MotoGP Mugello – Game Over?

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 809 for June 25th, 2025.

We're going to be talking about the news and all the racing from the Jell-O and to help me out with all those things and keep me on track is Richard Jowd in the UK. Richard, how's the weather over there? Because here in the Midwest we are experiencing a massive heat wave. To put it in new money, it's like 35 degrees C or if you're used to the Fahrenheit scale, it's in the high 90s, like 95, 96. Is it that hot in England?

No, it definitely is not. Although we have been having some rather nice weather, I must say, but we tend to top out in the mid-20s here. I think we got closer to 30 degrees last week, we had a little mini heat wave, but we're back down into the low 20s again, which is quite comfortable. So I'm hoping that the weather holds for Donington in a few weeks time, which we'll very briefly touch on in a moment because that is what, two and a half weeks away. So we've got some good weather forecast in July.

So fingers crossed it'll be dry, hot and sunny. Going to top up my sunburn. You've got to get your factor on as you say it over there. Yeah, I know. I always forget.

Terrible. Bad me. No, you can't do that. So what's in the glass you have, Rich? The beverage of choice for this evening's event.

Yes, I'm drinking the black stuff. The black stuff. Proper Guinness. Yeah, it's my favorite drink of mine. Okay, all right.

Yeah, I'm not a Guinness fan, but then I'm an American, so I have no idea what real beer or real food is like. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fussy. I drink a bit of lager when it's hot and sunny. I generally drink IPAs, but yeah, a bit of stout now and again. It's medicinal.

It's good for the blood. Good for the blood. All right. That's what I always say. Oh, that's what Dr.

Richard says, folks. A little bit of medicinal, medicinal. So we'll go with that. But hey, I want to thank everybody who subscribes to this show, who helps us cover bandwidth and server space and all that stuff. Can't really do this without you guys.

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You'll find a link to PayPal or Patreon. And with that, Rich, we were at Magnificent Mugello, the beautiful Tuscany Hills, probably what did Rossi say? The greatest ribbon of asphalt ever laid or something like that. Yeah, it's certainly up there, Jim, isn't it? I mean, Phillip Island always holds a special place in pretty much everybody's heart as well.

I think it's a toss up between Mugello and Phillip Island for me is the best motorcycle racing track. Yeah, probably. After the modern era in terms of bikes, places that you can actually race a bike in the modern era, I mean. I'll have to agree with that one. So with all that, let's start with the news, Rich.

Let's go with this one from the race weekend. Garcia has Sergio Garcia, Moto2 rider, has been released by his MSI Moto2 team. Well, I kind of think that that was coming. I mean, we finally confirmed what we all thought. I have no idea what Garcia's plans are here.

He may have another ride. There was some speculation that another team was going to take him. There was speculation he was looking at the world's super bike paddock in some respect. No idea what he's going to do, but he needs something to refine the form that he had two years ago now. Wow.

And it's just how, I mean, he's obviously immensely talented, but for whatever reason, he either can't make it work on the Pirellis or work with that chassis. I'm not sure which way it is. What do you think it is, Rich? Well, first of all, I would say it's despite his poor form, bearing in mind he broke his wrist, I think, or had a fairly significant hand stroke, wrist injury before the season even got going. I mean, it's not two years ago, Jimmy.

I mean, he was leading a championship this time last year. That is last year? OK, all right. It was around about 12 months ago where all the talk of a move up to what everybody was assuming and turned out to be the Pramak Yamaha squad would come around. And if you remember, the talk at the time was about that being very destabilizing.

And when he didn't get the nod, it did sort of coincide with quite a significant downturn in form. So he went from leading the championship, albeit narrowly, it's true. And over the course of the rest of the second half of last season, let's say, Aguirre just sort of hauled him in and overtook him and obviously took the crown in the end. And it's been, yeah, I mean, a strange one to witness really. There was talk of an upgraded or a different Bosque Sguirre chassis that came in last year, which perhaps he didn't get on with quite as well.

Yaddy, yaddy, yadda. I mean, who knows? But as you say, he's a very talented rider. And yeah, I mean, it's not that long ago he was being tipped to be on a MotoGP bike this year. So, you know, it goes to show that, well, they will say talent's permanent, but form is temporary.

But it can't be bad form, can't go on for very long. And particularly in the MotoGP paddock and whether he'll pick up another ride in Moto2, I mean, he's kind of relying on somebody getting injured, isn't he? Which is not the way you want to pick up a ride. So who knows? He's obviously going to pop up somewhere else.

But I don't like the kind of the idea that, you know, just de facto becomes a world supersport rider because it seems to be the place where kind of MotoGP paddock really is. MotoGP paddock rejects go. And I don't really like that notion because that really does a disservice to world supersport and the riders that are in that series. So I hope he does find another berth somewhere in Moto2 because, you know, things have just gone wrong. He needs a reset and a new home.

Look at Barry Balthus. He's a great example of a rider that was almost washed up in Moto2. And look at him this year. So these things can turn off very quickly. They can turn back on again.

So let's hope that Sergio does indeed find his mojo, get his form back, get fit and get back to winning ways. Yes, I hope so too. Other little tidbit of news that came out. And this is rumour, but it's believed that Picaras, the Moto3 star, has already got inked a deal to ride for the same team, but only in Moto2. Okay, we tipped Picaras to be world champion in Moto3 this year.

He hasn't shown the form on the KTM that he showed on the Honda the year prior when he has sort of a breakout debut kind of season. He has won one race this year, I think, on the KTM. I think that's right. One or two. I think it's one.

He hasn't been the kind of serial winner that we rather expected was going to be the case. Correct. And quite honestly, in my opinion, he has been overshadowed by Quiles. That rookie has come in as a 17 year old and that boy is doing some damage to the sport. So it's a little weird that that's happening.

Now again, hey, we could say the same thing about Fabio Quattraro. Quattraro was hailed as the next great thing. He ran on a Moto3 bike, never really did anything on a Moto3 bike. Next thing you know, he was on a Moto2 bike. Okay.

He was on the off. Oh gosh. What was he on when he won the race in Barcelona? Was it on the Bosca Cora, which was a speed up at the time, I think? Yeah, that's right.

It was the off chassis. It was not the KLX. He was Danny Kent's teammate, if you remember. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, he won that one race and I remember doing the show with Skyler and I said, well, who would you take for your MotoGP team? I said, well, I'd take a punt on Quattraro. I think he's got some talent.

He's got the world champion. So who knows? It shows you how we have no idea what really is happening in the paddock, but it just seems odd that, you know, he's already being sort of talked about to be here in a bigger bike. So you know, hey, more power to you. If you can get that ride, take it for sure.

I wouldn't necessarily be terribly surprised, Jim, if on the strength of his season last year on the, as you pointed out on the Leopard Honda, if he hadn't already signed some kind of pre-agreement. I see. Yeah. You know, we don't ever get to really hear about this sort of stuff until people kind of issue their biographies or autobiographies come out in retrospect with this kind of level of detail. But clearly, if you recall, he bought his way out of the Leopard seat and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that wasn't a Moto3 spot in the MTI squad with the option to go up.

Maybe. Yeah. Sort of without too many conditions attached because, you know, with Moto3 riders, they sort of arrive as little kind of relatively little kids and they sort of grow up quite quickly and they get to a point, don't they, where they kind of outgrow often the Moto3 bike and need to go up. And the cynic in me or the sort of the person that understands the sneaky way that these things go sort of thinks they've bailed Sergio Garcia out of that Moto2 squad. They brought in a placeholder, which is another Fernandez, which is going to be a nightmare for us.

Is it Eric Fernandez, I think, who kind of feels like a bit of a sort of placeholder. And I think that's probably where the room of the Picaras will be on that bike next year is coming from. And I fully expect him to win another race or two in Moto3, but clearly he doesn't look odds on at this point in time to win the championship in Moto3, does he? No. You just never know Moto3.

I mean, it's such a crazy, crazy series. And this key, as we'll come on to in a little while is, yeah. Making a statement. Yet another one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Let's step on the old news list. Now, we all know Pirelli will become the sole tire supplier to all the classes of MotoGP come 27, which seemed to go, wow, Michelin has sort of been left out of the motorcycling world, let's say. Pirelli now seemingly dominating all of the world championships.

However, that's not the case. You're not French rubber fans. Michelin is going to be the sole supplier to the world's super bikes starting in 27. Now I didn't read, I read it as world's super bikes. I'm assuming world's super sport will get Michelin's as well, or are they keeping Pirelli?

I couldn't define in what I read if there was, that was the case. Good question. And I don't know the answer to that, but I would be flabbergasted. I'd be surprised. If Pirelli retained any presence in the world's super bike product.

I completely agree with you. I think it's going to be full Michelin in there, which the conspiracy theorist to me goes, hey, guess what? Now we get to see what the new Michelin front is going to look like because they're going to make that front for the super bikes and they're going to just give it to them and we'll see what happens. You don't know. I mean, I don't want to say Michelin has been beaten up over their tires in MotoGP here, but I think people tend to blame Michelin for the tire pressure regulation rules and all of that.

Okay. Yeah. And again, I'm going to, as the engineer, I'm going to defend Michelin in this case. Michelin said, look, we have a potential problem if you run the tire pressure too low for too long because you can move the tire on the rim. You can spin the tire on the rim with the brakes.

You could potentially deflate and it could become completely catastrophic. We don't want that to happen. We're going too fast. You're going too fast. Bad things will happen in an, I call it the unexpected crash, right?

There's a point when you're racing a bike and this is going to sound really weird, but bear with me. You get to a point sometimes where you know you're going to crash before you have actually crashed. You know that I'm into this corner way too deep, way too fast. I've got to use a little more brake and the front is going to go here. Set yourself up for the impact, if you will.

You're sort of prepared to take that hit. If you just had a tire simply deflate rapidly on you, you have no warning that that's going to happen and you then are, you're not as prepared and you get flung off viciously. Now it's arms and legs are flying as opposed to maybe holding my arms together and bracing to hit the ground or something to that effect. Now we're talking broken wrists, arm, ankles, legs, whatever it may be. I get where Michelin is on that one, but I think they're getting a bad rap about it.

I'm really hopeful that they don't have that type of problem in World Superbike and that continue to have good close racing, perhaps maybe a little mixed up neck in 27 as the riders adapt to the Michelin having spent time on rallies. Just interesting that Michelin was still willing to, even they sort of got the bad knock, they are willing to up the game and say, hey, we'll go to World Superbike and supply tires. We should remember that these tire manufacturers, these big brands, they pay handsomely to have these contracts because there's prestige attached to this, but it kind of feels the wrong way around to me. You know, Pirelli is the sticky, squidgy tire and to me it kind of works best with the sort of the squidgy chassis that you get in a production type of bike and series through the various classes we're talking about in World Superbike. Whereas the Michelin is kind of the stiff, uncompromising tire.

I suspect they'll build a different construction tire for World Superbike. I mean, obviously we'll find this out in due course, won't we? But I was still a little bit surprised. I kind of in my mind, I just figured that Pirelli was going to rule supreme across pretty much every major line bike racing series in the world. But I mean, nobody, this is nothing to do with concerns around monopolies or anything like that.

This is purely commercial winning contracts, losing contracts. Michelin having either decided they didn't want to continue, given what you just said, Jim, about the fact that they're the ones that kind of get the fingers pointed at them all the time. I feel very sorry for them. It's a bit like pushing water up a hill from Michelin's point of view. Obviously they went after the contracts hard for World Superbike.

So fair play. They've won it. But it does feel a bit, it just feels a bit odd to me, but we'll get used to it. No doubt. But yeah, it's kind of weird with the top rack switch going on as well, isn't it?

You know, has he dodged the bullet by not, by one year, he'll have a year on a Michelin next year. It's true. Obviously the jury's out on how he'll find the Pirelli rubber and the much stiffer chassis of a MotoGP bike. That combination is going to be quite the challenge for him. You know, I was thinking about that with top rack.

Top rack is a talent, supreme talent, 100%. Massive talent, yeah. And I got to thinking, you know, that is going to be a very compelling storyline to watch because he has to adapt to a different rubber. He has to adapt to a chassis that's far stiffer than anything he's probably ever ridden. I'm guessing.

I don't know if he's tested Moto. I think he tested Yamaha's MotoGP bike. A few seasons ago he did, yeah. A few seasons ago, which, okay, he probably has some idea of how stiff it's going to be. But then he has to deal with an amazing set of aerodynamics that are going to be on that bike compared to the limited aerodynamics that you see in World Superbike.

And then add on the fact that he has to deal with the complexity of launch control, whole shot device, which we saw Marc Marquez kind of have to deal with. We'll talk about that later, guys. And he's got to deal with the ride height systems where it's going to adjust and change, which is, you know, I mean, talent will overcome those things. But I'm just, I would, I would, this will tie into what we'll talk about next people. I would love to see a series that covers and follows Toprac and is in the garage and talks about and shows you behind the scenes what he's dealing with as he goes through the season.

