News and Notes

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. Episode number 796 for January 31st, 2025. Happy New Year everyone.

Jim back in the chair giving you this hosting this podcast with Richard. He's back as well. Happy New Year, Rich. Rich, you are no longer or not this time you are not across the pond. You are actually to the left coast of the US in Long Beach.

Correct, Amunddo. Yes. Yes. I'm here on work for a few days. Nice to get some gentle sunshine, much unlike the weather in the UK.

Bellated happy new year to you, Jim and to all of the listeners. Sorry we've been away for a little while, but it's been as we were just talking about pre-recording. It's been nice to just, well, I was gonna say chill out, although we've both been incredibly busy and stressed with work and other stuff, but serendipitous, I suppose that we didn't have like double headers and triple headers to slot into that particular melee. But it's nice to be back now that things are starting to ramp up again. Yeah, yeah.

Things are starting to get going again, guys. I mean, racing is basically back there, but we would like to thank all the subscribers to the show who are doing, who have helped us out throughout all of last year. And remember, guys, every little bit helps. And if you can, please go to the page, www.motopod.com, motopodcast.com, sorry, and you can click on the PayPal Patreon links or you can do www.patreon.com or motopod. Every little bit counts.

And if you can't put anything towards the show or subscribe to the show, that's fine. We understand. Just go to wherever you get this podcast and give us a review. And that way we can go back to the top of the algorithm. With that said, Rich, would you thank the subscribers to the show?

Yes, I certainly will with pleasure, although we have lost a couple of, I mean, people come and go. I mean, that's just the natural blow in the way of things. But so the current list of subscribers, and I hope I have this correct. I think this is correct, is on the PayPal side of things. We have Gareth Locke, Jacob Nercau, Carl Hun, Norrie Ito, Nick Saban and Alan Fleming.

Some of those guys have been with the show for a long, long time, which is massively appreciated. And then on Patreon, we have Michael Cowan, Brenton Edwards, Scott Baldwin, Oli, Dennis Kindig, Jeremy Burnish, Jacob Brewer, Darren Andrews, Paul Lang, Gary Chavit and Steve. So yes, just to echo what you said, Jim, I mean, it's tricky. Life ain't getting any cheaper or any easier. The cost of everything just goes up and up and up and up.

So asking people to put a couple of quid or euros or dollars, whatever it is a month or a little bit more even is obviously it's a big ask. I hope we've been providing good content. We've been away for a few weeks just to recharge the batteries a little bit. But hopefully in terms of the in season stuff that we're doing, particularly with race attendances and interviews and stuff, hopefully people enjoy that content. And we do want to do more.

I've been trying hard to encourage one or two sponsors to come on board. But again, that's a little bit like trying to sell snow to an Eskimo. So, you know, it's just that is the nature of the times. But we've got a couple of irons in the fire. And if we can do more, we will do more.

But, you know, getting to races, staying away, you know, it is quite costly to do that. And whilst we self-funded ourselves, Jim, we up until now 100 percent. If we want to do more, that gets a little bit more difficult for us. So it would be nice to try and attract a bit more funding if we possibly can. But rest assured in terms of race reviews, the normal format of the show, that's not going to change this year or any time soon.

So we're looking forward to another packed 2025. And it's going to be a busy year again, Jim. You will. Let's see here. So let's get to some listener feedback.

This came a long time ago. Came from Jake Raller. It's a correction that I need to make because I did. I was wrong. He was asking about the 2027 fuel regulations with the 850 CC bikes, and they are not the same.

I did say that they were. I hadn't read far enough or I simply just did it wrong. But it's my bad. But fuel limits are changing. We're going from 22 liters to 20 liters.

And for the GP race itself, the sprint race on Saturday will be 11 liters, which really isn't that big of a deal. They're going to make the distance regardless. And I don't see it being that big of an issue. 20 liters is where we were when we had 800. So it kind of makes sense that they kind of went back to that.

I don't think it's going to affect the racing, Rich. I mean, I think the bikes are comfortably going to make it. The only place that I think that they might be squeamish about it would be Motegi always is a very difficult track for fuel. The stop go nature of that circuit leads itself to being thirsty. I was trying to think of what other track is very thirsty, where they're kind of close to the limit, where the guys are always behind the bubble for that whole siding lap.

And I can't really think of, I was thinking Barcelona for some reason, but I don't believe that to be true. Well, maybe, I guess perhaps someone like Mugello, where they're on full gas down the straight for so long, that's going to suck a fair bit of fuel through the engine. But as you say, it's not normally something. I mean, if anything, I think as we saw with, it was on several occasions, Fabio Quattraro running dry, but that's more because they were under fueling the bike, trying to make it that whisker lighter to help out. So that wasn't running out of fuel exactly for consumption reasons.

So it's generally not been a problem for a long time, has it? So, but Mategi is the classic one because they're kind of brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate constantly on that track. So yeah, thanks for the correction, Jake. I mean, trying to get your head around the rule book is not that I have a copy of it. And I'm glad I don't, to be honest with you, because I don't think I could stomach sitting through reading how many hundreds of pages that is nowadays.

But yeah, good to get a correction on that because as you say, we got that one wrong, but it's good to have the community out there telling us and putting us right. That's true. So if you guys were listening to the couple of shows that came out between the, at the beginning of the year, I had the interview, a second interview with Michael Goudjus. Also in that episode, there is, or we have a signed copy of his book. Michael has been kind enough to sign a copy of the, his book, the Legend of Mark Marquez, 2019 MotoGP World Champion.

To get this book, all you have to do is send an email to us at motopod.com. Tell us how many points Mark Marquez obtained in that 2019 championship season. Everybody who gets that right goes into a random generator and we'll pick one winner out of that. And you guys can get a nice autographed copy of his book. So I think that is mistakes and housekeeping there.

News right now, what'd you say Rich? Yeah, been a fair bit of news to catch up on given that we've been off the air for a while. I didn't put this there, but I'll start with this. Racing aplenty has come back, right? Supercross is running in the US.

They started that. More importantly, we had the Dakar rally at the beginning of the year, which I think is one of the coolest things to watch. The coverage this year, at least in the United States was really good. They had a full one hour episode, which was about a day behind where the rally really was. So if you could stay away from the social media web pages and any notifications that you may have got from your phone, you could watch a whole hour of all the racing, which was great.

The bikes are the part that I love the most. It was won by Daniel Sanders, only the second Aussie to ever win the event. American Ricky Braebrack was fifth. He had a terrible Dakar, and Skyler Howes was sixth there at Dakar. I found it interesting, Rich.

Do you follow Dakar, Rich, at all? I must admit I don't, not because I don't like it. Again, as you say, coverage is perhaps not the easiest to track down. It's certainly not considered to be a mainstream thing in the UK at least. Not to my knowledge, it's not.

Yeah, that's what surprises me that we get such good coverage in the US. It's pretty crazy. I've kind of missed it because I'm just sort of zoned out of motors racing across two and four wheels at the moment, just because it's the off season. So things like that, Daytona cars is happening or happened. It's already been.

Okay, so again, I've kind of missed that one, which I try not to do normally. But yeah, so I'm curious about the Dakar, but I don't know really much about it enough to make a comment on it. Obviously, you're much more of an official than I am, because I would say the same thing about motocross and supercross and stuff. It's not something I really follow, but I find it interesting. I like watching them when they've got demonstrations going on at the sort of the race meets that we go to.

There's often a monster stand with guys doing all sorts of jumps and tricks and God knows what. So it's pretty amazing. Yeah, it was just interesting to me. I mean, one of the things about Dakar is the fact that you have to navigate that. That's a key element of it.

And there's always this idea that it's easier to follow somebody else's tracks, right? Instead of opening the road and not be 100% dedicated to navigating. And it was just, I think the way that the stages were laid out, where the chrono was, where the marathon stage was, those details of it. But Ricky Braback was complaining about that it was impossible to win if you were opening the stage. And it's like, I'm like, come on, Ricky, navigation is one of the parts of this.

But the rally has gone through several iterations. And I think this is just the same thing as what happens to like MotoGP or 24 hour car endurance racing. You've built bikes where mechanically they're not going to die during this event, right? They're basically reliability is bulletproof. And much like you, if you're as old as we are, Rich, you watch cars in the 80s and you go to Le Mans and you'd have you what?

