MotoGP Silverstone – One For The Agius

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 807 for May 28th, 2025. I'm Jimmy Dow riding lead on this and the man playing the Ewan McGregor to my Charlie Borman Richard Jouwett over there in England.

You know that they have the new ones out, right? I haven't watched it yet. I want to. It looks like this one's going to be different. What is it?

What do they call it? Long Way Back or something? The Long Way Home. Long Way Home. That's it.

And they're writing more vintage motorcycles. That one should be pretty interesting. It's on Apple TV and I've watched the first four episodes I think around so far. It's very good actually. Yeah.

I haven't watched it yet. I haven't had the time yet. Hey, I'll get there at some point. But yeah, worth a watch. Yeah, very good.

That's why I had to throw it out there because I knew it would come out on there. So I couldn't resist the usage of the twist there if you don't mind. So this show got to remind you to thank everyone who is donating and thanking everyone who is supporting the show. Again, if you guys like the show, please go to our website www.motopodcast.com. Go over there and subscribe if you can.

There's Patreon and PayPal links. If not, that's okay. We understand it. But if you like the show, go to where you get your podcast. Put a like in there.

Share it with your friends. Tell everybody you know about it. It'd be really appreciated by us. And Rich, you were saying these couple of new people that you happen to bump into somewhere here. Yeah.

Walking the dog tonight with my lovely wife, Catherine. And we did what we often do on a sunny evening in the UK in the spring summertime, dropped into the King's Arms and happened to bump into a chap wearing a resplendent in his TT t-shirt and a Patronus Yamaha jacket, I think it was. So I happened to say, Oh, shouldn't you be on the island at the moment? He had been to the TT, I think he said two or three years ago. Anyway, just quick shout out to Helen and John Lewis.

I got chatting to them as you do, you know, what the motorcycle racing community, well, the motorcycling community, but certainly the racing communities like Jim, we will say everyone's friendly with each other. So we had a quick chat at the bar and yeah, we got talking about MotoPod because I'm always fishing for new people to subscribe to the show, get onto the Insta channels and so on. And sure enough, within a couple of minutes, Helen and John Lewis were new subscribers to the Instagram channel. I think they'll be subscribing to the MotoPod channel as well. I did show them that on my Apple feed.

So yeah, nice to have a couple of new people on board. Thanks guys. Nice to meet you. And I hope you're enjoying your little holiday. They were at Silverstone actually last weekend and then they're just spending a few days a bit further south where I am just to talk about detune, de-stress, whatever it is, decompress, whatever it is from a busy weekend at Silverstone.

So great to meet them and happy to have them on board like everybody else. All right. With that, since we're talking about listeners and whatnot, we did have listener feedback. This is from Chris Boyce. He starts out with his thing about did Ducati get it wrong?

So he says, when Ducati announced that VR46 would replace PreMac as their actual satellite team, it didn't surprise me, but I did question why Grissini was overlooked. With this beautiful thing called hindsight, I feel like Grissini should have received the nod as a satellite team. The VR46 boys are fourth and fifth in the standings, which is great. But from an optics standpoint, they just seem like they are further away and less consistent than Grissini. It looks like Furman is wrapping his head around his bike, around this bike, sorry, faster than expected.

And it wouldn't surprise me if he outscored Frankie and or Fabio by the end of the season based on his current form. I like an underdog story, so maybe that's why I'm so optimistic about Grissini outscoring VR46 in the standings. And if they do, did Ducati get it wrong? Additionally, seeing Grissini do well the past few years has been so bittersweet. I did not get the chance to really see the fruits of his labor.

You just can't say enough good things about that team. Rich, I'm going to let you speak first on this one. So you go with yours. I'll come back after that and we'll see how far apart we are. Certainly great email from Chris and thank you for that.

I think in the context of the last couple of seasons, the point about Grissini versus VR46 is quite obviously true. I mean, Grissini have done brilliantly, but I think you have to rewind a little bit and kind of consider the situation when Valentino Rossi recently retired, started his MotoGP team. At that point, by my memory, at least, Grissini was still very much the kind of third tier utterly customer squad. And obviously with Valentino Rossi, you know, that great big kind of brand name, it would have been tempting to Ducati to hook up as they did. And of course, at that point as well, Yamaha were very firmly not really kind of wanting to run a semi-works satellite squad.

I forget exactly which year Tech3 bowed out from Yamaha and went over to KTM, probably around about the same time, wasn't it? But certainly, you know, obviously Yamaha had Pramak on board as of this year and that is very much a fully supported satellite squad. Because we, I think going back when I was in the early days when I was on the Pod Gym, you know, we were kind of confused about Yamaha's approach to MotoGP at that point, weren't we? And the fact that the VR46 squad, you would have thought there would have been a natural kind of place for Yamaha to reside as a supported secondary team with Valentino Rossi, who after the rule was pretty much synonymous with Yamaha. So it's always been a bit of an odd fit really, the Ducati with him, because let's face it, Rossi did not have a great time riding the Ducati in MotoGP.

But it was the best bike available at the time. Ducati were keen for obvious reasons. So where we are now with Cristina is, I mean, they are, yeah, I think Chris is spot on the money really. I mean, it's a bit sort of weird, the VR46 form, isn't it? Because Frankie Morbidelli is so sort of haphazard and accident prone, isn't it?

We saw it again this weekend in terms of him getting penalized for on track antics. And Fabio DiGiantonio is kind of in this odd position like Peco of kind of trying to get his head around the 25 bike, which is clearly, well, perhaps I shouldn't say clearly, I think it's probably becoming... It is inferior. Generally accepted that it's not as good as the 24 bike. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I just think that he's bang on the money. Aldegaard is, I don't want to say a revelation because I mean, we knew he was good, but obviously, again, we're tainted by recency in the sense that he didn't have a very good season last year in Moto2 when he was expected to win the championship and had a pretty bad outing in 2024. So perhaps it shouldn't be such a big shock that he's doing so well on the Cristina Ducati. And obviously Alex Marquez, well, okay, perhaps this is the first signs of him having a bad, a properly bad weekend. But they're sort of neck and neck really, aren't they, in terms of honours for non-works Ducati squad.

So just to finish off what you get going, Jim, yeah, I mean, Fausto Grissini was the stalwart of the series and kind of it is sad that he isn't around to see this. But on the other hand, his wife has picked up his mantle and blimey, is she doing a good job with it? So hopefully Fausto would be proud if he was still around. Your thoughts? Yeah, so first of all, Chris, I want to apologize to you for not writing back to you.

I was buried underneath of work preparing for a vacation and other things, which is no excuse, but I am here now and I will give you my thoughts on this. First of all, my immediate kickback reaction was no, Ducati has this one correct. Valentino Rossi and VR46 is a brand. It is a brand. Let's not sugarcoat this in any way, shape or form.

Rossi is the still will and for the present foreseeable future still be the name people think about. And if he is associated to Ducati in any way, shape or form, that means more benefit to Ducati. It's the most famous Italian with the most famous Italian brand. You can't you that's a match made in heaven marketing scheme if there ever was one. I think this was the inedibility of the fact that once Premac left and decided they weren't going there anymore, that Rossi, regardless of whether Premac was there or not, the Rossi squad was going to become the facto satellite team that was going to get all the goodies and everything from everybody.

It's just it's Rossi. That's purely what it is. Now here's where I have to ask you a question quickly, Rich, because I'm terrible with names and a lot of times Italian and to me Spanish names are the same with the Italian. That's where I'm struggling because I can't remember. That's a good question.

I have always felt that he was Italian. I thought so too. But then I was thinking that the way the Marquez brothers have sort of been adopted by them and they talk about it being a home that thought, well, maybe it's Spanish. I'm not 100% sure. And of course, I should have probably checked this before I opened my mouth.

I'm checking now. But I didn't. But the point I want to point I want to say here was is that things look great over there because one, the Grissini team has 24 bikes. OK, yeah. And then both of them are 24 bikes.

Yes. Right. If you look at where Rossi's group is, they have one 25 bike that is for Digiantonio and they have a 24 bike. So you don't have two riders on the same equipment. You can't move in the same direction.

Right. I mean, not that not the two riders are going to have the same settings, but the bikes fundamentally would be the same here. We can obviously tell that the two motorcycles are vastly different from one another. Yeah. That, OK, wow, you're diverging away from each other as opposed to working towards something, which is making this look a little weird.

Grissini has the two has two riders. One, remember, Altegr is there because Ducati put him there because that was to keep him out of the limelight. Right. He was going to develop in a year. Then he was going to be at bounce somewhere, whether that's the factory team or whether he was going to go to the true satellite team.

Who knows? He may stay. We don't know that one either. Right. Is Mark.

I mean, think about it. Alex Marquez got a 24 bike in and a technical manual that obviously appeared to look like the encyclopedic Britannica from what I understand. And he get on the got on the bike at the first test and was instantly like the fastest guy there. It's like, come on, man. That bike is that good.

And Alex is that good. And if you've got all the setup notes and documentation, you're going to look good. Hence, Altegr looks good because he's feeding off of that same thing because they can have similar setups and move the same direction. So I mean, did they make a mistake? No, because the brand is going to be greater than anything else that's there.

I mean, there is a hierarchy that exists in the Moto GP paddock. And I'm sorry. And this is not disrespectful. And he's not that top tier team that Rossi's team will become in time. It's just it's the brand.

So I think they still got it right. That's my take. Well, yeah, I mean, just to go back to what I said at the time that the decision was made, I think it was the right decision. I mean, I'm still a little bit unclear as to just how invested Valentino Rossi kind of is in the team. I mean, because he's off car racing, he's retired.

You know, because when he was in racing, all these guys have got massive egos and a lot of talent to back it up, of course. And so it was all about him when he was in Moto GP. And, you know, it's kind of he handed it over to his mate. Yeah. And, you know, it runs as a very competent team.

But, you know, Grissini are certainly snapping at their heels racing race out one weekend. The 46 is perhaps slightly ahead overall. And then another weekend, it will be Grissini. So there's not much to choose between them. And obviously, as you say, Jim Pramak have dropped out of being the sort of the defacto official satellite squad.

That's made a big change. I personally think with the reemergence of Yamaha, I do wonder whether or not the VR 46 squad might end up on Yamaha's in the fullness of time, because it would just make more sense in terms of Rossi's kind of history, really. I mean, we know it would never be a Honda satellite squad. And I think there's some that will come to it in the moment. There's some possibility of chatter and a couple more Hondas turning up on the grid if certain things happen.

So, yeah, it's interesting, though. Again, this is not me that's necessarily coming up with this, but the whole 25 versus 24 bike is kind of an interesting thing in terms of where Pecos at, because if it's now generally accepted to be the case, as I think it is, as we said a minute ago, that the 24 bike is a better package than the 25 because there's been some weight distribution. There's been some repackaging of certain things and it's changed the base sort of feel of the bike. And this is where Peko is struggling, whereas Mark has gone from a 23 Ducati to the 25 one. He never rode the 24, so he doesn't have it as a comparison point.

So perhaps that's what's differentiating the two of them, because we'll come to Peko, who, again, didn't have a particularly happy weekend. Anyway, great email from Chris and it's one that we could talk about for hours, probably. I have a theory about what Ducati did to the 25 versus the 24. So quickly, I think they saw massive gains when they were able to use the rear tire, the rear Michelin, more effectively as a tool to slow down. So how do you use that as a better tool to slow down?

You have a couple of options. You could manipulate the ride height in some way to give you more stability at the back, which you could argue that the bikes are slightly lower than they were in their year prior. Yeah, you can kind of say as the Michelin came in, the truly angled bikes for the back end was very high compared to the front as kind of leveled off somewhat. The other thing you can do is you can change where the position of the rider is. Right.

