Marvelous Martin

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 792 for November 23rd, 2024. I'm Jim McDowell, Richard Joud is with me from across the pond, Rich 792, we're 8 away from 800 episodes.

That's pretty crazy. Getting close, yeah, it's kind of end of term or end of semester for the American listeners show this time, isn't it? So yeah, looking forward to just wrapping this season up. Yep, that's what we got to do here, guys. So we're going to go over some email that we got from the listeners.

We're going to talk about the last race. We're going to talk about the testing that happened after that race. And then that'll be this show. And from there, well, we're going to see where it takes us to get us to 800. So with that, let's start off with an email.

Now, this came from Jacob Brower. He's talking about the rules that are going to be in in 27. He says, I don't understand the new 850 CC displacement limit. We tried this before. To me, it seems very obvious how to evolve the rules simply continue to reduce the fuel capacity.

Perhaps I should have asked, do the rules for 25 or 27 include further fuel limits? I do wonder if the power surplus with the 850 CCs will be reduced enough to then reduce the aero drag appetite the bikes currently have, thus reducing aero and in turn the undesirable side effects like tire pressure and general aero madness. So there is some niceties there about the show, which we appreciate, Jacob. So let's get to this whole thing with the 850 CC displacement. So as far as I know, and this could still possibly change, but the 850s are going to be allowed to have 22 liters of fuel, just like we have 22 liters of fuel right now.

This whole idea of going to 850 is a way to slow the motorcycles down. And yes, we've done this and we tried this before with 800s. And if you can remember the Herve Ponsarrell Qatari interview that Rich did, Herve says, well, we're going to 850s because of the bore. We're we force people into a different stroke, which is going to make a longer stroke for the bikes, which means you're going to get a torqueier engine so that they should have some power to drive off of a corner and we shouldn't have the processional racing that we had in the 800 CC era. Now, the 850s is the idea that displacement is reduced because we've got to reduce the speeds because even Qatar, with like its three acres of gravel at the end of turn one, have all got to a point where the bikes are traveling so fast they will get to the hard objects, which we don't want to get to.

So there isn't going to be a reduction in fuel capacity. And remember, 800s at some point, we got those reduced down to 20. Well, I don't think the 800s were ever reduced by fuel capacity. But when we went back to thousands CCs after the 800s, we were allowed 22 liters. But then if you kept the factory electronics, when we had the whole CRT thing, you were allowed to have if you kept your homegrown electronic systems, you got reduced down to 20 liters.

They took two liters away from you. Ducati went with the Magneti Morelli. That's the standard system now. And they were given 22 liters to work with. You stop and think about that for a second, folks.

Rich, help me out here with this. Do you guys sell soda pops in two liter bottles in the UK or in Europe? I don't think you guys do. Not really. I think it's an American thing.

Yeah. So in America, they sell soda with two liter bottles. So it's two liters. So you would need 10 of those to get to 20 liters. Eleven of them get you to 22 liters.

If you ever stood in the grocery store in the US and you had those 11 bottles, you think, holy heck, that is a lot. But it really isn't that much fuel. Anyway, side note, sorry, I defurged from where I was going. What would you expect from me, guys? There's always something else that's there.

But the point being that when we went to thousands and you had your own system, you got 20 liters of fuel. Well, the bikes were so thirsty that they had to do all kinds of crazy things to be able to get those bikes to the end. Like they had their own GPS systems on the bikes, so the bike knew exactly where it was so it could lean itself out and then reaching it back up when you got the corners, which that was what caused Jorge or Jorge Lorenzo to have a huge high side at Lugana Seca once because the bike got confused where it was. One time there was the problem where people would shortcut, Mugello and come back in. So then the GPS didn't know where it was and it got all confusing.

And that really led to processional racing. Let's be honest, because everyone was concerned about fuel. Nobody could race to it. So eventually we got to these standardized electronics and you got back 22 liters. OK, so now we want to try to slow the motorcycle down.

So I don't think you can reduce the speed of the bikes and slow everything down by throwing a fuel limit on the bikes and say, hey, look, you got to do this on 21 liters or on 22 liters. I don't think that's going to work. That's my take on it because they're going to balk at it. First of all, the teams are going to balk because they look, we can't go the distance that you want us to go without having this extra fuel. So that's going to be a nonstarter there.

If we want to reduce the speeds, we have two options, in my opinion. First one is we create a fuel flow limit. I guess there's three. There's three options, really. Sorry.

First one, create a fuel flow limit. You say, look, you can only flow so many liters per second or whatever at a time. So then that way you can't ever get any more power than anybody else. It's the idea that Formula One has. And quite honestly, it's one of the better things that Formula One has done.

And was it 100 kilograms per something or so? I don't remember what it is either way. So the point of it is, it's like you can't violate this flow sensor that says you're flowing only at this rate. So I think that's a way you can slow the MotoGP bikes down if you want to. I think that's probably the better way.

The other way is going to be with the alternative fuels. OK, so we're going to go to carbon neutral fuels in 2027 or near carbon neutral fuels in 2027 right off the bat. They're predicting about a 15 percent reduction in the amount of power that the bikes are going to make because the fuels won't have the octane that's necessary for it to work. Now, eventually these fuels will come around and like anything else, they're going to work on it, develop it, and they're going to get right back to where they were, have that octane, and they're probably going to go just about as fast. So it's not a permanent solution, but it is a way to sort of in the interim, slow them down.

I think the best way to slow these motorcycles down is going to be a more standardized aerodynamic package that each bike has to run. So we can't get crazy with it. We have a set of wings on the front and that's about it. And we very much define where you can and cannot put anything else on that motorcycle. But along with that, you have to make tires that are harder.

Now, I know what you're thinking. They need to have a soft tire to be able to have some grip and some fuel. And you can't go out there in a ball bearing hard tire and race around and have any kind of competitive racing. I get that. Well, let's think about it this way.

This is just an example. If we went to Haureth and at Haureth, Michelin brought a soft rear and a medium rear. Those were your choices. And they had a medium front and a hard front. OK, well, what I want to have happen, say the next time they go to Haureth, is Michelin is not allowed to bring that soft tire again.

The softest tire they can bring is that medium. Therefore, they would have as a rear, they'd have a medium and a hard. That's your two choices. So you're letting them have a decent tire to run on. But it's not the fastest tire that we've seen this year, because there's a lot of races where they have the softs and they use them and they're really fast on them.

But their backup was a medium, which is just about as good, but would have a little more longevity to it. If you do that and you incrementally kind of manipulate that sequence of tires, the guys are going to go slower. Now, my personal take is I don't care if we ever set another track record for how fast somebody got around track. I understand why we want that because it's a headline grabber and people have an attention to it. But to me, I want to see closer racing with three or four guys battling for the podium positions than I do wanting to see people go super fast for one lap.

So that's all that part of it. Now, as far as the aero appetite and stuff for the eight fifties, yeah, they're not going to be able to pull that aero through. If you don't have the horsepower to pull the aero, then you can't put as much aero onto the bike. I would assume giving that that they're going to to trim the bikes out a little bit, give them a little less aero, which should give us better front tire issues and maybe reduce this pressure problem. That's going along with it.

But I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't have that big of an effect on it. So with that, that covers Jacob's email. Great email, Jacob. Love it when you send them in and love it when all you guys send something in for us to talk about and have our opinions on it. Rich, is there anything that you want to add to Jacob's email?

Just a couple of things, Jim, that just occurred to me whilst you've been doing your sort of expert bit, technically giving your view on it. I mean, one of the big complications with reducing fuel is that that would not work in the sprint. Sure. So you have to have a solution to this problem that works in both the sprint and the main race. So fuel flow would be the obvious way to do that.

Again, I'm going to have to throw the ball back to you on this one, Jim. I think part of the reason for the 850 in the way that they've constructed the rules around ball and stroke is also so that we don't fall back into what the big problem in the 800 formula was, which was just sending the revs into the blue sky. You will be limited in revs, I think, here. So they can't just claw back lap time and power. That is true.

The expense of fuel consumption, it's true. But by doing that route, I think they have thought about this very carefully in terms of the 850 rule. But my you could call it a slightly I don't think I wouldn't class it as a cynical take, particularly. I just think it's a kind of realistic take is that we talk often. And we've talked recently about the need for the manufacturers that are pumping millions of dollars or euros, pounds, whatever it is into this sport.

They have to have some trickle down effect in terms of a return on that investment. And I think if you look at the way bike sales are going in terms of road usage, liter bike sales are tanking just about everywhere, certainly in Europe. And I believe that would be the case in America, Jim, as well. North America. Yeah, I think so.

