Casualties at the Cathedral

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk. Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. Episode number 810 for July 1st, 2025.

I'm your host, Jim McDowell. With me as always, my good friend Richard Jowett from the UK. Richard, has the weather calmed down for you there? Because last time we were talking about how hot it was here in the US, we finally got through a spat of rain and it's supposed to be a pleasant week for the July 4th holiday here for us in the colonies, as you would say. But over there.

I would never say that, Jim. That's an abitted Brit. But over there, as the weather became more British summery. It definitely has. Yes, it's been unbelievably hot for the south of England here the last couple of days.

It doesn't last very long, but we've had what's called a heat plume. That's a new term in the global catastrophe that we're living through, apparently. It's been 30-32 degrees centigrade, obviously. Which I don't think is particularly unusual weather. I remember it being hot like that in the 1970s when I was growing up.

But nevertheless, it's still been very nice sitting out, drinking beer and wine and things that you shouldn't drink in the garden late in the evening. So very pleasant indeed. Thank you for asking. Well, we've been trying to beat the heat by being in the pool. So that's our relief for that.

Yeah, I don't have one of those, so that's not an option for me. Yeah, well, I know it's kind of a side story, but when aren't we telling side stories, right? When we moved in, I was very much opposed to having a pool, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And why my dad had looked at me and he says, you moron. It's the best thing you could have done.

It's like, what do you mean? He says, your kids are going to be over at the pool all the time, and everybody's friends are going to come to your house. So you're going to know exactly what your kids are doing the whole time. He was pretty much right about that one. We just don't have sustained hot weather in this country to justify the cost and the upkeep of a pool really, although it would be very nice to have had one the last couple of days for sure.

Anyway, this is a motorcycle racing podcast, not a weather podcast, not a home comfort podcast. Okay, fine. One more thing about weather. If you really want to, I mean, at least here in the US, if you're in the US base, if you're not watching Ryan Hall on YouTube, he is a great meteorologist and he does a lot of live streams when there's bad weather here in the US. He's really interesting to watch because he really breaks down how storms create.

Anyway, that's my plug for Ryan Hall. Go, if you're in the US, check him out. Okay. All right. With all that said, I want to thank everybody who continues to subscribe to the show and donates to the show.

Can't do this all without you guys, but hey, if you can, where you go, get your podcast. Could you give us a review? Could you share the podcast? Tell your friends about us. Got some buddies down at the bar.

You meet them. Hey, I know these guys, they do a podcast. They're cool. Tell them, tell everybody. It'd be really great for us.

Help us out. We'd appreciate it very much along the way. So if you could do all that for us, be great. With that, Rich, let's just get straight into the news from the past weekend of racing at the cathedral at Assen. There was quite the rumors kind of running around some other details.

I'll kick it off here with this spicy bit of silly season, if you will. Aaron Connett is strongly linked to a move to World Superbike to replace Toprac on the BMW team. I find that one intriguing. Me too. I heard them talking about that on the TNT UK coverage that I watched.

I'm a little bit surprised, I have to say. But having said all of that, there's clearly not a... Well, it doesn't appear that there's a seat open to Aaron Connett in MotoGP. And he's been in Moto2, I'm guessing this must be the fifth season, maybe fourth, fifth, sixth season that he's been in Moto2. And he's just dropped behind Gonzales again, I think, in the championship standings.

But he's in the running to win the championship this year. So, I mean, even if he was runner up, he's clearly going to want to sort of graduate to something, I would think. And so World Superbike in that context would make some sense. And obviously the BMW seat is, well... Baking.

Is it one of the plum seats? That is a very hot question, really, because with all due respect to BMW, it took Toprac to turn it into a championship winning machine. I don't know how they will fare once he's departed, which we know he will do as he comes to MotoGP with Pramat Yamahata next year. So, I mean, I kind of get the Connett rumour, but there's a certain challenge for whoever goes there. And I mean, the rumour from the World Superbike paddock is that there's potentially both of those seats are up for grabs at the Rocket BMW Motorrad World Superbike team next year, because I think it's probably quite likely that Michael Van der Maart might be moving on as well.

So, because Xavi Vieje is another rider who is obviously riding for Honda in World Superbike, who's been quite strongly linked to the BMW squad as well. So, you know, Vieje, Connett. Yeah, I mean, that would be an interesting lineup, but it's going to be, I mean, the thing about following whoever follows Toprac in any team and any formula is it's a tough act to follow. That's for sure. Yeah, I mean, for me, I think Connett is looking elsewhere because there is no path for him to MotoGP.

Let's be honest, the next people that are going to probably get MotoGP seats are going to be the Alonso's, the maybe Anshu gets one. That's, you know, the up and coming guys that are coming from Moto3 up. There's a path for them, right? You know, you got to think that Rureda gets a plum Moto2 seat and he's probably going to be tapped to go somewhere up the line, right? There's a succession there.

I think Keyless is definitely the guy to watch in Moto3. I mean, that's what's so great about the class. We can sit there and say, wow, we really think Picaris is going to be the guy. He's going to be the man. He's going to do this, this, this.

And some kid shows up all the time and just knocks your socks off and you're amazed by it. So, yeah, I mean, I don't like the idea of it, but it is somewhat true. It's like World Superbike is where MotoGP riders go to retire. It's just sort of the progression. It's just, you know, I don't want it.

It is a bad way to put it because the riding and the racing in World Superbike is spectacular. It is of the top shelf. It is equal of what MotoGP is, right? So, oh, 100%. No question about that.

And we, I mean, I think I said this in the last episode, didn't I? MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 by association, it is the pinnacle of the sport. It's prototype racing with some caveats around things like Moto2 because, you know, there's obviously spec formulas in there. That's just the modern world that we live in. But that is not to denigrate the talent, the quality of the machinery, the competitiveness of the racing in the World Superbike paddock.

And that would say that excels in World SuperSport, World SuperSport 300, the Women's WCR Championship. It's brilliant, brilliant racing. And so you have to kind of judge each in isolation, I think, because they're fundamentally different ones. Prototype ones, kind of street bike based. So you can't really compare them.

But having said all of that, it is sort of the place where people that are looking to rebuild a career or finish a career tend to go. And I think that's fine. I mean, you know, it isn't the prototype pinnacle of two-wheeled motorcycle racing. So I don't think that's too contentious. I don't have an issue with that.

So if Kinet were to end up there, I think that would make sense. I think what we can definitely say with some assurance, Jim, is that if you spend more than three seasons in Moto2, your likelihood to go up to MotoGP is sort of becoming quite slim at that point. And we've talked about Jake Dixon, Joe Roberts, obviously Aaron Kinet. There are a number of these riders that if they don't kind of catch the eye or get lucky, because that can sometimes happen. Fabio Quattararo.

Again, we touched on that last time out. Chandra. Yes. Although I think there's some sort of passport politics involved in that. That one I agree with, yes.

Idemitsu, they want a rider from that part of the world. And that's fair enough. That's a commercial thing. That's just the reality, really. I mean, I don't think it's contentious.

We're just sort of telling it how it is. So yeah, I'd quite like to see Aaron Kinet get over to World Superbike and the BMW is a plum seed. Maybe not the plumist of seeds, but as I say, it's going to be an incredibly difficult ride to replace the guy who's outgoing. But I mean, that would be the case for whoever takes that ride because I will stand behind the fact that Top Rack is a generational rider. Whether his skills translate to MotoGP, we're going to find out.

And that's going to be really exciting to see. Agreed. Moving on with this silly season, Joe Roberts has resigned for 2026 to race again in Moto2 with the American Racing Team. This one kind of struck me odd. Not that I was like that Joe, it doesn't deserve to be in Moto2.

I just was thinking maybe given that he's 28 and whatnot, maybe it was time to come home and that he would have been looking to find something in the Moto America paddock perhaps. But he's staying. He's done well. This is probably his best weekend he's had since his injury of his wrist. It's getting better.

He's looking better. So hopefully he can progress. I'd love to see Joe be a world champion in the intermediate class. I mean, I think it'd be great as an American to have another world champion somewhere. He'd be the first one to do it since Kudzinski back in 1990, for gosh sakes.

So there are very few Americans that have ever won intermediate. Yeah, you have to go back a very bit. So there's that one. Forgot to put this one on the list, Rich. My apologies.

But we were speaking about Anciu and stuff in the first part of that. There was rumor that his brother Chan was going to join his brother in the MotoGP paddock in a Moto2 capacity. Now I don't know about that one. I mean, it seems odd that the kid that shows up first race wins it on a Moto3 bike. Then does nothing the next year, then goes to World Superbike.

Now is it going to go back to that paddock? I mean, is it maybe because we want a Turkish presence now? Because you'd have Toprak, you'd have Anciu, you'd have his brother. I mean, they're all there with Safoglu as their manager. Is it one of those things?

I don't know. I don't put a lot of stock in that rumor that Chan's coming here, but it's possible, I guess. I haven't seen that rumor. So I don't know where that one came from. They said it on the broadcast that there was talk.

At least the Dornafeed cast that I'm watching had it. And I was shocked by it and just now reminded myself of it because I didn't write it down, which was weird. But I don't believe it. Yeah. Well, I mean, if those guys, I'm assuming you mean sort of Matt Burton, Lewis Sutterby, that kind of Jack Appleyard.

I always want to call him Applegate, but it's Appleyard. I do too. I mean, it makes sense. Canon Tew is having a pretty good season in Super Sport this year. I think, I mean, as we touched on last time out and what we're three days away as we record this now from the Liberty thing officially transitioning, I think the 4th of July is the date that was penciled in for that.

With Toprak coming across with the younger On Tew doing so well, you know, Dennis is having a good season and appears to be building now in Moto2 after, well, not two seasons, I always get a little bit like, yeah, two seasons. So it's taking him a while, but clearly the progress is there. And for me, you know, if I'm Liberty Media, I'm going to be saying, well, we need to have a race at Istanbul Park. I mean, I don't think there will be many of our listeners that would be opposed to that. Let's go back.

Let's go back. If you could add another fast Turkish rider into the mix, particularly the fact that they're brothers, because that adds a whole new dimension again. Marquez brothers. That makes a whole lot of commercial sense, doesn't it? Yeah.

And obviously then you've got Kenan Sofroglu, who's the mentor. I think he might even be sort of politically a mayor of somewhere in, or an MP or something like that. But that's a good, that's a good storyline for Liberty, right? Massive. Yeah.

So it's like you, so maybe it's the Liberty mayor, they're tentacles in half of this stuff. That's not to damn a canon with false praise, though, because he's a top rider in his own right. Yes. You know, you had that sort of first time out win in the sort of sketchy conditions in Valencia in what was it, September, October time. And then, I mean, that was such a high bar to try to live up to.

It just didn't quite work, did it? So for one reason or another, he sort of fell out and ended up over in Super Sport. But he's doing, you know, particularly well there. So I moved back into the MotoGP pad. It wouldn't be a huge surprise for me.

I mean, it would save on Kenan Sofroglu's travel bill if he had all of his camp in the same place at the same time, rather than having to sort of split his time. So, and I'm not being cynical, although I usually am, over the whole kind of Liberty media Turkish round. But that makes perfect sense to me. And unlike the kind of Chantra thing where that's perhaps a rider that's been thrust into that position, which isn't quite appropriate. I don't think you would say that about either of the On Tube brothers.

