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Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to Motopod, the Internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 803 for April 16th, 2025. I'm Jim McDowell, hosting the show.

Along with me, as always, from across the pond in merry old England is Richard Jowett. Richard, are you having a good evening, sir? Very good evening. Thank you, Jim. And yes, hello, everybody.

We've got a very exciting MotoGP race to talk about for once. And it's not often that we say or that I say that the MotoGP main race was the best race of the weekend, which it was in my opinion. Moto3 was a good one, too. Well, it was. We'll get into the meat and gravy of this, I'm sure, as we go along.

So yeah, looking forward to chatting about Qatar. Yes, we will be. That is on the schedule is Qatar. We'll deal with that. Although I would want to say to everyone, everyone who's out there who's listening, if you can give us a like, follow us on our socials at Motopod official and Instagram.

I'm at MotoRGV, rich is at Richard Jowett, Instagram X, whatever it's called. Tell your friends about us, leave a review. And if you can throw a little money in the pot and go to our website, www.motopodcast.com. There's links for PayPal and Patreon on the right hand side. With that, let's go to the little bit of news that has leaked out from this week here.

I think one of the biggest parts of the weekend is that Yamaha and Honda are testing in Valencia. They concluded today it's a private test, so there's no times that have leaked out. I haven't really heard a whole lot about it. But what we do know is Yamaha ran the V4 in anger for the first time. Thoughts about that, Rich?

I saw a little snippet on X. I think Keith Hewan posted it and it was the V4 going around. It sounded nice, but I mean, it's a V4, so sounds pretty much like all the other MotoGP bikes. But it's obviously very, very significant that this, I believe is the first time, it's probably not the first time that the bike's run on a track. I'm sure they've had it out in Japan somewhere.

Certainly in terms of Europe, I bet this would be the first time the V4 has run. So, I mean, we knew it was happening, but here's the further evidence that it is. And for sure, we're going to see it quite soon. I mean, not this year, because I don't believe even with the super concessions that they have that they could run that engine this year. The question is, when will we see it, I suppose.

But very significant. And obviously, Yamaha and Honda still have, I forget what the category number is now. Is it category three? I can't remember from my memory what the concession rules are, but they still get to do all the private testing with their works riders, I believe, still. So yeah, good to see that they're cracking on and Honda are coming.

I mean, we keep saying it. And Yamaha, again, I mean, it's mainly Crotter R, isn't it? But they are making progress. And you know, the European factories feel as if they're sort of dipping back a little bit to me, Jim. I don't know what you feel about this.

But I mean, ebbs and flows, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know if Ducati is really going backwards. I think that they're at the end of their life cycle, right? There's only so much that you can develop a motorcycle to or a car, whatever, take your pick, right?

At some point, you then have to fundamentally go change the design so that you can push forward and go so far. I think they're sort of I think maybe KTM, maybe Aprilia, maybe Ducati are sort of inching there. But then again, does Ducati really need to do anything for the next two years other than develop the 850 machine? So are they are they saying, yeah, we kind of got this and we're not really going to put a whole lot more effort into it because it is going to end. You know, this is and you are not going to have red heights and very restricted aerodynamics and no launch controls and all this other stuff is going away.

You know, maybe it's worth their effort to put their time into a more conventional motorcycle. Don't know. Yeah. I mean, the Ducati, the works Ducati is, I suppose, the great white shark, isn't it? It's the apex miracle of evolution, I suppose.

It's about as good as it can get under this set of rules. So yeah, perhaps me saying they're dropping back, they're not really they don't appear to be going marching forward anymore, I suppose, is what I mean, because there probably isn't anywhere for them to go, which is why they've kind of come back a bit to last year's bike, having tried a couple of things and decided they weren't worth the risk. But Aprilia, well, we're getting to Aprilia because they're in a bit of a dire state, you know, for reasons that are rather unfortunate and KTM is in all sorts of bother at the moment. And I just feel like Yamaha and Honda is starting to find their way again, albeit very late in this rule set. But they're clearly pushing on hard to see if they can do something before the rules change.

And obviously, we don't know what's going to happen once the 850s arrive in terms of who will have a competitive advantage or not. But it's going to be interesting to find out. Should be fun. We talked about this last week, but this is not going away. The top rack and Acosta to HRC rumors, they are not quitting.

What we know so far is that it is believed that HRC is willing to buy Acosta out of the contract he has with KTM. The rumor is somewhere between six and eight million. I don't know if it's dollars or euros. I'm assuming euros. But that is a hefty sum that Honda is willing to apparently part with to put him on their motorcycle.

All that you had from BSB about top rack and BMW, Rich, why don't you tell us that? Yeah, well, so World Superbike, not BSB, but from Assen at the weekend. So again, the rumor mill churning away and the thought that, well, that top rack and probably more likely Keenan Soffiroglu, who people will remember was a very successful 600cc rider in particular, multiple world champion, manages top rack, the Onshu brothers. Another Soffiroglu running in World Super Sports. I'm not sure if that's his son or cousin or nephew.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. It sounds as if the relationship with BMW has soured quite significantly just of late. And again, all points towards top rack jumping on a Fireblade next year. No doubt a big money deal that will then see him go into the 850cc MotoGP program and do some testing, I'm sure next year alongside his duties on the Fireblade. Even I'm a bit doubtful that he could win races, let alone a championship on the Fireblade.

But again, this is where the great kind of step up on inferior equipment. So that would be a great thing to witness in of itself, let alone him coming across and forming a what I think you could genuinely call a super team with a Costa in 2027 on a 850 MotoGP bike. I mean, that is a we keep talking about it and people will start getting bored of me. But that is a really mouthwatering prospect. It really is.

And although there's been a lot of talk about just switching over to a Costa, about him potentially ending up on a VR46 bike, I think a number of journalists have pointed out that the sort of money that's needed to get him out of the contract, let alone to give him a competitive salary, which is clearly going to be stock value has risen a lot. It's probably beyond most independent teams unless the manufacturer that backs them is willing to dip into their pockets. Why would Ducati do that? Because they've got Mark Marquez on the bike, Bagnara. Ducati quite famously don't pay big salaries.

They pay big bonuses. So none of that really points towards Ducati being a serious contender to get him, whereas HRC, on the other hand, were paying Mark Marquez a few seasons ago. What that's that deal that he took was 20, 30 million or something. I think Jim, if my memory serves me correctly. Yeah, you're close.

I think it was in the 20 million euros. Yeah. So I mean, I wouldn't like to suggest, say, seven million to buy a Costa out of his contract as a drop in the ocean. Clearly, that's a huge sum of money. But, you know, they're not paying Mark Marquez huge sums of money anymore, so they can afford to do it.

And they've got all of the motivation and the reason to do it. Let's be honest. A Costa is still a little bit unproven in a sense, but and he's clearly struggling on this year's KTM and the work squad. But look at what he's done in the junior categories and what he did on the Tech 3 bike last year. It's a no brainer for me that they would go after him hard and pay a lot of money to get him.

So interested to know what other people think. You know, maybe they don't kind of wax quite as lyrical as we do about the kind of the prospect of an Acosta, Razgatlioglu, HRC team in 2027. But I'm definitely here for that. All right. Anything else in the news you want to cover real quick, Rich?

Only just very, very quickly, just having mentioned last year that the OMG squad had kind of pulled out very, very last minute at a BSP. Pleased to report on people that watch the TNT MotoGP, Martin Spotted, Stuart Higgs, who's the BSP series kind of head announcing that both Kyle Ride and Brad Ray have alternative rides on good quality Yamaha bikes. So they will be on Yamahas just in different teams. Obviously, it's all a bit last minute and a bit kind of knee-jerk, but I'm sure they'll get together and get things sorted out. So at least we haven't lost the champion from the series this year, because that would have been obviously a devastating blow.

And with Brad Ray returning, it promises to be, yeah, hopefully a really good competitive season again. And I'm hoping to get up to the test at Donington this weekend, if possible, though the weather forecast is typically not that enticing. But hopefully we'll get a few interviews in over the course of the first couple of rounds, at least if not this weekend. And, yeah, focusing on BSP, which is always great alongside Bullsupers and MotoGP. So, yeah, that's coming up soon, hopefully.

All right. So that covers all of the news we got right now. There's some stuff that we that are kind of newsy that we're going to cover as we go through the actual race. But let's get on to Qatar and specifically let's start at Moto3 with qualifying. So the first qualifying session, we find out that Bertelli is not there because he has a broken humerus and a broken tibia.

Now, I think his humerus was his right humerus. And I think his tibia is his left, I believe. They're on opposite sides of the body, but it was a training crash that did him in. So he was obviously not there for the weekend. We also learned that Kylés, the sensational rookie that showed up at Qatar, he had a crash training there at the time.

They didn't believe anything was wrong when he got he went for, I think, an x-ray for his thumb and it turned up as negative. Now, sometimes bones do crack later on or the crack propagates over time. And as he got to Qatar, he was complaining of his thumb and he went to medical. They did an x-ray there and determined that it was broke and said, sorry, no ride for you. And he was immediately back to Spain.

I'm assuming to have Dr. Mir put a screw back together again or something. I don't know whether he's broke that weird navicular bone that sits underneath there or if it's some other part of the thumb. But yeah, it's like, wow, we are dropping like flies here with the injuries during the middle of the season, which is well, not the middle of the season, but during the season, which is kind of crazy. We had a good way to start the weekend, right, Rich?

It does make me wonder why the teams are not writing into contracts that they're not allowed to do certain types of training. You know, because these guys are constantly injuring themselves, we see it up and down the different categories, don't we? I mean, if you remember famously, I'm pretty sure Carl Crutchlow never did motocross because he just was not prepared to break himself as hard as you tend to break yourself when you have a motocross crash. So he was pretty much exclusively out riding push bikes all the time. I mean, he was like a Tour de France level cyclist in terms of keeping his fitness levels up and just did the rest of it on track during the race weekends rather than risking it out motocrossing.

I guess flat track is perhaps not quite so quite so dangerous in terms of falling off a bike from a great height. So I don't know the specific details of what Battelli did or Quillers, but yeah, I mean, Battelli was having a stonking season, wasn't he? And with the Humorous and the Tibula gone, I mean, he's probably out for, well, it's got to be several months. And as we saw this weekend, the risk of coming back early is a risk, a big risk. Well, we'll get into that a little bit later on, but it's a great shame to see to those sort of front runners out of the going at the minute.