They do what? 52, 56, 52 cars, something like that. There's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. I think they do 60 at Daytona on a shorter track.

I think they got like 50. And at one point, like two thirds of the field would have broken down or failed or had some mechanical thing. And over that timeframe, just like now you never see a Formula One car really retire for a mechanic, truly a mechanical reason. I mean, they happen, but they're basically other cars. Everything is all bulletproof.

And so now everything is a sprint, whether it's 24 hours or or or 12 stages over the course of two weeks in the desert in Saudi Arabia. Everybody's just got to go flat out. And it's just wild to see that change. So that's my Dakar rant over because I'm just, you know, I like to see the Americans when I'm very proud of of it. And when they do it or whatever.

So with that, let's get to actually talking about Moto GP. So the long awaited Liberty Media takeover of Moto GP from Dorna is on hold a fair way to say it, Rich? Rich Ingram Delayed. Rodney Weiss OK, that's a better way. Rich Ingram Possibly might be a slightly more accurate thing.

I mean, it's just as we kind of surmise might happen, it's kind of bogged down in regulatory due diligence, I suppose, is the official way of putting it. Well, I mean, that's my would be my understanding of it because it's a big deal. I mean, you know, Dorna has World Superbike, Moto GP, Liberty already has Formula One. So there are some genuine and I would suggest quite well founded concerns about too much residing in one place. So the EU, which is not an organization famed for its efficiency anyway, will take its own time to come to a decision on that.

So as things stand, I suspect we'll get a way through the year, if not all the way through the year before a final decision is made. I mean, clarity would be nice. And I think all the teams, the organizers, etc. will be keen for clarity on this as soon as possible. But as things stand, Jim, it appears to be some months away at the very minimum.

Yeah, I think it all revolves around monopolies, right? One single source of media coverage covering what you could arguably call the two most popular worldwide racing series that exists on the planet. And I don't know, I mean, Dorna has to change something because I think they need to, right? And I was listening through your Silverstone interviews. And it was interesting when you asked, I'll agree if I just blame Joel Kelso, like what he thought about Liberty taking over.

And he was excited about it, which I thought was really interesting. And his answer was also interesting to me. He says, well, that helps people from Australia, or from some of the other places that maybe aren't as motorcycle Moto GP savvy to get that ability to find and attract someone, some sponsorship, some bring money to the sport from someplace else, which is one of the things that I really didn't think about. Because I look at it from the standpoint of from the idea of what happened with Formula One, it became extremely popular. And it's still very popular.

It is riding a wave of popularity, mainly because of a drive to survive series that kind of pulled away the cover, pulled away the covers and showed what was happening underneath. It was well done, although I could never get into it. I mean, I love Formula One, I could never get into it. But some friends I was talking to, they said now the show is not genuine anymore, because now everybody knows there's a camera. Everybody knows there's a boom mic.

So everybody's sort of playing towards the cameras and it's lost its authenticity. It lost the little bit that gave you that hook, right? But if Liberty owns them, and it has this, and I don't, the question I've always had, and I don't know this answer, and maybe you do, Rich, maybe you don't, but I'm going to throw it out there. I don't know whose idea the drive to survive was. Was it Liberty's or was it Formula One's or who came up or was it Netflix?

Just I don't know who decided to do that. – I don't know either. I mean obviously it was a Netflix show. My sense would be that Liberty just lucked in to the fact that I think the bigger thing with drive to survive was that it came out when Covid happened. And so there was just a captive audience to watch it.

So it was just, the stars aligned really with that. I watched the first season, which was okay. I might have watched the second season, I can't remember now, but it kind of became a soap opera. And at which point, because I'm a sort of, without wishing to sound too pompous, I'm a sort of true fan. So whether it's Formula One or MotoGP or Superbike, I like to think that I know quite a lot about the teams and the riders anyway.

So it wasn't really adding anything for me. But then I'm not the target audience for something like that. I mean in terms of Dawner, Liberty and what Joel said, which was very revealing, you're quite right to point that out Jim. I mean Liberty is a business and it will want to market and sell this product, for want of a better word, everywhere that it can. And my last bit of the Silverstone stuff I'm going to put out over some point in the next few days.

And that has another interview with Stuart Pringle, who's the MD of Silverstone. And although I haven't got to the edit on that bit yet, I'm pretty sure I said to him, what's the single biggest thing Liberty could do to help Silverstone? Because obviously Silverstone perennially has issues with low gate turnout and revenues. He said, we need a British rider and MotoGP. So the only way you will get that is by growing an audience in each home country.

So that will be Liberty's challenge. And I don't think it's contentious at all to say that Dawner has done a great job, but it is so Spanish centric in its administrative setup. The fact that we have four races still in Spain, I think is a scandal in a world championship. And all of that will change. I mean, we've been over this before I repeat myself, but I kind of see Dawner as kind of the Bernie Ecclestone equivalent, really.

They've done a great job. They've taken it a long, long way. But it's time for a new broom, really. And so that's the hope is that Liberty will some potential cost in terms of, you know, we don't really want a drive to survive kind of so properly thing, in my opinion. I think the sport sells itself just on the sheer spectacle.

So hopefully we'll keep the razzmatazz down as much as possible. But if it helps countries like Australia, the UK, I mean, it's so hard for riders from the UK. Yes, they go through the super bike route and they've been very prevalent in world super bikes. But, you know, that doesn't help Silverstone MotoGP round. So, you know, this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

And likewise in the USA, Jim, because I mean, you badly need a crop of, you know, young US riders to come through the world championship. And it's very, very hard with the way the system works at the moment. DS Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how to right size my expectations of what Liberty can and can't do for the system. For.

Yeah, I know. That's a good point. Yeah. You know, I'm I just I feel my opinion is that Dorna thinks that they're going to wave their Liberty magical wand and it's going to be instantaneously as popular as Formula One is. I mean, I remember friends who went to Kota back when Formula One first went there.

Gosh, I can't remember when. I know it's been a long time, but they're like, yeah, you could get in a ticket for all three days cost cost you $150. Now it's costing like $1,500. And before there would be 70, 80,000 people there to watch Formula One race. Now there's 150,000 people there and it's hard to move around.

It's you can't get anywhere. You have all the things that come with the larger crowd, which is what you want. But it's do you want it? It just seems odd. And I'm just trying to right size the expectations for everybody.

I don't know what Liberty is going to do other than they have a bigger they have control of media that they can put the put MotoGP onto these different channels that are going to be easier for other people to get to. But how are they going to hook you? We're hooked. We are bike people and it's very difficult, I think, to introduce your friends to the sport, especially if they're just they've never really ridden or only occasionally rode bikes or I did it for a little bit when I was a kid kind of thing. It's very hard to get your friends to say to go to a motorcycle race.

They're just not there. They can't make the connection as easily as someone who says, well, I can drive a car. I'll go watch a car race because you intrinsically you understand what it takes to drive a car, but you don't really understand what it takes to ride a motorcycle, let alone rode a bicycle fast, let alone to do it at a world level. And it's how do you make that come across in a way that captures everybody? And I'm not a marketing genius.

I've had some marketing classes in college eons ago. And I'm just curious. That's what I'm curious about. How are they going to do it? What is their plan?

I mean, we're speculating here. We'll go wildly off of the small little bit I thought we'd do here on Liberty. But it's just they need to capture everybody's imagination. And I'm not sure how they do it. Well, I mean, as I said, I think largely the sport sells itself.

What it lacks is exposure. Yeah, maybe you just give them exposure. Maybe that's it. It doesn't like exposure in Italy and it doesn't like exposure in Spain because it's been utterly dominated in terms of riders from those two countries by and large. I mean, if you look at Formula One as a good example, you wouldn't or I wouldn't immediately say, oh, well, that's dominated by this nationality.

It has a widespread and that's not thanks to Liberty. That's just the way Formula One has evolved over the years. But I don't think it's a coincidence that, you know, the correlation between Spanish dominance in terms of riders and championships and so on and who's been running the sport. Now, that's not a criticism exactly of Dorna, but it is far too focused around that part of the world. So my hope and expectation is that Liberty, who are clearly masterful, I mean, including the name of the company, for goodness sake, and they are about making money.