I'm not really 100 percent on that one, because who can tell nowadays what your motorcycle anybody is on. But yes, bike sales are down and the displacements that are selling are more adventure tourer. Those kind of motorcycles here is more capacity. But more capacity. Yes, things that use less fuel, et cetera, et cetera, because there's everybody has targets.

I mean, whether you believe those targets are valid or the right thing to do, that's a different discussion. We won't stray into that area. But it strikes me that it was sensible for the manufacturers to look at 850 as a kind of a midway kind of size of engine that might have practical benefits in terms of road usage in various different genres of road bike, whether it's, as you say, adventure bikes, long distance tourers, scratches, whatever it is. You know, the interesting thing for me going forward as we look down the road to say 2030 and beyond is what the implications of all this are for things like Moto2, because that's already what 675 is it or something like that? It's 765.

Oh, sorry, 765. I'm getting my numbers around the wrong way. So there's going to have to be some sort of an adjustment, I think. And at the same time, obviously, there's been this ongoing discussion about needing to put the size of the Moto3 engines up so that we don't have quite such crazily close pack racing going on. So there's a lot of interesting things going on.

Never mind before you start talking about World Superbike and World Super Sport. Clearly, there is going to have to be an adjustment to the way that those bikes are configured technically as well. So, yeah, I mean, it's a kind of an interesting time. I kind of sensed a little bit from Drake's email, right or wrongly. And, you know, I'm a little bit fearful when they drop capacity down because you immediately think, oh, it's going to make things slow and boring.

And certainly the 800s was not a golden era. But I think the mistakes that were made in the formulation of that technical rules package have been very actively avoided in this 2027 rules set. So let's be hopeful about that. And as you say, Jim, I couldn't give a toss if they went a second quicker anywhere ever again, I would rather see them going five seconds of that slower and racing much more competitively throughout the field, not just at the front. So I think and I hope that that is what we will ultimately see.

But obviously, the fear is that there's some very clever minds up and down the pit lanes, and they will always find a way to get the bikes quicker again and to come up with whiz bang solutions that kind of claw things back or release new genies out of new bottles, which become a problem later on. But for now, at the risk of upsetting Alan, but, you know, personally, I'm happy to see the shape shifters go. I don't think they're really sensible devices that you can make the safety argument, as we've done many, many times, and they have no road application usage whatsoever. So those will be quite significant, I think, in terms of slowing bikes down. If they were electronic, that would be different, but they're not.

They're mechanical. So that's the big distinction for me. So, yeah, that's my kind of take on it. Yeah, in thinking this, and this is only because I just recently saw this as well. If you're at 850 for a MotoGP bike, a 765, 769 Triumph three cylinder is dangerously close to that capacity.

I think the Triumph engine, which I love the three cylinder, should be closer to say a 620, maybe a 625 size. I think that would be better, but I would like to keep the drope that they run now the same and then just decrease the size of the piston. So it's a very torquey engine. If I'm writing the rule book, I would love because Honda just announced a three cylinder, 300 CC forced induction, forced induction motorcycle. It looked cool.

It's very small. 300 CCs. Could we make that the Moto two bike? Work that idea, right? I think forced induction might be a way to sort of get everybody from the one cylinder to 50s to a twin slash three cylinder 300.

And if we want a little if it's not fast enough, how about a little forced induction on it? Just because, right? It's just different then, right? So then I think you don't have a pack race as that goes. Yeah, I mean, like it or loathe it, we do have to extract more from less.

I mean, in all sorts of different walks of life, that's kind of what we've been told we have to do. Again, we could argue to the cows come home and say, you know, as to the veracity of some of these arguments and the merit of some of these arguments. But it is an undeniable fact that car manufacturers, bike manufacturers, certainly in the sporting arena, they're being asked to be more fuel efficient, use less impactful fuels in terms of environmental effects. Again, I'm a bit skeptical about some of this stuff, but we won't go down that road just at the moment. So this is what we're facing.

But if at the end of it, the clever rule makers can design the rules in such a way that we get good racing, irrespective of the fact they might be going a tad slower. I don't have a problem with it, provided the bikes look nice and they sound all right. I'm not kind of a hater of Moto E. Some of the racing has been actually really, really good. But for me, a big part of it, because I'm old fashioned, is kind of the noise and the smell and the feel, particularly when you're track side.

That visceral thing, if you lose that, you lose a lot. So whilst electric bikes will play a role in racing going forward, I think I just understand the need to rein these things in a little bit for a variety of different reasons. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to the 850s. Jake and, you know, hopefully it will deliver up good racing and it won't repeat the mistakes that we've seen in the past. All right, let's move on to some news.

There's only two things we want to cover real quick here. Dennis Foggia is going back to Moto3. He's going to Aspar. I thought that was really interesting. Foggia just, you know, he said he knew it was going to be hard to go to Moto2.

Knew that it was going to be difficult. Didn't think it'd be this difficult for those two years. And he wants to go back to a winner, which you can't really argue with him on that one. And Scott Ogden has now gone to the CIP Green Power. It will be on a KATM and he will team with Noah Detweiler.

So Scott Ogden still stays in the paddock, which is good for you Brits, Rich. Yeah, I'm particularly pleased, obviously, with a slight national bias. It must be divulged. Won't come to a surprise for anybody, but I'm pleased for Scott. He's done good things on the MLab bike.

I think, you know, without hating on MLab, they haven't been running bang up to date equipment. So Scott is one of the taller riders. And so perhaps it'd just be interesting to see him on the KTM rather than the Honda and see how he fares because he's put in sporadic but very good performances. Obviously he's got the talent. He wouldn't be in Moto3 in any team if he didn't have talent and he's had good form at times.

And so, and that's a good little team, that CRP Green Power team. So interested to see what he can achieve there next year. Yep. All right. Let's get into the actual race action that happened at Barcelona.

This last race was at Barcelona as opposed to Valencia because of all the flooding that happened there. They called it the Solidarity GP. It was great to see a lot of people that had come out for it. There was all kinds of donations and things that were done there. So they really did try to do something for the people who had been ravaged by this natural disaster.

So in Moto3 qualifying, in the first qualifying session, Suzuki, Bertolli, Forosato and Yamanaka all get through. Forosato gave it one last gasp and he got in with one last great run. As we went to the second qualifying session, Alonso goes out and basically he's just under the track record. Okay, fine. Everybody else is playing catch up for all that.

Fernandez had a crash at turn five. That is a very tricky turn. Everyone seems to have a rough go of it there. But Alonso would take the pole position. That would give him his seventh pole position, his seventh TISO watch, which meant the pressure was then off of him because he now had a watch for his last crewman.

They all have a watch courtesy of Alonso. Vier would start second. Then Ortola, Piqueras, Holgardo, Lunetta, Fernandez, Forosato, Rolstein and Suzuki made the top 10. From there, we will get to the Moto3 race. Now Rossi had a double long lap pound that he was going to have to take as for slow riding at some point during the weekend or whatever, but we would see what was going to happen.

18 laps, Alonso with a whole shot at the very beginning followed by Ortola, Holgardo, Vier and Piqueras. Nepa was down at turn four and Lunetta was involved in that incident, which he basically just threw it up the inside and used Nepa for a berm. So he got a double long lap pound going into it. Munoz had a great start as well because he moved up to fourth from his 12th place position. Holgardo charged to the front followed by Munoz, Fernandez, Alonso or Ortola and Piqueras.

And he would hold that position for a few laps until eventually Fernandez got by on there. But then Holgardo and Fernandez would battle back and forth for a few laps, trying to decide who had more muscle. But the muscle came in the way of Ortola because we've got that kilometer along straight away. Everybody was just moving around in the draft. So it was just weird that everybody was just all over the place in this one.

But Ortola would go to the front for a little bit. Munoz was there and then they touched that turn five and that kind of skittled the pack a little bit as everybody tried to get around what had gone on there. But Fernandez was still leading and Alonso had got himself to second with about eight laps to go. Typical ride by Alonso, the pattern of events there. We got Ortola got a track limits warning thereafter.

But then with about five to go, Alonso got to the front with Holgardo behind him. For Asado got a track limits warning with about four to go. At three to go, Munoz had got back to the front with Alonso. They had elbows out at turn one. They were going at each other.

Alonso would fall then to fifth as he had a rough go there. So with three to go, Alonso is now back to fifth. Ortola then nerfed Alonso wide at turn four. So Alonso was getting beaten up by the gang here with about three laps. I think they'd realized that Alonso's game plan was always to be there at the end.

But hey, people, you got to rough the kid up maybe. So, OK, we're going to try that tactic. That tactic did fail because Alonso would go past everybody on a brilliant last lap to win the race. So Alonso would win, giving him seven straight wins in a row. That was a record.

Basically, Alonso hasn't lost since we did the flyway races after. Incredible, to be honest with you. Very incredible. Yeah. Holgardo would get second place on the podium.

