MotoGP Thailand

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 788 for October 30th, 2024. I'm Jim McDowell, across the pond in Mary Old England, fresh back from Germany, is the world traveler himself, Richard Jallet.

Richard, glad you can make time for us, I guess. I should be happy. Thank you, Jim. Good and tag, or good and act, I should say, in the present context. Very true.

Did you have a good time in Germany? Fantastic time. Love Germany, as I was talking to you just before we came on air. Lived there for a year back in 2000, so it was a bit of a blast down memory lane for and reminisce a little bit around Hamburg, which is a beautiful city, wonderful people, great beer, lovely food. Even the weather was good to us.

So yeah, five very pleasurable days, but always good to be back in England and equally even better to be talking about motorbike racing. Yep. When with that, let's just get right to it. We were in Thailand for the GP this past race. It's the second of the triple headers Malaysia is this coming weekend, a week off and then we're finally to the last race of the year in Valencia.

So we'll kick it off first with just a little bit of news. There's only one thing that I was able to come up with with news. Richard was right. I like to make sure that he that you all understand that he did tell us that Andrea Inione would be in to replace DG Antonio at VR 46 for Malaysia. He is that's been confirmed.

So props to you, sir. No, you're giving me credit where it's not due, Jim. I was saying Nico Booliger, wasn't I? I think the world super bikes, whereas it's Andrea Inione that's come in from World Super Bikes. So it's been a rough week for me, guys.

I'm sorry. I mean, Andrea Inione is a how should we put this politely? I mean, he's a somewhat divisive figure, isn't he? Given his well, not necessarily recent past, but because of course, he's just this year's back in international racing again, having served his four year ban for the doping man substance. Yeah, I forgot about.

OK, OK. I got these mixed up. He divides opinion, but he did win a World Superbike race this year in not the factory team, a well supported Go 11 team, I think it was. So not what I was expecting. I thought Nico Booliger was going to get the nod on that one.

But then he makes sense. I mean, he's obviously got past MotoGP experience, albeit quite some time ago. And let's not forget you got kind of booted out of Ducati because of taking De Vizioza in Argentina, if I recall. I can't remember what year that was, but it's obviously what, six years ago, I suppose. Then had a that troubled season at Aprilia before the whole doping scandal hit and then the rest of history is we know.

So yeah, anyway, he's going to come in. Interestingly, though, Jim, only from Malaysia. So whether his participation in Valencia, because De Geantonia was obviously out for the rest of the season, now he's going to have his shoulder surgery. So whether that means that they might bring somebody else in for Valencia. And it's dependant on how Ian only does.

Who knows? But it's confirmed from Malaysia as things stand anyway. So, yeah, it's hard to imagine he's going to have a great weekend because, you know, coming from World Superbikes, we know that's a tough transition to make. The bikes are so radically different now to what he last experienced in, what would that be 2019? Would it have been?

I suppose, yeah, somewhere around there. So years be there. Yeah. It's like jumping out of a biplane into a spaceship, isn't it? Really?

From his point of view? Well, hopefully he does well. Well, we'll see. It'll be one of the things we'll be talking about from that round. And that's pretty much it for any kind of news.

We will move into the racing and we'll start with Moto3 qualifying. There is really nothing to be said here in the first qualifying session. I think the only thing that's of interest is the fact that Netba is in this first qualifying round, but he survives and gets out along with Feroli, Esteban and Bertelli. They all get through. So we go to the second qualifying session.

We're halfway through. Picaris and Alonso, Holgardo, Ortola, Linetta and Fernandez are the top six guys. Now, they're halfway done. So we're talking about having like seven and a half each minutes left on the clock. OK, and then everyone gets a tire and they all sit.

We've seen this before. And for some reason, we'd like to do this at Thailand. I don't know why we sort of do this at Thailand, but I guess it's the really long straights because it's really only the long straights. We kind of see this at Mugello with a long straight. We see it at Catalonia with the long straight.

And here we have a pretty good length of stretch as well. And so everyone sits and they're waiting. Now, with six minutes left, Vire decides to get out and get on with the program. OK, so we're waiting, waiting some more. There's two minutes 30 left.

No one else is going out. Everyone stays stationary. It's like, guys, it's like a a pole lap is a one minute 40 something. You've got to get going because you've got the pit speed limiter. Of course, finally, it's like one forty five left to go.

And they all run out onto the track and. Oh, Rich, who the head of Aspar. Oh, hey, Martinez. Yeah, he's just shaking his head like, what are you people thinking from the pit lane? Right.

So the basically it was like whoever could get out, get around quick. They would be the first people to actually get, you know, you want to be that last person, right? So you just get to the start finish line with a second or so to go. That was who was going to be in there. Well, half of these guys don't even make it.

They're they're not even Alonso doesn't get a lap. I mean, all the fast guys don't seem to get a lap at all. The last man to get across was Joel Kelso. And interestingly enough, it looked like Piqueras had it with Alonso second and then Holgardo. But all of a sudden, we caught wind of Kelso having red helmets.

And he was that last guy just to barely get there just in time. And so he rode the best lap of his life and he goes to pull. I was really proud to see Kelso get a pole. He's been working hard for it. He had a great start to the year.

Things were looking really up when we talked to him at Coda. And then he had the accident or not the accident, but he got ran off, at Coda's infamous turn. I think it's nine. And from there, things sort of kind of went downhill. And now he's finally sort of rebounded and has come back up.

And he has his first ever pole. So Kelso has the pole. Vair was second. Then it was Piqueras. Then for Asato, then Alonso, and fifth, you know, he didn't even get a good lap at the end.

He was completely in the pack of everybody who was wandering around on the reservation, trying to figure out who they were going to follow or whatever. Then it was Ogden, Hulgardo, Almanza, Ortolla and Luneta. So that is how they qualified out of there. So we will then move into the race on Sunday morning. Now it rained with heavy thunderstorms overnight.

And there was a prediction that had been stated on Friday that the Moto GP race could be affected by rain as there was a forecast of rain during that time. Well, in the heat and the humidity of the of it, the rain was well overnight and it left the track drenched. And so the track was drying like it had dry patches to it. But there were still as many dry patches. There was as many damp patches.

So that changed how the Moto3 race was going to run as a schedule. So because there had not been any wet session prior to the race, race direction was and race direction declared the race wet. That meant that because the race had been declared wet and there had been no practices that we can in the wet conditions that the riders were given a 10 minute session to go out, make a lap and make as many of those laps as they want. But they had to come back through pit lane and go around it because people were warming up or setting up on the grid. They were running around trying to figure out who was going to be there and who was going to do what.

But also along for the rules, because we have a 10 minute session at the beginning, the race will be short to two thirds distance. So we went down to a 12 lap sprint race, if you will. And we basically had to figure out, were we going to go on wets or were we going to go on slicks? That was the question everybody had. I know you didn't see this, but I'm going to ask you intuitively if you know who this is.

Who was the very last rider to roll up onto the grid, Rich? Because I know you didn't have time or we can see all the. Yeah, I'm at a slight disadvantage because I only saw the races on playback. But I'm going to guess Alonzo. That is correct.

Yeah. The last man, the man who took the most laps, who did a lot of time, took the whole 10 minute session. He did. He did the most laps of anybody. Last guy to pull up to the grid, David Alonzo.

I'm like, OK, OK, what's this kid got figured out that nobody else has figured out? But it appeared, though, that nobody was going to go for the gamble of wets. I think one or two riders in the back did gamble on wets. But the contenders all decided to start on their slicks, except for we would except for Alonzo is on a medium slick and not a soft slick. So it's like, whoa, we have that Australia thing again, where Alonzo is on a off tire to everybody else, which was pretty wild to get him.

So there was a fair amount of drama and goings on, as it were, before we ever got a chance to drop the green flag. But at the start, Kelso took off. He got the whole shot. He's followed by Vire, Picaris for Asado, Alonzo, and Pogardo. But Vire would get by Kelso and Vire would lead.

And Kelso starts to sort of go backwards a little bit here as everybody kind of ruffs him up as they sort of go through because he would get stood up in a corner and while two or three other vultures were going to come flying through on you, which is the norm for Moto3, Kelso had got himself bumped back to like fifth. But he did he did rebound for a little bit. And he did get himself back up to third. But Alonzo would start leading by that point. And we had a seven bike group of Moto3 bikes, which is usually what happens.

