MotoGP Austin – Controversy, Chaos & Crashes At COTA

MotoPod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk. And welcome to MotoPod, the Internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 802 for April 5th, 2025.

I'm Jim McDowell, freshly back from the races at Kota in the US where there was chaos, controversy, crashes. And to help me go through all of that and fill in the gaps because I was at the track is Richard Jallett. Richard, I guess it's afternoon for you, I think, over there right now. Yeah, so we're recording this on a Saturday, aren't we? So and I'm out this evening.

So yeah, four o'clock here now. And so we're five hours different because we've just recently jumped onto British summertime as of last weekend and bang on cue. It's a lovely hot day here in the UK, unlike the weather you're suffering by the sounds of it. But basking in sunshine and 20 degree heat today, which is rather unusual for the beginning of April. That's definitely weird for England.

We are in the typical pre-Easter weeks of nothing but rain, rain, rain and more rain. Thank goodness this was not the rain or the weather that I had having to come back from Dakota for sure, because that was quite the challenge to get there and back. They had storms that were all over the Texas, South Texas for the two days prior there. So we drove into a huge rainstorm to get there, which caused all kinds of traffic problems. So a normal nine, nine and a half hour drive became a 12 hour drive to get there on Thursday night and then set up the RV and whatnot.

But the weather was not great at this weekend. I will say Friday was my take on it was Friday was a I don't want to call it miserable because you had a racetrack. So you have it's a good day. I would have thought it was I will say this. It was very British weather.

It was misty, rainy. If you're at if you're at Kota, you basically from anywhere that you stand, you can look towards Austin and see the outline of the buildings that make up downtown Austin. You could not see that on Friday at all. There was no sun, very, very low ceiling. I don't even remember the helicopter running because it was so the cloud was so low and the airport is right next to the track, too.

The planes tend to take off and come across the track. You could hear them, but you could not see them. It was very miserable. That was a really cloudy, nasty day. Saturday kind of became the same thing in the morning, although it cleared off just before the qualifying sessions.

And it was bright sunshine, not a not a cloud in the sky. Eighty degrees. Beautiful, beautiful day. And then we got to Sunday's race day. It sort of repeated itself Friday, which caused all kinds of crazy things to happen.

But we're never going to get to that if we don't start talking about it. Yeah, yeah, we got to get that. We got to get there. So just want to thank everybody who has continued to listen to the show, continue to donate to the show. Couldn't do any of this without any of you.

I would like to ask everybody to tell your friends about us, write a review if you can donate if you can. I'd love to have some more subscribers. We just need to get more of a following. And, you know, it's only going to work through word of mouth and you guys helping us by doing those things for us. And with all that said, Rich, I guess we're just going to jump right on into the racing, though there is a bit of BSP news, I think, that you want to talk about.

And I'll let you cover that. Yeah, just very quickly. I mean, the best season itself here doesn't start until actually either the first or the second weekend of May. So it's still quite some way off. Wow.

Very, very late start, actually, this year. I'm sure it hasn't been that late before. Anyway, that's not the news that we knew about for some time. No, the rather startling news emerged. And I don't know.

Nobody knows really what's behind this apart from the people that are most closely involved. But the OMG Racing Yamaha squad, which has been the official Yamaha supported squad for the last couple of seasons, I think it was on either Wednesday, possibly Thursday, or was it early in the week? No, it was on April 1st, because most people thought this was an April Fool's joke initially. But a statement came out on the morning on April 1st to say that the team wouldn't be competing this year for unspecified financial reasons, I think, which hints at a sponsor pulling out, I guess. Yeah, the team isn't able to go forward.

So this is the team that has last year's British Superbike Champion Kyle Ride in it. And the returning 2022, I think it was champion Brad Ray coming back from all superbikes. Wow. Both of whom are ride-less at the moment. And although the season is still, as I say, about a month from starting, testing is kind of getting underway already.

Yeah, it's a pretty dire situation. It's a huge blow to the championship not to have the championship winning team there for obvious reasons. And it's really super bad for the two guys that are left without a ride. There's actually a third rider in BSP for that team, or there was going to be Joe Tolbert, who had come up from the stockers, I think. So, yes, I don't know what will happen to these guys.

I would imagine some of the remaining BSP teams will lick their lips and grab them whilst they can. Maybe one or two of the one rider teams might be able to expand to a two rider effort, because obviously Yamaha have two less bikes on the grid this year. So, yeah, I mean, it's a real shocker, Jim, to be honest with you. Nobody saw it coming. And as I say, most people thought it was a joke when the news first emerged because of the date and the time that it came out.

Not a good sign, really, and hopefully not a sign of things to come with all the various financial woes, which we won't get into too deeply. But it's not going to be an easy year in terms of attracting sponsors and so on anywhere in the world, but certainly in Britain. So, yeah, some disappointing, troubling news, really, to start off with where BSP is concerned. Everything's OK, presumably, in Moto America. That, I think, is getting going this weekend.

This weekend, yeah. They're in Barber this weekend. I'm just looking at the radar and it looks like they're going to be free of rain today, but tomorrow I think it's supposed to be wet there. So that should be interesting to see how that all works off for them. But yeah, they are there and then they don't race again until, I think, May 2nd at Road Atlanta.

Yeah, that's normally early in the season, Road Atlanta. Yeah, so nothing else BSP related. I'll touch on the World Superbikes from Portimao at the end of the show, just to sort of quickly run through the results. Sorry, when we last recorded, Jim, I said whenever we recorded it that Portimao was this coming weekend. It was actually, I got that wrong.

It was the following weekend. So it was on the same weekend as MotoGP, irritatingly, because that obviously makes for a fairly hectic TV schedule. Yeah, but the time difference is enough to kind of help you out there, isn't it? They don't clash. No, there is that.

But it always frustrates me a little bit when, because there are so few races in MotoGP, sorry, in World Superbikes as well, you would have thought that they could have carved out some weekends when MotoGP is not on. But anyway, never mind. We'll touch on that briefly at the end. But otherwise, yeah, coach you all the way. And you were there.

Yes, yes. So let's start off with the qualifying for Moto3. In the first session was Yamanaka, Nepa, Kelso, Foggia, Rolston, Pinini, or Pini. All those guys, you know, it's kind of weird that they sort of are there. But we had rain on Friday.

No one really could get going on the track on Friday just because of the rain. So it was going to leave people out in different places. Everybody was thinking the original forecast had Saturday and Sunday being very nice. That changed, like, I don't know, by the hour, the weather man was making his mind up changing things. So I don't think anybody knew what was really going on.

But those guys were all in there. Eddie O'Shea had a really big high side at turn 17. And there were quite a few. That's the second of the three successive right handers that sort of end the lap at Cota. To think of it, if you from a visual standpoint, if you know where the tower is, they're racing around that section of the tower.

He did get a big high side there at seven at 17. And I know from from having walked over there and watched there used to be a really bad bump around that area of the did. I don't know how they delineate one is 16 and one is 17. But there were bumps that were in that area. And why was one of the big takeaways I had for the whole time there was it seemed as though a lot of the bumps had been removed from the track in the Moto three bikes were just flying through those three turns next to almost wide open, a good three quarters of throttle.

And they were on and flying. So it was a really big high side for Eddie there. But Kelso, Pinin, Foggia and Nepa all got through to get to that second qualifying session. Now our pole man, who's been very good because Bertelli has been on pole for the last two races, he crashed at turn 15, which was the sort of the last tight turn of the Mickey Mouse section that I always call it because you come off the back stretch and they make a few turns and I think it's just to keep the Formula One cars and the cars in general in view of the large grandstands that are there so people can see the sponsors. Then they take out of there.

So it was a low speed crash, but he was still down there. Then Almanzo and Bertelli were then down at five and six. The Bertelli crashed like two laps in a row. He couldn't figure out how to keep the bike up at any point in there at all. It was sort of crazy that we started to have these crashes at five, six because then Ogden and Rossi went down at five and six in a big tumble, which is that's at the end of the S's and that's where we were sitting for qualifying.

We were at the end of the S's. If any of you watched any of the Dorna feed, there's the big Texas flag and there's the big camera truck that sits there on the hill. That's where we were. We were just to the little short section between five to six. We were watching all these guys just fall off every which way.

I actually got to the point where I believe there was some kind of a fluid on the track or there was what they call this here in the US. I don't know what they call it in Europe, Rich. Maybe you know. When the water comes back up through the track, they call it a weeper here. It just weeps water onto the track.

I thought that was what we had going on. There was just these little wet patch that would appear because the groundwater would swell or whatever and go in there. I didn't seem like that was what was going on, but there was definitely a lot of guys that were going down there. Only nine riders by halfway had set a time because there were so many caution flags because of everybody running off track or crashing or whatever else was going on. The last few minutes of this was completely crazy.

Even Rueda was down at five and six. He had a small crash there and came in. As it came down to it, the rookie, Kylis, who was making his Moto3 debut because of age restrictions was the fastest man at the time, which was absolutely crazy. But then at the very, very end, Munoz clipped him, just nicked the time off of him to win. We don't think of Munoz as much of a qualifier.

Apparently he's trying to either work well with the track or he's trying to get himself into a better position. But he did come out with the pole. So Munoz had the pole, Kylis was in second, Kelso on the front row. For a while Kelso was on pole and it took Kylis to knock him off and then Munoz to then knock Kylis off of it. Rueda would be fourth, then Foggia, Luneta, Carpe, Nepa, Fernandez, and Bertelli, Piqueras, Pinin and Ogden rounded out the top guys from that session.