So I'd love to see that happen, Jim, to be honest. And I hadn't heard the rumor, but that makes a lot of sense to me. All right. Let's move on to the man who seems to be in the news no matter what happens. And that would be Jorge Martin.

Let's start with this part. Given a physical that he took, he has been declared unfit to take part in the German GP in, let's see, we have this weekend also be the next weekend coming. Right. So that's the week of the 11th, 12th and 13th is Saxon Ring. So that's interesting there.

So that's interesting. So then that was put out on this all happened, I think, on Friday, the Friday of the MotoGP weekend. But this situation has now been ramped up a notch. We've definitely gone from this is a low, slow simmer to probably I would call it raging boil at this point, or at least very close to it. Because what has happened is that Martin and his manager have insisted that his contract with Aprilia is for all intents and purposes, null and void.

And he will be riding elsewhere in 2026. Now, Aprilia boss Massimo Rovelli has a very different view of this. And that is he believes that they have a contract and they fully expect Jorge Martin to be riding their motorcycle next year because Martin's get out of jail free clause, which is the performance of the motorcycle, doesn't hold water because he's been injured. And given the past weekend and the last couple rounds, you got to say the appraisal looking pretty decent. And you got to wonder with a man of Jorge Martin's ability on said motorcycle, would things be different than they were the past weekend?

Don't know. Right. But to even make this story get even crazier, the man you wouldn't expect to say anything about this has opened his mouth. And that's Carmela Esplita, who is the man in charge at Dorna. And he says, Martin has a contract.

It's as simple as that. And no other team can have him or sign a contract with him unless Aprilia releases him. I don't see that happening. So are we going to be in some EU court deciding who has the rights to Jorge Martin, Rich? Well, I think at this point, Jim, it has the smell of going legal about it to me.

Because the two sides appear to be completely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what they're saying is true. Now, as I said to you pre-recording, Massimo Rivola is not the person that you would pull the wool over his eyes very easily. And although it is certainly true that that contract was pulled together very, very quickly. Because if you remember, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, Jorge Martin I'm talking about. He rates quit.

He rage quit. With some justification, let's be honest, I think you can understand why. But this is where I kind of will fall down on Aprilia's side because they kind of jumped through hoops to accommodate him. Again, obviously, we don't know this firsthand, but I've certainly read and heard that they went and found the sort of money that he was perhaps justifiably demanding as the guy that was likely to win the world championship and did so. They found that money having told Fabio Quattraro, who was after that ride, that they couldn't afford that sort of money.

So they did jump through the hoops to sign Martin. And that contract was put together. So we're led to believe sort of in a 24 hour period because this will happen very, very quickly if you remember, once the Marc Marquez to the works Ducati squad news broke. I mean, I don't know. I think Martin's manager is called Albert Valeras.

I think I've got that right. Yeah, I believe you're right. He, I think, has a bit of a rep of kind of saying what he wants to be true rather than perhaps having that grounded in the irritating mundanity of legal international law when it comes to contracts. So if I was a betting man, I would perhaps suggest that Martin and his entourage, of which his manager is a part, which is very fiery, very kind of ego driven and arrogant. I'm just going to say it as opposed to the cool business like operator of Matamoravola backed, by the way, by the Piaget group.

Which presumably knows its way around a contract, even if it was fairly hastily put together. Then add in Carmelo Espinetta kind of making his feelings plain. And that is not the first time he's said it. When this blew up, he initially said he was very disappointed by how Martin's behavior or again, words to the effect. And now he's coming out and saying that as far as he's concerned, Martin has a contract and he either puts up and shows up and says, well, I'm going to go and do this.

And he either puts up and shuts up or I don't know. I mean, I've said before, it would give me a certain amount of glee if Martin was forced to sit on the sidelines for a year. I don't know how this all gets unraveled. Clearly it's going to go legal and it's going to get a bit messy. Unfortunately, this is kind of not liberty might spin a story at this and they probably will because they're very good at what's the old saying?

Even bad news sells newspapers or any news. There's no such thing as bad press. That's how we say it here in the US. Okay. So that's exactly what I'm getting at.

So a media company will make gold out of anything, even if it's brown and smelly. So, but this is all a bit kind of unpleasant really at this point in time. And fundamentally, I just don't understand how we've arrived at this point. Unless Martin is one of these kind of very sort of superstitious people that thinks that somehow his tenure on this bike is cursed and therefore he doesn't want to get back on it. But all the signs are whilst the Honda is improving and there's obviously no doubt about that, although that improvement has kind of slowed a little bit in the last couple of rounds.

It's true. The Aprilia is the bike you would say would be the better one to be on. Unless you think he's driven purely from a sort of commercial financial perspective, but I'm not actually convinced that that's the case. I don't know that he's not actually quite badly advised because we've been in this position before, as we've said with the whole KTM debacle, some of the things he says and does. I mean, there was that famous.

Well, I say famous. You might not have picked up on this. I don't know that we've mentioned it on TV. Sorry on the podcast before, but he went on TV in Spain. I think this was sometime last year.

And he said something which in the sort of, again, I don't want to get myself into trouble. No. In the slightly snowflakey kind of modern perspective of how people read into what people say. But Martin said something which in the modern context was taken as a bit of a sort of homophobic slur. I remember this.

I remember this. Rather than his entourage, his PR machine around him kind of saying, you shouldn't have said that. You need to put an apology out. He was advised to, I think, go off on holiday and start posting pictures of himself and his abs on Instagram. You know, and it wasn't the right response.

So I just don't think he's necessarily terribly well advised a lot of the time. And they've kind of gone down this road and rather than thinking, hang on, we should take a time out. Let's just take a pause and think about what we're doing here. Because, yeah, he's been injured and it's been bad and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, having a training crash on a dirt bike or whatever it was that he was doing is not Aprilia's fault.

You know, crashing the bike in Qatar. Well, I mean, is that the bike's fault or is that the rider's? I don't know. I mean, it was just an unfortunate set of circumstances. Now, it has been a bad luck year.

I mean, fair enough. But people have come back from greater adversity than this. I mean, Mick Doohan didn't do this when he nearly lost his leg, as you were pointing out last time at Jim. So I think a lot of people are just losing patience in terms of the fans. And that's what I am.

That's what we are. I'm just sick of this, really. I just wish he'd shut up and get on with his job that he's been paid a massive amount of money for and hasn't actually done anything for that money yet. While simultaneously bitching and moaning about the fact that, you know, he's so hard done by and he wants to go somewhere else without really explaining why. So, yeah, it's all very kind of distasteful and unnerving, really, as far as I'm concerned.

And I think most people are like me a bit sick to death of it and just wish he would get on and do his job, which has been paid to do. Yeah, it's an interesting crinundum. I think Martin enjoys being the bad boy of the paddock. I think that's his persona, right? Like, that's his ego.

That's his flow. That's his thing. I think he wants to be that bad boy. He wants the bad boy image without being the bad boy. Somebody else pointed this out the other day, Jim.

It's hard to interrupt, but I think it's important. Martin, in this current era, is trying to do what Lorenzo did in the Rossi era and portray himself as the kind of, I don't know, he's not popular in the way that kind of Peco's been or Marquez has been in the way that Rossi was. So he's trying to be a bit sort of rad and alternative. And I think you end up just looking like a bit of a dick most of the time. I mean, that's personally how I always felt about Lorenzo kind of doing the I agree with you.

Copying Rossi thing. I think, Martin, fair enough to portray yourself in that way, but doing it like this in terms of all this contractual shenanigans is not the way to win fans. And I think he's probably going to be shedding fans with the way that he's behaving. The sad part to me is that Honda wants him. I'm surprised that anybody does.

I'm shocked. I mean, I do not think Jorge Martin is a very good development writer. You can argue it both ways. OK, I don't think he is. That's my own personal take.

I think he's very good. If you give him a bike that you know is good, I think he can take that bike, go to the limits and do that. But I don't think he says, hey, I need more weight on the front end or I know that the bike needs to have a longer swing arm. We need a stiffer spring, that kind of thing. I think he just says, I can't do this at this turn.

And the team makes some adjustment to it, right? Which I think is the part because I have to admit, I think that he was he was Martin's crew chief at Pramac and now he's Alex Marquez's crew chief at no, that's not right. I mixed them up, I think. But this guy was really good, right? I mean, at Pramac, this guy is a genius, right?

So he's good at getting it out of him. Honda still needs a development writer, but they need a fast development writer. But they need a writer that they know is fast to figure out that the bike isn't fast. It's like a catch 22 version of this or whatever. So I mean, I don't really get it.

I mean, yeah, I just don't understand. It's just it's weird. He's doing his own thing. Again, I think he's kind of like Dennis Anciu. We've talked about this.

He has an entourage that comes with him. I kind of feel like there's an entourage that comes with Martin. You know, there may not really be one, but there's it has that feel, right? No, no, it's whatever. I don't wish Martin as a person anything ill.

I hope he recovers. I hope he recovers fully. I hope he's able to race again at the level that he was at because I would like to see him mixing it up on another motorcycle with Marquez and with Quattroraro and then Yaya and, you know, whoever else because I think he adds something to the show. But the way he goes about this is just completely wrong, completely wrong. Oh, fundamentally, Jim, I won't go on much longer because I was on the clock on this one, but I think he's doing himself a massive amount of reputational damage, which coincide him with Liberty coming in and the amount of potential that that creates for riders.

And I'm not sort of saying that this should necessarily only be about, you know, them enriching themselves through their popularity and the deals and stuff. Although clearly these are the top of their game and they don't earn anything like the sort of money that the Formula One boys earn. And there's an argument, as far as I'm concerned, that they should. But this is not the way to go about it. I think he's badly advised.

I think he's like you say, he isn't proven to be a particularly good development rider. I don't really know what he would add to Honda. Certainly when you compare him against Luca Marini, who might not be out there winning races, but he is or has been until he got injured, helping clearly to develop that bike, as is the case with Zarco and Joanne Meir. And like you say, at this point in time, I don't really understand why Honda would want him. I don't understand why any factory would want him, to be honest, because all of this noise around the edges is not helpful.

And although he is the world champion, he's only ever ridden a Ducati, which when he arrived was just about the best bike, and is certainly the best bike last year when he won the championship, to take nothing away from the fact that he won the championship, because he did. But I just think he's damaging his reputation and his earning power in the future by being led down this path, if it is that. And let's be honest, if he's been led by a manager who takes a commission off his earnings, and Honda are coming out with a big paycheck, do the math. You can understand why perhaps there's some momentum behind that. So, yeah, it's just a weird, weird situation, but this is not going to be resolved easily by the looks of it, bearing in mind that Rivola has come out and said, we have a contract, he's an Aprilia rider, and if he doesn't believe that's true, then the courts will decide.

That, to me, speaks of a man who's fairly confident about the contract that he's got in place. ISKRA Yeah, let's move on here with the news. Let's talk about the walking wounded from the weekend and where they are. Oddly, Pedro Acosta did no media after his finish in the race on Sunday because he was stung by a wasp that he then had suffered an allergic reaction to and had to go to the hospital for observation and treatment. That's a heck of a way to end your day.