And the only way they will do that is to grow the exposure, you know, because it's a little bit like, well, you don't have to play football to enjoy going to a football match or you don't have to be able to skate on the ice to enjoy ice hockey. Many people do, but I suspect most people don't. So I don't necessarily buy the notion that people got into Formula One because they drive a car because the Formula One car doesn't know anything like a normal car. And in the same way, I don't think you necessarily need to be into a riding a T-wheel machine to get the spectacle of MotoGP or any other form of T-wheels. I think you just need to be aware of it.

And if you have people to cheer on in a truly global sense, you've got riders from all well represented from all around the world in all three categories, then I think that's the ticket really. And that will be Liberty's challenge. And I suspect they're more than equal to the challenge. Now, the double edged sword that I fear about, which I said a minute ago really is how much of the razzmatazz do they introduce to the whole show in order to help to attract that newer audience, maybe a younger audience? You know, I suspect that will be a demographic that they're going after as well.

Do they have to sort of spice up to levels that are a little bit unrealistic or, you know, false? I mean, that's really what I'm hoping won't happen. You know, if we have to be watching riders coming out to sort of ticker-tape parades and, you know, the sort of thing that we've tended to see happening in Formula One, that wouldn't sit particularly well with me. But I'm, you know, I'm the guy that will be pushing up daisies in a couple of decades. I'm not the long term fan that they're going to be looking for.

So, you know, and that approach will probably appeal to the younger audience, I guess. So, yeah, it's a double-edged sword, Jim, as you pointed out really. But if I don't, and obviously it's not going to bring ticket prices down. I mean, that's not Liberty's job. I mean, that's race organizers that are in charge of that stuff.

If anything, as you say, the popularity might put ticket prices further up because then it becomes a cash cow for everybody. I mean, this is why I don't go to Silverstone Formula One because I'm just not prepared to pay, well, I mean, for two or three of us to go, you'd probably be talking about a couple of thousand pounds by the time you're there. You've got a hotel, you know, a semi-decent seat to sit in. It's astronomically expensive. I mean, you could literally go on holiday for a week cheaper than a weekend at Silverstone Formula One.

MotoGP is pretty expensive, but it's nowhere near that level. So that's another worry that I have. But that's a byproduct of the success of the sport. And we kind of want the sport to be a bit more successful. So I'm interested in what other people think about this.

I mean, am I barking up the wrong tree and saying that there's too many Spaniards and Italians in the sport? I mean, I'm not criticism of them. That's just the way the system has tended to work. But I'll take going back to your original point, which was that Joel Kelso clearly indicating that as an Aussie MotoGP is a very hard sell when you're trying to pay for rides. Because I mean, this is what we're talking about.

People think, you know, Moto3 as an example, well, championship, you know, you've arrived if you get to Moto3. Well, you haven't. You need several hundred thousand euros even at the lower end of the paddock to get a ride. In most cases, it's a very expensive business. So anything that helps underrepresented nationalities to overcome that I think would be generally a good thing.

Yeah, I agree with you. You reminded me of something that I am an ice hockey fan. OK, I can ice skate. But one of the things, and this sticks with me, and I think that maybe this is kind of the thing that I'm looking for Liberty to do, is back when back in the 80s, we finally had cable TV. Well, that was a revelation, you know, to have more than like the six terrestrial channels that were available to you.

Wow. Now there's 20 or there was 40 or whatever, whatever it was. I can't really remember. You know, I remember days when TV sets didn't have the cable TV hookup to the back of them, right? So anyway, but I was, you know, I could watch professional NHL ice hockey, which, well, that's cool.

Like, OK, I knew hockey, but I didn't know necessarily like all the rules or things like that. But I will never forget that that was like after a commercial break. It was Al Treadwick was in the old Chicago Stadium. And he they were talking about this brutal. What had happened before was a big cross check that had happened in our trade.

Wicks says this is how violent a cross check is. And he took a stick and cross check the wall and knocked a cinder block out of a wall. And it's like it was quick. It was fast. It was wow.

I didn't know that was that possible. So it's like, can they do something like that? Can they give you? Can you I mean, I know there aren't commercials to stop play as there is in Moto GP, but do they have a little just a little snippet thing that's the beginning of the show that explains some little small piece of kit or something that we don't know that people are going to like? Right.

Well, something like that. Just those little tidbits that give you that little idea of, well, I know a little bit more now, but it's not overwhelming and it's not it's not in your face to a person who's like us who have been there. Yeah. I mean, it's very hard to cater to the entirety of the potential or exist indeed the existing audience, isn't it? I mean, I'm thinking of some of the really good stuff that Simon Crayfar, who's obviously departed his role with the sort of the Dawn of World Feed, let's call it.

He did these little technical bits to camera, going to various factories or examining certain bits of a bike, you know, which are really good. But the problem is, and this is only going to get worse. And in fact, this is blown up in the UK in the last few days is, you know, as the sport disappears more and more behind paywall services, which are not cheap, you know, you're immediately limiting or actually disenfranchising your existing audience even worse. You know, so you might they might be losing fans. So as an example, I mean, we mustn't belabor this for too long, I suppose, because we'll be a couple of hours as usual.

But so in the UK, we've or in my yeah, I'll say the UK, I'm not sure about the rest of Europe. In the UK, we've had for years Euro sport, which has always been a very competitively priced sports channel. All sorts of sports on there. But obviously, from my point of view, it's always been about the World Superbike and the British Superbike coverage that they provide. That moved over to Discovery Plus, in part, a little while back.

And now, Euro sport has gone been rolled into the TNT sports conglomerate or whatever you want to call it. So now, where before you would have paid, I think it was seven pounds per month for Discovery Plus, which gave you all of the Euro sport content. Now, it's behind the TNT sports paywall, which is 30 odd pounds per month. And a lot of people just saying, and again, perfectly understandably so, because like in the US and elsewhere, in the UK, inflation is still a problem. Things are still very, very expensive.

A lot of people say, I just simply can't afford it. And I won't I won't pay it. You know, I'll just have to stop watching it or people said we'll try to illegally stream it, which obviously we don't condone or recommend, but you can do it. Or you might get a very abbreviated highlights package on one of the terrestrial channels in the UK. But that is not the same as watching it live on the TV.

I mean, obviously, the best thing is to be trackside. But obviously, you can't do that all the time. So yeah, multifaceted problems and opportunities aren't there, as with all things good and bad, yin and yang. That's just the nature of these things. But at the moment, to go to the original bullet point, we don't know what's happening with Liberty.

So I mean, they used to say that he won't turn around and say, sorry, no, you'll have too much under one roof there. I'm pretty sure they'll have to have to carve off World Superbikes. I'd be surprised if they don't have to let that go. And as much as the completer simi likes things to be sort of under one branded roof, I don't necessarily think in fact, I'm fairly well convinced that it would be a good thing for World Superbike if that did head off to new ownership, because Dawner have not done enough with World Superbike, in my opinion. I agree with that.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, they're rich. I think World Superbike is every bit as good as MotoGP. Yeah, in pure racing terms, it's been vastly superior since the aero age came in. I just think that's demonstrably true. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I mean, that's the other big problem is the technical rise in the aero and everything. But anyway, I think we'd be rated that enough with Liberty. It is though. But I mean, it's one of the big things that's going to happen to the sport. It's one of the I mean, I remember when Dorna bought it in, you know, but that was outside looking in because there wasn't very much of it shown in the US at the time.

And you're like, Oh, well, it got better, right? You found it started to come to the speed channel or whatever, and then you whatever other racing channels that were on, you know, essentially, your high end cable packages or whatever. Anyway, so our team launches, let's talk about those real quick, which they have started with all the team launches. I we had this chat off pre pre pod, if you will. They are kind of mind numbingly boring.

And it's all PR speak. There's, you know, the Yamahas, they look like the Yamahas, they got a little slightly different graphic. They were 24 bikes painted in the new livery. They were not the 25 bikes. You know, Ducati has their thing.

We do know that Marquez is forbidden from skiing due to his contract with Ducati, which I for what that's worth. Okay, well, whatever. There. I mean, the bikes are going to be red. I mean, as much as I loved the white bike that Benya had at the end of the at the end of the year.