Which again, it was like, wow, this is going to be interesting because it sort of mixed up the grid. I was really high on Kylis because you come in as a rookie to attract it, you hadn't seen it per se and was just throwing down times. But then I also had a lot of hope for Kelso because he had qualified there well last year, but he did have that problem in seventh when he ran wide and kind of lost a lot of momentum. Anything else Rich that I didn't see? No, not really.

I mean, like you sharing the astonishment at Kies, I suppose, like you say, debut weekend, just outstanding really. So he's clearly going to be one to look after. I was pretty astonished to see Jacob Rulston back actually, although he didn't make it through Q1. But bearing in mind he had that nasty neck injury, it's much earlier than I was expecting to see him back. I think given the wet Friday, I think Kelso clearly benefited from having come through Q1.

That extra lap time or track time rather, I think probably benefited him quite a lot. Because again, he's not really renowned as Mr Qualifier, is he? So lining up third in the end was a good result for Kelso. But yeah, otherwise, no, nothing else too much to report really. So we get to race day on Sunday.

Finally, the sunshine is kind of there. It's a dry track. It's again, we're back to that. It was misty in the morning. It was nasty.

The cloud cover lifted a little bit and it was just a gray day, but the track was dry for it. But it was starting to spit rain. It was a much colder day. If you were there, you had the 80 degree day, the sunshine, you got sunburned. And then you came into this day and the temperature was a good 25 degrees cooler, which was in Fahrenheit, which was wild that we had dropped that much.

It was, you know, you wanted a hoodie, a jumper on maybe just to keep yourself just in check because when the wind blew, it was definitely cold. Now at the start, as everybody's trying to get out to do the siding lap, Fernandez's bike, Adrian Fernandez's bike will not start. The lay apart Honda will not start. Now that caused a bunch of brouhaha there because they were trying to fix it. They rolled the bike back in.

They couldn't start it. There was all this talk about where he'd have to go into the grid if he could make it out for the warm up lap. The crew had the whole fairing off of the bike, laptops hooked up to it, trying to fix whatever it was that was the problem. It eventually did start. Now I did not find anything as to a reason why they couldn't get it started.

Did you see? Yeah, it's just a mystery, right? It's a mystery. Well, I certainly didn't hear anything said about it. Yeah, there was, we didn't hear anything while we were there.

I didn't see anything looking through all the notes or whatever, but they did make it out. I think he made it out for the warm up lap. So he left from pit lane and there was a controversy of whether he actually should have been allowed out of the pit lane because there was a red light, but there was a green flag being waved at the same time. So I think it was one of those things that was so close that the automated light system had changed, but the human being waving the flag hadn't recognized that timeframe. So they allowed Fernandez to grid at the very back of the grid.

So he would start last at that point. When the lights turned green, poor Adrian jumped the start, was deemed to have jumped the start, which then resulted in a double long lap penalty. So his day went simultaneously from bad to worse. I don't think worse there's a word, but there's... Well from bad to doubly worse, how about that?

How about it will go doubly worse. It was not his day and it was just purely bad, but Chiles had a great start from the middle of the front row. Carpe had a great start to go with him. Ruraita had jumped off the third. Kelso fell back from his starting position to be fourth as we sort of worked our way through the first turn.

Then Foggia and then Munoz, who was the pole sitter, was all the way back to fifth. Ruraita fell down on the third lap and Ruraita wound up going to the lead. On the fourth lap Munoz was down at turn one. He had a low side and it was one of those things where he low sided it and then the bike gripped and flipped its own self over causing a fair amount of damage to the bike. But Ruraita was then starting to pull away.

Ruraita had put his head down and after five laps it was Ruraita followed by Kelso, Carpe, Chiles, Bertelli and Picaris had showed up. Lunetta then went down at the turn 18. He had a high side again. A lot of crashes in that turn 18, 17, 18 this weekend. I think it was because it was one of the first times everybody could kind of go through there with the gas really on and because the bumps were missing and it just kind of bit people.

The lack of any kind of dry running didn't help that situation either. Munoz pit it on that I think the sixth or seventh lap from his crash. He sat there. They showed a picture of him on the screen without his helmet on. So I assumed day done and then he went back out again.

Did you hear why he went back out? I could not figure this one out for the life of me. Well I was going to say something snarky. No I better not. Oh you could do that.

I'll allow it. The cynic in you thinks he wanted to go out just to get in the way of everybody in the lead and cause trouble like he normally does. But no I've been stupid. I guess they fixed the bike up and they just wanted to do a few laps to test it out or just get a little bit of extra running in whilst they could because clearly his race was way over because he must have been four or five laps down at that point. So yeah it was a bit, you don't see that so often though do you?

It's slightly odd but I can only assume as I say just a bit of data gathering. Yeah that's what I was. That's the only thing I can come up with because when he emerged from the pits the leaders were coming so I understand the snark that oh he came to screw with the guys that were leading but he sat up let everybody go by and he behaved. He behaved quite properly on that occasion and fair play to him that he did because we have seen that before where a lap rider just does not get out of the way and they want to sort of mix it up in the pack. I think nowadays you would get quite a draconian penalty for that and Munoz probably doesn't want any more of those just at the moment but he gets them often enough as it is.

So yeah just all in all another guy who had a pretty bad day at the office really. He did. Things would get worse for Nepe as he was down at turn 18. Again a lot of crashes that were there. With 10 laps Rureda is leading Kelso ahead of Bertelli.

Picaris has moved to fourth so Picaris had kind of closed the gap down. I thought okay Picaris has got this maybe because he kind of tends to come on late in the race. Rureda despite being I think at this point maybe two or two and a half seconds ahead that's nothing in MotoGP world especially if you know if Bertelli, Kelso and Picaris all started to sort of run together with that long long straightaway on the back they would easily be able to pull themselves up to Rureda. So I'm like thinking okay this is where Picaris is going to kind of show his muscle show what he can do in there. But let's see that made Picaris fourth.

Carpe or no sorry Carreras was then fifth and then Quiles was sixth. Then Peroni loses the front at turn six and he takes out Yamanaka too. So that crash was right in front of us when that one happened. It was it looked worse than it was because at first I thought they had tangled with each other and caused the accident but then when you see the replay they're sort of independent crashes or let's put it this way Peroni crashes but then Yamanaka is just taken out by the bike or not so yeah this is really no harm no foul there or whatever. But the racing then sort of just calms down.

At this point Rureda just keeps putting down laps and there's nothing changing. We get all the way to three to go it's still Rureda it's still Kelso still Bertolli still Picaris still I think Carreras and then Quiles but seven eight nine ten eleven twelve is great racing so if you want to see the racing you had to look back that far because nothing was happening. This suddenly became an atypical Moto3 race. Usually somehow winds itself back together at the end and we get this crazy matter but I don't know if it was the lack of it but Picaris Quiles their last lap battle was great. They go back and forth Picaris does not want to give it up Quiles wants it it goes back and forth I think they pass each other at six I think they pass back at eleven back again at I think twelve was they went side by side at twelve and ran through the end of the track but the race would finish with Rureda winning Kelso second then Bertolli Picaris would be fourth he'd hold on then Quiles was fifth Carpe was sixth then Foggia Crucis Furasato Buchanan Buchanan right?

Pini Fernandez who had raced his way up from the double long laps to actually get to 12th which it was that was a good race for Adrian despite all the chaos he sort of did his best to recover from that situation Alonso was 13th then Rolston was 14th and then Carrero was 15th so that is how the race finished. Words of wisdom for that one Rich. Yeah it was a sort of a bit of a non-descript weird race really for Moto3 wasn't it as you say we didn't really get that kind of sort of bombastic end of the race because Rureda was just too far away I guess my feeling is somewhat that probably Austin is not conducive to great Moto3 racing because you need the pack and if somebody does make a bit of a break and they break that toe on the back straight I think it probably is quite hard to get the slipstream back and no doubt the Friday disruptions with the weather probably cause a few problems plus let's not forget there are quite a lot of rookies or new riders in the championship this year as well so there's a few people learning their way around I suppose yeah the standout although he didn't get on the podium in the end but um Kies is that I'm not quite sure if it's Quiles or Kies I haven't quite worked out. Quiles is how I've heard it pronounced. Okay yeah I need to double check on my pronunciation there but he is I mean Aspart they don't find these kids don't they blimey.

Yes they do. Where do they come from? So he's going to be quite the talent by the looks or he's quite the talent so it's going to be good fun watching him progress as he gets into the season because again I mean to call these kids rookies technically they are but you know in flipping out they've been racing like madmen for years on Moto3 bikes up to the point when they arrive in this particular So he comes with all of the tools in the kit like so many of them do so yeah it's going to be good to watch him but a great result for Joel Kelso as well. Oh yeah fantastic result for Joel. For Joel.

Ruaida again I'm going to be kicking myself all year long for not kind of sticking him as my championship number one pick I just don't know what how I missed him really but again he's looking pretty formidable isn't he. He definitely looked very good. I spent a lot of time in the S's in that area from the from the S's to to over to to seven and one of the things that was I don't know if it was because of the rain that was there on Friday or the fact that Ruaida had such a lead on everyone at the end but you could audibly hear that Ruaida was very quick through the S's and by that I mean you could hear the way he was approaching his throttle where as the guys kind of go through the S's you'll hear that the off the on the off the on yeah Ruaida was able to run through there with the throttle and just slightly rolled off and change pitch then roll back on and slightly back off and back on and he was lightningly quick through that set of track all weekend. The whole time I was around that section he was so fast there and that's where he made his time. He got away because he was so fast through through three four five six and then carried that there's nowhere for him to really catch him again and then he would get to the long straight away and he just did that lap after lap after lap which was it was a dominant performance by him which was quite amazing.