Yeah, it was terrible. In that first qualifying session was Rollstein Fernandez, who was going to get a long lap because of a crash created in practice with Denys Foggia. He saw the video of that one. Yep, he deserved it. So fair play to that one.

Another Simon Krayfar moment where we go. Yep, got that one. Crashed it. Anyway, Almanza, Nepa, Peroni and O'Shea are all in there. When it came down to the end of it, O'Shea had a high side that took him out towards the very end of it.

He was in the top four, but eventually it became Almanza, Buchanan, Nepa and Fernandez. Fernandez. Sorry, I couldn't think of who was the last one who got through. So those guys all go to the Q2 battle. Now, Q2, Piqueras has a moment at turn one, which was a pretty good sized moment.

He did bring it back in there or whatever. Now, Fernandez had a big front end moment in turn four. It was as if the Moto3 bikes now qualifying, you know, sort of after MotoGP and after the sort of the lunch break, if you will, that the track temperature or something sort of maybe caught people out because it had now gotten to dusk as opposed to the heat of the day. And we know the track just holds heat and then will dissipate that heat. So I didn't know if it was maybe something along that way.

But halfway through, Fernandez was on top followed by Carpe, Almanza, Yamanaka, Rueda and Kelso there. Kelso would then go to the P1. Rueda would then knock him off. Fernandez was then next. Then it was Carpe, Almanza and Yamanaka.

Ogden had gone down at turn two and it was like, OK, who, what, where is in that final sequence, are you past that sector or how fast was that sector going to clear a yellow as to whether you were going to be on pole? But what happened was that Ogden got touched Carpe and Nepa and they all sort of kind of wiggled around and Ogden sort of got the short end of the stick in all of that one. So there was a great move. Sorry. And Nepa had a great move to avoid the incident as well.

But Yamanaka would go to pole, followed by Kelso, followed by Rueda, followed by Rossi, Picaris, Carpe, Fernandez, Almanza, Pini, Cararo, Munoz and Furusato made your first four rows. Now, this led to on race day, everyone was then talking about or at the end of Qualifying, I guess I should say more correctly, this is not to worry about from Rueda. Everything's going to be all OK. He's the only guy he was running. Well, I don't know what was it, two or one or two or two for the entire time.

He put together like 10 laps or whatever. So Rueda is going to run off even at Qatar, which is a very difficult track to run away from, mainly because of the fast flowy nature of the track and the what the one kilometer or kilometer and a half long front straightaway that they have. So it's going to be interesting to see if that was actually going to pan out as we moved into that race. So on race day, there was a huge headwind that was heading down the main straightaway, which meant that the gap, the draft was going to be even more efficient than what it usually is with the Moto three bikes. And it was like, oh, wow, this is going to be really crazy to figure out who, what, where, whatever.

But Carpe, having caused that crash in Q2, got a got a double long lap lap penalty. And of course, Fernandez already had a long lap penalty he had to take. So that was how we were going to start out. Yamanaka with the pole got away first, followed by Rueda, Kelso, Carpe, Almanza and Firasato. Kelso would go to lead there for a quick second, but then Yamanaka would go back by.

Piqueras would go past Rueda and then Almanza and Fernandez. So Rueda was by Kelso and then Kelso appeared to be going somewhat backwards at the beginning. After a couple of strong races from Kelso, some seriously strong qualifying from him, it appears as though that maybe the race pace was just a little bit too fast for him. But we were just roughly three laps into the race when Munoz received a conduct warning on his dashboard. The boy really needs a talking to, I think, at this point, if we've got to have a conduct warning three laps in, right, Rich?

Well, again, I'm watching different coverage to you in terms of TNT versus the Dorna World Feed. So on TNT, they had spoken with, oh, golly, what's the team boss? Oh, dear. Peter Ertl is the team boss in that squad. And he kind of made the comment that he has had lots of these talks with David Munoz, but once that visor goes down, everything seems to be forgotten.

And it's just same old David Munoz kind of activity. And I mean, the conduct warning was well deserved because he I think at this point, he'd had a bit of a elbows session with maybe he had a bit of a coming together with Fodger at one point. And he just he I it's a super aggressive category, Moto3, and if you're not aggressive enough, I mean, this is obviously one of the criticism that has been leveled, for example, at but not just that, but Joel Kelso is that he tends to get muscled out as the race goes on. So you do have to be quite aggressive. But there's just something about the way Munoz goes about things that, you know, I'm thinking of, say, Pedro Acosta or now, say, a Piqueras, who is very aggressive himself.

But when it's the crucial moments, he tends to make firm just about fair, decisive moves. Whereas Munoz just seems to get into fisticuffs with people all the time. He seems to have a kind of a red mist problem. So. Yeah, I mean, as I say, that's what the TNT guys were sort of chuckling about was the fact that Peter keeps having this talk with him and the same thing keeps happening.

And this is obviously having a big effect on his position in the championship at the moment. And he does need to sort this out, otherwise he's going to become one of these kind of people that's stuck in Moto3 forever when he probably ought to already be on a Moto2 bike, because I think he's got the talent for it. He just doesn't have the mentality. So but and Simon Krayfer, again, to his eternal credit, I think he's coming down hard on people that are repeat offenders. So they got that conduct warning in early just to see if it would calm him down a little bit, which I'm trying to think what happened later on in the race while we come to that.

But anyway, yeah, the enigma of David Munoz. Yeah. So after the conduct warning for Munoz, Ruraita and Picaris got by Yamanaka with Kelso next. Now, Fernandez headed to the long lap penalty loop to serve his penalty. But Foggia crashed there.

Well, like, all of a sudden, Foggia's bike sort of just appears because the camera, at least on the Dornal coverage I was watching, showed, you know, hey, here's Fernandez. He's going to the pit lane. Whoa, where's this bike come from? It's Foggia's. Holy crap, how that happened.

Don't really know. When we got another look at it, we realized that it was Munoz up the inside and Foggia was down. So get a conduct warning the heck with you. I am going to go forward and doesn't really matter to me. I'm racing.

So wow, that's a tough go here for our man Munoz in the first few laps. Well, it's par for the course, isn't it? I'm afraid. Yeah, unfortunately, it seems to be. With 12 laps, Foggia is in the lead.

With 12 laps to go, it appears as though that the top four had gotten into a bit of a gap. It's still Rueda, Kelso. Piqueras is now got by Yamanaka. Yamanaka kind of going slightly backwards at this point with Furusato now coming forward. And Rueda has a very small gap at the beginning.

So I'm thinking, OK, we got like 10 to go. Rueda has pace. We know that from practice. And apparently maybe he's decided to maybe pull the pin or he can just hold pace better than everybody else can. Was he going to be able to get away became the question.

No, that was not true because of that strong headwind. Yeah, Rueda being out by himself with a big gap went from first to fourth at turn one. Yeah, just punch it a great big hole. Just put a big hole in the air and everybody else just came right along for the ride. Buchanan was down.

He had a front tuck that was there. Almanza was down. He was down at turn 16. He had a low side that was there. But Rueda, Piqueras, Furusato, Kelso, Yamanaka and Rossi are all sort of now going at each other.

And as we got down, that was with six to go. Five with four to go. Esteban is down at turn two. Things haven't really changed too much at the front. But the final three laps of this race were absolutely fantastic to watch.

It is one of these races. I've said it before. Show your friends while you watch Moto3 because this is the reason you watch this class. Because with three to go, Yamanaka was back in the front, followed by Piqueras, followed by Rueda, Furusato and Kelso. And then there's a gap now back to Rossi.

But then Furusato went to the lead with two to go. Rueda and Kelso had been dropped back a little bit. But how far back were they? Was this now too far or whatever? But Rueda was dropping off really bad and he wound up pulling off on the main straightaway because the engine and his KTM let go.

Definitively that motor was destroyed. There was the entail tale of smoke going through there with the lack of any kind of a power. So Rueda would not score any points. Our championship leader threw a mechanical failure. And the scary part about this is how many more KTM failures are there going to be?

Are they pushing these motors to their mechanical mileage limit to where they're not successfully being able to be ran that hard for that long? Or did Rueda have it geared wrong because he didn't think he was going to be in the pack. He was gearing it for himself to be out front, which could have over revved the engine and caused an enormous amount of valve float. But I mean, there's enough securities in that that I don't think that that's what happened. But still was a possibility.

If you think that we're ever going to know what happened to that KTM engine, besides the fact that there's probably a hole or a dropped valve in it, we're not going to know. KTM will not tell you and no one's going to know. But Rueda was out of the race. And that's the important part to take away from this. And it's a proper collector's item, isn't it?

A blown KTM engine. I think so. You do not see that happening very often. I mean, it would be wildly speculative for us to say that this isn't anyway related to what's going on at KTM. But yeah, it's very unusual to see that.

I can't think of that. We'll just have to keep tabs on any other sort of similarities that happen as the season goes on. So what was it? It was two years ago at the Red Bull Ring that was it Fernandez's Honda that quit? Or was that his thing?

Is it exceedingly rare to see an engine failure on any bike, isn't it? Yeah, it was years ago. It had to be two or three years ago. It was one of the lay apart Hondas. I can't think of who it was.

They were battling for the championship. It might have been Foggia, perhaps if it was a lay apart. It might have been. So that's a long time ago, right? Then you get to this.

It's like, you know, because Foggia had gone to Moto 2 a couple of years and he's back, right? So it's exceedingly rare to see any Moto 3 bike have a problem. With all of that being said, though, Jim, I mean, you and I and many of our listeners will have been to Moto GP rounds in recent seasons. And I mean, those Moto 3 bikes, do you get a proper thrashing? To me, it's amazing that the tolerances and the production accuracy of these things is such that you hardly ever see this happen.

I mean, you would expect it to happen a great deal more, wouldn't you, really? So, yeah, but it's just unusual when it does, which is why it's so notable, really, which is an incredible thing when you think of how often, you know, mechanical things used to fail on cars and bikes when they were racing. So think about 80s, 90s, I suppose, perhaps up to the 90s when it started to change. Yeah, 90s, keep it being different. So, yeah, it's just I mean, a bit of a blooper or a bit, but I mean, you know, the guys having a stonking year, he'll put that behind him pretty quickly.

So the guys are going at it hard on this last lap. We've lost RUeda, but we get finally it's like you could tell you since you feel you understand this is the last corner, last lap thing that is going to happen here. Try to set the stage. Yamanaka is leading. The pack is together with Picaris there.