They're not going to they're not going to be white, they're going to be red. And they are the team in red. The bigger problem is all the KTMs will and will come to that whole mess in a minute. But all the KTMs now are the same exact color, you know, devil in the details of the bottom belly pans that tell you which team is tech three and which one is the factory team, because they just all look exactly the same. That's there.

The only one that caught my eye. And I think it caught your eye T-Rex because it was it was different is was trackhouse. And for me, I was really interested in the fact that, okay, here's the American team, you can kind of get behind it as an American is going to be quote our team, if you will. And I was hoping for some red, white and blue. I was hoping for, you know, some big American sponsor to be on the bike.

I mean, you know, you could dream wildly of Coca Cola or Pepsi. You know, I still think that's one of the most beautiful Suzuki's with Swanson's Pepsi bike from what 88, 89, something like that. No, there was. And it's just a blue bike. And it's just there.

But it did have one interesting sponsor on the front fender. And that was Golf Oil, which I was like, wow, that's kind of crazy that golf is there because where I live, there are no golf gas stations. I didn't even realize that golf as a company still existed. I guess there are as you head west in and in the US from where I live, they are some golf gas stations and service stations and whatnot that still exist and that are there. So I thought that was interesting that that had happened, that that was there on the bike because that's a different sponsor from the norm of the energy drink or the European oils, the Motul's, the Ajives.

There's probably another one somewhere in there that I'm forgetting, but you get the idea. And I was good for that. But then you told me that like everybody was like, well, Justin Marx wasn't there. He didn't talk about anything. He was Brio doing the talking.

So I was like, hmm, weird on top of that. And to continue the golf theme, it's actually on the Williams Formula One car. So it's like, wow, they're are they coming back to race and they not come back to racing? Because I mean, like for me, I remember golf being on cars in the 70s, but definitely not, you know, not that anyone that I can, you know, predominantly know. But what was your take on some of the launches, Fritz?

Well, again, as you said, we've been talking for a fair while before we started recording this, but maybe it's just because I'm a 52 year old grumpy old sod, but I just, I cannot get excited about team launches. I've never really found them to be very particularly interesting. Again, it's this whole Rasmus thing, trying to create a lot of excitement when it's just a couple of bikes on the stage. You know, these things are exciting when they're out on track. And that's the bit that I like, as well, most fans.

So I don't really pay very close attention to them. Most of what I've seen or read has come through the social media channels with the journalists who have either the delightful or terrible job of trudging along to these things all over the globe and attending in person. But yes, the one that caught my eye was the track house launch, because I think I'm correct in saying that was there wasn't even anybody there from a press point of view. I think it was purely just an online thing. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, anybody, but there might have been a few journalists there, but it was not a particularly, by comparison to most of the rest of them, it wasn't a particularly well fought through event by the looks of it.

Key figures not there. Obviously, radically different look to the bike. Yes, golf being on there is potentially significant. Hopefully, they've got some decent funds coming in from that association, but just a bit underwhelming, I think, and a bit possibly a little bit troubling as a result. I mean, I don't know if Justin Marks is somebody we can sort of try and track down in the paddock at some point this year.

I don't know if he attends many or indeed any of the races, but… He was at the 24 of Daytona because he has an IMSA team, he's got his NASCAR team, he has this team. I mean… Yeah, well, that's precisely the point, Jim, isn't it? So when Trackhouse came in and took on the satellite, Prelia, duty, there was a lot of kind of excitement and fanfare around that. That was a serious player with serious infrastructure in other series and knows what it takes both in terms of the technical side, the logistics side and the financial side to succeed, albeit MotoGP is a stiff challenge for anybody to take on. So, well, we'll just have to see what happens in the early rounds, won't we?

I don't know if they are running, you know, the end of 24 bikes or whether they have 25 machinery available to them. I'm trying to think if Fernandez… I think Ralph Fernandez will have a 25 bike. Probably, Iagira will be on the sort of the outgoing 24 model, at least to start with. So, because, you know, as we always say, it's a results-based business and if they start showing up in the top six, which I think is quite unlikely given the strength elsewhere on the grid, then things would be different. But at the moment, it looks a little bit troubling to my eyes without wishing to be overly negative about it.

And I hope to be proven completely wrong on that. But as for the rest of the launches, I mean, there was some… Not excitement. I mean, that would be a gross overstatement. There was, you know, people were intrigued to see whether Martin was going to run the number one. I think he had the number one on the bike when they launched it.

That was a few weeks ago, I think, or a couple of weeks ago. As you say, Jim, the Ducattis look like the Ducattis always do. I think there's a little bit of… Well, I'll say excitement. Again, I'm probably overdoing it. But as to what the HRC bikes are going to look like now that there's no Repsol anymore, whether they will be just Honda Colors or whether there's a new title sponsor that's come in.

But other than that, yeah, just not really interested in it. I mean, I guess we'll touch on it in a minute. But the shakedown test started today in Sepang with the rookies and the normal test riders. So we can perhaps touch on that very, very briefly. And then the first proper Sepang test gets going next week.

So that's when you know, the true bits of 2025 machinery will start to break cover. But even some of that will be held back, I suspect, until the Thailand test by which time it's too late for anybody to react when they see what Delinia's come up with this time. Yeah. That's the question is what new gizmo does he have that everybody else has to copy? There will be some aero trickery, I'm sure.

There'll be something. Yeah, there'll be something. I will be happy to see the 27. I'll be happy to get to 27. Seriously, just because I hate the aero bikes.

I just do. I'm sorry. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I hate them. I want to go back to just basic bikes. But yeah, although I'm not sure that we can necessarily hold on to the hope that aero is going to be significantly reduced because they'll find ways around the new rule set for sure.

And aero has not been banned. It's not as if they've got to have flat sided or curved shaped bearings and stuff. The genie's out of the bottle and it won't be going back in anytime particularly soon. So it's a tricky one. Normally speaking, when you have a period of stability in the rules, it makes the racing better because the people that have the early advantage for one reason or another kind of lose their advantage.

Other people catch up and develop similar things. But doesn't really seem to have been the case in MotoGP, does it? So I don't know whether 27 will really shake things up. I mean, that'll be the interest for us to see what the competitive order looks like and if all of the manufacturers or perhaps another one even potentially could be entering around that point. But the aero is clearly a problem in terms of overtaking.

I mean, I think we know that for certainty now and that's obviously not going to change this year. And who knows what Delinia will come up with or anybody else. I mean, Priya have done a lot of very good work with ground effect. I mean, yeah. And the new Yamaha has a very distinct curvature to its fairing to help stability in the aero world when the bike is linked over.

People can make a strong argument and I will not lie. There have been some battles in the first one to five laps of MotoGP race because everyone's fighting to get to a spot to get to clean air. I mean, we talked about that. I forget where, wherever it was. I was like, I think that was the title of the fight for clean air or something.

I think we titled that show. So it has produced some good racing, but it's not the best racing. I mean, it's weird. I don't know if I was like the thought process for a while for me was like, well, what if they built a slightly softer tire? You can't have to not build a good tire that lasts that whole distance.

You have to take some amount of time and you have to baby it for a little bit to the idea. If you build it just right, where some people may want to try to just stretch the lead as far as they can and just hold on, where some people want to protect it at the beginning, but then ride hard at the end. So who knows? I mean, if you listen to my interview with Gugias, we talked about having pit stops, which just seems bizarre. But if you think about it, it's a different strategy to break up things.

It's not as far fest as you think. I mean, they're done in world endurance, but yeah, it's an endurance. But then there's a cost involved in it. And who wants to be the person who makes the tires? I get all those other things that are all there.

And don't forget that, because again, I don't know why people were kind of all surprised and bitching about this, but it's been mandated that for the opening round of world super bikes at Philip Island at the end of the month, I'm sorry, well on the 23rd to the 25th, I think it is a February, they are going to have to do a mandatory pit stop again, because I mean, they had to do it last year, just simply because the natural PI on the surface then we've seen race length reduced in MotoGP for the same reason, but not a pit stop. Although they did have to do a pit stop a couple of years back, if you remember, back if you remember, because that's the famous race where where Marquez missed his is a lot of slot and was black flagged. Anyway, so they're going to be pit stopping again, Philip Island in world super bike on tire safety grounds, but just to sort of pick up on something you and Michael talked about the element of jeopardy is gone because they have a minimum time for the pit stop. So you can't rush to change the wheels. You know, otherwise you get a penalty for that.