This is a kid that like this time last year was going to have an emergency appendectomy because he had appendicitis. Yeah and I think that's possibly I think we said this on the last show because he had such a wretched season last year with injury and illness he never really featured and so a fully fit Ruaida plus what is this now his third or fourth season perhaps is it I think it might be the third but third I think you know he's quite experienced now and let's not forget Austin sorry Cota is a pretty technical track as well so experience does count I would imagine for a lot particularly through that section that you're talking about where you were stood as you say that left right left right is so much about technique I'm sure through there and a bit of experience in terms of how to do it because you know again Kelso another very experienced guy second you know Pitelli's been around for quite a while in third I think that plus the lack of running on the Friday which would have hindered the newer younger ones kind of made the outcome what it was I think probably we go to Qatar next don't we yes that is usually a bit of a barnstormer in Moto3 so hopefully that will be a bit more of an entertaining race there than this one was but nevertheless it was a great performance by a number of riders and again a shout out to Jacob Rolston scoring a couple of points down in 14th coming back from that horrendous crash that he had off season training but broke his neck or broke a vertebra in his neck so very serious and again amazing that he's back this quickly and had a no doubt a steady weekend I'm sure he didn't want to throw himself up the road but he got through a pretty turgid bit of weather as well didn't he with unscathed so fair play to him and yeah great to see him finishing in 14th so yeah not a classic no but very much indicative I think of how the season's going to roll that I suppose the slight oddity in terms of form is Picaris at the moment we've had two races where he has sort of been there or thereabouts and then the one race where he was electric last time out so whether it's just a new bike new team maybe just still finding his feet a little bit but it doesn't look as if he's going to sort of run away with it at the moment and Rueda well you'll go through the championship in a minute with Jim but he's sitting on just about a race win with points lead at the minute so very early days so yeah so with that Rueda it sits atop of the championship on 66 points Picaris is on 42 which is a 24 point gap so as you said he almost has a one race lead already in this championship long time to go here I think as they go back to Europe because what Picaris joined the championship halfway through last year or something like that because he had an age restriction too I don't remember him at the beginning of the year I would need to go back and check on that I think we'll look at that maybe he was there and he just was getting his feet maybe perhaps but he was very strong on the later European rounds and then into the I'll call it the the Asia swing yeah the flyaways yeah the flyways are there at the end thank you so you know Picaris is possibly going to just turn it on here when they get back to Europe the idea here is to not drop too many points and he hasn't there Adrian Fernandez having grabbed that he is on 40 points so that puts him two behind Picaris and then Bertelli Carpe Calso with that good finish he's on 28 and he is in with a shot for a top five top top three top four maybe see how this rolls out then Foggia then Almanza, Nepa and for Sato round out the top 10 in that championship. With that we will move towards we will move towards the Moto2 activities so again on you know they had all the rain on Friday everybody the Moto2 guys all there having to deal with all that all weekend Moto2 probably had the best track to qualify on because they were at the end of the day on Saturday it was extremely extremely warm the track dried out it was very it was very very nice there and it was all good there in the first Moto2 session Ortola, Anciu, Marrera, Bender, Roberts, Alonso, Slatch and Gonzales are all in that first session now this is all because of the weather right there was no dry running so this scrambles all of qualifying but you're standing there going four of these guys have to get out of this and you're going well which four are going to potentially make it out because it's there's some big hitters there right you know people we really sort of expect to be doing pretty well halfway Gonzales was pretty much safe he had a good half to three quarters of a second on everybody I was wondering if he was actually going to sit and save a tire but which you know we'll see how that pans out here then it was Slatch, Arenas and Navarro so all the people that you're thinking about maybe getting through well there's a whole different slew of people that are there at that beginning now Bender Darren Bender did crash with like a minute to go at turn three that kind of changed a whole bunch of things that sort of moved it all around or whatever but Gonzales went back out he wound up turning the fastest lap he turned a 207 and that was like the fastest moto 2 lap of the weekend or to that point and it was on his absolutely last one the funny thing was that Alonso came streaking through and actually had bumped Gonzales off of quote unquote the first position only to have Gonzales come back and then bump Alonso down a spot and then Slatch and Anju made it there so I mean at the last minute you know we had Alonso going through is the kid starting to come to grips with the big field he's starting to find his footing I from what I saw there he was very ginger in the wet I mean I expect that but when it dried out you I could sense that he was starting to push I think he was starting to feel it a little bit and you know I was like wow this could be pretty good for him but we get into the second session here and by halfway Barry Baltis, Kinet, Ramirez, Slatch, Alonso and Art Bolino are all going super fast and a lot of those guys came out of that first session right so you had some track time you had some dry time like you said earlier Rich there wasn't much dry running people were trying to find their settings and lo and behold Jake Dixon was like 12th I'm like wow for a guy who was fast in the wet he thought okay maybe that'll transfer over a little bit you know Dixon's experience he's been to this track I was shocked that he was that far down but we were only halfway through the session when we got to the end of that session because mind you by this point Dixon had topped every session that had been that had been done he was the quickest so again Brits that changeable condition thing looking good but like what was going to me why was Dixon 12th at this point I'm like I don't understand but Baltis then crashed and then Dixon went to the top followed by Gonzalez and then Baltis picks himself up and we had essentially Dixon on pole with a great lap to take it then Gonzalez then Baltis then Van de Gerberg which that was sort of a shock that Van de Gerberg was there then Kinet Alonso wound up being sixth out of all that so for him to come through that first session and then be sixth here was pretty good Arbolino working with the new the new Yamaha team if you will was seventh and then Ramirez was eighth Solach was ninth and Anchi would be the top 10 a great qualifying and it kept Dixon's streak alive of being the fastest man in every stage of the game I Dixon looked so good on the bike Rich he really really did especially at that point I think we had moved ourselves closer over to turn seven and Dixon would just come through there and he would just be late and then the way he went up that little hill to the right and then back to the left at nine and then disappeared from our view he was so sharp so precise so clean it was just really wild watch as I I'm wondering if this Bosca Cora that Jake is now on suits him to some extent I think my personal opinion is that the Bosca Cora is a little bit softer chassis a little more flex a little more give a little more street bike I was going to say a bit more super bikey okay there I'll take that I was going with street bike is because super bikes use those chassis or whatever but and I think it just now I think Jake it's just clicked I think it's just clicked way faster than what he thought it was going to click but he looked absolutely great after qualifying I'm sure you were stoked that he was on pole you should have been yeah well like I said Jim he was looking dangerously quick at times in the wet you know you're thinking oh does he need to be pushing quite that hard but it's always a risk when you change chassis or bike but it could not have gone any better really and I think probably we're seeing a guy arrive on a bike as you have just pointed out that suits his style and perhaps suits his experience a bit more he's come off perhaps a slightly finicky hard to set up calx and is now on a bike that's a bit more forgiving and works importantly to his strengths and experience and I would just add as well I definitely think being in the Mark VDS squad is having a hugely positive nothing against Aspar that's a great team but Mark VDS you know is is equally if not more so and it's probably a bit more British as well yes so I think you know Jake is very much a kind of a mental rider and people will know what I mean by that I mean that in a positive sense if he's in a comfortable environment he will prosper so that plus the chassis plus his experience all of these things it's kind of the perfect storm and you know I was saying last time out wouldn't I Jim that it's important to have a good first third of the season in terms of any possibility perhaps to get up to MotoGP if that if an opening appears somewhere and you could certainly see one or two openings coming up with what's going on in MotoGP so Jake is positioning himself I still think it's quite unlikely that he would get the chance but he's putting himself in the shop window for sure because that you know he's putting in commanding performances and it will be getting people's attention I would imagine I think that the Mark VDS team knows how to deal with British riders yeah because you think about how good Sam Lowes was in that team yeah I just think it's it could be just the homie feeling that of of quiet confidence I what I don't know however you want to think about it and it just somehow it works for Jake and I'm glad to see it absolutely positively stoked to see Jake running so well and you know looking great at this point in the weekend he you know he's one of those riders on many occasions you've kind of looked at the sort of things that he says and sometimes the things that he does and you kind of think you're making it hard for yourself you know he's so critical of himself and puts himself under so much pressure and I'm sure that's kind of held him back in a certain respect and I'm sure he would agree and say the same thing but put him in this environment and it's clearly working as you say Jim it's just it is a more anglo-file type of setup so it's just working and everything's clicking where and you know okay Gonzales has had a very good start to the season and he's going to be you know a stern challenge all year long although he clearly didn't like the wet weather on the Friday did he because he was kind of nowhere city Gonzales on Friday so he was lucky that the in a sense that qualifying was dry because that's how he ended up second we'll come to the sort of the tragedy of the race from his point of view in a moment but you know Viet is kind of up and down so far Lopez hasn't sort of found his way yet you know the other people are that you would expect to be there are not consistently there and Jake so far touch wood for sort of a British standpoint he's been he had a bit of a quiet ish opening in Thailand it's true but obviously one in Argentina and knows one here as well so oh sorry just I've just released the result everybody knows he won absolutely I'm sure everybody knows he won so yeah obviously I'm stoked I can only feel sorry for the Americans with what's going on with Joe at the minute haven't even mentioned him in qualifying because there isn't really much to talk about although again he I'm suspicious about just how bad this wrist is because he was quite far up the front on Friday in the wet and that tells its own story so I think you know there might be a bit of a get