Let's race a MotoGP bike, almost die, not die, and then get stung by a wasp and potentially die, not die. It's just like, wow, you're having a great day. GEOFF I don't know if this is the case, Jim, but I suspect that he might not have known that he was that allergic to wasps until Sunday. ISKRA You know what? That's probably true.

I think that might have been to find it out the hard way kind of a thing, which is absolutely wild. Alex Mar- So Pedro was in hospital. Alex Marquez left from the racetrack immediately to have his left hand operated on back in, I guess it would be in Madrid, wherever Dr. Mir is. I think, I believe it's Madrid.

Anyway, he flew out immediately to get that taken care of. He has a broken second metacarpal, which is on his left hand. That's not ideal when you're going to Saxon Ring because you're turning left the whole time. I'm assuming that I don't know if it's a complete compound fracture or the bones separated. It was just a crack.

Are they just going to put some plates or screws in it to stabilize it in the hopes that he could ride? I don't know. I definitely hope that Alex can ride and can score some points, but it's going to be difficult to beat his brother there. And if you know, basically, I have no hope for Benyaya winning a race unless Mark does something stupid, and I don't think Mark is going to do that now. So that's that part of that.

And then finally, of the walking wound, it well, maybe the carted off wound in this case, I'm not sure how you want to say it, but in the Moto3 race, which we'll talk about this incident in depth, Lunetta did suffer fractures to both his tibia and fibia of his left leg in the crash in the Timothée Chiquain on the 19th of 20th laps. That required surgery. I don't know whether they were having surgery in Holland or whether they were going to go have surgery back in Italy at the time. It wasn't stated, but they were going to have that. So that wraps up all the MotoGP stuff.

Rich, if you'd like to run us through World Superbike real quick and catch us up on a little BSB, be fantastic. So, well, I've put a little note of the news here. Lots of 2026 seats are still up for grabs in World Superbike. Slightly unusually, there's not a lot of people that have been confirmed. Locatelli's in at Yamaha, the tibia motor guys, that's Alex Lowe's and Axel Bassani there, confirmed there.

Nico Booliger is confirmed, unsurprisingly, at the works Ducati squad, but pretty much all the other seats are up for grabs at the moment. So this will obviously unfold over the next few rounds. It did emerge a couple of days ago that Derek Giroloff, for the American fans, he's extended his contract with Pichetti Karasaki. And that's not kind of the old fashioned hand-me-down squad. There's this slightly weird situation now where the old what's called KRT, Karasaki Racing Team, that's now the Bimotor squad, which is a Bimotor chassis, aero, fairing, et cetera package.

I guess maybe some electronics, I don't know. But the engine is effectively still the same ZX10RR, I think that's right, or RRR. They never seem to finish putting R's on these days. It's the Karasaki motor. So Pichetti is now the sort of the green Karasaki official squad.

Even though the Bimotor squad is kind of fulfilling that role under a different brand name. So it's a little bit weird. But anyway, so Garrett Giroloff, who's had a tricky start to the season, really fast in preseason testing and hasn't really shown so far, but is getting better and obviously has extended there. So that's good. The other big, well, I say biggish, bitter news, and again, my cynic hat comes on with this one, which is why I put it in here.

Tarrin Mackenzie or Taz, as people kind of know him, has just split from the Patronus MIE. I'm not quite sure if you call it the MIA or the MIE squad. I mean, he's been having an utterly wretched season on that bike. It's really weird. Honda and World Superbikes, you know, for years and years now, they've toiled away, they just haven't really kind of figured out.

World Superbikes. I mean, you've got Lekwona and Vierhe on the Red Works official squad, if you like. And they certainly have been showing improvements, but down at the MIE squad, which is a Honda-supported squad, as far as I'm aware. But it's a horror story, really. Taz has just pretty much, without exception, crashed out of just about every race this season.

Like me? Sorry to say that out loud. Yeah, similar, very similar. I mean, Taz is, don't get me wrong, nothing against Taz. He's a BSB champion and you don't get that championship on your roster by just pootling around half-hearted.

I mean, he's a top, top rider and he's done his best on that bike, but something's not right. So he's split from the team. And it just happens to be the case that Snetterton BSB happened last weekend. Was it last weekend or the weekend before I lose track of time? But Glenn Irwin, who's on the PBM Ducati, had a big crash.

I'm not quite sure the extent of his injuries, but they're quite significant. And I think he's out for the season. So PBM are looking for a rider and all of a sudden Taz Mackenzie, former BSB champion, is parting ways with a kind of a wretched situation, which I'm sure suits both parties. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Taz ending up on that PBM Ducati and British Superbike for the rest of the season. I hope that's the case.

And obviously from the Glenn Irwin point of view, we wish him a speedy recovery. I do nothing kind of seriously, seriously life threateningly injury wise, but I think he's broken bones and pelvises and stuff like that, Jim. So I think he's he's out for a while. Meanwhile, in BSB, just on Snetterton again, just as a point of interest, really. And I wondered what your take on this is.

Brad Ray, who was the British Superbike champion in what would it have been? 2022. Went over to World Superbike, kind of Yamaha, but in the Moto X team, which with all due respect to the Moto X team was not running full factory supported Yamaha R1 machinery. And with admittedly a few bright spots along the way, Brad kind of struggled to really make an impression. And you kind of get to that situation where after two seasons in World Superbike, sort of tooling around at the back, people are sort of written him off.

So he comes back to BSB, back into the squad that he was in more or less before. Well, he was meant to go back into the squad that he was in before that all fell through. So he's but anyway, he's still on a properly supported Yamaha R1 and BSB and nobody can touch him. And it just goes to show that even if you that experience running around in World Superbike, even towards the back, he has come back to the BSB paddock, which let's not mess about, I would argue is probably the best domestic Superbike championship. I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Consistently has been for as long as I can remember. And really nobody can hand a whole lot of candle to him at this point in time. And it just goes to show that experience and running at that level in World Superbike. And this is not to take anything away from the people in BSB because they're all very, very fast, but it just goes to show, doesn't it? You kind of go from zero to hero or hero to zero and back again so quickly in this sport.

And I mean, he's just unbeatable at the moment in BSB. It's just interesting to me how you go through that experience of relative underperformance. And yet he comes back with everything that he's learned and all that extra speed that he's gained in that difficult situation. And he's applying it again in BSB and is he doing the business? And that's exactly, I mean, I get that entirely.

Right. I mean, that just goes to show you that you can be an absolute wicked fast domestic series racer, right? Top level domestic series racer. You can go to the world, get that golden ticket and be at a world level. And you either can either do or you don't, right?

You know, let's take the case of Ben Spees. He won everything in America over and over again. Yamaha finally pride him away and said, let's go race world super bikes. He did steps up on a world stage and then beat everybody like a narcotic biker rally to wind up being a world champion in 2009. It's like, wow.

But, you know, then you've got this case, brother, right? One BSB championship goes to world super bike. Maybe not on the best team, right? Maybe didn't have the equipment that he had. Maybe didn't have what he needed to be fast.

But basically learned how those guys there go faster than what he had ever gone before per se. Let's put it that way. Many rock up as that guy coming back and just absolutely wipe the floor with everybody. And it's just, there's something about riding with, I'm going to say this and I don't want it to sound mean, but it might sound mean to people. When you start riding with higher level talent, you yourself wind up becoming faster because of it.

It's just you want to, if you have a desire to be good, you want to go race with the best. And when you do, you wind up being faster. That's just how it is. I mean, I spoke about this. Did dirt track was really high.

I had my expert license decided that we wanted to go road racing. And at the time we were doing both things. We were watching, we were doing some road racing on a weekend. We get dirt track on a weekend. Well, guess what dirt track became?

I was so much better of a dirt tracker just because the speeds are faster. The competition's tighter. Your braking is later. You, there's many different things that you do that suddenly make this, what you were doing seem slow because your mind has learned to go at a faster pace. And maybe that's the biggest key to it all.

I'm sure that when Ray was riding in BSB and winning a championship, he was going as fast as he could. And he's winning. Well, he learned how to go faster riding mid-pack world superbike. So if you go back to BSB, he's just riding at the same speed that makes sense to his mind. Again, it's incredible.

Which it all goes back to, we had the guys who wrote the book, The Racer's Brain or whatever that book. That's what's happening. It's straight out of that book. I guess it's a gross oversimplification, but let's put it this way. Perhaps the five guys that are slowest in world superbike are the five guys that are fastest in BSB.

That's pretty close to being true, I would think. Which takes nothing away from anybody in either series, but that's just the reality of the level. So Brad comes back with all this experience and operating in that zone, which is what you're talking about, Jim. Racer's Planet. Yeah, and he's just head and shoulders at the moment.

Think about it this way. If Jake Dixon were to get a top level, like a PBM motorsport ride for BSB, do you not think Jake Dixon would absolutely dominate BSB? I do. And this is obviously what we might be facing with Taz McKenzie coming back from the superbike. Same thing.

Although he's been struggling at the back, he's still operating at a level which is- Just that little bit higher. Very, very, very high. And I suppose Cam Bovie would be an interesting recent reference, although he came back onto the BMW, which was perhaps not quite the bike to be on compared to- Yeah. Was it the Attack? I can't remember the name of the team.

Oh, there it was. The R1 Yamaha team anyway in Moto-A. Yeah, Attack, yes. Attack, yes. But we might in the seasons to come, we might find Garrett Gerloff comes back or Joe Roberts.

It'll be fascinating to see how they would adapt back into say Moto-America if they chose that path. I mean, Scott Redden might end up in Moto-America. It wouldn't surprise me at all because he's not having a very happy time in World Superbike given the situation of the team that he's in. American Wife, his first child is one or so I think around about now. I could easily see him going into the Moto-America paddock because he came back to BSB, if you remember, after MotoGP won the championship first time out.

So he will fancy his chances in Moto-America, even though obviously it's a bit sketchy compared to what he's used to, but that was the same with BSB. So yeah, we'll have some interesting reference points for this one coming up. All right. With that, let's get on to the weekend at the cathedral. We'll start with some Moto3 action.

There's not a whole lot going on here in the qualifying. The first session you had NEPA Furusawa who's making a habit of being in this first session. Carpe was there given the fact that he had such a good weekend prior. That was odd. Yamanaka is there.

Kielis is there, which he's kind of making a thing about doing this Moto qualifying first session move to Q2. And Burasawai, halfway through you had Yamanaka, Furusawa, Carpe, and Kielis were all set to get through. And they do. They're the fastest guys. So they're up there.

They go to Q2 and Carpe, Almanza, and Kielis are fastest halfway through with Pini and Fernandez and Munoz. But when push comes to shove, the guy who's been fast all year, Rueda, shows up on pole with a great lap. Then it was Carpe, Almanza, Furusawa, Yamanaka, Kielis would be sixth showing great form from having won the prior weekend to now here at Assen. Then it was Pini Kelso who had form. He was actually directly into Q1 claiming that they found the feel that was missing in the bike for the last couple of rounds.

So that was promising. And Fagi would finish off third row in ninth place. When Sunday's race came round, we were going to go 20 laps. Kelso was the only person who deviated from the soft rear and went with a medium rear, which I thought was a bold strategy, mainly because the temperatures were still cool because it was still overcast at Assen. The heat hadn't really got there.