And if they if they're like half a second going out of the pit lane across the line, they will get a time penalty. So you almost have to be slower than you want in order to not get penalized. Now you can say that's a stupid way of doing it. But on the other hand, they don't want bikes going out and wheels flying off by mistake. So it's a tricky one, isn't it?

But because, you know, I never really liked Formula One refueling period, but it did introduce something that you're hinting at where some people went out light on the first and whereas other people played the longer game with a fuller tank. So but I don't know, it's all a bit contrived, you know, again, it's sort of this like ballast or, you know, reverse grids and stuff. It's not pure. I mean, I'm sort of as much of as purest as I can be, although I can already hear Alan Fleming tutting at me because, you know, I'd ban Aero tomorrow if I could. And he'd say, well, okay, you're not a purist, and are you?

And that would be a valid kind of retort. But I just think, well, I mean, we're signaling out Aero and it is a problem. But of course, the front tire is going to be remain the big one, you know, because, you know, people dropping back, you know, to allow their tires to cool down so they don't hit that penalty. So again, it's a real mess. It's conundrum.

Really? Yeah. Well, the problem is, it's, it's, it's a solvable thing as well. It's just, you know, that Michelin can't get this tire to a level where it's acceptable to race it because they just don't get enough time to test it. So I just think, again, I'm pointing the finger squarely at the at the organizational aspects of the sport that they haven't just made that happen.

Because we could have a new tire this year if they've been a bit more proactive about it. And yet we're going to go through another whole season as far as I know, with a tire that's likely to create issues again, or not jeopardize, minimize the racing. Yeah. Because people can't afford, you know, the pressure to go over the limit. Agreed.

Yeah. I, yeah, there are, I mean, we could, you could go on and on and on with all this. And we do. But it becomes, it's like, I've heard, you know, listen to some former than one podcast and they're like, well, if you're not talking about the tires, then the tires are doing fine. So don't worry about it.

Right. Well, we do is talk about tires because they're the one things that, you know, get you where you want to be or whatever. So all that. Okay. I'm sure we'll talk about it more as we, as we, as it goes along or whatever.

I mean, that's, that's all part of it or whatnot. But I mean, I think to the point with world super bike, it's disappointing for early economic attire that would go the whole distance at PI. They are the supplier and they, I can understand they got caught out because you can't really go test at PI. I get it. Difficult time consuming money, expense, all of that, but to miss it twice in a row, it's a little, you kind of, kind of go, Hmm.

It's either that Jim or I don't know, but maybe it's that they can't justify the expense of creating a special tire. Maybe very, which you wouldn't necessarily be able to use or want to use everywhere else. I think that's probably more of the issue. I don't think it's that they can't. It's just probably that it's just prohibitive to do it.

It could be. Yeah. It's entirely possible. If anybody from Prelly is listening, let us know. Exactly.

Oh, can you sponsor the show as well, please? All right. Let's talk about the elephant that's in the room and that is KTM. So let's try to put this into a chronological order of what we know and how things happened. I think it was evident towards the end of the year, the whispers started, KTM is in financial trouble.

What do you mean financial trouble? No one really could define it, but KTM is in financial trouble. The rumors started swirling about what that really was. And there was a lot of ha haing, poo pooing from KTM. Everything's fine.

What are you talking about? This is, hang on. And this is unfounded. Okay. Well, then the tune changed.

A race or two later was it, yeah, you know what? We got this glut of motorcycles and we really just made too many. And the economy has turned inflations up and no one's buying a motorcycle. So it's okay. We're fine.

We're just not going to make any, well, what did they talk at first? They weren't going to make any 2025 bikes. They were going to hold on to all the older 24s and sell them. And we got this covered and we were all fine. Well, we got through, let's have that Valencia at the end of the year and all that good stuff.

And then we get the real story because they had to go to court. They call it insolvency over there, Rich, which I think is like bankruptcy here in America as an equivalency. Yeah, it's not bankruptcy. If you call, you call the sort of the, I think the terminology is you call the administrators in to analyze the business and work out a plan to get it out of the trouble that it's in. So it's the stage before bankruptcy.

And obviously the administrator that is there at all costs to avoid the bankruptcy because at that point the company is insolvent and it's dead. Okay. Got you. Well, they came out of there that KTM was in three billion euro debt. Yeah.

Whoa. Like from, we just made a few too many motorcycles to we are three billion euros in debt is a huge change in the picture of this story because then it became, well, that's it. KTM is done. There's no way they're going to go race yet. There's, you know, pit buyer going, we hope, nope, nope.

We're going to, we're going to be on the grid. We're going to be here. We're going to be racing. We're going to be doing our thing. That's what we do.

And which you had to sit there and go, what is KTM sort of made their, their tagline, their company motto, the thing it's KTM ready to race. That's, it was all about racing a motorcycle, but you had to think, I started thinking at this point and Rich, maybe you didn't think this, but I started thinking like, well, I could see that you could be three billion euros. You bought MV Agusta, you bought Gas Gas, you bought Husqvarna. You have your own brand anyway. Like, what were you going to do with all these brands?

And essentially, yes, I know they're all clones of each other. Plus you were providing half the, well, more than half the Moto three grid with Moto three KTMs, flavor them, whatever, repaint them, whatever color you want. It's the same thing. And you're going, you guys don't have the money Honda has. So how's this, how's this working out for you?

And, you know, I think that's pretty crazy. So if I get this wrong, Rich, correct me as we go. But now I think, as you said, what the, the administrators have come in, they've, they've opened up the books, they've looked at everything that's going on. I know that they have sold MV Agusta back to the Rustin Oliark who had it, but when they bought it from him. So I know that I know that there has been what 1800 approximately redundancies or, you know, basically layoffs or laying off their production staff.

Stefan Pierre, the head of Pierre Mobility, head of the group is out and been replaced by, I forget who, I don't have the answer for who has it, but that leaves a lot in doubt about what's going on now. KTM had their factory bikes at Decar. They had all their equipment. So they're committed to that is Supercross is still running with their gas, gas and KTM brands, fully fractured support and funded. And you heard pit, you know, pit buyer is not just the head of the MotoGP team.

He's the head of motorsport for KTM. He says, well, we're funded. We have the money for the, for that year. What about next year there pit? What happens then?

And that's kind of where we are because I think 20, I mean, let's, is there anything you want to add in here, before we go down the whole, the racing side of this and that effect? Well, there's, I mean, there's obviously lots to say, although because we've been off air for quite some time, most of this has been reported and said and commented on and we're probably not adding anything. No, probably not. Novel on you. And, you know, we're not closely linked to any of this anyway, but I mean, where do you start with this one?

I think this really, this all goes back to funny enough, COVID again. Yeah. People were stuck not being able to travel and all, let's say a lot of people in inverted commas directed some of that unused money into buying motorbikes and KTM and derivatives of the KTM brand in particular. Fine. You know, good for KTM.

I think, and I'm not being critical here because, you know, I don't run a huge company like that. Clearly that, what's the word, kind of kickstarted a period of growth and investment. And I think now we might say overspending, which has put the business as a whole in peril because post COVID, everything's gone back to normal and people aren't necessarily buying as many motorbikes and not replacing motorbikes. As you say, macro economically, all sorts of funny stuff's been going on in the world. Inflation has been running rampant.

So people have just tightened their belts and that has left KTM with, I think at one point, well over a hundred thousand bikes in its inventory. You know, vast supply facilities and manufacturing facilities, you know, almost the entirety of the town where KTM is based is, you know, it's almost a single employer plus an awful lot of supply chain providers and stuff, all of whom are at jeopardy and all of this as well. So I'm not going to say it's hubris because that's an unkind way of putting it, but this is the result of perhaps some over enthusiastic decisions that were made some years ago. Now the good news, and I think this is what's been sort of revealed through this process of opening up the books. The good news is that KTM as a company is very profitable.

It's just completely overstretched itself and accrued such colossal debts that it can't clear that that's put the business at risk. So the issue is how do they deal with debt and maintain the business going forward. So that's kind of a think more or less where we're at. Now again, I don't have any detail and I'm not tapped into this, but I've been reading, trying to read some stuff around it. There are lots of investors that are looking at KTM and saying, yeah, that's a great brand.

