Look a Marquez still won

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. This is episode number 814, recorded September 10th, 2025.

We're discussing the Catalan GP. I'm Jim McDowell, hosting, riding alongside, as always, Richard Jowett. Richard, how are things in the UK this evening? Very good, thank you, Jim. Just slightly autumnal now, just focusing on the weather, as I always like to do, because I'm British, I'm always obsessed with the weather.

But yeah, I missed some of the racing at the weekend because I was away. Well, I didn't miss the actual races, but as I was just saying, I've missed out on some of the qualifying actions, just couldn't squeeze it in. But yeah, a few interesting things to talk about, although not a classic weekend, I think we've already established in our pre-show talk. Yeah, many different little things to talk about. Hey, so let's get to it here, guys.

Appreciate everybody who subscribes to the show, donates, that's great, I love it. I want to thank those of you who are continuing and keeping the show going. We can't thank you guys enough for that. If you have the time, you have the money, you can donate. Please do so, go to www.motopodcast.com, PayPal Patreon links on the right-hand side of the screen.

You can donate for as little as $2 US. And if you can't, that's great. Times are tough, I understand. We'd appreciate you listening anyway. But hey, tell your friends in the bar, tell your buddies at work, tell anybody you see, hey, these guys are cool.

They got a podcast and that'd be really great. Also go and leave a review, give us a like, that'll help the algorithm for us to get to more people. And with that, talking about people and such things, Rich, I believe you got a little special little shout out for this show, please. Yes, thank you, Jim. And thank you for the indulgence on this one, because this has nothing to do with motorcycle racing.

I, well, I say that. I mean, I don't know about you, Jim, but I have a few loves in my life outside of family and wives and children and stuff. I'm talking stuff. Obviously, motorcycle racing, prime amongst them. I like 1980s rock and metal music.

I love movies. I kind of quite like reading or they don't really do enough of that. And I like one of my more recent kind of obsessions is watches, as in wristwatches. So I've been building up a little bit of a modest collection and it just so happens purely coincidentally that there's a startup. What's known in the watch industry is a micro brand in my hometown of Malmesbury in the UK, in the southwest, a local guy called Thomas Harrison Hill, or Tom, started the company called Avenger Watches.

He's got a kind of what's known as a Kickstarter kind of campaign going on and pre-orders at the moment for a watch that's been in development prototype phase, I guess you'd say for a little while now. So he's kind of launched it. I've ordered one because it will come with a little engraving of Malmesbury on the back and there's a special price if you pre-order before. It's around about now, actually, but there's nothing in this for us. I'm just sort of helping out a local guy who as a fellow small business owner, I know how hard it is to get things going and to keep them going, particularly in economic climate in Britain at the moment, which we won't get into that.

So I just I met with him for coffee last week just to have a look at the watch that I was interested in buying. There's three different color variations of this watch, which is called the Nimrod, named after a famous British aircraft. I think that's correct. So yeah, I just wanted to give him a little shout out really and help it along in case anybody else is a sort of fellow watch enthusiast and is looking for a nice kind of micro brand, competitively priced, nice piece of equipment, nice movement in it, lovely design as far as I'm concerned. If you go to www.abingerwatches.com, that's A-B-I-N-G-E-R watches, or one word, you will be able to see the Nimrod range there.

And as I say, the pre-order is still going, I think. But yeah, I mean, if anybody has a bit of spare cash and likes watches and wants something a little bit rare and unusual, and as I say, it's because it's pre-order, you're getting a bit of money off as well. Go and check it out because I'm sure Thomas will appreciate any help he can get to get his business up and running. And there will obviously be further models to come, assuming it's a success, which I'm sure and hope it will be. So just a quick shout out and now on to the motorcycle race.

And again, I'm going to keep you drug into the watch thing because that is one of my favorite things is watches as well. I love them as well. I am fortunate enough, I have three in my collection. Again, I have a modest collection. I've always wanted I've always wanted a Tog Heuer watch.

My wife got me one when she was doing a missions trip on her way back from Argentina. She bought one for me. That's really set off this emotion for me. The next one I bought after that was an Oris. It's a Williams F1 all mechanical.

So you know, that's a nice one. Your arm motion keeps it wound. The last one I bought for myself when I was in Ireland for work was a gosh, it's a DS podium by Sertina. So it was a rally. It was a watch that was designed with the idea of being a co-driver in a rally car.

So it's a chronograph and it's very cool because you can figure out your speed and time based on the watch, which is again, we'll stop there because we're because we are off the topic here. So yes, we will. We will go. This is not a watch podcast, people. We got it.

We're just sharing a little passion, right? So I'm going to check it out. But I love having said that, Jim, if any of the listeners are into watches and they want to sort of share what they've got, I'm up for that discussion because, you know, I'm up for learning something every day to school day as far as I'm concerned. So yeah, yeah, no, it's always interesting to find out what people are into. Keep it clean.

Yes. But you guys can write it with that one. Tell us what watches you got. W W David dot Moto podcast dot com. OK, with that, let's get to.

The news, Rich. Oh, yeah. The biggest news here. And I don't know how I feel about this, but it's official. Gunther Steiner has purchased the tech team from Herbie Pontcherell.

Now there's lots of wild rumors about other potential F1 interests in Moto GP now that Liberty is taking the helm. I don't know who's going to try to be there or not be there. Rumors are rumors, but what we know for a fact right now is Steiner does own. Tech three. And he will be the head man next year.

Now from what I understand, he is bringing a group of Americans in on the deal. Who they are, I do not know. I have not heard. But that part interests me because the more American eyes we can get to the sport, the better. But I don't know if Gunther Steiner is the right person.

Now, I tried to watch the Dr. Survive series and F1 that Gunther was famous for. But. He is a personality that clashes against what I like in a person. And his use of the F bomb continually is a bit annoying.

I mean, I will utter one here and there. So I'm not as pure as the wind driven snow for sure about that. But I mean, it's so blatant that in the Moto GP press conference, they had a timer going and it only took two minutes and 47 seconds before Gunther dropped the F bomb. Your thoughts on the acquisition by Steiner, Rich? Well, like all these things, it's a double edged sword, I suppose.

I mean, there's obviously the whiff of inevitability around some of these changes. I mean, LCR, I think, is probably in the sights of a few investors as well. I mean, it must be said, I well, I assume it's the case that Steiner is the public facing part of what's always referred to as a consortium of investors, which is a term that kind of causes my blood to run cold, really. But I'm afraid this is what will become a little bit the new normal in the new sort of Liberty Age. Yes, it will help the sport to move on and grow, which it needs to do for its own survival and relevance.

