Zarco est magnifique!!

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. Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 806 for May 13th, 2025.

I'm Jim McDowell, hosting this show with me as always riding alongside Richard Jop from the UK. Richard, it's in the evening there for you. Did you have a nice and wonderful, pleasant spring English day? We do. We're having some very bonny weather at the moment.

In fact, it's for the next week. It's very unusual actually in the UK and the Southwest at this time of year. May is often has some nice patches, but we've got pure sunshine now for about the next week. Hopefully that stays like that because I'll be getting out on the motorbike tomorrow, all being well. So yeah, no, lovely, lovely weather here.

Very unusually hot and sunny. Wow. So here in Ohio, it is drizzly, rainy and terrible. I don't think we should stray places because usually in May it's relatively nice weather with some bright sunshine and you get an occasional thunderstorm or whatever that rolls through. But here it's like the three days of continuous rain.

The week prior was three days of continuous rain. Yeah. So yeah, just wet, wet, wet here. The weather cynic in me suspects that this nice weather will end just in time for the Silverstone Motor GP weekend to arrive and then we'll be back to sort of business as usual with Hamptonshire weather. Yeah.

Everybody's going to have to have a jumper on and it's going to be like what 12C or something. Yeah, exactly. And wet. And miserable. Wet.

Yeah. Oh, good grief. Hopefully not. All right. Well, it was, I don't know, it was kind of, I don't know, was it miserably wet at Le Mans?

I don't know. It was kind of cold, I think, but not necessarily there. But that's what we're going to talk about, folks, is we're going to talk about what happened at Le Mans. But hey, I want to thank everybody who is continuing to support the show and continue to do so. If you like the show, please give us a like.

Go to your place where you pick up your podcast, write a review, just give us a like, something there to help us get more and more people behind the show. Tell your friends about the show as well. And remember that you can make donations to us to keep us with the lights on. It's on our webpage, www.modopodcast.com. And you can find links to PayPal and Patreon.

With that, let us talk about this amazing racing that we had here in Le Mans this past weekend, Rich. Let's start as always with Moto3 and look at what happened there. Now we get into the qualifying with these guys. It's always weird to try to figure out who's going to get out of these Moto3 qualifying sessions. There was a few people in there that you kind of didn't think should be there.

Rollston was in there, Lunetta was there, Perez was there, Rossi, Nepa, Eddie O'Shea, Carrero and Buchanan. All those guys have a good shot at trying to get through this. But O'Shea was down and he had a problem. He was down at the museum, right? And Rollston was down at the museum as well.

So those two guys were all there. It was interesting that Rollston was actually a quick at that point and Lunetta was second quick and Perez and Carrero were all going to get through it that way. It was a little past halfway, I guess. But Rollston did not have a bike. He had returned to the pits but his bike did not make it back.

And it was like, well, is he going to be able to get through if he does or doesn't to the next session? Would he have a bike to actually work with? No one really knew or whatever what was actually going to happen. And then it had to be repaired. But it took forever for the bike to finally get back there.

And they did get it ready for Q2 as those guys that were mentioned did get through to that second session. So a bit of a rush by the Rollston is the Tech 3 boys, right? I believe so a little bit of a thrash for those guys to get that bike back together. I mean, I believe they said that I heard something that they had. There was the throttle was kind of stuck.

They had replaced like the throttle, I think. And the sprockets were the chain was off the sprockets. So they had to reattach all that. So a bit of a thrash there for this, which is kind of crazy. When that second round of qualifying showed up, it was Linetta.

He crashed out at the chicane and the bike continued on down the hill. So Dunlap chicane that's turns three and four. Linetta lost it coming out of four. Everybody sort of seems to high side there because it's a very off camber corner. But the bike slid and continued on down over the hill, which I thought was going to bring out a red flag because it's an unsighted area as you're cresting the hill for that.

The luckily the bike was to the far riders left, but then Marshall's and everybody's got to be there. But it just so happened that it happened to throw it away right when everybody got through and went to the pits to get a new fresh rear. So the action of the session did continue on unabated. Now at that point in time, we've been rejoined by Max Kiles in this. He was leading at that halfway point and then everybody's kind of decided when they're going to go out and how they're going to judge this and whatnot and what they're going to do.

They showed a picture of Kiles. He's literally standing there visor up, arms kind of folded across, leaning against the toolbox without a care in the world. The dude was like the most coolest cucumber I can ever think of. Very few people can be that nonchalant. Maybe Doug Pullman was maybe that way too because he was famous for being in a lawn chair until the last second and then getting up or whatever.

But it was kind of remarkable for a kid that's that young to sort of just have that much cool, considering the fact that he legitimately was leading the race to pole position in there. But as it turned out, it all kind of went topsy-turvy at the end, which usually happens. But Kiles would get his first pole position in the class by taking pole. Then Pini was second. Kelso had a strong run to get to third.

Then it was Piqueras, Adrian Fernandez, David Munoz, Peroni, Rueda having a difficult time here in Le Mans for some reason. And Rueda just did not look like he had the pace at all anywhere along that. Then Almanza, Carrera, Forosado, and Yamanaka ran out the first four rows that were there. I was a little surprised that Kiles was on pole, Rich, but I guess we should suspect that these guys have that kind of talent, that they're just going to bust one out every now and then. I mean, they arrived, don't they, in Moto 3.

Some of these kids, they're sort of ready-cooked, aren't they, in the sense of just cool as Cucumbers, got all the skills, speak English mostly pretty well, all the media training, fast as hell. So he looks like he's been there for years, doesn't he? Yeah, and considering he was coming back from an injury where he missed Qatar and Jerez. Yeah, peanuts, right? Yeah.

Yep. He missed those too. So he had a four-week break there of not riding. So you would have thought he'd been a bit race rustier, so to speak. No, I'm going to throw it on pole.

No problem. Yeah, unless it's a kid, of course, we've got to remember that he's only just turned old enough to actually compete in the Moto 3 Grand Prix World Championship, isn't it? So I mean, he is freshly into the series. So it's a bit of a worry for everybody else. Yeah, he is barely 18.

He didn't exactly under-impress on his first outing, did he? No, no. To be freshly 18 and have the composure that he seems to have is quite remarkable at that point. So there was all that kind of crazy stuff that went on. So yeah, that was pretty wild.

The race. Now, we get to Sunday. Saturday was a beautiful day in Le Mans. Bright blue skies, white puffy clouds. Everything was great.

Everybody was always talking about on Saturday was, oh, there's doom and gloom. There's a prediction of rain. It's going to be terrible. Maybe the morning is going to be OK. Maybe the Moto 3 race will be dry.

Maybe Moto 2 will be dry. But well, 2 o'clock, no, this is going to be Moto GP is going to be just a soak fest and yada, yada, yada. Well, let's see what happens when it becomes race day, right? Well, it was very wet and cold in the morning for Moto GP's warm up. They have only like a 20 minute warm up session.

Definitely everybody was on wets for that whole thing. But by the time we got to Moto 3, they did declare the race to be a dry race, which forced everybody on the grid basically onto soft front and soft rear slicks. But when the flag, when the we also remember that Rossi has a long lap penalty for riding slowly on the on the line. So he's got that to take, which, you know, again, why everybody should everybody should have one of those at some point, basically. But Keles and Kelso got away with a great start, followed by Picaris, Munoz, Pinini, Firasato and Rueda.

Kelso then took the lead from Keles as Keles was going backwards. I don't know if he was tentative, wasn't sure about the slicks on a let's call it slightly damp surface. It was nowhere could you have gotten away with running a wet. That was an impossibility. Everybody was definitely going to have to be on the slicks, Rich.

So for him going backwards, I didn't think know what to think about that at the very beginning. You got thoughts? Well, pure speculation on my part. Obviously we weren't in Le Mans on Sunday, so I can't attest to if it was chilly. I mean, I've been to Le Mans a bit some years ago, but fundamentally the weather is similar.

And when it's damp there, it's kind of cold and it's quite a greasy surface anyway. My speculation is perhaps a lot of these kids, I mean Rueda was finding the weekend mostly a bit tricky. I just wonder if they're just used to super grippy, hot sunny tracks in Spain and on the Iberian Peninsula and they turn up in Le Mans on a day like Sunday in particular. It's a bit scary to feel the bike moving around on a pretty greasy, cold, damp or damp patches anyway track. So that's all I can really think of to be honest, because in the dry, warmer, as you say, nice blue sky, sunny Friday, Saturday conditions, people were kind of probably thinking Kilos is going to win this at a cancer.

But Sunday was obviously fundamentally different conditions and I think that showed really for him. This is just part of the learning experience for him. It sure is. Somebody who has done their learning is Kelso because he was out front. He was riding a great race.

He was keeping Picaris, Munoz and Pini at bay. There was no way around that. Now Rueda had moved his way up to like fifth. Kilos was then next, but then Fernandez was like the fastest person going for a little bit with the Honda there. So it was kind of interesting.

Pini got the second, then Rueda had made his way to fourth. Kilos was still leading at this point. Now there was a bit of a argy bargy there as they went into Dunlap, but Kilos sort of survived that little back and forth to continue to lead as Rueda had moved his way into second. It was by that point though Munoz had got back by Rueda and it was those front three guys right there, Kilos, Munoz and Rueda that sort of started to define a bit of a break. It was a good pack, but by about halfway those three guys had started to separate themselves from everybody else.

And then it was like you're kind of going, wait a minute, is this Munoz? Because he's sitting there in second. He had that go at Kilos, right? Kilos defended it, came right back at him, still had the lead. And Munoz sat there and I'm like, wow, has he finally learned the lesson that's required of him and that is that you just don't have to attack, attack, attack, attack, attack all the time.

There are times in a race that perhaps maybe you need, your attack did not work. Maybe you need to take a moment, follow the leader or the gentleman in front of you and say, oh, he's a little weaker here. Maybe my next attack happens at this corner. So I'm like, wow, this is definitely not the Munoz we're used to seeing because things started to run out as those three guys out front and we're trying to figure out if anybody could kind of bridge that gap to it. I mean, Carpe tried as he came through the pack to bridge that gap, but that was a gap too far and Carpe never figured into it.

As we get down to the end of it, it's like Rureda took a shot at Munoz to get to second. He could kind of see that Kelso had pace and Kelso kind of put his head down with the last few laps to go, just trying to do the best that he could to get away or at least keep that lead, that little bit of a lead that he had going. Rureda sensed it and went after Munoz, but Munoz went right back against Rureda and put him back to third. And then it's like, okay, you're just kind of waiting now because everybody's back together again, just those three guys, and you just knew Munoz was going to have a go somewhere. The question was, where was he going to have a go as we got to the last lap?

I thought potentially he may do it into Dunlop. He didn't. He resisted. I thought, okay, what about at the museum? Nope.

I can tell you there was Garage Verres, I think next on the track. And I thought, oh, definitely. That's it. All right. He's going to stuff it in there.

Nope. Never did. They got through the two, the two 90 degree turns and they were heading back to the end of the lap. I can't forget what they call that. The chicane that comes up there.

And I thought for sure that Munoz was going to make a move at that point. He did not. Munoz saved it to the very end. Now it is two turns to go. So you're heading to 13.

You're coming out of 12. Kelso ran wider than he normally did. If you look at the laps prior, Kelso was running a tighter line and was not letting the bike flow all the way out. He did this time. That was an effort to keep Munoz from coming around the outside of him and gaining the advantage of having the inside position going into turn 13.

Now Kelso knows he's there. Kelso is defending it, but Munoz just doesn't care. Just sends it. He just sent it. Now he wound the knocking, bumping into Kelso.

Kelso picks the bike up and runs wide. Munoz because he's in way too deep continues outside. He doesn't even come close to being on the track if you will. While all that's happening, Rerea is just like, thank you very much, gentlemen. I will win this one.

And sure enough, Rerea on a weekend that probably people could have made some points back up on him doesn't get to do that because Rerea wins. You had Munoz finishing second on track and then Kelso. But immediately Simon Kreyfarr and the boys said, nope, you're dropping a one position which Munoz got a podium. He could have had a second, but he got that. And sort of the justification for this, Rich, see whether you agree with this or not, is the fact that as Munoz tried to pass Kelso at 13, Munoz went wide and ran off the circuit too.