I can be positioned farther backwards or whatever. Or you can change where the mounting points are for the engine and move the engine backwards. So I think Ducati was like, hey, look, we've had success moving weight rearward to take advantage of this on the rear. So to me, that says they moved one of the biggest parts, the engine backwards or rotated it in some frame to give them that more stability. That came at a sacrifice of the front end feel, which Benya has to have.

Mark doesn't because he does. He's had said that the front end is vague. He's admitted that and he admitted it here in Silverstone. OK. But Mark also makes a great statement and he says, hey, if you've tried three or four setups and you still have the same problem with the bike, it ain't the bike, it's you and you got to learn to ride it.

Ouch. Yeah, that hurt. And that was that was a shot across the bow. Right. And DG Delaney kind of backed that all up with some things that he said after post race, like, hey, we got to fix Benya's problem, but Mark still doing OK with it.

But we need to make his bike better, too. Well, the difference is that Mark can ride around problems. You've seen it. You know he can. It's it's again, we had this talk last time.

It's an alien versus a great rider. Yes. And that just happens to be where it is. There's nothing wrong with Benya. He's a two time world champion.

He's great. However, he's great because he had one of the best bikes on the grid. And as soon as things have gotten bad and somebody of better talent has shown up on the same bike, we see that he is more normal. Yeah, he's more human than anybody else. So anyway, that's my theory on what's going on there with Ducati.

That all sounds well thought through and reason to me. And as you say, Jim, I think the inevitable outcome of this and we can certainly say that exactly the same thing again now about Fabio Quattraro is that if you give somebody a good bike or even one that's got a few problems, but the talent will ride around the problems and will make the difference, whereas other people are still struggling to make it work. And you can certainly say that about the other three Yamahas on the grid. And unfortunately, I think you have to say that at this point in time, Peke Banya has been kind of shown up a little bit here. And that comment from Mark was pretty ruthless, but straight out of the Rossi playbook, wouldn't it?

Yes, it was. Oh, OK. With that, let's go to the news. So one of the best, one of the wildest things I've seen happen a long time is the fact that Aprilia released a statement about Jorge Martín, hey, bro, you got a contract. You're not getting out of this contract because just because you weren't riding the bike doesn't mean you get out of this contract.

You're still going to ride for us next year. Oh, and by the way, Honda, stop offering money to money to our rider that we have. Yeah, it was definitely a pretty I had the had the claws out. And they're definitely scratching because I think they need to. Right.

They had Jorge for that. And I mean, he's and he's a talent. There's no question about that. Right. But wow, there's there's some contract wrangling going on in the background there.

And it's going to become brutal, I think, before the rest of the year is over. You got some thoughts on that? Well, either he has some genuine what I call trapdoor clauses in the contract that actually do allow him to leave in a sort of a mutually acceptable way. Or him and his team are being sneaky, trying to sort of work their way around certain things, you know, like the fact that he's not third in the championship or top six, whatever it is. Yeah, that's because you haven't actually ridden the bike.

I made my position on this perfectly clear on the last show. I just don't think that's the way to behave. And fair play to a printer. They've said, well, I think what they are saying is that if you want to get out of this contract, you've got a fight on your hands. I think that's what that statement said.

You could well see this ending up in the sporting court of arbitration, whatever it's called, you know, dragging on and on and on. And, you know, he's at risk of losing a lot of time on a bike if he's not careful because, you know, he comes back and knuckles down and gets on with it. And as we'll come to the bike has the potential on its day to do really well. So that was a sort of a serendipitous performance on Sunday, really, in view of everything else that's going on in the background. Or he's at risk of sitting on the sidelines for quite a while whilst he's under contract and not wanted on the bike.

If I'm pretty to take that position. And I've got other options, as we discussed last time as to what they could do in terms of the works line up. And if Bizecki is able to step up and start to make the best of what he's got as well. We know Silverstone works for the Aprilia. It has done.

It's always been a good track for Aprilia. So it's by no means the case that next time out, you know, he's on the podium again or winning, but the bike has potential. I mean, we've seen this for seasons with the Spargrove and even Vinales, of course. So, yeah, I just think fair play to Aprilia. And I mean, Martin put out this kind of slightly, again, to me, distasteful, I'll be giving my side of the story.

Well, OK. But what's he going to say? You know, I've got buyers regret or, you know, I just don't want to be there anymore because somebody's offering me more money and I think I can win on another bike. I mean, that's OK. He's a racer.

You would expect him to want to do that. But if you sign a contract, you've signed the bloody contract. So unless you've got a genuine out clause, you're stuck as far as I'm concerned. Unless you want to battle it out in court and it will cost a lot of money. So it costs somebody some money for sure.

Yeah. Let's see. The rumor mill is running rampant. And this is a rumor is the question is or there is a lot of speculation, I should say, that KTM will only have two bikes on the grid next year. I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere, but this kind of makes sense because like, well, your race team has got a problem because you have no money and you've got people lining fund you.

But are they going to fund the whole kit and can poodle of four bikes? Probably not. So it does make sense that KTM will will honor the idea that they have to race, but they will only have their factory team for sure. But they may not have their factory star rider riding their bike because the rumor mill is still swarming with the fact that Acosta is going to be in yellow and ride for Rossi. I can't blame him for trying to get there.

But so I think we learned last week that is it a Josh? Is that correct? So it's an Indian motorcycle manufacturer. I mean, it's a huge, I think you're correct. Conglomerate companies.

So they've taken on the debt repayment for whatever percentage of the the issue debt wise had to be dealt with. So they've taken a bigger stake in the business now. So that secures, I guess, in the short to medium term, KTM, the brand. And as far as I understand it, that new majority owner, if they are a majority or close to being majority owner, are very much in it for the racing. So I think the signs are positive that KTM continues with its racing activities.

I mean, obviously, it's not just Moto GP, it's Moto3 and then all the off road. You know, it's a huge racing division. But as you say, Jim, it's a question of whether or not they can fund and justify the extra two bikes, as I don't know, for example, whether or not the Tech 3 team in terms of their sponsorship, how much that brings to the party or whether it's pretty much all on KTM's dime in terms of the equipment I expect that it is. I guess we'll just have to to wait and see on this one. But there's no doubt that having four bikes rather than two is a massive advantage.

You know, just ask Yamaha about that one. So it's this kind of double edged sword. You save money by having two bikes or do you risk not being able to push forward? I wonder. My suspicion is perhaps that the cost of stays put because again, he has a contract.

They perhaps don't spend too much more time and effort on what they have in terms of this rule set. And they now focus on 27 in terms of trying to get the 850 right and then see what happens thereafter. I mean, I sort of hope that's what happens. It would be I'm sure Tech 3 won't be bike less. I mean, let's face it, they're a great team.

I mean, Herve Pancheral is one of the most enigmatic figures in all of world motorsports, as far as I'm concerned. So it's hard to imagine they get left high and dry. So I'm sure that they would take on other bikes if they had to. But it would be a shame to see that kind of aspect of the KTM set up fall away. Hopefully that won't happen.

But I think your next news item is kind of hinting at what might happen should that scenario come to pass. That lays the question, what does Tech 3 do if the KTM says, well, it's only two bikes next year? What bike does Tech 3 do? Do they go back to Yamaha or do they slide over to Honda? I mean, if Honda could put if anybody has the power to put six motorcycles on a grid, it's Honda, right?

So for them to have the ability to have Tech 3 as a Honda based team, all that data, they could probably drive something forward. I mean, you know, you have to look at how good Zarko has been here. And quite honestly, the Honda is looking almost on part of the Yamaha, I would say, roughly kind of close, sort of there. I think the Yamaha has got a bit more one lap pace in it. But Honda seems to have a little more race pace.

I don't know. That's a shake up. It's a toss up, I guess. I think the accepted wisdom, Jim, is that Honda are probably slightly ahead of Yamaha. It's just that one of the Yamahas has Fabio Quattaro on it and he's an alien.

That's true. That is very true. You know, you have to look at the recent past with Yamaha. They sort of somewhat kicking and screaming, ended up with Pramak as their satellite squad, and it is a proper semi works operation. But the thought of Yamaha being able to field two more bikes that were anywhere close to that level, I think is a bit of a stretch.

Whereas Honda, of course, is another matter altogether. And you don't have to go too many years back when you had sort of eight to ten, well, certainly eight Hondas on the grid. OK, they weren't all bang up to date models. But with where Honda are and with the sleeping giant waking up again, it might well suit them to have a couple more top line bikes on the grid. And obviously, Tech 3 would be a great team with their experience and their resources and so on to do that alongside LCR.

So I would think Honda would be the more likely option if KTM did drop away there. I think so. I mean, I I just the thought of Gekulam wrenching on a Honda is mouthwatering to me. I think he's one of the one of the great chief mechanics. Yeah, there's others you can name, right?

But Gekulam has just done that, bought the T-shirt and worn it so long. One of those kind of ideas. Oh, last bit of news. This is not MotoGP, but involves a MotoGP rider. Luca Marini was injured at an Isozuka eight hour test.

He dislocated his left hip, damaged ligaments in his left knee, fractured his sternum and left collarbone and had a right side nemothorax. Does that mean deflated lung? I think that's what whole hey, my team had, isn't it? I think it is. Or there's some fluid around a lung or something to that nature.

So that was obviously a nasty crash that he had sort of testing. It was on the second day of testing. He'd already had a program on the CBR 1000 RR SP-R. I mean, if you can keep all those initial straight fine, great. Good on you.

But hey, it was a Honda superbike. OK. Let's just call it what it is. But yeah, that's a shame that he has that because I wonder what happened. I don't I don't I know of no photographs.

I know of no video of the event to tell you what may have happened. Luca doesn't crash very often. And to crash that, I don't know if you say crash that badly or have that bad of a crash. English is my first language and I'm terrible at it. But it seems as though that something happened that he was not truly prepared for because he's just not the kind of guy that does that personally.

So I hopefully he recovers and recovers and becomes back to fit. But I guess it's what now you're going to have the stuff and Brattle stepping in, I guess, to take his spot, I'm guessing. Yeah. Although I suppose I could bring one of the guys over from World Superbikes. Maybe I care like a winner might like a winner might come over and come across Shafi Fiehi, who's the other rider in World Superbikes.

He's been injured recently as well as a result of a nasty crash in Most in the Czech Republic at the last round. So like a winner tends to be the guy that they bring across would make sort of more sense in terms of race fitness than Brattle, perhaps. But but what about a leash? Well, obviously a leash. Yeah.

I mean, he's reserving me as well as to perhaps they would just draft him in. But I must admit, Jim, I hadn't seen that until I saw it on your notes. And that is a that's a long list of nasty injuries that Marines picked up. So that suggests to me that he's going to be out for quite a while. And let's not forget, of course, crashing at Suzuka on a modern day Superbike and bearing in mind, these are Suzuka 8 hour level Superbikes, which are cut above just about everything else, because they take that race extremely seriously, of course.

It's a smidgen below a Moto GP bike. Exactly. You know, as Casey Stoner found out a few years ago when he did the Suzuka, you have a crash there and you know, you hit something pretty quickly because there is not a lot to run off that Suzuka by modern day Superbike, let alone Moto GP stands. This is why we don't race at Suzuka anymore. Unfortunately, walls are so close.

They're just too close. It's yeah. I mean, this is why the bikes need to be slowed down. It's why we go in 850 on Moto GP. And I suspect this one will be sort of de facto Super Sport Regs in World Superbike.

It'll just get rebranded and dropped down to the sort of the 700cc category, I think, in a couple of years, because these bikes are just too quick. Yeah, pains me to say, but they just are. Yeah, that is true. Oh, I guess we should get to the racing at Silverstone because there was racing, right, Rich? How do we want to do this?