But you figure Kelso is a very stocky built lad and you think, well, if anybody can make the rear tire work or generate the heat, maybe he could. So it was going to be interesting to see what we would watch. Now, Panini stalled on the grid at the start of this race, which I haven't seen a bike stall at the start of a grid in a long, long time. We'd have to go back quite a long ways. I'm not even sure when the last one was.

Thank goodness he was on the far edge of the track closest to the spectator stance, which allowed everybody to get by him quickly and nobody ran into him, which is always your fear when you have that at a start. Essentially, in all honesty, that is why we have only three rider rows now, was to open up more space than the four rider rows to make a safer start process. So thank goodness everybody missed that one. But Rueda, Yamanaka, they also had great starts, but Carpe, Rueda, Yamanaka, and Kelis would be the top four guys as everything sorted out through the first couple of tight turns there at the time. Munoz would move up 10 places at the start.

He had an absolutely amazing start. We didn't see much of it, but man, he was up 10 places within a few turns, or within a lap at least. Carpe was wide because of the Munoz putting a pass on him, so that bumped him out. Kelis would go to second there. Rueda took his turn at the front now, followed by Almanza, because we're five laps in, followed by Almanza, then Kelis, Munoz, Perez, Yamanaka.

Then Piqueras was 13th. Now, Piqueras had a horrible weekend on the bike. Just nothing seemed to work. He got victimized by different yellows and whatnot. So he was 13th.

He's going to be coming up there. It was incredibly racing. It was incredible racing. It was where do you look? It's typical Assen, it's typical Moto3, it's a pack.

Everybody's changing it up. Everybody's going every which way. Kelis would go to the lead, and Rueda seemed to be a little bit slow. He seemed to be falling backwards into that pack, and you just didn't really expect him to be going backwards. Rueda's led almost every lap this season.

He's incredibly strong, but for him to be going backwards at this point seemed to be a bit odd. It was like, what's going on there? Although Ruedo did rebound, and it was basically seemed to me that after Rueda had worked his way back up to second, him and Kelis were going to leave everybody because they looked to be somewhat dominant at this time. That was not to be as Ruedo fell down to seventh. So that was crazy.

Kelis, I thought, was going to break away. Kelis was just putting in the laps. I thought, okay, this kid's got it figured out. He's just going to throw down laps, and that's going to be where it is. That was pretty much true, although Yamanaka did wind up getting by, and he did lead, but then Kelis quickly just passed him back again in turn one, which was nothing surprising there.

He's got that Mark Marquez kind of thing. You pass me, I'll pass you. I'm going to re-attack immediately kind of a thing. Kelis winds up getting hung out to dry, and then he falls back to ninth in the group because the 10-12 rider group, he got hung out to dry, and he was in trouble. At four to go, Carpe was leading, followed by Almanza, Munoz, Pereth, Rueda, and Luneta.

Now, Luneta finally makes his presence known at this point. Kelis now has a track limits warning issued. One more move by the kid, and the kid's going to go backwards or get a time penalty or something. So I was like, okay, hold on. Let's figure out, let's calm down for a minute and get this all settled.

Almanza then makes a mistake, which allows Carpe, Rueda, and everybody to go by. Almanza then tucks back into third. Munoz is right there. So, okay, we're looking for this craziness going on, and Kelis is now down at turn 10. So the wonder kid, having won one, thought he was going to win another one because, quite honestly, he was definitely on for it.

But youth and exuberance had been beaten by tenacity and treachery of the old is sort of what happened there. Because basically he got hung out to dry. He's on the outside. The trains forced him out there, and it just basically he was off the curbs, done, lost the bike, lost the back end on the dirt on the entry, slid it out, and his race was not. Now, he did remount on his bike.

So not a whole lot of damage here, but obviously, Kelis was not going to win this race. Although I had thought for a long time that this was going to be a double for Kelis, right? He was going to win two in a row. It just did not happen for him. Two laps to go.

Yes, Rich? Well, I think that's the point. Probably Kelis thought he was going to win the race as well. Now, having been singing his praises about how calm he is, I don't think it's a coincidence that, as you just pointed out, Jim, he got sort of caught out, shuffled back a bit to ninth. And I just think, what's the term?

He kind of rushed it a bit. I think the red mist might have come down a wee bit. Panic set in, really. Yeah, maybe a little bit. Because he wanted to go back to leading, right?

He wanted to go back to where he was comfortable. He knew he made a mistake. He put the pressure on himself to quickly get back, and he wound up being in a gravel trap. That's my take on what was going on inside his head, because I've done that. That was exactly what I'm kind of getting at and what I kind of wrote in my notes.

And this weirdest thing, I know things, as we'll come to a moment, kind of went a bit crazy on the penultimate lap. But what I just can't get over with Moto3, and this is not particularly to do with this year, it's been this way for probably the last two or three seasons, is this sort of mad four or five wide kind of racing going on. And relatively speaking for Moto3, not that many crashes. And so the context of this is that Kelis haven't been shuffled back to ninth. He kind of knew he needed to get back to the front, because you can't rely on other people dropping out.

And I just think he kind of rushed it a little bit unnecessarily. It's almost as if we put commentators curse on him, as they say, but what we were singing his praises last time out. And this time he kind of, he sort of comprehensively screwed it up, really. And you learn from these things. It's true.

But yeah, he kind of, I'm sure he's kicking himself over, crashing out in the, because it was completely on his own. I mean, he just went out a bit wide, lost it and into the gravel trap. So yeah, things turn around very quickly in Moto3, and you cannot rely on other people dropping out to help you get positions, unlike in some of the other classes we'll come to talking about in a minute. True. Very, very true.

I mean, I don't, I think a twin cylinder, whether V, parallel, whatever, take your pick, needs to be made. It needs to be, you need a 500cc twin of some variant just to break this up a little, make it a little harder for these guys to ride. As you've said so many times, Rich, these kids have been on a Moto3 bike for five, six years. They got it dialed in. They're really, you know, that's kind of it.

Okay. Let's get to the big event, the big happening that happens in the race here. We are on the penultimate lap. We're running lap 19. As that lap starts, Rureda is leading Carpe and Munoz, Pireth is next, followed by Piqueras and Lunetta.

Now that's your top guys. Everything's good except for heading to the 10th chicane at the end of the lap. We all know everybody loves to pass in there. The riders, everybody fan out to what looked like a three, maybe four wide bit as everybody's jostling to get into the first couple of spots because they know on the last lap, you're going to make your move heading into the chicane. That's everybody's strategy.

That's what we're thinking about doing. As everybody shuffles and falls into the chicane, Carpe is kind of balked. He's got to roll off ever so slightly, which causes Lunetta, who's right behind him, to hit his rear tire. This puts Lunetta down at the beginning of the pack because Lunetta had passed during that lap. He was like sixth.

He was up almost to fourth or fifth. He had passed a couple riders. Lunetta is down, but he's down in front of the entire pack. He's down in the worst possible place he could be, the racing line, without a lot of momentum to spin him and the bike out of the track because the track's going the way the bike is trying to take him. They've made the right.

They've got to now go back left. Well, as you fall turning right, the energy, the centripetal force will take you out to the right. They're going to want to go back left. They're making a turn, whichever. Right or left, it doesn't matter.

But he's heading down the track, is all I'm trying to really say. Horror show of horror show for a Sado who's got nowhere to go, absolutely unsighted, winds up running over Lunetta. Now, when I first saw it, I freaked. I got to admit, I thought Lunetta was hurt and hurt bad when this happened because the quick first glance of it showed that Fernandez kind of got away with maybe nicking him, but was more battling to stay up because he'd hit his bike. First Sado was plowing, and I thought he'd plow him right in the pelvis.

I thought for sure he had a broken hip. I was praying that maybe a rib broke something because that impact is where it looked like to me. And the quick first, hey, this is how it happened. That was the moment of what I thought. This is an incredibly nasty crash as everybody funnels off to start the last lap.

So I want to finish the race, Rich. We'll come back to the crash and things that happened. So the crash has happened. Oh, we're going on now. That's now broken the pack.

So basically now it's just Rueda and Munoz. They're battling each other throughout the lap. And as it turns out, they finally reached the fourth sector. A red flag is shown, and the race is now null and void. And we're going to go back to the 19th lap, how that lap started.

And that's where everybody's going to be for their finishing position. Per the rules of the rule book, no one's got an issue with that. So Rueda wins the race, Munoz is second, Peroni is third, then Carpe Picaris, Almanza, Ogden, Fagia, Kelso, Ureti, Yamanaka, Rulestone, Nepa, Rossi, and Keles gets a final point there. Now, my point here, Rich, is this. I think anyone standing in that corner, the corner workers, medical staff there, everybody knew that Lunetta had a serious injury of some kind.

We found out it's only a broken leg, a couple of fractures in his tibia, a couple of fractures in his fibia. Thank God. Because I feel like, one, Moto3 dodged a bullet of a severe injury, if not, I don't want to say cheat at death, that's a bit too far, but I'm talking about somebody having a pelvis broken, hips broken, maybe a back broken, something like that. That's a serious set of injuries. Nobody wants to see that.

So I feel like they got lucky. But where was the red flag by race direction? That should have been almost immediate. What was there to prove? What was there to prove in this race?

Sorry, I'm on a rant, Rich. I'm just going to go here. No, no, no. I do think it's justified in this particular case, yeah. The race, who cares?

At this point in my mind, the race is over. That is racing. This happens to many different people. I've been on both sides of that coin to where I've won races because of a red flag. I've lost races because of a red flag.

It's what happens. It's called racing. The most important thing is that medical attention should have been able to get there, should have been able to take care of Lunetta and do it in a safe manner. They're in an impact zone with a group of bikes coming around again that potentially the same thing could happen and send bikes off scurrying with people. There was at least by my count, six or seven corner workers slash marshals slash medical people that were attending to the three different riders and three different bikes.

There's a whole cast of people that's there. And the worst part is they're not looking at, I'm not an EMT. I don't do medicine. But given that fact of that, I'm sure they were diagnosing for movement. Does anything hurt?

But it just appeared. It's an image thing here. It just appeared as though they just flopped Lunetta onto a backboard and said, here, let's get him off the track because gosh darn it, we have racing going on. Which instantaneously to me shows you that race direction does not give one iota about you as a racer, your safety on that track, more importantly, the volunteers who are there to show that you can go racing and you don't throw a red flag. You wait until the two leaders are in the fourth sector.

They had just whipped around the fast left when the red flag came out. They're lucky that they saw it. Completely unacceptable by this, by any stretch of the imagination. Sorry, this is inexcusable. I'm not trying to be a health and safety nanny here and make this a nanny state of whatever.

We're men racing motorcycles. We all know the danger of what that takes and we still do it anyway. Well, geez, I'm making it sound like I actually still do this. I did it. My point is they all know that there's that inherent risk.

You know there's an inherent risk if you're a corner martial that something bad could happen or whatever, but corner marshals have died at Formula One races. They have died and I can't think of one that died. I know one has been injured beforehand because of a motorcycle, narrowly grazing them or whatever. As an sanctioning body at a world level, to sit there and let those bikes keep going is inexcusable. There should have been a red flag.

It should have been at least by the time they entered sector three because there should have been enough time by that point for people at the corner to say, hey, look, we have serious injuries that we need to take care of. We need some more time to evaluate, to make sure that we're doing the proper things, to not make anything worse for the down rider. Robert Leonard And they should have stopped it. I was so mad watching that. It's inexcusable that a world championship level racing organization cares more about their satellite time to get the MotoGP race on time than they care about the same.