out of jail free card for Joe on this one but if the wrist is that bad it's going to be a problem ongoing I think all right let's talk about the race so we get to we get to that Sunday now again we had a dry moto 2 race or sorry moto 3 race we're at moto 2 and it starts to drizzle oh man okay there was the other if you looked at if you were watching the radar you're watching the weather weather apps which I was you know it was like okay there's going to there was the time frame to where there was going to be a drizzle a shower I don't know what you would call it that would happen sort of right after moto 3 was done but would stop before moto to start it so those were those were issues that were going to be part of the game right now what was wild was the fact that and I think this sort of caught everybody sort of by surprise was that the rain picked up and became consistent like it just appeared if you watch the radar it just appeared over us there was no hey there's rain coming it just and I think it was a humidity thing it was just so humid that there was nowhere for the water to go it couldn't be held by the clouds because it was just it wasn't it was it was so it was actually cold because if you sweat it and you had any water and the wind blew it was the humidity was just so great you could just kind of you could feel it on your on your skin and I think that's what was going on so it was drizzling the question was it was it was it wet enough to go to wets was it was it not going to wet was it going to dry what was everybody going to do there was I was like oh man it's like kind of going on here now it's worth pointing out Jim obviously you would have seen us watching it back on the highlights and stuff but not whilst you were there but it was very wet out on the back straight wasn't it but in other parts of the track because it's such a huge track area wise you had that also that added conundrum of certain sections being pretty well dry and another bit has been very dangerously wet if you were on dries right we were what's happening back and forth and I said man if you could I'd want a wet front and a cut slick rear because that was just seemed like though you know or an intermediate tire if you want to think of it that way which they used to have back in the 80s I think but now it's just sort of like it's wet or not and it's like well you know I have limited experience with the Pirelli wets I thought they were absolutely fabulous when I had to use them and they don't look too different from what I had but you know from the still photos I was like well okay so essentially it became well what are you going to do now they declared it a wet race which meant that they weren't going to they weren't going to stop this thing basically like you got your choice guys you can go on the wets and what it came down to was what was the rain going to do if it continued to rain wet tires were obviously the thing to do however if you were on wets perhaps if the rain stopped you would dry and then the wet would deteriorate so it's like what are you going to do it shuffled the grid because some people decided to take that gamble Joe Roberts had a gamble on that I think I know he did some of the guys on the back of the grid had taken that gamble but for the most part the guys in the top two three rows all decided that they would go to full wet not that you had a choice they would just go to wets and then they would run from there so that's how this was starting but as it as it started Gonzales went to slicks and I can't imagine why he did that I mean this is the guy who's leading the championship honestly I think Jake Dixon is the guy you would have to have watched so cover your rival if Dixon was going wets then you need to go wets I I I but Igera did it in Japan courage of your conviction if you thought that was good I am not going to complain about it you you you stuck with what you were going to do and I'm I'm I understand I'm with you on that one but I can only assume Jim I think we have to cast our mind back to Japan last season the technique because let's remember Gonzales won his first race by going on slicks that's right he did he did go on a so-so track I guess he just figured it was worth the gambling he might pull it off again but this was definitely a case of again looking back to last year Mizano it was kind of like the whole martine not following banyan into the pits you know in yeah whether it was the sprint or the main race you know you always do what your closest rival does if you're behind and you have an opportunity to see what they're doing taking that gamble was an odd choice yeah it was it was wild I don't know so here's the guys who started on slicks Gonzales Roberts uh Aegis Arenas Marrera and Slatch they all went on slicks well that was the wrong decision as we know I mean we have hindsight because I was I was like okay where is this gonna because I thought for sure even though that there was you could see rain on the radar that like it wasn't gonna be heavy enough or it was gonna stop at some point like if this stops by halfway the slick guys are gonna catch you uh you know at some point but anyway at the beginning Dixon got a great start he covered the inside he went way far to the inside to make sure nobody could get up there he was followed by by Baltus Lopez Arbolino Kennet and Vanda Burberg now Lopez moved his way to second and then Dixon was just starting to stretch the lead he had a phenomenal first couple of laps in the wet Jake was in tune he was in in tune and he was going and it was doing quite well Arbolino made his way up to third by the third lap by the fifth lap it was Dixon Lopez and Dixon had a three second lead I mean it was oh I was like wow if this this is obviously I think by that point I think I was thinking because I could see how slow everybody was that was on slicks yeah no leaning angle no nothing I'm like wow even if this goes the distance and it stopped raining right now I don't think slicks were going to turn on and you know I made a note Jim uh yes particular note at the end of the first lap the slick runners were 24 seconds behind yeah yeah yeah they were it was like they all everybody went by on that second lap and then you're like where's the rest of the field it was just amazing how far behind they were yeah it was absolutely crazy and I would actually add how good the Pirelli wet is on the dry bits of the track that was the other amazing thing I was going to talk about that a little bit later down sorry no we'll talk we'll talk no there's not really much that really happens in this race because Dixon's out front nothing changes um you know with like hey on my lap eight Dixon was just setting fastest laps the track had started to dry a little bit and he was just knocking off fastest laps like he was just there I'm like wow that Pirelli is working well and they had some close-up views that I got to see when I re-watched the race those Pirelli wets were holding up on a dry track incredibly well Dixon was just moving you know it took in fact it was I think from from about lap 10 it started to dry the sun started to peek back out it started to dry a dry line developed relatively quickly there but it wasn't until like the last two or three laps I think Salach actually set the fastest lap and he took it away from the guys that were on wets which that is a testament to how good the Pirelli wet is yeah which is absolutely positively fantastic but again we had by 10 it's Dixon Arbolino and Lopez Vietti was there and then Baltas had fallen down then Kinet um you by by with 11 the 11th yeah by the 11th lap of the race which only gives you five more to go um everybody on the big fast long back stretch was starting to run to the far right or left to look for water to keep the Pirelli wets intact so it was like okay it's going to change here but it's not changing yet as far as it goes Anshu went down on lap 14 at sector 2 through that 910 he actually wound up bumping into that air fence or whatever and the question was whether they were going to have to do anything about that air fence that part right there now since they've sort of fixed the bumps leading up into it and the bump over the top of it the bikes are going through there a whole heap faster than they ever have and there isn't a lot of runoff room there I mean they've got the air fence and everything there it's it's perfectly safe but one of the things I do not like is they have definitely catered to f1 and they have paved over a large section of that gravel trap which that's not good for a bike I'd assume just you have let's call it one half car width of a formula one car of pavement and after that you've got gravel that's where I would rather see it I think that's safer for all concerned because I mean if you not that I want to make this a formula one podcast but somehow we always do this if anybody watched Jack Dewan who is Mick Dewan's son like the 500cc world champion Australian world champion if you saw him and the race in Japan he lost it at turn one I think that's turn one it's okay okay they've paved almost all of that gravel trap and his impact into that air fence whatever they have safer barrier whatever they call it was I mean it just the dull thud that that car made when it went in there was kind of scary thinking I'm like well if you had gravel there the car would have been digging in and some people will yell at me well the car may have flipped over whatever I don't know when a car's crashing at 190 miles an hour it's going to be bad whatever you've got there but I'll take your point Jim about that turn at Kota you need to be sort of retarding the speed as effectively as you can there because as you say the fence is not that far away it's rather reminiscent of the turn where Polis Bargo crashed at Portimao a few years ago it's the fence looks reasonably far away but a bike an out of control bike and a rider following it closely gets there very very quickly and it's kind of you know reminiscent of that yeah I don't know if there's I mean I don't know what Kota can do I mean they do own a bit of property there they would have to move the access road and they could make a bigger gravel trap there I don't see them doing anything about it though but it was interesting that we had a lot of guys down at at nine there over the blind crest which is one of the again that's my that is the best place to be I don't know why we can't sit in those grandstands that are there they actually remove everything as far as the seating there the grandstands exist it's sitting there all the aluminum structure but the seats are completely gone and I don't understand that really yeah I would sit there the whole weekend because that part of the track is amazing anyway we got to continue where how was the crowd though Jim was it oh yeah because we sort of comment about the sort of sparse nature again accepting that it's a very big track but again they pack them in for formula one like Silverstone do and then MotoGP turns up in town and it's kind of like oh my god you need binoculars to see the next person they're spectating next year I wondered about this the whole time to be honest because we got there on Thursday night late and we easily had a very nice place to go set the RV at that and then we got into Friday and you know people were trickling into the campground on Friday and Fridays there's hardly anyone ever there anyway it's the day to go souvenir hunt and walk around and see because there's nobody in the way and all that good stuff Saturday I thought the campground was fairly full but I didn't think it was any more than what we had the year prior I felt like that was pretty much the same by the time we got to Sunday I felt like the crowd I felt like the crowd was a little bit more now for the MotoGP race there was a lot of people in the stands there and I personally thought that the grandstand that is the one that is parallel to the back stretch at 12 that that one actually had more people in it than it did last year in my opinion I have no number to prove that I felt like it was slightly more people especially because when we were walking back at the end of the day from our position by the big camera truck there was a lot more people walking back at that time with us to the campground and you know usually we could walk there's a gravel path road whatever you want to call it there and usually you could like walk to the left of everybody and pass them and go out this time you