If Munoz I think had kept it on the curbing, I don't think Simon Kreyfarr and the boys would have docked him a position, but he did cross over that into the no-go zone and I think that kind of burned him. Yeah, I mean, I'm a bit conflicted on this one because last lap kind of, well, it's not the last one, it's penultimate corner, but people have to be able to have a go. But in the modern context of how the rules are framed with this kind of stuff, I mean, quite clearly showed that Munoz was essentially out of control, hit Kelso, which obviously said Kelso off the track as well. I think that might have played an even bigger part in Race Direction's decision actually, because had Kelso stayed on the track and maybe he wouldn't have got the win, but if he had been second, I think probably they would have just let that one go if Munoz had gone wide and rejoined the track and had finished third anyway. So I think they probably felt that that's what would have likely happened had he not been quite as out of control.

I mean, I'm pleased to say he hasn't got along that penalty for the next race, which is, you know, unusual for Munoz. But yeah, I felt a bit sorry for him in a way because I personally felt, taking your point that maybe Kelso was expecting a move around the outside and then a cut back, although I think that would be a pretty difficult move to do in that corner. I think Joel perhaps in retrospect might think that he just left the door wide open far too much and I mean, he knew Munoz was behind him because if he'd been reading his pit board pretty much every single lap of that race, you would have known that that move was coming. So I think he kind of invited it, but Munoz doing a standard Munoz move, you know, just kind of went in very, very hard and didn't really sort of come off. And I wonder, I mean, go back a lap, sort of Munoz doing the Troy Bayless routine, you know, get past and immediately go back by.

That did cost Rueda probably a second or a second and a half, I think. So I just wonder whether he thought, I'm just going to hold back now because I bet something happens in that last couple of turns. And I suspect he was half expecting to win that race, just bearing in mind that Munoz in second and it was absolute certainty that he was going to send one. And that's great if that is true of Rueda, that is really clever, crafty race craft. And that's what wins championships.

I believe I'm with you. I'm 100 percent with you that the Rueda is like if he's showing this much aggression against me, he's going to go after Kelso and he's going to they're either going to touch or run off and I'm going to be right there. So it isn't going to matter. Yeah, you know, you know, to me, Kelso did. You're right, Kelso did invite this right.

I mean, the way he the way he came out of 12, he let it go somewhat wide because he was expecting Rueda to kind of try to come around the outside and gain the advantage by being side by side into the you're coming out of a left hander, you're going to a right hander. OK, that makes sense. You're defending that. But then. In the back of your mind, and again, I'm not going to second guess what what Joel was trying to think about what he was doing, but you know, hindsight's 20-20 and I can sit here without risking lifeline body parts or whatever and say this, but it's like, man, if you knew you had to have known Munoz was there, if you again, if your paint's been to your pit board, you know, you had Munoz behind you.

behind you. That being the case. I would have break the smidgen earlier going to third going to 13 because Munoz would have flown by you to cut back to the inside. He'd have been off track. And even if he did somehow manage to keep it slightly on track, you had the inside to bump him out at the very last corner.

And I don't think anybody would have taken a win away from you if you had put Munoz down in that last corner. Yeah. So, you know, maybe that's I mean, I don't think Joel needs to learn that. I think he should have known that and you have to have situational awareness, right? The greats of the sport have always had situational awareness of understanding where everyone was and somehow having a mental 3D chessboard of where everybody is and what's happening at that time.

But it was a good race. Not going to lie. It took a little bit to ferment and finally become the fine wine that we expect to get from Moto3. But it was worth it at the end. I mean, with the greatest respect to Davy Munoz, he was always going to send one, whether it was inside the outside, straight into the back of Kelso.

That was obviously going to happen because extraordinarily, I had sort of lost sight of this until it got mentioned in the commentary. Obviously, Joel Kelso has never won a race, but neither Davy Munoz in Moto3, which kind of caught me slightly unaware, as I have to say, because he's been around a while, Munoz, and he is bloody quick, but it just goes to show how inconsistent and how wild he is that he hasn't ever won a race. They both obviously were gunning for it and perhaps that was clouding their judgment a little bit in terms of defense and attack. Who knows? But I mean, it was obviously very entertaining, wasn't it?

I think probably on balance, the switcheroo that they did for second and third, I think probably was the right call just about, even though I think Kelso probably might kick himself a little bit for not being a bit more defensive. And like you say, Jim, just sort of breaking a bit earlier, sure, in the knowledge that Munoz was likely to go sailing past in some sort of banzai move. So, but one thing we didn't pick up on actually, which was significant, was that on lap 10, Piqueras went down. Oh, that's right. Yes, I did.

Which was obviously significant for the championship and he looks to have a proper solcon when he got back to the pits. So I wouldn't have liked to have been in his immediate orbit for an hour or two after the race, but that was the only other sort of really significant thing that I can think of that happened really. Yeah. Yeah. So we know how the podium finished, but then Carpe would be fourth, then it was out Manza for Rosado, Keeley's was seventh, Fernandez fell to eighth, Lunetta was ninth, and Peroni was tenth, then Foggia, Ogden, Rolstein, Buchanan, and Carrara taking the last point.

As we look towards the championship in Moto 3, you have Rueda now on 116 points. He is 29 clear of Piqueras who is on 87. This one, this non-score hurt very much. It's tough. Kelso was a big gainer in this concept with Piqueras, but he's on 77 now, which is only puts him 10 behind, but he's 39 behind Rueda.

I think it's a two rider battle to the championship here between Rueda and Piqueras. Now Piqueras could whip out a ton of form here late in the year and just pull off magic, and all it takes is one small mistake by Rueda. I mean, he did have a mechanical, right? There's nothing to say that he's not going to have another mechanical. They're few and far between, and they're as rare as hen's teeth, to be quite honest.

Anything can happen, and if you're in the pack, one small flaw and things are where they are. To finish out the top 10 in the championship, Fernandez is fourth, then Furosado, Carpe, Bertelli, sorry, Luneta, Yamanaka, and Almanza are your top 10. Be interesting to see what happens at Silverstone. I'm wondering, Rueda is definitely going to be there. I think I've got to give him the nod going into the weekend.

Just the fast flowing, sweeping kind of sections that are there on that. But you have that big, long hanger straight. You've got the draft that people are going to hang into. We've seen on the faster flowing tracks that Kelso doesn't seem to have the horsepower, but I wonder if he keeps his podium streak alive. Be nice to see if he does.

Be interesting to see what happens with Picaras and how he rebounds off of this little attempt. So there's an interesting plot line that's kind of rolling here with the Moto3 guys that we shall have to wait and see from what happens at the Silverstone race, for sure. One thing that we haven't really seen a lot of so far this year, and I'm hoping we will see quite a bit of this year, is Picaras and Rueda kind of going at it to get together. Because it has the kind of feel of Lorenzo versus Marquez, doesn't it, in terms of the characters and the styles that we're dealing with here. Because Picaras has kind of changed squad, so I think he's still kind of finding his feet perhaps a little bit.

And when it works, it really, really works. Whereas Rueda, same team, is it the third year? Third year, certainly. He looks very, very assured and settled, doesn't he? And very sort of dependable.

I don't think he's going to drop a lot of points. I mean, he had that one failure, but that was a bike failure, as you said, Jim, which is very, very unusual. And Kelso, I mean, again, Lord, it's to him. I mean, he's having a best season by a mile, isn't he? So, okay, 39 points back, but he's still in the zone.

And he kind of looks like he's banished that propensity he had previous seasons to qualify well. And then kind of just dropped back further and further through the pack. So if he can just find another little bit, maybe he does become a bit more of a regular kind of top step challenger, even though he hasn't won a race yet. But I can see him winning a race or two this year with the form that he's on. So hopefully that will happen.

And I'm trying to think he's normally pretty good at Silverstone as well. So obviously he has a lot of experience now as well. So yeah, I'm looking forward to Silverstone. It should be a good Moto3 race. Way too early to talk about this, but I'm going to bring it up.

Of all the Moto3 guys, I can only see Ruveta moving to Moto2. I really don't see anybody else that's destined to make that move. Picaris is going to stick around because he needs a little more time, right? Yeah. Well, I think the thing that I agree with you, Jim, completely and utterly, I think what's going to not happen is much change in MotoGP, which is significant, because that means there won't be vacancies in Moto2.

So I think a lot of the Moto3 guys will kind of get stuck for a bit. Yeah. But I think there's people in Moto2 that are just going to be like slowly shown the door. Yeah. Well, I mean, you would have to start asking some serious questions about Joe Roberts, Celestino Vietti.

Yeah, those two are top-notch. I'll keep Jake Dixon out of it because he's having a strong year. I agree with you. Whereas those other two are not. And there's a few others that we could mention.

I mean, Diego Moreira is one person who is being tipped to go up next year, particularly with the Brazilian Grand Prix coming next year as well. So we might get into that later because that's relevant to some other hot news that's doing the rounds at the moment. But we'll come to that later on. But yes, I think Moto3 probably will remain slightly unchanged next year. I mean, if anybody does go up, I think it's a nailed uncertainty that it would be Picaris and Rueda.

I can't really see anybody else. Yeah, I can't either. Well, things can change. Well, Moto2, next as always. Surprisingly, Balthus found himself in Q1 after his great race the prior weekend.

Holgardo is in there as well, along with Ramirez, along with Alonso, along with Ortolla, Roberts and Colin Vier. Like, wow, that's kind of crazy, right? Like, Holgardo has sort of been the rookie of the year, if you will, in Moto2. And he's got, hmm, he seemed to always wind up being in the proper place. Now Sasaki was down at the S's, the front just tucked there halfway.

Dottasari was light years ahead of Alonso, Xantavante Gerberg and Huertas. But I think Balthus had a time that I don't think anybody was going to touch. In fact, I don't think Balthus went out. He stayed in the garage, confident that he had enough to get through. So it was like, well, who are going to be the other three people that are going to join him?

Well, after a great run, it was Ramirez, Vier and Alonso. But Ortolla and Alonso had laps coming that were really hot, really fast. So wound up with Balthus, Alonso, Ramirez and Ortolla all going through. And so that meant that all eight Basquiaturas had made it to Q2, which was interesting to note there. In the second one, where the question is like, well, did Gonzalez jump the light?

Because there was, you know, we had the controversy with Marc Marquez and Alex Marquez the previous weekend. Did you leave the pit lane too soon? And it was close, but I believe the light was on. As I recall, there was no penalties given to Gonzalez for that infringement. So that went there.

Now, Dixon just threw down a lap record pace on the first flying lap, which I was impressed. Dixon didn't need a warm up. He just threw it down. It was like, wow, that was pretty crazy. Garcia was down and out at museum.

It was a very weird crash because it was late in the corner and it looked like the back end had come around, which was going to be a weird loads, a weird low side that then sort of became a high side as the bike gripped. It was a very odd crash that, you know, somebody's got to really kind of tell me like, what the heck was going on there. But Gonzalez, Dixon, Canetti, Vietti, Balthus and Ortolla were all battling for the pole position. With less than a minute to go, Gonzalez was still ahead of Dixon and Canetti. And Solace had jumped in.

Vietti had jumped up to be right past Solace and Balthus. But there were, again, there was red helmets and red times coming. So it wound up being at the end. It was Gonzalez on pole. Balthus would be in the second spot.

Then Marrera jumped up to third. Arenas, Canetti, Dixon who fell down quite a lot. Even though he, you know, lap record shows you just how fast that goes by, you know, Dixon out of the box lap record. And then, whoa, it just fell off there. Solace would be seventh and Lopez, Vietti and Ortolla rounded out your top 10.

Portuña, Arbolino just missed out on that. Alonso fell back to 12th. Aegis was 14th after his great run. Anche was 13th after a couple of runs that were pretty decent for him. So it's all topsy turvy and moto too, I think, as it goes around.