Kelso did get back by Alonzo as Alonzo dropped back. And then for Asado, stood Alonzo up and stood up Kelso, I should say. And then Alonzo just went right through, too. So those guys, as soon as one of them makes one mistake, gets pushed off. Everybody was going through and that's where it was.

So now we had Kelso back to seven. Now, first, Asado seemed to be looking like he wanted to clear off. We're halfway done. So he's got six laps. And so he's sort of turning the laps and he's leading for a last little bit here.

But Alonzo stealthily works his way through the pack of other riders to get himself right behind for Asado. And eventually he leads with five laps to go. Now, that's when they told us, hey, look, he's got the medium rear and the medium front where everybody else is pretty much guaranteed to be on the soft front, soft rear, which is really interesting. Alonzo then started leading the fourth lap, but Picaris is riding super, duper aggressive. He's just everywhere.

He's if there's an inch, Picaris is going through it. I think he is probably the most aggressive Moto3 rider on the grid. And it works for him, which is in stark contrast to the precision at which Alonzo slices through everyone. It's just it's like like one is this clinical surgeon, very precise, very calculated. And the other one is just the raging bull in a China shop that's just going for it 24 7.

And it's amazing how they have, you know, essentially the same bike. They have a KTM, each of them. No, no, sorry. Picaris is on the Honda. Sorry.

So maybe he's got to ride the Honda a little differently than what Alonzo can ride the KTM. But it's they're different, but they're both fast, which is, again, unique circumstance that they're so far apart in riding styles. And they all seem to work with that. We got down to the we got down to the two, three to go. And Lunetta had made his way to fourth.

He had bridged the gap and had gone through and had gotten himself up and possibly was chasing a podium because he had gotten out, pushed out wide and sort of beaten up at the early part of the race. So he was now on form to come back, which was there. And it's like we had two laps and Ortolla had now gone to second. He was chasing Alonzo. And then it was like, well, where do you look?

Because everybody was passing somebody at some corner somewhere. And these last two laps, it's like it was Picaris Fernandez. They would they were both down down or Tolo was leading with one to go with Alonzo and Furasata chasing him with Lunetta. Then Alonzo got to the front about halfway around the lap. I think he did it coming out of three or going into four.

The blind crest at four, I think he blind entry to four. He got in there. It was the last came down, as always, to the last corner. What was going to happen or Tolo goes for it and he goes up. The inside, but he can't hold it.

He runs it wide. Then Lunetta ones up going up the inside as well with Vire. He's what's the cut under and then Vire touches Furasata, who was there as they're like three wide coming out of the corner. This causes Furasata to crash and then he winds up bike and riders sliding across the line with all that craziness. That last corner is a bonkers last corner, which I mean, you have a long stretch.

You have a nice tight turn. It's an out breaking game with a with the shortest dash to the finish line. There's going to be chaos at the last lap. And sure enough, there was with this first auto crash. But Alonzo did win.

Lunetta was second. Vire would take third. Then you had Ortolla in fourth. Now they gave for Furasata fifth. I was afraid they would not classify him at all because the rule states that the bike and rider must cross the finish line together.

They did not. But they came up with some way of, well, it really wouldn't matter because he could have got back up and mounted the bike and pushed it across the line or something that says like, oh, you know, it's it's OK that he's that he's finished, which I think that's a little bit of another topic we can kind of delve into here when we get through the whole whole part of the rundown. But first, I thought it was in fifth and Munoz came through. Kelso was seventh. Ogden was eighth.

Nepa Suzuki, Yamanaka, Hogarto having a miserable time this weekend. Then Ricardo Rossi, Faroli and Rolstein got a point. It was also a track that he Jacob is familiar with riding in the Pan Asia. I think they call it the Pan Asia Cup or something like that. So that is how the race finished.

I will go on to say that Alonzo, I have run out of superlatives. The baby goat is real. Twelve wins in a season. That's the first time anybody's won that many in a Moto three championship. I can't remember if anyone's done more in a season in one to five.

But for Moto, but for Moto GP, he has won the most of Moto three. The four stroke error. He has won the most races of anyone in the season. He then has five wins in a row to beat Marquez's record, a four in a row and when Mark had one, one twenty five. There's nothing I can say.

This kid is amazing. He is rewriting the record book as he goes. And I only hope that this kid will continue to rewrite the record book as he goes through Moto two. And every time I see him do another race of strategy, technique, you know, intelligence, I just get super mouth watery over the idea of him V. Acosta in Moto GP, because by that time, Acosta is going to be the old hand.

You know, because it's going to be at least two more years before he can for he, I Alonzo, can get to Moto GP. So that's going to be interesting. Rich thoughts. Yeah, I mean, as I only kind of watched it on my mobile phone, which is never the best way to watch any race. But I was a little bit disappointed that the race is for short.

And thank you for explaining why it was. I wasn't aware of the sort of 10 minute practice and proceeded the race. Interesting, as you say, that Alonzo spent the most time out, gauging the conditions and came up with that slightly unusual, well, unusual to everybody else, tired choice. But there's always method in, I was going to say madness. But it's not madness with him, really, is it?

Because it's yeah, everything's under control all the time, and it seems with David Alonzo. I know you haven't heard it yet, Jim. So I won't preempt it. But I've just put out at last one of the Silverstone shows where I'm chatting to heavy Pontreal. We talk about sort of the mouth watering prospect of Alonzo turning up in Moto GP.

You won't be surprised to learn that Pontreal is a fan. Oh, yeah, he's definitely a fan. I don't want to keep repeating the same thing over and over because people will get bored of us saying it. But he does bear direct comparison to Pedro Acosta, whereas, you know, you're picking out earlier on as an example, but by no means alone. But let's pick on Piqueras.

He was early on in his Moto3 Grand Prix career, it's true. But he kind of has the whiff of a denisantia about him, doesn't he? But, you know, spectacular, but maybe not erratic, perhaps not right the word. Certainly aggressive, but the sort of rider that you might see stall for a season or two in Moto2. So, again, I know I've said it hundreds of times, but one last time.

I'm interested to see if Alonzo makes the quick transition in Moto2 like Acosta did because of that spare capacity that we've spoken about so much and everything that he does just gives them that leg up on everybody else as a rookie into the next class that they go to. As we've seen with varying degrees of success, it's true with Acosta in MotoGP this year, but he is riding a KTM and he's by far and away stripping all of the other KTM riders. So, you know, you have to judge him on that, not how he compares to say Ducati riders, because they are not the same thing at all. So, yeah, I mean, Jim, you just, as you said, you run out of superlatives, really, with Alonzo, don't you? Now, it is true.

I always want to sort of just temper the enthusiasm around stats, around the fact that he is racing in a very large calendar in terms of the number of races. So he has more opportunity to win more races in the season than say Valentino Rossi did back in, what, 97 when he was in 125s, whose record he has just recently broken in terms of wins in the season. So, I mean, you have to slightly temper your enthusiasm around realities such as that. But nevertheless, I mean, you can only judge him on his performance against his peers. And I mean, he's made everybody else look pretty ordinary this year, hasn't he?

So nothing much more to say, really. I can well see him winning Malaysia, and it's not a big stretch to see him winning in Valencia either. No, I kind of hope he does, because if he can just add to these stats, just kind of just makes this year his world championship winning year even better, really. But other than that, nothing too much to say about the race, really, from my side in terms of the slightly marginalized way that I got to watch it on my mobile phone. Yep.

So when I get into these situations, like, well, there was more races I like to do if I win percentage. So I think there's 20 rounds this year. Right. Yep. And Alonso has won his 12 of 20.

That gives him a 60 percent strike rate to win. I think this is off the top of my head. I think there was 15 rounds in 1997. I think that gave Rossi a 73 percent strike rate. So it's very comparable statistically.

Yeah. That they're striking at the same rate, which is again, if you're going to hold me to them, let's say Rossi had a better strike rate because he had less races. All right. But I would then counter that and say, I think the people racing today, the quality of the kids who are racing today is probably greater than what Rossi's was back in 97. Well, I would say certainly the quality of the equipment across the entirety of the field is way above what it was back in the days where you had a good two stroke or an old one.