Picaris decides, Yamanaka decides, sorry, first, Sato is deciding that he wants to try to sort of guard the inside to prevent anybody coming up to him at the last turn. Picaris goes exceptionally wide in that turn and sort of almost late breaks himself almost out of the way. Like he's now on a very wide line, which allowed Yamanaka and Kelso to dive into the inside under them. However, what they maybe didn't see because they were sort of all tied together in a draft going in that corner and sometimes you don't see where everybody is was the fact that there is for a Sato almost essentially parked on the racing line because his tighter entry did not allow him to get any momentum to go out. Now, I don't think anybody let off, but it was definitely not not what they were expecting, to which point now Picaris, who had been wide as if he really meant to do that, was not going to be able to get out.

Picaris, who was on the throttle doing the ultimate late apex and having the straightest shot back to the start finish line. As they came to the line, it was going to be between Picaris and Furusato and Picaris just pips at the line. Furusato with Yamanaka third, Kelso in fourth, then Rossi, Munoz, Lanetta, Nepa, Carrera, Pini, Carpe, Ogden, Moodley, and Rolstein and Peroni getting the last championship point. An absolutely phenomenal last corner, last lap shootout worth the wait as all the action was great during the entire race. That last lap was something special by Picaris.

Typical Moto3 race, wasn't it? Really? It was all about being in the pack at the front and just waiting for that last couple of laps. And as always, the last corner really seems to be the thing in Moto3, doesn't it? More often than not.

I mean, you can draw a sort of straight line, Acosta, Alonso, Picaris in terms of this ability, this otherworldly sixth sense to just be in the right place, pick your spot, right moment. And just, I mean, it was a wheel that you won by, wasn't it? I think on the sort of the photo finish that they showed, it was literally was a wheel. And I felt so sorry for Furusato, but I think this is where we kind of perhaps saw, although you, I totally agree with you, Jim, Furusato sort of went a little bit defensive on that inside line to try and protect it and cost himself a little bit of speed coming out. But I think the KTM probably punches out of the corners a bit better than the Honda, whereas the Honda seems to be a bit better at the top end, maybe, and on the fast flowing stuff.

So Furusato, I felt so sorry for him. He kind of looked so dejected in part, Fermo, when he gave the interview. I mean, clearly he had to be happy that he got the second place, but he should have had the win really. And he knew it, whether it was him or the bike or a bit of both, probably. It's just one of those.

But I'm desperate for him to win a race because he does seem like a genuinely really nice young lad. And he's one of these sort of win it or bin it characters. And you just kind of feel again, he's another one that if he could get a win under his belt, he might just go on a bit of a run of form. I don't know. I'm speculating mildly now.

But this Piquet-Ras kid, I mean, he is like Alonso, isn't he? He's that kind of last lap, last corner demon. And he just he's able to position himself in such a way and kind of read the race and not fluff his lines. And there's another win. So although he's had a bit of a slow start, it's the Piquet-Ras that we were expecting to see turn up has arrived, I think.

Yeah, I think he's got to figure it out now. I think maybe he's adapted a little better to the KTM than now after a few races. Maybe it's just he's back at a track that he's maybe more familiar with, perhaps, you know, seen a little bit more. Who knows which way that is or is or isn't or what it may or may not be. But it was an outstanding ride by him for sure.

Now, did he intend to go as wide as he did in the last turn? I don't know. But if he really thought that through and that was the plan, that's a hell of a plan. Bold strategy, Codden. That's all I can say.

Again, I think I mentioned this on the last show. I didn't watch him coming through the Red Bull rookies and the junior GP, you know, whatever they call that championship. But he has this reputation, much like David Alonso, of lurking in the pack and then just having this uncanny ability or learned ability, let's say, to just read the race and kind of figure out what the best strategy is going to be. And for my money, Jim, he probably did deliberately just goes a little bit wider in that turn, knowing that Furusato probably was going to go defensive and that he would get the slingshot out. Because, of course, it's a very short run to the line now, unlike it used to be in Qatar.

The finish line used to be much further down the straight. And so the draft was kind of the thing to have. So now they kind of say you almost want to be leading coming out of the last corner because the draft typically wouldn't get you past. But this is all down to drive out of the turn and just making sure your bike placement was absolutely spot on. And that's I think is where Picaris is so good.

And the wins speak for themselves, don't they? I mean, you don't win Moto3 races regularly, but having a special ability because it is such a tight category. Yep. So, yeah, he's the real deal. He is the real deal.

And with this win and combined with Rurata's weird engine failure, Picaris goes to the lead on 67 points in the World Championship. He's simply one point ahead of Rurata. So if you had any kind of a fear that this whole championship was not going to be close, it's going to be. It's going to be a really good fight, I think, between Picaris and Rurata. Kelso, for what it's worth, is now sitting in third, but he's 26 points off of the lead and he's 25 points behind Rurata.

Then it's Fernandez, Bertelli, who, of course, was absent, Furusato, Carpe, Nepa, Foggia and Luneta round out the top 10. Given the form that we've seen so far, I don't want to call it a two-horse race, but it's definitely Picaris and Rurata that are probably going to be fighting it out for this one. It certainly looks that way. And I suspect Carpe will turn up and muddle up the podium, probably get a win or two during the season. I'll be surprised if he didn't.

I mean, I'm a little bit kind of perplexed at Luneta, who seems to have gone a bit AWOL all of a sudden. But again, he will pop up and disrupt the podium from time to time, as will a number of other people. But kind of already the competitive form appears to have been established. Kelso will kind of stealthily gather points, but that's not going to win a championship. This is going to be, I think, a Rurata-Picaris show pretty much all season long.

I completely agree with you, sir. Oh, with that, let us move to Moto2. So in the first qualifying session is Ortola, Navarro, Vier, Aegis, Salak, Escrige, Arbolino, Vietti, and Garcia on debut. So back from injury from a training crash, offseason training crash, we should say, Garcia now makes his debut. Sort of a lackluster run here.

Halfway through was Marrera, Vietti, Salak, and Escrige. But at the end, it was Aegis, Salak, and Vietti. So that's who got through from that one. So we go to the second one, second session. And we kind of heard a little bit about how there's so much grip that the Bosca Kuras that seem to be able to make an immense amount of mechanical grip are chattering almost everywhere now on the track.

And the K-Lex's appear to be a little bit better. Like, hmm, everything's, you know, like anybody who's on a Bosca Kura seems to be struggling a little bit here because of this extra amount of grip. So it's going to be a K-Lex race. That's a little interesting there, but it kind of kind of goes with my theory that the Bosca Kura is a very flexy chassis because if it's flexy, it'll work the tire differently and it should then produce that grip. So maybe I might be right on.

Might be onto something here with this one. But in the second session, Gonzalez broke out halfway through to be leading with Arenas, then Kanet, Badassari, Alonso. Alonso actually made it to Q2 directly. The boy is slowly starting to put this together. I think when we get into Europe, you know, we're going to a Harath next.

I think he's going to start to become more of a more frequent Q2 participant each time. And he's going to slowly be slowly gathering there by, I think by midway of the season, we may see him sniffing a podium. That's my guess. Yeah. So I was just pointing at my shoulder, Jim, because the intangible in all of this is that he obviously dislocated his shoulder.

Or did he break a collarbone, one or the other? And we obviously don't know to what extent that has impacted him coming back from that injury. But he is certainly starting to figure out one way or another, whether that's injury related or just bike experience related. And again, worth pointing out, he's a very, very small kid. So it takes a bit of time to build up the kind of the muscle memory to ride one of these things, I'm sure.

So again, he's another one who's definitely coming. That is true. But when it came down to the end of the session, Gonzalez came through with a pole position. Dixon was second, proving that a Bosco corner can be made to go around Qatar. Then Kinet, Aranis, Holgardo, sort of the rookie that we don't talk about for some reason, shows up and nails a fifth spot middle of that second row.

Great qualifying session for Holgardo. Vanda Gerber is sixth, then Anju Solatch, Baltis Ramirez, Alonso qualifying 11th and Marrera qualifying in 12th, the last man on the fourth row. There was, I think, I actually did have a high side at the last turn that I think maybe took some people's times away at the end there. But really nobody was going to get Gonzalez. I think Dixon maybe wanted another shot at it, but I think he'd used the tires up.

So it was good that Jake was where he was. And that was a great spot for Jake and continuing a strong run of form for Jake as well. And it's kind of interesting that Kinet now sort of has come alive after kind of being nowhere in the first three races, per se. So apparently things are turning around. I'm not quite sure that's entirely true.

I think he was qualifying, you know, I mean, stealthy, I think. OK, that's a better way than the new the new Aaron Kinet mindset. OK, all right, I'll go with that. The new Aaron Kinet mindset. All right.

He's not he's just stealthily creeping up through the pack. All right. Well, I'll go with that. I'll let you have that one. I like it.

I like stealthy. I really do. Hall race day. Kinet with a horrible start down in the dirt. Well, he winds up getting a wheelie and dropping like a stone.

I don't know where he was at the by time they hit turn one, but he was nowhere in the front of it whatsoever. Gonzalez did have a great start, followed by Dixon, Horgardo making a great move off the middle of the line, which is kind of where you kind of want to be, because that's kind of where everybody starts to bend themselves back out to the outside of the track to line yourself up the correct line into turn one. So Horgardo took advantage of that. Aranis, Anshu and Solache are all right there. Now Lopez has a long left has a long left penalty.

And Aegis had a double long left penalty because he had jumped the start. So those guys were in trouble right off the bat. That was there. Horgardo had moved into P2. Anshu roughed up Dixon and went from set and Dixon went from second all the way back to fifth.

So like, OK, well, maybe this is going to be one of those like tire race kind of attrition things, something like that. Or maybe chatter is starting to leak into the Bosca Coro that, you know, Dixon has. Perhaps maybe Dixon was able to ride around it in qualifying, but he can't ride around it with a fuel or perhaps maybe the full fuel tank is adding to the mix on this one. Not really sure. Thought those things all were thoughts that came to my mind as to potentially why things were happening.

Anshu would then go to second. Then Sasaki crashed. And then Sasaki then did crash and then gone back at the front. It was Gonzalez, Anshu, Horgardo starting to sound like the Moto3 guys of a few years past, right? You know, kind of there, right?

You know, these are guys you didn't necessarily think of. Arenas is there, right? Dixon and then Ramirez. Anshu got by Horgardo and they all got by Gonzalez. And so did Arenas.

I think Gonzalez had made a mistake or as Anshu put the aggressive move on him, I guess they sort of everybody's kind of followed on through through that part of it. Bender has a bike problem on the straight. And he was nearly clipped by Van de Gerberg. That was a scary moment. Because, I mean, Bender, all credit to Bender when he realized he had a problem, he got his hand up as soon as he could.