It's one of those ones where you wonder, is anybody going to actually sort of get themselves together and consistently do what they need to do? I mean, really, I guess Gonzalez is kind of the man right now. But it's funny that nobody else is showing signs of consistency, I should say. I would have thought more out of Alonso, Holgardo, those two. Dixon, I would have thought.

But maybe this Bosque Corp is just sort of an odd little beast to get set. I don't know. I just don't really know what's going on. The rider that's perplexing me slightly, and we just mentioned the rider, is Diogo Moreira, really. His form is kind of quite, I don't want to say underwhelming, because that sounds really rude.

But given he's had a bit of time on a Moto2 bike now, and he is good. I mean, he has real flashes of kind of good performance. But he's not kind of consistently up there. And he's certainly not challenging Gonzalez for that kind of one that sticks in the mind. And given the MotoGP talk that's starting to crop up around him, which might be more nationality based.

I mean, he's obviously supremely talented. Of course he wouldn't be in this position if he wasn't. And I'm sure he would do well on a MotoGP bike. No reason to think he wouldn't. But yeah, he's a little bit kind of hit and miss, really, in Moto2 so far.

Agreed. Yeah. Well, we can see what all happened, how it all falls out when we get into the race. Zonta Bandigorberg's bike either stalled or did not start when they were on the grid. They pushed it off and he was going to have to start from the pit lane.

At the opening part of it, Moreira took the lead up front of Gonzalez with Dixon right there, then Salak, Arenas and Barry Baltis. Vier would go down and then crash. Again, I think it was a front end tuck, maybe cold tire that happened there. Baltis got by Salak. Arbolino was down, so it looks like we had some people that were still not quite up to getting it.

Then Baltis was by Dixon at the last corner. Now, Gonzalez has got to the front at that point and Gonzalez was leading and he led for a little bit. It sort of stabilizes Gonzalez, Moreira, Baltis, Dixon, Salak and Canett. Eventually though, Baltis sort of moved his way up, got back to second place, Jake then starts to fade backwards here, roughly halfway through the race. But Gonzalez is out front.

Baltis takes a shot at him, takes a little bit of a try, but not there. They're just sort of running like 1-2 all there. Now, again, Gonzalez is just out doing the donkey work. He had pace all weekend from the practices, so we expected him to have that. Now, towards the end here, we had Canett who started to finally turn good, if you will.

It was definitely a two-horse race. It was going to be decided between Gonzalez and Baltis. It just depended on what happened along the way. Canett was going to try and he did get by Dixon at Dunlap, Chicane and Canett and Moreira were then had a battle. It was pretty good little battles.

They went through Dunlap. Canett almost high-sided, but they finally worked it out to where it was Gonzalez, Baltis, Moreira, Canett, then Dixon and Solatch. Arenas was now sixth. Arenas had gotten by Dixon, so that pushed Dixon to sixth and Arenas to fifth. Gonzalez and Baltis, they had five seconds on third, so this was going to be between them.

Then Gonzalez at the end just had way more pace than Baltis did. I think Baltis was nursing some... Did he have the injury where he broke a bone in his foot from a crash or was that not true? I don't think that was, but the thing was that Gonzalez would go on to win the race. He would be ahead of the Belgian Barry Baltis, which is kind of like the closest thing I guess to a home race that Barry's going to get.

I guess maybe the Assen race is maybe closer. Don't know, depending on what part of Belgium he's part of. Maybe he's got like kind of two homey kind of races. Canett finished on the podium then beating Moreira, then Dixon, Arenas, Solatch, Vietti, Ortola, Lopez rounding out the top 10. Then Alonso, Roberts, Garcia, Aegis and Ramirez finishing out the points.

Scorers in that one. Not the most spectacular Moto2 race that has ever been ran, Rich. No, not going to be catching that one on a rerun anytime soon. Yeah, I don't think so, but that did not do much for the points standings at all. Gonzalez, because he won, puts a 16-point lead on Aaron Canett.

Gonzalez is on 111 points, where Canett is on 95. Dixon is holding down third, but he is 18 points behind Canett. Then Baltis makes a big jump up. He's at 73 points, so he's only four behind Jake for third in the third. Jake's got to kind of look back a little bit in the points.

He needs to put some places together. We need to see if Baltis' form holds through for the entire season to see what happens there. Moreira is fifth, Vietti is sixth, Ramirez seventh, Aegis and then Arenas and Anshu is the final person in the top 10. Man, I really can't say that the championship is done this early in the season, but if Gonzalez continues to ride as he has, he's an assured himself of the championship. Canett is inconsistent, unfortunately, but we shall see what happens.

Again, consistency here in Moto2, I think, is going to be key, Rich. Ideally, the only person who's consistent is the guy who's the fastest man, and that's Gonzalez. Well, so far, you can never rule out an injury that could cause trouble. That applies to everybody, of course, but Gonzalez, I'm just racking my brain. He's not a crasher, is he, typically?

Not in races, at least, anyway. With his continued good form, which is a follow-on from last year, because he had some very strong races last year and won his first race in Matei, I think it was. He's the form man at the minute. Canett is only 16 points behind, so still plenty to play for there, but just turning back to the race, eminently forgettable, really. Balthus, we were kind of, I was waxing lyrical about him at the last race again.

I think he's going to be turning a few heads, particularly given where he's from in the world, because we don't see that many fast people from Belgium, so it's nice to have that nationality waving the flag and a different flag to look at on the podium. I think just worth pointing out, Autola in ninth, that's the first sign of progress in Moto 2 for the Moto 3 graduate as well. I mean, okay, ninth place, and it was a bit of a sketchy day in Le Mans, but nevertheless, that was a good ride from Ivan Autola. And like Hulgardo and Alonso, distinctly different from Vier, who is still struggling to make the switch at the moment. What was that, round six, not very long into the season, but he's the guy I kind of thought would take to Moto 2 the quickest, really, given his kind of physical size.

I mean, he's Dutch, which is different to Belgium, but there's another one from that part, roughly from that part of the world. So, Baltus is sort of flying the flag at the minute, and the rookies are really strong this year, which is not something we often see. I mean, case in point, Ivan Guevara, again, he's another guy that's going to be looking over his shoulder and perhaps looking to World Super, well, Super Sport, I was going to say, as a place that he might end up if he carries on like this, because this is his third or fourth season. Bearing in mind, he was Moto 3 World Champion, don't forget. So, yeah, and again, I've said it a couple of times, and I will keep on saying it, it's nice to see Goncalves flying the flag for the World Super Sport Paddock, because that's the route he's come through.

So, there is some top quality in that paddock, there really is. And it's nice to see somebody getting time to shine in the Moto GP paddock. The one that surprises me is Garcia. Garcia had that great season going last year. He's coming back from injury and quite a bad injury though.

So, I mean, he is, but he's got to say he gets some slack because he did have that injury. That is true. And I don't want to downplay it, but maybe the injury is more severe than at this time still, and perhaps it is, but it's like, I really thought that this was that time where he's got to bounce back. And, you know, I'm not saying he's going to lose his ride because I mean, he is injured, but he's the one I think also has got to be kind of looking like where, what's happening here. So, there's- Bear in mind, the first half of the season he had last year, I think in the second half of this season, assuming he is fully recovered, he needs to be pulling out some podiums really, doesn't he?

Yeah, I think he does. Because it's a cutthroat place, you know, and you easily get sort of cast aside and forgotten if you're not careful. I think it'd be- And he's on the Bosco Skiria, but Jake is sort of showing, and Philip Selatch is having a strong year in the Mark VDS squad alongside Jake Dixon. They are consistently the best of the Bosco Skiria riders at the moment. So, the bike is capable, but clearly the Calix appears to be the better package at the moment, which is a slight switch from the beginning of the season when we thought, hey, the Bosco Skiria is the bike to be on.

It doesn't kind of feel like that all of a sudden there. Yeah, it remains to be seen what happens. Again, I think Le Mans is just a weird place with just the greasy asphalt, the really changeable weather. Let's see what happens when we get to places like, you know, Mugello or we're in Aragon or Mazzano, all those places. We'll see what happens there.

See what we've got. Subzero and or flood weather to look forward to in Silverstone to test a few shuttles as well. That is true. We do. Oh, so that takes us to Moto GP.

When we start with qualifying, again, we're on Saturday, beautiful day in Le Mans, but all the Hondas are in there, three of the Aprilia's and two KTMs are all in this first qualifying session. Zarco, Mir, Digia, Ayagura, their bender, Bastionini, they're all there. Ayagura was down at turn seven, which created a red flag for the weirdest of reasons. And that being that Ayagura's bike did not turn off. So it was sitting there running with the rear tire spinning and the marshals seem to I don't want to say fumble it, but I mean, Le Mans, they have the 24 hour there at the Bugatti Circuit.

These guys are probably the same, I'm assuming, same people kind of working that did the marshaling there. The guys are doing the marshaling here and just seemed like nobody could run and grab the clutch and just pick this thing up and find the kill switch. I'm assuming there's a red button somewhere that's you would think would be the you'd think to be the kill switch. There's supposed to be a like a tip over switch for the bikes too, that if it's over that it actually falls unless the rider grabs a clutch or something like that. It was just really weird that the bike was just still running.

And it created this red flag, which was quickly done, picked up, everybody got there. There's some extenuating circumstances there that I can't say mattered that much at all. But halfway through, Renz and Bastionini were on the front. They were what we're going to go. But then it became Fernandez and Digia and then it was Zarco and there and so there were some really good times that were going through there and whatnot.

And eventually Zarco and Fernandez got through to get to that second session, which was pretty impressive that Zarco was able to get to Honda. The Honda there again, the Honda showing some improvement. Zarco seems to be, you know, it's odd, we'll get to this too, but it's odd Zarco's contract hasn't been renewed by anybody yet, which makes me wonder. It will be. I think it's going to have to be now.

I think he's basically forced that. So the second qualifying session, old Mr. Number 93 went out there, just blew down a 129.442, which is like lap record pace for that one. Then Quattrora was like three tenths behind the Yamaha and Quattrora there again. Wow, wasn't looking for that in the script to be at the bonds, but hey, it's kind of a Yamaha kind of track.

I mean, look how well Lorenzo did there. It's a great bike with bike handles. It works. It's just a couple of chicanes. There's not really a huge amount of straightaway per se that you could use to take advantage of having grunt and horsepower.

So even at that, they said that the Yamaha had a little more punch and a little more top end. So things were looking good right then, at least for the beginning. But poor old, but then it was Alex Marquez, Outager, like, oh, Outager. He's like right behind Alex, you know, their teammates in Grissini, right? Then Miller and then Vinales and then Benya was 11th.

It's like, oh, ouch. Okay. Well, Outager was in down at the turn three chicane. Zarco was down at Garage Ver and then it was Mark followed by his brother, followed by Outager. Okay.

Wow. That's crazy. Quattraro though was on a hot lap and I didn't believe it when I saw it, but Quattraro would jump the pole. I was absolutely flabbergasted that he was able to do that again, but he did it in her ref. He did it again this weekend and put the bike on pole.

And he even said it was one of the best laps he's ever ridden in his life. In front of the French crowd, it was just a spectacular moment that everybody was just super excited about. And I loved every minute of it. To see Quattraro on pole again, I was super great. He did it with a 129.324.

That's just, that's flying. That's a lot. Lap of the gods. Lap of the gods, that is. And Jim, I don't think my 53 year old brain is failing me or memory, I should say.

I'm pretty sure the first sector on that lap was not a personal best either. No, it was not. It was a kind of gray bar, wasn't it? And then he went yellow or orange, whatever they wanted to say. And then the third sector was red.

And then obviously it must've been red again in the final sector. Cause yeah, I mean, I just punched it. I mean, I'm not a massive Quattraro fan, but I'm just so pleased to see Yamaha getting the Mojo back. All four Yamahas had the new engine. So that clearly was a good development.

And this is the benefit of the concession rules as they are that Yamaha can have that dispensation to bring an improvement. But even then, I mean, Quattraro was like light years ahead of everybody else on a Yamaha. So it was something special that lap. It very much was a very, very special lap for him. I saw it.