Yeah. It's not entirely correct, because I know, for example, having spoken to the Vision Track, although it's not called Vision Track anymore, is it? But the Michael Lavatey team, I know they're running sort of like three year old bikes. So, I mean, they are quite a step down in performance. I believe that's correct.

That's kind of what I've been told anecdotally. So there are some variances within the field, but I don't think anything like existed in the 1990s for sure. So I think on that basis, you know, that does elevate Alonso back up again, even though his percentage might be a little bit lower. Yep. Let's be honest, he's a superstar already.

Oh, yeah. Going to be a massive superstar going forward. So, you know, quality always rises to the top. And that's just what we've seen throughout the whole of this year and most of last year as well. Let's not forget, because he won a handful of races last year as well.

So, yeah, just brilliant. Nothing more to say, really. Just like a broken record, really. But he's just outstanding. He is one of those ones that's special.

Yeah. For sure. So obviously Alonso is your world champion. He's been world champion. But the race now is for who will be second in the championship.

Helgardo holds on to his second place. However, Vier is now only 11 points behind him. If Helgardo has a bad Malaysia, a bad Valencia and perhaps maybe Vier catches a win in one of those two places, he can easily become second in the championship. Or Tola or Tola is fourth in the championship. He is a 21 points behind, further 21 points behind Vier.

So that gets him, you know, 32 behind Holgardo. That's with 50 points left to play. That's, you know, getting kind of tough there. So the battle now is for who is going to be second. Then Amunos is the fifth man.

Fernandez, Piqueras, Rureda, Kelso up to ninth and then Yamanaka in tenth. And that is all we have for Moto 2. We will move to Moto or we had for Moto 3. We will move to Moto 2 and we'll go through their qualifying. So this qualifying again is a little bit, a little bit bland here.

We had, I think the interesting person that's in the first session is Aegis. Senator Aegis is there. He had a great podium down in Australia. I thought he'd carry that momentum in again, another track that he knows. But he didn't.

He was in that first session again. But Chantra was there. And I have to mention Chantra's livery on the bike was pretty darn cool. It was based on a lion. And I thought that was a brilliant one of my favorite.

And that one's in that like the top five of liveries for Jim. That's a wow. That was a really, really good one. You know, I think the casserole Hondas of the Colin Edwards era are kind of sort of my what I like. My second favorite, my favorite of all time is doing 94 Honda because it just was HRC is before Repsol.

And I just I love that bike for whatever reason. But it was the wild 90s. It had the pinks and the purples and all that other stuff in it. So anyway, different times, different times, different times. So that so as I said, Bender.

So Chantra actually came through a bunch of traffic to be to be there as the first position to go through Bender Garcia and Sasaki went with him to the second session. We've seen Garcia here again. I thought maybe he was turning a corner with the island. It's not he's right back into that first session again. So then we get to talk here.

I want to do that right. Let's do that before we get to the race. We'll talk about the urban, the weird Arbolino incident, which I don't think you saw. You may have heard or seen snippets of it, but we'll talk about the race. We'll talk about that pre-prerace.

So we'll go through the qualifying here halfway through. Agora, who can become world champ this weekend, is leading things, then Kinnett, then Marrera, then Marrera and then Ramirez, Audegur and Aranis. Now, everyone goes out together at the end and the pack basically kind of screws up like Alcobo was around. He was running through the prac was there. He had to let off come through the packs of his lap, got got botched through all that.

Igera just pulls out of it all and says that I'm already on poll. If you can beat me, go ahead. I don't really care. And he thinks that, you know, hey, that's it. I've got it.

Well, Kinnett was going to give it a shot because he had gotten through. The pack had turned it on. He was turning in red helmets and he was going off pretty darn quick. But he did tuck the front slightly at 12. And that cost him, I think, maybe a tenth or maybe two.

And that left Igera on pole with Kinnett. Second, Marrero would be third. Then Arbolino, Ramirez, Salak, Aranis, Audegur and Garcia, who did qualify ninth. So, I mean, he's he seemed to kind of get it together as I got to. But we would get to move forward then to the race on that Sunday.

Now, OK, let's see if I can put this together for you all to get it together. Arbolino was going to get a three grid place penalty for an incident that occurred in practice. So if you know the circuit, they come out of 11, which is the right hander heading to 12 with a decent straightaway that's there. The entrance to the pit is right after 11. And so it is as they show you looking at the riders, it's to rider left.

Arbolino had high sided out of 11 and had gone to pick up his bike and want to bump start it and go back to the pits. The marshals wanted him to use the service road that was on the other side of the fence, separating the track and ride back to the pits and that way Arbolino refused and tried to bump start his bike on the entry to pit lane. Now he's despite I think he kind of maybe got it going, but he stalled it again or the bike quit on him again. Arbolino is standing is there with a dead engine bike. A marshal is running to him to assist.

And Van de Garberg, who's paying zero attention to anything of what's going on at the last second, realizes that Arbolino is a stationary motorcycle and weaves between Arbolino and the corner marshal who's coming to help assist Arbolino. A scary situation. Luckily, everybody involved was OK. You know, Van de Garberg is fine. Arbolino is OK, but he's not going to be OK because he's damn he has severely bruised his heels or his feet in the high side that he had.

And then you had the corner marshal who I think ducked it at the last second. He was OK as well. So for those infractions, you had Arbolino getting a three grid penalty and Van de Garberg would be forced to start from the pit lane. I thought those penalties were a little weird, giving all of what happened. It's like, OK, so Arbolino gets a grid penalty, but you make Van de Garberg start from the pit lane.

To me, they're both as equally wrong in this situation. So to me, the penalty should have matched each other. So either Van de Garberg should have been back three places on the grid or Arbolino should have started from pit lane. Take your pick wherever you want to put them. But it's like it wasn't like Arbolino was the innocent victim here who then had a problem.

It just bizarre how they decided that that was what they were going to do with it. It just left me going, I don't get it. And I mean, we've seen this from race control. I mean, we get Simon Krayfar as the new race director slash enforcer, if you will, for this. And I think Simon, I hope Simon at least becomes fair and consistent across the board.

Consistent is all I'm really asking for here out of this one. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, Rich, as far as the penalties go that they got, but I'll give you the floor. Well, I'm glad that you've filled in some of the blanks in my knowledge, because again, I didn't get to see practice or qualifying particularly. I did see the incident on Twitter, because obviously there was a lot of people reporting on it. So I saw the incident, but not the context of how it kind of happened.

My understanding and again, I might be wrong on this. My understanding is that the riders should know that they're not supposed to try and bump bikes back into life on a live racetrack. And the pit lane entry is part of the live racetrack. Whether or not he was directed or was ignoring an instruction from a or the marshal that became a bigger part of the incident, I'm not quite sure. But I think he wasn't supposed to be doing what he was doing.

So that's the Arbolino bit. The Bandigurbig bit. Well, I mean, he's coming into pit lane 999 times out of a thousand. I'll just come in to pit lane and that'll be it. They'll be looking at the dash.

They'll be, I don't know, looking at whatever. So they wouldn't necessarily expect to see a marshal or a stationary bike in the pit lane. And, you know, they are still moving quite fast. And it's not that long a piece of track as they come into the pit lane, particularly because Arbolino is halfway towards turn 11. So I'm not trying to excuse what Bandigurbig didn't see, but it doesn't take much of a lapse of judgment.

I mean, we've all done it. I've certainly done it on the bike on the road many a time. You know, you're kind of looking at something around you or your mirror and suddenly something's in front of you and you think, oh, crap, you know, and you sort of sticking the anchors on for all your worth. So, I mean, that sort of thing can happen. I mean, like you, Jim, I think on the basis of whether or not that's more or less correct, I would have to conclude that I would have thought the panellists were around the wrong way because it was Arbolino that kind of caused the incident, not on purpose.

I'm not suggesting he did anything dangerous. And it's perfectly understandable that he wanted to get his bike going again. But if he broke a rule in doing it and caused an accident or at least instigated an accident, I would have thought the burden of responsibility falls more heavily upon him. Yes, Bandigurbig was pretty negligent in not seeing what was in front of him. You can certainly argue that.

But at the very least, I would have thought they should have had an equal penalty, as you say, Jim. So I think, yeah, at least that's what should have been. It seemed extraordinarily harsh on Bandigurbig to have to start from the pit lane. Anyway, I mean, feel free to disagree people. And, you know, I'd say I haven't seen or read or done all of the research on it like others might have done.

