MotoGP Jerez – Out Of The Shadows

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 Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 805 for April 30th, 2025. I'm Jim McDowell, hosting the show with me as always, my co-writer, the guy that I lean on the most, Richard Jowell, directly from England.

Good evening, Rich. Good evening, Jim. Yes, hello everybody. Good to be back. So the racing was in her rest this weekend.

I mixed bag, I thought, Rich. There was sort of a boring race, a race that was interesting because the mid pack decided mix it up and then shock and awe in the big race of the weekend. But before we can get to any of that, just want to thank everybody who subscribes, donates to the show. We really appreciate it. Remember, you can go to our website, www.motopodcast.com.

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With that, Rich, we'll hit just a first little tidbit of news, just a small one. Jorge Martin, now out of Qatar, he's back in Spain, going to continue to recover from the 11 broken ribs that he had in the air or something that was in his chest cavity that prevented him from flying has now subsided. So good to see Jorge back. He is desperately missed in this whole race as a champion, but perhaps maybe another man has stepped up to take Jorge's place. Maybe I don't know.

We'll talk about that when we get to MotoGP. But that's all I've got for the news here. There was testing. We're going to talk about that, but we'll do that at the end of the show because it fits in more with what's going on in MotoGP than it does as its own thing about testing. And with that, Rich, I think we should just get right to Moto3.

Yeah, let's get to her. Moto3 qualifying on the Saturday. Well, we learned that there was no Keelys. Keelys having injured his thumb on a training accident before Qatar was declared unfit for the Qatari round as the x-ray turned up that he had broken his thumb. He then went back to Spain to have it operated on to help the healing process.

It is not healed enough and he was declared unfit to be able to run in this week's Grand Prix. So we were starting off Q1 without Keelys, which is kind of sad because Keelys had a great race in Qatar. Looking forward to him maybe adding a little more to all this. But we got what we got and that was some pretty decent qualifying. This is pretty straightforward.

There's not a whole lot going on in the first qualifying session. Almanza, Nepa, Lineto, Caro, Fagia, Rossi and O'Shea are all in there. Interesting, O'Shea dropped his bike on the way out of the pit box, if you will. And that was a very odd thing. I was like, okay, that's really weird.

I'm to find out that they had made an adjustment to, as I took it Rich, they had, I don't know which way it was, can't remember, it was either they had raised or lowered the forks in the triple tree of the bike and then they were bolting it, when they were tightening it back up, apparently they tightened something in there up too much and Eddie couldn't turn the bike. So the bike fell off from underneath of him because it wouldn't turn. I only giggled because it was such a weird little fall off in there. Those are the things that can happen to anybody. Those things do happen.

It's not an Eddie O'Shea problem. It's a guys with the wrenches problem. I find it extremely odd that as a team, they didn't have snap wrenches that will provide the appropriate torque to whatever they're tightening like that. Apparently it sounds like they either forgot that, didn't have them or just doing it by feel which is just crazy, but you would have thought that somebody would have thought to turn the front end before he left anyway. I don't know.

I laugh because I can think of the dumb stuff I did to my bike and caused me to do stupid stuff so I'm laughing because I'm remembering them as opposed to laughing at Eddie O'Shea and the team. They're a top level team. It caught them out. It just shows that they're all human. Right, Rich?

Well, I'm glad you pointed that out actually, Jim, because on the face of it, that looked pretty stupid from Eddie O'Shea, didn't it? It looks as if he just kind of dropped the bike in pit lane, which is not something that you see often. So the context to which why that happened is good to know. I must admit I didn't know that. So thank you for clarifying that point because it did look like a bit of a burk momentarily there, but if it wasn't his fault, then it's good that people hopefully widely know that because as you say, these things happen.

They call it finger trouble, don't they? In the pit lane, sometimes you just forget to do something or not do it quite correctly anyway. So a very odd thing to see. Yes, it was. The other odd thing that happens is the mismanagement of time by almost half of the guys in the second qualifying session.

If it takes you a minute 40 to get around the track, you have to leave the pit box with at least two minutes on the clock, roughly. It's staggering, isn't it? Yeah. It's over and over again. I just, it's crazy.

And so then there are these guys running around on the track and they are legitimately jockeying slowing down and guys, you do not have time to slow down like this. So five or six guys wound up missing the ability to get that one last flying lap in. I will, gosh, again, you go do the time by yourself. Okay. Yeah.

Period. Like if people come out late, guess what? You're going to get a tow because you're going to be back around by the time they're out in front of you or whatever. Again, I just cannot believe these guys continue to mismanage the time. Notably though, we didn't see any of this at the first four rounds of the season.

One you could say that being in Thailand, yeah, we started in Thailand, right? Yeah. Yes. So Thailand, I get Thailand and Indonesia mixed up. My geography sucks for that part of the world.

So sorry, I've got to ask these questions. But we were there opening, the opening, everybody wants track time because it's track that most of them, some of the guys hadn't seen, right? They have no knowledge of the track. So they go out immediately. We go from there to Argentina.

Again, a track nobody really gets a lot of time to run on. So a lot of the Moto3 guys haven't seen that track. They all go running out to get as much track time as they can. Coda, again, somewhat, but Coda is a long track. It's like over three and a half miles.

It's going to take you over two and a half minutes on a Moto3 bike to get back around. So they all go out together. And then the guitar, another long track, another three and a half each miles. They don't dilly dally. They all go out.

But hey, we're all back in the, back in the Iberian Peninsula and we know the tracks. So we're just going to sit here and wait. How amazing to me. It's weird. And the strange thing is with Haaretz in particular is that there's no advantage with the tow because there's no proper straight to speak of is there.

So there's no real advantage to be going. I can only assume that it's just that so many of the field have grown up doing thousands of laps around that track, that there are just certain people that you want to kind of tag onto because of their track knowledge. And I suppose maybe following something around here is helpful, but certainly not from picking up a few tents from a tow. It's not. But you're right, Jim, we haven't seen too much shenanigans until this weekend.

And obviously as you're about to tell us, I'm sure there were some fairly hefty penalties that resulted from some of this as well. Yeah, that's going to take care in a second. So well, let's finish up the first qualifying session. Lunetta, Foggia, Buchanan and Perez come out of that session. They get the privilege of going to the next one, mainly based on the fact that those guys went out early and got their lap in.

And the other guys who potentially were faster didn't get their lap in. I will just make a shout out at this point for Scott Ogden, who, boy, I mean, that guy has a lot of luck. Unfortunately, all of it is bad because he would have been second. But again, he got caught out by yellow flags and he might argue that again, he might have been a bit late going out. But yeah, poor old Scott Ogden can't catch a break.

People crashing in front of him, people crashing into him. Okay, he's had a couple of crashes of his own accord as well. And then, you know, yellow flags and stuff. He's just really dogged by bad luck at the moment. I mean, you would hope that this is going to turn around fairly majestically at some point for him and he'll get a run of good luck to sort of balance things out.

But boy, yeah, he's not having the best of times at the moment. No. As we get into the Q2, halfway through, Rureda is leading the session. Munoz is second, then Yamanaka, Carrero, Rolstein and Kelso. That's your top six.

Was the clock wound down? Rureda would take pole. Kelso jumps himself up to second, pushes Munoz down to third. Then Picaris jumps into the top six with a fourth place. Then Carrera and Yamanaka.

Now that then takes us to the race and we get to all the penalties. Now I must admit that due to the things that were happening for me on Saturday and obligations that I had elsewhere, as soon as qualifying was over, I was done. And I must admit that Sunday morning was pretty early for me here in the States to watch it. But I realized very quickly that Munoz was not in his grid position and he was knocked down. Now the question is, I guess I really should say how the actual qualifying finished.

So the top nine guys was Rureda, Kelso, and they still have it as Munoz there, but he got a penalty. Then Carpe, Yamanaka, Fernandez, Wollstone and Forosado. Rich, if you've got all the penalties, could you go through them for me, please? Well like you, I didn't pay massively close attention after the qualifying had happened. So again, I thought caught up with some of this as race day unfolded and like you, I'm sure many of the listeners, tweets from people that are reliably kind of informing us of what's going on in terms of the intrigue and stuff, prime amongst them being Simon Patterson, of course.

So I was aware of the fact that there were lots of penalties. So I think some of it was just for kind of infringement or blocking, perhaps not necessarily deliberately because there were people with long lap penalties, double long lap penalties. But Munoz was the one that caught the eye because of course he was put to the back of the grid. And from what I can gather, and this does relate to a tweet or an X, that doesn't sound quite right, does it, an X? But anyway, I'm going to call it a tweet that Simon had put out prior to the Ha'Reth weekend saying that race control, specifically with regards to Moto3, were starting to look more closely at people going out and setting fast laps and then doing further laps much more slowly, perhaps within the 107% rule so that they were perhaps not kind of triggering major alarm bells in terms of riding slowly on the line, but slow enough to impede other people.

Obviously the implication being on purpose, if you've bagged yourself a nice third place, as David Munoz had done. Now I believe, and again, hopefully I've got this correct, I believe Munoz was sent to the back of the grid for being found guilty by Simon Crafor and his team, I assume, of setting a time and then going around, well, as I say, not deliberately, obviously kind of slow riding on the line, but certainly getting in the way of people enough to ruin their laps. Now I hope I'm not doing Munoz a disservice in saying that. That is my understanding and the fact that he didn't get a long lap or a double long lap but went to the back of the grid, that's quite a severe penalty. And I think that's what it was all about.