I sent you the Instagram reel. I can't remember who created it, but it was a graphic that put Mark Marquez's bike digitally on top of Quattraro's bike. And you could see the strength and the weakness of each bike. And it's neck and neck there. Mark has it pulled out through the first sector, the second sector, but the third and the fourth sector, Quattraro nudges Marquez and wins the battle for the pole.

It was a really cool graphic. It was really well done. And it showed how good Quattraro was, how late he went on the breaks for 13 and 14, which was incredible. Then he kept it up and maintained it, which was quite amazing. Morbidelli did crash as well in that session.

So he was down and there. So that's your starting grid. Is Quattraro Marquez, Mark Marquez, Alex Outaguer, then Vinales, Vinales, Vizecki, Miller, Morbidelli, Fernandez, Raul Zarco, and then Acosta. Again, the second time in a row for two weeks in a row, Acosta on the KTM has qualified in 12th place. Interesting, right?

But we're pointing out, Jim, just because a number of people commented this over the weekend, the, and I'm sort of doing the old raised fingers for hyphens, the sweet spot setting that Vinales has landed on, who is by far and away the better of the KTMs at the moment. I think pretty much everybody was using more or less that set up and the parts, because again, KTM coming in for a bit of, well, not necessarily flat, but a number of people commenting on the fact that in the first part of the season, there were four completely different KTMs out there in terms of what they were running. Some had the mass damper on, some didn't, you know, bloody, bloody, bloody, different, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I think Vinales has found a setting on that bike that seems to work quite well. And a couple of people commented on TNT that all of the KTMs appeared to be the same this time.

So that's hopefully a sign that they might just sort of settle on that sort of line of development and try and make the most of what they've got rather than keep them throwing parts at it. Yeah, we can only hope. I mean, I don't want to see KTM where they are. It isn't good for the sport, right? You need to keep as many of the manufacturers as you can in here.

And you really don't want KTM to go away. You know, Suzuki went away. Yeah. And I don't want, you know, Kawasaki has been away. They used to be there.

And I just don't see Kawasaki ever coming back to the Bermuda GP pack. I just don't see it. You know, now. I mean, maybe if they wanted to do their Bermuda type thing, they could, I guess, because they do own it. But that's a stretch in my mind.

Yeah, I just don't think the Kawasaki, which as you say, Bermuda is part of that, but let's call it Kawasaki. Bikes are such a small part of that business. They just don't have the desire to throw that the sort of budget that's required. I mean, whether that will change with the smaller capacity bikes. I mean, clearly that's where the market kind of is nowadays.

And it's certainly where it's going to be heading in the future is into that mid sort of sized engine bracket. So I mean, it could tempt one of them. But I mean, it's more likely that you'll see kind of Chinese firms entering before any additional Japanese ones. I mean, this is all Suzuki coming back. Rumor still kind of keeps flagging up from time to time.

But again, I'm struggling to see it really. Yeah, I mean, they would have to find that if it happened, but I can't see it happening. They would have to find somebody willing to put the bill. Right. I mean, that's, that's how I see it.

I mean, if I think they would do it right, but they're going to, they're not going to do it off their R&D race budget, whatever, it's going to be some really big corporate sponsor that just is throwing wads of cash. And I just not in this. I mean, look at Honda, they don't really have a corporate sponsor at all. Well, they lost, I suppose, they lost the big one, didn't they? But of the Japanese factories, I mean, Yamaha are the ones which additionally have lent hard on to sponsors.

Whereas one of the criticisms, I think you could say of Suzuki, and certainly you would have said this about Kawasaki when they were in MotoGP was they didn't have any sponsorship. They just kind of ran the bikes. I mean, I'd love to see them in their respective blue and green. Beautiful. But yeah, it costs a lot of money to do it that way.

And yeah, I can't really see it changing, unfortunately. Yep. Your point. No, we need KTM. KTM is sort of close, aren't they?

Yeah, I don't think it's gonna take much for Acosta to start bothering the top six again. And Maverick is, you know, defying all expectations and is having a, for Maverick, a pretty consistent and good year. So Brad Binder is the one that really raises eyebrows to me because he's having a wretched year so far. I mean, but hopefully he'll turn it around, but not looking good at the minute. No.

Well, let's get to the sprint on Saturday afternoon. Yeah. See what happens here. So at the start, Quattrorau grabs the whole shot over Marquez, over Alex. Benyanya had a pretty good start to be fourth there.

Then Altegr and Bizecki. Now at the end of the first lap, Quattrorau had three quarters of a second on Marquez. Like, whoa, this is going to be interesting. And then Peco down at turn three. Like, okay, that's a tricky part of the track, right?

Because it's the fast left, sorry, it's the fast right with another fast right that you then break to go to the first left. And you've been through the last left you had was 12. So you've done 13, 14, one, two, and now you're going to go back the other way. And it's uphill and it's off camber and it's greasy. It's like a recipe for disaster in that, in the left chicane.

I mean, we've seen enough people, we've seen Marquez go sliding by elbows and legs up like, I'm going to save it. Even though I'm at the gravel trap, I'm still going to save it. But it was his turn to go down. I mean, Peco knew that he had a problem because he got up, he looked at it, he, you know, hands on helmet, he knew it was a bad deal. You know, he said he has said that the feel that he used to have with the 24 Ducati is not in the 25 Ducati.

And there is no setting that is going to bring that feel back to him that he needs. And he is trying to ride in a different way so that he can ride as he wants to, which that's never good that you got to change your fundamental style. But then everybody says, well, what about Marquez? Well, Mark never rode a 24 bike. He rode a 23 and then he got a 25.

So to him, it's a great bike. So he doesn't care. He just goes out there and does his thing. Right. But the bigger unanswered question, Jim, and it will haunt us forever is what would have happened in the championship last year if Mark Marquez had been on a 24 bike?

Oh, let's not play that game. Well, the reason I say it, and it's not just kind of throwing out wild speculation for the sake of it, because it's quite possible without the gauge of Jorge Martín still on and up to date Ducati, it's quite possible that neither of them were quite as good as we thought they were last year. And that had Marquez been on the bike, the same bike, he would have been like it is this year. And, you know, a good few tenths in his pocket, you know, maybe this magic feeling that's disappeared is just because he's got a teammate that's going routinely sort of half a second quicker than him. And he just can't replicate it.

Now, that's not me being unkind to Banyai, but all of the things he's saying before you put the dagger in basically just suggests to me that he is completely at a loss to know what to do to match his teammate. I mean, I think that's all it is. I'm not saying it's excuses, but I think he's looking for answers that just aren't there, really, for reasons. Yeah, I agree with you that Banyai is lost because he's watching somebody do something with a bike and he knows he can't do that. That is a mental mind, whatever, freak.

So I think that's a big part of this, right? That's a huge, huge part of that. So Banyai is on this internal amount of pressure. Now, I'll be cruel. I have never thought that Banyai was that great of a rider.

So let me put this into sort of a box here to show where I'm coming from. We used to have the aliens, right? There were four of them that were alien, right? Rossi, Lorenzo, Marquez, and Divisioso, right? Those were stoner.

I think it was stoner, right? Stoner, not Divisioso. Yeah. Sorry. Those were the four, right?

Those guys were alien because those guys were so much faster than anybody else. They were absolutely top shelf, top drawer, amazing riders. If I asked you today right now, who are the aliens in the class? Who are you going to pick? I'm going to pick Marquez.

Marquez. Yeah, Marquez. I'm going to go there. And then I'm standing there going, who else? There's a couple of people that might be.

There's a couple people that might be, right? But they're not. I'm not going to put Banyai in that category. No. I wouldn't even put a Hawaii Martini in that category.

I wouldn't either. He's a qualifier. He's a qualifying alien for sure, but I wouldn't put him in there for that. So Banyai happens to be in a place where he happened to have been on the best bike at a time when he was able to win world championships being a great rider, but not an alien rider. So I think that's fair.

I think that's fair. So to me, I'm looking at this going, if you want to know what the difference is between a great rider and MotoGP and an alien, a person who's just otherworldly on a motorcycle, this is it. This is the biggest description of what is going on is these two distinct differences between how Banyai is riding a 2025 and how Marc Marquez is riding a 2025. And I don't care about the fact that, well, Marc never rode a 24. He doesn't know how sweet that bike was.

That's whining. You're comprehensively getting beat and you are whining. So stop. You ride the bike that you've got. And I think it's entirely, I mean, maybe some of the listeners, and hopefully this might be the case, there's kind of shouting at us whilst they're listening to this or in the future when they're listening to it, and vehemently disagree with us and we're writing to say why.

I mean, that would be good to get a counter-planeting view. But I mean, as you say, just to be fair to Banyai and to Martine, they respectively won their championships against competition that they had. Fair enough. They didn't necessarily have to push past any further than each other in order to achieve those things. And they won their championships.

Those will never be taken away. They're massively valuable. But Marc Marquez turns up on a bang up to date Ducati and suddenly his teammate, double world champion, is, well, to quote him, I mean, we'll get to it someday in a moment, but to quote him, rock bottom. Even he is saying it. And it's going to be a long old season from here unless Banyai finds something.

But at the moment, it sounds like casting stones out, hoping one of them will hit the target. And it's a bit desperate, really. And as I say, with Martine having been a classic playground child and throwing his toys out of the pram last year, which meant that Pramak don't have Ducatis and he's not on a 20, he would have been on a 25 bike. We would at least have seen how close he would have got to Marquez or maybe Martine would have been scratching his head a bit like Banyai is and thinking, I don't know what to do about this. And just to add a little bit of salt onto the wound, the chassis, apparently they did try some new things.

I thought I had read somewhere that they hadn't really changed or tried much at the Haereth test. They did apparently both try a new chassis. Marquez loves it. Banyai thought it didn't make any difference. And so Marquez has got the new chassis and is again, you know, just pulling out lap records at the moment.

So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting, isn't it? Really, what's going on there? But yeah, he's the one and the only alien at the moment, unless Acosta finds his form, you know, well, no, unless KTM get their act together. I mean, the other one I suppose you would say is Quattroraro. And we're starting to see it again now that the bike is getting into the area where he can demonstrate that.

So I think to be fair, there are two currently. I agree. Definitely Fabio, obviously Mark, and then a couple of potentials out there. I think Outagor has potential. I think Acosta has that potential.

So you could get back to four. It's just right now you only have one and three quarters, right? So yeah, basically. So yes, I agree. I agree.

All right. So let's go back to the sprint. Basically, Marquez chases down Quattroraro. They have a bit of a ding dong battle that goes back and forth for a little bit. But basically, Mark eventually just gets him at the chicane, you know, kind of just nudges Quattroraro offline, takes care of it, uses the Ducati horsepower, let the bike settle in, let the front get warm, did everything he was supposed to do, showed patience.

So look, I got the better bike. I know Quattroraro is going to be tough, but I'm going to find a way by. He did. And basically, as it went to it, Mark eventually just wins this sprint. He wins six in a row.

Now, Quattroraro was slowing because Alex got by Quattroraro as well. And at the very end, Aldiger got by Quattroraro as well. So Aldiger got his first podium in a sprint, which was amazing. Quattroraro finishes fourth in that sprint. Then it was Vinales.

Zarco was sixth at this point, which is kind of crazy considering where Zarco started, right? Zarco was way down and he wound up being with the Honda on a dry track, got to sixth. The Digiantonio, Rens, and Mir round out all the points scores that are there. You know, it's amazing. Marquez has now won six sprints in a row.

Nobody's ever done that. He's unbeaten in sprints at this point. I mean, six times 12 for 72 points of his championship total is all there from nothing but sprint races. Which, I mean, let's face it, Jorge Martinez taught us sprint races are important and you need to bang as many points as you can. And then you can then worry about winning on Sunday, which takes us to the Sunday event.

Now, let's start this off, Rich. I guess we have to talk about this. The new rule that was brought in post-CODA to change how things operate. So if you're on the grid and for any reason after the siding lap, you decide that you want to change your motorcycle, go to that. And so if you or your motorcycle leaves the grid, you now have to start at the, is it start at pit lane after everybody goes by or do you join the pack at the back of the grid?