But that was my well, that is my kind of lightweight take on it. Yeah, you can like it, you can dislike it. To me, it was just both of these guys committed in my mind, a safety issue. Right. Bump starting a bike on live on a live track.

Bozo, no, no, not paying attention to what you're doing on a live track. Also, Bozo, no, no. So I get it, though. I understand, because I could tell you there's a number of times that. I mean, I don't know.

For me, when I was racing, it was I, for whatever reason, did. I paid the most attention when I was getting off the track, heading into the pits. I don't I can't really explain to you why. Like, I don't have a great answer. But I would that to me was the scariest part of it.

And maybe because I've seen enough dirt track races where people would let off right after the finish line or and people bump into each other and go down or just because I, you know, I remember the the Bubba Showbird incident at Laguna Seca in 89. You know, I was still third track and then so it's like, well, wait a minute, I'm on a really faster, much faster bike now going a lot faster. Hey, I got to pay more attention to what's going on. I don't really know. I just to me, those are like the there's there's certain things that are like inexcusable at a racetrack.

And to me, both of those are pretty close to being inexcusable. If I'm running the show, I put them both in the pit lane. Yeah. The grizzly, cynical me, Jim suspects that had the marshal not been on track and that accident that happened, neither of them would have got a penalty. Yeah, because if the marshal isn't there, then Vanda Gerberg just swerves around and rides off.

So, yeah, you're probably right. I think that race direction tends to react to things that they think, oh, that was a close one. We better penalize somebody. And, you know, I had a marshal who's just there, you know, volunteering, doing his job. No protection, so to speak, compared to the riders in terms of safety gear.

If he got clattered, I mean, he would have been nastily hurt, maybe not sort of seriously injured. But nevertheless, a bike traveling at what, 20 or 30 mile an hour hitting a soft, fluffy human body is going to do quite a bit of damage. So sometimes it just feels like they come down on riders like a ton of bricks because of something that might have happened. And I think had the marshal not been there, I don't I'm not sure that they would have made that bigger deal of it, which I'm not saying they shouldn't have done because fundamentally, I believe they shouldn't have been doing what he was doing. So, yeah, your experience is interesting there, Jim.

It's a little bit like this whole thing. And I won't go off on a this is perhaps for an off season show. But, you know, my hatred of the sort of the infringement penalty for not slowing down enough on the yellow flag. No, the yellow flag or the yellow board means you should slow down, not you haven't slowed down enough. I mean, it's meant to be slow down is danger ahead.

You might get yourself or somebody else in to bother. Whereas now they kind of go through about as fast as they think they can get away with and they might cop a penalty for it. And that's not the intention of the yellow flag. There's a small difference in here. And it can be semantic.

But the first part of it is there should be a stationary yellow flag to alert you that there is danger coming and then a waving yellow where the incident is. One of the things they told us and they would always kind of remind people of this every few races at the club level, at least, was, hey, guys, a yellow flag doesn't mean let off. A stationary yellow does not mean let off. It means, hey, there's something coming up that you need to start thinking about and put in there, like start looking for the waving yellow, looking for a motorcycle on track, look for a person on track, look for debris on track, something. That's how that was always explained to us.

And so I don't have a problem with them going fast at that point. But as soon as you get to that waving yellow, yeah, you've got to be out of it. Yeah, fair point. I'm not trying to nitpick you. I don't know.

No, that was always a fundamental part of it was a stationary or a waved yellow was absolutely critical to its meaning and its intent. And yes, you're totally right. So either way anyway, well, let's we'll go to race day here. So with race day, the race was declared dry. We had the rain from the morning thunderstorm motor moto three race declared wet, but was everybody roast race slicks anyway.

The interesting part about that one was I never did mention it. But I thought for a second, like, wait a second, if everybody's on slicks on a race that was declared wet, they can't stop it by putting their hand up if it rains. So if it would have rained and they all had slicks on, they would have had to try to finish that race on slicks or race direction stops on safety grounds on safety grounds. Yeah. But the riders couldn't stop it because, oh, hey, it's starting to rain.

Or anyway, small point against safety. We're OK on to race day. So this motor to race is declared to be dry. Agur can be world champion. The simple math is if he finishes in the top five, anywhere in the top five, he will have enough points that he will be world champion.

With the amount of races that are with two races left to go. So that is what we're doing as far as the calculations that we're going to try to keep here as we go in. Started the race. It's going to be the full distance. It's going to be the 22 laps.

I agree. It gets the whole shot followed by Kinnett, Marrera and Arbolino. Then as they got down to turn three, man, it's like, can it just, you know, goes in, layer leads. Furman, Altegr has a crash at turn five. Then Arbolino is taken out of that as a result of that crash.

That's there. Then at 12, Lopez and Marrera barge into one another. And they barged not Igera down to, I believe, sixth place or fourth place at the beginning of the race. So the first lap was pretty much chaos for the boys in Moto two. Thought there had been more penalties that would have been thrown out for it.

But, you know, that first lap, everybody sort of gets away with murder. And when you know that you can get away with murder, you will become an axe murderer is just that is how how that works. I'm sorry. I can tell you that from firsthand experience for sure. Lopez had a blunder at turn five on lap 20 to go.

Kinnett, Ramirez, Dixon was up front now. He had come from nowhere to be there. Then it was Binder and Marrera. Igera was now six. He was, you know, he's six.

He's got to get one more place. So Igera then goes by Binder. It was pretty rough. Igera did put it did barge him around a little bit. But Binder was at the curb, wasn't necessarily over the curb.

So they left that one go. I was holding my breath for a minute because now I got fifth place so he can be world champion. And then you're like you're waiting for the long lap of inconvenience to show up for irresponsible riding or something. Just, you know, it just I had that scare that was going on. Igera had gotten by Binder, as we said.

You know, Binder went to the car park. I mean, did he really have to go there? He could have finished the turn, I think, where he was. He was just out on the curb and he decided, oh, I'm going to go farther. Well, there was that like sausage type curb that's at the end of the curbing that he kind of bounced over.

I don't know about that one, but he was definitely out there for sure. So it's still leading over Ramirez. Igera gets by Arenas to become fourth. Binder then is down and out at turn eight. And then we got 13 laps to go.

Igera gets by Morbidelli, more Morbidelli, gets by Marrera. So Igera is now third. So Igera has worked himself to the podium. Kinet and Ramirez are still there with Igera now third. Then Igera got by Ramirez at turn three.

He took the he took the undercut. You know, some people go in wide squared off. Some people want to diamond it and shoot it back out. Igera was able to get in there, get that. So he's actually second, second, second position.

At that point, we got to to seven laps to go. There were spots of rain. The rain flag, the white one with the red cross on it, was being displayed in certain corners of the track with the rain there with five to go. Kinet's ahead of Igera and Ramirez. And then Chantra had now moved his way to fourth.

So again, we're sort of focused on the front battle with Igera. Where where is he at? We're not seeing what's happening in the back of the pack. But we did. They did at least like, whoa, hey, here comes Chantra at the very end.

So for him to be fourth was great with two laps to go. The red flags come out. It's now raining. They don't want to they don't want to get into a situation here. And so they just basically call it at that point.

That meant that Kinet would get the win. I think that's Kinet's second or third third win now, I think, overall that he's had because I know I think things third. Then Igera would finish second, which made Igera the world champion. So Igera is the first Japanese champion of the Moto two class, and he's the first Japanese champion. I can't I did not write it down on my notes as to who was how long it's been since there was a Japanese champion in the two.

I think it was Harada. It was no. Was it Aoki who won the very last 250 title? It was whoever won the first the very last 250 title was the last Japanese champion. So that was 2009.

I think 2008 was the last 250 champion. Was it Hiroshi Iyama? Maybe I might be that I might be. If he won the championship. I think he did.

I think he was the last champion. I know that you're a Kato one prior to that. But then you're going back to 2001, 2002, maybe. So, yeah, we'd need to check on that. But yes, I mean, it's been a long time.

So a long time. Yeah. It's good for Japan to have, you know, given the team years, the relative doldrums that they're in from a manufacturer's point of view. At the minute, it's great for them to have a rider that's doing well. It is.

I mean, HRC is prominently on the shoulder of Iger's leathers. And I'm willing to bet a dollar against a doughnut that those three letters will be on his leathers at trackhouse. Oh, I thought you were going to say that they would disappear. No. Yeah.