However, the closing speed at which Van de Gerberg is going through there is incredibly wild. And the one he did, you know, again, Bender did the right thing. He stayed in the line that he was in. Let everybody else figure out how to get around you and then safely exit the track when you're able to do so. Props to doing Bender doing the right thing.

Van de Berger, Van de Gerberg does the right thing by going to the rider right near the pit wall. And I want to shout out all the guys with the pit boards because they instantly had them all pulled back in. Props to the guys on the wall. I don't think these guys get enough credit. They have to pay attention to everything because they're having to get their board right.

They have to look for their rider. They have to put the board out. They got to put the board back in. Yet they were all in tune to the fact that there was a problem. And that was all happening within milliseconds that these guys folded their boards, got them against the wall and props to them.

Amazing moment. And luckily we all live to tell the tale and sit here. It's one of those things where you talk about watching Moto3 through your fingertips. That was a fingertip moment where that could have been so, so bad. But it did not happen that way.

We dodged a bit of a bullet there, I think. And there's nothing Darren Bender short of just swerving off to the left. Why would you do that? There's nothing you can really do in that situation. Because you just suddenly, as you said Jim, the closing speed on these bikes is just immense.

And he kind of tried to get off to the right hand side because he might have thought that he was chucking oil out of the bike at this point. So yeah, it was just horrifying really what might have happened there because we've seen bikes coming together at high speed like this before. I'm thinking of it was a different scenario. It's true. But on the back straight at Cota when Acosta went through the air for probably 100 yards having hit a slower bike.

Yeah, bad things happen in that situation. So it was a near miss. But fair play to Darren Bender and to the cat-like reflexes for the people on the pit wall, as you say. Because you don't want to be hitting a pit board. I mean, that would be pretty catastrophic as well.

Yeah. Everybody reacted correctly and avoided it. A disaster was avoided. And so props to everybody involved. I think everybody did a fantastic job to not have a worse incident than we did.

Meanwhile, during this excitement, Anchu is slipping away. Alan Chu, J.J. Hologardo, Aranis, Gonzalez, Kinet, Dixon, Marrera was then by Dixon a little bit later in the lap for sixth. Again, Anchu, I'm like, man, Anchu might win this. Anchu was looking good.

Anchu has been around. He's learned the bike. He's in the Accio squad, right? They've done a lot of work with him. They helped him.

I'm like, wow, this might be the moment that it plays out because Anchu leads quite a few laps here. With like 10 to go, Hologardo was back to fourth as Aranis and Kinet respond to Anchu's breakaway. Those guys decided Anchu must be trying to go. We need to go with him. And the sense of the urgency then decided that we need to get past our friend Hologardo.

Kinet was leading with nine to go. He was 14th on the first lap. So he had ridden his way through the pack, which was great, which was amazing that he was able to do that. He was second, and he's chasing down Anchu. So even though he had come in the pack, he still had tire.

He still had rubber left. He still had the ability to go there. But the question was then, when will the tires drop off? We're talking about on the Dorna feed that the Pirellis were going to give up. At some point, the rear Pirelli was going to give on this circuit, and they didn't know if it was going to be at five laps or four laps to go or where it was.

But there was going to be a drop. Now, I didn't see a drop in this as this race comes down. I mean, everybody was still pushing like hell and there wasn't a tire drop. So I don't know if that was really a true statement or if that's just something maybe Pirelli said to sort of cover what they thought may or may not have happened. Perhaps maybe the track rubbed in a little bit more than what they expected it to and that cured it or it cleaned up a little bit more than they expected to.

Or perhaps maybe the headwind slowed everything down a little bit. Who knows? A lot of variables and rubber. It's all sort of black art magic chemistry stuff anyway. Something I observed across the whole weekend in all classes, Jim, I don't know if you picked up on this, is it didn't appear to be quite so dusty on the track.

Yeah, obviously, obviously they wear a clean line on the racing line. But in seasons past when we've been to Qatar, it's been very noticeable just how much dust gets blown up by the bikes. So I wasn't really seeing that quite so much this year. So whether there's just a bit more grip than Pirelli thought, as you say, because it rubbed in, it didn't get dirtied and one thing and another. Because I was wondering this curiosity with the Bosca Skira as well.

Dixon, up until what happens in a moment, we'll get to. But by far and away, the best of the Bosca Skira is out there. I just wonder whether with Qatar being a famously kind of low grip track, whether they brought, I'm assuming they can do this, a slightly flexier chassis to try and overcome the relative lack of grip. And Dixon got on with it and nobody else could because I mean, the rest of the Bosca Skiras really were nowhere to be seen, relatively speaking. So it was a curious kind of thing, really, across the whole of the weekend.

And as you say, the tires just didn't appear to drop at any point. So something different happened or something that was unexpected from Pirelli's point of view anyway. I agree. At seven laps to go, Arenas is going backwards and Balthas is going forward. They passed each other somewhere during that time frame.

And then suddenly we get back to the fact that Dixon is down at turn 13. He pushed the front. He slid off. He knew he had done wrong before he had even stopped as he put his hands on his helmet. He knew he had done wrong.

He knew that what he did was bad. I mean, crashing is always bad. But I felt for Jake. I mean, he's been so good for the past few races. Couple on the trot there that he did.

It was heartbreaking. You, Rich, I'm sure you're a Brit, you're a Dixon fan. It was tough to watch. Yeah, although compared to last year, it was a bit of a let off really. Because if you remember, Jake had a massive crash which put him out of the first few rounds last year.

With Kato obviously was the first round last year. Again, it just kind of is part of my theory about did Boscasura bring something a bit different? And they almost in a way had too much grip. And that's where the chatter was coming from. And in the course of a race, I think it probably just caught him out.

But again, the good bit of news in all of this is that he was miles ahead of the other Boscasuras. So Jake should take some comfort from that. And hopefully by the time they get to Jerez in a week and a half or whatever it is, maybe they'll be back to sort of more normality. It's not a night race. It's a normal kind of normal race.

Inverted commas. And you would expect the Boscasura strength to shine through again. Because it has consistently over the course of the last what season and a half. I think Bin, the better of the chassis compared to the Calax. I think that's probably about right.

So, you know, because Aguero won on it last year, didn't they? So won the championship on it, I should say. So I think Qatar is such a, we always use the term, is such an outlier of a race, isn't it? Because it's typically such a dirty, dusty track, although perhaps a bit less than expected. And they're running under the lights in the dark and the relative cold and stuff.

So, yeah, just a bit weird one. But, you know, shame for Jake, but I don't think it will dent his confidence too much because he's on a bit of a high. Yeah, there is some credence, I think, to what you're saying, because that crash was at the exit of the corner, which is on throttle, on throttle low side, which is weird, which must have meant that the back was gripping and pushed the front. Pushed the front down. Yeah, so there's a lot to go through there.

There's a lot of data to look at, but I think you could be on to something very much. Oh, after Dixon had crashed, Anchi was still out front with five laps to go, followed by Kinet, Holgardo, Gonzalez. There was a gap from the first two, right? So there's a half a second between Kinet and Holgardo. So then Holgardo and Gonzalez have a gap of about another half of a second or so between Morera and Baltis.

As it wound down, Kinet would go by Anchi as Anchi goes wide at turn 14, which Kinet didn't really need the invitation at that point. It was a Dennis mistake and Kinet was there to clean up and make him pay for it. So Kinet would run on to win with Anchi finishing second, which I believe is his best finish in the Moto 2 class. Gonzalez snags the last spot on the podium. Holgardo with a, I think the standout ride is Holgardo because he is in fourth, which is amazing for a rookie to really be doing that well on a Moto 2 bike.

I mean, previous year's experience we look at and say, yeah, it's going to take you a year to learn the bike and whatnot. But, you know, hey, maybe he just suits it. Maybe that power curve is just what works for him. And he's taken full advantage of it. And I hope he can keep it up throughout the season.

I'll keep saying this, Jim, I think, you know, because I mentioned it a couple of episodes ago, physically, he is perfect for a Moto 2 bike. I mean, he's not tall, but he's not like really tiny, really short. And he, as I say, he's a stocky, strong little kid. I just think he's kind of almost the perfect match at the age. He could probably get a bit bigger.

I just think he physically can cope with the bike and his talent is obviously there. I mean, you know, he almost, maybe not almost, but he was, you know, a regular contender in Moto 3 to win the championship and won races. Let's not forget. So the talent is not for question. I just think that the bike has immediately fitted him and he can just make it do what he wants.

So in that sense, it's kind of not a surprise. But it is in the sense that we're not used to seeing this with the Moto 3 kids. And if you take as another good example, Colin Vya, who's on the other Akiyo bike in terms of the Red Bull squad teammate to Dennis Onshu, he's much taller, but has been forced to look like a rake in terms of his physique on the Moto 3 bike. You know, because I don't know what how tall he is. He's probably five, ten, maybe something like that.

He's quite tall, was way too tall for the Moto 3 bike and is now probably a bit too skinny and underweight muscle wise for the bigger bike. It's just weird, isn't it? Well, not weird. It's just funny how certain riders are best placed to adapt to certain types of bikes when they get on them. And we see people doing well on bikes that we just don't expect that often.

Even in MotoGP, that's the case. You know, we can probably pick out several people that have surprised us in MotoGP by being as good as they were when it wasn't really reflective of the form they had in Moto2. So I'm kind of not that surprised by Holgardo, but it's an amazing run of form. There's no doubt about that. For sure about that one.

To finish this off, in fifth was Marrera, then Baltis, Vietti, Ramirez, Arenas, Solac, Alonso then in 11th, Van de Gerberg after the scary one with Bender, then Vier as you have pointed out was 13th, then Aegis and Joe Roberts scored one point in 15th. If we look at the championship after this round, well, that crash did not do Jake Dixon any good because Jake Dixon goes from first to third in the championship. Kinet assumes the mantle of leader of the championship on 71 points. Gonzalez is 10 points behind on 61. Dixon is on 59, which puts him only, of course, two behind Gonzalez, but puts him 12 behind Kinet.

Holgardo holding down the fourth spot on 36 points, Ramirez, Baltis, Lopez, Arbelino, Anchu and Celestino Vietti rounding out the top ten in the championship. West one might be one of the better championship races we've seen in Moto2 for quite some time given where we are right now. Essentially no one showing dominance yet, but I have to say Dixon can't afford another mulligan. I don't think. No, I mean, it's a feature of his Moto2 career to date.