But of course, that comes with a certain set of compromises as well. Like you, Jim, I'm not the biggest Gunther Steiner fan. I mean, I think his profile is very much around the fact that he swears a lot on TV rather than his necessarily his performance as an F1 team owner, stroke manager, because Carl Haas owned the team, I think. Yes, that's correct. And it must be said without wishing to sort of snipe too much that the Haas team has done rather better since he left than when he was there.

Now, those two things might not be connected, but it's just an observation. I mean, for me, the big sagness is the fact that Hervé Poncharrá will in due course disappear largely from the sport, although he is going to stay on at least next season in a kind of consultative capacity. But the only constant is change. And clearly, Hervé Poncharrá can't go on forever and ever and ever. None of us can.

So it's inevitable that these things will change. But then you start hearing that Max Verstappen wants to buy into MotoGP. Lewis Hamilton wants to buy into MotoGP. I believe all of these things will come with good and bad aspects to them. I think that's just the way it is.

If anybody's going to do it, I believe it would be Lewis Hamilton. Yeah, well, he's a clear bike fan. I mean, there's no doubt about that. And I'm not the biggest Hamilton fan. I find him a bit grating as well for various reasons, more to do with the things he does and says outside of the car.

I mean, as a driver, and this is not an F1 podcast, so he doesn't go too far down this road as well, having already gone off script with watches. But as a driver, I have always found him to be impeccable. And I think he truly does warrant his place in the discussion around who is one of the greatest of all times, just basically on the fact that he doesn't drive people off the track deliberately. Yeah, he's had a few scrapes down the years. You know, it's top-line motorsport.

It would be weird if that didn't happen. But anyway, that's another tangent. So yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about this sort of stuff a lot, I think, in the years to come, Jim. And yeah, good and bad, yin and yang. But you know, if it was the case, I suppose.

I will leave it at this. Change is constant, so prepare for the change. Because the Liberty Takeover is going to be a massive change to MotoGP. It's going to be wild to live it. And I'm sure it's going to great, I think, fans like you and me, people who have been there since forever, right?

You're going to meet all these other people who, just because they've watched a documentary, think that they know everything about everything. And that's really going to be great. But I think we as the older fans need to kind of embrace them, because they're the ones going to be there long after we are gone. And I think it's up to us to embrace them and gently remind them that that is not exactly what really happened, because this is what happened. And I think if we can kind of just gently educate them, you know, some people you try to do that with, they get a little agitated with you or upset.

Precious. Yes. So with kind of gentle words, we should try to help educate. And I think we'll all be good. Now, with that, yeah.

I always think of the motorcycle racing community, and I'm talking about the fans more than the participants, I suppose, because that's the world that I inhabit. But I found it to be quite a broad church. And therefore, I think we can accommodate these people. You know, for me, last thing I'll say, because we can't talk about this too long. For me, when I go to the Silverstone Moto GP round, which obviously I've done every year for a while, and it's essentially empty, that causes me great concern and distress.

It really does, because some people love Silverstone, a lot of people hate it. I'm sort of somewhere in the middle. I quite like Silverstone, and it is a huge place like Cota. If they can get half a million people in over a weekend for Formula One, I don't see why they can't get at least a third of that number in for Moto GP, because it's much better spectacle and racing as far as I am concerned. So to see the place effectively empty is very distressing, and it speaks to a big problem.

So if we get that there, and this is not the case at Le Mans, a lot of these places are very, very busy. But I'm talking specifically about the tracks that we tend to go to, and there is a problem. So if this helps to solve the problem, I will be very happy about that. And we'll just have to swallow our pride a little bit on some of the other razzmatazzi things that are likely to come about. But that's the nature of life, that is compromise.

And if it's for the general betterment, and we get to go to some other important countries and continents as well as part of this change, then I'm generally in favour as things stand at the moment. All right, moving on in the news. Lunetta is to join Vietti in Moto2 next year. I think this is good for Lunetta. I think he needs to get away from the 658 Squadra Corsa team.

Some of the things that... I can't think of Mr. Simicelli, because I can't think of his first name. Simicelli Senior. Simicelli Senior, thank you.

Some of the things he says in his blog are not doing Lunetta any good. I'm not saying Lunetta is the greatest rider there is, but I do think he's better than what comes out of some of those blogs. Yes, he does make mistakes, we all do. But I think this is a good move for him to get on a different bike, to get into a different team, to get to a different atmosphere, to change things up. And honestly, Vietti is not a bad person to basically be teamed with.

But I think with Vietti, he does have quite a few good traits that perhaps maybe Lunetta can pick up on. And I think that'll be good for them next year. Is that going to be in the speed up, Scott, then, Jim? I hadn't actually seen or heard that particular piece of news or semi-official rumour. I am not sure.

I believe it to be Bosca Kouros next year, which is a speed up, which is that. Alonso Lopez is leaving that squad, isn't he? So there is a free space there. So if that's the space that Lunetta slots into, that would make a lot of sense. And as you say, Vietti is a fellow Italian with a lot of experience in that particular class now.

And a guy who in the sort of Aaron Canette fashion is kind of stuck in sort of perpetuity in Moto 2, unless he leaves the series altogether and goes somewhere else. Yeah, that'll be a good squad. And I like you, Jim. Lunetta is quite the talent. He's in a...

I suppose I probably oughtn't to say this, but it feels a bit toxic, that team sometimes, with the way it's managed. I agree. Particularly from a PR standpoint, because Lunetta is certainly not the first rider in that squad to have been on the receiving end of some pretty unkind words. Now, I'm not being all sort of wokey about it, but you genuinely want to try and build people up rather than kick them down all the time. So I think he's been there for a little while.

He's shown flashes of real brilliance at times, Lunetta. And he's geod tinted in Moto 2, I think. And then we'll really see if he's got longer term potential. Yep. Okay.

Next up in the news is Anciu is to partner Canette at the Elfmark VDS team in 2026. Now Anciu's current seat with the IO team is to be taken by likely Moto 3 World Champion, Jose Antonio Rueda. That's sort of the natural progression of things coming up. I think Moto 3 is cutthroat. I don't think Moto 2 is as cutthroat, but Anciu hasn't really performed.