I guess they do. I don't know. I rant over your thoughts, Richard, because I'm somewhat. Richard Larkin No, it's all totally valid, Jim. I have lots of thoughts.

Where do I start? Crashes tend to happen. When I say people, riders tend to end up in certain positions on the track because certain corners, certain typical incidents tend to result in certain outcomes. And the Timmer chicane at Assen, either you fire off into that big gravel trap to the left because you lose the front going in or you lose the rear going through the chicane and you end up on the right hand side. This is not an unexpected occurrence.

We've seen these crashes throughout this weekend and over the many, many years that we've been racing at Assen, left or right, arguably on the left hand side is a bit better because there's more runoff area there. It's a gravel trap, whereas on the right is grass, not much runoff area. And as somebody else pointed out, probably Simon Patterson on another podcast, on several occasions over the past, certainly the past 10 years, we've seen riders kind of high side almost, catch it and run through that grass area, kind of hanging onto the bike, feet on the ground, struggling to get back on and not crash. So that's the context. Now this is Moto3, it's the last lap, or going into the last lap.

You've got David Munoz in the pack. You know there's likely to be trouble on the last lap. That's normal at Assen in that kind of final flip flop chicane. My personal view is that, and this is going to sound perhaps a bit harsh, but I'm playing slightly devil's advocate here, but I'm going to end up in the same position as you, Jim. The riders know the risks, that they know that they will crash, and they're likely to get injured from time to time.

That's part of the game of being a competitor. My fury where I join up with you is with the corner workers and the medical staff, because they're generally volunteers. They're just there because they want to be, but they're putting themselves in serious harm's way, and particularly in that chicane on a penultimate or final lap, because that's when these incidents tend to happen. Now I'm very certain that, like you, going back to the actual accident itself, everybody's reaction initially was, oh my god, I hope he's not seriously hurt, because as far as I saw it, Frisata kind of ran over his back, and you're immediately thinking, oh my god, I hope he hasn't got a broken back, or like you say, broken pelvis or something. Thankfully it wasn't like we saw unfortunately at Alton Park in BSB a couple of weeks ago, where people ride over people's necks or heads.

That's always a bad outcome, even in Moto3, which I know they're quite light, but even so at those speeds, that's usually going to be a bad outcome. So I've no doubt that the medical staff at the corner determined fairly quickly that Linetta wasn't in that kind of mortal danger. It was telling to me that, as we saw him being sort of hastily carted off on the stretcher, his crash helmet was off, which is always a good sign. That means it's not an obvious serious head injury or neck injury. However, they would have also determined fairly quickly, because I'm sure he was screaming his head off, that he had a serious leg break as well.

And I don't understand how that information wasn't relayed quicker to race control, so that by halfway around that lap they said, okay, let's take this one, let's just red flag this. I mean, they caught a break by the fact that they called it when they did, just in the nick of time. Because if those two or three guys, I mean, I've lost track of a little bit, but I know Munoz and Rueda were sort of neck and neck vying for the lead. I can't remember quite where Valentin Peroni was in terms of in third place. Was he a bit further back?

There was about a half a second there. Okay. They were part of that area that got shuffled as they went through the chicane on that lap. But as I said, when I started my sort of contribution on this, all of history, whichever class you talk about, that last kind of Kurt Timmer chicane on the last lap of any race is always likely to end up with somebody going down. And so in that context, the fact that they're left at that late to call the red, given that they were still moving Lanetta away, and that there were corner workers and medical staff in harm's way, questions need to be asked, I think, on that one.

They just about got away with it. And lucky that the riders spotted the red flag as quickly as they did. Because bearing in mind, this is going into the last turn, or last two turns, on the last lap, you wouldn't forgive people for being so focused on trying to win the race that they didn't necessarily spot it. So, I mean, we talk about dodging bullets quite often, don't we? Lanetta dodged the bullet, because thankfully, I mean, sort of a double brake, Tib Fib is not good, and that'll see him out for quite some time.

Yeah, but in the context of being run over by one stroke two bikes, potentially, you might say that he got away reasonably lightly. I mean, that's easy to say from where I'm sitting. But yeah, overall, not really very good, really. I thought maybe it was just me at first, because I was very reactionary to it, because I knew it was Lanetta, because his yellow helmet is very easy to determine who he is. And to me, it was just, oh my God, he rides for a sick course of 58.

We can't do this again, right? I just know. And so I, you know- Well, in your perspective, Jim, is obviously key here, because you've competed, you'll have been the guys, you said that either in harm's way or approaching somebody in harm's way in a competitive situation, and people's minds are on other things in that situation. You know, the medical staff looking after their patient, the competitors still out on track trying to win a race or get a position or whatever. And all of these things can, you know, in a worst case scenario, can conspire to cause a much bigger incident than the one that's already happening.

And it's race controls duty to mitigate that as much as they possibly can. And as you've said, and I think your rage is well founded, I think they sailed far too close to the wind on that one, where they could have averted that risk much earlier, well, I think half a lap earlier. And what's so bizarre is that that crash actually, as you said, broke up the pack anyway. So whilst Munoz might say that he had a shot at the win, which is true, the race was effectively sort of over after that incident anyway. So it was a for me, with the benefit of hindsight, and I will always caveat things that we talk about on the show, it's always with the benefit of hindsight, which is very comfortable position to be in much different to the people that have to make the call in those split seconds.

It's true. But I think they just should have red flagged that, as you said, Jim, a third of a lap, if not half a lap earlier than they did. Luckily, nothing else happened to make the situation worse than it already was. And, you know, going back to the basics, Linnetha is not seriously injured. I mean, he is, but he's not like critically injured.

So I mean, that's the great bit of news that comes out of this. And this is what happens at Aston. And it's a great racetrack. It's not the racetrack that it was after they neutered it a few years back. But anyway, that's for old foguers like us to moan about.

But it's still a great racetrack, but great racetracks tend to be fast. And this is the sort of thing that can happen really. But you do then rely even more heavily on the stewards and the race controls and whatnot. And I'm not saying the job is easy, because it isn't. And I wouldn't necessarily swap my position for theirs.

But sometimes people do get it a bit wrong. And I think they really did this time. Yeah. Yep. I think that pretty much covers everything there with that one.

I mean, I'd love to know what you guys think out there, right? It's ModaPod, Modapodcast.com. Because I feel like this is really poor. And one of the things Liberty should look at is this. There's something that needs to be said about how this is going to happen.

And they just own it. So they barely aren't going to really say anything. But where's ERDA? Where's these other people going? Like, look, we need to have some kind of a standard by which all this is done and communicated.

And I think Formula One has the same problem, too, just to some extent. And the only people I've ever known to really do it in my mind correctly, and maybe this is the gold standard that I've always been around, so I don't know anything different, was IndyCar here in the US, right? Open World Racing, some of the Formula One, those you don't know. But they have their own safety team that goes to every race, every round. So it's the same people.

They're all always speaking the same language, right? I mean, I don't know. In that situation, if something bad happened, would you start screaming something in Dutch? I don't know. I don't think I don't I think you would kind of go to your native language as opposed to your second language, right?

So perhaps maybe that's the thing. But do you have, do you say, well, look, most tracks got, worst case, I think it's like Texas has got 20 turns. So do you have 20 people that travel the globe with you and they are a corner captain for these things or something like that? I don't know. I don't know what you do.

I just wish they would do something, have made the decision faster than they did to do it. The right decision was made to stop that race and call it. But how we got there was a long and windy road that I don't think we should have been on. We'll leave it there. So with that, yeah.

Yeah. This is probably a talk for another day, because we can't afford the time now. But I've been interested in what people think about this one, because it's such a tightrope, isn't it, of allowing people to race and take reasonable risks, but not putting people too much in harm's way when things don't go exactly right. And, you know, because we are sort of wrapped up in cotton wool from a health and safety point of view in the West in particular. And, you know, I hate it when, you know, they put a chicane in to stop people going through a turn, you know, fast turn.

I'm thinking to somewhere, for example, like Austria. That's a great example. I was actually going to point out, I think it's the final turn in Road Atlanta, where there's quite a lack of run-offs, so they kind of tighten that turn. Correct. The motorcycles have a different corner.

You know, because bikes get quicker, the level goes up. There's all these different facets to it. And so it's easy to be on the right side of a decision. It's very hard to be on the wrong side of a decision. And nobody wants to be on the wrong side of a decision.

And sometimes you can only make progress or learn or make changes by making a wrong decision. Now, thankfully, we didn't see that this week or weekend. Just gone. I don't know. It's incredibly difficult.

So I don't think we're necessarily massively criticizing the people in charge. But I think maybe there are one or two protocols that you could adapt a little bit to try and make a better job of that next time around. This happens, which it will, because this is motorcycle racing. Yeah, I've always thought, again, when I was standing in a riders meeting, the guy, the referee who was running the show, you know, a lot of times they would make a comment to the fact of, we're weekend warriors. You guys are all weekend warriors.

I want everybody to go walk back home and go to their job or go back to school, whatever it is that you're doing. So, you know, ride with respect was all that. And he says, if there's something that happens on track, I will err to the side of safety so that everybody's going to be okay. And I don't think anybody, if you know that going in sits there and says, Hey, I can't disagree with you on that. Right.

There's not pretty good. Why think we should just keep racing it? I don't think anybody's going to be that way. And I think if you say that, if all everybody knows that this is a potential to happen, hey, then that's the look of racing. And that's that.

So that's my last take. With that, let's kind of talk about where everybody is in the points of standings here now, having been through that. So Rereada still leads the championship. He's on 187 points. He is 69 points ahead of Carpe, who is now second in there.

He is overtaking Picaris because Picaris had a terrible weekend for here. So, but it's not by much. I mean, Picaris is only behind Carpe by one single solitary point. And then Kelso is now fourth. Quiles is fifth because of that win he had and he had and he did get a point at least here as well.

Munoz is sixth. Forisada is seventh. Almanza eighth. Lumeta ninth. That's going to, he's going to drop because he's probably going to miss Saxon ring easily if not Saxon ring and the Czech Republic.

And then you have Adrián Fernández in tenth. So that's everything about Moto three and the walking wounded, if we would like to call them that came out of that one. So that puts us into Moto two, Rich. OK. So at the beginning of the weekend, before we ever got to qualifying, we knew that Barry Baltus was going to receive a double long lap penalty because he crashed under a yellow section, which, you know, again, we're penalizing riders for falling under a yellow flag because we don't want them to hurt potentially a corner worker or another rider because of their bikes now tumbling through the gravel trap.

Yet we have that problem in a race and we didn't do anything about it. I know that I'll leave it there. I really have to not keep bringing that back up. And what I've ranted about this one before, Jim, and we have this absurd situation now where riders will cop a penalty for going full chat through yellow rather than just slowing down for the yellow, which is what the yellow is for. Why the hell they're not enforcing that one?

I think if you go, I know we can't afford the time, so my only my only answer, let's say in qualifying you go through a yellow flag zone at full chat and they can measure this down to the millisecond nowadays. I just think you take an instant grid penalty, not something at the next race. I think you just have to deal with that there and then it's so easy to measure that you have to slow down for yellow flag. And that's always been the rule. This whole thing that you just go through full chat and you might get a penalty afterwards is just absurd to me because it's putting the unpaid corner workers and medical staff again in unnecessary danger.