I want that series, Mr. Liberty Media people. I was going to say the timing could not be more perfect. I know. Wouldn't that be, would you not watch that?

As the Anorak fan that you are, would you not just go crazy waiting for the next episode? It could be, it could be, the season could be over and it could be a winter's long thing that you watch. I would be fine with it. It'd be amazing to just have this camera crew following Toprac and have him, you know, again, I don't want to give him, have him give away what secrets are existing in their thing. But some of the debriefs and things like, well, the bike doesn't feel this.

I don't feel that it does this and I don't want it to do that or whatever it is would be phenomenal to listen to how they go through that, how they do that, how he adapts, how he improves. And if you already know the story, like let's, I don't know what the hell's going to happen. Nobody does. I don't have a crystal ball, but let's say, you know, hey, he starts out. He has some really rough races for the first third of the year and his second third, hey, he's on the comment.

It becomes in top tens are kind of consistent. Then by the end of the year, he's chasing podiums. That story, that, that narrative, that content creation that Liberty Media talks about would be perfect. It just would be amazing. If you did it, you have to do it correctly.

The Mark Marquez documentary was brilliant in the way that it was done, in my opinion, okay, compared to the disaster that was the Amazon Prime series that was the equivalent of the drive to survive from with a one. Yeah, it was so bad. I can't even remember what it was called. I don't even remember what it was called either. I have no idea.

I don't care. It's like, it's just like for race car fans, you don't talk about the movie Driven. It's the same thing. You don't talk about whatever that series was that Amazon Prime did for motorcycles. So it's got to be in that vein, like the Mark Marquez documentary, or it has to be in the vein of how I can't think of his name, but the guy who did faster.

The doctor Mark Neil. Thank you. In the vein of the Mark Neil faster documentaries that were done, it has to have that feel. And for the love Liberty media, listen to me when I say this, the narration should be Ian McGregor, pay him what he wants. He'll probably do it for free, but that's it's that iconic voice that you hear that you understand when you hear faster.

You hear Ian McGregor talking. He's a motorcycle nerd like we are. It seems like the perfect fit. All right, I'll get off my soapbox. I'm done.

Your turn, Mitch. Well, I was gonna say all Keanu Reeves would be pretty good because he's the man who loves his motorbikes. Oddly, I think Richard Hammond would work too from the old top gear grand. Bro Hammond, yeah. Because he's a motorcycle guy.

He really is. At the end of the day, the content is what is... Correct. Content is key, isn't it? I mean, content is key, as they say.

I mean, we always talk about that in terms of what we're trying to do with the pod in terms of additional kind of stuff outside of what we do week to week like this. I mean, with the top-price thing, yeah, the stars have aligned really with the Liberty deal going through, which we will come onto in a moment. We'll talk about this a lot, obviously, in the months ahead. With top-prec, with his kind of level of prestige and somewhat dominance that he's had in World Superbike and the level of talent that he demonstrates there, coming in and going up against the Martins, the Marqueses, et cetera, et cetera, MotoGP, I mean, it's a compelling story just there. You then factor in the fact that he's transitioning across from one series to another and he has this sort of odd span year where he's on what would become the wrong tire and the wrong bike in terms of the 1000cc.

It's kind of a limbo year in a way. And I actually think that in many respects, although he's a very competitive animal and obviously he will try, but I suspect there'll be a certain amount of pressure on him to not try too hard and do too much crashing because there's really no point on a 1000cc prototype which has ride device things that will be gone, aero that will be substantially reduced, not gone, completely different motor, different tires. It's almost a waste of a year other than learning the tracks, learning the paddock. Obviously, it's a much bigger calendar as well compared to World Superbikes. So there's a lot of layers to the onion to peel away in terms of what happens.

How much does he spend his time on an 850 next year? We know Yamaha or we hear that Yamaha are quite ahead of the game with their 850. So I assume they'll retain their concessions and that he will be able to do a fair bit of testing on the new bike and it will make more sense for him to spend his year doing that. Obviously, we won't see it real time because all that stuff will be secret behind closed doors as far as the factory is concerned. year when documentaries start to show how this transition, there's so many storylines, so many interesting details and nuances of the top rack move.

That's just top rack. Never mind everybody else. Liberty Media, well, they won't and they can't afford to but I'm very sure they will not cock up their first attempt at dramatizing the sport. I don't mean false drama because there's enough real drama to focus on. You don't need to create and we do have a few decent characters in MotoGP and definitely Moto2 and Moto3 compared to Formula 1 where they kind of...

I hope we don't end up with media polished, can't say this, can't say that, all this rubbish that goes on in Formula 1. I'm pretty confident that won't happen in MotoGP because its selling point is the fact that it isn't Formula 1-esque in that way. If they go down that road, they will not kill it exactly but they'll do a lot of damage to the sport. They will, yeah. So I don't think that's what will happen actually but anyway we'll wait and see.

But when do we talk about the Liberty thing? Do you want to touch on that later? Now, we're going to do it right now. I think everybody knows Liberty has been approved to actually buy MotoGP and World Superbike The interesting thing is that Liberty has only bought 84% Dorna, i.e. Carmelo has kept 16% of it which I think is a weird number, that 16%.

I don't know what their deal is there. There's something there that I don't quite understand. It looks like the deal is going to be closed up and done and buttoned by July 4th. So we're talking two weeks each. Is that Independence Day Jim?

For me it is. For you it's Bloody Nose Day. Take your pick. I don't know. Maybe it's Independence Day for MotoGP as well.

Away from that. Who knows? I better be careful what I say here. I think it's high time for change. Let's just put it that way.

I agree. So this is my thought Rich. We have seen what Liberty has done to Formula 1. As much as what I appreciate the American audience now being somewhat Formula 1 knowledgeable in a limited way, it aggravates me that all these Johnny-come-lately Instagram influencers of social media are talking like they know everything that's ever gone on and happened. No.

Half the time you have not. No, you haven't. I've seen people who are supposedly in the know and they want to look at it and they talk about how this car is not that fast and this isn't that. You have no idea. You have no idea.

You don't know the history of the sport. So I want Liberty to help us get better access to create better content. I want that. What I don't want is people who are the Johnny-come-lately who then tout how they know everything like, oh, well, Rossi is the greatest rider that ever put a leg over a motorcycle. Rossi is one of the greats.

Is he the greatest? I don't think he is because you never saw Freddie Spencer ride. I've said it before. Freddie did something that nobody ever else has done and that's be a 250 and a 500 world champion in the same year on bikes that were completely polar opposites of how they had to be ridden back in the day. I think that's an incredible feat that he earns goat title for me.

Sorry, but that's the things that are going to upset me and maybe I'm being old. Maybe I'm being a curmudgeon. I get it. I can't hide the fact that I've been a part of this since the 1980s. To me, the thing is that what I don't like either is that when I became part of the sport, I had to read and research and find out because there wasn't an internet.

There wasn't a bunch of influence to tell me things. I only got what I could find in print media. So I know the story. I know the real story of what happened. Now there's things that I don't know.

So there's things in the background. I do not want, as you said, Rich, for it to become a very polished suit and tie. No cuss words, no whatever. I want the raw MotoGP thing that happens. You can't change that.

Its appeal is that it's guys in a leather suit going over 200 miles an hour and they're banging fairings. They're not in a survival cell. When they fall off, it's going to hurt. They're going to tumble. They're going to break bones.

I give you Marquez's arm. I give you doing leg. Whatever. They have to maintain that raw edginess that is motorcycle racing. If they try to take this diamond in a rough and try to polish it into a gemstone, they're going to ruin it.

That's how I see it. And I don't want it to be that way. I think the kind of conjuring trick that they've got to pull off before all of our eyes is this one whereby they don't marginalize us and the people that, I would suspect the majority of people that listen to this show, who are prepared to listen to a couple of old Giffers like us, waxing lyrical about the history. A couple of punters. People that listen to us religiously, and there are quite a few that do and we're very thankful for that, that they will always watch the sport, I suspect.

Although everybody has a breaking point. It's true. So I don't think the hardcore fan base is necessarily in jeopardy. What Liberty are going to obviously want to try to do is to kind of leverage up the natural drama, action, spectacle to bring in a new audience. And I don't have a particular problem with that.

I mean, I think we have to accept that there will be people wandering around on the grid to have bigger entourages in the royal family. That just kind of sort of par for the course. People that have more gold teeth and white teeth, all that sort of nonsense. We're just going to have to sort of suck that up. Where I will be very disappointed is if that is at the expense of the hardcore traditional fans like us and our listeners and the many people that I see and talk to around Silverstone each year and et cetera and Donington Park and so on.

I agree. So it's going to be difficult. I mean, I still watch Formula One, don't get me wrong. MotoGP has professionalized itself over the last 20, 30 years in the same way that Formula One has. The technology has arrived, et cetera, et cetera.

But fundamentally, although we're in this modern era of MotoGP, of wings and other things that have made the racing less good, we do still nevertheless get some really good racing, albeit in short bursts. Main race at Mugello being a good casing point as we'll come to. So they don't need to do much to sort of artificially big this one up. They just need to find a way to make it more widely understood or more widely visible. As I said, I think we can angle a lot of criticism at the local race organizers.

Let's take Cota, for example, in Silverstone. Just not doing enough to publicize the events to get the crowds in. So maybe Liberty will help to sort of start to breach that kind of particular issue or bridge that particular issue, I should say. So we're going to talk about it a lot. I suspect the 16%, which is a weird retention percentage, but there'll be a kind of buyout over time with that, no doubt.

Again, I'm going to choose my words carefully because I could easily go off on a, you know, an effing and blinding rant about some aspects of the way the sport has been run at the minute. Clearly, if Liberty want to grow the sport, they do need to make use of every kind of tool in the arsenal. And podcasts, even small ones like this one, are part of that solution, I believe. And so I hope we don't get left behind in this what will be, I suspect, a big shakeup. And I'll just quickly jump, Jim, because I just wanted to make mention of it because there's only two and a half weeks away.

So Donington Park is coming up this morning or this afternoon. I got my media pass. Green Tick came through from Dorna World Superbike, which is a very separate bit of the operation to Dorna Moto GP. Never had an issue in World Superbike. So I'll be at Donington on the Thursday, which is when all the press stuff takes place.

So that's great. Why we don't get that same level of open-arm welcome mantra and ethos on the Moto GP side, I can only assume is because some people have got a bit big for their boots and the Liberty thing was coming and people are just trying to maximize things before they're, I don't know, maybe shown an open door and, you know, they're just trying to get through the door and requested to walk through it. I don't know. I suspect there's a big shakeup coming. I think there is.

If Moto GP was flying in terms of its revenues and its publicity and all this other stuff that we've just been talking about, then Liberty would not have bought it at such a cheap price. I agree. I agree. I was pretty sure that World Superbike would get carved off and that would end up in somebody else's hands. That hasn't happened.

I'm reasonably pleased about that because I like things to be under one roof because I think continuity is helpful. Dawner operates very differently between those two series. That's for sure. So anyway, just before we sort of move on to the racing. I would like to interject like one little thing.

Is leverage the fan bases between both series. So hear me out. For me to Europe, I have a five or six hour difference in time. Okay. So as you because I think one of I think we know that there's not a lot more people in Europe that Moto GP could reach.

Right. Yeah, there's some. But basically that's sort of tapped out. It's the heartland. It's the heartland.

Yes. Best way to say it. There is a very large group of people in the US who do not know motorcycles, who do not know Moto GP, who are prime to be brought into this fold. A lot of these people are people that are into Formula One right now because of drive to survive. Okay.

So here's my thank you. My thinking. And if Liberty, if you're listening to this, this is what I would do. Hey, promote a double header race weekend of the greatest racing you've ever seen. Get up early with us and watch Moto GP guys on bikes at 200 miles an hour at Mugello and then hang on and listen to the Formula One, watch the Formula Race live from Canada.

The time zones work for that because as soon as you're done with Moto GP and everybody just went, wow, that was the craziest thing I ever saw. They then they get to sit down, relax and watch the Formula One race. You drag those people to you have to take it to the people and the US market is going to kick it, go kicking and screaming, trying to prevent you pulling them into this. But if you promote it as in this, hey, get up, have breakfast and watch this and make this like a weekend marathon of racing because that really has an appeal. Memorial Day weekend in the US is a huge event because people will watch the Indy 500.

They'll have their barbecue and then they will watch the Coca-Cola World 600 at Charlotte into the night. Yeah, they need to package these two things together as time zones allow them to do so. And obviously Liberty have the F1 national television deals understood, the social media side understood, they will understand a large portion of their audience who would be probably quite easily convertible to two-wheeled racing. Yep. If only people were more aware of it or were fed more snippets of it to get their interest levels up.