He has tended to crash a bit too often. The signs so far this year have been that that is likely not to be the case to quite the same extent. But Kinet and Gonzalez obviously, well, certainly Kinet is very experienced in this class. And this is why I'm not fully on board with the, you know, your evaluation of his performance, because he is actually now leading the championship. And, you know, he's quietly going about it and scoring a lot of points.

And obviously in this round, he was as good as Holgado was and he was great and Anchu was great. But Kinet, I mean, given the start that he had in his position, what was he 14th in that one? 14th. To win as comprehensively as he did, I'm pretty sure Anchu was probably one of the riders that did cook his tires because he went pretty hard pretty early and is relatively inexperienced. You could never accuse him of not being aggressive.

So it wasn't a huge surprise, perhaps, that his pace started to slacken off at the end. But I think Kinet was going to win the race anyway. So, again, the points table tells its own tale. And it's hard to see anybody other than Kinet, Gonzalez or Dixon really making a run. Because even if you take somebody like Vietti, who you would have thought was an absolute bolted on certainty to be, you know, in the upper part of the table, he's not even in the top five at the moment.

So, you know, I think we'll be picking our champion from one of the top three at the minute. I think so. That's my feeling. Very possible. Very possible.

Okay. I think that wraps up Moto2. Let's move to the big boys in MotoGP. We'll start with the qualifying. It's a mixed bag of people in the first qualifying session.

Renz is there. Marini is there. Mir is there. So the Hondas are there. Except for Zarco.

He's missing. Then Agura, Bastianini, Miller on a Yamaha. But Quattroraio is through to the second one. So mixed bag. Things have sort of flipped from kind of what we've seen previously.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say here with where everybody is. Bez, Martina is in there. Obviously, he's back from injury. He was declared fit after his wrist, broken left wrist or whatever. And then you had Binder.

Now, oddly, Chantra went out with only one knee slider. Oops. That's weird, isn't it? Yeah, that's a weird one. Now I could see where you maybe put one on and maybe you just didn't attach it properly and you knocked it on the curb and it came off.

But wow, those things, those things will stick to you. They they really, really do. You you always see these guys with a screwdriver or something usually trying to pry off like it used to. That's no joke. That is no joke.

That is that is not a show thing. I had to do that, too, with mine. I would have to grab and would have to get a screwdriver and pluck a corner and try to get that Velcro and rip up off of there. But again, I just think that's really odd. I need to be delicate here, Rich, but I think I need to be honest.

I think Chantra is in over his head in MotoGP. Yeah. Well, I think we all expected that that was going to be the case. And it was kind of slightly derailed in terms of our expectations by how well he did at the first round in Thailand, which was weird. I mean, yes, he's at home.

But first time out on a MotoGP bike with all the pressure, it was like, wow, he's really performed. He did really well in Thailand, if you remember. You do. And then since then, it's been a bit. But I mean, we know kind of why he's there.

And that is not to say he's undeserving. And I'm sure he will get experience and move on. But I can think of several other people that probably could be doing better on the bike, which is a bit of a curiosity, really, when Honda have the mountain to climb that they do, albeit they are making solid progress. Zarko has not been resigned as of right now for next year either, which is slightly curious given how well he's doing. So you wonder how much of a shakeup there's going to be at Honda in the next season or two?

Well, they put him on a one year contract and he was probably the only person that was willing to take a one year contract. So, again, I guarantee you, if I'm racing in Chantra's racing, Chantra's going to whip me. So I really have no room to talk about how he's doing. But as an outsider, looking at the talent, looking at what's happening, looking at that, I know the bike is not that great, but Zarko, Mir makes it look decent. Rini makes it look halfway decent too.

And Chantra is sort of floundering. And that's OK. Sometimes that happens and I get why all of it's there. But I feel I'm simultaneously happy and sad for him because you get that chance to be that rider. And then but you're I just don't think he's going to get a chance next year at it.

No, I mean, if again, we mustn't stray too far or I mustn't stray too far off point because obviously mine for the time. But with Honda probably now seeing the developments that they're making with the bike and then wanting to get the talent back on it, you do wonder whether they will make a bid for Agurra. Unless Aprilia are willing to dispense with Buzeki and bring him up. Don't know. We've said so often as an HRC man through and through really and you bet your bottom blotter that Honda would be desperate to get him into the LCR squad.

I would. That's where I think he goes. I think Chantra sort of. Thank you. We appreciate the effort.

Mr. Agurra, would you like to ride for the Indomitsu team? Thank you. Yeah, I think it's a let's get we got it. We have a lot to cover here.

So let us get moving. Basically, I Agurra and Martin on the Aprilia there is one there one, two and three as of right now. But as it goes on, Martin and Miller are there. Martin is like rides off the track or Miller rides off the sorry Martin has to ride off the track because of Miller because he was like, I don't know what Miller was doing is like he just I don't know if they just misjudged it. It's like a timing thing because you're not having been on the Moto GP bike for quite some time.

But who knows? But they were almost off in the gravel. And what was Miller doing there? But it was I Agurra and Rens with fast laps coming in. But no one can beat them.

And I Agurra is the only Aprilia to escape to get to Q2. Fascinating little 15 minutes there as we went on. As we look at the second half of Moto GP qualifying halfway through, Peko is down in ninth. I was not expecting that one. Right.

It's a 93-73 and then a Morbidele, a Quattrararo, a Digia and a Zarco. Wow, there's Zarco making the Honda look way better. Peko is then down at turn four. If you had that one on your bingo card, ladies and gentlemen, congratulate yourself because I did not see that one coming. So he is down at turn four.

He never ever got the rear end settled on the motorcycle. He was in way late. The back lifted. It was wobbling side to side when it came down. It just kicked left and he was out of control.

He was out of time, out of track, out of gas, out of everything. And it was down. He went. Digia went to second. Quattrararo went to the top.

Quattrararo was like second quick or whatever, which was kind of crazy. But you kind of knew that the Ducati's would be coming. It was going to be a short lived thing. And Marquez would take pole position. That would be Mark.

His brother would take second. But Quattrararo hangs on for a third. Wow. Superhuman effort. But again, we have a racetrack that is flowy with not a lot of stop and not a lot of start.

And that's the Yamaha hunting ground because of the very, very sweet chassis they have for that inline motorcycle. Morbidelli was fourth. Digia fifth. Vignola sixth. Wow.

There's a KTM in sixth. How did that happen? Oh, yeah. It's got a motor. Like, I think that thing's got like a rocket ship in a straight line.

Fastest through the speed traps. Yes. All weekend. Which either means that they don't put as much aero in the front of the bike so they don't have as much drag as the Ducati's have. Or we could play all kinds of games with that.

But let's just leave that for right now because there's a little more to this story I think will unfold as the weekend goes on. Then Zarco, Aldegar, Rins, Iagura, Bagnaya, and then Pedro Acosta, 12th. So, yeah. Crazy. Seized out qualified by Vignolas by six places.

Which if you had that on your bingo card, congratulations for that one. So that left us with the sprint. Now, Mir had to withdraw from the sprint because he had gastrointestinal lyes, which means that he was using the toilet frequently. We'll pull out. We'll keep it a friendly family friendly show.

Very delicately put, Jim. Yes. So he's sick. You know, if it was morbideli, we could go back to calling it morbideli belly. But, you know, who was it?

Was it Oxley or Patterson said that way? He's got morbideli belly, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. That sounds like a Matt Oxley thing to me. I think it is, to be quite honest with you. But as we lined up for the sprint, it was what you would think.

It was 93-73, Quattrararo, morbideli, out of your Vignolas, Bagnaya with a bad start to get to ninth. Alex got by Mark, but, you know, Mark went right back by again. So it was no big deal. Morbideli was third. Bagnaya had made his way to eighth.

Bagnaya then went backwards to tenth and Acosta and Digia got by. Iagura had got by Bagnaya as well. And there was Martín was right there too. It was like, well, I mean, you know, Martín's by for good grief. Bagnaya is like 12th.

Like what? You're going what happened here? What is going on? But it's the Marquez brothers out front with Quattrararo hanging on to third, although morbideli has gotten by to get to second. Then Vignolas is now right behind Quattrararo on fourth.

Then Zarco. Outagur, we haven't mentioned that name, he seems to be finding some magic on the Grisini Ducati. Then Acosta. Then Digia. Then Iagura.

Then Bagnaya. Acosta and Outagur and Digia, the battle that battle right there is really awesome because they cut to the mid pack in the sprint because, well, kind of everybody else is sort of gone. So you get to see the racing in the back, which is kind of nice. The morbideli can't match the pace of 93 and 73. Bagnaya is stuck in 11th for what's going on here.

Three to go. And Bagnaya is doing 153s. I think everybody else was doing 52s, low 52s. Not cracking on there. We realized that maybe the pace of Vignolas is because all the KTMs had started on softs and perhaps the tires were starting to go because even the softs, Michelin said, probably wouldn't go the distance.

Well, it's just kind of amazing. But Iagura got by as I speak, as they said that, Iagura went by Vignolas and then Bagnaya will soon gets by as well. So Vignola is now going like a rock backwards. Tire gamble obviously not working. But morbideli is then caught by Quattraro and Aldiger now is the fastest man on the racetrack.

Late race pace. Have we seen that before from Aldiger? Yes, on a Moto2 bike. Perhaps maybe this is going to be some of the magic that he potentially has. But morbideli had no more pace, but he did hang on.

Marquez, Mark would win. Alex's brother would be second. Morbideli would be third at the end of the sprint. Aldiger would pass Quattraro to take a fourth place. Brilliant sprint race by Aldiger showing that brilliance that was two years ago when he literally ripped off what, four Moto2 wins in a row.

Absolutely fantastic. Showing you the promise of why Ducati gave him a pin and said please sign here. Can I just say as well, Jim, Aldiger has Frankie Carchetti in his corner as well as a crew chief. That guy does wonders with every rider that he comes into contact with. Obviously he did well with Marquez last year, but maybe had Digia the season or two before that.

Aldiger is a talent. You can make the argument that Qatar is one of his favorite tracks as we've seen in Moto2. But he was pretty good last time out in Cotra as well as I recall. Wasn't doing bad. He's riding a Ducati so it is the best bike to arrive on as a rookie.

But even so, fourth place, I don't think many people would have put much money on that happening this early in the season. So credit where credit is due. Great race. Great race. That left Quattrorado fifth, Digia sixth, Ayagura was a seventh, Benyaya got an eighth which grabbed him two points.