Interesting. I firmly believe that they will be on his leathers at trackhouse. I am a firm believer of that one. I mean, I know we've commented on it before and certainly think when I either I'll Martin had chatted to Simon Patterson back earlier in the year or back in the last year, he pointed out certainly to me about the HRC affiliation still being on Iger's leathers and the fact that he rides for the MT helmet squad and still has an array. So he's very supported from Japan, which, you know, shouldn't come as a big surprise.

But there are, you know, a few kind of lines being crossed in terms of what you would normally see with sponsorship deals, given potential kind of clashes of interest. Let's just put it that way. So, yeah, interesting, Jim. Let's keep careful note of that next year. In terms of what he's got on his shoulder.

Yeah, like you, I was checking it out just to remind myself if it was still there. Although he had his sort of wins bit on him, part Fermi, you could just see the RC bit, couldn't you? So it was still there. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see if that level of sponsorship, because you must assume that Honda Racing Corporation still hope that he will be the prodigal son that potentially comes across in a year or two's time.

You know, at the end of the day, these riders are going to go for the best competitive package they can get onto if they can establish themselves within any given category. So they'll be hoping beyond hope. I would imagine that Iger might be a potential target still to come back home as they will see it. Sure. He is down the line.

Yeah. With that, with Iger being second, he is world champion. Then Ramirez finishes off the podium. Chantra for fourth in his home country. Great ride for him.

I mean, the crowd was just going crazy for him. Then Marrera, Guevara, Dixon, Arenas, Gonzalez, Ancho, Lopez, Garcia, with only four points finishing in 12th. Sasaki, Flatsch and Navarro take the last and Navarro takes the last point. Then we move to the championship, as we said. This puts Iger on 261 points.

He is 60 points clear of Aaron Kinnett. So with two races left in 50 points available, he then is world champion. Garcia has now slipped to third as Kinnett is second. And he is a full 22 points behind Aaron Kinnett, which is crazy. Outaguer is only four behind Garcia.

And if Outaguer would have stayed on the bike, he would probably be ahead of Garcia. I think it's a foredrawn conclusion that Outaguer finishes third in the championship for sure. Then after that, fifth is Gonzalez, then Lopez, Joe Roberts is sunk to seventh. Dixon, Vietti and Arbolino in the top 10. Rich, anything else for the Moto two guys before we hop to Moto GP?

Did we touch upon Outaguer's Bopar at the beginning of the race? I mean, he was completely out of control, didn't he? Yeah, he completely and utterly. We didn't go into it in detail, and I guess we should have at that point. But yeah, he completely and totally blew the corner.

It was he had no intention of being able to stop that motorcycle heading into that corner whatsoever. And he just plowed into everybody and anybody that was there. I mean, he used them as a break. They were the berm to his excitement. Who did he take out?

He took two riders with him, didn't he? And I'm just trying to because I didn't make notes because because of where I was. I don't remember. But I'm wondering if he will get a penalty of some description at Malaysia this weekend. Yeah, because I mean, it's hard to see that he won't have some form of penalty for that move because he was effectively off the bike and crashing before he even touched another rider going into that corner.

From my notes, I just had that out of your grass, the turn five taking out our Bolino. He had come from a very, very. Yeah. Yeah. He had taken it for come from a very, very long distance back.

Has no way he was going to stop the bike. And then a laugh or two later, the stewards decided that they would review this after the race. And I have not been I have not seen or heard anything about what penalty out of may receive for the Malaysian round. I've got to believe he's going to get three grid place penalty. I think that's probably going to be the norm.

I mean, they could give him a double long lap, but I don't know. I think it'd be easier for them just to give him a three three place grid penalty there. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he'll get something for that. And capping off a pretty wretched weekend for poor old Tony Arbolino. Oh, I get a feel for Tony.

And I kind of feel for out of here. I don't know for a guy who was dominant at the end of the season on that chassis on Thon Labs. And then he, you know, has not figured the Pirelli out. I mean, that's the only thing I can think of because Lopez looks good on the bike, but he does win on it. That's the strange part is that he, you know, you can say, well, he just doesn't understand the Pirelli.

Well, he's won two or three races on the Pirelli on that bike. He won a Qatar at the beginning of the year, if I remember correctly. He had another win somewhere. Did he win at Aragon? I think maybe I don't.

It's a bit fuzzy right now for me. Possibly. But somewhere. So he's won a couple, at least a couple of races, if not three. And you're going, what is wrong with him?

Like, it's hot and cold. And I don't know if it's like I was trying to think if it was like temperature related, because I know he won a Qatar, but that's a night race. And it's it's cooler there, but still warm and humid. If you'll take that one. So, you know, again, he won and he was looking fairly good here in Thailand, kind of like a warm temperature thing.

I just don't know what's wrong. I'd love to know. I'd love to be able to ask like what, you know, I mean, he's know to Jim, go find him a Kota and say, what? Why didn't you gel with in last year with it? Because you should have been the dominant winner of a Moto two world championship, but you didn't.

This is the championship that nobody wanted to win, in all honesty. Yeah. You kind of got that feeling. It was like it was all all over the place. You know, you thought maybe Roberts was going to have a shot at it, but then injuries, misfortune, bad judgment.

Garcia was then the runaway champion at that point. And suddenly he doesn't get a ride on a Moto GP bike and it just comes crashing down on him. Iagura just basically didn't decide to show up until halfway through the season. But Iagura was recovering from a very bad wrist injury that I, you know, even though I think he rode some last year after it healed, I don't think he was race fit until this year. And even then, I don't think he was comfortable with how his wrist was working until halfway Silverstone in August, because that's when he finally started to come alive.

And then just like the perfect storm of Iagura, just, you know, consistently being there. So very weird championship. It has been a particularly odd championship this year with people kind of shining briefly and then just falling away again. I mean, let's not forget, I mean, Dixon had a real purple patch in the sort of the last or the beginning of the final third of the season. He's kind of just dropped away again.

As you say, the strange case of Sergio Garcia. I mean, Iagura taking nothing away from him. He's an absolutely worthy champion, but it's kind of been done on stealth in a way. Well, that's kind of how it feels to me. I mean, it's one of two or three races, I think, hadn't it?

And I've yet is popped up once or twice. You know, it's just been very sort of topsy turvy championship. And Aldegu is a real head scratcher. Having said all of that, I mean, he was attracting, if you remember, at the beginning of last year, before he went on that kind of rip at the end of the year. I think I'm right in remembering that around the time of Argentina, which was at the beginning of last season.

I think it was last season, not the season before. They didn't have Argentina last year. OK, so it was the season before then he was kind of being kind of linked to the Aprilia squad at that point in MotoGP and decided to stay put, which I think was the right decision. Maybe just sort of like one of these little kind of short sweet spots of form at the end of last year. And it kind of clouded people's judgment a little bit because he has been kind of up and down prior to that and ever since.

But then again, as we've just said, so pretty much the entire Moto2 field. So it's really hard to judge, isn't it? And throw in different tires, as you say, Jim, and that's kind of added another level of complexity and jeopardy, I suppose. The impressive one in a way, and it kind of feels almost like a redemption in a way, is Aaron Kinnett, because I mean, he's doing a bit of a firm in AltaGa this year, in terms of this form that he's finding at the end of the season. Having been Mr.

Second Place, he's now won a few races and he's starting to look like a guy that can keep that kind of momentum going, given the amount of experience that he has. Doesn't appear to have a problem with the tires. And he seems to me that he's stopped crashing out of kind of race winning opportunities, which was his bigger kill his heel before. So he'll be an interesting one to watch next year. I don't know if he's confirmed to be staying at that same team next year.

I can't say that I know. We'll need to just double check on that and perhaps we'll touch back on what's going on in Moto2, you know, in a short two's time. But yeah, odd season, really odd season. But yeah, Igera, worthy winner. I don't think anybody can take that away from him.

And it's nice. I always think it's nice for a guy that's going up to the next class and obviously the premier class in this particular case to go up with the championship in his hands. So, yeah, well done to him. Yes. Well done, Diagora.

Moving to MotoGP. In the first qualifying session, well, all the KTNs are there except Mr. Acosta. Then Digia is in this one along with Alash. Alash has been terrible the last few races.