We want to go in the way they raced them. Moto two first. Yeah. I mean, it pains me that the card every year at Silverstone, I know why they do it is because the TV schedules and Moto GP with the British being on British summertime and stuff, it just causes a bit of havoc with the schedules. But I hate it.

You know, I hate having Moto three, Moto two, Moto GP, like we have just about everywhere else. No, we have to have this sort of mixed up card. And it infuriates me. Sorry, I won't run. No, that's OK.

I understand. I mean, yeah, I think it's because it's always you always have Moto GP at a certain time of day in Central Europe, essentially. Because Spain is on Central European time. So but whatever, let's just do it the way they race them. I think it's because I think it kind of builds as far as the story of the weekend plays out.

So let's look at Moto two. Let's look at the qualifying. In the first qualifying session, you had Ramirez, Kanett, Zonta, Van de Gerber, Alonso, Arbolino, Vietti and Garcia. Well, good golly, that was a list of high talent people in the first one. You know, it's like, wolf.

OK. Garcia had a crash, but in the end, Kanett, Alonso, Ramirez and Lopez all went through. I think everybody would think that those would be the guys that would go through out of there. They were just strange to be sitting in there. The second qualifying session.

QP to on to crashed and got back up, kept going halfway through. Can it was quick, followed by ages Alonso, Guilvara, Holgardo and Dixon. That right there should tell you all you need to know. There is a changing of the guard coming in Moto two, and it's coming very, very fast. However, as it worked out when it finally mattered the most, you had Kanett taking pole, snatching it away from Gonzalez with Moreira, then Alonso, Aegis, Marco Ramirez, Baltas, Guilvara, Holgardo, your top three roads.

I mean, those are people that you know, the old guard is kind of Kanett. And, you know, well, maybe you could say, you know, really can't say anybody else is in there as the old guard, per se. It's kind of crazy to think this, but that's how qualifying went. Dixon and Vietti, I suppose, would be the top line old guard, wouldn't they? But yeah, I mean, the changes are coming.

Yes, they are. So we get into race morning on this one. Gonzalez had an absolutely horrible start. Gonzalez has basically owned this championship, right? And he just got an absolutely horrid start to bike wheelie on him.

He goes backwards. Kanett broke into the lead, but Moreira, you know how he is. He's sort of he's sort of the munoz of Moto2, right? And it's sick. He's he came to race, right?

So he jumped out in front with Kanett, Guilvara, Aegis, Ramirez and Alonso. Now, Gonzalez had fall all the way back there. Then suddenly Guilvara was actually leading and he had come from eight. And this is all in the span of like about a lap, lap and a half. Essentially, this race was Moto2-esque in the craziness of passing that happened.

If you pass somebody, somebody else is passing you back again. It was fight, fight back throughout this entire race. It was a phenomenal race. It was probably, I want to say, like one of the best Moto2 races I think I've seen in quite some time. But Kanett basically was got himself back out front.

Moreira and Guilvara were there with Alonso hanging in this. And, you know, I've worked three laps in and I've written this is a belter just because if Moreira tried to pass Kanett, then Kanett came right back in the next corner. If Alonso charged up in there, then he would be second or third or maybe first. But then in the next corner, he got passing shuffled back again. Now, part of this is just the fact that the wind, there was what, a tremendous headwind on the hanger straight, which allowed the draft to be like twice as effective as what it would be normally.

So, again, man, we're having some great races. Gonzalez is is in sort of the front and he's, you know, he kind of like throws down some fast laps. And basically, Gonzalez was like battling with with Baltis. And they're they goes up the inside at the end of the Wellington straight. And then they go back into the turn and they touch them.

Baltis is, you know, tries to go back past again. And it's just incredible racing here at this point of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It's sort of kind of calms down just a smidge as the top five guys of Kanett, Moreira, Guevara, Alonso, Aegis and Lopez are kind of their own little battle. They kind of got away from the 11, 11, 12 rider pack that we had to get into this little five pack that we had like eight laps in. Aegis was like out front.

And then Alonso was second. I mean, it was topsy turvy. Great racing that happened as these guys were just battling. I mean, every battle was amazing. You didn't know where to look, didn't know where to watch.

It's absolutely incredible races. This goes on. Can it goes goes back to the front? And, you know, with Aegis, they're running back and forth right there. It's absolutely crazy.

With 11 laps in, Moreira has gone to the lead, but can it fights right back again? Alonso then leads it stow. He took a double draft and passed everybody. Sort of the magic that Alonso seems to have from Moto three is now sort of being translated to Moto two, potentially. Can it goes back out in front again?

Then he's battling with Alonso. Aegis is right there or whatever. Then, you know, Guevara is being dropped. It's like where on this planet do you even do you even look? And I think somewhere in here, Gonzalez actually crashes and he is out of the race.

Again, there's so much going on. I don't remember where it actually was where he or he fell off on Gonzalez is out of the race and not even air anymore. Now with five to go, it's Canet, it's Moreira, it's Alonso, it's Aegis, Guevara, and Salach has worked his way from the second pack. He's kind of bridged the gap and got himself to the front pack. But Canet is starting to slip away and Alonso recognizes this.

So Alonso gets the hurry up blast from his like third to get the second and starts to run down Canet thanks to the draft and some late breaking it stow. So with two to go, Alonso is trying to catch Canet. It's going to be Alonso versus Canet with a gap back to Aegis and Moreira. But on the last lap, you have a three rider battle because Aegis has kind of cut the gap. He's left Moreira back in there, but Alonso goes by its stow.

That's the end of the hanger straight. Then you're making the turn there. You head a straight and you got a left right flick and then you run out onto the front stretch of the new circuit. And basically Alonso's got that lead. He's got it at stow, but he's now on the wrong way because Canet runs around the outside to hang with him.

So as they go down that little hill to the now what's going to be the left hander, Canet has the advantage, but Canet slams it in there on Alonso. They go out and then Alonso pushes back and that opens a gap underneath for one. Mr. Aegis to slip by, win the race having never won, having never led except for that one lap, and he winds up winning the race. Absolutely incredible ride by Aegis.

In fact, you could say it was one for the Aegis. Oh, well done. Thank you. That's the title of the show, one for the Aegis with Moreira finishing second because Canet and Alonso battled themselves out to the point where even Even Canet, even Moreira was able to sneak by. Alonso did finish on the podium with signs of complete and total greatness coming here because you could see that Alonso had a lot of this figured out about where he was going to go.

If you watched that race, you could tell that Alonso had figured out where Canet was weak. He knew the only place that mattered was stow. I'm going to get there first, block it essentially. What Alonso didn't account for was Canet running it around the outside, you gotta give Canet some credit to hang out there, but then it all went wrong because one of them was not going to outbreak the other one. And well, they run off the track and Aegis wins the thing, which is absolutely incredible.

But Alonso was sort of like my rider of that race. I mean, I love the fact that Aegis won this thing, but Alonso was so good on that Moto 2 bike. It's like that mouth-watering idea of like, oh God, this is going to be so good, especially when he just gets that little bit more, little bit more. But to finish it out here real quick, Gavaro would be fifth, Celestino Vieta would make sixth. He got Solatch on the last lap.

Roberts had a fighting eighth, so Roberts is kind of coming on. Ramirez was in ninth, then it was Lopez Dixon who had a terrible, he had a terrible weekend. I don't know what to say. Then it was Arenas Van de Gerberg Arbolino who had another terrible weekend. And the last point went to Navarro.

Rich, a spectacular Moto 2 race, absolutely one for the books. Show your friends this race. This is why you watch. Yeah, I mean, arguably, again, my memory is not great, but I'm struggling to think of a better Moto 2 race than this for quite some seasons, if not ever, to be honest with you. I mean, okay, it was confined to the front five strokes six.

It's true. I was at Silverstone on Sunday. I watched it down at Abbey, which is the first fast right-hander after the start-finish straight. And I did have the sort of the screen in front of me for this particular race, which I didn't for the next two. So I was able to follow this race reasonably quickly.

And yeah, I mean, as you say, Jim, I mean, what it really said to me was, A, is this Alonso getting to grips with the Moto 2 bike, which clearly he is now, and just how much of an impediment was that collarbone break that he had immediately pre-season? I mean, we might have seen this performance out of him a little bit earlier, although of course he's been coming on strong in the last couple of rounds, it must be said. If I've got a slight criticism, and who am I to criticise, but this was a slightly un-David Alonso-ish last, well, last penultimate corner, because they go down, as you say, he got the lead into Stowe, went through what's called the Vale, that little kind of dip into Club Corner, which is that left. And I think a Moto 3 David Alonso would have left a bit of a gap, expecting Connet to go charging in, and then he would have cut it back in the way that Aegis actually did. I think Senna Aegis played an absolute blinder, because this is Aaron Connet, of course, who is quite an aggressive rider, and probably Aegis thought, I'm not going to win from here, but I might, if these two have a bit of shenanigans in the last turn, which is precisely what happened.

So it was very well judged by Senna Aegis. But it was just a great race, and you had, obviously, Aegis, so Australia's got plenty to look forward to in Moto GP, because this guy's going to be up to Moto GP, I think, definitely by 27. Oh, he's going to spend one more year in Moto too, more than likely. I think so. About the time when Jack Miller bows out and goes off to Aussie Superbikes, or World Superbikes, or Retires, or whatever, I think Aegis will be a more than happy replacement for Jack Miller in terms of the Aussie fans.

We had, obviously, Alonso, we know is just top draw, possibly an alien coming through. Ethan Guevara? I mean, what? I mean, we haven't seen much from him, and yet all of a sudden, I know he dropped away a little bit. You got Diogo Moreira.

And what was interesting in that, what became a front group of five, because Guevara did sort of drop off and sort of fell back towards the latch a little bit as the race went on. But in that top five, of course, you had four guys that had never won a Moto2 race. You had Kinet in there, who obviously has won a few, and then none of the others had. So it was just, yeah, it was the changing of the guard, I think, as you say, Jim. And it was hands down the best race, in my opinion, of the weekend.

I agree with you on that one. Rarely do we ever think the Moto2 race is a shocking race. But I've often thought that if Moto2 ran in the cooler conditions, that they would be better because the tires are a little more manageable. I've thought that, now whether that, you know, who knows. I'm going to try not to go on a rant now.

But I had to bring this up at some point of the show, and I'll keep this brief. What the Moto2 race demonstrated, and the other races actually, but the Moto2 race was obviously the pick of the bunch for once, and I'm pleased because Moto2, we tend to be a little bit down in Moto2 a lot of the time. But what it demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, and as did the other races, is that Silverstone is a great racetrack, particularly for MotoGP, because, you know, it is long and it's fast. There's some very fast turns at Silverstone. So a MotoGP bike, whether it's this version or what comes in 27, they're still going to be quick.

Arguably, they'll be quicker through the turns. It's a great racetrack, and it produces great racing almost always. I mean, you think back, I mean, you could just trot them off. Great races at Silverstone. What it is not is a great event in terms of attendance.

And this is where I have an issue. Now, a lot of people go on about, oh, let's go back to Donnington. I don't think Donnington would handle these bikes, to be honest with you. Maybe, but the infrastructure is not up to spec, and they'd have to make changes in terms of safety. You know, there is no other venue in the UK that could even contemplate running a GP.

I mean, in my fantasy land, you know, Brands Hatch would be the thing, but forget it. I mean, there's just no runoff. There's no possibility to extend it. There's noise restrictions because I hope, okay, so not happening. So I wouldn't be surprised to see MotoGP go back to Donnington once the Silverstone contract is up.