So he lost ten points to Marquez and their championship battle with Bizecki coming home for the last point in ninth. Now this takes us now to race day or race night, I guess you would have to say. And we're going to look and see what happens now. As you said, Rich, this is a great and wildly entertaining MotoGP race. I will give you that one.

Is it better than the Moto3 race? I don't know, but it was interesting, probably more interesting. Although I think maybe Moto3 might have been just a smidge more exciting because of the last lap. I think we kind of expect Moto3 races to be great. We don't expect MotoGP races to be great at the moment because of the aero and blah, blah, blah.

So when a decent race pops up, it perhaps shines a bit brighter than it has justification to do. But anyway, it was a very entertaining race. Off the start, Marquez, Mark gets the lead, followed by his brother. The two of them make contact in the first turn, removing one of the saber tooth thing dinosaur teeth things off the back of Mark's bike. Stegosaurus plates, they call them, don't they?

Is it stegosaurus? I'm not good with dinosaurs. I'll send you a picture, you'll get it. Okay, so Morbideli would lead. Oh, you got to love that.

And then he's followed by Mark, Ed, by Alex. Then it's Vinalas who got a great start again. And then Digia. Now, Morbideli, it's Mark, it's Alex, Digia, Vinalas and Vinala. And Morbideli is actually pulling away on this one.

He's actually leading. So it's like there's a lot of rampant speculation going on. Well, Marquez has got no arrow because he broke a staggered, see, what do you call that thing? Stegosaurus tooth? Stegosaurus.

Stegosaurus part off. I'm like, one little piece of arrow is not good on the back of the bike is not going to harm this thing, people. Let's get really brutally honest about it. If you knocked one of the front wings off, yeah, that's going to do some damage. But I don't think the back seat is doing all that.

I think it's more of air management in the back to keep you from drafting the person in front of you as opposed to anything else. But that's where we stood right then. So with 20 laps to go, Alex and Digia tangle and Alex basically runs Digia off the track. They both run way out onto the gorgeously paved out sections that are on the guitar racetrack, returning to the track afterwards. And again, Alex puts his hand up immediately and I'm like, yeah, OK, that's going to be a penalty.

No matter how you look at it, Alex admitted fault in that moment, which if you look at it, yeah, Alex pretty much just picked Digia up and you really shouldn't have. So Alex was going to receive a long lap penalty for that indiscretion. So that sort of shuffles the top to where Morbidele is out front. Mark is trailing and not making anything, but Penaia now is suddenly in third. Like, whoa, you were like way back here.

Now you're third, which is what the chaos of that little incident caused allowed Penaia to gain all that. He had actually gotten by Vinales and Zarca, which is fantastic. And Aldegar is now hanging on to like fourth. So on the 17th lap, 17 to go, Alex takes that long lap penalty. So now 93 is now passed by 63 at turn one.

Penaia looked racy, having no ability to race with anybody at all in the sprint. Penaia has now turned it around and is very, very racy. Vinales would get by Penaia at turn 16 as well. So Vinales was on the move. Now it was Morbidele out front, but guess what?

93 went right back by Penaia. To quote him after the race, he goes, when Penaia went by, the race was on. This battle between teammates is going to be fascinating to watch throughout the entire year. And it's going to be a true test of Penaia's mental toughness, because he's going to get hammered by Mark at every opportunity. Yeah, I was going to say it's going to be vicious at times.

And while it already has been, I mean, we were talking about the first few laps or lap one at Cota, weren't we, where Mark put some proper moves on Penaia. So Mark doesn't back down. The difference between Mark and Alex is that Mark kind of more often than not gets away with an aggressive move when he's retaliating. Alex, I think we saw the weakness in his armour where he tried to have an immediate bite back at Digia and he just cocks it up massively. Certainly cost Digia, I would say, a podium, possibly even a race winning opportunity, because he was fast all weekend, Digia Antonio was, and he was well placed in that race and Marquez ruined it.

So, I mean, Simon Graef are on the team again. How quickly did that long lap penalty come? That was within like half a lap that that came up. Sorry, mate, you're going through the long loop for that one. So that was a bit of a brain out moment for Alex Marquez and that is going to be his weakness through the season.

The only weakness that Mark Marquez appears to have at the moment, Jim, and I'm curious on your thoughts on this, is in the first kind of couple, three laps at the beginning of the race, it kind of is a little bit vulnerable and he kind of parked it in turn one, didn't he, on the first lap, which is why Alex rode into the back of him, I think, allowing Mourbidelli to get through on the both of them. So it's a bit curious about how cautious he is on the first couple of laps. I wonder what inherently on the Ducati is different to the Honda. My guess is they start with a higher tyre pressure than what he likes in the front. That is my assumption.

Having seen it, I think he needs to – he's got to work the bike. I think they start with a higher tyre pressure because they're now sort of – Mike, Mark has the whole shots figured out. He's getting out front almost all the time. We're qualifying on pole. We're leading at the beginning.

There's no way to heat the tyre up, to get the pressure up. So I think the cold tyre pressure, it's colder than what it's going to be after a few laps. That cold tyre pressure, they have to set a pound or two more, which makes that front end stiffer, which takes away the feel that Mark wants until he can heat the back up and then the bike re-stabilizes. So he is vulnerable in those first couple of laps, but I think it has to do with tyre pressure. And as if tyre pressures would ever be a thing in this race.

I know. Who would ever think that? Who would have thought it? That's almost a perfect segue. We're almost there.

You asked that question just a smidge early. Yeah, but it's a good analysis actually there because we were saying last time out, remember, that the Honda that Mark rode was all front end. And so all of his crashes were front end crashes, weren't they? More often than not, they were kind of – and he saved a lot of them on the elbow, of course, and on the knee. But yes, I hadn't thought about the fact of the tyre pressures just making him a wee bit worried but cautious in those early laps until the pressure comes up a bit.

Yep. That is my analysis. Whether it's true or not, we're never going to know, but it makes sense to me. Yeah, okay. Based on the visual evidence that we have.

14 to go, Miller crashed. Vignoles wound up getting by 93 at turn one. And then it's like, well, as fast as that happened, Vignoles was obviously going to get Morbidelli. And eventually, finally, Morbidelli is starting to lose the pace. And he starts to lose the place and sort of goes backwards.

And it was like him and Vignoles are now fighting with each other. It took a whole lap for that to happen. But that was great racing between Vignoles and Morbidelli. It's hard fair racing. It's attack, counterattack, counter, counterattack, counter, counter, counterattack.

So for four or five corners, we're treated to what is brilliant racing. And it was absolutely amazing to actually watch. Zarco even got by Morbidelli for fourth. But Vignoles this whole time has essentially been running away with the race. A KTM winning and you're going, this really doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

At least it wasn't working for my brain because he's holding off two factory Ducatis, which we haven't seen the KTM in the past year or two really battling at the front. It's podiums that maybe it's battling for and maybe a spot at the end of the podium with Acosta, but surely not Vignoles on there. I mean, I guess you could say Acosta had a couple races that he was in at a shout with a win, but just didn't get it. But the main one would be Matejki last year where Acosta threw it away from the lead. That is true.

They were mixed conditions, as I recall anyway. Yeah, it was rainy, misty the whole nine years for sure. I mean, the context of this, I suppose, is that Vignoles is a bit of a Qatar specialist. You know, he tends to go really, really well. He's won quite a few races in Qatar, certainly back in the Yamaha days anyway.

And this is Maverick Vignoles. I mean, you just you don't ever know which Maverick Vignoles is going to get out of bed on the Sunday morning or the Saturday morning. So this can happen at any time. It just happens faster and frequently for him to be consistently at the front. But it wasn't it kind of wasn't a big surprise as much as it was, which I know is sort of an oxymoron really.

But Vignoles is that kind of strange creature that can do wondrous things on anything. He just has to be in the right mood and have the right bike under him on the day in question. And most of the time, that's not what happens. But we did speak pre-show. I can't help tease this out.

You got a whole right there. There's not a whole lot left here. Let's just pound this race result out and we'll come right back to all this. Because I want to get to the I want to get to the Martin crash. Martin is down at turn 12.

He's over the curbs. He's lost it. And my first thought was, is he is he did he not have enough strength in his arm to be able to recover from the bike when it was going over the curves? It was extremely scary because did you I just missed him. In fact, I thought originally, did you may have hit his helmet?

I had to wind it back several times because I immediately wrote he just missed him. I then later watched it back several times and he hits Martin's helmet. Yeah. And I think what actually happened, Jim, is he he hit him and that pushed Martin back into the bike, which is when a lot more damage was done. Because let's not forget this is happening at 140, 150 kilometers an hour.

Miles an hour, I would think more than kilometers. Possibly even. Yeah. So a hell of a lot of energy going on in split seconds and the outcome of which will come to that. So let's go.

Martin suffered injuries in that. I don't have them written down, but I get the fact that he had fluid in the lungs. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. So my understanding of the situation is, is that he has got 11 broken ribs.

Really? Yeah. I mean, well, that's not my understanding. That is established now. He has 11 broken ribs.

That's moral. I mean, that is a horrible thing to have to deal with. On top of which he didn't puncture a lung, but he now has air in his chest cavity area. And I forget the technical term for that. Something thorax, which means that he basically can't be moved.

You certainly can't get on an airplane to go somewhere for treatment and you can't go by road because it would be excruciatingly painful. So he just basically now is stuck in Qatar probably for two to three weeks, I would think. Wow. Because obviously the big risk with this is you don't be getting things like pneumonia and other complications set again. So he just has to stay very still, very quiet where he is.

And I think things have taken a bit of a turn for the worse today. I mean, he's not in life danger or anything like that. But, you know, he is quite severely injured again. You know, Jim, I was kind of almost thinking earlier on that you just wonder whether he wouldn't just be better off sitting on the bench for the rest of the season and just getting everything put back together. Bring a gear up to the works team.

Because Salvadori is as good as a rider as he is, and he is a great rider. Again, he was wiped the floor with you, me and most of our listeners, if not all of them. You know, he's not going to win a race and there must be somebody they could draft into the trackhouse squad from somewhere. Somewhere. You know, and I just think with Martin, this is a classic case.

People were venting on social media because I was kind of reading a bit of this stuff. You know, it was the Aprilia, it's the Mitchelins fault. I just think he was fatigued. You know, he would have been in pain by this stage of the race because let's not forget he's still coming back from severe injuries, particularly with his wrist. And, you know, there's this low grip track, you know, I don't know if the dew point was coming down.