It's a very profitable business. It's just got itself in, I won't use the word that came to mind. It's got itself into some serious trouble, but it's a recoverable position. Obviously when you're letting 1800 people go, nevermind the impact on probably several times that number elsewhere in the supply chain, you have to shine a light on all of the areas of what you might call discretionary spend. But as you correctly point out Jim, the branding of the company is ready to race and without racing, KTM I would argue is not really a brand anymore.

So all of that's a long-winded way of saying, I think, you know, that the budget was already there for this year and I don't think that could be not spent because a lot of it will already be allocated anyway. The concern really was for 2027 and whether they can justify the development costs or the continued development costs because obviously they're already working on the 27 bike. In order to continue into the future, I think this year, no doubt next year, probably no problem. So 27 would be the worry. The hope now is that the recovery package, the investors coming in, some sacrificial lambs in terms of, and a couple of people that probably needed to have their heads on the block, you know, like Stefan Pira, for example, they're gone.

So it's a fresh start. They'll hopefully start to clear the debts. They'll rationalize their manufacturing back to a more sensible level. As you say, divest some of the, in hindsight, full hardy brand acquisitions that they'd made. I mean, they brought like push bike brands and all sorts of other stuff, which is not core to the business.

So at a certain point, you've got to let that stuff go and just kind of rebuild and just steady the ship. So I think that's where we are. Obviously from a purely racing point of view, Jim, and I'll let you come back in because I've been talking again for too long. You know, the big worry that everybody's highlighted is do they put themselves contractually in a position where there's a trap door clause in Pedro Acosta's contract that means he can sell off somewhere else, which he might not want to do to be bad to the guy. And obviously we don't know any of this detail, but that's, I kind of think that's where we're at.

And obviously you have to feel incredibly sorry for the couple of thousand people or so that have lost their jobs. Cause that's terrible, particularly, you know, cause that happened around Christmas time as well. And there was rumors towards the back end of last year that people weren't getting paid at the end of the month and stuff. So it's been terrible really. And it's a, it'll be one that, you know, management books look on as a case study possibly and overstretching yourself and allowing yourself to get into a very, very perilous situation.

But that's not, we've been all judgy about it. Cause I mean, KTM is a vast company and it's not easy to run vast companies, but it's easy to run them into the ground if you're not very careful. Yep. So I think if we look at it from the racing standpoint, you know, if you say KTM to someone, I think they think of dirt bikes first. Yes.

I think that's very much the thing. I don't think we think of them as a street bike brand and therefore not necessarily a group that goes road racing. I think they very much are about Enduro bikes and supercross motorcross, that kind of a thing. Fine. That's your niche, but the they're going to racing in 25.

I'm worried about 26 because they're getting $900 million of investment money. That's a far cry from 3 billion Euro that you're in debt. Right? There's going to have to be things that are going to have to be sold. And do they have value?

Does gas, gas have value? Does Husqvarna have value? I think this might be the end, if you will, of those particular brands. Yes. Because I don't know if anybody would want them.

I mean, I was trying to think of something relative. There was a there was Huzeberg back in, I'm going to call it the later late 80s, the early part of the 90s. It was a Swedish brand. It was there for a little bit. It was somewhat successful, but wasn't.

And they were like the first people to bring the modern day four stroke dirt bike into the realm of reality. But the other thing here is for me is that what are they going to do with their Moto3 project? That appears to be done. They're not going to have Moto3 bikes here shortly. Well, again, I might be corrected on this, but as far as I understand it, they make good money out of the Moto3 program.

So there wouldn't be any obvious reason to ditch it. I mean, the problem is, I think, Jim, and again, I'm happy to be corrected on any of this, but things like that are only a problem if they're losing you money. If you're a struggling business and you've got areas of your business that are making you money, then those are the ones that you want to focus on, not get rid of. Now, that would put MotoGP in jeopardy because that is clearly, you know, a cost center to end all cost centers. And it's debatable whether that really generates much money outside of the brand awareness of KTM or widely.

And you say it is a bit of a tricky one to understand really, given how predominantly off road focused they are as a company. I mean, it was always struck me as slightly odd that they went road racing, although I ordered them and I continue to applaud them for doing so because they like to race and we love companies that love to race. But it's not really what KTM is. And I don't have and I did take note when I was up at the Birmingham Motorcycle Show in November, KTM had a pretty big stand there, but they don't have a stand out kind of super bikey, you know, hot road machine as such, other than very expensive kind of small production special things. So it's not like they've got a Fireblade or an R1 type thing at the head of their that links directly to the MotoGP program.

So it's a bit, unless I'm missing something, I didn't spot a model on the stand, but they don't kind of strike me as a bike you think, oh, I'm going to buy a new bike next year, but you know, I want to lead a sports bike or I'll get a KTM. This would not occur to me. So MotoGP sort of sits slightly uneasily in the whole brand exercise. But I think in terms of, sorry, you meant that those brands will disappear from existence altogether, not just disappear from KTM ownership, did you? Well, I think they may disappear entirely because is there value for anyone to buy it and then try to have their own bike?

You know, maybe, I mean, Gas Gas may go back to being, it was always known as a trials company, right? Like, yeah, that's where I know it. I mean, I don't know what else they do, but I know it as a company that does a trials bike. I mean, there's bike companies come and go, right? Like you never see a Mako anymore, but they were prevalent in the 70s.

You know, they were the people who brought two-stroke technology, if you will, to the game. But I mean, they could spin out, they could spin out Gas Gas, it could spin out Husqvarna, whatever that they want to do and they become profitable there, right? I was thinking like, you know, you have, if you're making money at Moto3, fine, but the question, the article I read made it sound like they can make money, but are they really making money because there was this idea that they were sort of propping up some of the teams with some finance or a deal for bikes. And that was the inference that I had from it. Now, maybe I read it wrong.

I could be, it was one of those five minute reads kind of a thing for me at lunchtime. So that goes back to overreach again, doesn't it? And that appears to be the big problem is just going too far, you know, going beyond your means really, rather than concentrating on the thing that you're actually good at and that will make you some money. I mean, I always thought it was facile to have Gas Gas as a brand in MotoGP because why, how does that sell bikes that, you know, trials bikes, assuming they still even exist in that sense. I mean, I can see Gas Gas and Husky, you know, those will almost inevitably get bought up as brands by China or India somewhere, you know, one of the, you know, the coming nations.

I mean, CF Moto sounds as if it's one of the investors coming into KTM, which makes a lot of sense from the Chinese point of view, because they're buying into a huge amount of IP that would take them a long time potentially to come up with themselves. So clearly that's what's going to happen. Yes, just unfortunate, really, they've, you know, got themselves into an almighty pickle, really, but it does appear somewhat or a lot more hopeful now than it did a few weeks ago, certainly, that, you know, there are investors coming in, businesses viable in a trimmed down fashion, particularly if they get rid of some of the things that they should never have got involved in in the first place. Like the Expo or Crossbow or what do they call that three world thing? Yeah, Crossbow, I think it is, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. That's kind of why I use, you know, the term hubris almost. It's kind of like these things bite you in the ass if you're not very, very careful. I mean, lots of big companies service multi-billion dollar debts. I mean, but you have to be able to service the debt.

And if you're not selling your primary product, then you're not servicing the debt. And with the way, you know, finances at the moment, you could easily see that all of their profit would be consumed just affording the debt, let alone reducing it. So they've got themselves in a, you know, the mother and father of a mess, really. But if it's recoverable, and the net result of that is that they can justify continuing possibly on a slightly slimmed down basis, you know, the racing programs. I mean, tech three is an interesting one to me.

Can they really continually justify having a satellite squad? Because that's again going to be very expensive because I don't believe tech three are paying to run the bikes. That's why Herve left Yamaha, right? Herve left because KTM was giving him bikes. Who isn't going to do with that?

That makes all the sense in the world. I guess the thing that gets me is that like, well, last time we had one of these things, it was this, there was the Kawasaki Moto GP team, right? They had to continue. They became a ghost team. It became hiata.

Yes. They became hiata. And I can see KTM having to do sort of the same thing because I'm sure the financial penalty that they have to get out of their contract to race Moto GP is got to be equal to what, if not greater than what would cause them to stay. They're going to have to, right? The question is, is like, are they going to develop the Moto GP bikes this year?