I think it was starting from pit lane because this is all this all happens. So there's so much that happens here that we got to get this completely straight. No, I think the rule is, and I'll try and get, I think I've got this right. So yeah, the distinction is it's the siding lap. So they're on the grid and then within a certain number of minutes, I don't know how many minutes it is, say within two minutes, let's say of the warmup lap.

Before you go on the warmup, your bike leaves the, the starting grid you to change bike for whatever reason. Normally, let's say it would be for tires. You may resume from your original grid position on for the warmup lap. But whereas before you would have had a ride through penalty for doing that, they've changed the rule that it's a double long lap penalty. So they've reduced the penalty for doing it.

Whereas you would have thought that they'd have discouraged it even more. That's the bit that's got people's heads scratching. The other bit of the rule that still applies though is that if more than 10 people do it, then it's kind of, it's a reset, a complete reset. Because of the danger of lots of people exiting pit lane at the same time. I think that's correct, but this is, I'm still trying to get my head around this.

Yeah, I can't either. So I mean, you know, my favorite expression at work is explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old. Exactly. So somebody needs to explain it to me that way. If you guys know, still us, because I'm sure, because this all plays into it, because we had the wet session that morning.

We had a dry race for Moto three. We had a dry race for Moto two. Now in the time that's taken place, everybody has now gone out originally on a slick shod bike, did the siding lap and went to grid. Well, then the sky started to open up because they're sitting there for like 30 minutes or something on the grid for post-race, for pre-race activities, right? As that goes on, they now take off.

They head out on the siding lap to which if you watch closely, Quattroraro about threw it away because there was no grip because it had rained enough and it's greasy enough at Le Mans that a slick tire was not the tire to be on. If you notice Mark Marquez was riding around a lot with his foot out sliding across the surface, trying to get some feel for what was going on. Yeah. As all the riders then proceeded through the last turn. Now remember to get into the pits of Le Mans, you have to do it after you exit turn 12.

And as they came through those third turns, 11 and 12, the pack of riders slowed to a crawl were scattered everywhere across the track because everyone was wondering what was going to happen. Do we, is everybody going to go to a wet bike? Cause remember we're on slicks at this point. Well, sure enough, Marquez had bolts for the pits and everybody funnels in. So here is the spectacle of all the motorcycles leaving the track, heading to the pits to swap over to get bikes.

Now at that point, since everybody was on slicks, everybody went to go to the pits. And since everybody went to the pits to change over to a bike with wet tires, they decided to red flag the race. Okay. So now we've equalized everything back again, right? Everybody now can make a change to whatever they want to do, which everybody at that point in time, to my knowledge, everybody went to a bike that had wets and a wet setup on it.

So we reset the grid again, exactly as they had qualified only everybody's on wet. They leave for that, they leave for that siding lap, right? And it's a quick start procedure. So it's take off for the warmup lap, come back, your mechanics there at your spot. Is everything cool with the bike?

Yep. Okay. Cool. Lights out, let's go racing. So everybody who was in, who had come in, see, this is the part that bugs me in this rule.

Go ahead. I think we've got to be careful with our terminology here because there's clear differences between the siding lap and the warmup. Right. Yes, totally. And now I was talking about what happens if somebody takes their bike off the grid before the warmup lap starts.

But I believe this rule has now been extended to if you do the same thing happens during the warmup lap, which is what happened in the first iteration of the race. And because like 13 bikes came in at the end of the warmup lap, that's why they red flagged it. And we went to quick start procedure. Now what happens next, Jim, is that we have another, we have a new siding lap. Yes.

Which is. Or it's a new warmup. Yeah. No, no, no, this is this is siding lap to get back to the grid. For the warmup lap.

For the warmup lap. And then you go. Because a lot of people were kind of shouting and crying. So not crying, but kind of because this is confusing. So as you correctly say, everybody went out onto the second siding lap on wet and figured out straight away that it's dry.

You need to be on slicks. So we had loads of people came in again at the end of that lap, but that did not trigger a quick another red flag because it wasn't the warmup lap. So they could go out on mass and join the warmup lap because it's not a live race at that point. And this is why the rule about the 10 bike maximum exists because you can't have 10 bikes racing each other as they leave the pits. But because it was going onto the warmup lap, it's allowed.

So that's why the second start went ahead without another stoppage. But it is quite tricky just to make sure you understand the distinction between the siding lap and a warmup lap. Right. The simplest definition I can give you for it is a siding lap is you are leaving the pits and taking a site survey of the track to get back to the grid. Then you leave from the grid for your warmup lap.

Yeah. So, okay. So we all had slicks, then we all come in and we all get wet now. No, right. We were on wets.

And then everybody decided, no, we got to have slicks. Well, not everybody, but the majority did decide that. Marquez and a bunch of other people decided, no, I don't want wets. I want slicks. Right.

I'm just trying to keep this together because there's so much. And in doing that, they now know clearly, because this is a new rule, they now know that in doing that, they incur a double long lap penalty. Correct. Whereas the people that stayed on the wets went to the grid as per normal. Yep.

And they were stuck with the tires that they had, but no long lap penalty, obviously. Correct. So it creates a lot of contrived interference in what's going on. Yes. So to recap, after the second siding lap, yes, second siding lap, a lot of riders went in to get a bike that had a lot of riders went in to get a bike that had dry tires.

Yeah. So those people were going to receive a double long lap penalty. That would be like Mark Marquez, Alex Marquez, Aldegar, all these guys. Right. And you know, it's loads of them.

Yeah. Loads of them. Right. But like somebody like Zarco, Vinales, they were still on the wets and they went to grid. So they are not incurring a penalty or the wrath of the stewards.

Okay. Wow. This is going to be interesting because of like, okay, if this dries out, if Marquez has played this correctly and he dries out, he's going to be miles faster on a dry shot Ducati. And the long lap penalty is relatively short here given that we're in contrast to other tracks. So that's really not going to be that big of a deal.

And the time to come in, change your bike and go down pit lane is going to be less or more time than the two long laps, which are really kind of long short laps, if that makes any sense at all. Yeah. They're not long laps at Lamar in particular. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, this is going to be really, really wild.

So we finally then start the race. So we take, can we just, can we just back up? Cause there's an important point here. And this is the one that's been creating a lot of chatter from a safety standpoint. So the way the rule, the amended rule, given them, bearing in mind, they just changed this bloody rule and they could have thought this one through a bit better.

And we saw a demonstration as to why this is not a good outcome at the moment. Having come in at the end of the new sighting lap to change onto dry tires, you are then entitled to go out onto the warmup lap and take up your normal grid position. Now this is the point that's creating some worry now. And obviously we've had a demonstration as to why it's a worry. So now we've got everybody on the grid in their standard places, qualifying positions, but a mixture of wet and dry tires, as opposed to some modest penalty for the people that have elected to come in and make that change being set, say further back on the grid, still in order of qualifying position, but just behind the people that have not gone in and changed their bikes.

I think that's the key point, because this leads to some trouble at the start. So green light, green light comes on. Correct. Green light comes on. So you have them all charging down into the first turn.

Now Marquez was there, Quattrorara was there, but Quattrorara would lead because Quattrorara had a little more feel, I guess. And then it was Alex and Aldiger, then Acosta and Bender. And now WAP, there's a crash and Benyaya is down at the chicane. So is Mir. And Zarco has to run across the gravel trap to avoid the falling Benyaya and Mir more than Benyaya.

But this crash is caused by Baschenini or Bizecki? Baschenini. Because Baschenini arrives at the corner on wets where everybody in that group is on a dry tire. So they can't stop. So they're going slow.

He's going fast. It's a complete misjudgment. And he basically bladded one of the championship contenders right off the road. And that is the controversy. And Joao Mir, who has a broken hand as a result of it.

Correct. And he gets a broken hand as a result. That is true. Wow. So it's like you're going, there's the safety issues.

Like, hey, how can you say that we're going to start motorcycles in a mixed idea of tires, which are going to be fundamentally on different playing fields, right? To get and make it safe. There's so much you could do to change the rule to make it make more sense. One, here's my first take. And I'm opposed to a long lap penalty for someone who wants to gamble and change their motorcycle.

I'm all for the gamble. I'm all for that story. Because think about, we used this example earlier when we were talking, Rich. Iagura, last year, Japan, he decides not changing what I'm doing. I'm going to stay with it and wins or was on the podium or whatever.

It was a great story because you had this person who's out of the offset of everybody else. Like the guy who didn't go with the norm and it won't pay dividends for it. It's a great story. That happens. I like to see that.

I like that kind of chaos. I don't like the chaos of 10 riders sitting there going, is anybody going to go in? Anybody going to go in? Oh, I'm going to do what they do. I don't know what to do.

And whatever. Have the courage of your own conviction to say, I want slicks or I want wets or whatever it is that I want to do. But now you want to penalize with a double long lap that instead of a ride through in the pits or ride through, was that correct? The old penalty was a ride through of the pits. Yeah.

Which would have taken longer because you got to slow down, be on the pits, easy for me to say, hit lane speed limiter and then go out. Now you're doing it here where you got to come back into traffic. And it happens to be that, guess what? Nobody is in that lane. So if it's a wet track going to dry and you got to do that, you have nobody clearing that track.

So you got to run one slicks through a very wet section potentially. It's like, oh, this makes no sense to me. Right. I get that they don't want people leaving the grid, right? But there's a timeframe in which you're not allowed to go after, which I agree with.

But the simplest thing is make everybody line up on grid spots after the last person who decided not to make a change. That's the fairest way to do it. Right. I know it looked bad on TV in Argentina when Jack Miller was alone on the front of the grid. And the only thing you saw then was like five rows of nothing and 20 bikes or 10 bikes, 10, 12 bikes, all jammed into the pit lane, which is not safe either.

So let them start on the grid, just start farther back. Like if everybody's gone to that point of it, you know that, hey, you can easily make the other guys understand that they need to push up and take their position next to Miller or whatever, or whoever hasn't done it. And then everybody fills in after a row gap. Everybody else fills in by qualifying order. It's not that hard.

Guys are smart. And if you've got enough officials running around there that you could easily have them sort everybody out in a quick amount of time. I mean, it would create some logistical challenges to do it. And obviously it would require some significant rule changes to do. But I think purely on the safety ground and you citing the Argentina example is obviously is the one that sticks in the mind where you have one guy kind of stuck with the plan out front and then like a quarter of a mile it felt like before everybody else, you know?

So it does, it would look weird and it would present some logistical challenge. Funny enough at Le Mans, for example, because the start line is very close to the final turn. Yes. So would you fit everybody into the straight? Well, that's why I'm saying they move everybody up.

You move the people that didn't change. Then you're changing the race distance. So, you know, there are some, or you're requiring the track to change a lot because there's so much around timing and all sorts of different things in the background. Anyway, it could obviously be done. And it kind of strikes me that there isn't really a great outcome to this.

I mean, part of me thinks the old kind of way was the best one where you've got until, I don't know, say two or three minutes before the warm up lap to make changes. And then you sort of run what you're brung kind of thing. And if after that you want to come in and change bike, fair enough, but stop all this stuff around the sighting and the warm up laps. You go green. And if you're, I mean, people will say, well, you can't have somebody on slick tires on a wet track, but that's kind of what we have anyway.

So I just think people will have to make a decision, stick with it. And then they have an opportunity during the race to change if they want. And obviously there's a time penalty for that, but the kind of the double long lap thing is a kind of a time loss of what six seconds, maybe eight seconds, which is not really going to concern most people. Certainly not compared to a ride through penalty, which is probably 40 seconds at most places. So it's all a bit kind of all a bit of a mess really.

And on top of which it encourages kind of start line or first lap, first corner crashes because of the speed differential between different tires on track condition that is not totally clear. Yep. If anybody from Pirelli is listening right now, I have one word for you. Enters. You need to make a set of enters because if you had enters, everybody went to the entrance and this wouldn't be a problem now, would they?

Well, do you know, Jim, just going off on the track, well, not a tangent, it's a relevant question. In the olden days, they would cut a slit, wouldn't they? That was the term. You'd see somebody literally with a kind of a gouging knife cutting grooves into a tire. I wonder why they got rid of that.