couldn't everybody was taking up that whole entire area so that's my thought on the crowd I mean I don't really know whether it was there or not but I don't think they'll ever get any I think this is probably the maximum that they're ever going to get is that's going to but it's going to always be is be about that number of people I don't know what that number is my guess is maybe 70 to 80 000 for race day and maybe over the course of the weekend a hundred thousand people maybe and I just don't see it being any bigger than that there's just there there are people who are not going to go to Texas to see that race they're they just won't and you know if flat rock ever does get a moto gp race that's going to be interesting because people on the east coast who don't want to go to Texas will come to that but the people on the west coast aren't going to come over to flat rock but who knows whatever it's just we're we're a weird country if liberty and god please let them be involved as soon as possible bearing everything that we've said about dawn over the last few episodes but if liberty come in and they can switch the american market on as they have managed very successfully to do a formula one then moto gp I think deserves a couple of races in the us I agree so that you can cover that sort of vast geographical challenge you know and flat rock we haven't heard any more about that reason we mustn't talk about it now but it'll be interesting to catch up with yeah it's on the list of things to do yeah so you have a check in or whatever anyway uh let's back to both back to two we'll finish this up the the oddity here is the very last is that vietti falls at turn 12 then he picks the bike up and then immediately falls down at turn 13 weird oh that was I don't I don't have any explanation for that other than stupidity I really don't I don't know I mean it was like the last lap too either way Dixon wins the race Arbolino was second Lopez is third Kinet fourth Ethan Ethan Guevara was fifth and Ortola who had a good ride coming through the pack Baltis, Elgardo looking good as one of the rookies there there as well and then uh Agi, Vier, Ramirez, Gutierrez, Van Dierberg, Alonso and Excreech on the forward 15th with the final point yeah I'm really really pleased to see Tony Arbolino getting back to some semblance of the form that we expected from him all of last year and he just never really got onto yep I mean again this was a race we can given the conditions where experience counts for a lot but it's not a one-off for Arbolino he's clearly starting to gel in that new setup and he has a Bosca Cora and he has that chassis to work with as well so you know he kept pressure on Jake uh Jake was as you pointed out Jim was a few seconds up the road and was no doubt controlling things reasonably inverted commas easily but Arbolino gave a good account of himself I thought and he's a terrific guy people might recall I had the pleasure to interview him at Silverstone last year and really very very nice humble polite really charming fella so I'm really pleased to see him getting back to form again yeah let's look at the points real quick on this one Dixon now leads the championship on 59 points Kennet is 13 behind on 46 Gonzales is now 45 after the terrible decision to be on slicks then it's uh Alonso who on 30 points then Arbolino on 28 Marcos Ramirez, Baltis, Helgado, Sages and then Celestino Vietti finishing out the top 10 and that is what we have for Modo 2. Modo GP we might be here a while folks let's try to get through qualifying as quickly as possible to get to the important parts of it the first qualifying session was Quattroraro, Bender, Bezeki, Ayagura the Hondas except for Mir who had Mir had gone through and Renz was in there so the Yamahas were all in there but you know the KTMs are kind of scattered around there as well okay number one the KTMs look like the most horrible bike on the planet those things are just ugly it is aerodynamics personified I can't handle it I'm sorry I'm gonna rant about that I hate the look of the KTM fair we're done I accept what some of the listeners will be shouting at this point which is that it doesn't matter what it looks like it needs to go fast currently it does neither of those things particularly well it's ugly and yeah quite slow it seems at the moment so it is a terrible motorcycle all the way around the Hondas actually look pretty decent shockingly I mean it there was a couple laps practice maybe qualifying I can't really remember where where Mir is latched on to the back of Marquez and the Honda is looking pretty good pretty good one of the big the my eye what my eyes can see the biggest difference is the ride height device that Ducati has it is absolutely positively perfected that motorcycle drops the fastest it drops to the lowest of any of them and if you look at the Honda it's it drops but it drops slower and it doesn't drop as far visually you can watch and I don't know if this was because of the rain in practice but on the back straight away you could legitimately see that the Ducati lowers itself probably a good three to five inches more than the Honda does and just the look of the arc of the water off the bikes was enough to tell you that that was what was happening but the Honda has made massive progress massive progress in the past here I think we've got a day isn't it compared to is absolutely night and day absolutely night and day uh what they they have a big test planned is it post-hurrath they test I think there's a there's a European test coming up somewhere right that after after a race I don't remember where but they're supposed to have another engine it's supposed to give them more horsepower the acceleration appears to be good but it just lacks right like you can watch the Ducati come off the corner and for the first I'm going to call it 25 30 feet the Honda's with it and then it's like okay it's losing a little bit it's there but once the Ducati gets on song it's pulling away and the Honda just sort of dies they need more at the end more top end out of that motor and if they've got another motor that can potentially do that okay well then it's going to be better for them but yeah the KTM horrid absolutely horrid anyway Raul Fernandez would fall at turn 10 what we've been talking about with the air fence that aren't you winning too well Raul does that too because he goes over the curb loses the back which then kicks back over the curb which then goes sideways and he luckily did not high side off that motorcycle at that point he didn't we went down with it which was great and then they go into the air fence now that essentially necessitated a it's not an I guess it's just a barrier it's like a big foamy barrier which knocked it up on end as opposed to being laying down or whatever and you know it's just there that that caused a red flag you know but it was it was you know what we had to deal with and they did eventually get that repaired and they went back out or whatever but it was Luca Marini and Quattro that got through not one Aprilia was in the second qualifying session which shows you you know you're lacking Olivera he was out because of the muscle pull slash I think they found he has ligament damage in that collarbone connection to his sternum he's on Yamaha this year sorry wow I gotta get myself together right yeah so it's Bizecki and Salvadori currently have been for Martin and then you've got Iagura and you've got Fernandez yeah yeah right yeah so it goes to show if Martin not there maybe they're not even yeah I mean Bizecki again you would have spotted this track side on the Friday I didn't watch a huge amount of the running but every time I saw Bizecki on Friday he appeared to be in some sort of a limp mode almost like he had a pit limiter stuck on so he had so little running on Friday it's this little wonder that he was a bit behind the the eight ball when it came to Saturday but Bizecki's bike always sounded like it was running with the track control on or launch control on yeah and it was very slow terrible like they had speed limiter or something yeah something of that nature it was just every time you're like what's wrong with that bike what is going on which is completely and totally crazy that any of that was going on but anyway we got to the second qualifying session halfway through Marc Marquez is out front followed by Digia, Vignaia, then Alex and then Mir and Vignoles so the Honda kind of looking okay in that range right and not great but we're talking about it which is better than what we have been and so that Outaguer went down at turn one, Alex Marquez went to the top, Morbidelli went to third, Mir then crashed, he's still crashing but he claims he's crashing because he's riding so hard now as opposed to the bike was so bad and I don't know which way to call that one if you're crashing because you're trying that's different than crashing because the bike is bad which means you've made progress potentially I don't know which way to call that one the problem Jim I think is and again John Mir I mean people obviously have their own opinions I've counted him a couple of times and again he's another really nice articulate charming thoughtful person but he's cooking his goose at the moment as far as any chance to stay put there we might get into speculation about HRC in a minute but this is not a good time in which to start crashing a lot Mir because he hasn't done it so far this year whereas in Austin he did it quite a lot and yes he did that's not a trend that you want to see because he's squandering a much much better bike now as you say Jim maybe he's crashing just he's got a lot of confidence and he's having to relearn what the limit of a bike is because he hasn't really been able to find the limit of a bike for the last season or so because there was no obvious limit on the last year's Honda it just went down yeah you know without any warning seemingly so yeah but a shame really to see that yep so as it rolled off Marquez Mark went would take pole then Fabio DiGiontone would be second he had pipped Alex but then he was removed because there was an accident there was a there was a there was I forget who went down but there was a there's Mir I think it was Mir yeah the Mir crash there was a yellow flag now shortly thereafter they reversed this and they put DiGiontone back into second because they looked at some closed circuit television footage of the track and it just so happens that in the Mir crash DiGia is exactly at the signpost exactly the exact same time that people start waving a yellow flag and the light comes on you know what credit where credit's due they reversed it they put him back I think he deserved to have the lap did you feel that way no I did and I've written my notes I don't think I can ever recall having seen that happen before no I did I don't I do not either so that's why I'm we're talking about this because I thought it was the exact right thing to do like look there's no way he could have reacted to that yeah you can't penalize a rider for infringing a yellow flag and then sort of penalize or not give it back to them if they don't you know and if it was too close to call then I think they were quite right to reinstate him yes I'm glad that they did that yeah and I don't know who's called that is if that's the kind of a Simon Crafer and his team I guess I guess it would be don't know yet another good decision if it is yep I thought it was good thought it was correct that was good to do so then that bumps Alex to third it bumped Acosta to the second row it bumped morbideli down and Benyaya would be sixth like so Benyaya was starting on the inside towards the pit wall of that of the second row then Marini who actually looked I mean that's there's your first Honda seventh yeah like that's that's I mean if you told me Honda would be qualifying seventh with Marini I would have laughed at you and said order another drink and said you're drunk sit down right then Mir backing that up because he was eighth Miller was the best of the Yamahas which was shocking then Vinales then Quattrarro and then Outagher that was how the top 12 guys qualified there so let's just get right to the sprint there is not a whole lot to talk about here in the sprint other than the first lap the first lap is probably one of the best motorcycle racing laps I can ever remember because Marquez is starting and he has a pretty good hole shot but then I just absolutely nailed the start and he winds up actually