Because I think at this point, as much as I like and admire Stuart Pringle, who's the MD of Silverstone, and as people might listen to the show, I've interviewed him the last couple of years. He's a lovely guy, but I do question how much effort goes into promoting the race, because this is the lowest ever attendance at a MotoGP race that I can recall. I mean, over the course, over the whole weekend, they registered just about 99,000 and something, shy of 100. Last year, they had 110. If you go back to the heyday of Rossi, because when I think 2007, I think when MotoGP went to Silverstone.

They said it had been 15 years, so I think that's correct. About, it was around about then. In that time, I think they were pulling in like 150 over the weekend, which is still not great when you compare it to places like Le Mans where they claim 300. Although that's a bit, I have to say, that's a bit kind of dodgy, that figure, because of course, it's not 300,000 individuals. It's 300,000 people that are largely camping at the event and coming in every day.

So maybe it's 100,000 times three, but it's the same people. Anyway, I'm splitting hairs, but clearly Silverstone has a big problem. And it's just very frustrating to me. I don't know what the solution is. You can't blame the racing.

You can certainly say we don't have a MotoGP rider. That's true. And that doesn't help. But you would have struggled to know that the race was on. And why the hell they moved it to this weekend with TT starting the following day is anybody's guess, to be honest with you.

And interestingly, they've now just announced, or they announced on the Sunday, that it's going back to the August date. But the August date has been a problem in terms of race attendance. So I forget who it was. One of the journos that we listened to on other podcasts saying, should hand the marketing and promotion, they should take that away from Silverstone and hand it over to MSV, who run BSB, let them do it. And I suspect they would get a lot more people through the gate as a result of it, to be honest with you.

I mean, it's the usual problems. It's like 20 quid for a burger and chips, you know, which is outrageous. 30 dollars, let's call it. Which might be cheap compared to what they charge at Kota, you can tell me. But in fairness, parking on the Sunday, 20 quid for the car.

That was fine with me. I didn't have a problem with that. That's actually quite reasonable. So they're doing stuff, but it ain't working. That's the problem.

And it's so frustrating when you have great races like this and there's like nobody there to watch it. They need to find a solution because if we lose the MotoGP race, as in Britain doesn't have a race anymore, that is unthinkable. But these things have to justify themselves commercially. Otherwise, they can't run these things at a massive loss. The event is well organized.

There's plenty of staff there. You know, the car parks and the traffic was well managed. You know, you can't you can argue about the cost of food and drink and blah, blah, blah. But that's the same wherever you go. You go to bloody music festival and you're paying 20 quid for a burger.

So I don't have an issue with that. That's the same everywhere. That's not a Silverstone specific problem. The problem is that not enough people know that this is a great series with great racing. And it's fantastic to watch track side.

I don't get the problem, to be honest with you, as to why it's so hard to get people through the gate. But there is a problem. And it's the same in Kota, isn't it? Yeah, it's hard to get people together. If you weren't around the area of Austin, you would not know there was a motorcycle race going on.

I get that you can't broadcast it and buy commercial airtime nationally for that event. But it is a national event. It is the best. Now it's like Formula One has a grip on everybody here. Drive to survive whatever.

I run into every Johnny come lately Formula One fan, which drives me nuts. It's like, you know, guys, hey, if you like Formula One, you should try this. There's nobody there for… It is basically empty for a MotoGP race. It's like 60,000, 70,000 people. And a Formula One race there brings 150,000, 160,000, 170,000 people.

And I could go on and bitch about the price of food and the fact that just to pull the RV in and sit there for three days cost me 400 bucks. And like, you know, I could whatever. My point is that those problems around food prices and that's the same problem at so many different events, whatever the sport, music events, festivals, etc. That's always like that. I've got beef with Dorna's position on this, which I know, and people say, oh, Christ, don't start going on about that again.

But when you're told by Dorna, so I've been having backwards and forwards, emails with Dorna over, trying to get press accreditation, because I felt, although it took me a long time to put them out, it's true. And that was on me. But when the interviews that I gathered last year did go on, I felt personally that they were good. I think they're good. They're great content.

Dorna's position appears to be, well, what I was told was that the media center at Silverstone is just too busy. Well, that's, I'm sorry, that's BS, because it was not busy last year when I was there. And I asked somebody this year, and no. And in fact, the person that I was liaising with, who's in the media center at every race, was approached at Le Mans by somebody else in Dorna, who looks after the written media side of it, not the sort of podcast social media, any bit. He was asked to suggest people that they could give accreditation to, because they wanted to get more eyes on this sport.

But whereas I'm being told, no, it's too busy. We haven't got room for you. And by the way, you need 15,000 downloads per episode. Well, you know, I don't know how many most podcasts are getting 15,000 downloads per episode. But I would imagine you'd be in rare company with those sorts of numbers.

I don't know, it feels like an anti-publicity kind of strategy going on at Dorna at the moment. I don't get it. But Silverstone are responsible for the actual race event promotion. And it's not working. People who were called my chat last year with Greg Haynes, and then subsequently with Stuart Pringle at the Silverstone MotoGP last year, we discussed and floated this idea of, I don't know, put an old, a year old MotoGP bike in five or six shopping miles around the UK, with a big sign saying, you know, look at this, this is a MotoGP bike.

Scan this QR code, you'll get 50% off a ticket. Bring your family, you know, something like that. I was told, no, no, no, no, that's not going to do it. You know, we need a British rider. Well, we haven't got a British rider.

So we've got to do other things, you know, to get people through the door. Anything is better than nothing, in my view. And they're not doing enough. I mean, and the figures prove it. And for Dorna to have a position, which is that they're not supporting podcasts like this, even though we're small and we're not, well, I say we're not professional.

We're not, this is not our job. I think we do it professionally or as professionally as we can, given the resources that we have. And we always go on about that. But it's frustrating, Jim, because we love this sport. We're passionate about it.

You know, we want to get it out. They get more eyes and ears on it. And I bumped into two people in the pub tonight and they're on board. You know, it's getting it out there. There seems to be this attitude that they sort of want to turn it into Formula One.

Well, hello, it's not Formula One. Last thing I'll say and I'll shut up and we can move on to the next thing. But I tweeted this the other day. Dorner have gone from sort of 10 years, 10 to 15 years ago, being the sort of the bright light in terms of how they presented the sport from a social media perspective and a publicity perspective. They now feel compared to Formula One, like late era Bernie Ecclestone Formula One, which is it, you know, it's our stuff.

You can't see it. Embargoes on this. You can't do this. You can't do that. Whereas what they should be doing is getting as many eyes and ears on this as possible.

And yet they seem to have, as I say, an anti-growth strategy at the moment. And it's baffling to me. I'm backed up by the fact that nobody was at the event, relatively speaking. Yep. I, you know, hey, in the US motorcycles are a niche sport.

They very much are. Well, they're not here because we will have more people in the bank holiday BSB race than we're at Silverstone. And tell me how that is justifiable for a world championship event. The problem is, is that this is Dorna's last great grasp at the cash. And they want to come out of this with as much cash as they can, because they know they're basically going to take it over.

And Liberty is, I don't know what they're going to do, but I guarantee you, they're going to promote the hell out of it. Yeah. Whether, whether we can be involved with Liberty to do that or not is a different question. That remains to be seen. I'll take the hit on our ability to have access if the sport is, you know, flying in terms of its ratings and stuff.

I don't want to see all these idiotic bloody influences getting all the attention. Yeah, that drives me crazy. That will frustrate the hell out of me. But if Liberty genuinely push the sport forward, and there's always a, it's always a double-edged sword, but if they genuinely move it forward, sort of in the way that they have a Formula One, okay, I would accept that. But when you've got dwindling crowds, as we have in the UK certainly, to be told that you can't participate to try and help is just like, well, you're an idiot then.

And it does make you wonder what the motives at Dorna are. And I have to say, Jim, I think I agree that I think people are just trying to empire build in the hope that they can keep their jobs. And hopefully they will get kicked out because they're doing a shit job at the minute. Sorry, I know we tried to be a clean podcast, but I'm so irritated by this. It's, you know, I could literally kick the wall.

Anyway, there was a Moto2 race and after the race, we have to look at the championship. And Gonzales not being, not scoring a point leaves him still on his magical 111. Kinnett got a great break and was able to come up with 108 points, which leaves him three short. So, you know, basically, Kinnett's aggression on Alonso ruined his chance at actually leading the championship. Way to go, buddy.

Anyway, sometimes you got to take the think about the long game as opposed to the short game. Jake is on 82 points of 29 back of the leader. I mean, Kinnett has a, it's a two person battle right now between Kinnett and Gonzales. And we'll see what happens there. But after Dixon, it's Barry Baltis, Marrera, Aegis now goes up to sixth, then Vietti, Ramirez, Lopez and Albert Arenas.

So that moves us to MotoGP, which is the second event of the day. Oh, so when we got to qualifying, we learned that Morbidele was going to get a three grid place penalty for blocking Bez. And was it first QP or first practice? Some of the practice sessions, it wasn't a qualifying, it wasn't a practice session. It was free practice too, wasn't it?

Doesn't matter. It was a practice. He basically blocked him. You're done here. Hey, you're out.

So that's how that one went. Jim, as an extra, I just got to ask you, I know it wasn't the same when you were racing, but given how often Frankie Morbidele does this sort of stuff, just kind of like dawdling along on the racing line, was a three grid place penalty enough, given that this is a penalty upon penalty upon penalty for the same thing over the last few seasons? No, if you think about what happened in Moto3. Okay. Yeah.

We'll get there. Why are they not coming down harder on Morbidele for this? I wonder. I'm not against Morbidele per se. I mean, he's a good racer, but he is so clumsy.

I think it's the fact that Simon Kreyfarr, in my opinion, he was doing an absolutely fabulous job of being the steward. Right. I think he has a focus now of concentration on the Moto3 kids and the Moto2 guys, and then he's going to fix the problem in MotoGP by fixing the smaller classes. And as they move up, they will have been conditioned, if you will, to not have this problem because let's face it, the guys that are at the very tippy top, know better. They should know better.

And they should be the ones that are setting the example for the ones who are to follow them, i.e. the teenagers in Moto3 and guys in their young 20s in Moto2. But there's also a lot of ego that's involved in there, too. And I think Simon is walking a tight line. I think that given what was there, and I think he doesn't, I think he tries very hard not to look at your past history very much, at least in MotoGP.

Like, hey, I'm kind of giving you a clean slate and I'm going to figure you out this year. And I think he tries to make the best decisions based on those kind of parameters. And I think the penalty was a statement. Now, if Morbidele does it again, I hope that it becomes the type of penalty that Moto3 got. And I think that's where we're headed.

I just think that Simon has a bigger picture and he's got a bigger fish to fry than deal with this little bit over here. Interesting. That's my take. I mean, to pick up the Simon Pattern mantle, and I know people are a bit bored of me saying that because there's a lot of stuff that Simon tweets or Xs where he's like, OK, put that to one side a minute. But when it comes to his opinions of MotoGP and safety, I think everybody needs to take I agree.

a heed of what he says. He's quite right in my opinion in saying they should never have got rid of the points system. And I'm pretty sure Frankie Morbidele would be getting close to the point where he gets benched for having exceeded a certain number of penalty points. I mean, that rather than these kind of race by race things where they can't or won't or don't look at the past, it just keeps it happens far too often. And it's pretty much always him.

The sort of guys he is, and I'm sure he's a great guy. Never met him, never spoken to him. But he does have this habit of just dawdling along, kind of like whistling in the wind, as if there's nobody else on track. And then I was lucky that it was quite dry when bears kind of got blocked by him, because if that grass that he went over had been wet, front tucks and then he's heading to the barrier, you know, and then it's a more serious incident. And then I suspect the penalty would have been more draconian.