And part of it is his injuries, right? And I think he might be another person who will do well with a change of scenery to a different sort of environment than what he has been used to. Because I think he rode for IO in the Moto 3 part of it too, didn't he? Yeah, he switched to IO in Tech 3, but he's always been in the KTM family crucially. So this is a move away from that.

Which is quite significant. Yeah, that is. I do think that Mark van der Straaten is sort of a hands-off kind of guy, but you know that he loves his racing. And I've seen this even if his riders are on the podium. He's got a smile on his face and he's hugging you and just telling you how great it was.

And sometimes you need that. Sometimes that's an environment that you thrive in. So I'm curious to see what Anciu does here next year. And I'm curious to see what Rueda does next year in Moto 2. I mean, he's not going to set the world on fire, but steady progress.

Yeah, I mean, the change is as good as the rest, as they say. And Anciu has been part of that kind of IO. And Akiio, let's not beat about the boat, he is a brilliant, brilliant kind of organizer, team manager, people manager, rider manager. So nothing to say against IO. But Anciu has not really performed at the level that most people expected in that environment.

So perhaps a change will be good for him. And as you say, that Elf Marc VDS squad is one of the best in the pit lane. I mean, you don't see Marc van der Straaten quite as much as you used to do. But I mean, he has interest in all sorts of motorsport too and four wheel, it must be said. So he sort of spreads himself around a little bit.

And I think Anciu could do pretty well in that setup, to be honest with you. I'm interested to see how that turns out. It must be said, actually, just instantly, that came off one of the websites I tend to visit. So it's not kind of like Facebook kind of wild speculation. It's not official any of that.

But that is strongly, strongly rumored by sources that you would generally trust, including the Ruaia coming up, which obviously is a natural thing. He's in the IO squad in Moto3. If he wins a championship, he would go up. And if Anciu is out, then that's the seat that he would obviously take. So I think we can probably assume that that is what's going to happen.

Next up, Tony Arbolino and Philippe Slasch are potential replacements for Kinet at Fantik Racing. Now, Baltus is going to stay. He's going to be the number one rider. But the head of Fantik said that Arbolino was his number one pick previously at Hungary. He said that.

Our intention is there. And now this one is kind of, I don't, this is not from the team, you know, again, but I kind of get the impression there's sort of like either can't come to an agreement with Arbolino or Arbolino is looking somewhere else and thinks he's got something better than that. So maybe Slasch moves over there from Mark VDS. But Slasch has not had a great season either. And again, maybe change of scenery.

This is like a theme. Maybe change of scenery for everybody might do him as good as well. Yeah, I mean, quite frankly, probably a few of these riders have kind of had their chance in Moto 2. I mean, again, it's still surprising. It's still not actually, I'm pretty sure this is correct as of right now as we record on Wednesday evening.

It's still not official that Dixon's off to HRC and World Superbike, although I think everybody is just assuming that it's really just a question of timing or when that is announced. Could possibly. Yeah, could possibly. I don't know. I'm trying to think what's coming up in World Superbike where they might want to announce that because there isn't a Japanese round.

But anyway, but there's a lot of flux, you know, in Moto 2 in particular going into next season and obviously Dixon, let's say he's on his way out. Kinect we thought was going World Superbike but obviously stays now at Mark VDS on a new multi-year deal apparently. And, you know, Roberts, he's confirmed at American Racing again, although he's another guy that you would think probably is getting towards the end of the tolerance period for staying around in Moto 2. And yeah, there's quite a few like that and Arbolino, I would say, is also one of them. As nice a guy as he is, and he's a very nice guy and he's been very successful in the past, but let's be honest, since the switch to Pirellis, he's had a pretty wretched time really.

So I struggled to see how he'd be in a position to dictate terms really. And obviously Salac is now on the market. So again, not a great season, Jim, as you say, but there have been flashes of good form. And maybe he needs to just go to a new team, fit into a new environment and hope it works out as indeed has happened for Barry Balthus of Fantic this year, who was virtually out of the series last year, got that seat and has had a pretty stellar year up until the last couple of rounds where he's been a bit quiet, oddly enough. But anyway, he's still fifth in the championship, I think.

So it makes sense that he's kind of number one there for next year. Yes. Let's move to World Superbike News. Olivera is to be announced alongside Pertucci at BMW, which means is the Aprilia test seat gone? There isn't going to be another Aprilia test rider or was that just an offer?

Who knows what's going on there exactly. But if Olivera is going to World Superbike, he's going to a decent team with a decent piece of kit. Yeah. And I mean, he's a very, very good rider and very good riders that find themselves cut adrift in MotoGP that go to World Superbike historically do pretty well in World Superbike. Now we must just balance that statement with the fact that the only person that's done on the BMW, however, is top rat Rascati Leoglu, who's obviously moving across to Yamaha at Olivera's expense, ironically, or as it turns out, at Olivera's expense.

So yeah, for me, the jury is still a little bit out on that. Had I been a betting man, which in general I'm not, I would have thought that Olivera would have gone for the Aprilia test rider role because with all due respect to him, and I'm sure he's a lovely guy, but Lorenzo Salvadori is not quite at that level and does do quite a lot of substitute and wildcard rides for the Aprilia and they are desperately short of good test team riders. If you look at what KTM have in Danny Pedroza, Paul Espegaro, for example, I mean, he's a top top guy still, even Danny Pedroza, even though he's been out of mainline racing for a while, Salvadori doesn't really feel like that to me. And bearing in mind, they've got track house to keep happy as well. They need one, at least one or two, I would say top line riders.

But I guess Olivera just wants to race and that's what he will get to do more infrequently because the World Superbike Calendar is a joke compared to MotoGP. And that really needs to be dealt with in seasons to carefully. But I can understand why he would want to sort of shirk off the Aprilia opportunity, but I'm sure he was being offered a lot of money. I mean, who's to say, Jim, Aprilia don't take part in World Superbike and likewise BMW don't take part in MotoGP. So could they do a deal where he could have some duties in both?

Don't know. That would be unusual. But reading something that Simon Patten put out earlier on, he was saying it's just really a question of timing now before Olivera is named as the second BMW rider alongside Petrucci. So I'm going to assume that that's from the horse's mouth is pretty much the done deal. All right.

We touched on this, but let's talk mention the other part of it. Dixon and Chantra to head the 2026 HRC team in World Superbike. Chantra possibly, I think that's his lifeline considering that he's out essentially at LCR. I think that kind of does, everybody kind of feels good probably about that. Chantra may do pretty well in Superbike.