I think he's... Tired. But all season, really. Yeah. So then the Hondas and the Yamahas are there as well.

So halfway through Digia, Quattroraro. Quattroraro just riding his absolute butt off to do anything with the bike, which is amazing. Then Binder and Miller. Quattroraro had the save of the year. I mean, he was front end completely gone and basically just threw the elbow out and down, picked it up, waited for it to grab and did and caught it.

But that pretty much used up his tire. So he wasn't going to be over there. That was at turn five, which is a pretty fast corner, to be honest. Binder and Quattroraro at the top. But Digia has got a red helmet coming at the end of it.

Digia would take the first position ahead of that. And you had a head of it. And Quattroraro would go through as well. So we get to the second session. You had Martin and Marquez.

They both had errors on their first lap, so they didn't get the best and the best lap in. But Benyai would move to the pole position. Then Mark and Martin lose time in that four sector. Like Benyai is really strong on the brakes. He's very good at braking into the really slow turns.

He's very adept of being the latest of the late breakers and somehow hauling it down and still parking it at the apex, then shooting that Ducati out. He's perfected that move and it got him to the front. So then we got Marquez is waiting around for Martin. And now he gets behind Martin and he's following along, but he loses the front and crashes. And that's another mistake for Marquez that you just sit there and go, wow, just another one here.

I just cannot believe that he did this again. Then Martin fell, which was a shock that Martin had fallen off. He was really going for it because Simon was talking about how for Martin, he's got to go for it. He has to ride his style. He's got to be aggressive.

That helps him to focus. And maybe you focused a little too much there, Jorge, just just a smidge, maybe. I'm not sure. But, you know, hey, he was going for it. I have to applaud him for that.

But I'm thinking we're this far along. And I know it's a psychological warfare that's going on between you and Benyaya. And if you claim a pole position over Benyaya, you put the doubt into Benyaya. I get it. I get why he did it.

But wow. But Benyaya set a one twenty eight point seven lap to take the pole. Bascinini was next. Then Mark, then Martin Zarco had a crash that kind of botched a few people there at the end because of the yellow flag. It turned one.

But Bezeky would come to come good at fourth. Marquez would slide down to fifth. Quattro had another just absolutely fantastic lap to be sixth on the Yamaha. Then Acosta in seventh and then DG Antonio, Alex Marquez, Mavrick Vinales, Morbidele, then Zarco because he did have that crash. That is where we were now of interest here, I think, was the fact that Benyaya was somewhat miffed at his crew because he came back.

He had to come back in after he set his pole lap. And then they were talking back and forth to his crew chief. And he I mean, Benyaya has never really animated. I mean, he is the definition of ice cold. Come to find out that he was upset because the bike had been short fueled.

So there wasn't enough fuel nor enough time to put fuel in the bike to get him out to do a practice start. That, I thought, was interesting. Like Benyaya has not had the best starts. I think Martin is sort of the man on a mission of starts. He seems to just get fantastic ones.

And Benyaya didn't get a chance to. And that's been sort of his problem has been the start. So it's like, well, OK, this is cannot probably go well. But we would see what would happen when we got to the sprint race in the sprint. Benyaya bagged a whole shot and Martin went deep into turn one and he pushed that Benyaya out wide.

That allowed Bashtanini and Mark Marquez to get right there and get in there. Bashtanini would come out of this with would come in and get into out of this in the lead. And then you had Benyaya and Marquez are now fighting each other. And Acosta is there as well. Now, Martin is dropped back to basically sixth place.

Then Martin got by Acosta at five. Acosta was down at turn three. The kids still having crashing problems, which is a bit shameful. But he's where he was. Then we had Bashtanini out front still.

Benyaya, then Martin there. Now, Mark Marquez was now fourth. Then Martin got by Benyaya. So that was interesting. But then Martin got a track limits warning was five laps ago.

Bashtanini was leading Martin, Benyaya, Mark Marquez, then Alex Marquez at two to go. Martin was wide at three, which I thought Maiwee would give Marquez a chance to get to the podium. It did not. Bashtanini wins the race. Martinez, second Benyaya is third.

Mark Marquez is fourth, his brother, Alex fifth and Morbidele Bizecki, DG Antonio, Brad Bender, Quattraro. Quickly, Rich, before I let you have a say on the sprint. Interesting. DG Delinia does not go anywhere near the podium. Celebrations for his rider.

He goes to the pit for the Grissini and talks to Mark Marquez. And they had a very long conversation. And it was in Gigi was kneeling down, looking at Mark in his chair, nodding along, going, uh-huh. OK, taking the mental notes of what this guy needs to have a motorcycle that will win a world championship. If I'm Pekko Benyaya, I'm not real happy that Gigi's over there.

Just saying. Well, Marquez is the new toy, isn't he? But I don't know. Actually, that's probably not the right way to put it. He's the shiny new thing.

Let's put it that way. Well, he's the shiny old thing, really. But yes. I mean, clearly Gigi Delinia, yeah, sort of short of throwing rose petals in the path of wherever Mark Marquez goes. He's almost sort of metaphorically does that, doesn't he?

Through his enthusiasm to go and debrief with him after each race or session, even sometimes. So, yeah, interesting psychology going on there. The other thing, Jim, just to say about the sprint race results, top eight bikes, Ducati's. Yeah, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, Ducati, KTM. Scary, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. I mean, an odd really, because we started off the year with the hopes that Aprilia would continue to make forward progress, which early on in the season they did. Let's not forget most of the garros discussed, but, you know, that dominant weekend at Cota that Maverick had on the Aprilia, you know, Acosta has been a bit up and down, but, you know, the KTM is clearly not there at the minute and the Ducati's have just continued to move forward, haven't they? And, you know, top eight places in the sprint is pretty shocking. I mean, brilliant if you're Ducati, but a bit sobering if you're anybody else.

Very true. Now we get to race day. The rain has arrived and it has been bucketing down at different, you know, there's, I think, 45 ish minutes between the end of the Moto2 race and the MotoGP race, and it's been bucketing down. And when they start to go out for the bikes, that's they're talking about, you know, what's going to happen and whatnot. It's obviously tricky.

Oh, sorry. Let's go back. Benya, it comes out race morning that Benya is a little upset about track limits. He himself counted Martin being off four times. And then he says something really interesting that I didn't catch.

You're only allowed to do it twice in a sprint race before you have to take a long lap penalty. But in the main race, you can do it three times before you're allowed to take the penalty or you get a penalty. Like I didn't realize that there was a difference between the sprint and the race. Makes sense though. I mean, when I stop thinking about it.

But he's like, oh, maybe I was just mistaken. I mean, to me, to me, I look at that and I admit that there was one that was really close. They've got sensors there to determine whether it's going to happen or not. To me, when he's thinking about that, he's not necessarily thinking about racing, which means that I, to me, I think it's advantage Martin because I think Martin has gotten underneath Benya's skin. Benya is never going to admit to it.

No one's going to say Benya is having a bad time mentally. You know, at this stage, at this stage, before the sprint or before the main race, I'm thinking it's advantage Martin because we're talking about something that you can't control. You can complain. But there's one thing to complain about. And there's another thing about carry on.

It seemed like, you know, Benya, I want to at every turn want to talk about track limits, which I thought was just interesting. Yeah, it's a bit sort of chip on the shoulder, isn't it? Some of them going on. There's some there, but, you know, so on the side lap, Alex Marquez crashes. He seemed confused as to whether he wanted to try to pick up that bike or if you want to ride back to the pits or what he what what what what what what am I going to do?

I mean, he was perfectly OK. It's a low speed tip off. And the thing was, it was like, hey, you got to get the bike back because if it's a flag, the flag and if this rain stops and at that time the rain had stopped, the track was just wet. If it dried, you wanted you needed another bike to be have slicks on. You know, so it was like, OK, that whole mess is all going on or whatever.

And you're waiting to see what's going to happen. Everyone went to the grid on a medium front and a medium rear wet, which happens to have a harder compound on the the right side because there's more rights than there are lefts here. The softs are just a soft compound. I didn't realize that they had that the medium wets had two compounds on them. But that was new.

There's a little bit of information I did not know. Makes sense. I understand why you would do that. But everybody was going to be on the reins as it starts. Martin and Quattrarro, who got an absolutely just blinder of a start and to the point where people were thinking that Martin and Quattrarro kind of maybe cheated the light a little bit.