I think it's just the situation that it happened in. I think Simon looks at that and that's where it is. Oh, hey. So in the first qualifying session, we learned that a girl was out for the weekend. He was believed to have been diagnosed with a broken tibia in his leg.

I don't remember what it's left or right, but he flew back to Spain to have that taken care of. And so who knows how long I, a girl is going to be out with that one. But we had a cost of mere vinyalas, Marini, Fernandez, Morbidelli and Olivera all in that first session. Halfway, it was a cost of mere who were there. Can Morbidelli get through was a question.

Vinyalas was stopped on track. I mean, I think he had some sort of a technical issue. I'm not sure what exactly happened to him. Yeah, the bike cut out. Bike cut out, turned off, whatever there.

But it was Marini had gone to the top along with Morbidelli. There was like 10 seconds to go, but nobody was even faster. Mere was following Morbidelli, but then Morbidelli ran off at there and kind of like screwed up Mere's lap. And Mere was fixated on a target that he was following and wasn't riding his own lap, if you will, on that one. So that's who gets out of that particular qualifying session for sure.

So we get to the second session. Alias has got like a bit of a tumble he had this morning, so he was a little bit beat up. It was Quattroraro, Rins, Miller, that all the Yamahas were in there. They were actually at one point the front row. I mean, to show that Yamaha, at least at this track, had got their act together, whatever.

Then, you know, or normal order was zoomed in as Mark Marquez and Alex Marquez went to the front of that group to have that. Then Quattroraro bumped his way back into second. We had finished off halfway with 93-20, 63-73. So then after that was Rins Digia at the halfway point. But yeah, Quattroraro just come through with like an absolutely just barn burner of a lap again that put him back on pole.

Alex was second now. Benyaya would finish third. Marquez, as in Mark, had a lap going, but he made a mistake in it and could not get there. He kind of got messed up by the yellow flags that were sort of out there on the end. And so he didn't get a good run at it.

So he wasn't able to be any higher than that. Aldegar would be fifth. Then it was Miller, Digiantonio, Luca Marini, Zarco, Morbidelli, Bezecki, and Rins for qualifying, which was going to be, whoa, let's see what happens in the sprint here because this is going to be interesting, you know, because we'll see how fast the Ducatis were at that time and what could Quattroraro do with it. So as we got to the sprint later in that day under what was essentially glorious sunshine, I would say, right? Because it was bright and sunny.

Yeah. Quattroraro got off to a great start followed by Benyaya, Marquez, Alex then after that. And then it was all crazy there at the first bit of the race as they kind of swapped it back and forth as they try to settle things. But Carchuara emerged with the lead followed by Alex and then Mark and then Benyaya. Then Aldegar was there, but Mark would then go by Alex and then Mark would go by Quattroraro at Stowe.

So it's like, okay, we got this is how this is going to be. Things are going to be pretty good here or whatever. It's going to be a fight again. But Alex then got by his brother and he got by Quattroraro because Quattroraro got by Mark at the end of Stowe using the draft. But Mark had also made a mistake that led Alex into the front because he ran wide at Cops, which is the entrance to Cops, Maggots, Beckets.

It's a fast section there, which I think you got to have some absolute massive attachments on a MotoGP bike to go through there as fast as they do. I certainly could not have gone there as fast as they do. So it was interesting that Mark had a mistake. You know, like the front end was kind of sketchy a little bit. It's the first time we kind of seem like a little bit of a kink in the armor of Marquez.

He was out front and like, well, he should be going good here, but he did. Benyaya had moved his way by Quattroraro, which again was a bit of a wild part there. But Quattroraro was hanging tough. He was in a battle over fourth with Digia to see what was going to happen there as they were going around. Five laps halfway through, you had Alex, Mark, Benyaya, Quattroraro, Digia, Miller.

Zarco showed up and then Aldegar had gone backwards a little bit. Digia would get by Quattroraro, then Zarco would get by Miller. Then Digia was now all out to get all over basically Benyaya. There's no question he was going for it. But with three laps left to go, it was still Alex and then Mark, then Digia as he had gotten by Benyaya, then Quattroraro, then Zarco.

Then Bez got by Quattroraro. Then Alex had like over a second over Mark. It seemed like Mark had decided to just sort of give up on the sprint. He wasn't going to get there anywhere. So Alex rode home to the victory, taking the 12 points.

Mark was second, which was good for the championship. Digia Antonio was in third, so it was an all-Ducati podium. Bezeki, who was brilliant on the sprint with the Aprilia. Usually Bez comes on late, but he sort of had it all together. With the long lap that Silverstone has with the great passing opportunities, there's like four or five places to pass easily.

He was able to come through for fourth, which is like, wow, stand up, take note here that Aprilia was looking pretty good. Again, as you said, Rich, Aprilia always seems to be good at Silverstone. And that was being proven out. Vignaia had fallen back to sixth, which was just terrible for him. Then it was Quattroraro who had another rough ride, I guess you could say, in the sprint.

So he just sort of got roughed up with the power of the Ducatis. Acosta eighth, then Miller, and then Luca Marini in tenth. And that's how things finished off from the sprint. The question was going to be what was going to happen on race day? And what were we going to see then?

So it's like, okay, let's see what was going here. So race day was cold and windy. It was as the normal British weather had been ushered in and it was just cold and whatnot there. I wasn't said it was cold, not by Silverstone standards. Bear in mind, it was May.

I mean, it's certainly been colder in August on the last few years at times. So it was kind of warm, but the issue on Sunday was the wind. It was, well, it was very windy and it was particularly gusty. Yes. And Moto GP bikes with these bloody massive wings on them do not like gusty winds and so it seemed likely that that was going to cause some issues.

Yep. So as it started off, Bastianini was going to have to serve a long lap. That was for his indiscretions at Le Mans, right? But the question was, there was whispers that some people were going to go on the soft front. And I was like, okay, well, this is interesting because I think it was like a temperature thing.

You know, right? Like, yeah, everybody looked like they were going medium, medium, medium, medium, medium, medium, but, you know, there's always these different guys that are defecting on it. Well, at the last minute, Quattraro switched and went to a soft. So all the Amahas went on soft. The Aprilia was on, the Aprilias were on soft.

Zarko was on soft. I think there was like four or five people that were all on soft. It's like, oh, wow, this is going to be interesting. It's like, okay, is this going to really work? You know, I mean, granted it was cold, but was it going to work?

But hey, so they dropped the flag. We take off. We're heading to the first turn. Alex goes to touch the brakes front and immediately tucks. He slides off into the, into the air fence.

It's like, whoa, what the heck there. I watched it back quite a few times. I do not think the ride height of the whole shot device deactivated properly on the bike. Is if you look at the video, you see where marks the distance between say marks front tire and the front fairing of the bike. And you look at where Alex's is, it is significantly lower.

Alex's is Alex is say that five times fast is significantly lower. And I don't think it detached. So Alex is now gone. He's off that he's done. This is his race.

This is his race ran at that point. Mark was now leading because his brother has crashed. He's out front. You're like, well, this is race run. I mean, Mark's got this.

He's on a Ducati. He's got everything you need. But morbid Delhi and a leash were down at the veil. A lace should take any amount like a lace had his own crash. Right.

And just so happened that the bike took out morbid Delhi that was like, oh, wow, that's crazy. There's you know what? We're still kind of trying to sort of understand what happened in that crash. When suddenly you get wind that there's a new Cotty down and it's Marquez who's down at the maggots and bag. Maggots and Beckett's complex.

So on the transition from the left, which is maggots to the right that would give you Beckett's, he's skittering across the asphalt, bumpy headbutting the foam barriers there that tell you you got to go around this way or whatever to join back into the track. Holy crap. That's amazing. Like, wow, that's crazy. That's all done.

They also say, hey, we have a red flag. Now everybody kind of jumped the gun and said, well, they red flag because Marquez fell off. He didn't red flag it because Marquez had fallen off. There was oil on the racetrack as a result of the crash of a Lace and more Badelli. There's the reason for your red flag.

Okay. We haven't completed three laps of the race. So what does that mean? By rule, these other laps have not happened. Therefore, it's a complete restart.

Is it the rule is it's as if the race had never ever been started. And with that, that allows Mark Marquez to get back to the pits, get to his other bike. It allows Alex Marquez to get himself back to the pits and get on his bike. So now these guys get a complete, they got the world's greatest mulligan, right? They were literally sitting in Monopoly jail and they wound up turning up rolling double sixes to get out.

It was just amazing that this actually happened for them, which is stunning. Unfortunately, it didn't stop the idiot sphere on social media coming up with God knows what conspiracy theories and just read the sodden rule book. You know, normally speaking, if you have a crash and there's a red flag, you have a certain amount of time to get back on the bike. I think it's five minutes or something of that order. Yes, I think it's cost.

I think it is five minutes. Yes. You know, and then you're eligible to restart. But as you say, Jim, because this happened within three laps, the race never happened. So everything is just a complete reset.

And that's just the rules, you know? So there's no need for people to start going off as if it was, you know, as much as I despise Dawna at the moment. There's nothing to do with Dawna support and the Marquez brothers. It's the rules, you know? So bonkers.

And again, and we don't say this often enough on this podcast, Jim, because there's always an event every single round of every single race series. The marshals do a great job and they identified that danger of the oil or the, you know, the lack of adhesion anyway from what the fluids have gone down very, very quickly. It just happened to coincide with Mark Marquez doing that thing that I hate to watch because you're always worried about fingers getting ground down to the bone when people hold on to the bars like he did in that sort of attempt to keep the bike running and to get it upright again as quickly as possible. But whether that was a little gust of wind that took him down or what, that was the way the wind was blowing. And my thought was that it just caught a bit of wind on one of those flipping huge wings on the front end of that bike and it just took the front.

Plus he was pushing on because this is Mark Marquez. He was extraordinarily lucky that that red flag came out when it did. At that particular point that he crashed, his race was effectively done. Yes. Let's be honest.

Yep, it was. But, you know, it wasn't going to be that bad for the championship, right? Because essentially Alex was out too. So they were going to stay in pat. Benyai had the most to gain.

He was going to be able to at least take points off of both of them. So it would have gone from a two rider championship to back to being like a three or a close three or, you know, hey, Benyai just needs a smidge luck more. Now, I first thought that I thought that the tire got cold on Mark, right? Because you have a succession of right-hand turns, but you do put energy into the tire as you go into cops, right? And then you go into maggots and bags, it switches back again.

And I thought, well, you know, maybe it was that. But, you know, hindsight, knowing what Mark said about the bike, it's a front end field problem. And that's where this gets interesting is all that. So, okay, let's set the scene here. We get back, everybody's back.

And we got here 19 laps now because we take one off of the distance, which is a 20, because it's a complete restart. Then we head back out again. You got your quick restart procedure pits are open for 60 seconds. Got to get out there. Hey, you bring your bike back to the grid.

You got your mechanic. Is everything okay with the bike? Yes, it is. They all walk off. Hey, you're immediately out the siding lap.

Brakes are warm tires. When we come back to the grid green light, go. At that point, Ben Yaya actually gets a whole shot. Ben Yaya is leading this thing. And you're thinking, whoa, okay.

But, you know, Quattrora was like right there with him, but Quattrora out-foxes him because he's got the better position going into the first turn. So he's leading in front of Ben Yaya, in front of Mark, in front of Alex. Now those Alex and Mark are both being a little cautious here on this one. Interestingly, to this point, I never understood this. The race restarted.

Mark has to know what tire Quattrora was on. Alex has to know what tires are on. They all know that Quattrora and other guys are on a soft. Why would you not put the soft on? That's the part that bugs me.