And he was the only one that copped that. And as I say, I was kind of slightly aware of it because of the fact that Simon had made us aware through his tweet that race control were going to start stamping on this stuff a bit harder because this is not the first time it's happened, obviously. I think they're just kind of being a bit more vigilant in policing these kinds of shenanigans because I mean, all through the classes, we know that a good qualifying grid slot for Sunday is paramount. I mean, ever was it thus in racing, you know, obviously, you don't want to be getting bumped down onto the second or the third row if you can avoid it. But that kind of tactic is obviously now being analyzed much more closely.

And of course, it had to be Munoz, didn't it? I mean, again, talk about a guy. I'm going to say talk about a guy who can't catch a break this year. Some people will be shouting at their speakers at this point, saying, well, he's creating his own luck and causing his own problems. And that is entirely true.

But he's the one that caught the penalty for something that a lot of people apparently are doing. But, you know, it's a little bit like the sort of what I call the Dennis Onshu factor. You know, if you put yourself front and center most of the time, then you're likely to be the one that catches the rough end of the stick when it becomes a bit more of an issue from officialdom. So I think that's what happened, Jim. OK, that that all lines up.

Wow, because I, you know, I knew people had been moved around. I think, like I said, I'd gotten up just in time basically to see the BMW safety car head out because we're out that night with friends. Well, we all know what happens when you go out with friends. Yeah. It becomes a late night.

Anyhow. Oh, but Sunday, the race day showed up beautiful, beautiful weather in the morning there. In Hereth, beautiful sunshine, beautiful temperatures. It was just an amazing crowd, too. They showed pictures of like everybody on the hill in the natural amphitheater, like with their I'm assuming the light, the flashlight of their cell phones on.

It was in it was impressive. I mean, they said it was like what it was some unastronomical number, like two hundred and forty two thousand people over the entire weekend. Spain is race mad. Hereth is iconic. We're going on like 40.

This is like what, 40th year of racing at Hereth or something like that, they said. Yeah, it's got to be. Yeah, it's just been there. I mean, gosh, I can remember and I only know this from a Duke video that back in the 80s, you know what I'm thinking here, Rich? No, no, carry on.

I'm just laughing at Duke video. That's a company you don't hear mentioned very often. It was a review of like the I don't know, call it the 86, 87 season, 500 GPs. They go through one of the corners there and the cameraman follows and stops because, well, there's a lady there. And well, let's just say there was a lot to look at.

Let's put it that way. I remember I was like, we've been there from that point to now to this point. It's like, wow, things have changed in the professionalism of this sport. Haven't they? Yeah, so yeah, apparently they were saying on TNT Sports, which again is what I listen to now or watch the coverage on that if you went through the turnstile at 5.30, 6 a.m., you weren't getting a spot on the hill at the back because the crowd is very much focused around that last third of the track, isn't it?

So I suppose it's a bit hemmed in in that way, but it's cool. Blimey, what a noise that crowd was making. It will come to you later. Gosh, it was it was truly amazing. So the important thing to understand here as the Moto3 race starts is the tire choice.

Rureda has chosen a medium front and a soft rear. He's the only one on the first three rows that's got a soft rear. Again, last time in Qatar, we were told Rureda had pace, Rureda was going to run off, Rureda is going to disappear. It seemed as though this is going to be a strategy again. If you take us off, what's your plan?

Your plan is to get out there and go and get away and manage it at the end. But Kelso, he's starting on a soft front and a medium rear. But then Picaras is sitting on a medium front, medium rear. Wow, this is this is definitely odd strategies from the guys that are out front, but, you know, they know their riding style. They know what they want.

Let's just see how this pans out. So it was like, well, was Rureda going to escape from everybody and pull away? Well, he got the start that he wanted, followed by Carpe, followed by Picaras, Yamanaka, for Asado. Kelso went backwards from his middle of the, you know, from his front row start. He kind of goes backwards a little bit.

Suddenly we have three people down in a turn. It's the people down are Munoz, Almanza and Moodley. Now, it appeared that Almanza and Munoz kind of had their own little crash going as they were sort of running each other off of the racetrack, which was then exacerbated by the fact that Moody just completely outbraked himself. I think it was at the end of the backstretch going into six, correct, Rich? Yeah, it was.

Yeah. So Moodley outbreaks himself. Whoops, then goes flying into the combination of Almanza and Munoz, which puts all of them down in a huff. Wolf, that's a great way to start this race, right? Action that you weren't expecting, things you didn't think were going to happen.

I have to say, Jim, just quickly in defense now, this one was, I think, the one occasion this year where we can say with absolute certainty that this was not Munoz's fault. Exactly. I think Almanza actually ran Munoz out a bit wide, as you said, in what would have been just a slight time delay incident. Let's say they'd have lost a couple of tenths, maybe. It was Moodley that came steaming in, who apparently forgot he had a front brake, and just completely wiped them out, which is a shame because Moodley had been having a really great weekend up until that point in terms of his pace across all of the practices and qualifying and so on.

So yeah, pretty disastrous weekend, again, really, for Munoz in particular. But at least we can say on this one rare occasion, he was definitely 100% innocent on that one. He was the victim. He was. Not the victimizer.

My initial thought seeing him in the gravel was, oh my God, what's he done now? Here comes another massive penalty. I even wrote it on my notes, and then I had to correct myself a little bit later on when they did show the replay, which was a lap or two later, as I recall, and it was quite clear that he was just the complete bystander on that one. Oh, but the crashing wasn't done because as they went back to turn one, Rossi fell at turn one. Then Buchanan was down as well as like, holy crap, we had like, seems as though half the Moto3 field was crashing at that point.

So it was an eight rider group with a front fault with Rueda leading, followed by Piqueras, followed by Kelso, then Carpe, Yamanaka, and Firasato. The top three were starting to pull away from everybody that was there, and Kelso moved his way up to second. So again, Kelso was quick, right? Rueda was quick. Munoz was into the pits.

He finally got the bike out of the gravel trap. It took a while. He got it restarted. He got to there, and he wound up coming into the pits. I think he actually left again after a couple laps in the pits because the bike was in the back.

I don't know if they were fixing it in the garage or they were discussing what they were going to do, but I think they thought, well, there might be a point on offer if we go back out because it seemed as though it was going to be a race of attrition given the fact how everybody was crashing at this point. But with 10 laps to go, it's Rueda, Kelso, Piqueras, Yamanaka is now following Piqueras, then Firasato, Carpe, and Panini are all there. The top three had absolutely insane pace. They were pulling away, and it was obvious at this point we had a three race, three rider battle for the race win. That's when we came back to, and we're talking about the tires and these things.

These three guys are on three different combinations of it. What's going to happen? Carrera was down at turn one, I think he went down at, and then with eight to go, you could tell Rueda since the time was right, it's time to go. He had nursed his tires for seven laps roughly, seven or eight laps. I'm going.

If you can come with me, come on. It was he threw the gauntlet down, said, are you prepared to go as fast as I'm prepared to go with it? Well, you know, Kelso couldn't. Whether the soft front was the wrong way to be, don't know, just his riding style, just never just didn't have as much pace as Rueda had, no idea. But one thing was sure Piqueras noticed what was going on because Piqueras instantaneously went to the back of Kelso and was all over Joel as he tried to get by.

Piqueras knew what Rueda was doing and he wanted to go with him desperately. It took a little bit for him to actually get by, but he basically did finally get by. Now, when Piqueras finally did get by, Kelso took a long, long look behind to figure out where he was in this order, at which point it's like, you know what, the front must be gone at this point. So I need to just get this thing to the finish and do it at the best possible way, which is a podium position. There was a huge gap to him, so there wasn't going to be a big deal.

Four to go, Rueda had three tenths on Piqueras, who had another few tenths on Kelso, and there was like a three second gap back to Yamanaka, Fernandez, and Furusato. I mean, basically Rueda was roughly like eight tenths faster than anyone else on the track. It was just red helmet, red helmet, red helmet. It was an impressive display to see that late in the race on a soft, him going that fast to be quite honest. Three to go, Panini was now sixth, and he was charging.

It was like, whoa, wow, he's got some there. Piqueras has now gotten by Kelso on the final lap as they had a good tussle, but then Kelso goes back by Piqueras at five, but then Piqueras finally did seal the deal at six. Kelso, I think, sort of capitulated at that point because Piqueras did run him a little wide at six. That's all within well within the realm of what you're allowed to do and not do. I think Joel just decided that this is enough, is enough, is enough, and we're just going to ride this one on home.

Rueda clearly class of the field, wins the race going away, followed by Piqueras, followed by Kelso. Then Adrian Fernandez, who we don't talk about at all because we didn't really see much of it. We were sort of fixated on the front, which was kind of interesting to me that we didn't go back and see a little bit more of what was going on because it was kind of obvious Rueda had this thing figured out. It was obvious after a few back and forths that Piqueras was going to sit behind Kelso until the last lap and make his final lunge then to take that second spot. So shame on director work for this one, I'm going to say.