We don't know why he crashed, but it might have just been a lapse of concentration when a few inches too wide and then the front tucks under him. And ordinarily, that wouldn't have been such a bad accident. It's just that Didger was so close behind him that he couldn't avoid hitting him. And that just rammed him, I think, into the bike, which is where most of the damage was done. So, I mean, he's going to be out.

He has to be out for weeks now. Easily. I think. If not months. Well, yeah, I mean, thankfully, touch wood.

I've never broken a rib, but people that have, you know, always say that breathing is painful, let alone anything else. And to have 11 broken ribs, never mind the potential damage that does to other internal organs and stuff. If you don't, you know, stay still and stabilize those injuries. So in the context of that accident, given that he was up on his kind of hands and knees and, you know, the race was going on. I don't want to get too far into some of the bleeding that's been not bleeding.

That's the wrong word. But obviously a lot of comments been made by the fact that they didn't throw a red flag. And I think in hindsight, they definitely should have done because he was being attended to for a couple of laps, I would say. And there was a live race going on close by and it is an impact. It's pretty dangerous.

Yeah, that's not great. The only thing I'm going to say, I agree with Simon Patterson. Where was the red flag? I think this is a moment where it was. Now, maybe perhaps the medical team did not fully grasp how bad it was, but I think in these instances you must err to the side of caution, and they did not.

I understand why red flags historically exist. I'm a bit curious as to why with all the other messages that come through on the dashes now from race control, why they can't have a kind of a virtual safety car kind of system a bit like they do in F1. Where you just ride to a delta time, which is, I don't know, 20 seconds a lap slower. But you don't gain or lose time or position in that scenario. But you do have to slow down just to lessen the risk for corner workers when they're attending to a rider in that kind of a situation without having to go through the whole palaver and rigmarole of a race stoppage and then a restart.

Because I can't think what stage of the race this happened, but whether it would have been a result at that point, I don't think it would have been. There was only seven laps left to race at a 22-lap race. I believe that's at least three quarters distance. Yeah, so that would have been borderline. So I believe it would have been considered a result.

So it's even odder then that they didn't throw the red under that situation because they wouldn't have had to have had a restart if that's the case. So just not very good or wrong really. Yeah, so let's quickly get to what happens after this, which is that Vinales eventually runs wide at turn six. Let's Mark Marquez by it. Then Mark simply just drops the hammer and he's over a second clear.

And basically it's Vinales is hanging on to second. Zarco gets passed by Morbidele for fourth. And we wind up with Mark Marquez winning. We have Vinales second. We have Vinales third.

Then Morbidele, Zarco, Aldeguer, great race. And then Alex Marquez has made his way back to sixth. That is where the race finished. However, Vinales is found to have circumvented the rule of tire pressure, which he then was penalized 16 seconds to his race time, which meant that he was dropped from his second place position and dropped all the way down to 14th place because of the tire pressure infraction, which was not having the properly inflated tire for over two thirds of the laps that were being run. Now, there's a lot that can be done about all this.

I will say this. Jake Rowler rode in. He was like, you know, he was talking about how great Vinales is as a Qatar specialist. Lo and behold, there he is running away with this race. I do think that Vinales did work his rear tire harder than anyone.

And I do think he was losing some there. I do think Mark was going to get him, regardless of whether he ran wide or not. I believe Marquez would have passed him because Mark had more tire because he definitely was taking care of it. Throughout the race. But there's but don't feel sorry for Vinales out of all of this, because he gets to keep the second place trophy.

He gets to keep his podium bonus for KTM. And if you want a conspiracy theory to go along with this one, if you're KTM and you need somebody to give you some money, how about you take your Qatar specialist, put him out there just to make it make a show, maybe even look like he's first because you know if it's a tire pressure problem, they're not going to do anything about it until after everybody goes home and then they're going to talk about it. So you have that ability to at least go, hey, look where we were. We just got caught by a tire pressure. We were just barely under it.

OK, who knows? I don't know. You have a bunch of thoughts on this, Rich. I know Jacob wants an interview with Simon Kreyfarr. I know that we could probably talk to Simon, but I guarantee you, much like when I talk to Freddie Spencer, he is not going to talk about his job.

No, and I'm not even sure this is within the jurisdiction of Simon Kreyfarr anyway. This is more of a... He's listed on the paperwork as approving the penalty. OK. So...

He's a steward. He's not a race director. So I don't know whether like... And part of the problem, I think, with modern GPs is that there's, you know, you've got Erta, you've got the FIM, you've got Dorner. It's a bit unclear as to who's in charge of what.

And you do get this situation where people are sort of accusing people of making decisions when they're not actually the ones that make the decisions at all. But, you know, it's a great conspiracy theory, Jim. And, you know, it's a bit like running in the old days of Formula One, running cars in testing with like vapor in them rather than fuel, just to get a quick lap time to try and attract a last minute sponsor. So you can kind of see where that comes from. But, you know, my abiding position on this is one of...

At a time when the sport is trying to attract a newer, younger, low kind of engagement time fan, i.e. young people, you cannot be having people finishing second and then suddenly finding... Particularly if you follow that person and then suddenly finding that they're 14th. Now, okay, I get... We all understand that as frustrated as we are with the whole situation with the Michelin front tyre, and it's not Michelin's fault.

You know, they've been trying to get this bloody front tyre tested for ages. Now it's so late and so impossible that they won't bother because they're out in a year and a half. So we're stuck with this. But it's not Michelin's fault. But...

And clearly, if we don't go down the conspiracy route, we'll say that Tech 3 did not expect Vinalas to be in the lead. And therefore his pressure was set at a level that would have been commensurate with him being in the pack, i.e. he'd have had a higher tyre pressure. That's kind of where I sit on that one. My beef is really with the kind of, I think, the absurdly draconian penalty for it.

Yes, if you keep doing it, you should get a draconian penalty. But as a one-off, I think he should adjust... I think the rule should be you keep your position. Because as you say, he keeps the points, he keeps the trophy, all that sort of stuff. Does he keep the points?

No, he'll drop the points. He was on the podium, he keeps the trophy, all that sort of stuff. I just think, you know, on a one-off like this, you just get like a three or six place grid drop at the next round as your penalty. And then if you infringe the tyre pressure rule again in that race, then okay, maybe it's a bit more of a stringent thing. But at a time when we're trying to attract fans to the sport, you need to allow people to be able to follow it.

And if you have these kind of weird kind of rules around things like tyre pressures, let's face it, that most people are not interested in, and a lot of people won't understand why that is even a thing, let alone the complexities of how the rule exists and what the penalties around it are, you've just got to stop this sort of thing. Because the sport is all about whether we like it or not, it's about personalities. And Mavrick Vinales is quite an engaging personality. He's kind of like this weird guy that would either be first or second or 20th. So he's perfect really for this kind of age that we live in.

And if you want to capture fans to follow people like him, you can't have him suddenly just being demoted for some vague reason to most people down to 14th or 15th. It's stupid. So just give people a moderate penalty at the next race. As I say, I would choose a three place grid drop. I mean, you get that for bumping into somebody.

You know, I just think that's a better way to deal with this over the course of the next year and a half. And we don't know what the prelude tires are going to be like. We might still have issues around tire pressures and stuff or mandated levels. We don't know. But there must be a better way of handling it than this, because I just think this is stupid the way they do it.

I like your idea of it. I have a slightly different spin on it per se. Good. I think that if your infringement of the rule happens, right, the knowledge is determined that he has a low tire that I believe he should be dropped one position. I think that's very easy for somebody.

Hey, look, you had a tire circumvention rule. You have been docked one position. OK, because you now illegal. Right. I think if you get caught doing it again, then it needs to be draconian.

Is 16 seconds proper at that point? I don't like that because then it's sort of weird to where did they finish. Right. I think I agree with the hey, you have now been deemed to have been illegal twice. So you're losing a position in the race that you just finished illegally in.

And after that, you're going to get a five grid place penalty to start the next race, which I think is something to that effect. I think works quite well because again, these guys are trying to guess where they're going to start, how they're going to start to determine what pressures are going to be here because we're playing on a very thin margin of I don't know, one or two psi. It just seems ridiculous to try to guess what you need to be able to actually do your race. Who knows what's going to happen on a start? That's why so many things happen on a start because what happens if you didn't engage your ride height device properly?

What happens if it doesn't release properly? Well, OK, now all those things now are conspired against you and your race is ruined from that standpoint. Now you could sit there and go, well, yeah, Formula One teams do all this all the time and they do that. It's a little different with cars, right? But it's weird that not even Formula One has a tire pressure rule like this one, right?

There are rules that Pirelli will set because they happen to be the supplier to Formula One that they say, look, these are the pressures you are allowed to run. And Formula One basically has it as it is a massive draconian penalty of like no championship constructor points and no anything if you now run a foul of those particular rules. And it's a hard thing. It's like you've got to be in the range and that's that. But it's a I don't know if it's a bigger range than what we're allowed in Formula One.

But this is really kind of annoying because it does take away from a very good race that you see KTM standing on a podium, which you didn't expect, which is, wow, that's great. It's all again, KTM still has all the pictures of them on a podium. They get to, hey, we were here because no one's going to mention the last little bit. But that's stupid as well. I mean, that is stupid.

There has to be a better way to do this and they need to do it quicker so that he doesn't stand on the podium. Right. But trouble with he watching who's a casual viewer, he just finished second. Correct. You have a hard and fast and I understand that it's a percentage of the race where the tire pressure applies.

Right. But essentially my beef is that you have a hard-swab rule for regulation, which requires guesswork. So if somebody gets punted out by a rider and find themselves in a different position in the race pack, they potentially get a penalty for that, but that's not their fault. So it's just the whole thing is just completely out of whack as far as I'm concerned at the moment. So I understand why Michelin have the worries around people running too low tire pressures.

That's been going on for years and years and years. It's just obviously the bikes run a much more loading with the aero and the ride height devices and blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, I mean, I do understand that. But there just has to be either a quicker resolution to the investigation because it flashed up straight away that he was under investigation. Maybe they have to delay the podium ceremony or something.

I don't know, but I just think it's unacceptable to have a guy particularly. As you said, it's Maverick vineyard is like, OK, and then it's a KTM and it's attacked three KTM, by the way, not the works by. It's a great story. And then suddenly it's all evaporates, but it hasn't because people have seen it happen. So it's chaos really in terms of and this is why you can't attract new fans to the sport when it's so unclear as to who has done well and who hasn't and why they have or haven't.

