You're allowed.

I'm just asking the question because I didn't know if he'd win this many. I figured he'd win, but I was thinking that the factory bikes would be just that little smidge better. He'd have his moments, but I thought podiums would be more for him than wins. I'll correct myself slightly because I suppose it's a bit easy for me to say yes, I would have thought that. I did feel there was a strong possibility that he would win a race.

The thing about Márquez is once he wins a race, then he's likely to win a handful of races. And now he's won a handful, he's going to win a bucket load next year. While I predict that is what's going to happen. Not that that's a stellar prediction, the way things are going. It's pretty bloody obvious really at this point.

But all right, I think that's everything from the island. Would you agree, Rich? Yes. All right. Three great races.

Last thing I wrote on my notes, Philip Bloody Island, three mega races and they were three great, not such a great sprint race, but the three races on the Sunday were top drawer. Yes, top drawer. With the top drawer racing over, we head to Thailand folks. So we'll be back after that one and everybody ride safe. See you soon.