leading out of turn one but Mark kind of shuts the door on him as they get down to like to two but then then Benyaya goes back by Mark as if hey I'm done dealing with you I am going to put myself ahead of you which he did but then they got through they got to us where we're standing and we watched Marquez just carve Benyaya and run it oh it was like people are gonna hate me for this analogy it looked like Marquez v Rossi back in the prime time because it was like nah this ain't happening and then they both go flying down the back stretch and I thought Benyaya was going to outbreak Mark he didn't because you know Benyaya is kind of known as being that late breaker but I think Mark kind of hung on to it around the outside because you're trying to do something on a left hand turn not gonna work out is it I applaud Peko for giving it a go right I'm not gonna argue that but then they're going they get through the fiddly bit right and they leave they leave 15 head to 16 through 17 now they're at 18 and Marquez almost launched himself to the moon that bike steps out okay and Benyaya had to crack the throttle because he had thought Mark was going to fly past him towards the outside of the track so Peko cracks the throttle to cut back underneath well Alex is already there so somehow Mark stays on this bike now you me I meet you most normal human beings will be like okay let's stop inspect our underwear and be sure we're okay and then we'll start again no Marquez just simply flies into 19 they go three wide and he winds up leading when they get to 20 how the hell does that just happened like suzy perry tweeted out or x or whatever you want to call it this how do they stay on I I don't know how he did it either I luck magic I I don't know but because as you said earlier on Jim that is a bloody quick turn oh it's now it's incredibly fast like again again we spent a good portion of sat of Saturday morning at the the 17 18 19 area watching and the bump is gone the bad bump there is gone so everybody was flying through there and wow did the MotoGP bike there's actually a straightaway there between 18 to 19 is a straight and those MotoGP bikes were covering that super quick and so that all that happens right and then somehow Marquez just stays on the bike and you're just going like really you just you got to you have to marvel in a guy who who literally had his humerus re-broken and rotated and then put back together again to be able to ride a motorcycle and he still does he still rides like that with absolutely no fear they had I don't know if you know who Dex Shepard is he is an American actor he was part of one of the times they tried to have an American Top Gear show okay he did a couple of seasons he was at the race and they were talking to him there he's married to some really famous uh he's married to the lady who voiced Elsa in the frozen movies I think is her name oh he's married to so maybe you know him that way it doesn't it doesn't matter the point of it is Dex Shepard is talking about how he's a Rossi fan I'm a Rossi guy Rossi's my god Rossi's this Rossi's that he says but if you don't like the story Marc Marquez has of beating himself to the point where he couldn't race a motorcycle and then getting it all fixed and then coming back and racing as hard as he did before he ever had that accident is you're crazy this is one of the greatest greatest things you've ever seen in sport for an athlete to have had to be at the pinnacle to have a bike break his arm as bad as it did right and then now be back on the best bike in the paddock with this arm yield and win races it's he says you have to like it you have to and it's a great story it's a great story I don't care if you hate Marquez or not which we'll get to that part of the story here shortly either way either way he either way in this sprint race it's done I'm sorry it's done Marquez goes on to win this race his brother finishes second Benya finishes third so okay we're halfway to a triple treble we were doing good so here so far DiGio Antonio and Morbidelli had a little coming together in the essence at the beginning of the race DiGio felt he was shoved off the track and he fell back like four or five three or four places or whatever he did rebound to finish fourth or whatever before Morbidelli but there was words and there was no friendly writer debrief in the Mooney VR46 is it not Mooney but it's been said before that there isn't an awful lot of love lost between those two anyway and definitely not after Saturday not after that so they he didn't he just walked out of the back of the pits and then you had Pochirau with a great ride to be sixth Acosta, Marini, Onahonda and then Ayagura showing you that it's actually tough to be a rookie in MotoGP and then Bizeki finally you know tenth there with the Aperillia so that's how the sprint worked out so again amazing that first lap that was everything it was absolutely crazy anything you want to put into the sprint here Rich? Well as you say Jim it was purely just about lap one because nothing really happened other than me crashing out of the race a bit later on in the sprint as we were kind of alluding to earlier on all I'll say is that Ron Dennis's again now my turn to do a formal one thing Ron Dennis's famous quote along about you know having Prost and Senna in the same team sort of back in what would this have been 88 when Senna rocks up at McLaren next to Prost and Ron Dennis pointing out that if you know if you put two bulls in a field you know that there's going to be trouble at some stage and we kind of got a little glimpse of that because Marquez was not kind of making his intentions hard to read was he where Bagnale was concerned in terms of wanting to get back in front of him and that second overtake that Mark put on him that you saw trackside Jim was a very hard move I thought on lap one between teammates so we haven't seen much of it yet but I'm sure we're going to see a bit more of this because as we say often Bagnale historically tends to build into a season and he hasn't been at tracks that have favored him so no I think whilst we've kind of said all along nobody's going to say which way Mark went I'm perhaps pulling back from that view a little bit just because the Ducati is just such a great bike you know we're seeing Digia doing really well on it obviously Alex Marquez Peco's had a tricky start but again as I say not his favorite tracks so I think Mark is going to have perhaps a bit more attention than perhaps we figured might be the case and things will get tasty because he just he doesn't know when to concede or he won't concede so it's going to be great fun to watch how this one plays out over the come well all season long basically but other than lap one yeah there's not really anything to say about spring all right let's get to the controversy and everything that went on here in the MotoGP race we had just finished Moto2 right it's a drying track there's what 30 minutes or more happens after that race there's a that break right to get you to that to get you this race all the MotoGP riders start to go out they would go out on one bike and they use the siding lap because the pits are open for I think five or six minutes something like that there's there's a session you were allowed to come back into the pits and do anything you want to do a lot of people changed bikes and went out on slicks and then saw it well is it slicks don't really know here right now what are we going to do so a lot of people tried both bikes right just to see what was going to happen but we got up to the grid and it's like okay what are we going to do that was it we're waiting the sun starts to come out things are starting to dry now Marc Marquez I think all of us agree is a master statistic master strategist he he he knows the rules he knows how to take advantage of those rules so he asks because they went to the grid everybody at the front went to the grid on reins okay the people at the back of the grid gambled and went for slicks just we'll just cut the cut right there there's a few people who were gambling on slicks Marquez says hey is our second bike ready to go yes okay I think we made a bad mistake to start on wets I'm going to change now you can change your bike and you're allowed to up until three minutes are left on the for the pit lanes to be closed and for the safety car to go you can change but you gotta start from now that's fine because if I am Marc's thinking if I make that change I start on I start on dries everybody in the front's on wet they will have to come in and swap bikes and by that time I will be back in front again it is a master strategy class however there's one part of strategy that Marc missed he didn't sit back on his bike Peko noticed this like why is Marc standing by the bike so Peko says okay what's our bike second bike ready he goes okay we're gonna do what Marc does Marc at the three minute Marc bolts to the pits to go get his motorcycle Benya jumps off his bike he wants to go there also the next thing you know everybody who's on slicks is now running down the pit lane to get that and that caused a red flag for the start now it was red flag because there's a rule remember Argentina a few years ago when Miller's sitting on the track and he's at pole and there's five empty rows of motorcycles yeah how could you forget uh-huh so they made a rule said well okay if they all jump to get off this and if 10 riders leave the grid to change bikes we're stopping it and we're restarting the race again since everybody followed what marquez did they red flagged it and stopped the race now I am standing on the hill and you would not believe the hatred that came from the fans about marquez causing a red flag I'm like time out people this is all well within the rules there were people screaming that he was cheating there was people saying I'll never come to another motorcycle race there were people yelling that it was a formula one race and it's only favored marquez that Dorna that only wants to see a Spanish rider win they don't care about crap about Benya it was any kind of viral hatred you can possibly think of is actually happening right now and I am sitting there going oh you because I'm with my I'm with my son I'm with I'm with my best friend's son I'm with my best friend my best mate I'm like guys guys this is what's going on Mark is doing the strategy he knows that if this happens this happens whatever either way Mark wins he either gets to start from pole on slicks or he gets to start from the pit lane on slicks when everybody else is on wet the rules are the rules they followed them MotoGP followed their own rules in this one because there was enough people who left that's where the problem is not 10 riders left but they red flagged it anyway now that's where the controversy is in all this is that they denied their own rule which is the 10 rider rule because there isn't there wasn't enough so it were they playing favorites I don't know but I do know this if you watch carefully at least on the Dornifed I don't know what your and I want to know what you saw in this as well rich the problem I saw was that Marquez and everybody else was coming to that end of that pit lane with all these other people coming off the grid with bikes and motorcycles there was the there was the Texas cheerleaders or whatever they are that were running through there there was people everywhere and all you had to do was hit someone and this race wouldn't happen in coda ever again right so I think this is the point Jim because by their own rule they shouldn't have red flagged was it the fact that you need 10 10 or more 10 riders was it nine people that are actually went to swap they didn't hit the mark they didn't hit the mark I don't know who should instigate right that stoppage let's call it correct yes I think it's absolutely correct that with all this melee going on there grid girls you know walking back to the garages and stuff and somebody had the forethought in terms of race direction because people started again on you know on x and stuff people started going after Simon Craffart no he's the steward it was a different group of people that get the call on this one yeah there's nothing to do with Simon and his team and I think the call was just made as you just said that with people in a bit of a panic in pit lane and that just that general confusion and a lot of people walking around it was just too dangerous so as what's his name valentine harunci who's on the race