I mean, I don't know. I mean, he's done well in Moto too. So I'm on occasion. On occasion. I'm just, I just can't make, I just don't want to make him a whipping boy.

I just can't, you know, I don't want to. But I think Dixon leading the team would be good. I think it'd be good for Jake, especially with the way the series looks next year. It's basically a European based series. So travel goes away.

I think Jake's got, is it one or two young children? One at the moment. So, I mean, that's a lot easier to be a dad, you know, and being a dad is important to do too. So I'm sure he's going to have earned some pretty decent money in Moto too over the last few seasons. So, and he will earn decent money at HRC, of course.

And as you say, there are all those benefits of a much smaller calendar. I mean, literally like half Moto GP, if not more than half. And although it's a sort of utter bemusement to me, it's a European racing series to all intents and purposes. So that is better for him in that sense as well. So yeah, I mean, a chance try.

I just don't rate, I didn't particularly rate him in Moto too. He had the odd good performance, but not enough to warrant some Moto GP ride. And he's been kind of found severely lacking and wanting, hasn't he? Let's be honest. To the extent that it admits he is out of Moto GP by the sounds of it next year.

And the second bike, which again, not yet officially confirmed, but will have Diogo Marrera on it will be a Castro liveried bike by the sounds of it as Zarcos generally has been this season, if not entirely, because LCR famously were sort of a did the switcheroo on sponsorship depending on where the race was taking place. So it sounds as if that would be more of a kind of Castro Honda squad next year with those two riders in place and Chantra. I don't know why anybody in Moto two would want to take him on. I think he'll be poor in World Superbikes. Lovely guy, but I think, you know, I don't really see him as a World Superbike rider anymore than the Moto GP rider.

Well, if it means there's another Castrol colored motorcycle on the grid, I'm all for it. I mean, I'm sorry. Those are some of the most iconic liveries that I wish are all rejoice. Yes. Yes, which all rejoice.

You know, it's liver. Okay. You know, if Steiner's bringing American people in, please, please, please, please, please, let it be Pepsi so we can have a Pepsi bike like Schwantz had in 88. Because again, that's one of the more iconic paint jobs that have ever been on a motorcycle. Right.

It was just it was beautiful. I mean, it was I mean, I don't know. I guess I'm getting old and getting nostalgic, but I just loved the cake. I loved I love the old livery style throwbacks that Honda did, which was old school HRC red, white, blue and whatnot. I just thought those were just brilliant.

Hands down, they won best bike award for that. Does Pepsi as a brand? I mean, I don't drink those sorts of fizzy drinks. So Coca Cola is kind of I would say more of the predominant brand over this side of the water. Correct.

How prevalent from a marketing point of view and particularly from a sports marketing point of view is Pepsi. I mean, if the profile of MotoGP suddenly does ramp up, particularly in the States, would they likely start to switch some of their money across a series like MotoGP, do you think? And harken back to that kind of classic livery. I think they would. At the time when they did that livery on Schwantz's Suzuki, remember it ran at Daytona as a Pepsi Suzuki.

And I found remembering and I can't be wrong here, folks. This is from memory and it was that's a long time ago. I think the Yosh bikes for that entire year ran as a Pepsi Suzuki bike in AMA Superbike and Schwantz had a Pepsi Suzuki in 500 GP. Pepsi has always in their marketing, at least from the 80s into the 90s, they always portrayed the younger crowd. They wanted the Gen X crowd, the people who were of my age, your age when it was the 80s, right?

Yeah. They never did kind of do well with the Coke against the people who like Coke. You also have to remember that Pepsi had in that same timeframe, they just a little before Schwantz, they sponsored NASCAR. They had the Pepsi Challenge car and they had a Mountain Dew car with their wall trip, which was incredible. That was a really major brand on a NASCAR.

They're not a stranger to this racing thing where from my take, Coca-Cola has never really ever done that. They like to be around polar bears and things of that nature and Santa Claus. Father Christmas. Yeah, they're sort of that. So I would like to see it.

Of any of the fizzy drink people other than energy drinks, Pepsi would be the most likely one to want to throw money at that, to be honest. That would be super cool. And incidentally, one of the most hilarious things, if anybody wants to have a laugh for 20 minutes, just trot over to YouTube as I do most days and watch Kevin Schwantz on the Pepsi Suzuki RG500 at Macau. Again, I can't remember what year it would have been, I guess, 1888, maybe, 89. Just popping wheelies all around the Macau track, which is a ferociously dangerous place and was even worse back then.

And he just, yeah, just a stroll in the Sunday park for him on that bike. But God, it is just hilarious. And that bike was just absolutely iconic. So if there was even the vaguest chance of that happening, I'm definitely there for that. Sure.

Last thing in the news, this one directly from the Moto America website. Michael Van Damark wants to come to Moto A on a BMW team. And he's very emphatic in the video. It's on the Moto America Instagram page, folks, if you want to go see it. If you haven't seen it, you will find it there.

He's really emphatic about wanting to come to America, to wanting to be in the paddock and do it with a BMW team. Now, my speculation is perhaps maybe Trackhouse will front up for a team riding BMWs in Moto America. I think there's that possibility if Liberty delivers on the audience, that Trackhouse will put way more money into all forms of motorcycle racing. Moto America being a logical step, comparable to NASCAR, British Superbike kind of thing, right? Not necessarily some of the best tracks in the country, but hey, it's a series.

And there is good racing there. For sure, that's not a question. But it allows Trackhouse to have that. And I also wonder if Trackhouse wouldn't be willing to eventually have a Moto 2 and a Moto 3 team just so that you could run talent through your organization. I don't know what Trackhouse has all fully in NASCAR, but I know that they have a cup team.

And I think they have the next level down team as well. I can kind of see that philosophy going there, but I'm not Justin Marks. And I don't have his money and I'm not building a racetrack that you want cars to come to and bikes to come to and all that. But what better way to do it because you have a track. He's kind of like trying to be the next Roger Penske.

I own series, I own cars, I own tracks. I am the omnipresent everything of everything. Yeah, empire sort of builder. No, I kind of like people with that kind of drive and enthusiasm. Obviously a clear love of motorsport.

I mean, that underpins it, doesn't it? Otherwise you wouldn't do it. I mean, that's the one thing actually going back to Gunter Steiner that he was saying when he was interviewed on TNT Sports and the UK coverage over the weekend. I mean, he is very, very clearly a big fan of MotoGP. So this is not a kind of a cynical moneymaking thing from Steiner's point of view in the same way that it's not for Justin Marks as well.