It's like, okay, as much as what Marquez is into the strategy, into the rule book, into all of this, he doesn't think to change to a soft tire on the front. Well, I can sort of understand it for Mark because his tires were shot at the end of the sprint race. And true, true. I mean, I was going to come to this point later, but I mean, Mark Marquez didn't look comfortable all weekend. Bingo.

In any session. No, he did not. And so I just think he was trying to play it a bit safe with his tire choice. And obviously having crashed and then restarted, he was going to be even probably even more cautious because at that point he might not have known really why he'd crashed. I don't know, Jim.

I mean, obviously we're speculating as we love to do and always do. So I sort of understand it. But like you say, I mean, the conventional wisdom is that you do what everybody else is doing unless you know that your bike is not going to behave on those tires in this particular instance. And I can only assume that that's what you thought. Well, it was shortly after the restart.

I think there was a flash on the screen from the head of Michelin saying, yeah, the soft is going to can make it. Nobody's done a race distance on a soft. Nobody's even tried to simulate a race distance on soft. But you could maybe do it, but you're going to have to look after it. So I was like, oh, OK, well, now we got more information.

OK, maybe this is why. If this is the case, what's going to happen to all the guys that are on soft? You're going to fold up like, OK, wait, Quattroraro is out front. Hold on. He's pulling away at this point.

Is Quattroraro going to burn the front off this thing? Because it became blatantly obvious that Quattroraro's strategy was jump out front. Get a huge lead as quick as he possibly could while everybody else is trying to figure out what they're doing and ride home easily or, you know, bring it home like you're going to grandma. Let's just bring it home. It saved the tire fight if you have to at the end if something changes because Quattroraro is essentially gone here and Benya is acting like the cork in a flow.

Right. I mean, he's got people stuck up behind him and people can't get out of it. I've got to say, Jim, just before you carry on with the Quattroraro bolting at the front, by the time the race restart happened, I was around at Cop's Corner. And when we talk about being trackside and you can spot the aliens or the really good ones from the the merely brilliant. Yes.

Quattroraro through Cop's Corner was just awesome. Every lap until obviously what we'll come to in a moment, which is where that problem appeared to manifest itself. But yeah, I mean, he was just sensational through Cop's. I mean, like visibly faster than everybody behind him. Just unreal.

His front end feel and confidence on that bike. He was throwing it in there and he built up that lead. What was it? Five seconds. I think it was easy to see trackside from my perspective, I've haven't been to a lot of bike races anyway, as to where he was gaining his time.

I mean, he had so much front end confidence on that bike with the soft. And I was sat there thinking because I was listening. It's always hard to listen to the sort of the tannoy system in the motor GP bike, because you sort of hear the bits when they're not around. And when the bikes are around, you can't do a flipping thing other than the bikes, obviously. And there are big gaps at Silverstone because it's such a long track.

But I was aware that he was on the soft and I was saying to Emily, my daughter, who was with me and my mate Ben, they came along to his first MotoGP race, which he really thoroughly enjoyed. Oh, I'm sure that guy's a fan for life now. Sort of eyes out on Storks when these bikes are going by. I was saying to them, I don't think I was going to make it on the soft because, of course, I had watched the sprint race at home. I didn't go to Silverstone on the Saturday.

But and then obviously Mark Marquez, I don't think he gave up on the win, you know, because he dropped a long way back in the sprint, didn't he? With about five laps to go. I think his tires were shot. I think that was the problem. But Saturday was quite cloudy and cool, whereas Sunday was quite warm, but gusty.

And I don't have the first idea of the sort of the intricacies of the science behind rubber technology and how that applies to certain conditions and bikes, et cetera, et cetera. So like you and like a lot of people, I was kind of perplexed at the number of people that were running the soft front because on the evidence of the sprint, that was a folly, it seemed. And yet on Sunday, it worked for a lot of people. And the medium was the one that was going to cause people trouble, as we're going to come to. But obviously, Quattro's situation, we're going to find out in a minute, was a bit different.

So as Quattro was pulling away, Miller, who's on the Amal, who is on a soft gets past Marquez and past Benya and goes there. Zarco then runs past her because he has a soft on. So it's like everybody at the front now has a soft. Like, oh, OK, you know, me, I'm thinking from where I am and given what we've seen, it's like, OK, well, this is going to basically work for about half distance. And then it's going to turn the other way.

We're going to see this go a different direction. What was I think I was wrong? I think everybody was wrong. I think it was crazy wrong there. But Marquez then sort of kind of started to write the ship, right?

He got by Miller. I think, OK, well, Miller's tires starting to wear here. This is going to flip. We're seeing the transition go back the other way. But, you know, Mark was wide through cops.

He almost got Zarco. He almost hit him. It was so close. I mean, that's a fast section. And, oh, he hit him there.

That had been crazy. But with the fourth lap of the race, Benya was down. Don, another weekend just completely destroyed with him. The look of dejection and his look in the garage where he looked at the camera, saw he was being on there and got up and walked away is everything you need to know about where that man's mental mental psyche is. He's looking at somebody riding his bike who is way better at riding his bike than he is.

And he can't deal with it at all. And let alone the Mark Marquez Salvo. Well, you try four setups and it's wrong. It's you, buddy. You got to ride it different.

I'm like, oh, Lord have mercy. If Benya's confidence and mental stability is not shot right now, it's certainly going to be here shortly because, wow, you can't take that many hits and not come out with some damage. It looks like it's going to be a long old year from here on in, doesn't it? Unless he finds something. As you said, Jim, I think they've changed something fundamentally with weight distribution on that bike and he is not going to get the field back unless, and I don't know if they presumably they cannot go back to a 2024 bike for him.

The 24 motor is in the 25 frame. Well, I think there's a bit of debate about that now. Because I was thinking they may have made some extra bracket tree or whatever. Maybe it is. I mean, they all work as a package or whatever.

Right. So who knows? And I don't think you're ever going to get like no one's going to sit there and say, yes, we're running a 25 bike with 25 engine or blah, blah. You know, this isn't going to happen. So we can speculate all that we want.

If people are thinking they're running a 25 engine, you know. Yeah. What would be great to see though is if Benya could have basically his bike from Valencia last year, if he could have that bike back and ride that now. Roll for the Grissini garage over. Oh, yeah.

How would he do? He does not get on with this iteration of the works Ducati. And bearing in mind that he was on the medium front, I think as well, wasn't he? Benya? I think he was on the medium.

I might be wrong. Yeah, he was on a medium. That plus his issues with the front end on that bike anyway, because the crash, I did see it on replay. I mean, it just was a weird one. It just went, didn't it?

And it's not often you see people have a crash like that in club corner, because it's not a high speed corner. Nope. Okay, he's got a freshish rear on, so he's pushing the front in terms of grip, in that sense from the rear, it's true. But it just, yeah, it just went. And as you say, he just kind of looked like a bloke who just didn't know what day of the week it was, really, as he, you know, just sort of feel sorry for him a little bit.

Because not only is he having a rubbish year, he's got that pesky MM93 in the box opposite. And it's got to be a tough place to be. Got to be brutal. It has to be brutal. He is not the favorite son.

Sorry, he's not. Oh, good grief. Meanwhile, while all this is happening, Bez is somehow now in third. I don't know how I got there. He's just there.

I mean, waltz of waltz. There's a perly there on the podium. Holy crap. I don't even know how that happens, because there's so much that's going on. Like, again, you don't know where to look.

So if we settle out here at five laps, Quattro is first, Miller's second, Bizecki is then there. Then you've got Zarco, then Alex, then it's Morbidelli, then it's Mir, then it's Marc Marquez. Jesus Christ, Marc's going backwards. Apparently, he doesn't want to fall off. At least he's going to try to maintain some points out of all this.

Like, okay, wait a minute. Hold on now. You know, right? So then Bez wants to go into second. Zarco gets to third, right?

Because Bez is sort of opening the door for everything. And Zarco is just going there with him, right? That's kind of how they're going to the front, right? Miller's been shuffled back now to fourth, right? Then Marc Marquez finally gets by Mir, and he's now seventh, which is, you know, hard to fathom.

But this is the funkiness that we're dealing with. Then Marc bypassed Alex to making sixth. Then an app later, Marc has now gotten by Miller because now Miller's definitely fading. Again, hey, whoa, before I thought this was Miller's tires going bad. No.

But hey, now they are. And I assume Zarco's is going to be the next. And then, you know, Bez on the Aprilia might be better. But who knows? But then the Yamaha's got to start to fade back to Bez, right?

Nope, not going to happen. Doesn't not work that way. But Marc made his way to fourth with like 11 laps into the race. By the 12th race is like, what the heck is wrong with Quattroraro? Like suddenly he's like got a hand up.

He's got no speed. What on earth is going on to it? And you find out the ride height device has failed him. He had he had gone through Stowe, was heading down to Vale, right? And that's where it didn't disengage from what I kind of gathered, right?

Am I in the wrong part of the track here? He went so, as I said, I was sat at Cop's and just marveling every time he went through. And then he went through and went like really wide, as in trackside, knowing that he was on the soft front. I thought he'd had a front tuck in the front tire had gone. Obviously, I wasn't privy to seeing up close on the TV footage because there was no screen in front of us where we were sat.

Now, as I say, Jim, I just assumed that he just sort of cocked the corner up a little bit or was getting into front tire difficulties and had gone wide. And you know, he lost a couple of seconds and off he went. But next lap round, somebody else is in the lead. I didn't see all the theatrical dramatics that then transpired until I was on social media a bit later on. Yeah, he's out of Stowe and he's heading to Vale.

And he gets into that in between the chicane there and he just stoppies it in the middle of it. I'm like, oh, gosh, it's got to be a ride height device. It isn't releasing because Quattararo finally gets off the bike and he's like right there at the pit entry. So I guess that's how he got to that point. So I guess I put that mystery to all to bed.

So it's like the ride height. Now, I love Simon Patterson's tweet. We got robbed of the greatest story and Moto GP so far this year by a shitty ride height device, which is true. This is why I don't like them. No argument with that.

It's like Moto GP needed this story of Honda winning, Yamaha winning, the Caudi not being that great and you let it get ripped out from you because of a ride height device for cramny sakes alive. Anyway, Bez is now leading, right? So Zarco is now second. Mark Marquez is now third through tenacity, just fortitude and a don't give up attitude. He's kind of gotten to there.

Things sort of kind of stabilize from this point on. Miller and Morbidelli sort of have like a back and forth. Alex gets by Miller. Miller goes back by Alex or whatever. That's all happens in the five, four, three, two, one laps to go.

By the final lap, Morbidelli is just like all over Mark and Morbidelli winds up getting by Mark at cops or whatever. But as it turned back out, Marquez brought it back together again. Now, Bez was in the lead, right? And after Quattroraro had ride height device, it failed. That left Bezeki with the lead.

Now, question was, I think Bezeki was going to have to be a half a second faster than Quattroraro for the rest of the race to get there. Based on how everybody's tires looked at the end of that race for the softs, Bez was not going to catch Quattroraro at all. We were completely robbed of that, right? But Bezeki inherits a win on the Aprilia. Zarco gets a second place.

Mark Marquez salvages a podium out of what could have been complete and total disaster. Go buy a lottery ticket, my friend, because you won it this weekend for Criming Easy. He's alive. Morbidelli is in between him and his brother. Akasov got sixth out of all this.

Miller had faded back to seventh. Outiger looking somewhat human, finished in eighth. Then Gigi Antonio in ninth. Mir is tenth. Vignola is 11th.

Raul Fernandez is 12th. Then it's Rens, Brad Binder, and Luca Marini. Wow. What a crazy mixed up flippy floppy MotoGP race. You're thinking, how in the world are the guys on Moto3 going to ever follow these two acts?