But, you know, they looked back at all the replays and found that neither of them had done those two just had great starts as it came about. But, you know, Benyaya was there as that today's guys got by. Then Mark goes by. So Martin is leading Benyaya, followed by Marquez, Quattrarro, Acosta and then Binder. So a little bit of a shuffle through the first couple of turns.

I think we expected all that. There was definitely some feeling out of the racetrack because there was quite a bit of spray that was coming off of the bikes. And you just didn't know what was going to happen as far as track conditions, track dry out. But in this situation like this, you kind of favor Marquez a little bit because he's sort of the master of these if he conditions, plus he has nothing to lose. So he's probably going to push it.

We had Bezeky down at turn one and then Quattrarro and Morbidelli make contact and Quattrarro is down. A long lap penalty was given to Morbidelli for basically knocking Quattrarro down. Sorry, Morbidelli fans, but he just pretty much just clotted him. And again, it's kind of like who we were talking about earlier, needing the penalty for clotted. Oh, Outagher.

You know, it looked like Outagher. It was just it was completely too late, out of control. And, you know, hub, wah, wah. You know, you're there. And there we go.

Right. Martin would go wide at turn three and he falls back to third. So it's Benyaya followed by Marquez, followed by Martin. Binder's fourth, then Miller, then Acosta. So Miller worked his way through the wet, you know, magically to get himself there.

Morbidelli then falls down at turn eight, although he did have a really good long lap. He went through that really quick for free being wet and probably not having gone through there that much over the weekend. He went there. He went. He did a great job of going through it.

It's still Benyaya and Marquez out front. Martin has closed things up a little bit. Bastianini's kind of coming, but we're wondering where the beast actually is going to wind up. And, you know, then Mark Marquez makes his first attempt at getting past Benyaya by trying to outbreak him at 12. It's a tough go, but then I would hang on.

Martin was then off at turn four and he was coming back on the track. He was flirting with the limits. He went way beyond it there. Not sure what Martin was thinking there of his concentration, but he likes to ride fast and hard, so his concentration is acute. But for some reason, he was having a little rough go in the rain.

So the top three guys have a three second gap to Miller, Bender and Acosta. Mark tries at 12 again and Benyaya cuts back underneath because Mark gets at 12. He can't get it. Woad. He goes wide.

Benyaya, Benyaya, the smart racer that he is, stays out, cuts under, uses the drive of the Ducati down the go. Now you're thinking, OK, Mark's got some data here. He's going to have to do something. He's going to have to mix it up a little bit. He's not going to really probably get it or he's going to have to try late in the race, the last lap, second to last lap at 12.

Needs to probably look at maybe, you know, he's not. It can't get to him at three. Benyaya's Ducati is much quicker in a straight line than Marquez's. So he's thinking maybe you're thinking five is a possibility, perhaps maybe 10 is a possibility. So I'm thinking like, well, where's Marquez going to go and do his thing?

Well, before I can figure out where Marquez is going to do his thing, he does his thing by falling at turn eight. Yeah. I mean, unnecessary. But I mean, it's a wet race, isn't it? Such high margins.

And yeah, well, I mean, we've said all season long that we believe and let's assume we're partly right, if not fully. Mark is having to kind of override that bike to stay with the 24 bikes. So I think you can give him a bit of a let. If we were fast forward into this race, same conditions next year, and it's him and Anaya on the works. You know which way he went.

Well, Mark makes a similar mistake is the point I'm making. Then you can say, well, OK, that's maybe less one that you can sort of let him off for. But I think the fact that he's on the old 23 bike is possibly does show itself from time to time. But then again, Marquez does have a habit through his career of just crazy pushing and occasionally overstepping the mark. So I mean, he very, very nearly saved it, Jim, didn't it?

It was really just tried that took the front away from him. Otherwise, had he not been on the curve, I think he would have saved that and he would have carried on in second place. Yeah, even in the last there. Yeah, he would have. Yes, by all means, he would have carried on and probably won within to go.

Ben Yaya has got a two point seven lead on Martin, who has a one point nine second lead on Miller Binder and Acosta Acosta goes by Binder with five to go. So he's fourth. The question was, can Acosta stand on the podium with three to go? Acosta does get by Miller and they go back and forth through three, four, five and six. Finally, Acosta gets by all of that and he is going to stand on the podium.

Then Yaya runs home with the victory. Martin finishes second Acosta with a well earned podium in the wet on a MotoGP bike. I thought he was probably the rider of the race for me. Just by that loan. DJ Antonio with a great fourth, then Miller, Miller and Binder.

Again, you are talking about a rain race. Acosta gets to the podium and Miller and Binder were a good three to four seconds slower than what Acosta was. Yeah. Anyway, then Yaya's was seventh and Zarco a splish. Alex Marquez, Mark Marquez, we credit it with 11th because he did remount after his off.

He just, you know, as high up as he could get. Marini was 12th Takenaka Gami. So the Honda is making some points there. And then Baschini was 14th, then Mir and Quattrarara was 16th. So that's how the race finished.

Let's look at the championship and what this does to it. Martin is on 453. Ben Yaya is now on 436. That's a 17 point gap. All Martin has to do in the next four races is finish second and Ben Yaya and he's world champion.

Yeah, the maths are looking pretty slim. But as we saw, Martin's obviously going to be running hard. Track limits may be an issue somewhere. He may get zapped with a long lap penalty. He may not get a good start on the Ducati and be buried in the pack somewhere.

And Mark Marquez is out for blood. I don't think he gives one iota, whether Martin or Ben Yaya is around him at all. He's going for it. And that's kind of what you like about the guy, to be honest. But it does leave the championship in firmer hands now for Martin.

I won't say that he's got he has one hand firmly on it. Let's say that a lot can happen in these sprints. A lot can happen in the races themselves. We're going to Malaysia, hot, humid, could be a tropical thunderstorm shows up. Could be a flag to flag.

You have no clue. You know, the weather in Valencia may not be worth anything and it could be crappy all weekend. Who knows? But that's where it is. Marquez has now got a fairly firm grip on third.

He's 80 points behind Ben Yaya, but Bastionini is only 11 behind him. But Bastionini is hot and cold. And if I had to pick, I'd take Marquez over Bastionini for third in the championship. Bender is fifth. Then Acosta is in sixth place.

And basically he is only six points behind Bender. So it's very possible that Acosta could finish as the lead KTM in the championship. I wouldn't put it past the kid doing that. Vignolo is the seventh, Giontonio eighth and ninth, Morbidele in tenth, Alessio Spargrove. And that is what we have from Thailand, Rich.

Anything else to add? Not really for Thailand. I mean, Ben Yaya, you can certainly say that he on his good days. And he does have more good days and bad days. It must be said, you know, he is rock solid psychologically when he's under pressure.

And I mean, he was under a lot of pressure in that race. I mean, he could not afford a crash. He had Marquez all over him. He couldn't afford to lose to Marquez either, to be honest with you. He couldn't afford for anything to go wrong really.

And so it was a pretty masterful race by him, given the conditions, both in terms of the weather and obviously the psychological pressure of where he's at in the championship, which is not in a great place, as you say, because of the fact that Martin doesn't even need to win any more races this year, provided he finishes second. Yep. However, having said all of that, it just feels to me this year feels with these two like there's something's going to happen. Somebody's going to drop the ball somewhere. You know, I wouldn't call Basjinenia in Malaysia because he did win there last year.

So it's a track that he goes well at. And OK, he didn't have a great Thailand race, but he did have a good couple of rounds before that, and I think he'll finish off the year strong. He needs to really, because he's obviously getting off the Ducati. So at the end of the season and going on to the KTM, which will be a bit of a probably a bit of a shock to the system for him. So, yeah, I can foresee one or two surprises still coming.

It just feels like that's likely to happen because Martin and Bagnar do have a habit of dropping the ball at various points, don't they? It's which one blinks really now, isn't it? It's a real game of cat and mouse, I think. The other point I was going to say, Jim, just spotting it in the points, because you kindly put the table up on the screen there. Almost as important as who wins between Bagnar and Martin is that battle for fifth between Acosta and Binder, isn't it?