But then Yamanaka was fifth for Rosado, Pini, Carpe, Rolston and 9th, Peroni the 10th man, then Linnetta, Ogden, Foggia, Nepa and Burosari, rounding out everybody who gets points in the class. With that win, Rueda now jumps over Piqueras and leaves the championship by four points, 91 to 87. Kelso is 34 points back of Rueda right now and 30 back of Piqueras. He's only on 57 points. I hate to say this, I think this is a two horse race already between Piqueras and Rueda.

Now, I know both of us picked Piqueras to be a world champ. You've said many times that you rue the fact that you did not think about Rueda having a great season. Rueda is having an incredible season so far. That's a domination that we have not seen since maybe Acosta. But even Acosta was in the pack a lot.

He was more like Alonso, hang out, chill, I'm going to win it here in the last couple laps. Rueda is just plain dominant, which is absolutely, positively amazing. I think where he would be if his bike did not fail him in Qatar, which again is a weirdly weird thing that happened. Yeah, I don't know if you've picked up on this, Jim. Again, I claim no credit for this.

I forget. I think it was probably, it might have been Neil Hodgson on TNT that mentioned it or Gav Emmett anyway. Rueda runs the 99 plate and they were drawing the parallels with his riding style with another 99 plate. Jorge Lorenzo. Jorge Lorenzo and he does have that kind of what they used to call butter style.

Very smooth on the bike and perhaps that's how he can get away with running soft tyres where other people can't. Clearly, if he gets out front, now, okay, he's Spanish, he would have done a lot of laps around Jerez. But I think we're seeing the rider that we expected to see last year because of a couple of injuries and then that illness that he had. We just never really got to see Rueda, which is why he slipped off our radar when we were kind of thinking about who's going to be top five this year. So I think that's kind of what's going on here, Jim.

But the parallels with Jorge Lorenzo, I think, seemingly quite stark at the minute, aren't they? I mean, that was a totally dominant display that he put on and he just never looked like he was going to even drop a few tenths on a lap, let alone get caught by anybody else. So it is a two horse race, I think, at this point, because it was a great result for Kelso. I kind of circled in my thing here because Kelso is fast in qualifying, but his habit in races has tended to be run at the front in the first quarter of the race and then slowly kind of lose the front group and then drop back and back and back. So I think capitulated is the right term, but I think it was an entirely justifiable decision to get a much needed podium under his belt.

Although this is by far and away Kelso's strongest season that I can recall already, what, five races in. So I think, you know, the grabbing the third was an outstanding result. But like, you know, I kind of think this is already looking like Piqueras versus Rueda and it's going to come down to who crashes a bit, perhaps. And like you say, we don't really expect to see bike failures or technical issues in Moto3, but as we've seen, they do happen. So, yeah, outside of the first few laps, which were a little bit crashy, it wasn't really an awful lot to talk about, was there?

No, there isn't. He is a metronome. He just ran laps. It just, nobody could match that pace the whole time. If he qualifies well, he gets out front.

I mean, he could easily win LeMans. He could easily rip off three, four, five of these in a row and almost put this championship, you know, out of touch. Oh, great. What's interesting so far this year, we haven't gotten to the tracks that generally have this, but the pack racing isn't there this year so far, right? Yeah.

You would think in, Jerez kind of usually has a good group of eight to 10 for a fair amount of the race and then, you know, in the top five get away, you know, cream rises to the top kind of a thing. But it's going to be interesting to see what happens when we get to like the Magellos, the Barcelonas, Aragon, those places with the big straightaways, you know, and see what happens. So the one thing I will say, Jim, in response to that, just the occurs to me, and this is not in any way to detract from the performance that Piqueras, Calso and obviously Rueda are making, but we did lose up to Moto2 three top running riders last year, and Alonso, Ortola and Vaya, those are the ones that immediately spring to mind. Algarado. The top talent, and obviously the talent is just dripping throughout this field, even right the way back to the back end of the grid, but certainly in that kind of regular top 10 zone, we have lost 50% of the people that were there last year.

Easily. And so I think that's that is probably thinning things out a little bit. And obviously with Moto3, we're used to seeing quite a lot of pack fighting, which slows stuff down a bit and causes the group to get even bigger. And I just think there's a couple of extreme talents there. And if they get a chance to break away a little bit, they're gone.

I mean, we've seen it from Piqueras this year already, although he is kind of the Alonso last lap axe murderer kind of guy, whereas Rureda is, I think, will start doing the whole Jorge Lorenzo thing over and over again with him. If he gets a little bit of a break, he's going to be hard to get back at sort of things. So I think that's possibly why your observation is happening. It could be. And I think it's a great explanation for it.

I certainly didn't think of it as that from that standpoint, but I think that's everything for the Moto3 guys. Would you not agree, Rick? Yeah, I agree. It wasn't a classic, that one. Yeah, they all can't be classics.

All right. So let's go on to Moto2 in the first qualifying session. So Huertaas, Arbolino is there. You had Bender in there. You had Vire in there.

Now, here's where my world gets turned upside down. You have Colin Vire and Celestino Vietti. So it's Colin Vire, C-V-E-I. It's Vietti, C-V-I-E. If you don't think I'm going to screw that up in my notes, people, please.

Well, I'm constantly double taking up the tower with the three initials on it. I'm thinking, oh, Christ, which one's which? Yeah, it's going to take a bit of getting used to. It's tough. It is tough with that one.

Screege was in there. Sasaki Garcia Guilvara was all there. Bender was also in there. He was down at turn 13 in there. You had five riders that were going for four places.

So somebody was going to get left out. Guilvara, Zanta, Vanda, Gerberg, Vire and Ortova go up to the second qualifying session. In that second session, Alonso was down at turn 13. He had lost the front, put it into the gravel trap. It was sort of weird because there was the argument with the marshals as to where the bike should go.

Alonso eventually did get the bike back and did get back to the pits. He did try to rescue a lap, but he couldn't do it. Aegis was the guy who was the fastest followed by Baltis, Aranis Gonzalez, Anshu and Holgardo. Aranis would go to pole and the question was going to be who in the world could bump him off? Well, Gonzalez did, but Kinet crashed at turn six, which messed up a few people's run.

So it wound up with qualifying finishing with Manuel Gonzalez snatching the pole to take the first position for the race tomorrow with Aranis second. Aegis was third with a great run. Baltis fourth. Then Marrero was fifth. Anshu sixth.

Kinet seventh. Alonso eighth because he did get back. He did get out and then he did salvage an eighth. Dixon was ninth. Dixon was not having a great weekend.

He even admitted so when we got to the race on Sunday morning. They asked him, where are you at this weekend, Jake? He says here or maybe back a couple of places. It seems again, as though we found out at a place that the Basque Cora doesn't seem to want to work or the guys who were on it can't make it work. Not sure why it didn't.

They weren't talking about the extra grip like there was at Qatar. Well, they were on TNT. Oh, did they? They didn't say anything about the extra grip on Dornafeed. The explanation or the comment that was made on TNT is that now I don't know if this is specifically a herething.

I guess this is perhaps a bit of a trait of the chassis as it is at the moment in this stage of its early development for this year. It's creating, let's say, too much grip on the rear and it's pushing the front. I think that's the issue that they've got. So I think that's just causing them difficulties in terms of front end feel. Now, again, the physics and mechanics of all that in terms of how rear grip pushes the front is perhaps not one for right now.

But the Calyx looks like the easier package at the moment, whereas the Bosque Esquerra appears to be going back to it works brilliantly occasionally, which is a worry because that's not how championships get won. Very true. After having talked to Dixon with the lights go green, Lopez would fall at turn two on the opening lap. Gonzalez was leading Aegis, Marrero, Anchu, Arenas, Balthus and Dixon. Helgardo was down at the last turn, helped by his teammate, one Mr Alonso.

Oops. Alonso was in a little deep. I was shocked that Alonso didn't get a penalty for that one. So it's like, huh, OK, well, that's mighty interesting there. I think, Jim, that might be more evidence of the new Stewarding regime perhaps giving a little bit of leeway on the first lap or two.

I think so. And I think that's right. There was a close call. It was a bit ambitious, perhaps you might say, but it wasn't an egregious move as far as I could tell. I mean, Helgardo presumably would be fairly peeved at the outcome.

But I mean, that's just racing, isn't it? Yeah, I didn't have enough angles to pass judgment. What I did see was somebody trying to go up the inside of somebody who was wide, who was squaring the corner off. And well, unfortunately, Alonso is kind of committed to the arc that he's on. He can't really change it.

And you have now Helgardo squaring the corner off to get the run down that short stretch into one. And the two lines intersect. So given that there was no penalty, I will agree with that just based on the evidence. If there was some other shot that showed that Alonso was into the turn three bike lengths deeper than he's ever been, then he needs a penalty. Right.

So again, the officiating so far this year has been fantastic and continues to be fantastic. It is definitely Simon's show and it's basically what Simon says you do. Yeah. I think they're coming down on the things that need to be sort of stamped out as much as possible. But otherwise, they're trying to allow a bit of, I know it's a cliche, but the old sort of rubbing his racing thing to go on.

And if it's kind of stuff that's well intentioned, but doesn't quite work out, you'll get some form of a penalty thinking Alex Marquez on Digia in Qatar, for example. That was a bit of a boneheaded move, but it wasn't there wasn't intent to cause an issue there. So I think they're getting it right at the moment. I mean, they will obviously get a couple of calls wrong because that's human nature. But so far, I think it's a vast improvement on where we were with all due respect to Freddie and the team, some of which may still be the same.