I think it's the tire makers kind of got like wigged out that somebody would cut too deep and you'd have a slow leaking tire. Well, you would the tire then delaminate because now you've given it, oh, you know, it's not designed to, a slick is designed to use that whole surface to dissipate that heat. Well, if you put a cut there, it can't dissipate that heat, dah, dah, dah, dah. I assume that it was something in that effect. That's why that was there perhaps.

So anyway, well, okay. Now that we got that whole thing all figured out. Well, I'm not sure we do, but. I'll say this because we have, because I have to, because it's me. Why not have it said you have to conduct a pit stop and you have to change tires on the bike that you're on.

Like why have another bike? Let's just change tires on the bike that you're on. Okay. If you want to go full world endurance spec and change tires in 15 seconds, go for it, man. Go for it.

I'm a hundred percent there with you. I like that. That's cool. That's a bit of something that you don't see very often. It would be really cool.

Right. It's a, it's another sort of strategy that you can do. You can do it. You can do it. It's a sort of strategy that you can add into things.

I don't know. But again, no, I was gonna complain that, well, you got to have all this money into a motorcycle to do this. Dude, they're spending the money. They're not spending on ride height devices. Now they can make some, they get to machine up a couple of pieces of billet that keeps the wheel in play, the sprockets in place.

And then, you know, you let you whip the wheel in there and change it real quick. Like, well, endurance. Yeah. You know, they have that in world super bike. You know, they do do changes of wheels and tires in world super bike, particularly at places like Philip Island, where you have the mandated tire change.

Obviously in MotoGP, they have the mandated bike change, but it's not exactly as if it would be new technology. I'm sure MotoGP geniuses like Gigi Delinio would find ways of, you know, creating something amazing, but you know, you would have a mandated minimum stop time anyway. Or was it maximum? Maximum. A minimum.

So that people can't gain by taking risks. You can't do it faster than 15 seconds or whatever, right? Yeah. You want it to be safe. Like, see, I mean, I think, yeah, that's all fair.

So, okay. There's an argument for it in terms of saving money, in terms of not having other bikes, of course, but I don't know that we'd ever see MotoGP go to a single bike rule, but they'd save a shed load of money if they did. Are you going to save it? Because guess what? Every team's going to show up with a frame with pre-built stuff, just like the Moto, the best Moto two teams are the same way.

Let's be honest, there's another frame hanging out. That's just got stuff that's to be put in it. Racing is expensive. Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?

Period. End of statement. It's never going to change. Let's move on. Teams will always find ways to spend the money.

Of course they're going to. All right. Back to this racing thing. Now that we've got off the soap box and figured out everything that's wrong with racing and tire changes and everything else. Oh, we got to the crash, right?

Benya is down. That's big. That's huge, right? Alex gets by Mark. Okay.

This track is super greasy and it's obvious how slow anybody on a slick is going that that is the wrong call. So guess what? Sure enough, here we go. Quattro on lap three heads for his long lap. One of his long lap penalties that he's got to take, right?

Altegr gets by Marquez because he's going super slow. Alex is in there as well. Now Quattro and Bender are down at the last corner in a bit of a tuffle because they're on the wrong tire. Quattro tries to pick his bike back up. He tries to get back onto the track or get some assistance by getting a push so he can get back to change his bike.

He got into quite the kerfuffle with the marshals about that, which was not the best thing and wound up being fined 5,000 euros for the offense of not heeding a marshal's direction. I think it was, I think it might have been, well, worse than that. He actually slapped one of the marshals. Oh, he slapped one of the marshals. Okay.

I, oh, okay. That's not cool. I mean, I thought it was like five grand or whatever, but I think he got, well, no, I think he got a 2,000 euro fine and he has to sit out the first 10 minutes of the first practice at Silverstone. Okay. Well, that's what I get for trusting.

In the overall scheme of things, given the danger that he put people in on that corner, because he was tussling and arguing with the marshals for a good lap, probably, because his bike had cut out. Bender went down in the same corner, if you recall, but his bike, again, magically didn't cut out. So he was able to sort of get back on and rejoin, whereas Crossrider was requiring a push. But Bender, one, two of them had just gone down in that corner. It was slightly unreasonable of him really to expect people to stand in harm's way like that.

But the red mist came down and it was his home race. So I suppose you can understand it, but he got off quite lightly, I think. Yeah. So Marquez goes on lap three, he goes to do his, the first of his double long lap penalty loops, right? Vignoles and Acosta, they go to pit because they need to change because they want to get to the wet bike, right?

Now, on lap six, Marquez does again another second of his long laps. He has not changed the bike yet. He stayed out, took the penalty, then went back because now it's a race, it's been declared wet, the white flag has been thrown. You are free to change bikes without penalty now. So Marquez, after taking the penalties, stops in, drops in, and gets his bike with wet.

Alex does the same thing and they're both on their wet bikes now. And Vignoles is now back out of the pits, but he's been down several laps and there's probably no way he's ever going to get any points. Well, Vignoles having taken out in the first turn by Bastianini, did sort of get back on the bike, not quickly, but you know, sort of half, three quarters of a lap down. I guess because he could see himself that the slit was not the right tire, plus his bike might have been damaged. He went straight in and changed bikes.

So he was on the wet now. Okay. He then inexplicably makes the decision to go back onto the dry bike. I guess they've had a chance to change the wheels and the tires and patch up a bit of aero that's been broken or whatever. So he switched back onto the slip bike.

It was slightly the moment when he should have stayed out on the wet. Wow. I did not see that. I did not catch that. In the chaos of that, I did not.

Again, evidence of a man who was just not thinking straight at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's face it, Mark Marquez lives rent free in Vignoles' head. And I don't think it helps that DG just listens to him.

He's just sitting there going, yeah. You know, Gigi just simply points at Marquez and this is like, well, he's riding it. He's winning on it, bro. What's up? I don't know.

Anyway, the chaos in the car, he's just still there. Now, by lap eight, Altegr is now in and he makes a bike change. So through all of this, finally we realized Zarco is actually leading because Zarco had wets from the get go. Having been through the gravel trap now and the chaos of long laps and everything else, Zarco is actually out front. He is leading the race.

Then after that, there was Marquez and then Alex and Vignoles and Acosta. But Olivera was in between there. I think Olivera was next because he had picked the right tires. I think it was Zarco, Olivera, then Marquez because Mark wound up getting by Olivera. And then Alex gets by.

So by lap 10, it's Zarco, it's Mark, it's Alex, it's Olivera, Acosta, Vignoles, Altegr is there, Nakagami is there, then Fernandez, and then Digia. So it's a shuffled up group of people here. But the racing tends to be pretty much where we expect it. Olivera is starting to go slightly backwards. Acosta is going forwards at this point.

By lap 20, Zarco is still out front. He's got, I think, 14 seconds on Mark. Mark had 3.3 on Alex. And then it was Acosta, Vignoles, and Altegr. Now, Olivera had a high side at the last corner.

I don't know. Olivera had a medium rear wet. Is that correct? I believe that to be. I'm going to take your word to that.

If I'm wrong, folks, I'm sorry because this is pure chaos that was going on. But he seemed to not be able to generate the heat required to keep the bike going because of that medium. And that wound up causing his high side in the last corner because there was just no grip. On lap 21, with 21 laps completed, Alex Marquez is down at the last chicane. He had a high side.

That was not good. That was not good. So that put Acosta onto the podium at that point. So Acosta was looking like he's heading for a podium. Zarco is still out front.

And when Alex was out, that put him down and out. He wasn't able to get back in and keep going. Sorry. He did get back on, didn't he? Didn't Alex get back on?

I think Alex had actually crashed a bit earlier in the race. He did get back on. And then the crash you've just mentioned was his second. Was that his second? Because I've got it down with three to go that Alex is down at that point.

So there was 21 laps completed of a 26 lap race because they took one off of it. And I think with three to go, he remounted after that and then trashed it completely by throwing it into the gravel trap big time after the chicane at the end of the back stretch or whatever. I believe. Now, okay, so they have all that. Now, Altegr then got by Acosta.

So Altegr was then on the podium. So through all the chaos, Johan Zarco, Magnifique, Altegr, is the first French rider to win the French Grand Prix in 71 years. That's a stat, isn't it? It's an amazing stat. He legitimately wins this race through sheer determination and correct tire choice.

His French, he should know the weather, right? I'm not an inconsiderate about inconsiderate. What's the word I'm looking for? Well, a considerable, I suppose is the word I'm looking for, amount of skill as well, because at times he was the better end of a second faster than Marc Marquez. And people are, you know, Chetianelo doing his usual thing on the pit wall just thinking don't bloody crash.

Because, you know, again, you were talking about Hen's teeth earlier on. Honda wins are not common at the moment. Although Zarco was the last person to get a win on the Honda, I think. Is that right? No.

That LCR, whereas Rins at Cota, I think, wasn't it? Rins at Cota, that is correct. I think that was the last Honda win prior. So yeah, Chetianelo kind of has this. And of course, Pratchlow famously won on the LCR in the Czech Republic.

I thought he did in Australia. He definitely won in the Czech Republic in sort of similar very, very wet conditions and was miles out in front going, not too fast, but faster than Chetianelo was comfortable with. So yeah, it's funny we all sort of see this from Lucho Chetianelo. He's a great character. But Zarco at times, but to be honest with you, he's such a sort of steady good rider.

I never kind of thought he was going to drop it. I don't know if you were kind of worried about his pace out front, but he just was in a rhythm. Yeah, he just had the rhythm and he was set. Nobody was going to catch him. It was kind of obvious that nobody was going to catch him there.

Marc wasn't. I mean, let's give some credit where credit is due. Marc rode an incredible race. He ran an incredible weekend. Given everything and all the chaos that happened around him, he just rode smart, let everybody else make mistakes or become part of a mistake in Benyaya's case.

Right? Yeah. It's like, no, I'm going to, this is as good as I can do. And hey, second place is good to me. Kind of like Wayne Rainey.

Well, I can't beat Kevin today. Well, I'm going to wait till tomorrow and I'll beat him the next time, but I'm going to take as many points as I can, which is be second. And sort of tangible evidence that you might have just learned his lesson from Harath. I think he did. He rushed it early and paid the price.

Whereas this one, he kind of let the race come to him in very, very difficult conditions. He rode a patient race in the sprint and again, rode a patient race here, just finished, took what he could get. Oh, so Aldiger on the podium for Grissini, which was a great, great, I mean, that's his first podium. Podium is pretty, a podium here. You know, Aldiger's on the upswing here.

Acosta next and fourth, then Vinales, Nakagami, Fernandez, Digiantonio, Salvadori, Iagura, Marini, Renz, Baschini, Bezeki and Morbidele getting the last point for that, which is kind of crazy that all of this happened like that. It just absolutely wild. Zarco was named rider of the race. I can't disagree with that, but I will give Mark Marquez an honorable mention just because he used his head for the first time. It's like he actually understood the mission and the mission was, do not fall off this weekend and take as many points as you can, which is what he did.

And that was absolutely positively fantastic for him. That shook the championship up big time because Benyaya doesn't score, Alex doesn't score, Mark does everything, almost does the double, right, with a double win, doesn't get it. But Mark is on 171 points. He is 22 points clear of his brother. He is 51 points clear of Benyaya and Benyaya is, what, 20, no, not that.

He is- 51 points behind Mark. 51 behind Mark and he's 29 behind Alex, right? Which is crazy to me when you think about that. Then it's Morbidele, Digiantonio, Zarco with that jumps way up to sixth. Then Quattroraro, Outiger, Acosta and Iaguri, your top 10.

What a wacky, wild, crazy race that one was. And just when you thought it, well, anything else, Rich, for the race before we get to the other wacky, crazy stuff that happened all post race. I always like to try and point out just a couple of things that take my attention. The obvious one is Outiger. It was obviously Zarco's day, but Outiger, okay, he's riding a great bike, arguably still just about the best bike on the grid.

But nevertheless, because he had such a wretched season in Moto 2 last year, we were all thinking, oh, this is going to be a disaster on the Moto GP bike. But no, I mean, he's doing the business, isn't he? Big time. Quickly. And most people would have allowed those sorts of conditions to get the better of them this early in there.