So those are the sorts of people that we want. People that are long-term committed and can bring funding and infrastructure, etc, etc, to the series, hopefully for its overall betterment, as well as for their own personal gain as well. Because that's part of the reason why they do it. And that's fair enough. I mean, Van Damark, I'm just going to put my cynical cap on a moment, Jim.

Or as I know you love me to do from time to time. I mean, he's basically out of a ride in World Superbike. If he's not in one of the works squads in World Superbike, so Ducati, BMW or Yamaha, there's no room for me at Yamaha and Honda looks to be tied up. You are effectively paying for a ride in World Superbike, which is why Johnny Ray has decided to retire. Because outside of the works squads, you're going to have to fund it yourself.

So there's that. I don't think there's room for him and he probably wouldn't like the British Superbike Championship Series. So Moto America is a kind of a logical place to go. And he can probably earn some pretty decent money there as well, if he can get on a good package. So, you know, obviously he would stay in World Superbike next year if he had an opportunity to do so.

But that door appears to be closed. And he's another guy that's been around for a long time. He's been pretty successful. But I'm sure he'll do well in Moto America. But as Loris Baz found and as Dan Danilo Petrucci found, you don't just turn up in Moto America.

You know, cream everybody that's been doing it for years. Because they're very good riders. And some of those tracks are a bit choice. So it's a shock. I'm sure to people that have been going around, you know, 20 meter wide tracks with acres of runoff, etc.

Although not everywhere, as we've been talking about on recent shows. But hungry, springing to mind. But, you know, Balaton Park will look like a walk in the park compared to one or two places on the, I still want to call it, RMA. I need to get out of that habit. The Moto America circuit.

But anyway, it'd be good to see. It'd be a bit more color and flavor for Moto America to have a fast European coming over again. It will. All right. With all that, that's the news, Rich.

I think we'll move into the racing for the weekend. Specifically here from the Catalonia Grand Prix. The circuit to Barcelona, which is in Mambolo. Again, I'm not going to steer the geography. I swear.

I promise. No, no, correct. Correct. A moment. But it was the track that was built for the 92 Olympics in Barcelona and has been the scene of some good races.

I will say the racing this weekend, just to start off, was not the best racing we've seen from weekends and weekouts. It was different racing. I will say that. But we'll start as always with the Moto3 guys. Now, as soon as we got turned into qualifying for Moto3, we learned that Rueda would get a long lap penalty for indiscretions from Hungary.

So, okay, fine. He's going to no matter what he did, wherever he was on the grid, he's going to have to get to the long lap penalty. The only real interesting thing of the first qualifying session is that Picaris is in that session, which is not normal for him to be there, but he was there with it. He did get out. We expected that.

So Picaris, Yamanaka, Fagia, Buchanan are the people that get out of that session. And get into the second session. When we get to the second session, we're just waiting for everybody to get out there. They did wait a little bit, but not as long as they have in the past. They sort of at least got out there right away.

Picaris was quick, followed by Fernandez, followed by Yamanaka, Nalmanza, and Rueda. Pini was there, and Quiles was having a struggle. Quiles has won the week prior. He's definitely struggling this weekend to find a setup or find something that makes it go fast for him. It's always going to come down to who got that last lap.

Who was the last person who could get across the line to get one more lap? And with eight seconds to go, you had Almanza on top, followed by Kelso, Picaris, Munoz, who was flying with a lot of red sectors, Fernandez, and then Yamanaka. But Munoz lost time in a couple of sectors, leaving Almanza on pole with Kelso on the middle of the front row, with Picaris being the last person on the front row. Then it was Munoz, Yamanaka, Fernandez, Rueda, Pini, Carpe, Quiles, Rolstone, and Furosado for your first four rows on the grid. So we then move into the race on Sunday.

We learned that Yamanaka is at the back of the grid for slow riding on the line. And I think that was like a third offense. And so a third offense, you get moved to the back of the grid. Rueda, who had the long lap penalty that was slow riding online, he's got the long lap he's got to take. So going to be interesting to see how all this was going to shake out as we started in the race.

We started off for 18 laps. Yamanaka got, or sorry, Almanza, who had his first pole. I should mention his first pole for Almanza. He's had a sort of an up and down kind of season for him to grab a pole on there was kind of nice to see. Kelso got into second.

Munoz had moved to third. Now Munoz, of course, was fourth. So he only got one place there at the beginning. Then Quiles had moved from ninth up to fourth. Quiles had like the best start.

He moved really fast, got a great start, was up the inside, rode around the outside of two, heading to three, which really kept him going. He did actually move up to third on the second lap, followed by Fernandez and Rureda. Now Rureda was in for the long lap on the beginning of lap three, right? So he went in in fifth. He came back out in 15th and Picaris had gotten shuffled himself back to fourth.

Now it was heads up riding by Rureda for this. He had a leg out the whole way down the front stretch, let everybody know he was going because the long lap penalty exists at the end of the first turn at the fastest part of the racetrack. So he's having to break a lot harder for that because it's dirty in the long lap. It's not the racing line. So he's breaking off of the line.

So he's got to be careful about all that. So he did the professional thing, warned everybody that he was going there, got in and got back out. Quiles had then moved himself to second at turn one. The draft being very powerful as always in Barcelona, you got a kilometer long straight, you're going to have these kind of things. By lap five, it was Almanza, Quiles, Picaris, Fernandez, Munoz, Pini.

Rureda had made his way to 12th. It was about a 15 rider pack that was still in the lead. So Rureda was able to get latched onto that last bit of the pack, which was important for him because there was a gap and if he had to bridge the gap, that was going to be a problem because everybody said they were on the soft tire, but the soft needed to be babied a little bit to get yourself to the end. So it was like, well, how hard are they going to really ride? I think that really shook a lot of the race up that they couldn't sort of just pin it and go for it the whole way, which stopped, I think, a lot of the racing and a lot more in line racing, not as much people drafting for the lead and shuffling as it was.

It almost made the race un-chaotic, which made it sort of the opposite of any normal Moto3 race at Barcelona because I have stood on the soapbox numerous times about how they go into the pit lane exit to pass people going down the front stretch. There was not as much of that as there was in previous years, to which I am thankful for that on that issue. Almanza is doing great. He's got a Honda and he's out front, which is really kind of amazing. Furusato had made his way into third.