I don't know, but it's all about the person who's in charge because they're the one that carry the can if things go wrong. But at the end of the day, and Simon Kreyfar is doing an admirable job, I think. I completely agree. That second lap was everybody was starting to sort themselves out, although Anshu did wind up working his way past Arenas and Alonso did get by Dixon. Five laps in, it's Gonzalez, Moreira, Baltis, Aegis, Anshu and Arenas.

At this point, I think Simon Patterson had a tweet, a thread, something he said, those guys up front kind of look like a changing of the guard in Moto 2. Like, you know what, that's probably a pretty fair statement that maybe we are starting to see a change. You know, the people, the new kids on the block are starting to show that they have the potential to run in this class. And they're giving Helgardo, Ortola and Alonso are all there lurking in the shadows and starting to run in that top 10. Well, you know, it's going to look crazy from now on for sure.

Gonzalez is particularly pleasing with my sort of World Superbike fan hat on because he's come through that paddock earlier on, didn't sort of go through the conventional route and is showing, because there's often a sort of sniffy attitude, I think, from the MotoGP paddock towards the World Superbike paddock. Even Adrian Juarez, who's come up as the supersport champion of last year, OK, he's not troubling the top six or certainly not the podium at the moment, but he's solidly running in the midfield, I would say. And again, showing that there is great talent over in the other paddock. And it's nice to see just the occasional people that come in that direction, as opposed to going from the MotoGP paddock and doing well over in World Superbikes or World SuperSport. Yeah, and Gonzalez is, I mean, my note at the beginning of the race was, who can stop him?

That was the question. Well, we know that Alonso was not going to stop him because Alonso crashes at turn 13. This was a scary, scary crash. He's basically in too deep. He folds up the front.

He falls. Now, the problem is that given the way that that turned shaped, it's almost a V, right? His now trajectory, because he's fallen, Newton's laws of physics will always win. He's going to go in a straight line because there is no outside force acting to take him around the corner. He's going out the corner.

However, what doesn't clear is the bike in front of him and Alonso smacks his head directly on the rear of the rider in front of him. I don't remember who that was. I think they said it. I did not catch who that person was. I think it was Guevara.

It was. It was Guevara. Okay. Yeah. That impact was super scary.

Now, again, it's shown in slow-mo, which is going to make things look worse than they are because you're seeing it frame by frame. But that impact to the tire with his head was enough to jerk his head up and rip the visor clean off of his helmet. As that happened, my next thought was, oh my gosh, his face, the tire is going to get in there and just rip his eyebrows off, basically, which was never going to be good. It didn't happen. He did tussle off into the trap.

He was there for a little bit. He did recover to his own feet and he did walk off, but he was a shaken pup. There's no question about that. He was definitely not 100%. I'm willing to bet there's a concussion in there somewhere, and I guarantee you we're never going to know, but I can't imagine that there isn't one.

Just the effect of that tire picking that helmet up and flipping it around, your brain doesn't decelerate in the fluid that's around your head and your skull as quickly as you think. It's going to smack into something, and I'm sure it rung his cage. I'm amazed that he didn't have anything wrong with his neck. That was the bigger fear for me was, oh my gosh, we're going to watch somebody get their neck broke and they're going to be paralyzed, which just the fact that he stood up was just the biggest of reliefs to me. I go right back to Rainey and San Marino in 93.

I cannot get the image out of my head of Rainey's arms and he's trying to get himself to say he can't. The whole thing just gives me the heebie-jeebies. I actually have Rainey's book and I can't finish it. That is the only book I've ever started and I have not finished. I cannot do it.

And I thought, at the time, I thought, well, you know, hey, look, you're talking about a guy with x-rays and you can see the pictures of his back and how it was broken. That's why his spinal cord has been destroyed, yada yada. Hey, you're racing a motorcycle. You don't want to think about what can happen to you at the time. You'll finish it later on.

I've tried. I've tried twice since. I cannot finish that book. Wayne is a successful person. He's got plenty of money.

He's adapted. He runs Moto America. He's a fantastic person. I just can't do it. Yeah, that's my own personal stake.

No, it was a scary crash and, you know, he was dazed and confused, to put it mildly, walking through the gravel trap on the shoulder of the Marshall. It must be. I don't think he would have got away quite as easily under his own steam. I mean, on the face of it, the CF Moto Moto 2 Squad might have felt a bit hard done by come Sunday afternoon with both riders going out. But the whole Gardo, the crash that he and Alonso had, it just occurred to me, again, on the slow mo.

But Alonso's foot went perishly close to getting caught up in the rear end of his own bike. I think it was. That could have easily been a broken ankle or broken leg. And then obviously with Alonso, I mean, that was very much reminiscent of, was it Nakagami on that one in Barcelona a few years back? There was a big crash and his head caught the rear tire of, I can't remember who it was now, but and whacked his head up against the sort of the underside of the rear seat unit.

We don't see that sort of thing very often, happily, but yeah, it does show, doesn't it? That is a very, it's a very kind of risky situation when that happens. Alonso, you just kind of get this feeling he's getting over the shoulder injury. Obviously the talents are undisputed. He's getting quick because he was quick all weekend on the Moto 2 bike.

Just wonder if he's going to get a bit crashy just whilst he figures out the limits at the moment. And he was involved in those two incidents and he came off worst, of course, although thankfully it wasn't as bad as it might otherwise have been. But yeah, dodged a bit of a bullet again, I think on that particular occasion. Racing motorcycles is dangerous. It is.

Oh, with 13 to go, Aegis is the fastest man on the track. He's fourth, but he's got pace. Gonzalez is some two and a half seconds ahead of Baltis, who then has Marrera behind him, but they are three tenths ahead of Aegis. Now Aegis is coming and coming hard. Anshu is next in that list and Arenas is next with him.

And then it's 2.8 till we get to Vietti, not Meyer, and Kinnett and Dixon. Now Aegis has caught the battle for the podium. He has a shot to get on the podium. Anshu and Arenas and Kinnett are basically they're trying to go with Aegis, but they can't handle the pace of what Aegis can do. Now Aegis kind of dragged them up there a little bit, but then they fell right off of it.

Five to go, Gonzalez, Baltis, Marrera, Aegis, Anshu, Arenas, Vietti, Kinnett and Dixon. Baltis has got like a half a second on Marrera. So it doesn't look like Aegis can get to second, but he can definitely get third. The question is can he? Lopez was down again at turn six.

Remember Lopez crashed at the first turn on the first lap? Well, with three laps to go, Lopez crashed again this time at turn six. Aegis would make the move on Marreras and Aegis was actually on the grass as they headed to turn six. They were that close. He was right there at the edge.

It was a great move. It was it was giving a quarter. It's that hard racing. It's the things we like to see. Yep.

And that's what we got. And it was a great move, but Gonzalez wins. Nobody get touchy. Baltis second, Aegis third, then Marrera, Anshu, Arenas, Vietti, Kinnett and Dixon. So the established stars, if you will, of the group, Vietti, Kinnett, Dixon, they are way down on the list.

They are seventh, eighth and ninth. Maybe it really is a changing of the guard as it's there. Dixon came home in ninth. Then it was Slack Roberts who has looked a lot better. The wrist is obviously improving, but still not enough.

Ramirez was 12th. I mean, at least Roberts beat his teammate. Let's at least give that as a plus. Juartas, as you said, the rating super sport champion 13th, Colin Vier 14th and our poor old Tony Arbolino picking up only one point in 15th. Yeah.

I mean, the standout there is Barry Baltis in the second, isn't it? Completely. Bearing in mind that he was pretty much ride-less come the end of last season and then got picked up by that team, which raised a few eyebrows, I think. Because whilst he's quick, he's never really shown much consistency, but just goes to show, doesn't it? You never can tell if you land in the right place on the right bike and with the right people around you.

Sometimes you just need somebody to help. This is where somebody like Aki Ayo is famously good at chipping off the rough edges and polishing the talent that is latently there. So it's going to be good to see what Baltis can produce. I'm not suggesting for one second that he's going to suddenly become a title contender or anything, but a guy that was on his way out of the paddock at the end of last season to be in this position, I think we'll come to it, but I think he's fourth in the championship now. So yeah, outstanding.

I mean, that was the one bright spot in an otherwise barely dull race, really. Agreed. With his win, Gonzales vaults back to the top of the riders' championship on 86 points. Kinet is on 79 points. That puts him seven behind.

Dixon falls to third in the championship. He's 20 behind Gonzales and 13 behind Kinet. Then Baltis has moved up to fourth in the list at 53. Then it's Ramirez, Anshu, Aegis, Marrera, Holgardo, and Vietti taking out the top 10 positions in Moto 2. An okay race, a little more exciting race, maybe because of the crashes, although some of the passes that Aegis did have on there was quite good, but you had two races which both riders led every lap at her.

Which is slightly odd. Usually there's a pass somewhere in there at least. Well, the question for all that was what was going to happen in MotoGP when we got to that, when we get there. First, we must qualify and race a sprint. We can't call it a sprint race because legal ramifications would cause us to have to pay more, but hey, whatever.