Because honestly, Moto2 was a great race, right? But there was drama, intrigue, disappointment, heartbreak. Every emotion you can think of happens in the MotoGP race. Good grief, what are you going to do for Moto3? This will turn out to be like a snooze event or something, right?

But with all that said and done, Marquez is now on 196 points. He is 24 ahead of his brother. They sort of equaled out, right? They were 24 apart coming in. They're 24 apart still.

There was nothing gained, nothing lost. Whatever Mark lost to Alex in the sprint Mark made up in Sunday's race, Ben Yaya is on 124 points. He's 72 behind Marquez. He was 48, now he's 72. It's like good game over.

Ben Yaya is done. Morbidelli is next on 4th. Zarco is climbing up the table. He's in 50s on 97 points. This is crazy.

If you thought a Honda would be that high up, you were completely mental at the beginning of the year. DiGiantonio is on 6th. Mizeke is 7th. That win, 25 points does a lot for you. Quattro is on 59.

If he had the 25, he'd be in the 70s. He'd have been above Mizeke, right? Acosta is in 9th and then Aldegur has now slipped into the top 10. So he's pretty much assured rookie of the year. In fact, between him and Ayagura and with Ayagura being out, more than likely Aldegur is going to take rookie of the year.

But remains to be seen when Ayagura could come back. Oh, so that is the wacky crazy. Anything else for MotoGP, Rich? Very, very briefly, because I know we're running long already. Bez, really, if he could qualify that bike, he did inherit the win.

He got a solid 4th in the sprint. Obviously won the main race, which he did inherit it. Although to finish first, first you must finish. But if he could qualify better, he would be a genuine threat more often. Even on the tracks that don't necessarily completely favor the Aprilia.

So I think that's worth bearing in mind because he was very, very fast in both races. He just was starting so far back. Again, beef with ride height devices. And why, because Rins went out of the sprint race with a stuck rear ride height device. Obviously Alex Markers crashed in the first corner with a stuck front ride height device.

I don't get why they don't just ban the bloody things on safety grounds at this point. Because, you know, we saw in Le Mans, there are certain tracks with first corners. And Silverstone is another one where you're going into a fast turn. You're not really touching the brake quite as hard as you would if you're going down into a first gear kind of corner. And they're just not very safe and everybody has them.

So banning them doesn't really change anything much for anybody other than, okay, it's going to alter how you build the bikes, the packaging, you know, the gear that's tightly packaged in there, et cetera. So it would be a big deal. But people are having unnecessary crashes and or as you quite rightly said, Jim, citing what Simon had tweeted about, you know, robbing the sport of great storylines. And they're so pointless, these things. They don't enhance the race and they make it more dangerous.

They, you know, they rub us a good results and spectacle needlessly, in my opinion. If they were electronic, you could sort of justify it on the basis that, well, at least that has some trickle down effect into road bikes. But these are manual systems or hydraulic systems. They're hydraulic based systems, yeah. So why continue with them?

They go in anyway, so just get rid of the damn things, you know. The thing of it is the bikes are built for this already. They're going to be here this year. They're going to be here next year. When you get to twenty seven, we're done with it.

Well, all right. So leave all the hydraulics, leave it all there, but just take the buttons away. So you can't use them. Then you're not altering the bike. True.

You're not altering the bike, but man, that would just be the most crazy thing because people would not know what to do with their setup on their bike. Well, it's the riders that are crashing. True. If it's, gosh. You know, Alex Marquez was, I think with some justification, a bit critical of Silverstone in terms of where he crashed.

There's an access road, so there's no gravel put across it. So, you know, that bike and he went a long way. I don't think he hit the barrier, but the bike certainly. Biked it, yeah, because they thought the race was going to be stopped just because that barrier would be deflated. It didn't, or they were able to get another piece in place by the time.

You know, it's a long lapse. You have a fair amount of time to fix things. I don't know which way it was. It's an oversight in retrospect. And the trouble is these things are always retrospect, aren't they?

He wasn't badly injured in that crash, but he might have been had he reached the barrier or he got in first and the bike had fallen, whatever. But the point is that it was the ride height or the whole shot device that made him crash. So, you know, you have to call into question why they're just not being switched off. Let's call it switched off, not removed, just turned off. I don't know.

I don't think many of the riders would necessarily bitterly complain about it. I mean, I have an awful lot to do as it is. And obviously pressing all these buttons and procedures and stuff just adds to that. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

I mean, I know people say and I can already hear what Alan Fleming is saying. You know, it's prototype, but everything goes and blah, blah, blah. But when safety becomes an issue, then I think we've seen stuff getting outlawed before. And I don't understand why they're not doing it now, to be honest. Anyway, that's all I'll say, MotoGP.

We need to move on to Moto3. But last question, is Fabio Quattraro, bearing in mind what we a third into the season maybe? Let's see. That was round seven of 22. Yeah.

So we're a third into the season. We're a third of the way there. Yeah. It's Quattraro, a championship challenger. Maybe that's one for the listeners to write in about because that bike has genuine speed now.

That's a great question, Rich. That is an absolutely fantastic question. I think he could be, you know. I'll say this. I think there is a point later in this season string together some victor.

Whether that's enough between now and when that happens, if he can keep himself in the window of it, maybe. I think it's a bit of a stretch, but you've got to think that next year, Quattraro sort of kind of becomes the favorite because the engines are homologated for next year already. So you can't change it. Ducati can't change anything, basically. Yamaha has some flexibility, but they're going to lose something because you had podiums and whatnot.

Right. So there's some restriction there that's going to happen. Honda's got to win, so they're going to lose some sort of concession over it all. Right. It's possible, but I tend to think it's not.

Maybe. But I don't think so. I think we could probably compromise and say that second is definitely in range then. By the end of the third is in range. I could easily see Quattraro being third.

Second is probably Alex's territory and the championship is probably Mark's. I'm not so sure. I think Alex will start to crash a bit more and that 24 will start making, I don't know, maybe because the 25 is not that great of a bike, but Yamaha are coming on. Oh, they're coming. 100% think that they're coming.

I think Honda's coming. I think Alex knows that he needs to ride as good as he can. And I think he knows that he's pushing now in this first third, maybe the first half, to keep his brother in sight. Otherwise, what we all thought was Mark was going to run off and nobody would know which way he went. And it kind of looked like that at first, but it is definitely not.

Do you think Ducati is going to fix their problem? I assume so. Now, when that happens, Mark takes the advantage. Or look, if you just give Mark a 10% or 15% increase in front end fuel, he's going to win races with it and make it look stupidly easy. I think DG and the guys can make that happen, but Alex's bike isn't going to change, but he's going to probably have enough points already because Quattrora has had problems, crashes, other things that he will get there.

Because that's a monumental gap he has to span in this championship. What's the points on for Mark and for Fabio at the minute? Right now, Mark has 196 and Quattrora has 59. Quattrora is 137 points off of Mark. That's a huge gap.

That's a big gap. That's huge. Now, can Zarco get his way to third? That's potentially possible because he's on 97, only one behind Morbidelli, and he'd only be 27 points behind Benyaya. That's a race win and Benyaya's got the crashes.

So I can see that, but is the Honda better than the Yamaha? Quattrora is a better rider than Zarco. Sorry, Johan, but that's true. Yeah, I think the Honda's a better bike than the Yamaha currently, but Quattrora is by far and away. He's just phenomenal.

He's in alien territory. It's probably Mark, Quattrora. I think you could throw Martin into that alien territory when he's healthy. He is phenomenal on a bike. He really has been.

Well, he was phenomenal on a Ducati. Okay, it remains to be seen there. I'm a bit anti-Martin. I appreciate that. I mean, Pedro Costa is officially the shark, but Fabio Quattrora is like a shark sniffing blood in the water at the minute, and he's only going to get better as the year goes on, provided the Yamaha doesn't let him down in silly ways or unfortunate ways like it did this weekend, just gone.

I mean, yeah. Sorry, now I'm looking at the points that you've just relayed. Clearly, be a phenomenal own goal if Marc Marcos didn't win the championship. I just can't see them Ducati slipping. I can see Fabio getting into second.

I certainly can see that by the season's end. That's entirely possible, but I just can't see. Not yet. I mean, I can't see that. I don't have a crystal ball, but that's a gap.

That's a huge gap. I wish I did because I'd win the lottery then. Yeah, we wouldn't be podcasting. And then I could run my own MotoGP team. Oh, man.

I thought about that. I thought about it. I think at one point here in the US, everything called Powerball or something, your take was like almost a billion or a billion dollars to win. And I think one person won. And I think if you did the cash out options, we're talking about having like $800 million or something like that.

And I'm thinking, gosh, if I won that, what would I do? And I'm like, oh, God, I'd get my CD out, get myself a big rig. I'd have myself a Moto America team. And I would literally be going to the track all the time. And I'd be guys like, I would literally have everybody do their thing.

And I'd literally roll up in the truck. I'd park it. And then I'd just flop out a lawn chair and go, yep, and watch. That's all I do. I think we'd all be like that.

All of us doing the listeners are probably all the same on that one. Anyway, yeah. Anyway, guys, sorry, we're daydreaming. Daydreaming when we need to be talking about Moto three. All right, let's get the Moto three.

The last one of the day is NEPA Rossi and they get out of it. Buchanan had a crash. Second qualifying, you had Almanza was told he was going to have a long lap for, he was doing slow double long lap, second offense because he was doing slow riding. Halfway through Carpe, Rueda, Piqueres, Lunetta, Munoz and Perez were there for your top six in qualifying. At the end of it, Rueda would be on top.

Carpe would be in second. Piqueres third. Then Almanza, Kelso, Quiles, which I've heard now it's not Quiles as we thought it's Quiles. So we'll try to do that correctly. Lunetta, then Munoz, Peroni and your top three rows.

So there was going to be some interesting things. Now, what we learned on race day morning was that Rueda would be relegated to the last position on the grid for, this is kind of key, slow riding on the line after setting a fast time. This is kind of why I was another reason. My other points about Simon Crafer I think are still correct, but sort of diving into this just a little bit more because we're here at this moment in time. It had more to do with the fact that Rueda was intentionally trying to slow somebody to not get a faster lap than him or Morbidelia was just clueless about where he was on track at the time.

Maybe he needs a GPS system. Which is an important distinction. There's a distinction. Yeah, I agree. But I do think there's a bigger picture that Simon Crafer is trying to correct.

And it's easier to correct it with the young kids. And then as they go up, they know not to do it than to beat the death out of your stars of the sport. As much as what we love Moto3 and Moto2 because they are fantastic races that you see, people show up to see Marquez against Quattrararo, against Benyaia, against Martín. That's why they're there for the show. If you don't believe me, look at any of the racetracks.

There's nobody there until it's the main event and everybody shows up. Now, granted people could be in the paddock mingling around, whatever it is that they're doing. But generally everybody's there to see the big guys. And that's pretty much to get the case in point. All right.

So with that said, we hit the race now, right? Rueda, he is now starting dead last. Hey, guess what? Two other people have done it. Some dude named Alonso did it a few years ago.

So there's every chance that you can win this one, but we'll see what happens. As it starts out, Carpe gets the lead followed by Picaris and Alonso at the start. Or they were good. Alonso or Acosta, did you mean? Alonso did it.

And I think Acosta did too. The three people. I know Alonso won it from dead last. And that was the first race he won in Silverstone. That was his first Moto3 win.

He did that. Now Acosta did it, I know from the pit lane in Qatar. I don't think Acosta was on the last row and won a race. I know he got put there at one point in time, but I don't know if you... They said who it was and I can't remember it.

I don't think it was Acosta at Silverstone. Brad Bender did it from last on the grid at Jerez, didn't he? Yeah. Who wasn't Bender? And I failed to write it down for you folks, but I know Alonso did it.