And I am absolutely convinced that they will be on that mission right from July the 4th or July the 5th. I bet you see a lot of ads for MotoGP during Formula One races. Yep. I'm willing to bet that that's the first thing that happens. Clearly it will take some time and I'm talking, you know, one, two, maybe in three years for them to really ramp this up, but I'm very convinced that's what will happen.

Funny enough, Jim, I thought you were going to say something different then. Really? I thought you were going to say, why not run a World Superbike race during a MotoGP weekend? I mean, for better or for worse, for right or for wrong, World Superbike is sort of the poor relation to MotoGP, but MotoGP is the premiere, the be-all and end-all class, so I think we can all accept that one. There are not that many races or rounds anyway on the World Superbike calendar, half the amount of MotoGP, give or take.

Right. There's plenty of scope for a bit more World Superbike action, and it would make perfect sense to promote both series together at one or two rounds in a year, I think, you know, because World Superbike is also really good racing, but, and I've said this many times on the show, so sorry to repeat myself, but Dawna kind of got World Superbike a few years back and it's always felt like the poor relation and it's, in my opinion, always been criminally undersold by Dawna. You know, they see MotoGP as the blue-ribboned series, which it is, but they just have not really pushed World Superbike, I don't think, at all, and it's brilliant. I mean, World SuperSport is great, even though, you know, the lower classes, I mean, the Women's Championship, and I'm not saying, even the Women's, because I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that all of the race series on that card of World Superbike, if you actually watch the races, they're all really good races. So in the same way that Moto2, Moto3, and MotoGP obviously are as well, most of the time.

So there's massive scope for doing a lot more. Yeah, I see your point, and that, I wasn't thinking that way because I look at it as the same people who are watching MotoGP are keeping an eye on or are watching World Superbike. I was thinking of it from the point of view of the Formula One people. They might be aware of MotoGP, but I bet you most of them are not aware of World Superbike. Okay.

That's where I'm coming from. I see. All right, I got you, because I was just looking at, hey, here's all these people in America who are now getting interested in sports that don't go around in a circle all the time and actually turn right, left. Well, hey, here's the ultimate turn right, turn left sport, if you will. So I'm thinking, you have to bring, if Muhammad won't go to the mountain, you got to bring the mountain to Muhammad, or I don't know what they're saying, it's something like that.

I think that's right. Might be, could be. But anyway, why don't you finish up the news here, Rich, with the Donington Park stuff? I just really wanted to say briefly, media passes through. It's only two and a half weeks, so I'm going to scramble a little bit now, even to get somewhere to stay locally, because I'm sure the hotels are sold out or massively expensive now, so that's a challenge in itself.

But my plan, bearing in mind I have not written to anybody to try and organize this yet, that on my hit list of riders to try and get to, at least some of this list will be, and I'm mentioning this because I would like to invite certainly the paid subscribers of the show, or anybody that's raised some money into the pot as a one-off over the course of the next couple of weeks, sending a question or two to any of the following riders, and if I can get these riders as an interview, and I've managed to do this for the last, what, two or three years, I think there, at Donington World Superbikes. I don't want to go and talk to the people that I've talked to before, because that can get a bit- Stale. Stale and repetitive, so I'm always looking to try and speak to people that we haven't got before. So on my hit list will be Ryan Vickers, who's in World Superbike, Jemma Masseyer, who's now in World Super Sport, obviously former Moto3 World Champion, likewise, Chaviyar Tigas is over there, Jeremy Alcoba is over there, doing pretty well in World Super Sport, both of those guys are obviously ex-Moto3, stroke Moto2 riders. Then we've got Manzi, who's hotly tipped to be up into World Superbike next year, and then a British-lass Chloe Jones and a South African-lass Jessica Howden, they're running in the Women's Championship, and so they're definite people that I will try to get in front of, so if anybody has any questions that they would like, you know, a question or two that I could perhaps pose to either those people, that would be good, and obviously I will have a go at getting Toprak and Alvaro Bautista as well.

Bautista has all has proven to be a pretty difficult fish to catch over the last couple of seasons. He might be a bit more receptive and Ducati might be a bit more receptive, because Ducati have actually just dropped him from the works squad, so he's looking for a ride next year, so he might be a bit more willing to talk perhaps, and I'd quite like to speak to Tom Booth Amos as well for the British fans, he runs in World SuperSport for Triumph, so that's probably too much to try and achieve in one day, but I'll do my best, and yeah, as I say, we want to try and find ways for the people that regularly subscribe to the show, have some interest in World Superbike and World SuperSport and the other series on that card, if they've got some questions that they want to pose for any of those riders, or if anybody is really desperate for me to speak to somebody else, then you know the email address, write in and let us know, I mean we will do what we can to please the listeners, because that's why we're here doing this, as much for our own sort of gratification, and there is an element of that to it, it's true, but there's no point speaking to each other, Jim, and then talking to riders if nobody ever listens to anything that we do, so this is my great frustration, and well more than the frustration really, you sent me the link for that thing on X a week or two ago, which was the top 50 podcast, was it? Top 40, top 40 podcast, that cover MotoGP, yeah, and we were number four on the list, number four on the list, I sent it to my nemesis at Dawna, MotoGP, by email, say don't understand why you hate us, you know, yeah, click this link, which you won't have done, I'm hoping Liberty will change all of this, because you know, we know, yeah, they need to, so anyway, that's the plan for Donnington, provided I can get stuff organized in the next sort of 14 days or so, because I don't have a lot of time, anyway, it's good to be given the green light on that, and we'll obviously do our best to create some good content again. Yep, be good. All right, let's go to the race in the halven this weekend at Magnificent Mugello and the roulette wheel of fame that that place is, good grief, it's like a lottery ball bouncing around with Moto3 guys here, but qualifying was interesting, I thought, just a little bit, the fact that, you know, Foggia Munoz, Achilles, Nepa, Buchanan, Bassari, and Peeny were all in that first session shows you how important the draft is and how much it works to get you into the second qualifying session, because well, you know, Munoz is a title win, right?

Foggia is not necessarily a slouch, and Achilles is the new up and comer and whatnot, so for them to be there is pretty wild. Now Achilles was quick, he had a set of time kind of by himself in that session that was leading the session. He then came out of what is that, the third turn at Mugello, so he went up the hill from one, the chicane, two, three, he slid the back end out and low-sided himself and spun off into the dirt, which he lost the back end, which was weird that he did, but I think it had more to do with maybe the dirt or dust that's accumulated there sort of out on the edge of the racetrack where he was, so he had crashed his bike. His mechanics were in a fright to get a bike running again, particularly they've spent a lot of time, or at least I thought they spent a lot of time working on replacing the throttle barrel in the throttle and getting that working correctly again, or at least making sure that it was working correctly. It was a bit of a thrash, but Achilles was never really underneath threat to not make it into the Q2 session, and as it turned out, Achilles, Munoz, Pereth, Foggia all got a ticket to go on, so in the little bit of time that there was, I think the guys, by the time the bike came back, they had about six minutes left on the clock, and I think there's roughly about a quick eight to ten minutes between your end of Q1 to the start of your Q2, roughly ten minutes, let's call it ten minutes, so these guys had about 18 or so minutes to fix the bike.

They did have it waiting to go for him at the start of Q2, which goes to show how great even the Moto3 guys are at fixing a motorcycle and repairing it and making it top notch again, even after an accident like Achilles had. Achilles' bike had been repaired, which was great. Halfway through, Carpe was leading everything in qualifying with Pereth. Scott Ogden just looking like magic here. He was third, wow.

Then it was Munoz, Fernandez, and Lunetta. Yamanaka had a bike problem. I'm not sure, nor did anybody else seem to know exactly what was wrong with Yamanaka's bike, but there was some issue that he felt or did not like or whatever that didn't work. To show you, not that this isn't their job, but it is a team sport. Many KTM branded mechanics were there trying to help with the laptops and whatever was that had happened to that particular KTM.

They were working to get that bike to work again. They sadly never did get it to go again. I'm not sure what it was, if it was a mapping fuel problem or what it was, but whatever it was, it wasn't working despite the best effort of the entire team that Yamanaka rides for plus three or four fully kitted KTM guys there that were maybe specialists or know a little more maybe than what the team knows about the motorcycle. As always, it's a team sport. That's the thing I love about that.

I know what happens in car racing, but it just seems like it's more prevalent with bikes. I've got my slightly cynical face on again, Jim. Go for it. I love it when you get cynical with me, Rich. It was clearly an electronic or software type of issue.

It's not cynical, it's self-interest. I think probably some other people, KTM shirt-wise, probably turned up because if it was happening on one bike, they didn't want to see it happening on any other bikes. Diagnosis was obviously crucial to understanding the problem and making sure it wasn't a wider problem because we do occasionally see this, don't we, where bikes suffer the same problem because these things, we always kind of think of lay people to the sport, which is obviously one of the things we've just been talking about at length, might think that you turn up to each race with the same bike. No, I mean, they are tightly regulated in terms of what they can and can't do, but clearly they will develop anything that they can and anything new is risky. So let me add a little more to this.

This is my own personal observations. I didn't read this anywhere, but I noticed when they first started off in the qualifying session, there was a bike that puffed a large amount of smoke as it was started and then ran off. Okay. And I went back and I looked to try to see if that was Yamanaka's bike. Yamanaka's bike is nearby, but it was unclear to me which exhaust that it actually come from.

Now, was it Yamanaka's? I do not know. I want to make that perfectly clear. I have no idea, but I just thought it was interesting. You never see a Moto3 bike smoke, right?

Like that just isn't what happens when you start them. And what was interesting is that the smoke was whitish. It wasn't your blackish overloaded with fuel flood motorcycle type of smoke. It was a whitish color or grayish might be a more better way. That kind of means that you've got maybe some water or something in the fuel or a leak in a head gasket or something.

Don't know. Like I said, it was just, it caught my eye. I backed up, tried to figure out which bike it came from. I couldn't. I sort of dismissed it as maybe it's just one of those things, you know, perhaps like it just, you know, Hey, there could be that this particular engine is near end of life and it needs a rebuild.

So I didn't think much about it until Yamanaka's incident, right? Where they couldn't make it work. And then I like, well, was that Yamanaka's bike? And I kind of went backwards and, you know, inconclusive evidence, but something to think about. It's very rare, but we did see, for example, was it Raleigh's bike go pop in Qatar?

I remember we are sort of a bit flabbergasted at the time because it's such a rarity to see. Yeah, very much. Yeah, they're always pushing the limits. Even in Moto3. Yep.

So at halfway, Keras had not even set, he had not set a time. Each time he tried, he seemed to run a foul of a track limits, which scrubs your lap. I mean, if you go across and you go into the, which way is it? I can't remember at Modjela which way it is. The green is good, but if you go to the red, that is bad.

I think that's the way they do it there. I believe that's correct. Cause I tried to do that little association green good. Makes sense. Yeah.

So that way. So he was a foul of a track limit. So he hadn't this time set. Now this whole thing was going to roll down to like who got the draft at the right point at the right moment in time to get the best lap. It's like the lottery.

You're just no idea who's going to come out on top for a while. Looked like it was going to be Rueda, Ogden and Carpe, but those guys got like one more lap right at the end. So it was all down to who was going to get there at the end. At the end, Carpe took a pole position. Rueda would go from the middle of the front row.

Ogden qualified third. Absolutely amazing job by Scott Ogden. Then Piqueras, Rollstone, Peroni, Munoz, Quiles would be eighth because he never did get out in the draft. Never could get with anybody to tug along. He did most of his work by himself, which was of interest to me because like if you're out there doing it by yourself, you're maximizing your lines to get to that time, which means you should be okay.

It's a kilometer plus long straightaway at Mugello with a very fast run to the beginning of it. It was going to be a drafting battle. So I don't think it really mattered where you would start, but it was just interesting that Quiles did a lot of the donkey work on his own without the aid of a draft at all. Kelso would be ninth there and then your top 10 finishes off with Almanza there for that part of it. So that was the qualifying.

Now we got to the Sunday event. All the riders were on the medium rear except for Kelso who had gone the other way. He had a soft front with a medium front with a soft rear, which maybe that works for you, but I thought maybe Joel was going to try to steal the start because he's on a softer tire. I'm really not too sure how that was going to actually play out. But as we got to the race, it started off Carpe with a great hole shot.

He had it timed perfectly to get to the front. Ruraita came with him. Then it was Ogden and Piqueras and Almanza and Raul. Then Quiles was nudged out at third turn. He was taking the long lap, if you will, to get there.

Pireth and Rossi went down with Moodley. We didn't ever really see it until much later, but it appeared as though what happened in that particular instance, it seemed as though Moodley was the victim because he was coming behind as the other two bumped each other and that caused them both to crash. Then that's how that went down. The incident was investigated by Simon Krayfar and his band of merry men. They deemed it all to be a racing incident, which I can't disagree with at all.