Picaris would get that final step up onto the podium. Jose Antonio Rurado, who we didn't talk about at all, just sort of appeared at the very end and got a fourth. Then Yamanaka, Munoz, Forasado, Rolstein, Ortola. Vier at tenth. Vier had a horrible race.

I think something was wrong with his bike in the post race pictures of Vier in the in the box. He very much would be like throttle on and, you know, the gesture of there's nothing there. Not sure what happened. Could have been something clogging an airbox. It could have been a leak in the airbox.

It could have been anything. Who knows what was going on there. But then Fernandez, Kelso, Suzuki, Almanza and Bertelli would get the last point score with that one. Absolutely incredible season by Alonso, an incredible run of form by Alonso. To win those seven races in a row.

The kid's a talent. I don't have anything more to say about Alonso. Do you, Rich? I mean, I don't know. Do you have a thethoris for great?

I really don't know what to do. Well, I mean, we have run out of superlatives, as most people really weren't describing the kid, really. And so I won't bore people by kind of doing my loving of Alonso for this race. I mean, the simple fact of the matter is that he was able to win well, really in the second half of the season, wasn't it? I mean, that was his 14th win.

I have many races. 20 races. I think it was 14 anyway for the season. As you say, seven on the bounce. The class level that he was at was so far beyond everybody else.

And there are some very good riders in Moto3. Let's not forget. So my question to Jim is, yes, is he better than Pedro Acosta was at this stage? Because that's the only comparable, I would argue, talent that's come up through in recent times. And admittedly, Acosta was only, what, three seasons ago that have been three or four different, but different in different season.

It's not totally comparable, but I mean, I've got a view on this. So I'm going to say, yes, that he is better than Acosta. But I'm going to put an asterisk on what Jim said to me. I think that the overall level of riding talent in Moto3, when Acosta did his deal, was a little better than the overall talent we have now in the group. Because and I say that because really the top guys like Helgardo never had any consistency to be at the front.

He had big stretches where he was nowhere. Picaris had a rough start learning the bike because he's the rookie to the class. But his second half of the season was really pretty strong. Rueda had flashes of brilliance, but never did put it all together. So with that said, Alonso, I think, might be the better rider because Alonso won races from way farther back than what Acosta did in his time.

But it doesn't really matter. They're both supreme talents. I mean, we're talking about two kids that I think are alien level style motorcycle racers, Alonso, because he decimated a class that is an axe murderer class that usually has 13 different winners in a season for him to dominate as he did was absolutely impressive. But Pedro Acosta got onto a Gascas Moto GP bike and for a rookie, did incredibly well with that system. I mean, he out rode outpaced the guy who knows that KTM better than anybody.

Brad Bender and Jack Miller and shaded his own teammate Augusto Fernandez. Yeah. And Augusto is a Moto two world champion. Right. So yeah, Acosta didn't win a race.

Yes, he didn't do a Marquez and win a title in his first season. But there's something special about Acosta on a Moto GP bike. Do not misunderstand that. So that's where I'll leave it. What do you think, Rich?

You question, so you have some answer. Well, yeah, it's a hard one to judge at this point in time. And as you quite rightly point out, Jim Acosta was stellar in Moto three. Pretty stellar, if that's not a kind of a stupid way of putting it, but it was very good in Moto two. Did he have one season in Moto three before he went up to Moto two?

I think he did, didn't he? Did he win it? Well, yeah, he was champion as a rookie. Champion in his rookie season. So whereas this is Alonso's second season in Moto three, full season.

So you have to balance it a little bit there. He's had a bit more time with Moto three as David Alonso. But I think possibly the racecraft of David Alonso on the evidence of what we've seen so far is better is probably not quite the right word, perhaps a bit more impressive in terms of the way he's handled himself this year. And, you know, you can't really compare him, I suppose, given it was me that asked the question, but to Acosta, because Acosta had gone through Moto two, done really well, won the championship in the second season and you might argue should have won a race in Motegi in Moto GP this year, threw it away. But, you know, he's a rookie.

That's what happens when you're a rookie. You find the limits and you find that often by exceeding the limits. So on a bike that is well known to be quite a tricky bike to make it go fast consistently. So, I mean, the jury is out, but so far I think Alonso in Moto three terms is me just probably shading it, but does have the benefit of the second season. But again, doing my broken record routine, how quickly, because I don't think he won't adapt to Moto two.

It's really a question of how quickly will he adapt to Moto two? Because Acosta did it very, very quickly. They went on a kind of a crashing spree in that first third of the season. Then he broke his leg away from the track in a motocross accident, which kind of impacted the second half of his season. But by the time he had his second season in Moto two, Acosta was untouchable.

So the question is, is does it take Alonso one or two seasons to replicate that? I suspect he'll go through the first season struggling a little bit and then season two. Let's bring that back up because I've got times from Jareth for Moto two and Moto three. Okay. We'll add a little more there.

How's that for Colin? Okay. Yeah, yeah, good. So sorry, Rich. Well, all I was going to say was I'm clinging on to the conversation, not clinging on, just fascinated by the conversation and the answer that Herve gave at Silverstone when I interviewed him about this idea that Alonso makes it to Moto GP in time for the 2027 rules set because he's got a couple of years now to learn and then win.

And by win, I mean the championship in all probability of Moto two, ready for jumping on the 850 in 27. And that is a mouth-watering prospect. Oh, yes, it is. Him versus Acosta is going to be a very mouth-watering prospect. Yeah, because there's every reason to believe that Marc Marquez and possibly even, you know, like your Bagnars and your Binders and stuff, they might not be around anymore at that stage.

I mean, Marquez, who knows? I mean, these guys do ride on a long time now. We're still talking, what, two full seasons to go and then a big change. So yeah, Acosta might be kind of king of the hill by that stage. Could be.

So let's go back to Moto three. Let's look at the championship. We obviously know that Alonso is world champion, but the question was who's going to finish second in the world championship? Helgardo, via having that second place in Vier's 10th, gave Helgardo the second position in it. Vier was third, Autola is fourth, Munoz was fifth, and Fernandez, Rueda, Piqueras, Kelso, ninth, and Furosato has 10th in it.

So your top four are all going to Moto two. Yeah. So that's sort of how it's supposed to be. You do well, you're there, you graduate, you move on. So with that, that is everything about Moto three from that weekend.

Let's go to Moto two now, Rich. If we go to the qualifying on there, there was really nothing that big of a deal in the first qualifying session. It was pretty lackluster, but Lopez, Senna, Aegis, Aranis, and Masi all got through. They just did it with a great last lap to get in really. So he threw one in there at the end of real flyer.

On the second qualifying session, Altegr was down at turn 14. He just touched that curb on the inside and just lost the bike. It was very bizarre that he did do that. Navarro was down and only 10 riders had set a lap time halfway through due to yellows. Like so many people got laps just scrubbed off the board.

Aranis crashed at the very end as well, but Aaron Connett would take the pole position followed by Gonzalez, Van de Gerberg, Dixon, Iagura, Marrera, Vietti, Navarro, and Senna, Aegis. So it was a very mixed up qualifying session for the Moto three guys just because of the yellows and everything else that was going on around. But we'll get to the race. Now, Altegr had to serve a long lap penalty that he had from his indiscretions and I think in Buriram. So he still had to take that because he hadn't gotten there yet.

But when we started this one, Gonzalez took off with a hole shot. He would get out front. Connett, he kind of went backwards really quick. Dixon was way up there as well. He had a great start, but I think was wide on one.

And then he was out like in the penalty lane coming back in. There was then a high sides. Who was it that high side at Rich? They had on the change of direction there. There was an almost high side.

It's been a bit since I can't remember. I don't have it quite right. I can't remember. It was such a boring race. I didn't really take much of it into account.

The first lap was exciting. I was trying to do as much as I could to excite the first lap antics of what had gone on. But essentially Gonzalez, Anciu, Solac, Marrera, and Van de Gerberg were all sort of the front. Then Dixon and Navarro were then down at turn five. So Dixon had gone at that point.

I thought that was just tragic for him. But Van de Gerberg was into the back half of Vietti and he wiggled out and they got a crash there. And they were at turn one. And I don't know, Zander Berberg, I don't know what he was thinking. He was just all over the place there at the beginning.

It was like everybody decided they want to just detach their brain and become mother three kids again or something. I don't know what was going on. Anciu was really lucky to stay on because Van de Gerberg had touched Anciu and Anciu then was able just to keep a hold of everything. Again, these were like the only laps of chaos that happened were these first two laps. Yeah.

And that was pretty much it. Because from that point on, Kinet went to the lead. He was followed by Gonzalez. He was followed by Aya Gura, Marrera, Aegis and Solac. And that sort of just kind of kept the thing there.