podcast he kind of summed it up quite well when he said that post argentina as you just alluded to with jack miller this rule came in this is the first stress test to use valentine's terminology this is the first stress test of that new rule and clearly it needs to be amended in some way because it didn't work mark kicked it all off as he was well within his rights to although he if he thought he was getting a pit lane start he was wrong because the rule is that you go out you join at the back of the grid i believe and then you have to do a ride through penalty and that would have been a much more severe time loss obviously than just starting at the back or in the pit lane so the rule does say that if you do change your bike in that manner with that few minutes to go you got a ride through a ride through i forgot about that part of it yeah so that that's come to light i mean obviously i didn't know that either it's only because more knowledgeable people and obviously hindsight you can go and dig through the rules and see what actually happens in this very very kind of rare scenario so mark's bacon was saved really by the fact that they did decide to red flag it now the people well i don't want to steal your thunder because obviously there was a lot of discontent elsewhere on the grid so i guess you should pick it up from here yeah so if in that okay let's if you want to go down that scenario guess what ben yaya and everybody else went with him so ben yaya is going to get the ride through and everybody else is going to get the ride through i get that yeah now to me the the the uh gosh he runs track house david abrivio david abrivio thank you i just blanked out uh david abrivio had the best solution he says we should reform and everybody who was in the pitch should be at the back of the grid behind us because that is a fair way to go about it i agree with him that was a i again there should have been and you know marquez is playing the rules to his knowledge to hey we can go do this mark is gambling that everybody else is going to follow what he's doing and he's going to get the 10 rider thing which he did get so because it was all premeditated this is 100% premeditated that marquez was going to do what he was going to do at the time he was going to do it to create something for his favor that's knowing the rule book and that's fair racing in my opinion what mark does what mark does is correct where it falls apart is that hey the the rule itself of you know getting to nine or to ten didn't happen and now everybody's mad at mark well no no you can't blame the person that invokes the rule you can be mad at the rule yes everybody who was on that hill with me you all need you all know who you are and you need to be mad at the rule book and not mad at marquez yeah with all of that being said though jim yes prior to brivio's suggestion of how to sort of make it a bit of a fair outcome prior to that he was going swivel like bonkers oh yeah with all of this because of course his rider and i'm not sure if uh i'm not sure if raul fernandez did this as well but sonia ioguera was sitting on the grid on slicks he was sitting on slicks and this is where the jack miller comparison comes in because if all these other people are starting from pit lane and having to do a ride through penalty in order to be on slicks then a giro already on slicks clearly would have been a minute up the road easily and with a very high chance of winning plus obviously there were some other people on slicks on the grid as well so brivio was i think quite justifiably absolutely apoplectic about this it's one of these weird things where you know the rule exists for a good reason but it didn't sort of stand up to scrutiny but you can't really blame them for red flagging it because there was a clear danger of somebody getting hit by a bike in the pit lane yes and you can't have that obviously you can't have that so whichever way you looked at it it was all a bit of a well i won't use a swear word but it was a bit of a shower really wasn't it uh well yeah pardon the pun great but these things happen and you just have to try and sort of unpick it and change rules that aren't quite right and then have another go the next time the snow comes up which could be years away right this is again it argentino was three four years ago when this happened and they put the rule in and they put the rule in they said because i think we didn't go there for covid or whatever so it's got to be four years or more miller was on the pram actually i think yeah he was yeah so that was quite some years back what some years ago so this is now the first time let's call it five years just for argument's sake that before this rule has been tested okay well okay maybe we need to retweak this and say look okay if if six riders abandon this then there's a problem and we need this red flag it okay let's re grid everybody because we've obviously guessed wrong or the weather's changed and this is not not fair you know and who knows there's not really going to be anybody who's going to like it because again anyone who's going to start on slicks the next time if it is let's say six riders they're gonna be like why we figured this out why didn't you why do you get that advantage so there should be some kind of something in the rules and we can debate what kind of rule we want to put in here but there should be some of the rules that the guys that did abandon their bikes should have been penalized in some way however the rule worked out to where mark got a break but it isn't mark's fault it's the fault of the rule book and with that rant done well and if you believe in such things perhaps there was a bit of karma coming down the that's the other that's the other part that's the other part we're going to get to here so let's get to the start of the race yeah so now that we get everybody set all right we take off we shorten the race to 19 laps it's mark it's his brother it's ben yaya it's uh digia there then peco got by alex on the first lap he did it 11 12 but then alex came back by again so at the end of the first lap it was mark it was his brother it was it was peco digia it was it was um uh i think it was uh miller and then morbideli that was there now ben yaya finally then got by alex in that so now it's 93 63 73 digia morbideli miller with after five laps five laps acosta crashed on the eighth lap from eighth place in turn one and basically parked the bike after that one but then we get to the almighty lap nine marquez himself crashes in the s's on the second turn of the s's he runs over the curb and he crashes now go find hot neil hobson's discussion of this about it he does a great review of this go find on instagram it's there i'm not going to beat this to death but what i'm going to tell you is mark renner of the curb and mark crashed okay fair enough wet curbs paint that's a bad news deal you're going to have a problem mark screwed up he did the lap before correct but he didn't now what what nobody has mentioned in any of this that i've seen anywhere online and i'm not saying i'm a genius or anything was the fact that all weekend when the track was dry mark was taking and going over that curb and cutting the corner changing the angle of his approach in his line because the ducati doesn't change direction as good so mark doing that was causing him to be faster through the s's all weekend long mark gambled that at that point in time that curb was dry enough for him to be able to go across that curb like he'd been doing all weekend when it was dry and he didn't win the gamble karma appeared and everybody was all happy again on the hill because the man that had decided the riot had now crashed himself out of the race and everybody was a okay again and we all hugged it was it was the difference of people within 20 minutes or whatever of all this taking on was just absolutely insane to me it's i don't know i'm not getting on down on anybody i'm glad everybody who was there was there to see the race but it was just wild to see this emotional change and how people argued about how wrong mark was when you don't even know the rule book because you know again we said it i'll say one last time marquez didn't do anything wrong the rule is wrong and that's where we that's what happened so you you know hate the game not the player i mean i suppose if you're looking for a silver lining to the clouds of the weekend on this one yeah i mean you and i and most of our listeners as kind of pure racing people would just prefer to have seen a race long battle at the front you know with digi and beco and mark and whatnot but with everything that transpired in this crazy race and it was a bit of a crazy weekend as well elsewhere but particularly this race i mean it created a lot of drama and a lot of stories and a lot of memories didn't it and from sort of the the show bit which is obviously for me is not kind of the the most important bit but as moto gp tries to capture people's hearts and minds and expand itself i mean this would have made a great episode of a total drive to survive type series wouldn't it this weekend because there's just so much going on weather crashes you know people choosing the wrong tires in more than one class and then you know the whole start line thing i mean we didn't mention maverick vinales who was running around with that bike at one point i mean i haven't really quite got to the bottom of what that was all about if the bike just failed and he was kind of wondering where his next bike anyway that never mind because vinales is a bit of an irrelevance really uh yeah so to use the term that you use and as a as an americanism you know there was a lot of color wasn't there across the weekend and really the championship ought to be making a lot of this really you know this is where liberty again will well i'm sure would do a much better job it will not miss an opportunity no uh so it was kind of entertaining in that regard but it did somewhat rob us of a potentially great race i don't know if mark would have sort of pulled away bit by bit i suspect he probably would have done yeah but he's not really the king of kocher anymore not in the way that he was is he no and that was a bad mistake and he put his hands up post race and said he just got yeah he got that wrong you say jimmy took a gamble and it just yeah didn't pay off he didn't need to and he didn't need to do it no but your point actually is an interesting one about the fact he's clearly having to ride the ducati very differently to how he's always had always ridden a honda you know he's somebody else i forget who it was was pointing out you know it's a longer bike so the turning of it is different it's very slow he's sort of sitting further back in the seat in terms of his style yes all of which will obviously will affect the way dynamically the bike works compared to what he's been used to i mean he's been used to a bike that was all about front end whereas the ducati is a more probably more stable longer kind of sweeping turn he sort of the bike so you can understand why he was kind of creating the arcs in the corner that he was as you say he just didn't figure on the fact that it was wetter than he had been used to elsewhere in the weekend he simply again you can go back you can watch the sprint you can watch his quality he goes across that curve every i mean every time it's dry he goes across that curve because he's straightening that line out and the ducati wants to run in straight lines he's riding to the machine that he has and it bit him yeah it's that simple it bit him i think he i don't want to say he defaulted to his hondaisms you know i think he defaulted to his codaisms and just was like i'm the king and i can do what i want and no you can't yeah but it robbed us of what may have been a good race who knows but if we continue down this path it's basically now just you know 10 laps in it's it's banyaya it's alex digia morbidele miller and bender now the the bit players are starting to change here at the end there's good racing there watch the end of watch the bikes that are you know seven eight nine ten eleven twelve again mirror then falls off on lap 11 at turn 12 by 15 to go or after 15 laps it's banyaya again this isn't changing but the bit players at the end are so after morbidele it's miller but now outager has appeared so outager is having a good run on his ducati in the crissi di or whatever three laps to go zarko falls down at 15 outager's down at turn 15 as well