Again, I will give credit where credit is due because we hated the stewarding for so long, but this stewarding has been fantastic and has continued to be fantastic underneath Simon's tutelage. That's for sure. Almanza was at turn two and he was down. He got bumped into by Ogden, who bumped him and then Almanza went down. Quiles, magically, by the fourth lap, had come second.

I don't know how he did it. I have no clue. He's like a magician. He just appeared in the second spot there. Then Quiles went right to the lead, which was very impressive to me.

Of course, it's the draft, so Carpe and Ruraita worked their way back in front of Quiles with Lunetta there, then Forosado, and then Peeny. Now, this is great racing that's going on. It's classic Moto3 at the roulette wheel that is Magello. Whoever is in the draft, you're coming from three back, four back. They were six, seven, eight wide into the first turn.

How they all ever figure out how to get back to the small groove that requires you to be two riders side by side and do it without killing anyone is beyond me. I have no idea. I'm always in awe of it as I watch through fingered eyes as they go to that first turn. You really didn't know where to go. Basically, it's just great racing.

By lap nine, Peeny had his stay at the front. Munoz has the turn at the front. Peeny and Munoz, they get stood up at one. Peeny stands Munoz up. That caused Lunetta to go down with Fernandez, and they go tumbling into the gravel trap at one.

I put it that way. Kylis is leading again with Carpe, Perez, Foggia, who's now showed up. Foggia was way down when he qualified. Where did Mr. Foggia?

Yeah, Foggia was 15th on the grid. He was now leading, which was incredible. Again, the draft, all that is very prominent here. This is what you're seeing in this great race. Kelso got bumped by Peeny or whatever.

Peeny was then down in the middle of the track by 11th. Foggia goes to the front. We get to the 11th lap. Here comes Peeny, who suddenly winds up being in the middle of the track. It's right before the chicane, before the final turn at Mugello, which I guess is like turn 14, 13-ish there.

I know 15 is the last one. It's something there. Peeny is down. He's in the middle of the track. He's holding onto the bike as it's spinning him around.

How everybody missed him, I have no idea. It was amazing. It was one of those moments where your heart goes right into your throat because there's a pack. Luckily, there at that point, they're out wide. As we were looking at it, camera view, right side.

They automatically start to sway back to the left side of the track to set up for the right hander that's coming. It did offer him a little bit, but the momentum kept Peeny going as he kept going along, which he did cross back over. Some people had to take some avoiding action. Nobody hit him, which was absolutely amazing. It was fantastic.

Basically, Kelso had put the shoulder on him and Peeny lost it there. Again, that was investigated. It was deemed a racing incident there as well, which I thought was great because it was just hard racing. Two guys were willing to occupy the same piece of racetrack and that happens. Those speeds, those angles, because we call it a chicane, but you tend to think of a chicane as a first gear flip flop.

Not that one. No, that is a seriously quick set of turns there. That tiny tap just sent Peeny down. I suppose the fact that he and his bike were sliding at such high speed down the track, maybe that gave other people a bit more chance to avoid him rather than a guy who's just prone stationary on the track, which we also see sometimes. I was particularly disappointed for Eddie O'Shea, who it was his first race this year where he has started to show what talent that he has.

He was in the front pack, bearing in mind the front pack was like 20 riders at various points. That really scuppered Eddie O'Shea, which was a great shame for him. Hopefully he'll take heart from the fact that he did well. Peeny was very, very lucky not to get hit. Not that it was his fault that he fell off, particularly as you say, racing accident.

The stewards made the right call again on that one. With five to go, Quiles is out front followed by Carpe Perez. I guess it's Z thing, which is TH I think. Yeah, but yeah, Pereth. Then first, Soto, Fagi and Yamanaka there.

With three to go, Carpe has now passed Quiles and Fagi is still running on the podium. Ruraitis kind of fell down a little bit and him and Piqueras has sort of lost that gap that's there. It rolled out to one lap to go with Fagi leading as they came across the line. Then, you know, he is his third Piqueras, right? First Soto, Munoz was there.

The last corner, Quiles makes the ultimate attack and does it at the absolute prime time to sort of take a different line at 15. Absolutely just rail that bike around there as they shrieked toward the line. It was enough for Quiles to win the race. If it had been 10 feet longer, he wouldn't have, right? And then Carpe finishes second on the podium.

Fagi will get the final podium position, his first podium since returning to the Moto2 class. Ruraitis is fourth, Munoz is fifth, Fagi is sixth, Piqueras is seventh as that group passed through. Then Peroni was eighth, Kelso finished ninth, his season kind of going lackluster right now after the high of LeMans when he almost won. So, you know, I'd like to see Joel kind of gather it back in a little bit here, but the talent is fierce in this class for sure. Carrero was 11th, Ogden would drop from his great starting position to 12th.

And I, you know, I'm not going to put the CPI green team down as one of the premier Moto3 teams. So perhaps maybe that those motors are, they just, you know, again, we've always thought that there's the people at the front front are cheating in some way with the motors in some way. Perhaps maybe they don't quite know what to do, but it was a shame that Scott had such a great qualifying to end up 12th, which was a good finish. But it's just, I thought it was just a shame. He did do so much promise with the third place and he just looks so good.

I have thoughts, but perhaps in a moment. Okay. So then after that, it was, it was Rolston 13th, then NEPA 14th, and the last point went to Cormac Buchanan. Give us your thoughts there with Scott Ogden before we go to the championship chase and see where everybody stands in that one. I mean, we have to accept that Moto3 is absolutely jam packed with top talent.

I mean, of course it is. It's the Moto3 championship and these guys, young guys and occasional girls have been racing this type of bike for many, many years. Okay. And this applies to Quiles as well in a moment when we come onto him. So it's hard to differentiate yourself in a class like this basically.

And there is a disparity between the machineries you were just kind of hinting at. And I, you know, we're not casting aspersions on the CIP Green Power team. They're the top team, but they're not the top team. So to me, it's always telling when a rider gets third at Mugello, because Mugello, if you can be third on the grid there, you've got something about you. You know, it's like being on pole at Phillip Island or, you know, Scott was on the front row at Silverstone last season.

I think it was. So he has, you know, he has a massive amount of talent and he has massive speed. He hasn't found himself on top, top machinery and arguably he's another of these kids that's been in the class perhaps long enough that his physical stature is becoming a bit of an issue. But more than anything else, and obviously I've interviewed Scott twice for this show and he's a lovely lad, but when you see him or hear him interviewed in the garage or on the grid, he's overly negative about himself and his chances. And I just feel that he's incredibly talented and very, very fast occasionally, but he's fast at places where you think, well, if he can be fast there, he's clearly got the X factor.

But then he kind of talks himself out of it. And I just hope at some point the entourage around him or somebody can come in and help him sort of manage his expectations a bit better, because, you know, he sort of talks his chances down and you cannot afford to do that in any of these series, let alone Moto3. So that was an observation really, but he kind of has this kind of downbeat feeling about how the race is going to go often when he's commenting on his chances and what his plan and strategy is. And you kind of see it, he was upfront for the first couple of laps and then bit by bit he just dropped further back. In fairness to him, he did have a bit of a, I think on the penultimate lap, he did have a bit of a touch with somebody and I can't remember who it was.

And he was a bit frustrated on the last lap, he dropped into either the red or the green. So he did get a three second penalty added to his time as well. I don't think it dropped him a position in this particular instance, Jim, but- Yeah, I don't think it did either. It was a race full of promise for him and it just went a bit sour as has tended to be the case for Scott, but it's not lack of talent that's holding him back. It might be a bit the environment that he's in and the machinery that he's on.

But I do think that he has every reason to be much more confident about his chances in these races. And it does seem to be a little bit negative for me. I mean, that's just my opinion. I listen to what he says and next time I get in front of him, I might even ask him about this. But we are rather reliant on Liberty giving us some access as it will be in years to come.

So that was my thought. The other thing just quickly on Keeley's before you take over again. Sure. Fifth race, first win in Moto3. So let's talk about that for a second.

I don't know if any of you saw this MotoGP Instagram page reel or whatever it is that you call it, but they talked about Keeley's having won his first pole position in France, how Keeley's won his first podium in Great Britain, and his first race win was in Italy, which mirrors a certain younger rider here on Mark Marquez on a 125 had the exact same trifecta. First pole on 125 happened in France, first podium on 125 for Mark Marquez took place in Great Britain, and his first win took place in Italy. Given that Keeley's is being coached by the Marquez brothers, you almost get the indomitable sense that he is grooming his replacement for later on. It was an interesting statistic. Is history repeating itself?

I have no idea. I just thought it was interesting. I mean, this is, I think we've got, this is his sixth or seventh race weekend now, because Keeley's missed a couple races. I know there at the beginning. I think it's his sixth.

Well, I wrote down fifth, but he missed around or came through injury, didn't he? Yes, he did. I thought it was sixth, but I could be wrong. I'm not keeping that close of attention to how many races he has. The point of this is this kid has not had that many races in Moto3 and he's won one, which is amazing.

Right. I get, you know, Acosta did it like on the opening night in Qatar, right from the pit lane. But that's a, again, that was a different situation here. And again, I, you know, I'm not saying Acosta isn't good, but the level of competition is a little different now. I feel, I feel like there's a lot.

I, I personally feel like right now in Moto3, there are a lot of really good riders who could all win on the day. And I not, you know, back when Acosta did that, I, there were a couple of people who were fast, but there was a definitely a certain four or five that were quick here. I think there's like 10 that are quick enough to win in my opinion, I guess, again, it's my opinion. I don't know. I'm sort of a firm believer in recency bias as a concept and you do tend to perhaps forget how vicious it was in years gone by.

That's true. I'm not going to lie. I don't know. We'd have to go back and revisit. It doesn't really matter, right?

The kid's got talent. Yeah. Bottom line, kid has talent. An interesting point, Jim. And again, this is not my original thought, particularly, and it definitely isn't because I don't watch Red Bull rookies because I just can't watch any more race.

So I picked this up secondhand, but apparently, and this came up in the context of other podcasts talking about Frankie Morbidelli, which obviously we'll touch on in a little while. And you know, this notion of trying to stamp out bad behaviour earlier and it transpired. I didn't know this, but apparently, I'm pretty sure they said last year at Mugello, Quiles did a mad swerve on the start finish straight on the last lap and took somebody out and quite seriously injured them. And he was given a very, very strong penalty. I think he was benched for a while.

And it fundamentally changed his approach to racing. And he acknowledges this himself. He has sort of come out and said, I think I'm paraphrasing, but it was kind of air quotes the best thing that ever happened to him because it forced him to be more strategic and to think his way through, not just try to be banzai on the last lap. And we've said already, and this is high praise indeed, that Quiles has, particularly bearing in mind he's on the same team, but has all the hallmarks of David Alonso, doesn't he, in the way that he kind of loiteres in the pack and then attacks, but in a very sort of tactical way and a well-thought-out way. And taking your point, turn 15 when he went past Foggia, there was no contact.

It was just a well-executed, well-thought-out move. And he knew that if he'd led into that straight, he wouldn't get drafted by the line. As you said, Jim, had it been another 10 meters down the track, probably it would have been a cigarette paper, Foggia or whoever in front. But he's a really a thinking rider now, one year on from having had his wrist comprehensively slapped for acting like a tit. So, they do learn these youngsters, don't they?

And he, fifth or sixth race, whatever it is, but to pick up his first win is not a surprise because he might have already won a couple already because he's been close. But this feels a bit like floodgates are about to open, doesn't it? It feels that way. So, we'll see. So, with Rureda finishing off the podium, his championship lead is reduced to 56 points over Piqueras.

So, Piqueras is still second in this championship, but he happens to be 56 behind. Now, Carpe is only one point behind Piqueras on 105. Kelso has slid to fourth on 93, his run of form sagging a little bit, thus the Australian sliding down the championship table. Quiles now promotes himself to fifth. He is on 85 points, only 77 behind.

And you got a feeling Quiles may take a run at this title. There's time. The floodgates may open. Rureda is a talent, let's be honest. But Quiles rips off two, three, four wins.

This is going to get tasty as we head to the end of the year. A lot of racing left to go, so we can't really hand the title to Rureda yet. What was Mugello, Jim? Was it round nine? Was it?

I think. Nine. Nine of the 22. So, Quiles has dropped four or five rounds through not being eligible to start or injury. And he's fifth in the standings.

So, yes, that tells you everything you need to know about his chances going forward. Yes, it does. Again, it's always neat to see how our predictions are so wrong because you have no idea that this kid, Quiles, is going to show up and just show you how good he is. You know, you don't know. Yeah, we don't know.

I mean, maybe if we were there in Europe and we're watching all the junior races, we, yeah, this kid's got talent or something, who knows. Where were we? Oh, first Autos in sixth, then Lunetta, Munoz, Fernandez, and Almanza in the top 10. And that is everything you need to know about Moto Three. On to Moto Two.