All right. I know Alonso did it. So that's where we're there. So it was Almanza, then Quiles, Carpe, Kelsol in the next lap, then Luneta Picarra. This again, it's a 17 rider pack.

It's crazy. Picarra was also after a bit of a front tuck. He caught it again. It's going crazy as it goes. Everything's all crazy as there is.

Almanza has did a long lap. He went in from first. He went out back in 12th. Rada had made his way to 16th by this point. Now, Kelsol, he's going into maggots and he just gets the front end and just...

Yeah, that was just crazy. The front end just tucks or whatever on that one. So it was pretty wild. He took four bikes going in there. That's impressive.

I mean, I don't care. That's great racing. You're passing four bikes there. It's like, whoa. And then the front's even kind of slightly tucked or whatever.

Kelsol's leading followed by Kielis Munoz, who's going to just pass everybody anywhere. And he was. And then Carpe and Lunetta. Then Kelsol throws it all away. He's down on the transition.

What is it? That club goes into Woodcott or is it Woodcott then Club? Well, I didn't see the Moto3 race in terms of on the screen. So I was only watching them going by. But on the track, when you're going to the old front stretch, that's Woodcott's the last corner, right?

Yes. Club is the one prior, correct? So they come down to Wellington straight and then they sort of have the hard left and then they go to Woodcott. Okay. Pass the old pits and then it's Copps.

Right. It was before they get when they came around to go through the front pits. Leffield. Old pits. Leffield.

Okay. So between Leffield, Kelsol's on it so hard. He lifts the front end and when he sets it down, it's turned flat. Falls off from underneath of him. Right.

I don't see that. Kelsol literally has got like a wheelie going and when he sets it down, he's got it turned and flat. He's just down. It's like, okay, that could happen to anybody. It does happen.

He was just on it so hard, on the gas so hard there in between, you know, that transition, it caught him, right? It happens. I'm sorry. Maybe it might have been between Vale and Club. I think it's Vale and Club he went down at.

I think I'm on the wrong part of the track. You have Hanger Straight, Stowe, Vale and then you're into Club Corner and then you're onto the wing, you know, the main new start, finish straight and pits. I'm so centric that the main straight is the first turn is cops, right? And I can't get myself. Well, the first turn is now Abbey.

Correct. But it always was cops, right? And I just, I can't, too much for me the one from the 80s and 90s. I've just got to say, so round behind the Beckett's grandstand, I know you'll love this, is the old pre-1991. Yeah.

Bit of tarmac. And there's just, I don't know if they haven't put it in a glass box or done something to commemorate it, but there's an old bit of the original, I'm going to say, I suspect it's the outside curb from what used to be. Oh God, I'm going to forget. And, you know, I just stood on this old bit of curb, which is just only sort of like five or six feet of it that's left exposed. And I'm just thinking of Prost, Senna, Mansell, PK, all these guys.

All the greats. And, you know, that old bit of track that will never ever come back, it's called Chapel that corner. So Chapel was the old bend and I just sort of happened to see this bit of curb. I've probably seen it before, but I hadn't really sort of taken it on board. And I did take a photo, which I must put out on Instagram.

Yeah, just a great bit of history. And I just wish they would kind of commemorate it a little bit because it's kind of, think of all these people, Clark, Robert, Spencer, they've been through that. Never ride bike races. Yeah. Yeah.

All of them. Yeah. Sheen. Sheen. Mamma.

Okay. Crazy. We got to stop memory lane. Sorry. It just came into my mind.

Sorry. I love that. I mean, this is what makes the show great is these things that come up that we think about as you're going through all this stuff. It's kind of the magic of actually being at these old racetracks and stuff. I mean, you know, to me, code is a fine racetrack, but it ain't got nostalgia like Silverstone has.

No, Indy does. Right. But do not race motorcycles there, people. Anyway, it's like, whatever. Because you're on this and I'm going to deviate too.

I can't wait. This year we go back to see the MCCAR at Indianapolis. We're going a day early because we were going through the museum because they reopened it and I am told it is absolutely amazing. Anyway, moving on. Moving on quickly.

Where were we? I don't remember. Oh yeah. Munoz and Lunetta collide. Lunetta then gets a long lap for his indiscretion.

Whoops. Right. You know, that's not good. So then, you know, Keelys is out front with Lunetta and Carpe and Piqueras. They're all there or whatever.

Rurata has now made his way to like ninth. Then Almanza leads after he had been through the long lap penalty. Right. You know, Rurata has made his way to fifth. Piqueras is tenth.

Well, he's going the right wrong way. But he did have a mistake at Stowe, which kept him out of the lead there. So that kind of was weird. Almanza still out front with Keelys, Keelys, then Perez, Carpe, Rurata, Pini, Piqueras, you know, and then you get a group of like 12 more guys that are behind that. Five to go Carpe still out front with with Keelys and Almanza, Piqueras and Rurata.

Now Rurata is by Almanza and he was so fast in that first turn. Rurata was just flying when he was doing any of that. It basically three laps ago, it is crazy mad racing at the front. I have no other way to describe it other than that. Everybody is cutting everybody up in every conceivable direction.

It is literally knives out and we're racing. It is wild. I mean, if you thought Moto 2 was great, Moto 3 at this point has turned into that craziness of what Moto 2 was. You know, it's like the continuation of it. Two to go.

Piqueras is trying to get to get and take a podium place. He's there. Rurata is now at the front and he's going to try to break away with one to go. Now Rurata and Keelys are out front. They're probably going to settle this one between themselves.

They're pulling away. Third is anyone's guess. I don't know. It could have been anyone. Pini and Yamanaka who had showed up now having bridged the gap from the second pack to get there or whatever.

It was like, I don't know, it was you could have spun a wheel and picked something. I have no clue. No clue at this point what was going to happen or what's going to happen at all. But as we get down to it, Linetta is third and he's in first slot on the Piqueras. Now, at the end, Keelys tries to go around the outside of everybody because he had a different line downhanger straight.

He was to the outside as everybody was to the inside. Sorry, if you were looking down the camera shot, right? So I'm talking what would be riders right? Everybody would stay to the inside riders, right? He was on riders left.

Which was completely different. I mean, like that KTM he's got must be a rocket ship because he was hanging it out there for sure. And he basically went around everybody around the outside of Stowe. Wolf attachments, attachments people. That's what that was.

That's a quick turn as well. Oh, yeah. The approach to that turn is that's flat out in a Moto3 bike. You got to be doing a buck 50 each old money. Easily.

Easily, man. Easily there. Anyway, they go through it. They tussle, but he went wide. Keelys has got this, right?

But he goes wide in the last turn, allowing Rurata to underneath and win the race. Last to first, Alonso and whoever else we can't remember at this point right now. Then Keelys, Linetta from a long lap, right? Because he had a long lap. He gets there to be third, which is great to see the sick Corsa team on the podium.

I love it when they're on the podium. Carpe was fourth. Peroni, Almanza, Pini, Yamanaka, Perez, Carrero, Scott Ogden, 11th, which is great. Forosado was 12th, Rollstein 13th, Buchanan and Riccardo Rossi got the last point in 15th. An absolute cracker of a race.

Belter as it were. Just every race had its own unique flavor and feel. It was absolutely crazy wicked racing from Silverstone. You had the craziness, the mad chaos that literally was Moto too. The drama, intrigue and heartbreak of Moto GP.

Then just the sheer fascination that Rurata went from last to first to win the race. It was amazing. With that win, Rurata is on 141 points. He is 54 points ahead of Picaras, who sits on 87 points. Kelso is still on 77.

I'm not giving it to Rurata just yet, but good golly grief, he's got a great lead. This is looking Acosta-esque in Moto 3. Although Foggia did come through there in the middle part to win a lot of races, it did make it go down to the wire. I assume something's going to happen here too, but as it looks, nobody can handle Jose Antonio Rurata. He's looking great.

Well, last to first is a proper statement of intent, isn't it? Oh yes. And a proper one-fingered salute to the powers that be. I didn't see it on TV, from what I heard and read. It sounded as if the demotion to the last place on the grid was a pretty tough penalty, given some of the other shenanigans that goes on elsewhere in the championship.

But anyway, he dealt with it in the best way possible. He just took it on the chin and won the race. So what can you say? Claude it. Yep.

An amazing weekend of racing for sure. And then now we go in two weeks time to Aragon. Yes. That's a left-handed track, man. So anti-clockwise.

If you don't think the red number 93 will be fast, please reset your watches. I think it'll be win or crash, Jim, that one. Yeah. I think that might be a win or a minute. But it's going to be warmer.

So I don't think the problem is significant. If you have no feel on the front of the motorcycle, that is a distinct problem that you have. However, the warmer it is, the better it's going to be for the Ducati. Because this problem really hadn't shown me. Yes, there is a problem.

I give you here at Silverstone. There's a problem that they have to fix. But when it's warmer, it doesn't appear to be a problem. Thailand wasn't a problem. Or yeah, Thailand, Indonesia, Thailand.

Where do we start? Thailand or Indonesia? Thailand. Thailand. So I mean, it's different there.

You're going to go now to Europe summer. I'm assuming Spain and the desert around Aragon is going to be warm. I think the problem will be lessened. It will still be there. Now, was Marquez going to wind up falling off once or twice in practice?

Probably. But you got to know where the limit is, son, so you know how far to push. It seems like they've kind of, I mean, at a certain point you produce a product that is so good, it kind of can't be better than that. I think the accepted wisdom now is that the 2024 Ducati, that is the apex predator of MotoGP machinery. I agree with you.

So kind of the only way is down from there. I mean, it's weird. Silverstone was not cold. And trust me, I've been to Silverstone a lot and it gets bloody cold there on occasion. And it was not cold this weekend, thankfully, because it's a very unpleasant place to be.

But it was windy. It's an old World War II airfield. So kind of windy conditions are what you want on an airfield. It just happens to be a racetrack now. So the wind is always pretty breezy and gusty at Silverstone.

And I'm sure that may be played a part. But it does appear to be the case that Ducati has gone back a little bit, a few years back, to sort of Doviziozo kind of levels of that vague front end, sort of understeery front end thing. And that is clearly what Bagnar is not coping with. And Marc kind of rides around it. But it's perilous.

If you don't have the setter, absolutely bang right. Yeah, I agree with you there. That's where the opportunity exists for everybody else, basically. Maybe not KTM. I mean, they're just a bit in the doldrums.

But everybody else has a chance to catch them out if the conditions are right. Yeah. All right. I think that's it. Except for I did figure out Grissini is an Italian.

Actually, Grissini was born in Imola. Yeah. Yes. So yeah, so the Spanish theory doesn't hold water. Like I said, I didn't know.

But I mean, whatever it is, the Marquez brothers have found a home there. So anyway. All right. Yeah, we got to get out of here. Got to wrap this one up.

This is another long one. But there's so much that was going on at Silverstone. It was great racing. There's no way we could not talk about all that stuff. And the news that was going on there as well.

And you know, listener feedback, which we love having on the show. So thank you again, Chris, for writing in. Great, great questions, great thoughts, thought provoking things, which obviously we rambled on enough about. And we'll get out of this because I will tell everyone to ride safe. And all I will say, Jim, before I go, I would just say if you subscribe to this podcast, please subscribe to the Instagram channel because we really need people on Instagram.

And Jim, enjoy your holiday. I will see you the other side of Aragon. Yeah. And we will when I get back, we will talk Aragon. And we will hope for a safe and secure two weeks at the TT, which got going for practice week this week, race week this week.

We might touch on that when we come back. But yes, see you in a couple of weeks, everybody. Yeah, two hours. I knew it was going to be.