Now Anciu had a long lap penalty for track limits with about 13 to go. But the front guys don't really change. They're in their same positions and it just doesn't really matter. Nobody can really do anything except for Marrera got by Aya Gura. But Aya Gura would go right back against him.

And then basically Gonzalez was starting to close in a little bit on Kinet. But Kinet had everybody covered here. Marrera did go by Aya Gura at one, but then Aya Gura went back by Marrera at turn 10, which was a great move on the last lap to get it to where Kinet would then win. Gonzalez would be second on it. But Marrera got Anciu on the last lap last term, sort of a Rossi-esque thing, and would take that final podium spot, which is great for Marrera.

Then Aya Gura, then Solac, Garcia with a top six. I mean, Garcia finally had a race that was worthy. Then Guevara, Lopez, Audiger, Chantra, Ramirez, Aegis, Arbolino, Masi and Darren Bender. This one, wow, was a snoozefest, Rich. I really don't know what to tell anyone.

We were just watching Kinet basically racing himself the whole time. After the chaos that happened. You know, I can't say that the racing between Aya Gura and Marrera was not fantastic. It was. It was back and forth.

It's what you were looking for out of the race, but there was nothing in the middle. The first two laps are great and the last three laps are great. And anywhere and anything else in between was follow the leader processional. It was a really horrid Moto2 race. I don't think Barcelona creates that great of racing.

The long straight sort of takes everybody away and separates them a little bit. You have turn five, which is tricky, which if anybody crashes, there holds everybody else up and lets the pack sort of expand. And they never really do ever come back together again. But we'll look at the championships. Of course, Aya Gura is your world champion, but Kinet would finish second in this.

Gonzalez would coach third in the championship. Sergio Garcia, the runaway leader for the first half of the season, would eventually finish fourth in this championship. Do you put Garcia as your favorite for the championship next year, Rich? No, I don't, actually. OK.

I mean, this is probably a discussion for a different show, but. It will be, but I just thought I'd ask. I mean, he will go into next season as one of the favorites. But the question is, although it was a solid finish in this final race, but it's been a horrible second half of the year for whatever reason. And, you know, form is always difficult to change when you're on that kind of run.

So he needs a strong start to next year. But for me, Kinet is the impressive guy here outside of Aguirre. I mean, as you said, Jim, that Aguirre-Marrera fight was quite entertaining. But, you know, Aguirre won the championship and didn't want to have a crash because he was out on a MotoGP bike two days later in the test. So, you know, but fair play to Marrera.

First podium in Moto2. He's been quite impressive this year. I think this is his rookie season. So he ends the season strong. I mean, there was some interest there, but the cynic in me says they kind of ended up at Barcelona.

Obviously, they couldn't go to Valencia. We've spoken about that obvious reasons. But, you know, the big gala dinner was planned. Prize presentation was planned weeks in advance to happen wherever it happens in Spain, maybe that was in Valencia. So it didn't really warrant them racing somewhere other than in Spain.

And Barcelona for me is one of the Spanish rounds that I personally would drop because there's too many rounds in the Iberian Peninsula anyway. To me, it never really delivers up great racing. And they do have a lot of data from there. So that was never going to lead to a fantastic weekend of racing. And I think that's generally what we saw.

We haven't even come to MotoGP yet. So nothing much more to say, really, other than Kinet has had a very impressive season. I mean, he was the perennial second place finisher, if we remember, had his first win in Portugal this year, got that kind of monkey off his back. And this is his fourth win of the season. So again, and by far the second half of the season has been the best for him.

So he will head into next year in the same team, same crew. Very, very confident, I would imagine. And rightly so. Yep, I agree with you. Altegr would be fifth in the championship, but he's off to Ducati, Lopez, then Vietti, Dixon, Roberts falls all the way to ninth.

But he didn't race the last three races. He had the broken navicular bone in his wrist and Arbolino is tenth. So going to be interesting next year when the Moto3 guys that we know are going up get into this mix. So we're there. We'll have to watch that space, see what happens.

We will report when we have. Yeah. All right. So let's go to MotoGP, because that is where, in theory, all of our thing was to play for, right, because we still got Benyai and Martin. They still have to decide who's going to be world champion with all this.

But in the first qualifying session, it was the KTMs minus Acosta, the Hondas minus Zarco and the Yamahas were there, save for Renz. He had gotten through, which is kind of crazy. You think about it. So through all that, Marrera and Raul Fernandez were leading for the two spots to get in at halfway. After that, Miller, who was trying to get through, but fell.

But Marrera or Marrera, Morbatele and Quattrararo got through into that Q2 session. So in the Q2 session, it was a pack of riders that left altogether. It was like the Moto3 guys that showed up in MotoGP. Everybody just went out all together. It was like a huge pack.

They all went out together. Alex Marquez was down quickly at turn five right off the beginning. Halfway Benyai, Marc Marquez and Martin and Quattrararo. I was like, wow, that was just, I mean, some, I mean, great effort by Quattrararo just to even be that close. I mean, it was amazing.

He was that far up there. The big question that happened in this session was, did Benyai actually change the rear tire? It looked like he'd come in and said, no, I think I'm OK with this one. I had the impression he'd changed it. Michelin data said it already had like four laps or five laps on it.

And he went back out on it. I never did get a definitive answer. Didn't hear a definitive answer. I don't know if you know, but I don't think he went out on a new tire. I think he was out on his original tire, wasn't he?

No, I think they did correct it midway through his run to say that, no, actually, that data is wrong. He did change. So I'm pretty sure he was on a fresh tire. OK, so Benyai was on a fresh tire. OK, cool.

So at that point, Benyai, Marquez and Morbidelli were all there. Now, Martin did screw up turn one and he kind of ran a wide on that one. So when it all came down to the end, Benyai was the quickest person followed by Elish, who is just sort of like the master of Barcelona. He just is. Then Mark Marquez.

But Martin was fourth. Perfect position here for him. Then Morbidelli, Acosta on the front two rows. Then Vignales, Bastianini, Bezecki on the third row. Then Quattro, Marquez, Alex, that is, and Zarco on that fourth row.

So the qualifying was kind of what you expect that Martin did what he had to do. I thought Martin would have been maybe just a smidge higher. He did have that little small problem. And you wondered out loud, at least I did, is that the crack in the Martin armor that Benyai is looking for? Because Benyai comes into this 24 points behind Jorge Martin.

And then we got to go to the sprint. Right. So we look at the sprint here. It was interesting. You had Martin going with a medium front and a soft rear.

And you had Benyai on a hard front and a soft rear. So at least they were on the same rear. The front tires are basically the same. It's just a bit of feel. The hard is a little bit better for the hard braking at turn one.

So Benyai is a late breaker. So it made a lot of sense to me that those guys would be off slightly in that respect. So the maths are real simple here. Martin only has to score two more points than what Benyai scores. And he will be world champion.

So basically always got to do his finish second throughout this or whatever. And he's basically going to be, you know, Martin just really needs to stay on the bike. Right. He can't afford a crash, but he's pretty much OK. So at the start, Benyai just got out of there.

But Bastiani led for a little bit there. But then Benyai got back through again. Martin was in real deep at the first turn. He kind of went just a little bit wide. Benyai then went under him.

That's how Benyai got the second. Then it's Acosta and Marc Marquez. They kind of come out of there within a little bit of a tangle that caused Acosta's whole entire front fairing to be ripped off of his motorcycle. Very, very weird thing to see happen. I mean, the whole thing.

Yeah. The whole thing in one big old chunk just went right out of there. Again, you got all these little flip up and winglets things that are on the back of the bike. So it's got to go away. They will in twenty seven.

They're just catching on to things and flicking things off. So again, when that big of a piece left the bike, thank God it was in a quarter and it didn't stay on the bike and then blow off in a straightaway where it could have injured Acosta or injured any other rider that's going by. You know, again, aerodynamics might be the fastest thing, but, man, I just don't want to see anybody get smacked by a bit of carbon fiber like that. I really don't. And thankfully, nobody did.

So we're all good there. Benyaya would instantly go to the front with Bastianini behind him. Then Martine, then Marrera, Morberdelli. Sorry, now I got to mix it up again. I can't get this straight.

It's the new thing. Yeah. Imagine when Morberdelli and Marrera are in the Moto GP together. We're really going to have fun. Like I have fun with all the Fernandes' Anyway, then there's Alex Marquez and then his brother, Mark.

Martine would make his way to second. Bastianini then got by Martine at turn one. Then Martine went back by Bastianini at turn one again. It was just draft me, draft you, see who was going to be there. With five to go, Benyaya, Martine, Bastianini, Alex Marquez, Alais there.

And then Morberdelli. Two to go. Benyaya is still out front. Martine still second. Bastianini, nothing's really changing here.