I agree. That's all I'll say. 100%. I just think that is just ridiculous. So back to Moto2 qualifying.

Well in the first qualifying, since it was Baltis, Holgaardo Alonso, the Anciu having their Vire, Vande Gerberg, Binder and Sasaki were there halfway through. It was Baltis, Vande Gerberg, Holgaardo and Anciu that were going to go through. As it came down to it, Vande Gerberg had crashed. His bike was brought back into the garage. They were working on it feverishly.

The question was, was his time going to stand up? It did. Holgaardo was the fastest Baltis was then second quick. They had jumped over Vande Gerberg and Anciu did squeak by a few hundredths of a second to get into second qualifying. Now Baltis' or Vande Gerberg's bike was put back together and he was capable to be able to run in the second session for sure.

Slatch had a massive high side there and it was like, wow, what the heck happened in this corner? Everybody's dilly-dallying and kind of lagging around. They're sort of everywhere. Suddenly Kinet goes by and he was super unhappy and you're like going, why is Kinet mad or whatever? Well, we found out that Slatch was up the inside of Lopez who went wide and that caused them to kind of contact and that broke.

Was it Lopez's exhaust that got dented or bent at 45 degrees? I think it was Lopez's, but they're wide because nobody was paying attention basically. Everybody was putting around and Kinet was unhappy because somebody's putting around. Somebody was on the racing line not putting around and then they wound up coming together as you tried to come back on the track. It was just a terrible incident that happened.

Again, luckily nobody was seriously hurt. I mean, some prides and pipes were dented and banged in, but it was really ridiculous. You are Moto too. You guys don't have to have this problem. Again, something has to be done about the dawdling on track because that is becoming really, really bad.

I think they need to go to like a 107% rule. Every lap you run in a qualifying session must be 100% of the fastest lap time that you did. If you're not, that means you're going too slow. I think it's that simple, Rich. Do you think it's that simple?

I do. I won't belabor the point, but in my notes for the race, which will come to the minute, I wrote that Moto 2 is now the crash fest that Moto 3 used to be. I think it's that simple. The riding standard in Moto 2 seems to have deteriorated to the state that we used to moan about in Moto 3 as well, which is kind of a qualifying thing. Yeah, it's weird.

I can't argue with that. The Moto 3 guys, I know we had that big last penultimate lap crash, but the Moto 3 guys just don't seem to crash that much in races anymore. Whereas Moto 2, as it will come to the minute, if you finished, you scored a point just about. Pretty much. Whether it's because that's the Moto 3 cohort that have moved up over the last couple of years, and that's just the way that they are.

They're just the unruly bunch. I don't know, but there's some bad behavior in Moto 2 at the moment. I think so. Across the board. Agreed.

After all that mix-up or whatever, we were basically at half the time had been ten laps. Diego Morera was the quickest, followed by Dixon, followed by Gonzales, Holgardo, and Ortola. At the end, Morera won the pole. Ortola would go second. He got a nice little toe, if you will.

A marker that he followed to get there. Then Gonzales, Kenet, Arenas, and Barry Baltis. Senna, Aegis was seventh. Roberts was eighth, which is his best qualifier, one of his better qualifiers. Then Holgardo, Anshu, Dixon, Zonta, Van de Gerber, and then Marco Ramirez finishing out qualifying.

We get to the race. We're going to go 20 few laps. Ortola got a wicked hole shot, although Morera did get by him there. Then Kenet also went by as well. With Anshu up from his position in tenth, he was way up there of third or fourth as they went through.

It settled out to be Morera, Ortola, Kenet, Anshu, Gonzales, and Arenas then as they finished off that first lap. Now Gonzales goes back to eighth. Not sure why he dropped back, but Roberts was sixth and coming forward. Boulvaro would crash in turn eight. Kenet leads because he passed by turn nine.

He was leading. Anshu was now third. Then Alonso was down on the chicane, so he crashed again as well. He's now down. Kenet about five laps in.

It's Kenet, Morera, Anshu, Arenas. Roberts, Ortola. Gonzales is stagnated at eighth. He's stuck there for some reason. Roberts moves up to fourth, which was interesting.

Kenet, Morera, Anshu. There's a little gap. Then Roberts. Balthus crashed out at turn one. Tucked to front, done.

He's out of there. Eight laps in. It's Kenet, it's Morera. There's a gap there. Then there's Anshu, then another gap.

It's Roberts. Gonzales seems to have figured out whatever is wrong. He's right at the ship, so to speak. He moves his way up to fifth by the time he completes the ninth lap. Ten laps in.

Kenet still leading. Still Morera, still Anshu, still Roberts, still Gonzales, but now Gonzales is there. Dixon is clinging on. Gonzales gets by Roberts. Then Gonzales and Gonzales and Roberts are by Anshu.

Basically, Gonzales sort of opened the door, and Roberts kind of said, thank you very much. I'll come along for the ride too. Anshu was then in the gravel at the chicane because he lost the front end or went through the gravel or something. I can't really remember exactly what had happened there. With five to go, Kenet is leading Morera and Gonzales.

Dixon and Roberts, which Roberts would then get by at turn one or Dixon got by at turn one. Then Ramirez is how it panned out. Three to go, it's Morera. He is all over the back of Kenet. It's a good race because you're like, Kenet's been leading for a while, but Morera has been pressuring, pressuring, pressuring.

You're thinking, this is going to go down to that last lap into the chicane. I'm thinking, let's not have another one of these problems where everybody falls off in the chicane. I can't do this twice in the same race weekend in the same place. Whatever it is, Morera cannot find a place. It is some good racing.

It is really close. It's really good. Turn three, Kenet makes a small, little tiny error, and Morera is by in a heartbeat and a flash. Then Morera starts pulling away. It was obvious that Morera had the pace at that point or Tola crashed on the last lap, but Morera would go on to win the race.

He is the first Brazilian to win a Moto2 race. Kenet would finish second. Gonzales gets steps up onto the podium. Dixon with a great ride to fourth. Dixon likes Assen, right Rich?

It's been one of his favorite places. Roberts with a fifth. That's his best finish of the year. Then Ramirez, Arenas, Lopez, Aegis, Hulgado, Vietti, Van der Bergh, Arbolino, Weier, and Sasaki being there at the 15th spot and getting the last point. A good race, which meant that because Gonzales did get on the podium, Kenet is still second, but he's only second by five points in the championship.

Gonzales has 159 to where Kenet has 154. Morera on the strength of a 25 point gain is third, but he is 31 points behind the leader. Everything to play for there. With Morera's form here, he was trying to be the first guy to have three poles in a row or something like that. He's been Mr.

Poleman here of late. Dixon's in fourth, Baltas fifth, Aegis sixth, Arenas is the seventh, onto eighth, Ramirez in the last tenth place is Celestino Vietti. I'm hesitant to think it's not a two-man race anymore, Rich. I do think Morera is coming. If he can continue his form and Gonzales has bad race or has a small mistake, it's going to be a three-way fight for this championship.

I really do. I agree. Actually, in my notes, I highlighted Morera in third place, only 31 points back, and put Jim as Morera's championship threat. I think he kind of is because momentum is starting to build from Aragon really. Morera is another of these Moto3 graduates, very, very talented.

Taking a little while to find his feet in Moto2. Is Morera a graduate of Moto3? I thought he came from a Moto2. No, no, no. Morera was in Moto3 for a couple of seasons.

Again, underperform, but he's a very, very talented motocross rider from what I've heard. Neil Hodgson on TNT Sports always massively sings his praises in terms of his talent on a dirt bike. And suddenly things start to click, and that appears to be where he's at. Now, he's up against certainly a very seasoned campaigner in Aaron Canet, albeit somebody that might be on their way out of the paddock at the end of the year, as we were talking about earlier on. Gonzales is possibly somebody that could be in MotoGP on the track house of Aprilia next year.

Wouldn't be a huge surprise given what's going on in MotoGP. But Morera is sort of sneaking up consistently, kind of racking up the points. And whilst Morera and Canet are very solid finishers pretty much all the time, although Gonzales did have a couple of dodgy rounds recently, I think he's kind of going to, as we head into this second half of the season, I think Morera might become a factor at the gym. And the weird thing about this race was, just the only thing I'll say because we want to move on, there were loads of crashes, loads of incidents, but it was actually quite a boring race. It was.

Arguably it was almost, you could argue, it was kind of one of the most interesting races. It was a bit cat and mouse, but it just didn't really kind of light my fire. I guess the same for you. But it's an intriguing championship Moto2 this year. And I think if Morera does genuinely come in as a third person, genuinely vying for the title, because I don't think Jake Dickson or Joe Roberts or even Barry Balthus, he's very quick, but does crash a bit too much still.

Senna Aydius, I think probably is going to have another season or two in Moto2. So I think it's between those top three guys now, which is a bit of an obviously logical thing to say, given that they are in the top three. But I wouldn't rule Morera out at this point in terms of seriously challenging for this title, particularly because I think he'll be a MotoGP next year. Very probable. And who knows what's going to happen.

Connect is not going to be a MotoGP next year, because as long as Morera, I think will be. And so that is the kind of the flash point of interest for me with those two, because there's some bragging rights involved there. And obviously that's where ego comes into the equation as well. And they will both obviously all of these people want to win the championship, but those two guys, I think along with Connect have a genuine chance now. I think so.

All right, let's move on to the big boys, the MotoGP. Just quickly want to talk about Friday. It was a wild Friday. Mark Marquez was in the gravel trap twice. Let's see, Ayagura crashed his bike and it burned itself to the ground, which is kind of wild.

It was an intriguing weekend there. I think people just didn't get the cold or whatever that was there on Friday. They just didn't seem to be able to handle it, or just couldn't come to grips with the track or something. I thought it was interesting MotoGP had a little Instagram post and it showed Mark Marquez and it said that he had crashed at like 11.52. By 11.54, he was back in the pits after receiving a 27 G impact to his elbow.

By 12.02, he was the fastest man in practice. It's just crazy how that happens. It was actually a wild Friday to be honest with you, but what all that did is it meant Yes, sir. Can I just say a lot of the trouble on Friday was because people didn't have enough, no, let's get this right, didn't have enough allocation of soft or hard tires. Oh, okay.

I thought it was the weather. In the morning, it was particularly cool, but Mark has had that big crash where he hit his funny bone and lost feeling in his hand. People thought he'd broken fingers and stuff, but he just had no feeling in his hand for a little while. He didn't break anything. In the afternoon session, which is when most of those big crashes happened and it was like seven or eight people went down.

Everybody was running the medium tire because they were trying to save the softs and the hards from their allocation. The medium tire, for whatever reason, given the weather conditions, temperatures, et cetera, nobody was confident on it, bar one or two exceptions. That's why we saw so many crashes. It was because it was the unfavored tire. What we didn't mention in the news, by the way, and this is I don't think is official yet, but I think it's semi-official now, is that the new Michelin front is never going to appear.

Of course not. It is now officially cancelled, semi-officially cancelled. We're stuck with what we've got now until Pirelli turn up in 27. Discussion for another day. It came up a bit on Friday because people were also having to run an unfavored tire and people were saying, why the hell don't we have more of the softs or the hards?