Furusato just sort of came out of nowhere and boom, he just showed up in the front of the pack there for third. At 10 laps, it was Almanza, Piqueras, Munoz, then Furusato and Rueda. Now, Rollstone was off on the side. He had a mechanical failure at turn five, gutted for Rollstone. He doesn't look like he's got a ride at KTM next year, at least in the two factory teams.

He was gutted. He's had bad luck. This is even more bad luck. I guess there was a real Instagram thing where the teams were talking about how we feel really bad for him. We tried to pick him up, that kind of thing.

They're really behind him and they want him to succeed, which I completely get and understand by that point. But it's racing. These things happen. I had a bit of bad luck this year though and that was another… I mean, you could see he was pretty cut up about it. It's unusual to have bike failures.

We've touched on this a few times this year. Two KTM motor failures this year. Now, my theory is on that is that KTM's financial woes have caused them to stretch the service life intervals of the engine. That is a theory I have to where… Let's make a number up because I don't know what it is. Let's say that a KTM 250cc motor three engine is good for, let's call it 500 kilometers.

Maybe after that they've taken it and and maybe after that they've stretched it from 500 to say 800. Maybe that's just a smidge too long because the failure that Rurada had on his bike early on in the season was smoke out of the exhaust. Yeah, that's cut out, isn't it? The same look, exhaust. That makes me wonder, are they dropping a valve maybe perhaps?

Or is it a piston ring failure and we're getting oiled by? Not sure. But I do think that the life of those engines is being pushed a little bit farther than they need it to be. And although I know it's a theory, right? Yeah, we'll never know.

But it's just unusual to have seen this many bike failures in Moto3 because it's pretty rare in season past. Yes, very rare. So Almanza is starting to pull a gap in the last two turns. Did you notice how good Almanza was through the final two right handers? Nobody could really touch him in those last two.

And by lap 11, we only got, it's an 18 lap race, so there's only like seven to go. If he'd been babying the tire, it's like maybe this is his chance to go and break this team up, break this up. Because being fast at those last two corners that get you onto the long straight, if nobody else can go with you, they can't get in the draft with you so then they can't get by you. So I'm like, wow, this is going to be, this has got some intrigue here a little bit. Like, well, what's going to go on?

Now, Keelys goes into turn one on lap 12. He messed that up big time. He just every which way, but loose on the brakes. He wound up going all the way back to 14th because it's a pack of people, right? You mess up, you're not going to go drop one or two places.

You're going to the back. And that's where he wound up being. Yamanaka was up to sixth at this point from being dead last on the grid or in the last row, but all the way up there, which I thought was pretty crazy. Now, Rueda is starting to come to the front. With 15 laps to go, Rueda is there and thereabouts, right?

Which, okay, this is a guy who did a long lap penalty. Now, arguably, this was probably, if you had to get a long lap penalty, it was kind of one of those, is this really bad or is this really not that bad because of the track? The thing of it was Rueda did it smartly. He got there and he was able to latch onto the lead group and then use the draft and slowly work his way back to the front. Where this had been anywhere else, he may not have been able to, but he was looking good.

The true fight was with Almanza there for a little bit because Almanza realized that the only way he was going to win the race was to be out front. Perhaps maybe that little bit of a push he put on in the round of lap 11-12, really was running really hard through the final two lefts, might have been a bit too much for the soft tire to ask because he starts to slowly work backwards at this point. With three to go, it's Rueda with Picaris and they've got a gap of about three-tenths of a second. It's like, wow, it's two KTMs and then it's like three Hondas, which is weird because Honda hasn't won a race all season. It has been a KTM-powered machine in Moto3 all year long and the Hondas have been out on it.

You're thinking, well, maybe there's this possibility that a Honda could win. I'm thinking for Rosado, the logical one who could win, we didn't know what was going to happen. On the last lap, Rueda hugs the inside line on the front stretch. He just stayed over there and that allowed Picaris to get by as he rode around the outside, just enough to be able to block Rueda as they went back to two. That got shuffled.

Then Almanza was third. Then there's first Rosado and then Rueda actually falls back three places because of that. It's cutthroat. Once Picaris had shuffled Rueda out of the way, there was a bunch of other people to pound right through it. Rueda then got to third and at turn six.

Now Rueda has got to be great at the last two corners. If he's got any chance of getting near Picaris, he's got to run the last lap of his life and the last two corners would have to be something spectacular, something akin to the Rossi version of the last lap. Rueda sure is trying it but he's struggling to get past for Rosado. He finally does push by but it's too little too late as Picaris will win the race. José Antonio Rueda will finish second.

Then for Rosado, third on the podium. Almanza will be fourth. Fernández Pini, Kelso Munoz and Yamanaka in ninth with Peroni in tenth. Then Lunetti Chilis would recover only to twelfth. Then Carpe Ogden in Urate, the only last person to gain points.

Not the best Moto3 race I've ever seen but it did have its little moments and it did have some intrigue. Yeah, I mean as I said before we started recording, Jim, and as I've said numerous times on this show, I'm not a big fan of Barcelona. It's a kind of low grip track so people sort of weirdly, it seems counterintuitive but everybody has to sort of protect their tires. Because it's low grip I suppose they're using a lot of tire to run the pace. So it's a weird kind of track in that way.

I think because it's a low grip circuit you're forced into a softer tire which takes a lot of load. It takes an extreme amount of load on the left hand or on the right hand side because turn three is like 180 degrees of right hand. Four is 180 degrees of right hand and then you have the very high speed final two corners which is going to put a huge amount of load in. So I think it's just the surface, if they repaved it, if it got repaved it would be grippier and you maybe see people run like a medium tire or something like that. But I think it's more to do with the low grip causes me to want to use a soft tire but because of the energy that I have to put in because I'm on the right side so long I use the right side up a little bit.

I got to watch a bit of the Friday practice. I was away the weekend but I was around on Friday and certainly on Friday when people are refining setups and stuff there was a lot of kind of banding on the tires and stuff so you can see the degradation and the stress that it puts into the rubber and as you've pointed out, Pirelli obviously brings some different constructions and compounds to deal with that. So I'm not a big fan of these races where it's a big time management kind of exercise and we saw this in Moto2 and particularly in MotoGP where the pace is like three, four seconds a lap down on what you would expect. So yes, I'm never a massive fan of these sorts of races allied to which, parking to one side for a moment, that we have far too many races in Spain and I would instantly get rid of this track. I kind of think of it as a Formula One track although there have been some good bike races there, it's true, but compounded by the fact that a lot of the field is Spanish and pretty much everybody in the field races in the Junior GP or what used to be the CEV so everybody just knows this track like the back of their hands.