Now, qualifying first session, Anciu, Robert Alonso, Ortola and Weier and Zonta van de Gerbord are all in that first session. It's like, wow, that's pretty wild. You know, I mean, you know, Anciu wins the race, but they said he was struggling with bike setup. And once they put a soft on, he found something. So they were pretty confident that Anciu would get through this session.

But it was interesting that he was there to begin with, right? Van de Gerbord had a high side, man. He ran team, man. It just threw him land. It was wild because he just, yeah, just, you know, just crushed it with the high side there.

Halfway through, Anciu, Robert Alonso and Ortola were all going to go through. Robert's goes below his track record. This is a track that Joe likes. Joe has been, how do I say, has been performing better as his wrist heals, as he develops strength, as he gets back into the groove of racing. So he put out his, it broke his own track record.

He went to 149.8, which I thought was amazing. I thought, wow, this is really good for Robert. But he did wind up actually being the first person in the line. So it was Robert, Anciu, Alonso and Sasaki that all got out of that session. So it's like, wow, we're looking for some good things to happen here.

Maybe perhaps when the guys go out again in the second session. Halfway through, Diego Morera had set the fastest lap at a 149.7. So, you know, another 10th faster than what Robert's had accomplished in the first one. So it was pretty wild. Arenas was there, then Anciu, Kinet, Bautissari and Gonzalez.

Gonzalez having a, putting a banker lap in, if you will, because of the time he threw away the bike. Like, hey, just go out there, put a lap in, we'll worry about where it is. Solache was down. There was a very large group that was going slow and, you know, something happened in that group. We didn't quite see it, but it did mean that, whose exhaust pipe got broke?

That was... Morera's. Morera's, yes, thank you. So did Morera and Solache hit? We didn't know.

It looked like they maybe did. It was kind of off camera, wasn't it? We didn't really see what happened. There was a lot of dawdling going on. And then the next thing we know is that Morera's got bike damage.

So he obviously got hit by Solache because his exhaust pipe was off at sort of 45 degrees, wasn't it? Not optimal for performance. No, definitely not. They're highly tuned exhausts for those things, for sure. So Bautissari, Bautissari had a high side.

There were yellow sectors everywhere, right? And somebody was going to get caught out. And Gonzalez did. His time got scrubbed for that there. So Gonzalez was tied to fourth.

But when it came down to Morera, who had set a track record, was your pole sitter. Kinet was second. Aranis, you know, Aranis really hasn't shown much in qualifying, hasn't really done much in Moto 2. He's a former world champion in Moto 3. Now it looks like maybe he's sort of maybe got something going together.

Who knows? Could be one off. Then Ramirez, then Gonzalez. Anche would be sixth. Then Vietti, Bautissari, Hulgardo, and Tony Arbolino in the 10.

Hopefully Arbolino trying to at least put something together here, which, you know, he's still having another poor year and he's on the Mark VDS team. So he really shouldn't be. I don't know if he just can't seem to find the setup or what. But isn't he on the Yamaha Junior team now? Oh, you're right.

I'm sorry. I had that wrong. You are correct. He was Mark VDS last year. That's right.

Thank you. I'm yes, he's on the Yamaha squad. That is right. Thank you, Rich, for correcting me. But that's your top 10 for the qualifying.

Now we get to the race. Now, Gonzalez got a three-grid penalty for riding slowly in the qualifying session. So Gonzalez has dropped back from his position from yesterday. 19 laps. Marrero gets a great hole shot followed by Anche, followed by Gonzalez, who came from that fourth row where he was like, wow, he just really nailed the start got there.

Then Kinet, Ramirez and Arenas. Now Ramirez and Kinet, they were so close to disaster when they went in the turn. They were touching. He's like, oh, you think this is just going to be over? And they actually got away with it.

Helgardo had a long lap penalty that he had to take because he had a grid infraction. I think it was. And then Anche was leading for a little bit with Kinet, Marrero, Arenas, then Gonzalez, and then Vietti. Arenas goes to first. This is the first time I remember Arenas leading a Moto2 race.

He probably led one at some other point, but he was just different to see him there. Five laps in, Arenas is still leading there. Gonzalez has made his way to the podium positions. There is great racing happening in this one, quite honestly. It's kind of Moto3-esque.

They're trading places everywhere. Everyone's taking a chance and trying to get there. But Kinet then starts to lead. It goes to the lead. It's an eight-bike lead train.

We're starting to pull apart. The leaders are starting to separate themselves from the normal, from the pack. That kind of starts there at the beginning. Solache, he was now fifth. He was charging with six laps in.

Gonzalez got to the front on lap seven. By lap nine, Gonzalez and Arenas and Kinet and Marrero are out front. There's a big gap to take you back to after that. Nuvaro has crashed at turn one, went way too late, ran wide, loses it in the dirt out on the outside there. But that gap after Marrero is now Goulvaro and Anju.

Marrero goes by Kinet because he's starting to sense that Gonzalez may be willing to take off at this point. So he's got to do something. So he forces the issue on Kinet and gets by. He does that. The question is, could he catch anybody on the front two?

Who knows? But he was going to give it a try. Five to go. It's still Gonzalez out front. Arenas has nothing for him.

Kinet and Marrero are still vying with each other. Then it's Vietti and Anju. Four to go. Gonzalez is gone. He's kind of broken Arenas.

He's got a 1.8 second lead on that. The question then is the Kinet Marrero fight is really shaping up to see who's going to actually sit on the podium for this one. Two to go. Kinet and Marrero, man, they're fighting with it. They're swapping it back and forth and their fight is slowing them down spectacularly.

So it's a foregone conclusion at this point with this fight going on that Gonzalez is going to win the race and that Arenas is going to finish second on the podium. But my golly, as slow as what they're going, is Vietti going to have any chance at these guys and maybe nick a podium, which was kind of interesting at the end to have a little bit of drama and excitement in a Moto2 race. It never panned out. Kinet and them, it's awesome racing back and forth there. Vietti was coming, but he never could do it.

Gonzalez would win the race. He takes that Moto2 victory. Arenas finishes second. I think that's his best Moto3 finish. I think he had a third before, but he had a second here.

So hopefully he can build on this and create. Kinet staves off Marrero and Vietti to run third and be on the podium. Then it's Marrero, Vietti, as I said, on to sixth, Guevara Alonso. Roberts in ninth. He made it to top 10.

I think this might be Roberts's first top 10 all year, I think, perhaps. Then Ramirez. So Roberts beats his teammate, which is always the best thing you can do. Baltis XI, Salats, Agis Lopez, and Holgario in 15th. Anything you want to say about the race before we go through and diagnose the points after this round, Rich, for Moto2?

Not really. There was a few decent overtakes in there. It's kind of a bit of a typical Moto2 race, wasn't it? Yeah. The only last little bit of interest really was Alonso closing in on seventh place, because I think Alonso had gone with the hard front.

I think so. So there was some suggestion that might just give him a bit of late race pace. And he did have that, but it just wasn't enough. A bit like Vietti, it just wasn't quite enough to make it in the last couple of laps. But yeah, other than that, I mean, a bit of a shocker for Jake Dixon again, from the British perspective.

And obviously I was taking a bit of an interest in that. But good to see Joe Roberts having a bit of a better time. Although I'm sure he would still be disappointed, because Mugello has traditionally been one of his really, really strong tracks. Yeah, I mean, Gonzales, I mean, I feel a bit sorry for him in a way. He kind of keeps winning races in a very unspectacular way, it seems to me.

But they don't give them away for free, do they, Moto2 wins? So he's doing a hell of a job. But yeah, it's a little bit of a kind of, what's the word, I'm kind of looking at a little bit, all a bit sort of placid at the minute, Moto2, it feels to me. But it's generally the one that disappoints the most, with a few exceptions. I didn't write many notes, to be honest with you, Moto2.

That's usually the case. Moto3 is like, oh my God, you give up, your hand starts to hurt after three or four laps, whereas Moto2 is a little bit respite on the old hand. So yeah, having said all of that, it's still a pretty tight championship race at the top, as you're going to tell us. Yeah, it is. Gonzales only leads Connet by nine points, which is nothing.

Basically call it what it is. Marrera is third. He is some 40 points behind the other, behind Gonzales, sorry. And then Baltis is there on 94. Dixon is falling, has fallen to fifth.

Aegis is at sixth, Anju is seventh. Then Arenas with that great finish kind of bumped himself up a little bit there to eighth. Then Vietti and Ramirez, and that's your Moto2 real champs. A long way to go here. This is not Gonzales' thing, but I do think his little outing on a MotoGP bike I think has maybe given him a smidge of confidence.

He's riding a little bit more, I would say maybe relaxed. Maybe he knows something we don't know. So he did turn it around. It was just one of those things where you just want to hear someone say, yeah, look kid, you've got some talent. You can make it.

You can do this. He had a bit of a, well, I thought maybe he was riding like he had no chance at anything. And he was his last gasp and riding, I don't want to say desperate, but Gonzales was definitely sort of something happened over the last couple of rounds where he sort of lost his mojo a little bit, maybe overriding a smidge. I don't know. I'm not sure.

Maybe this having, maybe he was thinking more about the test he was going to have on a MotoGP bike or who knows, whatever. Maybe it's just the fact that after riding a MotoGP bike, everything is in slow motion on a Moto2 bike. I know that happened to me. I dirt tracked all the time and then I went road racing and it was like, I became a better dirt tracker after having road race because it made dirt track look like it was literally in slow motion to me. Weird.

I know. Crazy. Right. He doesn't sort of jump out like a stellar talent at the moment, although as we've seen the new pick-tag Quattroa earlier on, as somebody that kind of went up to MotoGP and we were all thinking, really? I mean, he hadn't really done much.

Certainly in Moto3, Quattroa, it must be said, had a stellar pre-Moto3 career in terms of the junior championship, which is part of the reason why people were so disappointed in how he sort of fared in Moto3 and particularly in Moto2. So it was a real eye-opener when he got the shout out to the Petronas Yamaha squad, if you recall, and obviously the rest of his crew. So in a similar way, Gonzales, I'm doing him a real disservice and he is a very, very good rider. He's just quite sort of methodical the way he goes about it, isn't he? But you are right.

He came off a couple of poor rounds. I mean, for sure, as far as I'm concerned at Silverstone, he had a clumsy crash, which was his own fault and he didn't need to have. I'm trying to remember what happened last time out. That was Aragon, wasn't it? I'm trying to think.

Oh no, he fell in qualifying and so was way down the grid and sort of worked his way back up. Yeah, okay. So a very strong return to form. And again, sorry to repeat myself, but people that win at Mugello, you always think, you know, that's a box ticked there, because conquering Mugello is, I would imagine, because I've never raced a bike, let alone one at Mugello, I can only imagine how hard it is. So, and you cannot help but feel that that little taste of a MotoGP bike, it goes one of two ways.

You either kind of just lose the plot afterwards, or you think, I'll have a bit of that and you get your head down and you make sure it's going to happen. And that performance coming after the test, I suspect will have opened up track houses, eyes a bit wider even than they were already after a very good test. But nine points is not a big difference. So there's lots to be done in Moto2 yet. Yep, there is.

Okay, with that and having covered Warbazen Championship, let's move on to the main event, the MotoGP bikes here at Mugello, where they record, I think, what the fastest top speed anywhere that they go is at Mugello, some, what is it, 322 or 324, 25 kilometers per hour. I know 320 is the magic 200 mark, so 210, 215 miles an hour on a MotoGP bike, that's just... I think it's actually faster than that. It might be. What was it, was it 226, was it last season?

Bender or somebody was in the high, almost nicking 330, I thought. Something close to that. Way over 220 miles per hour. Yeah, that's just insane on a motorcycle. I'm sorry, no matter what I do, hell yeah, but I think it would be insane.

You do it once and be scared the crap out of you and then you'd be like, okay, I'm done. I don't want to do it anymore. But anyway, we got to qualifying. The first round of qualifying had Miller, it had Bender, it had Bastianini, it had Mir, Zarco, Iagura was there, and so was Aldiger. Halfway through, Raul Fernandez had put in a phenomenal lap to just edge Aldiger at that point in the Goling's on.

Raul had a tire warmer problem where they couldn't get the front tire warmer off the motorcycle, which was interesting. It was like, he was called out to go get on. They couldn't seem to get it, they were working on it. I don't know what they did to cause that to stick. I've never seen one do that, but they couldn't get it out.

To Raul's credit, he did calmly stand there, let everything be, then got on the bike, sort of took a moment, which I thought was good. You could watch him sort of just, okay, go. He steadied himself. He did put in a formidable lap, but Aldiger went very quick. Well, I should say Miller went quickest.