But Alex Marquez would be wide at 10 and then he would be behind Alais. The race finishes with Peco Benyaya winning the sprint. Bastianini second. Jorge Martine third. Alais to Spargaro.

Then Alex Marquez, Morberdelli, Marquez, as in Mark, Bizecki and Binder taking a point. The result of this, basically, it's nothing. It's Martine still in the driver's seat. He's only lost five points, right? So it's a 19 point lead now that Benyaya has.

So he needs help and he needs a lot of help, really, because Martine could finish, I think, like eighth or better. And he was still going to be a world champion. We got to the race. Benyaya was going to start on a hard front and a soft rear. Martine was going with a hard front and a medium rear.

The simple math is Martine could be ninth or score seven more points than Benyaya, and he will be the world champion. Benyaya gets off to a great start. Martine's right behind him, followed by Mark Marquez, Bastianini, Acosta and then Alais to Spargaro. Mark Marquez got by Martine at turn one. Alais was right on Bastianini.

And it was a ding dong little battle there that those guys kind of go through. But it's really just Benyaya, Mark Marquez and Martine out front. That's an Alais, Martine's really good friend. He's going to run rear gunner behind him, you know. So you're almost at this point, think it's close to being over because really Martine's going to have enough points to win this championship.

He just has to ride smart, stay in lane, not let anything happen. Don't get super aggressive. And he's going to be world champion. Alex got by Acosta for six mirror crashes. But Bastianini was wide at turn one and then he dropped down to seventh.

It's Benyaya, Marquez, Martine, Alais, Alex Marquez and Acosta. That's your top six. They run that way basically to about seven laps to go. And then Acosta was sliding back as Bastianini and Bender would get by him. Morbidelli would get by Acosta now too.

So Acosta ran out of tire or something with the KTM and was having difficulty there. But with five to go, Benyaya is still in control, still the top three as they were. And Alais and Alex and Bastianini, two to go. Alex got by Alais. But as it would finish, Benyaya wins the race.

Mark Marquez was second. Jorge Martinez was third, thus giving Martine the championship. Alex Marquez had a great fourth. Alais, Aspargo, Bender, Bastianini, Morbidelli, Bizecki, Acosta in tenth, Guattararo, Oliveira, Jack Miller, Johan Zarca and Maverick Vinales. And with that, Jorge Martinez, world champion.

He rode around emotional last lap for Martine. I mean, my gosh, you've worked so hard to get to something like this. I can't imagine the emotion that you would have. However, he stops at a magic black box and he was in there for what I thought was an insane amount of time. And I thought if he's coming out with gold leathers on, I really was turning the TV off right now.

I'm not watching any more of this. He did eventually emerge after what seemed to be just an absolutely inordinate amount of time with a Terminator mask on him. And he shot the golden helmet out from a block of ice, mounted that and took that helmet and rode on into the pit lane for the celebrations that was there. I don't know. I didn't care for that celebration.

But Martine, I think, is a worthy world champion. How do you see it, Rich? Well, first of all, I had said a week or so ago or a couple of shows ago, whenever it was with Toprak, who I admire greatly. I mean, I genuinely think he's probably in the top three in the world. Riders at the minute.

Easily. These self-indulgent winning celebrations really start to do my head in. I actually went and made myself a cup of tea to get away from all of this rubbish, to be honest with you. I thought I'm going to pinch this off Simon Patterson because I thought this was absolutely classic. He made the point that when, as you have just said, Jim, when I reemerged, it was a bit underwhelming really.

And Simon Patterson said what would have been truly phenomenal would have been if he'd come out butt naked, ridden round to the Aprilia garage, gone up to Alacia Spargrove. Bone in mind, we're talking Terminator and said, I want your boots, your clothes and your motorcycle. I won't try to do the Arnie impression. But bone in mind, he was going to be taking that over that seat and a couple of days later. That would have been really quite entertaining.

And that one I would have been there for. But I mean, perfect weekend by Bagnar, but an almost perfect season by Martine. I forget how many races between the sprints and the main races Bagnar won in the end. But 11, I think a lot. And you would think that should have been enough to win in the championship.

But it goes to show. And this is coming from me. I held my hands up. I've never been the well since he's been in Moto GP. I mean, I really liked and rated Martine through Moto3 and Moto2.

As we got to sort of see a bit, perhaps a bit more of him, certainly as I hadn't encountered with him in Qatar last year, I was not a big fan following that, I'm honest. But you can certainly see that he has worked on his kind of I'll say attitude that sounds a bit pompous, but his mental approach, let's put it that way. I mean, he was visibly very, very nervous, as you would fully expect. But he wasn't kind of he didn't go into this weekend all sort of cocky because he was in a very strong position. He did look genuinely very kind of nervous and was probably riding pretty tight.

So the fact that he delivered the results that he did, I thought was very creditworthy and fair play to the guy. I mean, and this is as I say, this is coming from me. He is a worthy champion and to do it on a satellite, I mean, I know it's a works bike, but it wasn't the works team. And he is the first person in the modern era, if not ever, to win a championship on a non fully works outfit. So, I mean, there's a great deal of credit that's due to him for that.

So, yeah, I mean, it was just he did what he had to do this weekend, didn't he? And it was more than enough in the end. I mean, Bagnari, as you said, Erdi Jim needed a lot of help and the cavalry just never, never arrived. Yeah, I mean, to me, there was a sort of inevitability once Benyaya crashed in a sprint in Malaysia. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, one too many times on the ground, Benyaya. Yeah. And you know, and you did that in sprints, which is OK. But in those sprints, Martine won. And then in the race on Sunday, you may have won, Peco.

But guess what? Martine was right behind you. Yeah. And that did him in. Right.

Yeah. I mean, he is, yes, the first person to win on in a non factory team, a privateer team in the Moto GP era, if you want to consider that to be the modern era. But it's not the first time that a satellite team has won a world championship. Andy Roberts team back in the 90s with Marlboro was not the factory Yamaha team. They became the factory Yamaha team, but they weren't originally.

Yes. Eddie Lawson won on a Rothman Honda in 89 with Erv Kentomoto tuning it. That was not the factory Honda team. It was Erv's team. So it has been done.

It just has not been done in the modern four stroke era. And Martine did it. And more to the point, I am most happy for Pramac for them as a team. I was very scared. I didn't want it to be a mechanical failure or a problem from one of the guys on the team that caused Martine to not win it.

And they didn't. I'm not saying that those guys are incapable of tuning or working on a motorcycle. No, they're fabulous people. All of them are. But you can't help but be caught up in what you're doing.

Right. But they stuck to their system. They stuck to how they did things. It seemed like the team was always doing the same week after week after week. They obviously were nervous.

You could tell from what was going on in the box or whatever. Right. But they held together. They did what they had to do and they won. And it's a deserved championship.

I mean, there's no question about it. And to add to that, Jim, I would also say it's to the very great credit of Ducati that they didn't play any or try to play any silly games. And I personally was I thought it was very heartwarming to see the Ducati top brass straight into the Primark garage. Oh, yeah. Once Martine had won the championship and congratulating everybody.

You know, because at the end of the day, Ducati did win the Riders Championship. Yeah, it was sticking their throat a bit that the number one plate potentially goes over onto the Aprilia. But I don't see any great sort of bragging rights for Aprilia on that. Having the number one plate on the front of Martine's bike next season because they didn't win the championship. He did.

He's just switched teams. So I think that's all going to play out in a fairly fair minded way in the end of the day. But as I say, you could have understood, although they were the masters of their own kind of demise in this particular instance, you could have understood it if Ducati had been a bit sour faced about the way things ended up. But both them and Peco Bagnara as well, which is important to point out, he handled himself, I think, with a great deal of dignity and professionalism, which hasn't necessarily always made the wisest choices in other areas of what he does. But no, I thought everybody was pretty exceptional, really.

I mean, we're coming to the end of this kind of period of relative stability in terms of riders and teams and stuff. And we'll talk briefly about the test in the moment because we're going into season next season, which is fascinating in all sorts of different ways. I mean, Martine won a lot of races this year, but I forget the actual stat. But I think he only finished off the podium in like three or four races all season long. I mean, it was just a fantastic run of form.

You know, you could never say, oh, he kind of won it by attrition because he didn't. He won loads of races. Bagnara just screwed up one or two times too many critical moments and was always kind of chasing it. So the right guy won really at the end of the day. And that's all you really ever want to be able to say.

He wasn't robbed by some finger trouble or a mechanical. Imagine if the bike had blown up or something in the final race. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, immediately there'd have been a conspiracy that, you know, Ducati had caused it to happen.