One of the things that I will hope to see, and obviously this is putting an enormous amount of pressure on somebody's young shoulders, but boy, do they need a costume to come out of the gates, you know, put in some more eye catching performances. I mean, if he could grab a win or two in the first sort of third of the season, boy, would that help KTM justify continuing on keeping hold of him, you know, developing the bike and, you know, as the general company itself, hopefully sort of starts to return to a better state of health, then, you know, hopefully the spotlight goes off things like Moto GP and all the other things that they're involved in, which are myriad. I mean, making a bloody car, we're going to say, I mean, many companies come up proper by going into costly vanity projects like that. I mean, I don't know that they make any other four wheel vehicles. I haven't really taken notice, but certainly that crossbow was an amazing piece of kit.

But again, no doubt enormously expensive to develop and probably, well, I don't know, but might not have made them a, you know, a Euro cent of profit, who knows? But so yeah, it's all been very sad and in hindsight, avoidable, I suppose you might say, but they are where they are. Yep. Yeah. I, there is the rumor that Acosta's talking to the VR46 team for a 27 ride.

That's, I think that's coming back because he went to the ranch to do some of the races that Rossi put on. So I don't think it was the most credible source that actually posted that. Let's just say that. Yeah. I mean, yes, he went to the ranch.

He rode people are going to draw a line. So what? I think Simon P was kind of ruling that one out, but saying a much more likely scenario would be the tech three lose the KTMs because KTM can't justify it. Ducati swooping with a works bike or two, one of which would have a Pedro Acosta on it. Because Acosta's manager will of course be talking to every other manufacturer out there now on the basis that he does.

That's his job or her job. I'm not quite sure who Acosta's manager is, but, you know, to look for good rides elsewhere, should the KTM thing fold, which it looked as if it might do, you know, just a few weeks ago, that was very much everybody's concern was that would they even be at the Sipang test that's just started? Well, they certainly are. They've got Danny Pedroza and Paul Espargaro down there doing the shakedown. And then obviously they'll have the full suite of riders in the first official test next week.

So there's nothing being held back other than the fact they did an online launch. But then I think they've done that for the last couple of years anyway. So don't draw too much into that as a cost saving measure. So yeah, I mean, hopefully things will just steady, steady up and they'll do well. And hopefully, you know, with Acosta on the bike, they've got the best possible chance of winning a race or two, as well as Brad Binder, of course, and Bastionini and Vignale is on the Tech 3s.

Well, that's a little bit harder to predict. Vignale is predictably saying all the right things, which will please Gary no end. But, you know, it would be amazing if he did win a race on the fourth manufacturer. Nobody's ever done that before. But in terms of a title tilt, no.

So let's talk about Tech 3 a little bit here, because you mentioned it. I had not heard. I assumed that one of the things you're going to get rid of is going to be having bikes in a satellite team. That's probably the easier contract to break, which that leaves Herve kind of looking for equipment. So Simon thinks that Ducati is going to come and throw bikes over there.

Well, if Acosta was part of the package, yeah, if Acosta is part of the pack. OK, gotcha. People will. I mean, every manufacturer will move heaven and earth to get his contract. That is a valve.

I think the one that's more prevalent to me is Alonso's. Alonso's signature, right? But with the big question mark and caveat as to, you know, he's got to get through Moto2 and continue that, you know, that rocket sort of trend that we've seen so far. And there's no reason to think that that won't be the case. But many are good riders falling at the Moto2 hurdles.

So, you know, question mark remains. But yes, I don't disagree with you, Jim. OK, since you brought up Moto2, Moto3 and those guys, let's talk about the new Moto3 rules that possibly are coming. Because I think we've done the KTM thing here to the point. Yeah, we've done enough.

I mean, obviously we're done here. I think so. So there could be it's not confirmed as far as I know. It's very much, hey, we need to do something kind of a thing. But Moto3 may change in 2027 to a twin cylinder or twin cylinder 500 CC bikes.

The idea being that you get a little bit more power. You start to break up the pack racing that you see in Moto3. And I like the idea. I like that idea a lot that we are going to change it up. So, you know, it's say, you know, who knows what they can do?

You can do a V twin, you can do a parallel twin, you can do whatever you want. It's just going to be 500. You're going to be 500 CCs. I think this is, you know, from Simon Patterson at the race. And he makes a great point here.

I think he says, you know what, if you've got this where it uses the tire a little more and it a little more power, it's going to kind of break up this pack. I think it will. I've argued that they needed to be on a bigger bike because the jump from a 250 single cylinder to a triple 796. Is that what the trumps try? I can never remember.

I think 765. I think I always get it back because we have a machine that's a 796 machine that we have at work. So I get I interchange those like really easily. So that's if I got it wrong, I'm sorry. But it's always been a big jump.

Right. You go from the smaller wheels to the 17 inch wheels as you move there. And as Simon pointed out in the article, it may separate and take out some of the false moto to false moto three champions that we've had because they were just good enough to die, to ride in a pack and dive bomb the last couple of laps and be a world champion. Now that's a slight on what are arguably some talent, very talented riders. I'm not trying to throw shade on any one, anybody who's won a world championship.

If you did, you have, but you have to admit that Dennis Foggia did not have a great time riding on a moto two bike. Who was the De La Porta was the other one who had a very difficult time adjusting to the moto two bike. You could you could throw Ramon Fennati in there. He's a good moto three guy, but he got on a moto two bike. It just never worked for him.

Why you could you have any number of reasons as to the why. But it's like, okay, but if you think about it, the supremely talented have always gone through that. And it's it's you know, you look at Acosta, it took him two years of moto to write the first year was a very big learning year for him. And there is obviously some struggle of adaption, even for someone of his nature, because he broke his femur racing. Now he broke that off track, didn't he?

Yeah, that was a test. He did crash a lot. He did crash a lot on his first year at a moto. Not testing accident. It was an off road.

He was training. Yeah, yeah, he's training. I've somehow I had it. I had it in my mind that he broke it at Le Mans, but he just crashed. He's had a really bad crash at Le Mans.

But so there's some there like it'd be interesting to see what Alonso does on much on the motor two bike, right? Because he's going to go forward. And then he's going to take him a little bit of time. He might crash his brains out. I don't think he's going to go and dominate this first season.

But he's going to do probably dominate like Acosta did that next year. You know, he takes him a year to settle in and do that. Does that cut if you had a 500 twin? Does that does that transition become less? Probably.

I think it does. Yeah, I mean, as the other bikes have certainly the middleweight bike has got bigger and a bit more complicated electronically and stuff, then it's made Moto three even more of an outlier really in terms of that entry level, hasn't it? So I mean, I don't know what's driving this potential change, whether it's just concerned around safety with the pack, which is a problem without any shadow of a doubt, that is a problem. And the fact that it might on occasion allow certain riders to do better than they would otherwise have done probably a mixture of those things in the gym at the end of the day. But it's just time for something different, right?

Yeah. I mean, we saw this in the world super bike pad. At least have the super sport 300 series, which was arguably even worse than Moto three in terms of some of the shenanigans that was going on and the fact that they were just kind of glued together all the time. So those bikes have increased in capacity and those rules allow triples and twins and there's a few different things that are allowed there depending on what sort of configuration you want to run. I mean, this is obviously going to be a problem for KTM if this new rule set comes in, because does that really hasten their exit from that class?

And do we end up with a single manufacturer series? I mean, would be some good reasons for that, but it would almost also be a shame in other regards. I mean, obviously time will tell on this, but I'm certainly in favour of them making this change if it kind of breaks the packs up a little bit. Because whilst I enjoy watching the races through my fingers, as we all say, yes, that's fine until somebody goes down and there's, you know, God knows how many bikes about to hit somebody. And we've seen the outcome of that a few times too often in recent years.

So if they can mitigate that risk somewhat, not eradicate it, because you can't, but if they can mitigate it to some extent, then I think it's beholden upon them to do that really. But it's going to be costly to develop a new formula of bike. Having said that, you might get a CFMoto coming in as a actual or pseudo manufacturer to replace, say, a KTM. So, you know, there's one door closes, another door inevitably opens. So the other thing about this that I think is if you saw Honda's 300cc V-twin turbo bike, that thing's beautiful.