You know, so these all conspire to make for relatively, and I do mean relatively, I mean the word, it's still quite exciting but relatively it's not as exciting as most other places that we go to. So yes, it wasn't a particularly enjoyable watch from my point of view but it had its moments as you say and incidentally Jim, the fact that Max Quiles was even riding on Sunday despite his big mistake into turn one was something of a miracle because I don't know if you saw it but on Friday morning in first practice he had the mother and father of all crashes and really looked as if he might have damaged himself quite badly so the fact that he was even racing was somewhat miraculous really but 14th or whatever he was, 12th, was it 12th in the end? 12th, Quiles was a bit of a poor return for the amount of effort he put in really but I mean whereas you know he's over 100 points down so he's not going to win the championship this year. Sounds as if he's staying in Moto3 next year which is a slight surprise to me but I think we'll probably see him on that bike in the same team as by next year and given that he will take part in all of the rounds which he hasn't done this year you know he's going to be pretty formidable I would think next year. I would think so as well.

All right, let's look at the championship standings after this. Rueda now is on 270 points. He's 64 clear of Picaris. Picaris if he's on form we know that what he did at Misano last year he came from like dead last to win so it's not impossible there. If something happens for Rueda that 64 point lead will disappear quite quickly.

Quiles is actually got the best point scoring percentage of anybody if you want to break it down that way. He sits on 168 points now he's 102 behind Rueda and he's got this attitude of well nothing's impossible which yeah I don't disagree with you but miracles happen but maybe not this time. But second in the championship is possible because he's only 38 behind Picaris and or yeah Picaris and he's Picaris is not necessarily run I mean. Well interestingly we saw the Picaris again this weekend pop up for the first time in a while that we expected to see all season long and I mean I wrote the one thing I did write in my notes which I thought actually that's worth pointing out and I haven't which was that on the last lap into turn 10 they had the like the helicopter shot and I mean Picaris just was like so late on the brakes and so good on the front end. I mean he took meters out of people so there was literally no chance of anybody getting close to him going on to the final couple of turns and onto the front straight so it was an awesome awesome last lap by Picaris.

He rode that race to perfection you know he lingered around in the pack whilst the pace was a bit slow and then when it mattered he hit the front and absolutely pulled the pin and nobody else had a chance. If Quiles hadn't kind of put himself as far back as he did maybe he would have been in and around it with Picaris but Rueda I mean second given his points position is a great result and he can afford to do this all for the rest of the season now if he needs to so you know another championship ride for me. Yep I agree with you on that one. Munoz is fourth in the championship then it's Carpe, Kelso, Forasado, Almanza, Fernandez and Peroni. So we will move on to the Moto 2 qualifying.

Now the first qualifying session we had Arbolino, we have Arenas, we have Ramirez, Vietti, Alonso. I think we kind of expect Alonso to be there because we know he can't get whatever it needs to switch the tires on. He can't seem to accomplish but when they're old and shagged you know it's like I want to say the thing like let's you run one practice tire and just put about four or five laps on and then use that to qualify on. I don't know does it work does that work I don't know but Arbolino is way down the list because he's having trouble for some reason just can't he just seems to be not with it for whatever reason is going on and then Navarro has crashed and then we had Alonso who is looking clueless at this time. Now for a track that he has won on it technically he's undefeated there in Moto 3 he's now in Moto 2.

We were like what's going on and then you know I kind of I'm going like I'm speculating myself trying to think like why isn't he you know I know it's the tires but it just seems like he's really disconnected here or whatever. Then we learned that hey for whatever reason he's admitted that his style how he rode a Moto 3 bike does not translate to a Moto 2 bike at Catalonia. It seems to work everywhere else okay but the way he wants to ride and how he wants to do corners and take the lines he wants to take doesn't work with a Moto 2 bike there which I thought was a weird statement to have said but I was like okay I'm gonna I'll you know you're on the bike but I'm not I'll give you what you got there because I mean I really thought it's strange too considering that Alonso was super quick at right the end. Go ahead Mitch. When did that statement come out Jim?

I think it was I think that statement was actually race day during the beginning. Well that makes sense. Yeah I'm just kind of putting it in there because I'm kind of tied it into he looks clueless right and then I found it odd that he would say it because you know he becomes the fastest guy in that session followed by Aranis and Vietti and Sasaki and they get to go through so it's like I don't know it's I mean the kid who is the baby goat is not being able to adapt. It's weird it was weird that he said it weird that it was put on the air the whole thing of it was weird anyway we get to the second qualifying session we learned that Gonzalez is staying in where he's at at Dynavolt intact for 2026. Dixon blew in with a all-time lap record around the Catalan circuit but he was followed by Holgardo, Baldassari, Solache, Canet, Lopez, and Gonzalez but and it came down to it at the end Danny Holgardo took his first pole with an with an all-out record that for a time around there for a Moto2 bike followed by Jake Dixon followed by Colin Vier who had a great he would look good like all weekend and was looking good here as he was third which is his first front row on the Moto2 bike again you and I both thought because the kid's so tall that he would adapt really quickly to that Moto2 bike and he just seems like now he's kind of got it going on.

Aranis would be fourth in Balthus, Munoz, Solache, Aegis, Canet would go from ninth then Sasaki, Lopez, and Gonzalez finishing off the first four rows so not a great qualifying for Gonzalez DC qualifying for Aegis because he's back on the bike Canet sort of down uh Balthus up uh Daniel Munoz in sixth which you know he's subbing in for Anchu looking good Dixon sort of formed again but back at the top but again Catalonia is a circuit that Jake likes I don't know does that mean anything I have no idea but Helgardo did get a poll and he has sort of been the best of the Moto is this his second year in Moto2 Helgardo's? No he's a rookie he's adapted the fastest of all the rookies so far I think he's been the most consistent rookie how about that would you take that would you take most consistent? Yeah thank you yeah I mean obviously Alonso beat him to the win yes in terms of Alonso won the race last time out in Hungary and it was a great response by Helgardo this weekend as we'll come to but he has consistently been fast right from the get-go hasn't he whereas Vaya and Alonso perhaps Alonso slightly ahead of Vaya but those two have taken a bit more time to find their feet in Moto2 but both are starting to look really good now but yeah Danny Helgardo has been pretty impressive all the way through. Ivano Tola is also a Moto2 rookie this year and but I'd say probably out of the four of them is in position four in terms of his progression but again has been quietly doing quite well but Helgardo has definitely been the pick of the bunch and we've picked up on it several times and speculated that his kind of stocky physical or physicality has probably helped him in that transition but he wouldn't have liked very much being shown up by his teammate last weekend so as yes as you'll come to now talking about the race it was a good response. But let's say Helgardo was properly motivated for this weekend how about that?