And so it all played out perfectly fair, perfectly level. And whilst I personally maybe would have preferred Bagnara to win this one last time before Marquez goes on the rip. You know, Jorge Martin is a worthy world champion and not say he won't win another championship. I think he's going to be an awful lot better on that. You're brilliant.

I think he's been written off a bit too early for my liking. But I guess we'll come to that now. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think Jorge is an incredible rider. All these guys are incredible riders.

For me, I have a personality conflict. I just neither Benyai or Martin do it for me from a personality point of view. From a riding perspective, they're phenomenal. They're amazing. They're great.

But they lack that charm, charisma, the quote unquote it factor that some people have. I don't disagree with you. I mean, it's not that they're boring people or whatnot, but I mean, Martin wound up getting involved in some row over a television interview shortly after the world championship, you know, and Benyai has had his indiscretions with a drunk driving incident. Right. I'm not this is not shaming them.

We're human beings and you are entitled to your life and do what you're going to do. However, at some point, especially at this level, you are a motorcycle racer. You are going to be looked at by millions of people and they're going to judge you for your actions. All of them on the racetrack or off the racetrack, rightly or wrongly, that's what's going to happen. And at some point, I mean, it has to be just insanely tough to keep your personal life out of the spotlight and be able to go somewhere and not be recognized in Spain or in Italy or, you know, just simple things.

If you want to go out with a date with your wife to a nice restaurant in Italy, then everybody's going to recognize Benyai. Right. It's got to be difficult. I'll tell you what it is for me, though, Jim. And obviously every rider is different.

And I'd be interested to see if anyone wants to write in and express their opinions on some of this stuff. You know, Benyai is very levelheaded and he's obviously a really nice guy. OK, he's done a couple of silly things, but then who hasn't? Who hasn't? Yours truly included.

But he's almost just like a little bit too nice, a little bit too kind of. I don't know what the word is, really, but, yeah, just it's a bit neutral to me. It's hard to sort of get really enthusiastic. Other than the fact that he is an incredibly fast rider. Martine still has, but certainly had that kind of whiff of arrogance about him and a propensity to sort of lash out at people when things didn't quite go his way.

Again, referring back to Qatar last year, which I was at, if you remember, and I had my sort of lesson, ideal running with him. But that was the famous race where, you know, let's say he had a bad rear tire and he went off on this Ripper Bear, you know, Michelin stealing the championship from him. And I was like, oh, come on, really? I mean, that's so childish to sort of have that kind of reaction to it. And you can say he was understandably upset because things hadn't gone his way.

But it was that kind of propensity just to lash out at everybody else and not just take it on the chin. Now, this year, he does appear to have turned that bit of his character around and much credit to him. But what I really like is the Mark Marquez. And I'm not a big Mark Marquez fan historically, but I like that Marquez Acosta. And I think we can start to see bits of it in Alonso, that kind of that killer instinct, you know, the smiling assassin.

This was Rossi. I mean, again, remember what that famous join us there. Don't be fooled by the smile. He'll rip your throat out if he needs to. Those are the kind of love them, hate them, Marmite kind of, as we would say here, characters.

They split opinion, but they create a lot of energy around them. You know, they're not boring people at all. You know, my great hope is that, you know, KTM, despite all the worries about KTM in terms of the company at the moment, or the Pierre, Pierre Mobility Group, whatever. Yes, Pierre Mobility Group. That's correct.

The hope is that, you know, he can with a year and just about can get at the front. And imagine Acosta and Marquez going at it. As I say, I do firmly believe that Martín will not be languishing down in the middle of the pack next year. I think he'll be close to the front. He might not be right at the front straight away.

But we've seen how good that Aprilia is sporadically with Alaysh and Vinales. I think with Martín on it, it will be featuring at the front a lot more consistently. So, yeah, I forget how we kind of got on to that. We were just talking about just Martín's celebration and all that. Yes.

I think to sum it up, I think it's this. For the last four years, the villain has been missing. For four years, there has been no villain. And I don't think everybody likes things unless there's a villain somewhere in all of this. And the villains on red now, right?

So let's just look at the championship real quick. Let's then go to testing. OK. So if we go back and we look at the championship, see where everybody else is actually finished off. Martín obviously is now the world champion.

Benyaya was second. Marc Marquez would get the coveted third place in the championship. I mean, given the bike he was riding on, that's pretty doggone good for him. Bastianini because, you know, Marquez beat two factory bikes. He beat Bastianini's factory bike and he also beat Morbidele in it, too.

So Marquez, great to be third in that championship and him on a factory bike. Tasty. You got to think he's going to be at the front most of the time, if not winning races almost all the time. Bastianini fourth, Bender fifth. He wins the battle of the KTMs, beating Acosta by two points to fifth in the championship.

Vinyals would be seventh, some 25 points behind Acosta. Then Alex Marquez, Morbidele and DG Antonio. That's how they finished in the top 10. And that is that. Let's look at testing that happened on that Tuesday.

There's not a whole lot that you can take out of this testing. So let's just talk about like where everybody was by time. And then we'll kind of break it down to sort of the more key pieces of it or I'll break it into the more key pieces that I see, Rich. And then you can come in on those and tell me if there's any key piece that maybe I've missed in all of this as well. Yeah.

So Alex Marquez set the fastest time in the test. And he said, well, why wouldn't I? I got a 24 bike and it's a huge improvement over a 23 bike. And I have all the notes and setups. So there was really nothing for me to do but go fast.

Quattroraro was second on a Yamaha, still in line for Yamaha. Then we had Benyaya on a 25, which it was in white. I thought that bike just looks so, so good at white. I just think it does for some reason. Then Marquez Mark fourth on the all red Ducati, all of it red.

And it looked so good with the big, like slightly different shade of red 93 on it. That bike looked really super cool. That to me was very, very special paint job. It looked really great. Then Raul Fernandez on the track house bike.

Then Brad Bender, Morbidelli, Rins, then Pedro Acosta, then Zarco, Martin, Vinales, Bizecki, Aleixasparguero on the Honda, Mir, Batchini, Oliveira, Lucca Marini, Miguel Pirro, Outaguer, Iagura, Miller, Somkat Chantra and Salvadori. Those are the 24 bikes that were on the track. So let's think about this from this standpoint. One, be very afraid of Mark Marquez on a factory Ducati. Be very afraid.

Underestimate how bad he wants another championship at your own peril. Yes. Benyaya had nothing to prove. He's been the fastest Ducati rider, one of the fastest Ducati riders for a long time. He was just figuring out the new bike.

The new bike seems to be more evolutionary than revolutionary because there doesn't appear to be very much between them. And that was said by Alex Marquez. It was said by a few other people who were now riding 24s versus 25s. The test riders who was test riding there is a Piro. Piro was test riding.

He says, yeah, the bike is not that much faster. It's not as big a jump as what the difference was between a 23 Ducati and a 24 Ducati. The 25 is much closer, but we don't have a lot of setup data on that bike yet. So there is room for it to evolve ever so slightly. You look like you have something you want to interject here, Rich.

So please do. Only to interject with a caveat, which is the chatter you know, I tapped into in terms of reading and listening to things was that there is probably going to be a fairly significant aerodynamic update coming on that 25 Ducati. And obviously they were never going to run it at Barcelona because it would give far too much time for other teams to analyse. So whilst the 25 bike was certainly an evolution, I think it might go perhaps a wee bit radical. Or is that such a thing as being a wee bit radical?

That's an oxymoron. It will probably change a bit more for the what will it be? Thailand or Malaysia test when we get to. Oh, gosh, I don't even remember which one's next, Rich, to be honest with you. Sepang is where they go first and then they test at Thailand and then they race in Thailand and then they go to Buriram.

Is Buriram in Thailand or is Buriram the one in Indonesia? It doesn't matter. Well, I'm pretty sure we will figure this all out in our pre-race that we're going to do between now and then. The interesting thing, though, that Jim, that Piro said over the course of the weekend, bearing in mind, he ran on the VR46 bike because obviously Fabio DiGiantone was off again, having had the surgery. I'm pretty sure that was a 23 bike that he was on, and he couldn't get over how far back it was relative to the 24 bike that he's been used to riding testing an occasional wildcard position.

Makes you wonder how good Marquez is in that case, right? Yeah, that is the point. For Marquez, we've done what he has done on that bike. Really does shine a lot on just how potentially devastating he might be next year on a 25. Some other things that we learned about all this.

We learned also that you can say that Jorge Martín adapted very well to the new Aprilia. The crash that he did have on it was not a crash of a rider going, what the hell just happened here? It was a crash that a rider has when he's pushing, looking for a lap time and trying to find the limit. And now it's slightly gone beyond it. I do wonder about Aprilia, Martín and his new crew chief, because that's all different.

That's a lot of change, right? I mean, if he was taking his crew chief with him from Pramac. OK, yeah, maybe that's bad. But you got a crew chief who's learning the bike. He's learning his rider.