Because I don't know how many wet sessions he would have had on a Moto GP bike, but not many. So I just thought he was absolutely outstanding. And a shout out for Takenakagami, wild carding on the Honda. And yeah, what was he, fifth? Or sixth?

That was a great result as well. So a great day for LCR, obviously, because Takenakagami was on the other side of the garage. Well, because he, I think he was wild carding that race anyway, but obviously Chantra had had arm pump surgery, I think, and has had a couple of complications, which meant that he wasn't past fit to ride or was advised to sit this one out. Because Acosta just had arm pump surgery as well. Obviously, he was good to go.

But yeah, I mean, it was a chaotic, crazy race. I really enjoyed it. I mean, you can always guarantee that a bit of rain in the mix spices things up. Most of the kind of the talk and the intrigue and the concern, etc., is around kind of how the rules are being applied and whether the rules are quite correct for a variety of reasons at the moment. But the thing, I suppose the big thing before we get on to the last bit, is kind of how poor MotoGP teams are at kind of reading weather radar and interpreting what's going to happen.

I mean, it shouldn't come as a great big surprise that the French guy read the weather and won the race. So I suppose if there is such a thing as a bit of home advantage, maybe that's where it showed itself. But, you know, who is it pointing out? I think it might be Simon Passam pointing out that there is actually an airport at Le Mans, literally by the track. They have excellent weather radar and weather prediction there.

And it's one of these things where people were kind of starting on slicks when everybody knew it was going to rain. So I mean, you've got to be on the right time at the right moment. You know, I get that. But bearing in mind, Zarko did start on the wax. He must have done a very good job of protecting them in those first four or five laps and not burning them out.

So that when the rain did arrive, you know, he would have been in trouble if he kind of had completely torn him up, which he didn't. So he rode a very, very tactically smart race start to finish and was a thoroughly deserving winner. And, you know, French guy winning at home, I mean, it must have been the noise on the TV of the crowd. What it must have been like to have been there would have been a great day to have been at Le Mans. Well, it would have been fantastic.

They'd have been at Le Mans completely. You know, kind of it kind of would be sort of, it's not the same, but it was kind of like when Nikki won at Laguna Seca and they brought MotoGP back, right? That was pretty wild, just the noise that came up out of that. So I mean, not nearly what I mean, there was not, there was like 150,000 people that has and we're kind of spread out around Laguna. So, but that question, Jim, just one quick question.

So Alex Marcus now 22 points behind his brother on a bike that is going to gradually slip back on development as the year goes on. Is the sort of the progress stopped at this point? Do you think for Alex, what can you see him still making a fight of this? He's going to hang in there for a while longer before this eventually becomes essentially a route. The, the, the, the progress going forward on the 25 Ducati, I believe is progressing at a much slower rate than say the 24 bike did in its evolution, right?

So I think that keeps Alex closer to the front for longer before eventually they come up with, Gigi comes up with one other magical upgrade that happens somewhere that it's going to be the, the thing that Marquez needs to be super duper quick on the Ducati, faster than he is. And then that gap starts to be like, well, you know, Alex may be able to qualify or throw down a lap and get close, but he can't run the race pace. And it's just a matter of time. And you're just waiting for Mark just to pounce and then he rides off to the sunset. That's, that's how I think.

I think there's probably, I think there's, we're, we're on round six of 22. Six of 22. So you've got, so halfway would be 11. So you get five. Yeah.

I think he's in it for five more rounds, five or six more rounds. And then, you know, it's, I think it's going to look like, I think it's going to look like Alonso winning his Moto three title last year. Let's go to the flyaways and just win everything. I think Mark could put, put a run like that on and have this thing done, you know, early on, you know, somewhere the Japan, Indonesia leg of the championship. He, if he was to win, if he was to win the championship in Motegi, cool.

That would hurt. No, it hurt bad. But yeah, that's yeah. I just, if Mark continues to ride the way that he's riding right now, then yeah, there's just no one that is going to beat him. I think he understood after her, that I can't do this.

I have to take the points when I can and worry about it later and just go from there. So, yeah, no, I agree. I agree. All right. So just when you thought all the craziness and all that couldn't possibly be any worse.

What happens when you wake up like on late Monday night, early, you know, some grumblings, I think that happens Sunday evening into Monday. And that is that Jorge Martin is wants to leave Aprilia. He has a clause in his contract that depending upon where he is in the championship standings, he has a get out of jail free card and does not have to complete his contract for 2026. This is wild to me. Now there's a precedent for this.

Mark or Martin's manager had a contract when he was riding for KTM that they used a get out of jail card for Martin to escape KTM's grasp and move on to Pramak and onto a Ducati. So there's a precedent here that he's done. So the problem I see is that you haven't ridden the Prillia very much at all. You went off of it. And where do you want to go?

So, OK, are you rage quitting again because you've been hurt? I don't understand his logic of doing this because even if he does stay, there's going to be animosity amongst that small team that they're really not going to he's not going to win them back over. This is out already. And the damage I think is done. So then it seems crazy to me.

It seems illogical to me. I don't know what he's thinking, but it's going to shake things up massively because I think you've sort of got it figured out kind of like what may play out here, Rich, if you want to go into that part of it. Well, I mean, I think it's worth pointing out the shenanigans. I mean, the first point I will make is that as a person that kind of exists in the commercial world, I mean, I'm not a legal person, but you would hope and expect that there are some better clauses or fine details of the clauses in some of these contracts than the shenanigans that's being suggested. Now, none of us have seen what the contract says, but it's worth bearing in mind.

I mean, there's a pattern of behavior here. So. Martin was always associated with KTM through Moto3 and obviously in Moto2, where he had a lot of success and everybody expected him to go on to the KTM MotoGP bike. But there was a get out clause, as you say, which was if there wasn't a KTM MotoGP bike in the top 10 of the championship by a certain date, then he wasn't beholden. He was a free agent basically, but this was the COVID year.

So there hadn't been any racing. So he was allowed to escape or slip through KTM's fingers for that reason. Now, okay, you might say, well, who could have predicted something like COVID? There'd be no racing. All right.

But it was a bit of a not dishonest because the contract allowed it to happen, but it was a pretty underhand way at getting himself out of his commitment to KTM. Bone in mind, he had signed a contract or had a contract in place. And so now we find out that or allegedly with this Aprilia contract is that if he's not in a certain position in the championship by round six, which we've just had, he becomes a free agent. Now, Aprilia, if they haven't got a counter clause in it says, this assumes you're riding the bike. Again, that would be a kick in the well, I won't use a vulgar term, but a slap in the face of Aprilia, who let's not forget, kind of pulled all the stops out financially to sign him in the first place when he had his kind of meltdown and walked out on Pramak and Ducati.

Now, the, not the cynics, the people that are thinking this one through think this might have suddenly erupted and gone public, which is the unusual bit of it. Normally this stuff, I mean, this stuff happens all the time in the background. Of course it does. It just doesn't become made public. Some, one or two people suggesting that Zarco winning the French Grand Prix puts him in a prime position to move up to the works squad if he wants.

He might want to stay at LCR, although I suspect he probably does, Zarco. But if Martín has suddenly decided that he plants his life on an HRC with several more noughts on his contract paycheck into the bargain, which might be the prime motivation here, then he'll use whichever kind of underhand or shrewd, whichever side of the fence you want to sit on with that one tactic to get out. But as you say, Jim, if this is all true and it has been made public, then I don't see how the relationship with Aprilia can possibly continue. A couple of people suggesting that they might now take this to arbitration and if they can win, they could hold him to that contract and effectively stick him on the sidelines so that he doesn't get to race a bike at all for the better part of the year, which there might be some karma there as well as I'm concerned. He could get healthy.

Well, I mean, he could still beat himself up in training crashes. I mean, this is the ironic thing. OK, you can make the argument that he crashed in the first test in Malaysia, which is true on the Aprilia, but they were all kind of pointing the finger on that one at Michelin, if you remember. Michelin was expected to take the blame for that, not Martín or Aprilia. And then obviously he duffed himself up in a training accident, which he probably didn't or shouldn't have done, and then had the unlucky crash perhaps coming back a wee bit too early in Qatar.

I mean, I don't know how many laps he's done on the Aprilia so far, but maybe a couple of hundred in total across the tests and the practices and the couple of races that he's had. If that, I mean, he has not done that. The sprint and the main race in Qatar, I mean, that's it, isn't it? So for him to invoke a clause about not being in the top three in the championship as a trapdoor that he can escape by is, I think, is lamentable, really. You know, he felt rejected by Ducati, fair enough.

I mean, he had good reason to feel that way. And Aprilia kind of, in a sort of way, kind of saved his career, didn't they, really? And this is how he repays it. I think it's, having not ridden the bike, really, I just think it's really, really bad if this is all true and this is what happens. I think, and I suspect and part of me hopes that he will come out of this much worse because he either won't be riding a bike or would be so damaged that some factories might actually say, actually, I'm not sure we want to take this guy on.

Particularly with what we were saying earlier with Marc Marquez showing how much better he is than Peco Bagnalea, he only just got beaten to the title by Martins. And perhaps Martins is not quite as good as, you know, he claims to be, but he is the world champion. So, I mean, I don't know. It's just, it's a bitter sort of tasting thing in the mouth, really, this one. So, this is going to cause a shuffle.

So, I have several theories about the shuffle. Yep. So, I will give you my thoughts. You can, you know, feel free to add in as we go here, Rich. So, ideally, I think Martine is trying to head towards Honda.

Yeah. Okay. There is his quote unquote manager, also manages one Pedro Acosta. So, the question is Honda says, well, look, Juan Mir has a two-year deal. And we know Luca Marini is at the end.

He's off of the normal two-year schedule. So, does Jorge Martín take that second factory Honda seat? And does Mir get sent to LCR to partner Zarco and poor old Chantra simply pushed aside because he was a placeholder. And then you have both Acosta and Martín at HRC. That's my first one.

That's my first one. Okay. All right. Okay. Just saying, I'm just trying to figure the shuffle out here, right?

So, my second theory is if you've noticed, Peco seems very despondent with the team. And the way he says things about the team makes you feel like he is not feeling the love of Ducati anymore. Right? So, you've got to question yourself and go, okay, is Benyaya potentially wanting to find an escape clause in his contract to get out of Ducati? Does he dislike being the person who races with Marc Marquez as his factory teammate as much as what we think he does?

Right? So, does Pastures of Green mean that Benyaya finds an exit clause or someone buys out Peco's contract? Right? And so, therefore, you have maybe an Acosta sliding to a factory Ducati to partner one M. Marquez?

Possibly. Right? But then where would Benyaya go? Potentially, Aprilia? Italian on an Italian bike?

Right? Potentially, but doubtful. Right? But then does Benyaya slide towards Honda? Take Marini's spot?

Possible, but highly unlikely in my mind, too. But it's crazy what this opens up because there's so many things because the problem is that you know Honda's got cash. They'll buy anybody out to get anything they want. Right? But still top racks in play because if he's there with Pirelli's, they want that.

So, okay, what happens there? And what about KTM? Does anybody want to be on the KTM? Is KTM still going to be there? Like we don't even know.

I was going to say the nuclear option there. Is KTM even there? Right. Which then causes a really crazy section because is there a clause that teams have to provide a third bike if they drop below 20? I doubt it.

Okay, I might be confusing Formula One with MotoGP here at this one and that's my bad, but I was thinking at some point there was a, hey, there has to be a minimum of bikes that have to be on the grid. And if KTM walks without a replacement, right? I mean, I don't think they can really walk away. I mean, they might like to next year, but they've got a contract that said they're going to be there. You know, Doran's going to hold them to that.

So are they just going to become like shadow bikes, right? Like they're KTM, but they don't have, there's no support or whatever. Who knows? I mean, there's so much going on in this silly season just because Martin drops his bombshell that I want to go, I want to be gone from Aprilia. I mean, it's crazy.

I think we have to remember and you can give Martin a degree of a let on this one, I suppose. Yeah, we understand why with Ducati suddenly decided to take Mark Marquez and send to Martin, look, you stay in Pramak and you'll be on a works bike. He wasn't prepared to stand for that. Okay, fair enough. But so he did the deal overnight, if you remember with Aprilia.