Then Aldiger surpassed him to have it, but at the very, very end of it, Fernandez just did nip it to get second and push Miller out of the second qualifying. Aldiger and Fernandez actually go through. All credit to Raul for keeping that headspace because it's so easy to just be caught up in all that. Back in the day, obviously, we were racing two strokes and little 80s and 125s. You could foul a spark plug in a two-stroke, like there's no tomorrow.

Somebody would be on the clock or something and you would just sort of put you off your game. It was like you really had to learn to mentally recenter yourself and take that second and put it back. Because this doesn't affect me. It has nothing to do with me. It wasn't a me thing.

It's interesting to sort of be able to, for me, because I did this, at a very moderate level, people want to kind of know that that's what he's doing. I could catch that. I know what he's thinking. It's kind of fun for me at times. I remember those days.

The funny thing is that Raul Fernandez is probably the last person you would have expected to keep his head. I suspect he will never know. I suspect had he lost his bleep, you know, a Spigaro style, I doubt he would have gone through to Q2, to be honest with you. You have that kind of over-exuberance, that extra adrenaline hit. You override.

You make silly little mistakes because you're pressing too hard. Your judgment kind of gets a bit clouded to use that kind of phrase, possibly. Sure, but also your heart rate's elevated. Oddly, you have to calm yourself back down. At least for me.

That's my take on it because I've had those things where, for whatever reason, something was going on on the bike and I had to step off and I was trying to fix it. Whatever, right? Because there's just something that's just slightly off or whatever it may be. Like you, I was very surprised when I saw the tire get stuck. I was like, uh-oh.

Toys out of the pram. This is going to turn nasty. To his great credit, he kept his cool. As we say, that is not something that he's been renowned for in his career to date. I hope, we're talking about like Kiele's learning hard lessons and stuff.

Hopefully, the risk of sounding extremely patronizing, but I'm in my 50s so I can do it. Hopefully, he will learn from that and understand that if you just keep calm and let the team do their job when stuff doesn't quite go to plan, which is inevitable in any form of life and certainly in bike racing, you just got to roll with the punches, haven't you? Keep calm and do your best, which is what he did. Fair play to him. It's the first time I actually was really happy to see him go through because he's one of the riders I'm a bit on the fence with him.

Let's not beat about the bush. He is under immense pressure in that team because whilst he has a contract for next year, you know, contracts, what the hell, we know what contracts are. It's the right moment for him to keep his calm and to turn in a good performance, which he did the following day as well. Yep, for sure. So those guys go through.

Second qualifying. All right. Marquez goes out first. We'll just throw us down like an all-time lap record. That was the Marc Marquez, ha ha ha, Benyai, I'm on your playground and I can go faster than you ever have been around here.

Yeah, there's, we'll come on to that and then the racing here, but that was just crazy just right out of the box at a 144.5. Then Quattraro pulled off the magic and, you know, it's being the second quick there. Makes you wonder what Quattraro would do if he had a Ducati, right? You know, Quattraro was almost moving into that alien status because he's getting so much more out of the bike than anyone else can get out of that bike. I don't think Alex Renz is going to have a MotoGP ride next year.

I just don't see that. I mean, again, technically he has a contract, but- Yeah, those are made to be broken. Well, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, there are a number of people that really need to be graduating up to MotoGP or certainly are worthy of it.

So we'll see. Yep. So as soon as Quattraro threw down that second fastest time, Benyai went by to be second fastest, you know, halfway through. It's Marquez, Benyai, Morbidele, Quattraro, Bizecki, Vinales, and Alex Marquez. Now, Quattraro goes out with absolutely no help and runs a 144.4.

No draft, no nothing. That was Quattraro just absolutely wringing every last ounce out of that motorcycle. And you could see him on his cool down laugh. He's just sort of like, that's it guys. This Yamaha will go no faster than that.

It's worth pointing out, Jim, having dislocated his shoulder the previous day. That is true. Yes. Or partially dislocated it, whatever. It took a corner worker.

He pulled it back in place, which, you know, that was enough to make everybody winch. I winched. I don't know about you. I winched. Yeah, I can only, well, I can't imagine how painful that would be.

But and he clearly was in quite a lot of discomfort from the footage. I mean, he was moving his arm around, clearly in some distress. So that just added to how great his performance was. Oh yeah. I'm sorry.

I literally wrote no help, wow, in my notes because I was flabbergasted that Quattraro could make that bike go that fast. Yeah. Absolutely flabbergasted with that one. And it's telling Jim, sorry, I know I keep butting in. That's okay.

No, no, I like to hear what you had to say. With the Yamahas and with Fabio in particular, because he is so fast, despite the fact that there are some disadvantages to it in terms of not having a moving target, but you can see what he does pretty much every round, which is he goes out on his own because then he can ride his lines. If he goes out trying to sort of follow somebody, they will just mitigate the strength of the Yamaha, which is the sort of the sweeping. I know it's a cliche, but it is still true with the inline four. Quite how things will transpire when that becomes a V4 obviously is going to be interesting to watch because as we said a few rounds ago, Fabio has never written a V4 in MotoGP.

He may not like a V4. He wants one, but when he rides one, it might not be what he wants. We just don't know, but you can see what his tactic at the moment is, is to maximise the things that the Yamaha is really good at, which has been quick through the turns. I'm pretty sure that is why he doesn't bother trying to sort of draft people or have a sort of a target to chase more often than not. Just an observation.

No, no, you're right. 100%. If he's chasing a Ducati, Ducati's going to park it in the middle of the corner and he's not, oh, his corner speed's crushed. He has no choice but to go out by himself, but still bloody amazing that he is able to even accomplish that. Then Benyaya, of course, would go faster.

Now he's sitting on pole, but yeah, there's this other guy, maybe the guy that sits right beside you in the pit there to what would be camera left because Benyaya is on the camera right side. He throws down a 1.44.1, which is an absolutely stunning lap by Marquez. It finishes off with Marquez being, Mark that is, being on pole. Benyaya in the middle of the front row, Alex is on the outside of the front row, then Quattroraro. Vignola is on the KTM.

He seems to be the only person who can make the KTM work, weirdly. I know Gary right now is pulling his hair out, has to be. And then you have Vignola, as I said, Morbidelli, Digiantonio, Acosta, Renz, Bezeki, Raul Fernandez, and Aldeguer being the slowest of the people who made it into the QT session, which this sets us up for the sprint this afternoon. Can I just point out, Jim, interesting your take on this, Mavik Vignola is switching between the Mastampa salad box thing round to round. Interesting, though, to me, because that must have a huge effect on how the bike rides.

Very much so. Again, we always joke about Gary being, you know, so sort of anti-mad Rick, and we're all a bit kind of like, you just can't figure the guy out, can you? No. I mean, I thought this year was going to be an utter unmetigated disaster. I did too.

The thought that he is leading the way is, I love it. I mean, I really do. I just think, there's another great story. Look where Vignola was a few seasons ago, you know, sacked to all intents and purposes by Yamaha. A difficult transition through the Aprilia years, but started to win on it.

And then bizarrely leaves, goes to KTM, we're all thinking, well, that's, you know, you might as well start getting the nails out to put the lid on the coffin. And here we are, he's sort of switching between bike specs and showing everybody else the way, including Juan Pedro Acosta, who, it must be said, is starting to cut a bit of a dejected figure and saying things that are a bit like, well, hang on, pal, you're on the works bike, you're meant to be developing this thing, not demanding something better. Yes. So with the mass dampener, this is my take on it. There must be something about it that works with quick transitions of left to right.

Because if you think about how Aragon is laid out, right? You have heartbreaking first turn, but then you got to quickly kind of go back to the other side of the bike and you have to settle it for the sweep. Then you've got to switch back and you got the difficult turn four, five, then the reverse corkscrew, then this big long sweeper, you're on the tire. Then you got the 11, 12, and then you got the 13, 14 had happened in quick succession. So what I'm guessing, and this is purely speculative from what I think is going on, is that by having the mass dampener on like at Aragon, where the quick transitions are, it settles the bike.

It makes it actually feel slower than it is if you can follow what I'm trying to say. So Vinales throws a lot of effort into the bike to turn it left to right, but his effect of what he's doing is tapered or tempered, is probably a better word, by the mass dampener unit. Think of it as like a really tall skyscraper. The Taipei 100 towers is probably one of the best examples I can give you. The wind is pushing against that tower, which causes it to sway in the wind and the engineers design that building to be able to do that kind of flex.

But the problem is that motion up and top will cause people to become ill because it's moving more than what they really want it to be. So there is like a 160-ton steel ball at the top of the Taipei 100 tower on a cable that just sits there in midair. So as the building moves left, the ball doesn't go anywhere, which keeps the building slowly moving. It dampers out that quick motion one way because all the energy gets stored in there. So I think that's what's happening when we go to Magello.

There's not really a stop-start chicane. Only maybe turns two and three in that. Being generous, everything is a more fast flowing, set the bike on the edge, make the turn accelerate, now slowly go back the other way. So Vinales' motion is slower to go from left to right than it is at Aragon, where he's trying to go very fast from left to right. But that left to right motion that he makes at Aragon upsets the bike or puts the bike in a feeling that he doesn't like.

But the mass dampener corrects that flex or that feeling that he gets out of it. But he doesn't need it at track where you're turning slower than you would at Aragon. Now we're going to Assen with its very quick changes of direction. Sorry, Rich, I didn't mean to cut you off there, but I kind of thought you were going there. Interesting to see what he rides.

I think I don't know which way he's going to go. No idea. I would look for him to, if I'm watching practice, I'm looking to see if he has the mass dampener device attached to the bike as he does practice. And I think he will try it with it on. I think he will try it with it off.

And he will figure out which one he wants. It's a 50-50 crapshoot. But deep inside, my guess is he races with it. That's my guess. Yeah, I would agree.

We'll have to take a particular note on Friday, won't we? Yes. Friday is going to be very interesting to see what he does. I really am interested to what happens there. Good golly, where were we, Rich?

Oh, we're going to the sprint race, right? Real where we were. So, sorry. From the beginning, everybody's lined up and mere seconds before the light turns green to start the race, one Marc Marquez on pole reaches over with his right hand to engage the launch sequence because he forgot to do it. As soon as he gets his hand back onto the right-hander bar, the lights are green, jumps the clutch, and goes.

I had to play that back. And when they showed it again on the onboard camera, there was one thing I really wanted to hear, and that was the engine note. The engine note clued me in as to what really happened in there. Marc had pulled up. He had engaged the whole shot device, but he had forgot to initiate the launch sequencing device or code, however you want to think of it.

What happened was the lights started with the first red. Marc turned the throttle to wide open and the bike revved all the way up. The bike should have only revved to, I don't know, but let's make something up here so we have numbers to work with to make this example work. Let's say the bike was only supposed to rev to say 8,000 RPM. The bike went all the way to 12,000 RPM and Marc was like, oh, whoa, okay, push the button.

And as soon as the light goes, you're going to the exact same time and off he goes. If you listen to an onboard and they isolate, nobody's talking over top of it, you'll notice that as the lights turn green, they turn the throttle to wide open, but the bike is not revving as high as what you would think it should be for being wide open. That's how they're working launch control because they're not moving the throttle. And again, if you watch from an onboard, the right wrist does not change. The launch system, I think, that's what they do while the practice starts and they're all coordinated.

I think there's some sort of hydraulic learning device that's in the clutches that learns where the bike point is and then they just throw the clutch and sort of because it's a passive device, it's simply the hydraulic pressure changes in an accumulator as to how fast that clutch releases and it gives you the maximum amount of slip that you want. Again, interesting development that happens right off the start of this one. But Marquez was down to, I think, about eighth place. And as we were talking earlier, Rich, his first lap and that sprint was a phenomenal lap. It was reminiscent of him on his 125 at Portugal when he started dead last and was basically halfway through the pack after a lap.

So it was an amazing bit of work by Marquez. Now, Zarko and Binder, they crashed at turn one. They were there. I think Marquez had got himself from somewhere around eighth to fourth by the time they reached the first turn and then he just plowed through everybody else. It was basically out of there.

It was Benyaia, Alex, Mark, Quattraro, Vinales, and Acosta. Alex led for a little bit and then Mark had moved himself to second. Acosta would crash. Digia was into Binder and then that pushed him into Zarko. That caused the crash at the beginning.

There was no penalties given for that because we didn't learn that until later. Benyaia was just losing pace to both Mark and Alex. Benyaia did not have the pace to go with those guys. Four laps in, Marquez is at the front. All systems go there, followed by his brother.

And then you had Benyaia. You had Quattraro still hanging on. Then Digia. Now, Vinales does get underneath Quattraro and sort of motors away. Five to go.

Quattraro is losing places to the Ducati Armada that's now showed up. He's got corner speed, but the Ducatis are faster in a straight line for sure. So they were going to overtake him obviously. Benyaia would get a track limits warning. Bez would work his way past Morbidelli with three to go.