We beat that dead horse. Sorry folks, I couldn't help it. Anyway, MotoGP QP1, Bender, Bizecki, Miller, Vignalas, Rens are all four Aprilias and three Hondas are all in this first session. Now, Vignalas seems to be the weird one. If you saw the warmup before qualifying took place, Vignalas was fast as all get out.

He just wasn't fast enough in the practice session that matters to put you into that second position. What's Vignalas going to do here in this one? This is really the one that you're wondering about because that's what it's going to be. Literally halfway through, Vignalas is faster than Bez is right with him. I mean, okay, I can kind of see that, right?

But then Rens hasn't even had a lap yet because he had a crash in that warmup session or the practice session right before qualifying. He destroyed a bike and I think they were having a... He destroyed one or two bikes. Oh, he had a bike. He was in the medical center getting checks.

Rens was ever in medical. He did get out and turn a lap, I think. He did. Yeah. He did at the end.

He did at the end. Yeah. I mean, that was a big crash that he had in what's that? Free practice two, is it? I think they call it now.

Trying to think now. I don't know. I think it is FP2. I'm not sure. It was another crash that caused issues with the air fences, which happened quite a bit over the weekend actually with MotoGP bikes causing red flags.

They're fast and they don't stop in gravel because the walls are too close. Let's just be honest about that. I could rant for a while, but I'm not going to. I'm going to keep this podcast moving. They've done something about it in terms of trying to slow the bikes down a bit in a couple of years' time.

A couple of years' time. They'll soon be about as fast again, won't they? Because that's just the way it goes. Yes. Never discourage.

Just never tell the engineer we can't go faster. We'll figure it out somehow. Asparguero is out and he's on the HRC test bike. He's there. Salvadori is now down at turn nine, but Vinales and Bizecki go on to the second qualifying session.

Now, in this one, you got to remember we actually had Mir actually get through. He was just by the skin of his teeth, but he was in. It was weird, but none of the other Hondas got there. For the bikes that seemed to be vastly improved, they didn't get anywhere. But you know what?

Quattraro and the other Yamaha, he's actually in this second session, which is impressive. But that first flying lap by Marc Marquez, come on, let's face it, that was a blinder of a lap. A 135.643. Absolutely just like on pace and flying. Well, that was an all time record at that point.

Yes. His brother was next. Then it was Morbidelli and Quattraro and then Denaia. Now, I didn't have this on my scorecard. Didn't have it as a bingo space.

But when they go back out to do their second runs, Quattraro rides the lap of his life. Puts that Yamaha on pole. Oh my gosh. It was the most amazing lap to watch. It was a man who probably rode what I would consider the perfect lap.

I mean, we're all searching for that, but he hit every corner perfectly, every brake marker perfectly and threw that bike to pole position. In fact, it was so good. Marquez couldn't even respond to it, which made Quattraro on pole, Marquez second, then Denaia was third. Now that's kind of impressive for Benyaia to be third because Benyaia had trashed a bike in that FP2 session and he really couldn't afford to fall off because he didn't have another bike. So for Benyaia to be third was pretty damn good in my opinion.

Alex, who had been fast all week and had somehow fallen to fourth. Morbidelli was then fifth. Vinales, who came through that first session, was showing that he is quick. He's sixth. And shout out to Furman Aldiger being seventh.

Aldiger didn't go through Q1. He was fast enough to be in Q2. It's like, wow, didn't have that on the Mingo card either. It's like the craziest. I mean, he out qualifies Digiantonio.

Like, did you? He's faster, did you? Well, in defense of Digiantonio, he's on the 24 point something bike, let's not forget, which is probably not the best Ducati out there. I mean, I think Aldiger, I'm assuming Aldiger's on a 24, not a 23. I'm pretty sure he's on 24.

So arguably he is on the best bike, but you've still got to pedal it around and do the lap time. And as you say, he's been looking really good the last couple of rounds at least. Fully justifying Ducati's decision to put him on a long-term contract. I think he's on a three-year deal with Ducati. Something like that, yeah.

It's a long... Okay, he's in Grissini on a year-old bike this year. So what? But if he keeps going like this, who knows where he'll slot in. So Miros 9, Zarco is 10th, Bizeki and then Pedro Costa in 12th.

That is your top. That is how qualifying finishes. So that gets us to then the sprint. Hang on, Jim. Yes, Rich.

Just say two things about Q2. Like you, I wrote down possibly the best lap of his career before Pabllo Quattraro. I mean, that was reminiscent of a kind of Ertan Senna Monaco, 1989 was it? A bit, you know, that kind of lap of the gods. Yeah, 89 is correct.

There won't be many laps in his career that he looks back on more fondly than that one. I will contend. So that was that. The big crash that Bagnari had, admittedly in the pre-practice session before qualifying started, the way he wrecked the bike and again caused a red flag because he deflated an air fence. Apparently he'd been looking at Marc Marquez's data on that corner and had a go himself, bearing in mind it's a left.

Yeah, and promptly threw it at the scenery. And then the last thing, did you spot Pedro Costa's save on the last lap that he did in Q2? He fully tucked the front going through the very fast turn 11, is it, or 12? Yes, the two fast rights. How the hell that wasn't a monumental accident is quite beyond me because the front had completely gone.

It wasn't just like a little bobble. It was like completely bars on the lock stops. Yeah, it's kind of like Marquez at code on the first lap, like, that should have been a crash and wasn't like, well, the talent is supreme. I mean, maybe that rumor of Honda willing to part with 30 million euros to put him on their bike is true. Well, although it sounds as if that's receding at the moment.

Really? Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, like I said, it's an internet rumor. It's just circulating on social media.

So yeah, we'll know a bit more in a week or two. So anyway, sorry. Yes. No, you're fine to point those out because they are true. Those things are all very valid in there and it kind of shapes what happens in the sprint.

So if we head to the sprint, Guadarrara just has this absolutely wicked start. He goes super aggressive at turn one, sort of knocks Marquez out of the way like, nope, I'm taking this one, my friend. Then they are then followed by Alex and Benya and Morbidele. Now Marquez lines up the Yamaha. The top speed of the Yamaha is not what the top speed of a Ducati is.

He lines them up out of, is that four that's heading to six? Because don't they call five the kink that's there? I don't know. Either way, they're heading to six. Let's just, they're just, that's where they are.

They're heading down to six. Marquez is definitely level straight with him. Marquez is going to outbreak Guadarrara. Guadarrara was like, I don't have anything in the jam, Jim. I'm just going to stay with it.

He does and promptly loses the front and throws it into the gravel trap. Now I watched that crash over and over and over again. I think that the front tire actually flexed on him and caused Guadarrara to crash. Now I've thought about this and I, it could be an optical illusion because you've got the white on the tires that designate them as softs that are, that's spinning and it's spinning in a slow mo. But I, cause the reason I thought it was the bike twitched and it wasn't the back end is up in the air and it's moving.

These guys are used to that. If you watch his arms, they twitch on the handlebars and even on the door in a feed, who's a Gavin, like is it Gavin Emmett that does the feed? It doesn't matter. The lead guy says, oh, it must've been dirty air off of the side of Marquez's bike. They caught Guadarrara out.

And I'm like thinking, no, that was the tire. I think Guadarrara has the front. I think as all of them do, I think they start with the front tire low on pressure and they have it build up over that time. So at the beginning, it's a bit squishy and I think the tire moved underneath Guadarrara and he was not ready for that to move. And it just, there's nothing to do about it.

It just squished and went flat and it just, that was it. He was done. Now, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was all optical. I think it was. How did you see it?

Well, like you, Jim, I mean, without a doubt, the front twitched on him hard. He was already on a wide trajectory because Marquez did nothing wrong, but he did kind of push Guadarrara wider than he would otherwise like to have been. And that little bubble just sent him even further wide, further into the turn, at which point he's on the dirty stuff. And there's really only one outcome at that point, whether it was kind of aero outwash or could it have even been a slightly cold tire, bearing in mind it was the first lap and he just, maybe it just momentarily locked. Don't know.

Your theory sounds good to me, Jim, and maybe they ran the tire a little bit lower pressure, expecting him to drop into the pack anyway. You know, just didn't quite have the correct amount of pressure and feel. It's the first lap. I mean, there's so many things that can happen, aren't there? But I mean, I just thought fair play to him for hanging it out and toughen it out because that was always going to be a losing battle really for Yamaha against the Ducati at the moment.

Although the advances that the Yamaha is making are clear to see, albeit the caveat to that is they do have an alien on the bike. We don't really use that term anymore, but Quattroraro really is very, very, very good indeed. And he just hasn't really been able to share it for the last couple of two or three seasons, has he, let's be honest. But give him a sniff and suddenly he's there. I think he's a guy that won't crash trying on a bike that he knows can't do it.

But the moment he has a bike that he can get a result on, he's going for it big style. And I kind of admire that about him. Actually, there's no point injuring yourself needlessly on a bike that just can't do it. You know, so we saw a rider that's been completely absent for the last few years, really this weekend, didn't we? I mean, OK, he had a good round in Qatar, it must be said as well.

But again, the long straight there was always going to count against the Yamaha. So did Yamaha have private testing with Honda at Haaretz before this race? I think they did. Did they have it at Haaretz? I know they're in Valencia, weren't they?

OK, sorry, sorry, sorry, Valencia. They had private tests before we went to Haaretz. And didn't they find a motor that gave them two more kilometers per hour? No, that was in the test yesterday. So they had a little upgrade yesterday.