It's all a little bit up there, right? And I don't know if that's going to be the one little weakness that Martin has. But I do think there will be a more consistent top 10 ish, top five ish, maybe Aprilia, and it will be Martin. I think we know that much right there. Acosta says sometimes the KTM does silly things.

So again, with the peer mobility group, I think a lot of people should be talking about the fact that apparently they're not going to produce a motorcycle at all for two months or something like that. They're laying off a big chunk of their workforce. The rumor is that Matt is just his son. Is it Matt or Mark? I don't remember which is Matt, but he was willing to offer all kinds of money to the peer mobility group to get them through this, but they claim that those talks have never taken.

The problem is KTM has made their ethos race ready, right? We're ready to race. We're KTM. We're ready to race. We're going to win.

They're not going to stop racing per se, right? I'm just worried that you've got this kid in Acosta. You really have to support him with everything. But are they willing to give him everything? I don't know.

They may, but I'm not sure. This is a difficult time for KTM. They've got to produce a bike they have to produce. They have got to have a bike that is at least the equal of the Aprilia, if not close to the Ducati, and it can't fade somewhere. It can't come out of the box and be great and then disappear for the middle of the season and return at the very end.

It has to be good the whole time. And I think they need to think about what Acosta wants in a motorcycle and what he feels and how they're going to go about that one. Speaking of developing a motorcycle, I don't ever remember Peco Benya saying anything about how Bastianini and his riding style were equivalent or that they wanted to go in the same direction with the motorcycle like Marquez and him want to. Now, he's either playing to the media to disenfranchise everybody or that's really true. And him and Marquez think the same thing of the bike.

Now, if that's the case and you have non diverging rider styles, if you will, that means the Ducati may be even better than what we think it may be because of the two of them pushing the development. Of course, you know, who knows what kind of crazy gizmo wings and stuff that Delinia will have it. They're talking about having a 27 bike on track in 25, which kind of makes sense because they said they're only going to have three factory Ducatis. Well, what's going to happen to the people that are making that fourth Ducati? Well, they're making the 2027 Ducati, which that ought to scare everybody that they're going to get that much testing time on it.

Right. Yeah. The other thing I thought that was interesting that came out of this was the Honda saga with one mere frustrated they had nothing to test. Johan Zagre going, dude, sit back and chill. The new stuff's coming.

But what we got here is OK to learn and have a direction. And then you have Marini, who's all excited because Alesh was as fast as him on a Honda and said, well, there's really not that much wrong with it. We just got to tweak a few things. Oh, I have no clue where Honda is in all this between all that. We got one person who's really mad, one guy who's really happy that they've got a leash and another guy's like, just wait for the updates.

I don't know. I'm confused even more so now than I was previously. It doesn't sound good when you got different riders saying different things on the same ostensibly the same bike, though, does it? And Amir's big beef all season has been like a testing part. Well, lack of rear grip and extreme chatter.

Yeah. Acceleration, too, I think. Well, yeah, I guess the chatter is part of it. I guess if it's chatter, you can't. They're all out all over the place.

And this has been obviously a problem that we've seen very graphically at times on slow motion with KTM. Oh, yeah. I mean, since this new rear came in, some teams have really, really struggled. Oh, who said that the bike was built around that new rear? I can't remember.

Somebody said that the bike was built around that new rear tire. Oh, I forget. I didn't write it down in my testing notes. Sorry, guys. I'll figure it out for the next show.

Anyway. Oh, what else, Rich? Anything else from the Moto GP testing? I mean, you're really not going to learn much from this. No, it's a test, particularly this test, because nobody wants to head into the winter with a broken something or other all damage pride or whatever.

Although I must add, Bastionini had a mother and father of all crashes on the Tech 3 KTM. Actually, I'll rephrase that. He had the normal turn five crash on the KTM and the bike went and hit the barrier and was literally in pieces. So that was not a great start for him. Vinales did a lot of laps.

I made a note somewhere. I highlighted it here. Yeah, I mean, the nice is 74 laps and apparently was quite pleased and was super impressed with the starting capability of the KTM, which we know it's a great bike in terms of the current kind of start format with electronics and ride height devices and stuff. And we know that Vinales has been a absolutely putridly bad starter on the Aprilia for most of the year, most of his time there. So there are some interesting things going on.

I was particularly impressed with Aya Gira, 86 laps on the track house bike. That was the most laps in the day. And again, quietly, quietly, softly, softly, Monster Energy Yamaha continue to look as if they're finding their way forward again in a way that Honda still aren't quite at that point yet, despite the fact that Alessius Bargros, again, who's a bit of a Marmite sort of carriage as far as I'm concerned, but he jumped on that Honda. Again, white livery looked really awesome. That white looks good.

It was really quick, straight out of the gates on it. So he may well contribute a lot. There are new technical people involved in some of the teams in terms of KTM and Honda and stuff. So there's just so much to look forward to next year, Jim, as far as I'm concerned, with so many kind of differences. Pramak, Yamaha didn't really sort of show too much.

But I mean, that's a huge change for the whole team operationally, with the equipment, you know, and again, none of the riders were going to want to smash stuff up. So nothing jumped out too much. Other than the fact that although it was a test and yes, it was not a big surprise that Alex Marquez was quickest, but his time of 1.38803 compared with the 1.38641, which was Bagnars Pole on the Sunday. So, you know, he was going very, very quickly. So the times were quick, even though it was.

And there might have been one or two fuzzy heads still knocking around in the pit lane, because obviously they had the grand gala on the Sunday night. So but clearly the important test will be the post Christmas or the into the New Year one, which, as I say, I think is in Sepang. As to precisely what date that is, I don't know. But we're going to formulate a plan of what we're going to do over this two and a half months. I mean, it's hardly any time off at all, really.

We've got a few things planned, don't we, Jim? And we'll talk about the new season once we get into the new year and what we're most looking forward to. But there is a huge amount of intrigue there. And that was an interesting day's running. Yep.

It was just interesting there. I think that pretty much covers Moto GP testing. Yeah. For everything that we can know, I think. So let's talk about the Moto 2, Moto 3 test.

That was at Haureth, right? It was a private test. So we don't know a lot out of it. I must divulge at this point. I haven't even seen any of the coverage of the Moto 2, Moto 3 test.

So I'm in your hands. Oh, that's OK. I mean, there's not a whole lot there. This was a courtesy of David Emmett, Moto Matters. He had posted this on X.

It's a private test. But Anshu is the quickest Moto 2 guy there at a minute 40.6. Then there's Adrian Huteres, who's the rookie. He's at a 141 flat, which that's pretty good for the rookie. After that, it's Guevara and then Arbolino, then Colin Vier.

So now we're getting into the Moto 3 grads, right? So there's Vier. After Vier is Holgardo. So Holgardo is at 141 and a half. Same thing here with Vier.

They're right there with each other, a few hundreds of a second different. And then who else is in that 141 range? Oh, somebody you may have heard of, rich one, Mr. Alonso. Wow.

OK. So all three of the technically the fastest Moto 3 kids are all right there. And they're all on the one minute 41 and a half range, which is pretty fantastic, quite actually. And then Ortola is right after Alonso. And he's about three and a half tenths a drift of the his compatriots of Moto 3.

So pretty well there. And Rureda was the fastest Moto 3 rider there. And then it was Capare, who was the world junior champion. He had the wild card in Moto 3. And then there's a Maximo.

I guess it's Quillis. It's with a Q. I'm not sure how that works in Spanish. I don't know if Spanish yet. I haven't heard it enough.

Then Piqueras, then Ogden, and then Fagia was the slowest of the Moto 3 guys that were out on track at the time. So not a whole lot to get from there. We won't know more until later with all that. So with all that, that's testing. That's everything that we know there.

Quickly to kind of talk through a couple of the shows that are upcoming, guys. I have another interview, chat, sit down with Michael Goudjus. If you have any questions for Michael, please fire them off. Motopod at motopodcast.com. Happy to ask him.

This is going to be a long, long, long chat because we're going to go through everything. I've got a laundry list of questions to ask Michael. And he really has some good insider paddock knowledge. So if there's anything that you can think of that you want to know, let me know. And I'll be sure that I ask that question of Michael when I talk to him.

I'm doing that on December the 7th. We're planning on a review. Rich and I having a review of the season podcast, the interview podcast we'll have after that. Rich, you've got still some Silverstone interviews. Well, I've got quite a lot of Silverstone stuff, actually.

Yeah, since Silverstone, I went straight on holiday for two weeks, which wasn't terribly helpful in that sense. And then we had just like so many races. It was just impossible to shoe on this stuff in. So obviously some of the stuff that's been discussed with riders at Silverstone that was unknown at the time is now known. So there's a little bit of I suppose that's not ideal.