Benyaia was caught by Vinales and you thought for sure Vinales was going to maybe take down Benyaia in the sprint. That did not work. Benyaia would finish third. Marquez, as in Mark, wins. Alex is second.

Benyaia, Vinales, Digia, Bez, Zecchi and Morbidelli. It was only a stellar race in the fact that you saw Mark Marquez and what he could do with that Ducati when things were down. And that was pretty amazing to watch. Other than that, it's the basic boredom of a sprint race now that Marquez has a Ducati and a weapon to work with. Props to Quattroraio for hanging in there as long as he did.

The inedible happened and Mark wins. As I said before we started recording, Jim, to me it just showed the absolutely devastating speed that Marquez has on the rare occasion that he has to bring it out. There's a psychological aspect to this weekend as well, which is that this is where Peco Benyaia has won for the last several seasons, including sprint races. Benyaia has not been the sprint race guy typically, but Mugello he certainly has. So Mark was ramping up the rhetoric around, oh this is Pecos track, I've only won here once.

That wasn't him being nice, that was him getting in Pecos head. Not because he's a nasty person, but that's just the game that they play. Certainly it's the game that Marquez plays. Anyway, he wanted to make sure he had another perfect weekend, Aragon style. Put it on pole and this is where the whole spectre of the front tyre pressure raises its head.

That thing would have been set on the basis that he led pretty much flag to flag. Having had the small font calamity on the start line. I don't know if you saw the, Matt Oxley put out a tweet showing just the sheer number of buttons and stuff and levers on the handlebars. Oh yeah, that's crazy. How the hell they do what they do.

It's just absolutely unfathomable to me. But anyway, so Mark had that little slip up. He knew he had to get back to the front or certainly to the first two to three positions very, very quickly. Otherwise he was likely to run into tyre pressure issues in the pack. Given that challenge, he just got to the front.

I was liking it to be out in the centre of the 1993 Donington Park wet race where he dropped positions at the beginning and at the end of the lap he was in the lead. Just phenomenal to watch really. It just shows you how much redundant capacity Mark Marquez has. Although he's only been winning races dropped the ball a few times, it must be said. Harath, Cota.

However, you expect that a few times in a season for many riders typically. But yeah, he is only really winning by a second and a half, two seconds. He's riding to the board once he's out front typically, I think. But we saw in that one lap that when he knows he has to pull it out, he has all of the ability on that cicatini to do it. And nobody can hold a candle to him at the moment.

So take note of what we're going to call this episode, everybody. I've already decided what this episode is called. Game over. Yeah, I really think it is at this point because this was the one track which was meant to be the glimmer of hope and light for Bagnier, particularly after the supposed revelation of the front disc brake, which he couldn't, to be fair, he couldn't run this time. Because there's not enough braking.

I mean, obviously they're heartbreaking down into turn one, but they're just not breaking anywhere else. And so they can't generate the heat in that size disc. So he wasn't able to run it. Asun, I suspect, will be similar. I think so.

Because it's again, it's a very high speed, flowing side to side sort of track, couple of heartbreaking points. But so I don't know when we'll get to see Bagnier back using those bigger discs again. Yeah, but I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't like the lighter fuel load, the sort of the repositioned tank or fuel position on the bike. Plus he couldn't run the brake discs that perhaps gave him a glimmer of hope. So yeah, and it was, it's kind of even worse.

He was beaten by Alex Marquez in the sprint as well. Yeah, I mean, Bagnier doesn't know what to do. He is a, he is a beaten man for sure. His body language says that, you know, I think what happened after the sprint was interesting. So I want to talk about that for a moment.

The crowd booed Marquez vehemently to which David Tardazzi looked at them and said, Hey, he wears red, he rides red. He won the race, the Italian Grand Prix on your motorcycle. You should stop booing him. Okay, fans can do what you want, right? I get it.

You want your hometown hero, you know, to win that race. But it was, it's interesting that it has gotten to the point where Marquez is seen as such a villain against Bagnier that Tardazzi feels that he must say something to the crowd to remind them that he is on a Ducati. And you know that, I thought that was, I don't have the right word here for this. I think commendable is what I'm trying to say that Tardazzi did what he did. Tardazzi could have just agreed with it and let it all go, but he didn't.

Because trust me, whether he gets whether Mark gets booed at the racetrack or not is not going to affect what he does on a motorcycle. Not anything, it would motivate him more. I think he does. I think you're right about that one. Yeah, I think he takes that negativity and turns it into a positive.

He lets the hate fuel him, right? Like, you know, it gives him the energy just to ride that much harder just to basically tick you off in the stands. Yeah. But it also goes with this that I think a lot of people will have to rethink who is the goat. Mark, I think, is going to win this world title, right?

So that puts Mark doing it on a Honda, doing it on a Ducati, doing it on, again, a vastly different Ducati than the Ducati that Rossi got on, and a vastly different team than what Rossi was on. But still, to win two world championships, to win one world championships and do it on two different bikes is rare. It's not, hasn't, like, it's not been done. Okay. Eddie Lawson did it.

You know, he did it on a Yamaha, did it on a Honda. I know it's been done by others back in the day before my time of watching. I think Certese may have, no, not Certese, he did it once, but Mike the Bike Hailwood, I think, did it on different motorcycles. I think, I'm not 100 percent. Agostini, I think, did it with different bikes.

Yeah. I mean, the most recent one would be Casey Stoner, wouldn't it? I mean, having him on the Stoner would be, yes, that's the one I'm trying to think of in the present day, because he won 2007 and won again on a Honda. Yeah. So, and arguably Stoner could have been a go as well, but he wasn't able to stick around long enough and- Yeah.

He's, whatever. You know, there's those things, right, that are there. So, you know, you can love or hate Marquez, that's your own opinion, and I'm okay with that. I'm fine. But you have to respect the talent that that man has on a motorcycle.

You may hate him as a person, you may hate him as a rider, that's fine, but you have to respect the talent that he's put into that craft. And, you know, this is one of the greatest sports stories that will be told, because Mark had damaged his arm so badly that it didn't fit in his shoulder correctly, and it was because he needed to have the humerus bone cut again by a doctor, rotate it 30 degrees, 30. That's not three, it's 30 degrees and put back together again, and he's winning races on a bike and probably will win a world championship. The only thing that comes close to this story is Mick Duhin having won or having had that bad crash at Assen when he was leading the world championship in 93. No, 93, no, 92.

I see, wasn't it on the Rothmans bike? Yeah, it was on the Rothmans, I think it was 92. I think it was 92. We'll go with 92 because I think that's right. And basically, you know, if it wasn't for Dr.

Acosta to show up at the hospital in the Netherlands, Duhin's leg was going to be amputated. His leg was so badly damaged, it took Dr. Acosta hours to put it back together again. And once Duhin was able to, at the end of the year, get back to moving on a bike, he had no mobility in his ankle. It was fused, he couldn't do anything with it.

And only a couple years later was he able to get it to where he could have it unfused or operated on again to give him some range of motion in his ankle. And yet, you know, Duhin persevered, pioneered the thumb brake for the rear so he could ride a 500 the way he wanted to. There's an equivalency there to what Marquez is doing because it's so far out of the realm. And honestly, not to be fan-bushed, I think Marquez, if he wins the championship, his accomplishment will be slightly greater than Duhin's because it's his right arm. It's the arm that takes the gas and the brake and all the punishment on the motorcycle.

Duhin's was a leg and I'm not discarding the damage that was done to his leg, but it's his leg, right? It's not his, you know, his shoulder, his arm and what he needs to ride. So much of it, again, yes, I know a lot of it is the motion with your feet to get yourself to go left to right on the bike. But I just think Marquez's injury is a slightly more severe injury and to recover from it as he's done, I think is better than Duhin's. Not like there's a rating system for riders that have basically destroyed themselves, but yeah.

This is going to be an interesting off-season chat. Yeah, okay. We could drag some subscribers into perhaps in terms of the relative merits of different riders across different time frames. You know, I mean, bearing in mind Marquez post that accident and the reconstruction of his arm went through some periods of infection as well. Yes, yeah.

Which were equally likely to have ended his career or even ended up with, you know, an amputation. I mean, if you get a badly infected bone or it can be really, really bad. So as a kind of comeback story, as far as I'm concerned, this is right up there with like Muhammad Ali or, you know, you can name several other people that sort of battled back through various forms of adversity. Definitely Duhin. I mean, I would say about Duhin, you know, he was riding the bike that was, you know, utterly vicious and uncompromising on tracks that were definitely sketchy.

Oh, yeah, of course. In protective gear that was... Not what it is today. Definitely not what it is today. So this is the interesting argument about different riders, different time periods, of course, but you can never really make that comparison, can you?

But interested to know what people think about this one. But, you know, as I've said many, many times, I'm not the world's biggest Marquez fan. I wasn't the world's biggest Van Zee and Rossi fan, actually. But you could only go on their performance on their records and their sheer brilliance, and particularly their sheer brilliance when they are under pressure to pull it out of the bag. And we haven't really seen a great deal of it for Marquez this year, because when he's crashed, it's kind of been a bit pointless crash kind of thing from him.

Stupid crash. You would have understood it if he had crashed on that one of the sprint, because he had to get back to the front. But, you know, just the sheer brilliance and talent shone through. And I'm afraid it is game over as per the title of this episode, because I just don't see that anybody can hold a candle to him. The only, actually, one thing I've been saying all year long, Jim, is that I thought Alex Marquez would start to drop back around about now, because I felt that the 24-byte was going to start to suffer in comparison to 25 in terms of development.

But because of the issues that exist on either side of the garage, there is now a train of thought with this unique, pretty much unique situation we have with the kind of development freeze and the 24-byte potentially being eligible for the Works team to use again next year, which Banyan may elect to do. Some people are saying Ducati might actually continue to develop the 24-byte parallel to the 25, so that they have that option next year. Really? Interesting. Some people are saying, David Emmett the other day on Paddock Pass podcast said that in the Works team, and he was specific about Works squad, you can't have one rider on the 24-byte, which is homologated, and any other rider on the 25-byte, they must be on the same base package.

That would create a real tension potentially between Marquez and Banyan, because I suspect Banyan would want to go back to what he liked last year. Marquez will just say, I'm good with what I've got, thank you. If Marquez, as we suspect, or we are pretty certain, will be the world champion, you have to assume that he would have some sway in terms of Ducati's decision on that one. Now, some other people are saying that they can, so we need to dig into that a little bit and find out if they can run different bikes. But both bikes will be eligible because of the nature of the last season of the 1000cc formula.

And so perhaps Alex Marquez will get some some titbits as the year goes on that help to keep him in this position, which again doesn't bode well for Pekka Banyan, who can't drop back to the 25, sorry, the 24-byte, I don't believe, this year. Yeah. He's not allowed to do that. He's stuck with what he's got. Interesting.

Well, we need to try to figure that one out, see who we can come up with. Oh, okay. All right. Well, let's move on to the actual race. So pretty much everybody on the grid had gone with a medium front and a soft rear, except for Bender and Acosta, who went with the hard front and a medium rear, which was there.

Somkat Chacha was late leaving the grid, so he would wind up with a long lap penalty because he didn't leave in the required amount of time for which he can go. So that was going to happen. That was the first thing that happened. Now, this time Marquez did not forget to use launch control correctly. He blasted out to a whole shot followed by Banyaya.

Alex was there more fidelity than Quattroraro and Vinales. Now Banyaya just put a banger move on at turn two to knock Marquez out of the way. Marquez went back by on the very next turn. This winds up giving us about five laps of incredible racing between Marc Marquez and Banyaya. And the sad part of this is that if you watch that race, you can look at the body language of Banyaya on that motorcycle, and he is riding at his 10 tenths or maybe 11 tenths speed.

Marc is racing at perhaps 8 to 9 tenths. It has a lot more in reserve and is literally toying with Banyaya. It is easily seen in that if you're watching correctly that Marquez is in control of the situation. Or more correctly, he knows what problem Banyaya will run into that Banyaya cannot ride around or cannot figure any day setup to get around. And if I just simply push him hard now, he's going to destroy the front and it's going to be pretty much game over in a few laps.

That was pretty much true because by about the fifth lap Banyaya was going through the final turn and the front laid a big blackie through that turn 15 to which point at that point Banyaya was like meow I'm out sorry can't do anything else and that left Marc and Alex out front at that point with Banyaya now third. But you have to give credit where credit is due. Banyaya put the effort in. He tried. He did what he could.