All right. I'm just my timelines messed up. Sorry. So I think they were testing the V4 in Valencia. That's right.

Yes. Prior to the Haaretz weekend, that was definitely Augusto Fernandez, who obviously is the test rider now and was substituting for Olivera, who's still injured. And I think this little engine tweak upgrade, because Alex Rins was very pleased with the small improvement that they had made. And it might bring us on later when we get to testing Jim to talk about the merits of the inline four versus the V4 that may or may not appear. And I must before I forget, I don't want to forget to correct myself.

I've said a couple of times, I think now that Yamaha can't run the V4, but because in actual fact, they can because they've got completely open concessions. So if they want to go with the V4 at some point, they absolutely can. And I've been saying that they can't because the engines are frozen. Not for them or Honda. Yeah.

Just to correct myself and put my hand up when I'm wrong. So it's Mark, Alex, Benya, Morbidele, Outager, Digia, race done. No other way to put it. They follow each other home. Miller does fall at turn six.

Morbidele got a track limits warning. Zarco was down at turn two, tucked the front, but that's it. The race finishes as it started. Nothing really changes. After the out of your Digia and Tony, it's Vinalas, the Zeki, Mir and Acosta.

I mean, Mir actually stayed on a bike for longer than six laps. I was impressed. Small gains, small gains. So that's how the sprint finishes. In fact, I had slightly pithily and not entirely tongue in cheek.

After qualifying two had finished, I put the problem for MotoGP is that qualifying is arguably better than the racing. And that was certainly bored out in terms of the sprint. Yes, but not necessarily in terms of the main races we're going to come to now. Things change. Give us 24 hours.

Things will change. You never know what can happen. Yep. All right. Everyone is on the medium medium.

So tires were de facto standard for everyone. Marquez from his second starting spot got a bad start. Now, not so sure if the ride height devices didn't engage properly because Mark kind of stopped. Don't know if he had it all the way there. He then kind of came forward, slammed on the brakes.

It looks like everything was set then and now the back end sat down. Okay, maybe we're all good. But it was something was definitely not right. Whatever that may be. Don't know.

But he definitely got off to a bad start. It was Quattro Aro, Ben Yaya, Mark and then Alex. When they got down to six, Alex was in way too deep. He threaded the needle between his brother and Ben Yaya to not hit either one and just simply went wide in six and fell back to his fourth place position. Now, at that point, Ben Yaya and Marquez go at each other.

They pass each other like two or three times on that same lap. That was game on. Yes, it was Ben Yaya was obviously not going to play second fiddle to Marquez. Marquez knows this. It was the battle of the superpowers and the super team to see who was going to come out on top.

Let me say we at least got a couple of laps that were thrilling and entertaining as those two decide that doesn't matter that you're my teammate. We're deciding who's going to win this thing because eventually Quattro Aro has got to fall back into their grasp. So that's how that part. Well, while those two are playing around, Quattro Aro literally is pulling away. He's putting a gap on everybody.

And then the shocking moment again, if you have this on your binger card, you're good. Marquez tossed it away at which turn was it? Turn eight. He lost the front end. He folded it and he went through the gravel trap.

He stayed with the bike. He scooted across it. When he picked the bike back up, the left side fairing was pretty much trash in bit and battered pieces and he remounted to be 22nd position. Did not see this coming. Marquez then is like, well, it's how far back up is Mark going to get in this and is Benyai going to inflict maximum pain on Mark because he knows now Mark is out of the race, essentially.

So that's where the excitement comes. But Alex gets by Benyai at turn 13. A brilliant move, a good braking. He sets it up the corners prior. 11 and 12, the two fast rights.

He put a big gain, a ton of time on Benyai and then was able to pull out and make a very nice pass into the final turn. This all becomes important sort of later as we go through all this. We'll talk about it at the end, Rich. By now, Qualtiro is out front. He's followed by Alex, then Benyai, then Outaguer who's having a great race.

Outaguer had a great sprint. Outaguer is having another great race. Vinales is after him. Then Digia. And then, can Outaguer podium?

I really thought this was possible that he's going to be able to podium. This is not outside of the realm of impossibilities that Outaguer is going to show up and get a podium here. Now Alex, since he's passed Benyai, is catching Quattrorara. The amount of distance between say that straight on the backstretch 10-6, through 7-8, and then 10-11-12. Alex just ate the Yamaha up.

It just like literally just ate him up. Basically, he set himself up to head to turn one and pass Quattrorara for the lead. Mark is now in 19th place. He still isn't in the points at this point. We're talking like 10 laps to go.

Good on Quattrorara and the Yamaha boys. They led half that race. Honestly, I thought Quattrorara was going to pull off a miracle. The only thing I could think it was all crap. Yamaha is going to lose their concessions because they're going to win a race.

You know? I mean, it's like, gosh, who's the author? It's the worst of times. It's the best of times. Isn't that the opening to like, I can't think of it.

You've got me on that one, Jim. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not. I don't remember. I don't remember books or authors very well, but it's a Dickens novel or something, isn't it?

I don't know. I'll see if I can find it. Rich will find that while I tell you what else happens. Vignales is now catching and he's catching Benyaya at about two tenths of a second per lap because Benyaya is just sitting in third. He's not really going anywhere because Quattrorara is between him and that.

Now, Benyaya tried, tried, and tried again, but he could not find a way past Quattrorara. Now, this was getting to be interesting because like, wait a minute, this is the Yamaha. We know the Yamaha has made strides. We know that it's better. But for good, and it's a sweet, sweet handling machine, but Ducati horsepower should at least set you up at turn six, right?

I mean, Benyaya has won this race the past three years. It isn't like Benyaya is a slouch here, but 11 and 12 seem to be the doom of Benyaya on that Ducati. He literally could not make any ground up in that sequence of events, which should lead you into the ability to sling out. If you get a good run through those two corners to pass your opponent, when you go into 13, it's one of the reasons we love Horef because the last corner, last lap scenario plays out because you can run through those. If you can carry momentum through 11 and 12, you have a better chance of getting past the person in 13.

This unfortunately never really does happen, but Mir does go down at turn six. Mark is now up to 17th, was at five laps to go. It's Alex, it's Quattroraro, it's Benyaya, Vinalas, Digia, and Bender. How that happened, we don't know, we were only watching what's going on out in the front. Mark has made his way to 15th.

He's going to get at least a point by this point. And actually, in four laps, he's actually made it to 13th, which is as high as he can go. But Alex Marquez wins the race. The crowd goes wild. He goes wild.

Everybody loves this. The celebrations, the joy, the emotion, I felt all of it with Alex. He got a chance to win a MotoGP race, thankfully. I would hate to see him be the Randy Momola of his generation where he never, ever gets that win. He's so close.

Quattroraro, an incredible second place on the podium with the Yamaha. Benyaya settles for a third. Vinalas is fourth. Digia Antonio is fifth. Bender is sixth.

Acosta, Ayagura, Bastianini, Marini, Zarco, Marc Marquez in 12th for four points. Renz, Bizecki, and Raul Fernandez. Now, Rich, MotoGP now let you vote for your rider of the race, a la 4-1. Don't know where Liberty got that idea from. Oh, I mean, I mean, Dorn got that idea from Liberty from, I mean, they copied somebody.

But the crowd had their opinion. The internet voted and they chose. Who would you pick for it? Well, I would pick Quattroraro. As tough as that is on Alex Marquez, obviously winning his first MotoGP race.

Obviously, he's won a sprint before. Was that in India last year? Yes, I believe so. But I mean, that was as good as a win for Yamaha and Quattroraro really, wasn't it? And I just think across the whole weekend, he did have a crash in one of the pre-practice sessions on the Friday.

First one. First one on the Friday, yeah. That was the only blot on Quattroraro. I mean, you don't really see him crash a great deal anyway, do you? But he was just outstanding across the whole of the weekend, really.

And the rest of the Yamaha riders have their reasons for underperforming. But it's kind of a hang your head in shame kind of time, really, isn't it? Because he was so much faster. So that's all you can say, really. So for me, Quattroraro, rider of the race and rider of the weekend, really.

The internet agrees with you, Rich, because everybody voted for Quattroraro for rider of the race. I thought they had, but that's not why I've said it, because I just genuinely think that is the correct choice. Yeah, I mean, it's a tough decision. Alex gets his first win. That's pretty big.

But I think what Quattroraro did was bigger. I would go with Quattroraro as well in that situation. So that's all that. Let's run through the points and then let's go back to talking about the Ducatis. I just want to say on the Alex Marquez thing, just in terms of the rider.

He was damn lucky not to take out three of the riders in front of him on the first lap. I don't know that that was anything other than luck rather than judgment. Oh, I believe it was blind luck. You described it as threading the eye of the needle. But I think at that point, he was way out of control and he was bloody lucky that he didn't hit at least one other bike or a couple because you tend to see that skittle effect, don't you, in the first lap or two.

I think Mark knew he was there, because Mark does not turn in. If you watch it, Mark is not turning in. He knew he would have done that for anybody. Right. It just happens to be his brother in this instance.

Right. Like any sane individual has enough peripheral vision on a motorcycle to realize something's coming and I need to get out of the way, which he did. But he is incredibly lucky. But that's kind of what Alex needed. He needed a little luck to go his way.