So are the rules going to be written that you could have a 300cc turbocharged motor? Who knows? Or a supercharger? Would take your pick. But I mean, that sort of makes the bike a little more relevant to the emphasis on green, right?

On saving it because, oh, I can have as much power as a 500, but do it on 300cc with a turbo. And, you know, it provides that research platform to emphasize the more green alternative, if you will, to it. Right. Who's to say you couldn't, you know. So I would look to see Honda try to say, like, well, look, well, we will we can do this if we are allowed to bring it right, which would be interesting because, you know, I was trying to think about this as trying to think of like, I know bikes have had turbochargers on them before, but I don't really remember anyone really racing one of them.

At least not that I can remember. I'm sure somebody road raced one somewhere. I just think the sound would be really different and that would be kind of cool to have a different sounding bike. And let's be honest, the long term health of the sport relies on the trickle down effect so that manufacturers get something for the R&D expenditure, which is obviously significant. And if you want to take the car industry as a good example, now we see V8 turbos rather than V12s, don't we?

So I mean, smaller capacity, forced induction type engine. It's not a new technology, is it? But it is somewhat novel on bikes. I suppose it's an issue of packaging and heat and things like that. But certainly it makes a lot of sense to my mind to have a smaller engine that uses less fuel and then have some other form of power generation, such as one of those chargers.

So it wouldn't be a big leap to go into a formula like that. And it would certainly get the interest of some of the bigger companies. I'm quite sure of that. Yeah, for sure. Let's see.

Since that's the technical reg, potential technical regulation change there for Moto3, let's talk about some of the couple of the riders in there. Jacob Rolstein suffered a training crash, crash, I guess the thing is a proper way to where he now I heard he I heard he had fractured his C3 vertebrae, but he also displaced it. That's that's in your neck, right? See, that's a very serious injury. Yeah.

Yeah. Luckily, thankfully, from Jacob's points of view, it's been well, replaced, recovered to its correct position. Wow. The fracture will heal itself. The displacement has been replaced positionally, I suppose.

I mean, I'm not a spinal surgeon, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. But yes, a lucky escape. I mean, he's very young, so he'll he'll, you know, fairly quickly in the overall scheme of things. But that would have been a scary situation. And it just happened to be the case, obviously, that I just put the Moto3 show out where we had quite a long chat with Jacob, albeit back in August.

My bad. But yeah, so it was a bit sad to see the following day or so that news come out. But so he's definitely going to miss the first few races of the season, obviously. So that's a dent on his 25 season, because obviously, 24 was a pretty good season, you know, his rookie campaign, and he got better and better and better, for the most part, as the year went on. And so that would have been progress that he would have wanted to have, you know, got straight back into that right from the get go.

So that's obviously curtailed that part of the plan. But the good news is that, yeah, it's not, you know, what's the right word, something that's, you know, causing long term severe disability, basically, I suppose, you know, because if you if you're breaking bones and displacing things in your neck and spine, we all know what that can lead to. So thankfully, that's not the case. Hmm. Sounds like he was very fortunate to to aim to, I'll say, get away with it in air quotes, if you will.

Yeah. Well, I don't know, Jim, I don't know if you read it. I don't know what he was training on or doing. I never saw what he was doing. I don't know if he was motocrossing or just trail riding somewhere or something.

I have no idea what he was. I don't know. I assumed it was motocrossing. Well, you do, don't you? You automatically.

They sort of where your mind goes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, also, David Alonso has dislocated his right shoulder in training in Cartagena.

Cartagena is in Spain, right? Because, yeah. OK. Yeah. So I thought, but then I thought somehow I was thinking that that was in Colombia.

And I just like, no, that's not right. My geography of the South American continent is not very good. They're not a city called Cartagena there, but it's a track in Spain. I'm pretty sure that that's where Alonso had his incident. Yeah.

I mean, it much less serious in comparison to what we've talked about with Jacob. But having said that, I mean, you only need to talk to somebody like Ben Spees to know how troublesome dislocating your shoulder over and over, because it is the most complicated joint in the body, isn't it? In terms of all the various bits that attach and rotate and one thing and another. So shoulders are notoriously, they like the sort of the scaphoid bone in the wrist. I know they're the one thing you don't want to be sort of repeatedly damaging because they tend to just become more of a problem as time goes on.

So, but again, David Alonso is very young, very fit. I'm sure he'll heal up and pretty quickly, but he will no doubt just going back to you talking about him in Moto2 Gym, be putting a lot of strain on his shoulders through training as well. I would imagine at the moment because he is very, very small. I mean, obviously he's very short, but again, I obviously interviewed him in August last year, so he is a proper little knee high. So he will need to put on some bulk to cope with the Moto2 bike and that'll take a bit of time.

So yeah, shame to be reporting on a couple of injuries already, but that's what happens. So speaking of like bulking up, Acosta seems to look like he's bulked up a little bit more too. He seems to have. Yeah. He, I thought of him as he's not, he's also not tall either, but I kind of saw him as being lanky, right?

Yeah. He seems to have filled out and put some muscle on and whatnot. So it'd be interesting to see what he does with the MotoGP bike. I was listening to them the other day and they said that in that first season of Moto2, he had to put on around six kilos of weight in muscle mass to cope with the Moto2 bike. So that will have been repeated, I suspect in terms of the MotoGP machine.

That's six kilos is quite a lot. Yeah, that's over 12. Yeah, there's 2.205 pounds. Yeah, 2.2. So it's 14-ish pounds you got to put on.

That's a fair amount of muscle, of muscle. I can put that much fat on in a couple of weeks. Yeah, our age. Yeah, so he's very easily done. So there is some world super bike.

Is there anything else? I'm pretty much done there with MotoGP stuff. I think we need to talk way more than we should have done. Probably. Well, when don't we?

Anyway, the Harez test, it was for a world super bike. That was rain affected and the teams are heading to Portimao. Yeah, although I wrote that note last week when we first tried to do this. So Portimao test already happened. So Toprak who again had an injury, injured a finger, I think, or fractured a finger a few weeks back.

So he missed her. But he was at Portimao predictably he was fastest and doing the whole stoppy in the pit lane shenanigans as per usual. So he appears to be back to some decent level of fitness and was yeah, quickest straight out the back. But interestingly, Axel Passani was second on the Bimota, which is a beautiful looking thing and a lovely sounding thing. Although I've only seen it on video on the screen, not in the flesh yet.

Garrett Gurloff going well on the Karasaki that remains, which is still a reasonably works supported Karasaki. So early season form from Garrett might look pretty good. And for us in the US, which I can say at the moment as on Southern California. So yeah, World Superbikes has been great last few seasons and this year will be no different I'm sure. So and we've only got what three weeks to wait until they get going in anger again.

So yeah, very much looking forward to World Superbikes again. Yep. Yep. Basically, it's that's really think all we got was racing and testing, racing right around the corner. Yeah.

Other than to say, Jim, that the shakedown tests started in Sepang today as a Spargrove pole was quickest. Iagura was second just ahead of Firmien Aldega. So the two rookies and then the various other normal test riders. So Piro, Andrea De Vizio is out for Yamaha because I think Crutchlow is pretty well done in the testing role now. I think his wrist injury is so bad that that's probably game over for him.

Salvadori, obviously on the Aprilia. So nothing too much to report on that. The next time we get together, we'll have the proper Sepang test to chat about. I just noticed that Jim in my notes, just assuming that he listens to the show fairly regularly. Our friend down under Phil Hall, who's obviously done stuff from the Phillip Island Classic and some of the other race events over the years in terms of interviews and stuff had what sounded like a fairly nasty road bike crash a few months ago.

I think been quite a long painful recovery process. So yeah, just shout out to Phil, a bit like Jules who had a tumble last year as well. Thankfully they are recovering bit by bit, although at our age it takes longer than it used to, doesn't it Jim? But yeah, thinking of you Phil, if you're listening. All right folks, I think that covers the show.

As always, we will be back, we'll be talking about testing. That's going to be really good. They give us something more to talk about and focus on other than the downer news that is KTM and the injuries and the Liberty media thing and all that stuff. So until we're back here next time talking about the test from Sepang, ride safe.