And bearing in mind, I read there was an excellent article by Lewis Duncan. I think it's Lewis Duncan. Hope I've got his name right. And I think he works for crash.net. Now he wrote a really good article on this yesterday.

And he pointed out that Aprilia wanted to sign for this year, Fabio Quattraro. Quattraro's salary requirement would meet. But then fast forward or roll on a few weeks, Martin becomes available and overnight they find the money, similar money, if not more, and sign him. So he could have had Quattraro on the bike this year as things transpired. But anyway, the point being that Martin made the decision to go to Aprilia sort of on a whim.

It helped along a lot. And this is where I'm going to go slightly conspiratorial. It helped along a lot by his best mate, Alessio Spargro. And where is Alessio Spargro now, Jim? HRC.

And where is the former Aprilia technical director now at Jim? Al Paciano. HRC. So I sort of sensed the hand of one Alessio Spargro a little bit in tempting Martin to say that you've had a rotten start for various reasons, but you've had a rotten start on Aprilia. You probably wouldn't have chosen to go there, but it was the only option you had last year when this all blew up, you know, and all happened within 24 hours.

Look at what we're doing at HRC. And by the way, this is the sort of money you could earn if you came here. Yep. I would imagine that's possibly what's happening. Quite again, quite why they've gone as public with it at this point as they have is hard to understand.

Great for us in terms of talking points. But yeah, the shuffle that happens, I think is that, and again, a couple of other people have said this, but it is obvious, you know, Aprilia would probably jump at the chance to promote Agoura. Although he's got a contract. He's got a contract with Trackhouse for another year, but can they work out a deal where he slides up to the factory bike? And again, I'll go conspiratorial here, right?

The fact that who's the guy? Who's the head of Trackhouse? The team manager? Justin Mucks. No, no, no, no.

Sorry, David, David, I preview. I mean, I had for some reason, Fabio Briatore was stuck in my head. I know that's for me. I know that's wrong. I'm having a rough day, guys.

I'm sorry. So my thing is that he said, yeah, I agree is great. And we don't expect him to be here long. Was that because they know that they knew this? Like they knew that Martin was leaving?

I don't know. Maybe. I mean, that comes out that that's sad. Trackhouse feels to me like the feeder team. If things go as they should do for the main works.

I mean, that's generally how satellite squads on heavily supported machinery like that work, isn't it? So I think. Exactly. And so I kind of see Aguirre slotting up to the works by alongside Bazzacchi is a kind of an almost done deal if this is how things go with Martin. The question then becomes what the Trackhouse do?

You know, Ralph Fernandez, I think has a deal up until the end of 26, but isn't really doing a great deal to justify it. But this is where the Diogo Marrera link to GP is coming from, because you know, as Simon Patterson pointed out on the race, Trackhouse is not fastened with sponsorship at the moment. Put a Brazilian on the bike with a Brazilian Grand Prix next year, and you could see a ton of cash coming into that team to compensate the loss of Aguirre. And there are one or two others in Moto2 that you could slot onto the bike as well as placeholders that would, you know, again, somebody pointing out that even somebody like Jake Dixon, for example, Dawn or a Desperate for a Brit in MotoGP, that would make sense. You know, so there's a few candidates.

You can see how that would shuffle out. The question is, if KTM stay around, does Acosta stay put for now and just see what comes up for the 27? Because he's the hot property still, really. I don't see Mia staying at HRC beyond the end of next season. You almost get the feeling that due to circumstances beyond his control, his career on its last legs.

Mia's? Yeah. Yeah. Marini's is on the last legs too. Yeah, although Marini is a really good development rider.

So again, he's another guy that could slot into the Prilus somewhere. True. But I mean, you know, I mean, I see Marini maybe being a test rider for HRC, right? I mean, they want to keep him, right? He'd be a dream test rider.

So you have all that time to build your 850, yada, yada, yada. You know, you put Martine on the bike, keep him with me or who cares, whatever. I mean, that's possible. I mean, there's a lot there. I mean, nobody knows exactly what's going on.

No, I mean, the new story is Martine, isn't it? It's a real shocking. Obviously, I don't have a press pass for Silverstone, unfortunately. What a time to be rejected by Dorna. Yeah, exactly.

But the two people that would have been, and I'm not saying this in retrospect, I actually wrote it down because there was a slight glimmer of hope last week, but anyway, it's not happening and it's too late now. But the two people I was going to target above all others was Jann Zarco, who's having a great season at LCR prior to the French Grand Prix, and Massimo Rivola, you know, who's the team boss at Aprilia. Both of those guys will be virtually impossible to get a hold of this weekend for different reasons. Rivola probably will be spitting feathers with what's going on and I suspect might be not too quiet about the fact because Martine won't be at Silverstone, obviously. And obviously, Jann Zarco off the back of the branch is going to be a man in demand, isn't he?

But yeah, shame that we're not able to capitalize on any of that at the moment. But anyway, hopefully things will change. Yeah. Oh, with all that, Rich, where are we here now? Anything you'd love to say, kind of newsy here as we wrap this one up?

Very, very briefly. I'll do this in 60 seconds or thereabouts. So we've got a nice show coming. Coursier's got Bolton, who caught a bunch of interviews in Moto America at Road Atlanta and Barber. So more details on that to come.

But yeah, thank you very much indeed. Hopefully keep some of the American listeners happy with a bit of Moto A content, which is always great. We've got World Superbikes this weekend from Most in the Czech Republic. I think Toprax, I wrote it on the notes, I think he's 34 points behind Nico Bulliger. Nico Bulliger, there's another guy who could end up back in Moto GP as well.

I mean, he's having a rip raw in here in World Supers. And it would be remiss not just to touch very, very, very briefly on what happened at Alton Park and around one of the BSB, a couple of really great British Superbike races, but the whole weekend really marred in tragedy with the death of two riders in a kind of a bit of a typical turn one accident at Alton. It kind of invites high sides really. People kind of drift out onto the curb and you often see people just losing the rear and going down, which, you know, 999 times out of a thousand, you know, there's a bit of a scuffle, but everybody walks away. But unfortunately in the pack, one rider went down.

I'm not quite sure who it was. I was watching it at the time, but quite properly they cut away pretty much immediately. Anyway, the net result of all of this was that Owen Jenner and Shane Richardson, two of the supersport riders, lost their lives in an accident, which is devastating first and foremost for their families and friends and teams and so on. And it's a terrible start for BSB, obviously. So Donington Park round two is this coming weekend.

I'm not actually going to be there and I'm kind of glad that I'm not in a way because it's going to be such a sombre, sad affair. I mean, BSB, people will remember a couple years back, Chrissie Rouse died at Donington. So BSB does a very good job of commemorating and paying respects and all the rest of it. I mean, Owen Jenner, a young guy, young rider, multiple champion in the lower classes. Shane Richardson, a New Zealander, didn't know too much about him, but I think he was a bit older.

I think he was 29, 30, a couple of kids married, you know, so that's a real, really devastating. But, you know, this is motorcycle racing. You have a weekend like Alton with all that going on and then contrast it with the joy and the elation of Zarca winning at home. It's hard to sort of balance those two things against each other, really. But I mean, as we've said, I have to say a few times, unfortunately, you know, condonances from MotoPOP to the friends and families and teams of the two riders involved.

Happily, I mean, there were, it was a 12-bike collision, Jim. I think nine riders were kind of dealt with medically. Obviously, the two that died were critically injured. Tom Tunstall was also severely injured and the initial prognosis was not sounding great. I'm happy to say that it sounds as if he is going to make a full recovery.

He had a broken bone in his neck, I think, but I don't think it's a kind of life-altering neck break in the sense of anything sort of worse than being out for probably the season, if indeed he wants to return. But most, normally these guys do. Everybody else required some sort of minor treatment and we're okay. But happy to say that Tom Tunstall is going to make, by the sounds of it, a full recovery. But yeah, pretty dark weekend.

Start things off in BSP, unfortunately. Yeah, that's terrible. I never want to see that happen. I saw enough of it. I don't want to see any more of it, but it's a dangerous game that's played, that is for sure.

On a lighter note, I got a little Moto America thing for everybody. It applies to MotoGP, ironically. MotoGP has decided to race Baggers, yes, Harley-Davidson Baggers, at six rounds. Selected six rounds. I don't know which six rounds yet, but that was why, if you watch the Dorn of Feed, they had Bradley Smith, a former MotoGP rider, was there because he's going to be riding the Baggers.

That one, I'm completely, I just don't understand that one at all. Oh really? Oh, I'm here for this. I really am. I'm not.

Oh, I've seen these things at Koda. It's just mind-numbingly stupid in my mind. I just know. Oh Jim, come on man, lighten up. Sorry.

I've seen it. I think it's absolutely ridiculous. It's a 400 plus pound motorcycle with luggage bags on the side of it. It's just, oh, no. Not something that would necessarily, in your mind, lend itself to racing.

But they are quite trick though, aren't they, these things? But they don't stop. They don't handle and they're racing them. I mean, I don't know. Sorry.

If you want to find a positive note, Jim, this suggests to me a greater focus on the US as a market in the future for MotoGP. Yeah. The thing of it is, I was like, if they were going to do something like that, Harley doesn't make one, but if you ever see a Hooligans race, that's cool. Because it's more of a naked bike kind of thing. And it's more, I don't want to say it's more like how super bikes looked like in the early 80s without fairings and stuff, but it kind of does.

And it kind of reminds you of that. And they're kind of, they're race bikes, right? As opposed to this tube frame big, I don't know. It just depresses me. I just, they did that.

I mean, the thing of it is here in the States, Harley-Davidson is lagging in sales. They cannot in any way, shape or form command any kind of millennial buy-in of wanting their motorcycles. It seems as though that it's dire straights here for Harley-Davidson. There's rumors of Harley-Davidson on the market to be sold, and they can't seem to find anybody to invest at all. They kind of put all their eggs into the electric bike thing and it failed miserably because no one who owns a Harley is going to want to have that.

But I will get off the soapbox here and there because it's already been a two-hour show. Yeah. Last thing, Jim, and I promise I will be quick. Just a couple of things that hopefully will be of interest to the listeners. I'm trying to kind of think how best to try and do this.

The first thing is that the kind folks at Rock Oil, which is a UK company, we're going to do a little bit of sponsorship kind of stuff with them. They have sent me a box of, I'm holding it up for the camera so Jim can see, it's their thing called Rock Oil Dirt Blaster. It's kind of the pre-wash prep stuff. You spray it on your bike and you wash it down. I've got quite a few bottles of this.

We're going to have to try and figure out a way. This is obviously going to be something for the UK listeners and I'll need to take some of these along to a BSB round or two as the year goes through. We'll try and think of a way to generate a bit of interest so that people can win a bottle of that because it's good stuff. I suppose I can say this. We are what?

A week and a half out from Silverstone. I'm hoping I'm going to be sent by Silverstone Circuit a couple of pairs of Sunday tickets. We will find a way to do a quick comp on Instagram or Twitter or something to see who can bag one of those pairs of tickets. We also have, I think one of our paid subscribers is UK based so if that is the case and they haven't got tickets for Silverstone, they'll be first in the queue as a subscriber, as a financial contributor to the show. I will try and get my head around that over the course of the next couple of days because obviously it's only a week out till Silverstone.

We're always trying to find people to help us out with things like this. Great big thanks to Rockoil. Again, we'll do something properly in the show around this. I've also got some tubs of oil from them as well but it is 5W40 so it's a particular synthetic oil that will be suitable for some bikes, not all. It's fine for my BMW, I'm happy to say.

I've already used four litres of it. Thank you Rockoil. A little bit of progress here and there, counteracted by the fact that Dawna kicked us out of the GP paddock for the time being, which is a pain in the butt but we'll get back. Keep your eyes on the socials. All right, sounds good.

With all that folks and everything that's happened with all this marathon chef you made this far, you're hardcore. There was a lot of good stuff in there and as it goes, everybody ride safe. Peace out.