He's always been so close. Yeah. Oh, no, don't begrudge him to win. He rode brilliantly all weekend, didn't he? I kind of felt like he was going to get it, to be honest with you, as fast as he was through practice and everything.

All of that is like, wow, man, maybe this is Alex's turn because I think we know that the factory Ducati has a problem. The 24.9 or whatever we want to call this thing has got some flaws. Let's talk about that in a minute. But he did. He won.

I mean, absolutely incredible ride. Loved it. Did he get cheated by not getting right out of the race? I have no idea. He did get cheated.

It doesn't really matter to him because he leads the world championship. He is one point ahead of his brother, 140 to 139. Benyaya gained a lot because he's on 120 now, but he's still 19 points behind Mark and he's a full 20 behind Alex. So Benyaya has got trouble coming. Morbidele is definitely down on 84.

He's some 56 points off the lead and 36 behind Benyaya. But it's definitely a three-horse race for this world championship. With that said, Digia is fifth, Quattroraro with those points jumps up to sixth, Zarco seventh, then Ayagura, Bizeki and Acosta. So let's talk quickly because this dovetails into testing. There's a problem with the 25 Ducatis.

What that is, is it the front end? I think it is. Benyaya says that it's the front end, right? He's even said that it's an arrow problem. I've heard from the internet that he believes that this Ducati does not handle the dirty air as good as the previous Ducati.

Benyaya says that I should have been able to be faster through 11 and 12 than I was, but I can't ride there because the front end lacks the feel. So he was going to go into testing looking to solve the feel problem. People have pointed out conspiratorially, hey, it isn't a dirty air problem because Marquez spent a lot of time behind Alex in Thailand. Mark also raced through the pack on a broken Ducati to 19th. So it's obviously not just that.

It's something there. Is the front end maybe vague where it's not providing that feel? Don't know. It's interesting that Ducati supposedly brought to the test new arrow because they're allowed to homologate another set. Is it to help fix this bike?

Does Mark have the same problem? What do you think of all this, Rich? Well, clearly the 25 bike is a bit different in certain areas. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a 25 bike, even though it's a 24 point something. So I don't think it's Benyaya making it up, although you do sometimes wonder how much of this is kind of mental because last year, of course, he was only really racing Jorge Martín, whereas this year he's got some other people to contend with.

So perhaps part of the lack of feel or the change in feel is just that he's a bit deeper in the pack in races so far this year and he's not used to it. But there's either been first or second most of the time last year for my recollection, at least. So maybe that's part of it. Marquez looked a bit sort of twitchy or the bike looked a bit twitchy. Now, whether that's just classic Marquez kind of, I don't want to say overriding, because who am I to say that?

But Marquez is very aggressive on a bike. We know this. I mean, I have several things about the race gym observations and thoughts. I mean, one question in my mind was where Mark Marquez crashed. If you looked at the rear camera view from who was at Benyaya's bike, because he was in front of Mark at this point, obviously that turn, whatever it is, is a left hander.

Mark came into that turn and through that turn so fast, you wonder if he almost kind of glitched a little bit because he was going to run into the back of Benyaya. Such was the closing speed and his speed advantage in the left hand turn. And perhaps that's what sent him down. Or was it just that the bike is a bit twitchy and a bit vague on the front end? It's hard to know really, isn't it?

My understanding from the test was that they didn't really test anything much new. Now, whether that was because I think it was quite windy there. There's been all sorts of problems in Spain over the last few days with power outages. So it's disrupted everything. So I don't know to what extent that might have led to it.

But in the run up to this test across the last two or three races, Benyaya has consistently said he couldn't wait for the Jerez test to test new parts that hopefully were going to fix his problem. And it sounds as if they didn't really test anything particularly new. So quite what we make of that, I don't know. I suppose we'll find out a bit more come what Lamont next. Although that is classically a tricky weekend with weather and all sorts of other variables creep into the equation there.

So yeah, the sort of the works Ducat is, and of course we have to include Digia in this as well because he's riding that same spec of bike, is a bit of a conundrum. And I would contend that it's not a three horse race. I still think it's a two horse race with the championship because I just think that as the year goes on, Alex Marquez's bike is not going to get developed. Correct. It is the 24 bike.

It's the best bike currently. Of that I think there is absolutely no question. But I think Benyaya, if he can sort of develop his way through some of these issues that he's got, and if Mark Marquez keeps crashing a bit too much, which is his historical Achilles heel, isn't it? Is pushing too hard at the wrong moment and crashing. I'm not saying needlessly, but perhaps, I mean, again, that race probably would have come to Mark Marquez if he just kept his cool a little bit.

I see, I think it was brilliant to watch that first and second lap where, or was it the first lap, where him and Benyaya, and Benyaya was not having it. I mean, great to see that from Benyaya because he's been sort of shoulders down so far this year and he really kind of stuck his head above the parapet, didn't he, and said, no, no, I'm not taking this one without a fight. And he put Mark Marquez in his place a little bit, didn't he? Sure did. I think that might have rattled Mark a little bit as well.

Which led to that early crash. It kind of, the red mist might come down a wee bit because I'm going to jump around a little bit here. That's OK. Mark Marquez did go down to Park Fermé to congratulate his brother, but note the difference in tone. He's been elated when he, Mark, has won and Alex has been on the podium with him.

Switch it around a little bit. Alex gets the glory and Mark's on the ground. The happy face slipped somewhat. So I think that race kind of caught Mark Marquez out a little bit. He got a bit duffed up by his teammate, which he wasn't expecting.

And then, obviously, crashed, maybe needlessly, his track was a bit of a strong way of putting it. But it just all went wrong. And for his brother then to win the race and take the championship lead, it was a bit of a sour face Mark Marquez come Park Fermé in post-race interviews time. And yeah, he wasn't quite as elated by his brother winning as I thought he might be. Thoughts?

He was a bit down. Racers love to race and they love to win. When they don't win, they don't like it too much. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I understand it.

But I just I'm going to shuffle it off as racers want to win. And that's that. My thought is that maybe there's a like Marquez doesn't seem to have this problem in the sprint race. So that makes me think that maybe the fuel load is a problem. Right.

Like the balance is wrong because I've heard them say that they have different tanks for the sprint race versus the Sunday race, which makes sense. You don't want the fuel slosh. Right. So if you can make that smaller to only contain what you need and stop the slosh going forward, it's good. So it makes me think that maybe there's too much weight on the front too early.

And that's what Marquez doesn't like. It's maybe what Benyaya doesn't like. So how do you how on earth do you fix that problem? Well, that's a really that's a fundamental sort of frame problem. Now, part of me wonders a bit is that I can't be wrong in this, but they agreed at the tests prior to the season that the 25 motor was not the way to go.

So the 25 chassis has a 24 engine in it. And that's what they're going to have from now until we get 850s. Yeah. The question is, what is there can't be a whole lot different between those two engine mounting positions because do Cotty put the older motor into that frame? But is there something about that motor that it somehow has weight distributed differently to try to make an offset that didn't work because the riders don't like the power it produces or don't like the feel or whatever they came up with.

Oh, we like this engine better. But is that somehow in some way pushed weight to a different place that they don't like and that they've got to find a setup to compensate for that particular problem? I don't know, but that's what I'm thinking is going on. So it's interesting to me. Yeah.

All of this is interesting. And all of what's going to happen later is going to be interesting. It's just you seem to think that for some reason, if Mark would just chill a little bit, he'd be OK. But that's not his style. And so it's going to be interesting to see what he does in France because I'm trying to think, and I don't have this all top of my head.

Maybe you know, Rich, has he ever won a race there? I think he must have done. I think he must have done at some point. But I think it was like he struggled there for a long time. And then finally, I think he broke his duck or whatever.

But with all that said, that's what was going to go into testing. So let's go through testing news, some testing notes a little bit. OK, Rich, something else, please. One more thing, because it didn't get shown in the race. And it hasn't been particularly widely reported.

Frankie Morbidelli had an enormous crash. They didn't show it on replay and was, from what I've read, was not clean unconscious for quite some time. And it's had quite a significant head injury. I'm not in a sense that he's in mortal danger or anything. But it's always they don't rush to show replays now on any incident because it's kind of deemed to be a bit insensitive, I suppose, which we can take issue with that another time.

But if they don't show a replay at all, you kind of wonder what's happened. And it does seem that he had a very, very big crash and hurt himself quite badly. So whether he'll be out in France or not, because that's what, two weeks, I think. Two weeks. Yeah, obviously we'll find out in due course.

So Simon Patterson had put this out on the socials. It said, a mixed signals about Franco Morbidelli's crash at the weekend. Originally reported by the team as a cervical concussion, then changed to a cervical contusion. An odd choice of words with mistranslation cited. Not the first time we've seen that mistake in MotoGP.

But now seeing reports from fans on the scene saying he appeared unconscious immediately afterwards and was structured away, which matches up with him not being declared rider OK on the info screens. And there's no TV images of it either. So that's a bit of conspiracy theory there. So we'll find out about that. So these are all just little quick snippets of testing of little things that we know from a lot of this is all due to Simon Patterson.

But Pedro Acosta underwent successful arm pump surgery this evening on his right forearm to treat the chronic compartment syndrome. Going to be able he's expected to return to be able to be good to go for the French GP provided that he passes a medical check. So that's an interesting little tidbit that's that for you all to think about while we're on that one. So it's like at one point you were saying that there was winds and stuff. The cell phone signals disappeared.