and then you know we wind up with peko banyaya winning the race alex being second digia being third then morbidele miller has a strong fifth i mean miller had a great race in the amaha yeah he really really did really good yep besecki slid into six because we had trouble with zarko we had trouble with outager so that promoted besecki bastionini was in seventh marini was eighth okay there's your honda's there's a honda right uh because everybody else crashed iagura was ninth again where would he have been you know we can play up some butts but if iagura had been able to start on slicks everybody else had to take penalty who knows what happens yeah quattrarro who had crashed on the warm-up lap the siding laps out of the pit really scuffed his others up terrible he and miller wound up giving the taxi ride pushed his bike to get it started with his bike and then you know he was 10th then rins was 11th then fernandez 12th augustus fernandez 13th vinyalas and then salvadori picking up the last championship point so that's the race that's the that's the championship points as we dealt them out now we look at the table the championship table to quote neil hoxson we have a championship on now because we've seen the kink in the armor there is a weak spot we know that it exists okay because alex marquez now leads the championship on 87 points he is one point ahead of his brother on 86 banyai is now on 75 which puts him only one sprint win away from being equal level to to um to mark or to alex sorry so you know which is kind of crazy then it's morbidelli digiantonio agura zarko the zeki marini and miller in the top 10 in the points what i'm interested in is and i can't remember this and i apologize i did not look this up rich but my memory says marquez has never won a guitar on in a mode on the motor in the motor gp class he's been close but i don't think he's ever won because i know rossi beat him a couple times there um he's and he had his injuries and things like that i don't think he's ever won if he has it's a long time ago if he is if he did it's a long time ago i will agree with you yeah to me if marquez comes out and just goes back to winning a sprint winning a pole and beating benya straight up again even if then i finished the second i don't care then mark's mental capacity is okay and he's not gonna and this is a blip on the radar that we didn't expect but hey it's here everybody makes a mistake oh i'm sure he would have brushed it off almost immediately yeah of anybody i think he's the most mentally strong yeah and he knows why he crashed i mean it's not it's a mysterious thing is it yes 100 i'm with you 100 i'm with you there it's going to be interesting to watch guitar or whatever but it is also interesting to note that benya is the first teammate since 2017 to win against mark marquez and that person was danny prudressen oh wow okay that's a crazy stat that's a great start yeah i don't know i hadn't heard that one yeah i mean mark marquez is not a fan of catar i think that's reasonably well established and peko tends to go pretty well there so i can see quite a close battle actually yeah the big question is not that he would be anywhere close to competing with those two but do we see hohey martin back because there is some suggestion that he might have a go in catar yeah but i still think he's on a fairly sort of slow curve to kind of get back up to fitness and somewhere up the front and that relies upon the aprileia behaving itself of course i mean it is the ducati championship there's no two ways about that i mean only a ducati is going to win unless something extraordinarily weird happens in catar the question is mark probably is going to be a bit weaker there i wouldn't put it beyond the bounds of possibility for alex marquez to win in catar he may win the sprint yeah i mean he's riding superbly isn't he and for all of the i would say from you and i anyway hopefully reasonably light criticism of banyaya's start to the season it just goes to show doesn't it things change very very quickly and banyaya is not that far behind yes he's been out performed in the first few races and mark had a silly crash but he's been consistently there or thereabouts and he's not very far back in the points and you know but alex is obviously with what six second places now yeah i mean i can't really believe deep down that he's a championship challenger as the year sort of goes on and on and on but you you never know i mean stranger things have happened and a satellite bike won the championship last year so there is precedent now i still think this is you know very much a mark versus peko kind of deal and the intrigue for me is does it start to get a bit kind of knives out at times because banyaya is quite a reasonable fellow but he has limits and i suspect he wasn't hugely enamored at that move that mark pulled or the two moves that mark pulled on him in the sprint for example so this is going to blow up at some point i suspect but yeah weird weekend really all things considered weather all sorts going on there yeah like i said there was controversy chaos and crashes at coda but that's all i have here rich so yeah well all i was going to do just to round out was just to sort of quickly touch on portimão uh which was the top rat razzgatti leoghue show he won race one he run the sprint and he won race two after a pretty mediocre australia which is not his favorite track by a long chalk and he had some bike troubles there although they're still trying to get their head around this stiffer chassis that they've been forced to use this year so that is a problem but bulega is still handsomely leading the championship as i say because top rack did drop quite a lot of points in the first round in philip island so bulega is 29 ahead of top rack at the moment and then it's patrici bautista and locotelli kind of keeping the yamaha flag lying but he's already 55 points behind locotelli so this is very much bulega versus top rack this year great races because world super bicycles delivers great races arguably better racing consistently than moto gp i would say the intrigue though and the reason for sort of touching on it a bit more is that as we've been chatting over whatsapp a lot well i say a lot certainly the commentators on what was it our tnt sports can't call it eurosport anymore mentioning this rumor about top rack perhaps not wanting to stay put at bmw and this rumor mill starting to gather pace like a rock running down a hill about hrc now this could be sort of a bit beyond the bounds of possibility but the suggestion was that does he jump on the fireblade next season the one last year in world superbike and try and win the championship on a third manufacturer that would be a stern challenge on the fireblade but if anybody can top rack can and then perhaps simultaneously start testing an 850 moto gp bike with the intention to come across to the hrc moto gp squad works right they've made it very clear that's what he wants for 2027 i mean it's an intriguing appetizing thought particularly if he ends up next to pedro acosta in that team which again is a rumor that i think is not going away and post cota i think there was there was a sort of a teaser type thing that came out on x about a decision coming from the acosta camp so i wonder whether we might hear something a bit sooner rather than later jim because all is not well at ktm quite clearly and the costa is not the sort of talent that's going to wait around for season after season for that bike to come good assuming that it ever does or indeed that ktm stay put in the championship for that matter the rumor also just to be part of this ktm thing is that bmw motor rat is very much going to buy ktm and shift the production to india that has come back hard again okay that they're gonna buy it that bmw is buying ktm now okay if they do does that mean acosta stays i don't know i have no clue i mean i mean i i do think that whatever contract i don't think costa's how do i put it i think a costa's lawyers are good enough to have an outclaws somehow like they're not they're they were not going to link him to ktm for his career like some people have signed contracts like lucler signed a lifetime contract with ferrari i mean well jim again there is a sign in like a vile cynic which i am a lot of the time it's not hard to envisage a scenario where hrc let's say it's hrc and it's not the vr46 squad which doesn't seem like an easy fit to me i don't really see that although that's another room that keeps doing rounds let's assume hrc um open their checkbook and say mr across to what numbers should we write on this piece of paper yeah he names his price and buys his way out of ktm and ktm at that point lateness he might well be quite pleased to have a check of their own with a few noughts on it to help them out because yeah they're not awash with money or unlikely to be going forward you know i could see that kind of scenario unfolding and that honda is looking good and i think it would be attempts in proposition for the costa yeah and him and maybe it's a bit too much to hopeful but the costa and top rack in the same team that would be awesome absolutely awesome because top rack is a i mean again for anybody i'm sure most of our listeners do touch on world super bikes i mean what that lab does on a on a motorcycle top rack i'm talking about it's just it's otherworldly it really is it would be a great great travesty to me if he didn't get a couple of seasons on a good bike in moto gp to measure up against the best with no disrespect to world super bike but he deserves a proper shot in moto gp and yes he's getting a bit old but his talent is still on fire so pirelli tires and a new formula i just think it makes a whole lot of sense for hrc to give him a shot but isn't it he'd only be like 31 or 32 in 27 yeah he's not old is he because marquez would be 36 because they were doing that list like zarka would be 37 marquez would be like 30 35 or 36 depending where it is and i've seen all that and he would only be like 31 so it was it's not like he's out of i mean you know these guys are getting older everybody in much b is getting older at some point all these people that we talk about are going to leave and we're going to have another generation of craziness we're going to have yeah uh chiles and alonzo and rarita and they're going to be the people we're going to be talking about so it's just a natural turnover of course what's going on as i've said about top rack in the past jim what's unusual about him is with the exception of mani core last year which was a bad mistake on his part you know he hardly ever crashes you know so he he doesn't carry injuries this is the extraordinary thing about him he's so fast and so good but it's so unusual for him to drop the bike and so although he's aging a bit he's still in good shape basically so i think he's due a due a crack at moto gp i agree uh and yeah the sort of across the top rack super team on an improving or you know an hrc 850 which could do a you know an rcv 211v couldn't it could happen they could come out of the blocks with an absolute world beta they've done it before elder yeah but there's three great races in portimao so if people get the chance to go and have a look at them yeah i suggest they do what the hell bmw does when top right leaves is a is a question for another day but because that bike is not really performing in michael vandermark's hands particularly well certainly nowhere near the level of top racks and that might be perhaps where the bmw ktm things coming from maybe they see their way into motor gp is just to buy the slots and you know the technology the ip from an existing outfit and try and improve upon it rather than starting completely from scratch it's a better idea we will see all right let's put it that's it's something we're going to watch this we're going to be talking about this a lot guys this is just how it's going to be let's put a bow on this one rich again you know be sure that you follow all of us on our socials i'm at moto rgv on x twitter instagram threads all that it's at richard jowett on twitter x instagram all that good stuff it's instagram is motopod official yeah there's another score that's a mother pot underscore official for instagram follow us there as well i tried to put a lot of things up on instagram while i was down there yeah that was good stuff jim yeah really good and with all of that said till we come back and talk about guitar ride safe cheerio