Because that's a bit of a trials and measurement operation going on there as well in terms of who takes precedence in the works team, given that they'll be teammates next year. So there's a lot riding on those six points at the minute. So that one is worth keeping an eye on. Yeah, I think that's where my attention is, is there as well as at the top. But as a subset of it, watching what happens there is going to be interesting.

One thing we didn't mention in the news, Jim, is just very, very briefly, as it occurs to me, although they've come out and sort of vehemently denied any impact on the racing activities, the appearance ability group is I think that the KTM brand is part of posted some pretty bad financial results this week just gone, I think it was, which has cast a bit of spotlight on other areas of spend within the group with one or two doom sort of days kind of insinuating that this might bite into the racing activities a little bit. They've come out and said absolutely no, they'll work their way through their commercial issues in terms of road bike sales and off road bike sales, etc, etc. I mean, KTM, let's not forget with all the various sub brands heavily invested in all sorts of different categories of motorsport, all two wheeled motorsport anyway. So, you know, they've got fingers in lots of pies and MotoGP is obviously one of the premier things that they're doing, certainly in terms of road racing, at least, and is a significant financial burden to them, it must be said. So that hopefully isn't something that's going to play any part in the coming few years, but they are rationalizing back to KTM.

So Gas Gas we know is going, I think the Husqvarna name is going to disappear as well, bit by bit. So I think this is partly the reason why those sorts of activities are going on is to kind of, you know, just kind of simplify things a little bit and streamline where they can, but slightly concerning because it's not a great time to be in the business of selling motorbikes for any manufacturer at the moment. Yeah, the Red Bull has got a big checkbook, so don't worry about it. Yeah, as long as people keep guzzling the energy drinks, you know, there's hope Ditto Monster and the various other ones as well. Yeah.

OK, so that's it from Thailand. Yeah, real quick, Rich. We've talked about this. This is your three favorite race win celebrations, the podium of race win celebrations from any time. Give me your podium.

Give me your third place on the podium and I'll give you mine. OK, I've got a couple of vulnerable mentions which I'll come to at the end, but I've thought long and hard about this, but I mean, I think we might be somewhat aligned here, but so number three on my list is here not because it was a great one, but it was because it was a really stupid one, but that made it great. And that was Jorge Lorenzo jumping in the pond at Haaretz. Don't ask me which year it was, but in full leathers and a helmet at the end of her race, jumps into a lake and almost drowns or got potentially into a bit of difficulty and realized the folly of that endeavor fairly quickly. So that would be my number three, perhaps.

Yeah, stupid one that was quite funny because let's not forget Lorenzo caught a fair bit of flak, I think, to be honest, justifiably because he did do a bit of a copycat kind of thing, whether it was to try and emulate in a sort of flattery sort of. I don't think it was that I think it was to try and sort of get under Valentina Ross's skin at the time. And they always felt a bit flat to me, but that one was kind of quite amusing because it was so disastrous. OK, I have one honorable mention. We'll do that later.

But my third place on the podium, Valentina Rossi with the Claudia Schiffer doll. OK, because of what Biagi and him when the rivalry that they had in two fifties, I thought that was just absolutely over the top, funny and creative and fun. So that's who I have in the third place. Second place on your podium, Rich. Well, Claudia Schiffer.

Yeah, I said, OK, I'm pretty sure it was Rossi in one two fives or two fifties when he pulled this one off. I thought it was two fifties. It could have been because that's probably when Biagi had come back from five hundreds and went back to two fifties and was running off the four titles on the ponder is when that happened. I believe I believe I could be wrong. Yeah, I seem to be well to be.

I had the four two fifties on the bounce than they then went up to five hundreds, almost beat McDoone in the first season in five hundreds as I recall, but didn't quite make it and then just never really kind of chilled, never really kind of had another serious go at it, as I recall anyway. But with Rossi coming up, that's what the Italian rivalry started to really kick in. And I think at the time around this time, Biagi was either seen dating or made a big play about the fact that he was going out with Naomi Campbell, who was obviously one of the models at the time. And so hence the blow up doll with Schiffer, Claude or Claudia stenciled on the back. It was an absolute kind of kicking the nuts digger.

Biagi by Rossi, who knew that they were going to have some fairly tasty battles to come, and they weren't even in the same category at this point, let's not forget. So this was definitely Rossi doing the whole mind game. I'm coming for you every which way trick. And it was really was, you know, a signal of things to come. And for that reason alone, it's on the list for me because, a, it was very, very funny and B, it was ruthless as well.

And that was what Rossi was. I mean, what was it? Michael Scott, one of my favorite motor GP journalists said, I think it's in the film faster, actually talking about Rossi says, people should never forget what he is behind the smile. He's a ruthless assassin. That was a great example of the way he would go about doing stuff to get people brilliant.

Yeah. OK. So second place on for me was Jorge, the renter at Le Mans, where he got off the bike, got the chair and sat and watched the big screen and ate popcorn. I loved that one because I thought it was of all the ones Lorenzo did. I thought that was his best one because I didn't really like the astronaut thing, but I thought that one was really cool.

Hey, I'm going to eat popcorn and I'm going to watch a movie on the big screen. What better way to celebrate it when so I take that at second place. So that leaves us to your position. Let's do honorable mention before we go to the top spot. OK.

Give me honorable mentions quick. Honorable mention would be Rossi with the broom, which was his kind of retort for the Qatar thing. So it was a bit of a digger, Jibunow and the Grissini squad at the time, sort of dobbling him in on that. So that was one. And then the other one was again, it's Rossi.

I mean, these are all Rossi from him. Pretty much was the ball and chain where again, I think it was probably 2003. Rossi lost a few races to Jibunow and he was getting a bit of heat from the Italian press, I think it was at the time. So, you know, the whole ball and chain thing was then sort of holding him back or they wanted to send him to prison. So he kind of came out with the striped suit on.

It's just a real piss tape. He was very, very good at. So my honorable mention is Pedro Acosta pulling the pizza box out at Mugello. Yeah, I thought that was pretty clever. So, yeah, good Spanish guy beats the Italians home turf.

Hey, have a pizza. Yeah. Rossi-esque. Rossi-esque. Give me your number one position on the number one.

And I don't really understand what the point of it was, but it was the Rossi-Portolou incident. That's my number one. Yeah. I mean, it's just like a totally random thing. And was it at Mugello?

I'm trying to think where it was. I don't remember where it was. But the thing of it to me was it implied that, OK, I won the race, immediately stop, run to the portal, let pee and come back. And the whole part of it was the only reason I went so fast was because I had to pee. That was how I took it.

OK, well, maybe that's what it was. And I think that is the best one that's ever been done. It's just absolute classic. Yeah, it was just very, very funny, basic level. I mean, you know, I'm British, so anything to do with toilets is just immediately hilarious, no matter what the context is.

So, yeah. I mean, the thing about Rossi is I can't really think of anybody before him that did this sort of thing. He kind of invented the concept of the crazy stunt after winning, didn't they? Yep. The championship celebrations were his idea, too.

You know, the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for when he had seven titles at that time. So, yeah, did he not do a bowling alley one as well? Or was that the Seven Dwarfs? Maybe that was the same thing. I might be misremembered.

There are a lot of them. There's so many of them. It's a little bit like, you know, as I've said before, I'm a sort of dyed in the wool heavy metal music fan. And people say, you know, the song Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath is the defining heavy metal song and everything else is interpretation. And with post-race celebrations, it's like these kind of key Rossi ones define the art and everything else is really just a copycat or an interpretation on the theme.

So the only thing I will say is one thing that's starting to get a little bit tiresome to me is the whole gold leathers and gold crash helmet thing, because everybody does it. And it's like it's not really that special anymore. So I wish people would just sort of get on with their slow down lap and just go in and celebrate with their team rather than these. I mean, as much as I love Topper at Razzicati Ogno, and I really, really do. That was a self-indulgence gone mad.

What he did the last round when he deservedly won the championship, but spent like 10 minutes in a pretend cardboard alien ship changing into more thinking, what's he going to come out as? You know, like a big bird or something. No, it was bloody gold leathers and a gold crash helmet. It's really we've just waited 10 minutes for that. It's all a bit tiresome and predictable, really.

So I wish they'd come up with something a little bit different. But yeah, nobody will ever really beat the Porta Lu for me. No, nobody will. OK, that's it for this show, guys. We're back next week with the results of what happens in Malaysia until that time, I ask you all to ride safe.

Cheerio.