Presumably because the backup generators had ran out of diesel. You know, the new Yamaha engine, not a V4 was tested today was tested. It was two kilometers per hour faster and meant Alex Rins went a half a second faster. He's very pleased with it and both of them will race it in Le Mans. We kind of talked about that earlier.

You're there. True. Marco Buzek is going to focus on aerodynamics and testing different swing arm. Lorenzo Salvadori was going to do some new developments aimed at improving braking performance and the bike's stability. So Vignales, Bignale, Buzeki were the first three guys out on track as soon as the lights go.

Those guys all searching for some sort of setup development. KTM had a fresh livery of all fresh carbon fiber on Danny Pedro's bike. They're obviously looking for something that was going to be there for that. Right. And let's see.

There was the whole talk of the wind or wind thing or whatever, but that appears to be mostly all of what's going on. Other than, you know, I think Jack did retire from the race. We didn't mention this. But basically what happened was that one of the fairing bolts was touching the wiring loom, had rubbed through it and severed something important because the bike went to three cylinders for Jack. So that's what happened to Jack in there, which I did not mention.

But now we know that as well. And Marquez has said, if I want to fight for the championship, I have to understand these mistakes that have been made, which is definitely not good here. So interesting stuff for all that. That's everything that I kind of know about testing. That's all that I know from what happened in Spain over the weekend.

We look forward to the bonds in two weeks. Always an interesting race that appears there. Never know what's going to happen with the weather. It could be 85 and sunny. It could be 45 and rainy.

Who knows what's going to happen in the northern part of France there. Rich, any final comments before we get out, sign off and get out of here? Well, it certainly would be unusual if there wasn't at least some rain over the weekend because I've been to that race once or twice. And yes, it's usually a bit wet at times. Matt Burt, I think on the Dawn of Fede is who perhaps you were trying to think of his name earlier on.

Yes, Matt Burt. Sorry, his name was escaping me momentarily. And the town of two cities by Dickens is where your literary prowess is showing itself, Jim. Very well done. Thank you.

Yeah. It'll never happen again, folks. The only other thing I just wanted to touch on was Fabio Quattraro kind of saying over the weekend, because obviously there was a lot of questions coming the Yamaha riders way back, the V4 test. Clearly a lot slower than the inline four at the moment. And Augusto Fernandes, I think, pains to say he didn't want to be the first person to crash the Yamaha V4 in the modern era.

So wasn't exactly overdoing it in that Valencia test. But Quattraro kind of saying this sounds a little bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it at the same time, as we say in English. He's looking forward to the V4 and maintaining the sweet handling of the Yamaha. And some people pointing out that you probably won't get both. You get one or other thing.

You get more power and perhaps more drivability off the turns, perhaps a bit more top end with the V4. But you're not going to do the sort of the wide arcing fast in fast through turns. It's going to be more the V-corner approach. Some people kind of tongue in cheek kind of saying Quattraro might get the V4 and then say, oh, I prefer my old bike, you know. And what does that mean for Yamaha?

I mean, I don't know with the 850s whether they would look to run that as a V4 perhaps. Who knows? We've said numerous times on this show and I know that I've mentioned it. But at the point when Suzuki bowed out, that was arguably at that particular moment, the best bike on the grid. And that was an inline four and that thing was making loads of horsepower.

So there might still be some life in the inline four just yet. It might solve one problem, but reveal a different one, I think is the conventional wisdom. I think it's more to do with the compactness of the V4. With the rigs going to in 27, you're going to have a standardized, here's the wings you can have on the front. So all the rule says is the overall width from the left side of the bike to the right side of the bike, take a tape measure, you can't be beyond X.

Okay, fair enough. If you have an inline four, that is going to be wider than the V4 by its nature of design. There's nothing you can do about that. That means that you running an inline four will have an aerodynamic disadvantage because your wing area will be reduced because the width of your engine is wider. So if we just say for the sake of this argument, it's I'm going to say 36 inches.

It's the easiest thing to do because I can divide into thirds. That means you get 12 inches of wing on one side. If you get a V4, you can have 12 inch wide V4. That isn't true, but let's just go with it for a minute, folks. And then you get 12 inches of wing on the other side.

If you get an inline, well, you're not going to get the 12 inches of wing on each side. You're only going to get 10 because your V4 is four inches wider. So it's a 16 inch wide engine as opposed to a 12 inch wide engine. Is that why they're doing it? I don't know.

Is that because they're looking ahead to the future and seeing that maybe they need to have a V4 in the 850 class? We have no idea what size displacement that V4 is. Did they make a thousand? That's a lot of work for one season. Well, exactly.

To have a V4. Is it that Yamaha says, nah, we're going to stick with this V inline four until the regulations of 850 and show up with a V4 on the grid, I think is a more probable outcome of sums than, hey, we're going to change our bike and run a V4. Yeah. I mean, at the very minimum, Fabio decided to stay put at Yamaha and put a lot of faith in Yamaha. And they are repaying that faith at the moment because they're trying their hardest to develop what they've got, which is the inline four.

And as we know at the test, they did come with an upgrade to the motor, which gave them a bit more speed. Concurrently, they're running a 1000cc V4 potentially to run it this year and certainly next. And they're developing the 850 at the same time. So I mean, talk about chucking a lot of resources at the problem at the moment. That's why it's so heartening to see Fabio turning out a result in a weekend like he just did, because that will give everybody a bit of spring in their step for the immense effort that's being made.

But I'm kind of curious. I mean, your point about the aero regs is interesting, Jim, because I'm assuming, well, I'm pretty sure that the new regulations for 27 are not framed in such a way that you have to run a V4. I'm sure you are allowed to run an inline four as well. I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to run a triple or a five cylinder bike any longer because of... Yeah, I think they kind of closed that roof hole.

Cost caps and stuff. But if the rules allow an inline four, then you are almost giving an aero advantage to the V4 format, aren't you? Because they've got more width to play with, presumably. Presumably, yes. Yeah.

So I mean, that would be interesting to talk to somebody perhaps a bit more on the inside, technically, about that. Yeah, interesting. That was just some of the chatter around all this different engine configuration and development that Yamaha are doing. And perhaps, you know, they might solve the problem of the power and the drive and whatnot, but fundamentally all to the thing that makes Fabio so devastating. And bearing in mind, he's never ridden another bike and he hasn't ridden the V4 in MotoGP.

And people were pointing towards Vinales, for example, who's a good example. And this is obviously pertinent to his performance this year, whereby he started on the Suzuki, did really well, which was an inline four transition to the Yamaha as Ross's teammate inline four. Was Vinales on a Suzuki that was an inline four? I thought that was the V4 because then Suzuki... No.

That was an inline... Okay. Yeah. Okay. That was when Suzuki came back in, they went sort of conventional with the engine.

The previous, the 990 that they ran was the V4. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. So he transitioned to the Yamaha, if you recall, as Ross's teammate and won, I think, first time out and possibly the first two or three races on the Yamaha he won. Had the whole kind of fallout with Yamaha, we don't need to go back through the sordid details of that, went to the Aprilia and took a season and a half, arguably two seasons, to get his head around riding the V4. Has now jumped onto the KTM and everyone's thinking, oh, is it going to take him two years to get used to it? No.

I mean, it's a V4 again and he's right on the money. So I think what this tells us is that moving from an inline four to a V4 is not just the work of a moment in terms of getting your head around it and making it work. Now, maybe Fabio would because he is... Well, I don't want to say if he's a better rider than Vinales because Vinales on his day is almost unbeatable, but Quattro Rara has a lot more days like that. So yeah, just, it's going to be interesting to see how that one plays out, isn't it?

And it's hard to, well, impossible to predict really. Other than that, nothing else to mention really, Jim, from the weekend. Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen. It's going to be fascinating to watch, the testing to watch.

We get to the end of 26 and we got the next day Valencia test. That's going to be wild to watch a bit without the rate 50s. I mean, it's going to be, gosh, give me the spy photos now just so I can go, gah. Because somebody's going to pull off some unobtainium bit that I'm going to just drool over because it's been machined from one solid chunk of aluminum that's as big as my computer screen. And now it's a small little ingot of decadence.

I don't know. Anyway. That might be one to start putting a few pennies in the piggy bank towards actually going to Valencia for that test because that would be a great test to attend, wouldn't it? Yeah. It'd be good for you to get out of the dreary British winter.

Absolutely. Yeah. Just before we sign off, Jim. Yes. Just to mention, because I don't want to forget, British Superbikes get going either this weekend or next, certainly before we record again.

And World Superbikes are at Cremona in Italy this weekend. Petrucci did the treble last year. Don't think he'll do it this year. But funny little track, kind of go-karty. Yeah.

World Superbikes will be entertaining from there, I'm sure. And yeah, looking forward to BSB getting going again. I think Moto America's in Road Atlanta this weekend, I think. Elkhart Lake is that? No, Road Atlanta.

Oh, Road Atlanta. Sorry, I thought you said Road America. Okay. Yeah. It's easy to confuse those two.

So yeah, racing is full swing. Yeah. Oh dear. Lots of TV at the weekend. Oh yeah.

So folks, that is it. We are out of this show. I want to tell you all just to ride safe. Yeah. See you next time.