I just think, you know, the other big bit of news actually that or rumor, semi news, let's call it that merged between last race and this is that the reports and I think it was Reuters that came out with it, saying that the Liberty deal is going to go through unopposed. IE, they're going to get MotoGP, they're going to keep World Superbike. It's going to happen. So we don't know what that means, but, you know, I think they're probably savvy enough to know that this is not the sort of thing that's going to improve fan engagement and bring new fans and viewers to the sport. So this has to be resolved one way or another.

But this is where the sort of commercial and the technical and the governance aspects of the sport are all held by different bodies. And so how that melds together to sort of move generally forward in the same direction is obviously hard to say how that's going to work. But they do need to sort this one out because this is a really shocking problem as far as I'm concerned. And it's not as if this is a new thing. They've had loads of time to figure this out and to come up with something better.

And I'm not blaming the rule or not blaming the application of the rule anyway. I'm blaming the rule. And there's plenty of scope to sort this out. And we've still got what? Four fifths of the season plus all of next year to go as well.

So they've got to sort this out. Yeah, there's what 18 rounds left to go because we're at four and there's 22. I don't disagree with anything you're saying, Rich. I 100 percent am behind it. The weird part to me on this one is the teams were running the tire pressures low.

Michelin says, look, there's a potential problem if you're running this low. Well, how low is it? That's my question. Like you couldn't like are these guys trying to run? OK, let's just put numbers in here for the idea of math.

Maths. Well, let's say that it was 30 psi. They're supposed to be running in the tire. Were they trying to run down at 10? Were they trying to run at 15 or were they running at third or they were running at 25?

If you feel like, yeah, we really want to be at 25. That's like less than 10 percent. That's that big of a deal in that tire? Well, it's the difference between winning and losing, isn't it? Exactly.

And they'll cut it to the absolute finest margin. But this is my problem. If you're anticipating that Maverick is going to be running fifth in the pack and he's not going to do a Maverick thing and suddenly be in the front on his own. Are you feeling are you are you taking that much pressure out of it? I mean, tiny, tiny margins are what wins or loses you the race.

And so and this is the problem. This is why the infringement comes now. Some people will clamor and say he would have been getting a warning message on his dash. He probably ignored it. Which he said after the race, I don't take any notice of that sort of thing.

I'm concentrating on riding the bike. Whereas, you know, then you've got a Mark Marquez in Thailand who either knows or sees that he's in trouble and deliberately drops back behind his brother to get some heat into his tire. But none of this is really a motorcycle race as far as I'm concerned. This is a sort of a tactical front tire pressure strategy race. And that's not really something that I'm terribly interested in.

And I can guarantee casual viewers are not interested in that sort of thing. If you want to watch tactics, go and bloody watch the World Chess Championship. Watch World One. This is meant to be a motorcycle race where people are flat out for the whole way and the best person wins. Again, I blame the organization of it, whether it's ERDA, whether it's Dorna, whoever, or the FIM, whoever.

When this becomes a problem and, Michelin, you go back as the sporting – let's just call it the sporting body for this argument. Hey, Mr. Tire Maker, you're saying that you have a problem with your tires? Yes. Okay.

What's the solution? Well, we can't run below this. Is that a hard stop? Is that – okay. What – can you make a tire that will do – that will hold up to this?

Yes, we can. Okay, cool. Can you work on that? We'll implement a rule that says, hey, it's a hard stop. You can't go below this period.

End of statement. We're going to check everybody cold on the grid, add a tire warmer. You can't be below this. If you're below this, you're illegal. Done.

That's easy. That's a hard, fast, dry, hard rule. I think everybody would be on the same page. If it ruins the racing a little bit, fine. But then as the sporting body, you've got to say, okay, Mr.

Tire Manufacturer, when are you going to have a new tire for us to test? Oh, we won't have it until the 10th round of the season. Okay, great. We're going to schedule a test after that round, and we're going to put everybody on those tires, and all we're going to allow them to do is to test that tire. Sorry, guys.

This is how it is. If you have to dig into your pocket and pay the teams to do it, then you have to dig into your pocket and pay the teams to do it. Them not making a decision to mandate a testing day of that new front that Michelin supposedly has is, in my mind, completely ridiculous. You are the sporting body. You can say whatever you want, and guess what?

You have the best card that you could possibly play. You have the trump card. It's called safety. Yeah, it's negligent at the end of the day because it's fundamentally a safety issue, and then secondarily, it's a promotional marketing, understanding what the hell's going on for fans issue. I don't necessarily say one's more important than the other.

I mean, the safety issue would be the more important thing, but, you know, there's no time left to do that. This should have happened two or three years ago. When it first became a problem. Yeah, when Aero appeared and then these, you know, gizmos started to appear that were putting extra loading in. So, you know, we understand Michelin's concerns, and they're quite right because they don't want to have riders coming off at X hundred miles an hour with blown front tires and stuff because that reflects badly on them.

So we get all of that, but the time has passed to resolve that problem. They now need to change the penalties, I think, just for this last season and a half. Let's hope that when the eight fifties with less Aero less gizmos come along, different tire construction, things will be different and more manageable in that sense. But as you say, we've still got 18, 20 rounds to go this season, plus all of next season and the potential for this to happen more and more. So they have to sort this out.

And I think the quickest, easiest way to deal with it is just to say that if you if you step out of line in a race, you get a modest penalty in the next race, but it doesn't affect your result here. So nobody's confused about what happened. And, you know, you don't miss your fan, you know, your favorite rider stepping on the podium. If in the subsequent race or the subsequent three races, you do have the same thing again, and maybe it's a bit more of a bit more of a stern penalty. But for me, this is just way too too much because it's it's so reliant on chance and circumstance.

And you're asking people to guess what the tire pressures are going to be and then enforcing a draconian rule around it. So, yeah, well, people tell us what you think. But I'm I was really peed because, like everybody and some of our famous listeners, we all have a position on Maverick Vinales. But I was delighted to see that Maverick appear on Sunday. And for him, Katie, I mean, particularly for Tech Three, I love Tech Three as a team.

I thought it was great that they got the podium. And OK, you can never take away the TV footage and stuff, but it's just a sour taste in the mouth as far as I'm concerned. But what happened subsequently? Well, do you think that Dorna never did anything about it because they didn't think they'd ever in the dang show and by now? I mean, I don't know what to think about Dorna at this point in time.

And this is not a discussion for now, as I'll be ranting for the next hour. But, you know, I won't hide my excitement, even if things don't fundamentally change, that Liberty are coming in hopefully later in the year or at the end of the season and taking this over because. Yeah, I mean, Jacob on his email saying I want to hear from Simon on this. How about an interview? Well, I don't know if Simon would even engage in an interview because, you know, there's a bit of a conflict in terms of his position and what he can say, particularly some of the questions that we would want to ask.

Plus, Dorna have made it perfectly clear that they don't want Motopod in the paddock. So I won't swear, although I'm very tempted at this point to start launching F-bombs. But the sooner that the Spanish Mafia and the Nippo babies are gone, the better as far as I'm concerned. And I'll just leave it at that. I think that's good.

All right. So let's look at the implications of all the craziness that has happened in the championship. Well, so what happens is Mark Marquez reassumes his lead in the championship. He's on 123 points. His brother is still second at 106, being 17 points behind Mark.

Benyaya is third on 97, which puts him exactly 26 points, one entire race win behind Mark Marquez at this point in time. Now, after that, it's Borbadelli on the strength of his great finish, then Gigi Antonio, Zarco, Bizecki, Quattroraro, Iagura, and Marini in the top 10. Acosta is actually in 11th, believe it or not. But with all that said and done, this championship is going to go down to the wire, and it's going to be who makes the least amount of mistakes. And as it sits right now, the least amount of mistakes is the man on top.

Yeah, and there's no obvious sign that mistakes are likely to start creeping in. The only hope, I think, Jim, is that Benyaya might sort of do that late season build or mid to late season build that he has done before. The question is, and again, he's overcome some big points deficits in a couple of seasons. He has. So not to say it can't happen, but I just think psychologically that team is galvanizing around one rider.

Yep. And Mark Marquez does not give a flying you-know-what about anything, particularly not Peco Benyaya. So he's not going to get out-psyched in that team. And that crash that Benyaya had in qualifying this season was a classic case of chasing a position. And Mark, in the press conference on Thursday, I didn't watch it, I just saw the headline.

Mark very clearly said, with Peco next to him on the stage, this is the first round that I go into where I'm at a disadvantage to my teammate. So he immediately starts turning the screws pressure-wise on him, upping the pressure. And Benyaya was expected to kind of have his measure because Qatar is one of Benyaya's historically better circuits. And for me, his poor result in the sprint, maybe the bike was rebuilt and wasn't quite correct or he was on his spare bike, which felt a bit different. So I can kind of understand why he struggled in the sprint, having had a big crash, because that bike did barrel roll.

I mean, it was quite badly damaged. So you can kind of understand that. But the Sunday race, he just was never really in it, was he? Let's face it. I mean, I know he finished second or third, was it?

He was third, but he got promoted to second. He got promoted to second, but he finished third, as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, psychologically, it's the one-way traffic at the moment. Although he's only 26 points behind, so I mean, because obviously Mark threw it up the road at Qatar, which he didn't need to do, but he did. So it tightens the points a little bit.

But the direction of travel is all on one side of the garage at the moment, isn't it? Yep, without a doubt. So, all right. Well, I think that covers it all, Rich. Let us know what you guys think about everything that we talked about here.

Write us, motopod at motopodcast.com. I'd love to hear from you all. We have a week off as we wait to go to Haaretz and the European section of the calendar takes off. You are shortly soon to be at Silverstone, right? It's like the end of May or something, isn't it?

Certainly during May. Yeah, because they moved it. Precisely, Rich, date is. I'm not quite sure. Understood.

Yeah. I mean, obviously I don't have access to the paddock at the moment, so I'm not quite sure what plans are going to be for that weekend. Yeah, so we'll kind of hold that one in abeyance at the moment. But I mean, we've been chatting for two hours. So I'm not going to talk about World Superbike Aston in this show, but I will just touch on it in the next show when we come back for Haaretz MotoGP because there's a three week break, I think, on World Superbike now.

But it was a very interesting weekend at Aston on the track. So we'll just keep hold of that for next time. All right. We can do that. All right.

With all that said, everything done here, we're going to get out of this show, Rich. I'm going to tell everybody to ride safe. We'll see you next time. Cheers, everyone.