He did everything he could with the motorcycle that he has and it gave us a glimpse at what kind of great racing we could have seen all year long where Banyaya was able to put up a fight against this guy who came into the factory team and basically has knocked Banyaya's feet out from underneath the desk and is taking command of the chair. Right. Yeah. So I mean I don't know what you thought about this first few laps Rich but those first few laps were absolutely telling laps and it was great racing. Reminiscent of the first three laps at Sepang last year when Banyaya and Martine obviously both on 24 Gcatties at that point kind of went at it and there was this kind of trend that we've seen which is pretty boring sprint races and then in the main race sometimes a few laps at the beginning before the tyre pressure issues start to become a factor.

So we retreated to what yeah five, six laps of this at the beginning and it was really really good and I wrote down in my notes this is what good old-fashioned classic tracks are capable of delivering. Even the good old-fashioned tracks can overcome issues around tyre pressure or bike setup ultimately but it was great to have because if you look back to Aragon that was not an exciting race at any point. So we did at least get treated to and bearing in mind that Alex Marquez was in this fight as well and it was pretty brutal although I have to say and I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole because we're already over running but Alex Marquez is much more brutal with Pekka Banyaya than he is with his brother. That's perhaps an argument for a different day or a discussion for a different day I should say. There is definitely a problem there so that's yeah perhaps we'll talk about that another day but those first few laps were very very exciting but you kind of as you say Banyaya looked as if he was at the limit and you just knew that Mark could go toe to toe like that for the whole race distance if it came down to it.

The interesting thing to me is that at this point Banyaya has been giving it everything and I grant we are on a full full load of fuel 20 to 20 ish 20 liters of fuel which is a fair amount of weight. If you think about trying to pick up 20 liters of gasoline that's a fair amount of weight but their pace was some two seconds slower than they were running in the sprint the day before. So the argument then is like well was Marquez riding within himself whether they trying to save the rear because they were on a soft and the soft may not have gone the whole distance where the medium maybe would have but that seemed odd to me because everybody was on a soft rear. Which way was it but for what was it simply the fact that they were just battling back and forth and chopping each other's lines and so therefore you're going to ride slower because everybody's in your line that you want to run right. You're being balked at some point because somebody's essentially block passing you to get by.

I think it had rained quite heavily overnight on the Saturday as well so whether that took some grip away perhaps washed the bit of the river away greened the track a little bit as they say. Could be green. But having said that it was a more overcast slightly cooler day which you would have thought would have caused them to go faster so yeah odd one that. Yeah you know it's odd because you know it's a counterintuitive move that you run a softer tire when it's hotter right and the reasoning behind it is that the rubber will get hot be used up and be thrown off which keeps the carcass cooler because the rubber going off is taking the heat away and the carcass temperature is what you're really caring about for a lot because that's what's affecting tire pressure everything. So did that have a play a mix in any of this don't know but my lap six Alex was leading for a little bit.

He was really really fast in that first sector that that's for sure. I mean he was he had kind of jumped himself out to like about three tenths and you're like I didn't see this one happening with you know Alex on the 24 bike and his brother on the 25. Wow but you know to pull out a few tenths is pretty good but you know hey a lap later Mark was by Benyaya at one and Alex was leading still then you know Alex I thought Alex was trying to check out about 10 laps in I thought Alex was trying to check out. I thought Alex thought my brother's back there he's kind of fighting with Benyaya because you know you can not only just read your pitboard right you can read your competitors route board because it's out there for you to see right. So it's easy for him to have looked and seen his and seen hey plus three and then saw like you know his brothers are Benyaya's with a plus zero meaning indicating that those two guys are fighting and I can take a little bit of a break and I can maybe lead and pull away maybe I can break the draft and maybe everybody's going to be able to catch me.

It's strategically thinking it's a sound bit of logic to put into it so I was curious how that was going to play out as it went down but like nine laps but Mark was by Alex Vinales had got his way to fifth. We were trying to figure out like with Benyaya now falling behind ever faster as he as the laps were on was what was going to happen could more Bredelli could Vinales could Digia could they all catch him could they all pass him you almost wondered how far the tumble was going to go for Biagi like how bad is this going to get before it gets better because that's a horde of 24 spec Ducati's although I think Digia's is a 25 spec maybe not the exact spec that Mark is having but it is a 25 bike like you're like oh I wonder how that's going to shake out because you're just not sure what's going to do. Vinales just came back to earth because he crashed Morbidelli just slams slams in the door there put the bike exactly where you legitimately can't put it there's another motorcycle fully committed on that line yet Morbidelli doesn't give a rat's ass sorry my language doesn't give a care about what happened there and simply just punts Vinales off. I'm really not a Morbidelli fan anymore because he simply does stupid stuff that you just can't do all the time yeah he uses Vinales as a berm he's not making the turn if he doesn't pump into Vinales I mean I'm sorry this is not the sport that I want I want close racing but I do not want boneheaded moves by boneheaded people that knock other people off that potentially can hurt them it's almost like he's riding dangerously or way too desperately yeah I'm not sure which it is let's be clear about this I don't think he's deliberately looking to take people out correct if I made that implication that is not my point no no I'm not what I meant to do you didn't I mean other people are suggesting that that's kind of what he's up to and I fundamentally refute that he just appears to have a sort of a clumsy absent-minded tendency at times which just means that he gets in people's way he does the same things over and over again and I mean this one at Mugano was the kind of one of the more egregious examples because of course he and Vinales had gone at it in turn one Maverick was trying to sort of maintain that overtake going into turn two into that sort of flip-flop far chicane and yeah Moppadeli just slammed it up the inside there was not a gap there that gap was always going to disappear because Maverick was fully ahead it was just a boneheaded stupid move and if it was just a kind of one the season you'd say well okay it was a misjudgment but there is a pattern of behavior here which is where we get into the fact that he got off with a long lap that shocked me honestly he got a long lap yeah I'm not disagreeing with what Simon Krayfar dished out as a penalty I'm sitting here thinking like that move was egregious all you needed was the onboard of Vinales' bike and you saw how egregious that was in my mind it was like hey that should be a double long lap penalty but then Moppadeli kind of did that to himself yeah karma yeah I guess I maybe Simon was betting on karma I don't know but Moppadeli attempts to take the long lap penalty and he muffs it up and rides oh yeah you know does not complete it correctly by staying within the lines of the long lap penalty and has to do it again so Moppadeli's race is ruined at that point as in all honesty it should have been the problem with this Jim is well there's two things I mean it was the closest to an almost sort of deliberately dangerous move that I think we've seen from him and that is saying something and the second thing is that yeah I think and we've said this before the sanction that applies in a case like that is a long lap penalty but there doesn't appear to be any willingness from the stewards to step outside of the strict letter of the law and whilst they're applying penalties as often as the previous person did who was in charge equally they're not extending that latitude on the other side of that argument to say okay enough's enough this guy needs a bit more than a long lap penalty we're going to go a bit further this time they're not willing to make that jump and this is where the argument and the discussion is it's never really gone away but is sort of cropping up mostly thanks to Moppadeli around whether they should re-implement the old penalty point system I think there's an argument now that says that the penalty point system is a new system that is being implemented and there's an argument now that says they need some sort of a different system in place to deal with people that are repeat offending and Frankie Moppadeli is obviously the prime person in all of that so it ruined what could have been a good sort of race. He's not like a serial type guy.

Yeah well he absolutely is and you know Maverick may well have got on the podium because Moppadeli was sorry Moppadeli um was going to be vulnerable towards the end of the race and one thing you can also about Maverick Vinales is he manages his tyres well and he's always got late race pace so he would have had to deal with Digi Antonio but we were robbed of that battle which was a shame. I agree it's at this point in the race that there's sort of like a little a nominal blip that happens with Benyaya. He kind of starts to put pressure on Alex significantly. I was like okay maybe Benyaya kind of was saving a little something because Mark is pulling away now. He's pretty much got Alex covered as well and you're thinking okay perhaps Benyaya is trying to get by to maybe get near Mark or at least beat Alex right and I think this is where most of the the way that Alex rides around Benyaya is not how he rides around.

His brother comes from as in these couple of laps that happened here where I have to admit to me that was good hard battling for a position. There was no reason for a penalty but I can see where Benyaya is aggrieved and we should take this up as a very long topic of conversation in a different show. Perhaps when we get to the summer break it might be a good place to shove this one. We'll make a note of that for everybody. Meanwhile Mark is pulling away.

Benyaya is trying to get with Alex. Alex sort of politely says no and you're not getting by. Benyaya tends to retreat but all this is done is allow Digia to close in. Now free of the roadblock that is morbidely in Benyaya's, Digia is showing some pace. Digia is trying to check down Benyaya.

Well that might be possible here. Morbidely would wind up getting by Fernandez to get the six because he had fallen back because of the two long laps that he had to do. Five to go it's Marquez, Marquez, Benyaya but there's Digia, Bez and morbidely are all there. Now Bez is going now too because Bez is sort of famous for being light on the tire right so he's kind of making some inroads into this. With two to three to go Digia has arrived on Benyaya.

He is right there and the question is how can Digia get by? Well two to go Digia gets by Benyaya and then he's just instantly gone pulling away. You can tell that now Benyaya is the rolling roadblock that exists as he is now that the race has gone to this stage of laps. He's there but hey Mark wins. Alex is second.

Digia gets that podium at his home track. Benyaya hangs on to get fourth. Let's call it what it is. Then you had Bez, morbidely, Fernandez, Acosta, Bender, Iagura, Mir, Outiger, Oliver, Cotararo and Renz. That's how everything's finished out and that's how things ended in the GP.

Anything there Rich that we should dive into a little more? I think we kind of covered most of the high points, low points, sideways points of the race there. Every race that I can think of, really even the ones that turned out all right, you just think if only Marco Bizeca could qualify the bike. Oh yeah. You're kind of left wanting with that one.

Yeah this was not a good round for Yamaha or for Honda. The reasons that we don't we won't try and speculate on now because we've already been talking for long enough. Like a motor is what it really is. The Honda's slow, so is Yamaha. It's that cut and dry.

Yeah I think that's what it is. Assen will be interested. I mean it's a fast track but it doesn't have that long straight. It's more flowy. It is more flowy so you would think it would suit the Yamaha perhaps a bit.

But I mean generally speaking and I'll always sort of stand on a hill for Joanne Meir, I think he's having a pretty good year. This was the first race where we never really got to see much of him. So I'm hoping that Assen will suit the Honda a bit better. In terms of the race or the weekend Jim, the only thing I was going to say was just an amazing crowd. A good size crowd which is good.

Not back at kind of Valentina Rossi heyday levels but certainly amazing on the grid. You could hear the crowd cheering and there was a whole Tardozzi thing where he was sort of trying to manage their behavior a little bit around Marco's. It's true. Tardozzi is just amazing isn't he? I mean most people of his age would be sort of smoking a pipe and having a little sleep after their lunch.

Whereas he's just like one of the most animated people in the paddock isn't he? But so yeah long-lived Mugello that's all I'll say. All right let's look at the championship here. Marquez Mark is on 270. His brother's on 230.

That's a 40 point gap which is pretty crazy. Benyaya is another further 40 is on 160 which puts him 110 behind Mark and 70 I believe behind. No not 70. He's what or he's doesn't really matter. I mean Benyaya is out of this title fight.

His reaction, his bi-language, his shoulders, everything tells me he's done as it is game over for Benyaya. Can Alex do something with Mark? I don't know. Morbidele is fourth in the championship. Bendigiantone with a great podium climbs up to fifth.

Zarco and then Bizecki, Acosta, Outiger and Quattrarro just clinging to the top 10. It was a great weekend for Outiger. I was surprised. Outiger had those great couple weekends and I guess it's hit or miss right now for Outiger or are we seeing the lesser spec 24 bike not perform with him? I don't know.

I'm not sure. I'm inclined to think it's a rookie at Mugello. Yeah oh yeah I mean it's got to be difficult to figure out where to break at 330 kilometers an hour or near close to that. I mean they will not hit a higher top speed than they do at Mugello. That's got to be pretty sobering and daunting first time out.

I'm sure it would be. It would have to be yeah. Trouble with Outiger is he's kind of last few rounds he's set the bar a bit high for himself really as a rookie and the expectation is he's going to do it every round and clearly I know he's been to all these tracks many many times but a MotoGP bike is a whole different story from a Moto2 bike. I think he's going to rebound well. I think he's going to have like a top five at Assen.

I can see that. I can see that playing to his strengths. I mean obviously the bike will work well anywhere but so it's down to the rider so yeah I agree with you. I'd be interested to see how he gets on Assen. Yeah well that's right so Assen is next weekend folks.

That's the next one. It's a double header followed by a week off and then another double header and then it's the summer break. Yeah. If I am thinking correctly there. So we're at round nine.

Assen is 10, 11, 12 so essentially we're pretty close to halfway through with 22 rounds so slightly longer but it's coming fast and furious at this point in this. So with all that we need to this one's long we need to get out of here right Rich says that we got to edit this up and get it out so you guys can listen to it before hopefully before the Assen round. So with all that said ride safe everyone. Back soon. Cheers everyone.