I understand that one, man. It resulted in a lot of very big, and it must be said very costly crashes. If you look at Ayagura, that thing was burning away in the gravel trap for, well, it seemed like minutes, probably two or three minutes maybe. It didn't seem to be people rushing to put it out to me, but that thing probably wasn't salvageable after that, which must be painful for trackers. Yeah.

Story for another day. All right. The upshot of all these crashes and whatnot, put Altegr, Miller, Bastianini, Renz, Mir, Bender, Ayagura, and Fernandez all in the first qualifying session. Ayagura went down to turn eight. Renz and Bastianini were arguing with each other.

I think somebody got in somebody's way. Not sure who. Never did see a replay on that one. Raul and Mir were the one, two guys halfway through, but then Raul Fernandez would stay there to be able to get out of the session, but Altegr pimped Mir by four thousandths of a second to be in there, which was interesting. It was neat to see.

I don't know, not neat to see. It made the qualifying interesting for it. We go to the second qualifying session. Benyaya and Marc Marquez, they're playing games, trying to figure out, they're putting around, trying to figure out who's going to lead who for the love of games, who knows, man. But it was 93, then 63, then 73.

They all trade pole laps, right? And Quattrora was sixth. Then Quattrora went faster than anybody to be at the top. Like, okay, Quattrora came to play. And again, the Yamaha is a great handling bike.

So you got to think Quattrora does have a bit of advantage to be able to carry a lot more corner speed through that. There's some fast sections and you could see visibly where Quattrora was faster through some of the fast turns than it was one Marc Marquez on Ducati, specifically the right turns. The several, the couple of double rights that are there. Whoa, Quattrora was just wicked fast for those sections of track. Now, Alex Marquez became the first person to do a sub 131 lap, but it didn't last long as basically Quattrora set a track record to have the pole.

Vignaya would be the second quick, then Alex. Marc could not match the speed of everybody as far as one lap qualifying pace and would be fourth, which is only the second time he's been off the front row all this year. Vizecchi was fifth, then Morbidelli, Aldiger, Digia, Acosta, Vignales, Fernandez, and Zarca. Of note, the KTMs ran the mass dampener like we predicted, Rich. I just made a little circle on my notes about that.

Vignales, I spotted on the weekend. And Acosta. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

So we were correcting our assumption. That's how we had everybody going into the sprint later that afternoon. Okay. Marc makes a absolutely bang on start and he beats everybody except for Quattrora. The only reason he couldn't do that was he was trying to do his best M&M impersonation by going around the outside and around the outside, which he couldn't do because Quattrora was smart enough to realize that he's out there and take the track from him because if you get a wheel in front, it's your line.

So basically, Quattrora winds up pushing Marc off. Mir crashes on the very first lap. It's Quattrora, it's Marc Marquez, Vignaya, Alex, Vizecchi, and Aldiger. Now, Quattrora gets passed by Marquez and by Alex from the last turn into the first turn. They just basically, Ducati horsepower grip.

I don't know the squirt that the Yamaha can't possibly do. Basically, they get by or whatever. Vignaya was down to fourth and Bez wanted by Quattrora as well. Now, Bez did get by Quattrora. Alex was all over the back of Marc.

Couldn't find a way through. Aldiger got a track limit this morning. I mean, good grief. We're all of four laps into a sprint and apparently we ran off the track enough to warrant a track limits warning. Seriously, just amazes me that these guys, I mean, I know they're at the edge and it's by mere millimeters that these things are being called, but I was like, wow, obey the tracks, right?

Digia was all over Vignaya. Bez got a track limits warning. Marquez was still leading with his brother second. Then Bez had made his way to third. Then Quattrora, Vignaya and Digia.

Digia gets by Vignaya. Alex has a track limits warning. Your entire top four or five all have a track limits warning from the sprint, which is absolutely crazy. With five to go, it's still Marc out front followed by his brother and Bez. Bez was showing strong pace and I thought, wow, if Bez has got this kind of pace here in the sprint, I wonder what's going to happen in the race because if he got longer distance, twice as far, maybe Bez has got a shot at winning this thing.

It was like food for thought. You're thinking about what happens because what's going to happen on race day on Sunday is encapsulated in a micro chasm of what happens in the sprint, right? If you're paying real close attention, you can kind of figure out who's going to win the race on Sunday, which means you should go to all the betting websites and figure out how to make your money. Tip from me to you. But the odds are always in favor of the house, people.

So remember that. Now, Marc got his track limits warning, I think with like five to go. So the top five all had track limits warning. Poor old Quattro went down. He went down at turn 10.

That move, Vignaglia is up to six. The front tire just said no more. Basically, Quattro was riding with such corner speed that the old front Michelin could not handle the punishment that he was being given. And basically they said no moss and that was it. Done.

Gone. Aldiger did get a long lap penalty for track limits. Well, you know, if you're four laps in and you can't keep it on the road, well, you're probably going to get one of those. Costa did get a long lap penalty for track limits as well on the last lap. He did not take it.

So he was assessed a time penalty, which really all it did was put more Vigdelli ahead of Acosta in there. Marc wins the race. Alex is second. Benz is third. Didja?

Vignaglia. Vignaglia just, this is just, it's starting to become painful to watch Vignaglia. I'm so, feel so bad for him. The bike will not do what he wants it to do and he can't make it do what he wants to do. And he can't seem to figure out how to ride around the problem either.

So it's just, we're going from like bad to badder to best, baddest to worse. I don't know what else is beyond worse. I don't know Rich, but Vignaglia is there. He's not having fun. I'm trying to think of a word.

Yeah, I don't know what word either. I don't have a sethorus, but he just looks like he just does not want to be there. He's just, I just, he's like, I just don't want to do this anymore. He's just a beaten down man. It's particularly acute in the sprint as well, isn't it?

Oh yeah. It has a lot to do with the fuel tank. Fuel load. Yep, they put a smaller fuel tank on and that changes it. But when you get to Sunday, that heavier fuel load helps the man out.

It's like, I don't know. Vignaglia is the sixth, Aldegar is seventh, Morbidelli and Acosta, that's how they come out of the sprint. Now we'll get quickly on to race day on Sunday. I loved Yamaha's 75th anniversary red and white motorcycles. They were gorgeous people.

Pure artwork. I loved it. It was retro. It was cool. I remember those bikes from a few years back with like, I think, Lorenzo and Rossi maybe or whatever.

Our Ben Spees was on one of the Yamahas that was red at one point. Yeah. I just, I love that color scheme. Dai Chao, it was beautiful. Rich, I don't know what you thought about it, but- No, no, absolutely.

Just iconic really, is the word. They've won best graphic paint scheme for the year, I think. Props to Yamaha. 26 big long laps we're going to have here at Assam. Benyai got the whole shot.

Mark got by Quattraro as well. He had a good start, but not as good as the start he had before. He again, tries around the outside. He's M&M, so he's got to go around the outside and whatnot. Then Benyai is there, but he's now third behind.

Mark's now third behind his brother. Morbidelli, he's off the seat in a moment where basically he threw out and got back into it. Ayagura and Chantra have come together at five. I couldn't figure out what had gone on. I had to listen to Simon Patterson at the race, but Olivera started it all, and they all wound up coming together.

Chantra was simply the victim. He just was running off to avoid another motorcycle, but it'll be a weekend to forget for poor Ai. He really had high hopes of Ai being rookie of the year. I still think he has a chance. Still, he'll be rookie of the year, but Ayagura seems to have taken over the mantra of rookie of the year.

It just seems to be what's going on, what's happening there. Mark does get by Alex. He's going to go hunt down Benyai, which he does. Bez is by Alex's way, and Pager is by his way as well. With five laps in Benyai, where Mark has Benyai, Bezeki, Acosta, Alex is falling back, and then Morbidelli.

Mark makes his move, takes the lead of the chicane, and he came from a long, long way back to beat Benyai. That's one of his weird little tactics. You ever notice that about Marquez? When he decides he wants to pass you, he'll drop back and take a run at you so you don't hear him, so that you don't know to cover that. It's a sound tactic, but he does that a lot, and it's rather interesting to watch.

Mark's now in the lead, but now his brother is down, having bumped and rubbed with Acosta. They're coming out with that really tight, what's it called? The Rams hook or something there? It starts that long straightaway that's heading you back onto the old circuit, if you will, those of you who know about the old circuit. It took a lot of it replays to figure out what in the world happened here, what went on.

This is my take on it, Rich. Acosta was a little bit rough with Alex when he went by. That's fair. Acosta is entitled to rubbing racing in my book. Was it too aggressive?

There was a line, and I don't think Pedro basically went across it. Alex then decided he was going to go back around Acosta, and when he did, he thought, well, I'm just going to be like him and play rough. The play rough part of it was as soon as he got nearer, Acosta got touched. Acosta takes his knee to push him away to take his space. Unfortunately, I think, this is my own personal take, that the front brake lever guard then rode up Acosta's leg, which lifted the front tire just a smidgen off of the ground, which then I think maybe caused the brake lever to get collapsed because part of Acosta's leathers may have gotten balled up in between the the safety device and the lever itself, which then just slightly pushing on that with a carbon set of brakes was going to cause it, without the tire being on the ground, to lock, which then, when it came back down on the ground as Mark moved off of Acosta's leg, caused Alex to then fall and go careening off the bike, tumbled and went into the gravel trap, getting up immediately and holding his left hand.

As we talked about earlier, he's got a fractured second metacarpal in his hand, he's gone to get surgery. So that happens. Then Mir and Altegr are down. Basically, what happened was there was a high side by Altegr. So he high sides.

Mir had nowhere to go and hit basically Altegr's motorcycle. That took him out. Mir ran back over to be sure that Altegr was okay, which shows what a sport and professional that boy Mir is. Hey, look, are you okay, buddy? That was a bad one.

I did everything I could to miss you, but it got to your bike. Sorry about that one. There's guys that are going to have to be there. Oh, we're on lap eight and Bez now makes it by Benyaya at the chicane. Acosta goes by Benyaya at the chicane one lap later.

So it's 10 laps in, it's Mark, it's Bez, it's Acosta, it's Benyaya, Morbidale, Vinales. Now Marquez is out front and he kind of sets like a fast lap. I think he was trying to break Bez. We're like 14 laps into the race. There was a thought of Marquez is going to go and let's see if I can break whoever is behind me.

That didn't seem to work out too well because Bez just sort of upped the pace too to stay with Mark. Mark kind of had a second to maybe a second and a half lead, but he wasn't getting any farther away, which showed that Bez had some serious pace. Benyaya sort of mounted a bit of a resurgence maybe. He fired in a couple of laps that were pretty quick. He did get himself back by Acosta to be third.

It was weird because at 15 laps into the race, Benyaya had the fastest lap. I literally put question mark, whoa, where did that come from? Because this is just not inside of Benyaya's forte to be this late in the race and be going well, but he was. Then Benyaya set another fast lap right after that. By 20 laps, it's Marquez, it's Bez, it's Benyaya, Acosta, then Morbidale who cut the chicane gets a long lap penalty, which he then takes the long lap penalty for that.

With five to go, it's still Mark, Bez, Benyaya, Acosta, then Indigia. We get a track limit for Mark with four laps to go, but it doesn't really matter. Marquez wins the race, takes the 25 points. Bez is second on the Aprilia. Again, Mr.