But most of what we talk about is great content for the off season when it's a bit quieter. And like you, Jim, I'll encourage some questions in because in principle, I have James Tozland and James Ellison lined up for some Zoom calls over the course of the short winter break. Let's call it. You know, those two guys have enormous kind of CVs to talk about in terms of what they've done in the world of bike racing. I hope to have a chat about World Superbikes with Greg Haynes again at some point before that season gets going again.

So if anybody has any burning questions that they would like to ask any of those three gents, that would be great. And indeed, if anybody has any riders or team people that they would particularly like us to try and nab next year at some point, because we'll try and get to a few races again, Jim. Yeah, I got my Texas tickets already. Cool. Yeah.

We're heading there. And as you know, Scott obviously delivered up some great content from a couple of the Moto A rounds and the Barber Vintage, which was, you know, that stuff was great. So thanks to Scott for that. There's a couple of other people I might sort of reach out to just to see if they're around to do a couple of things for us next season as well. So there's loads of content to come.

And yeah, we'll try and fill up the relatively quiet bit. Once you've had a slight sort of detox, if that's not the right word, is it? But it's just been so busy. I mean, it's just a full on season, isn't it? I get so much racing to talk about.

So, yeah, lots of stuff to get into over the off season before things go crazy again. I was thinking just before we came on edge and we were talking about it. And I was in my mind, I still kind of thinking about your GP getting going to March, April time. But no, it's the end of February, you told me, because I've lost track of the calendar again. So, yeah, it's not long to go.

We'll have to. I was just trying to think of trying to grab here real quick. The one the opener is. Just watch you're doing that, Jim. I noticed you said on the Moto2 private test that you've found Gravara posted the second or third quickest time.

So he obviously does have a contract. I just haven't spotted who that team is that he's with. But I'm pleased to see that he does have a ride confirmed. I'm assuming that's with a new team, because I don't suppose it would be on the Aspar squad. Just to reconfirm to you, because we're going to see this kid's name quite a bit.

Adrian Huayratas, who I think you said was second. He's the world super sport champion that's come across to Moto2. So he is a rookie technically in Moto2, but he comes with a fair bit of pedigree. Yeah. So the first race weekend is February 28th through March 2nd.

Grand Prix of Thailand. OK, well, then from there, we're supposed to go 14th of March to the 16th of March. Is the Grand Prix in Argentina. Now, we didn't go there last year. I'm willing to bet we're not going there this year again.

Yeah, but it's on the calendar. But then that means that would be if that's the case, if we don't go to Argentina, it's a month between the race in Thailand and the race at Kota. Unless they've got another race that they'll try and slot in. Maybe. Here's a substitute.

They're working on that already. But it does seem curious to me that they have kind of Argentina in as a definite round two, given everything that we know and what you've just said. It seems somewhat hopeful to me. One thing else, Rich, I need to have your opinion. What do you think of the new MotoGP logo?

Well, again, this one has kind of caused bits of social media to go kind of swivel like bonkers. I actually quite like it, to be honest with the gym. I mean, change is as good as a rest and it's only a logo at the end of the day. It's nothing to get too hot under the collar about. Don't know if you've been following the news of Jaguar Land Rover in the UK in the last few days.

They've kind of come out with a new marketing. Campaign, which has gone down about as well as a turd in a swimming pool. These roads are fraught with danger. As it stands, the MotoGP logo, I don't think it's offensive in any way. They haven't kind of.

Do I go down this avenue? They haven't kind of overcomplicated it by saying that there's anything other than a logo. They haven't tried to sort of push some agenda, some kind of virtue signaling add on to the whole thing. It's just purely a slight rebrand. You would assume with the future and liberty, perhaps somewhat in mind.

I mean, I'm not a marketeer, so, you know, some of the relevance of this stuff is a little bit lost on me, but I quite like the look of it. And as I say, they haven't overcomplicated it by delivering other messages which are nothing to do with bike racing. So for that, I'm eternally grateful, particularly when you look at what Bud Light Target is it? You know, the whole go work, go broke thing. Again, I don't encourage too much negativity onto the show, although I'm sure a lot of people will be like minded.

But, you know, if you start to go down avenues and rabbit holes about stuff that's not core to your brand or your audience more permanently, then down that road ruin lies. So for me, we've escaped with just a slightly different logo. And that's good enough for me at this point. I don't think it's hideous by any means. I do like the fact that now, like the microphones and stuff say M.G.P., which I think is easier to kind of grab because it's like, you know, it's like M.2.

It's Moto2, right? M3, Moto3. Now it's M.G.P. To me, though, the way they styled the M is very reminiscent of how Formula One is styled F1 in the Liberty era. So I think this is the first big influence of Liberty trying to sneak into this.

I think I don't know that for certain, but either the enlightened or the doomsdayers, depending on which side of the fence you want to occupy, might infer from some of that some closer integration between MotoGP and Formula One actually do. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I say that with no speculation in mind. But the fact that they're kind of aligning the brand identity, as marketeers would say, get me. The buzzword there.

Yeah, probably isn't a coincidence. But as to exactly what that means going forward, anytime we'll tell, really. Yeah, I don't think it's hideous. But one thing I didn't like about the Formula One rebrand and their logo was that they, their website, they created their own font to go with that logo, which I thought was hard to read. And I mean, I have reading issues, but that's me.

And at least they didn't change the font to try to have every M look like the MotoGP M everywhere. I would have really lost it there. I mean, it's in there a little bit, but it doesn't have as much lean angle to it. So it's much easier to realize that that's an M and that's an N than the way it was to try to figure out A's in Formula One thing. But anyway, that's everything that I have, Rich, to talk about.

Yeah. End of a fascinating season, not a bucketload of great racing in the MotoGP format. I think it must be said there were certainly some good races and some good individual performances. Moto3, again, was the standout class, really, with an utter standout rider. Moto2 delivered up some very good races on occasion, much better than we've seen in the past.

And yeah, MotoGP, it's a bit of a waiting game, really, I think, at this point for the 27 rule set to come about when things will shake up really properly. But we do at least have all these other changes with teams and riders and a couple of, you know, manufacturer swaps and stuff. Go all one anyway. Going on next year to keep our attention and to sort of rough things up a little bit in terms of form and so on. So, yeah, there's a great deal to look forward to.

But yeah, the end of a great season, the Ditto World Superbike, which arguably has been a lot better in terms of the racing, the MotoGP. But it is production racing and I'll always caveat that. So and a great BSP season, a very entertaining Moto America season with Josh Herron taking the title on the Ducati. So everywhere we look, it's been really, really good. I guess it's probably been one or two nasty accidents, one or two tragedies here and there.

But generally speaking, it's been an OK year. The TT went off, you know, without any major incidents this year, which was great. The future of road racing, I mean, Macau was a bit of a mitigated disaster. I don't know if you caught any of that over the weekend, just gone Jim. Yeah, I heard something about they couldn't, the cars, it caused a problem to where they really had like almost no motorcycle practice at all.

Yeah. Or something. And then to cap it all off, it was torrential rain on race day. And so the race, the bike race never happened. And so the trophies were handed out based on qualifying, which itself was a bit of a disaster, really.

So I feel very sorry for the teams and riders and so on. That great expense, it must be said, go all the way out to Macau for something that is really, I think, almost unviable, really going forward now because of the amount of stoppages they have, because it's a car weekend, really. And it's such a tight, snyly little place that there's just constant red flags and the bikes always just get kicked out of the order of the run in. So and this was the big beef this year. So I think Macau might be something that we don't really see much involvement in years to come, but at least Northwest 200 and the TT on the Isle of Man, strength to strength, improving safety all the time.

And yeah, looking forward to seeing those things again. I mean, we've got to try and get there one year, Jim. You and I, we have to. Yeah. It's a bucket list.

Yeah. So I'm still plugging away, by the way. I was up at the NEC in Birmingham, the National Exhibition Centre for the Motorcycle Live show. So I went up, spent the whole day shamelessly grifting, handing out a kind of motopop prospectus to various commercial entities there in the hope that somebody might come along and jump onto the show and help us out a little bit to realise some of our loftier dreams and ambitions. But we do for the time being still rely on our very loyal listeners and those people that subscribe on a financial basis to the show.

They're absolutely invaluable, Jim. So we can never say thank you enough to those guys, and hopefully they'll continue to stay along for the ride. I really like this trajectory that we're on with race attendances and interviews and all the extra stuff that we do outside of just talking about the races. So, yeah, end of a busy year and much look forward to going into 2025. All right, people ride safe.

Yeah. And we will. Well, we'll be in touch fairly shortly. But yeah, he's probably looking forward to a bit of a rest and recuperation. So enjoy the R and R.