Juan Jorge-Martin, that bike doesn't look that bad to me if it's running second to Mark Marquez right now. Benyaya finishes on the podium for the first time in quite a few races and Benyaya actually looked like he got a little bit of confidence back in the bike. Perhaps maybe he found something or feels something, who knows? Acosta with a strong fourth best finish of the weekend, Benyaya is his teammate right behind him. Digia then was sixth, Morbidale seventh because that dropped him back because of his long lap penalty.

Really all it did was make them swap again like they did back in the sprint race. Well, yeah, yeah, I don't think that was no, that's not true. But then Raul Fernandez, Bastianini, Quattroraro, Bender, Zarco, Renz, Miller and Sompcat Chantre did get a point in there. I mean, he was definitely in the deep end of the pool, but he's treading water and he got a point on the Honda, so you really can't blame him for that. It was a lackluster race as I look at it.

One, Simon Patterson had some tweet. Wow, they've now made it impossible to pass at Assen. It's kind of right. Yeah. I'm not, I do not, this is not meant to make it sound like mischelons should be thrown under the bus here.

But as good as the racing has been in the two lower classes of Pirelli, I hope Pirelli can work that same magic on MotoGP bikes, honestly. And I think part of the help is going to be lack of ride height devices, right? So you're going to have one setup, that's what you're going to have. The back ends are going to be up in the air, they're going to be wiggling around. I think we're going to see better racing and more spectacular looking racing.

Does that make sense? Because the shape shifters are not going to be there to help you, right? It's going to be, you're going to be a lot of different passing that's going to go into different areas because somebody's not going to get the drive and you can't accelerate hard because the bike isn't lowered now. And I think it'll be better. But I think the last year and a half of Michelin, I think we're going to see some processional races, unfortunately.

Yeah, I mean, this is not a criticism of Michelin, by the way, but I think with this front tire, the new front tire that was meant to come in, now almost certainly not coming in, it's kind of Michelin throwing in the towel because they did kind of test it briefly earlier this season. Bownam said often, and the main issue here is that Warner or the powers that be haven't insisted that that tire got tested properly. The fleeting tests that the teams have had have been very mixed in terms of the rider responses. I think at this point, Michelin, who know they've got a year and a half to go, have said, we just don't want the aggro of negative publicity because it's only going to be the riders that hate it that get heard rather than the riders that love it. Sure.

So we're stuck with what we've got at this point in time. Now, I mean, 27 is colossal. New tires, shape shifters gone, aero restricted not gone, different motors. Everything changes in 2027, doesn't it, Jim? Oh, yeah.

But for the remainder of this season and all the next, we're kind of stuck with what we've got, I'm afraid. And so we are going to see this. But I mean, my abiding point about this race is kind of for people with very long memories, people of our vintage, or even a bit older, actually, Gilles Villeneuve, Haramah, 1981, the guy that won the race in the Ferrari driving at the slowest speed possible whilst defending brilliantly and keeping everybody behind him. I mean, that was effectively what Mark Marquez did all weekend. Well, he did in terms of the sprint and the main race.

Again, a lot of criticism aimed at in the sprint, Alex Marquez, and to a lesser extent, Bizecki in the main race. Not kind of trying to overtake Mark, but this is Assen, you know, it's a very fast track. And particularly in the sprint with Alex Marquez, he was quicker than Mark in the final third of the race track. But that is not an easy place to overtake. And Mark is so good on the brakes with the Timur Schikane in mind, you know, passing in through the ramp.

The hairpin, by the way, that we're talking about on is the Stribon. The Ram's Hook is the really fast left turn before the Schikane at the end of the lap. So, you know, you could not possibly criticise anybody for not throwing one up inside there. I mean, it has been done, but you know, that's a sketchy move. So, I mean, again, it's just Mark Marquez, isn't it?

I don't want to say he's kind of winning at a cancer, but every bit of the toolkit is in place with him, isn't it? So when he's fast, he's unbeatable. When he's struggling, bearing in mind two big crashes on Friday, he still wins both races and he does it at the slowest he can get away with whilst defending brilliantly and not allowing other people that are stronger elsewhere in the track to get past him. A masterclass again. Really?

I think so. That's all you can say, really. It's a bit boring. We keep saying the same thing, but that's what we keep saying. Not boring if you're winning, right?

Not for him. Speaking of winning, since we hear the championship standings, Mark is now on 307 points, having taken again another round with the maximum. That's three rounds in a row. He's taken the maximum amount of points. It's crazy.

In both events, right? He's crazy. His brother Alex is now some 68 points behind him, only to be worse once we get done at the Saxon ring, because who's going to stop him there? No one. Then Benyaya's third.

He is a whopping 126 points behind Mark and he is 58 points behind Alex. I think the only realistic thing is if Benyaya can find something, maybe he might be able to jump Alex, especially if Alex can't ride for a couple weeks because of his hand. Now, you know he's going to show up and go at it. No way around that. Then it's Morbidelli who is 42 points behind Benyaya and then Digia, Bizecki, Zarco, Acosta, Outiger and Vinalas.

It's amazing that Mark is just basically dominating the season, which is kind of what we thought was going to happen. You put the best rider on the best bike, this is what's going to show up. I really thought Benyaya would give him some trouble. Benyaya would have won two or three of the longer races on Sunday as opposed to Mark winning the sprints. I would have completely thought that that was going to happen.

It just has not materialized in this one. As you said, you're in the last podcast rich game over and I do think it is. Barring the fact that Marquez decides that the only person who can beat Mark Marquez is himself. As long as he understands that, which I think he's sort of learned his lesson, if you will, that you win at the slowest pace possible to allow you to win. Since he sort of has that idea mastered, it's just another tool in his toolbox that's going to keep everybody else moaning and groaning.

I think the difference that Mark Marquez has now compared to say when he was on the latter end stages of the Honda was that he could win, but he had to push the limits really to the edge and sometimes over to win. 12 tenths. Yeah. When he was being challenged now, it's the other way around. He can sort of, again, I don't want to say win at a canter because that's again, it's sort of damning with false praise, but if he needs to up it a percent or two, he can easily do that.

And we saw that this weekend really at Assen because I mean, he must have been hurting. He had stitches in his chin. You know, he'd whacked his arm. Okay. I mean, you know, that probably faded away.

It's true. But on the Friday afternoon, he went through the gravel on his stomach and was clearly in some discomfort in the trouser department as a result of that. So, I mean, it was a pretty rough weekend for him and yet he comes out with all of the points that are available on the table again. So it's pretty demoralizing for everybody else. And the fact that Alex crashed out, yes, it was a slightly bizarre incident with a Costa, but you know, that's now created that bit of a gap in the points.

What is it? 68 now. That's almost insurmountable. I would suggest now because Alex has not been beating Mark. He's been running him close, but finishing second pretty much all the time.

What's Alex Mark is one, I think one sprint race this year. Otherwise Mark is either one or crashed. Basically. Yeah. So, and again, I hesitate to say this because I don't want to sort of say it as if I hope it happens because I don't, but I think at this point, a bizarre crash where Mark injured himself in his outrace or two is really the only hope that anybody else has of clawing any of these points back at this point.

And I don't think Mark will do that because he doesn't really need to, because if he needs to turn it up a notch or two, he's doing so with such ease, given his level of talent and confidence on that bike that it's not really that dangerous. I mean, the crashes on Friday were tire related or odd track condition, weather or temperature related. And that's not typical through a MotoGP season because MotoGP tends to follow the good weather. So Aston is always a bit of an outlier in the same way that the UK is often a bit of an outlier weather wise, but that's not typical. We tend to go to places that are hot and sunny.

So that kind of is what MotoGP bikes and their tires are built around that scenario. So I do think this episode, probably more than the previous one would have been called Game Over really, but your title is correct. And the fact that it was a bit of a crash festival weekend in all three classes, but yeah, more of the same to come, I think, particularly given that we're going to the left hand circuit that is Mark Marquez land. Yeah. And then to Brno, which is Horsepower Hill, and we know which bikes got the most horsepower there.

It'd be fascinating to see. Obviously they're going to break the track record there in Brno, but I can't wait. I love Brno. I think it's a great track, really, honestly. To me, it's in the amphitheater, the valley and whatnot.

I would say it's kind of a, I mean, I'd probably have to go and think about this a little bit more, but immediately I think Mugello, Phillip Island, sort of level pagan top two tracks in the world. And then I would go probably Brno next. It's a great, great track. And the one little glimmer I hope for everybody is that nobody's been there for a few years. But the Marqueses of the world, as in the Mark Marqueses of the world have been there before, so they will have a bit of an advantage, but it's going to be interesting to see how people handle that track, given that we haven't been there for, we were having this discussion a few episodes back and trying to think of the last race.

I can't think of when the last race was there. That'd be five, six, seven years ago. I was thinking it's been on almost 10, almost a decade that we haven't been there. We'll find out because as soon as we get to the race weekend, they'll say, well, again, it's our first time back and since blah, blah, blah. Because I feel like they quit racing there when it was like Pedrosa and Rossi and Lorenzo racing, is what I feel like.

I feel like all those guys were riding at Brno and that was like the one of the last races. Kyle Crutchley won a MotoGP race there in the wet on the LCR. Yes, that's right. He did. That was his first MotoGP win, I think.

I believe you're correct. I'm guessing that's like six years ago, maybe. Okay. Is it that short? Okay.

Round about that sort of period of time. Who knows, man? Time flies. It's a flat circle. Yeah.

Oh, speaking of time, we got to get out of this one, Rich. All right, folks. That's the show. I hope you enjoyed this one. Remember, ride us at motopod at motopodcast.com.

Find us on the socials, Instagram, motopod official, tease at Richard Joud, I'm at MotoRGV. Everybody ride safe. And before I go, Jim, just the last thing I'll say, I've been making progress with the interviews, slots at Donison Park, which is next weekend. So this is the last chance for people to ride in with any questions. So I have officially now confirmed Ryan Vickers, Stefano Manzi, Alvaro Bautista.

That one could change at last moment, but that's currently fixed. I'm in a Q&A session, round table sort of session with Toprak and Michael Vandermark in the BMW hospitality. So I might get a chance to throw in a question. And I'm just waiting to hear back on Jemma Massey, Jeremy Alcoba, Tom Bouffamoss, and then the two lasses that I wanted to try and speak to if I can, who are in the WCR Women's Championship, which is cast Chloe Jones and Jessica Howden. That's a Brit and a South African respectively.

So I'm hoping I'll capture those other people as well. So any questions you've got, particularly if you're a paid subscriber, because we want to give obviously priority to those guys and girls. Find a question and I will try and ask it for you. But certainly four or five of those people are already confirmed. So and that's next Thursday as we record this.

So I'll be there on the 10th of July. So I need to know beforehand before that date. And I'll be getting up early in the morning to drive up to Donington, which is only two hour and two and a half hour drive, Jim. So nothing. No, don't even don't even go there.

I'll be setting you up early. Oh dear. I hate getting up early. Oh my gosh. You know, 4am.

Wow. I know. But so that's the plan anyway. So if you want to ask a question, guys, this is kind of like 11th hour now. So get them in on the email address that you know.

That's it. I'm done. See you next time. Bye everyone. Cheers.