Exactly exactly so when we get to Sunday morning we learned that um Barry Baltis Arenas or sorry Arbolino Baltis sorry let me start again on on Sunday morning we learned that Baltis Arbolino Darren Bender Arenas and Alonso will all receive a nine place penalty because they were slow on the line from qualifying which that's a new one for me a nine place penalty it's like where did you pull that one from Simon? I'm like I'm not going to criticize Simon I promised myself I wouldn't do it in this show but that's a little weird like what so you put Yamanaka on the back of the grid in Moto3 and you say okay that's your second offense you're at the back of the grid yet you have these five guys getting slow and you just say all of them get a nine place penalty me I want consistency I want consistency across everything not just consistency in the class I just find that weird that I'm going to leave it there Rich it's a weird call it is in the rulebook that is a logical thing that you can do I find it a bit odd but that's what they that's what they decided to do so who knows who knows um this was interesting because we had one guy who had a different tire than anybody else during the Moto2 race and that was Helgardo he had a medium front and everybody else was on a soft so he had medium front soft rear and then everybody else had soft softs which was interesting and they're like you know he says oh now that's a choice for me because I had it in five laps on uh Friday it was uh the front tire was destroyed and the medium feels just as good to me I'm like oh that's that's one of the things I was like okay put that in the back of your mind when things get late in the race you know perhaps maybe Helgardo will be able to go with it but at the start Helgardo gets a nice whole shot followed by Dixon and then Gonzalez who had a great start right Gonzalez came from uh he was what in the 10th on the grid up the inside used that inside at the first turn then was able to use the outside to ride around everybody at two to get to third absolutely fantastic start I thought he jumped to get that far up that quick I thought he jumped he did not um Vier was then it was Guevara uh and Colin Vier after that now Kinet was back in 10th and Alonso was way down the pack uh in fact Moreira was 12th because he had a terrible qualifying you know he doesn't even show up in the list of the top four rows he's not there you know the Brazilian looking fallible on a track that perhaps maybe he I thought he would be just as good at I mean he's had spectacular races so far this year this track just doesn't work I guess for him but Gonzalez then got by absent all weekend yeah yeah really yeah he's missing the whole way around so Gonzalez has got got passed by Guevara and then he passed him back and then Munoz got by him that's Danny Munoz right and then he got he got back by now Danny Danny Munoz flying like he was on fire turning some fast laps he was red helmet red helmet red helmet red helmet red helmet he was the fastest guy going there by lap five it was horgardo dixon munioz guvara gonzalez lopez alonso was 14th Moreira was 10th at this point I was kind of keeping track on where they were because we've seen what Alonso can do uh as the race progresses so I was like trying to keep my eye sort of back there like where is he where is he moving up the board because there wasn't a lot of action that was going on until we got to like lap six when Munoz put an absolutely amazing pass up the inside of dixon he started on the so jake's going into one right and he's sort of protecting the inside slightly which means there's some area on the outside and here comes Munoz on that outside I'm going dude you're going to go around the outside of dixon at one that in itself is practically insanity but no he just slammed the brakes on harder cut it back to the inside was all kinds of sideways heading for the apex at one I thought oh my gosh here's both dixon all I have this vision is dixon and and and uh dani munioz going into the gravel trap rolling together in a ball of carnage is the only vision that I had at this point and my gosh did he pull off a pass one of the best passes of the year probably the best pass of the year in moto two if not one of the best passes all season any class I mean he was every which way and it was like oh I'm gonna try it on the outside nope nope the inside open up I'm going over here just to be able to have that much faith uh trust in the front end to be able to move like that and then you know pull it off man congrats to him man I passed the race my friend big time because it was a great buzz and he was making shapes all race long wasn't he and very reminiscent actually via gurra on a moto two bike massive amount of rear brake you know sideways great to watch and turn one does sort of well I say invite a move like that it was an audacious move and perfectly executed but yeah it's a it is a sort of an inviting turn turn one if you can get it right which he certainly did and it made you think why the hell was this guy not had a full-time moto two ride this year well next year well we believe that is the case it's at it's our trans as we mentioned earlier on so yeah certainly well deserved if that is the case agreed um then slats in the varro crash at turn two now navarro was all out of shape and then he tagged slats and then they both went down in a very heavy fall um they they try and I think they took I think they took so latch to the medical center for a checkup on that one I think they did not 100% on that one I didn't have it in it was a very helpful I just remember his seemed like his head like everybody who fell in the gravel traps this weekend seemed like their head kind of got stuck in the gravel and every time I see that I just I'm sorry I have PTSD about my Mahzano in 93 with rainy and I just I just you know thinking as the camera sort of cuts away on those because I just I have that memory of rainy trying to sit up and he couldn't do it and I just get sick when I hear it okay off that subject I think it might be a bit of a symptom of the fact that this is an f1 track deep gravel so they have deep gravel and it's not good with bikes and riders we've said it multiple times yeah you know I think tarmac runoff is generally better in this in some of these places particularly if you have a fairly large amount of runoff area and then perhaps a bit of gravel at the end but I don't know I mean it's easy to criticize from the sidelines but yeah you're right Jim I mean if anybody did watch the Max Quiles Friday morning crash he was again his head was snapping around in all sorts of unpleasant looking ways and he was very lucky not to be injured badly in that crash I'm wondering if we're going to get a a helmet air bag that deploys down to your shoulders to sort of stabilize your head in the event of a crash I'm I don't know from my engineering standpoint I'm quite sure you could do it the trick would be the algorithm for the accelerometer the the amount of pressure that you actually deploy the device with would be in question I'm sure the engineering is there to do it but I'm wondering if we're not moving towards that or if we don't need to move towards that I mean I think so many guys have had accidents where the airbag in the suit has deployed that has saved their collarbones and their shoulders from from massive injury you got to think that the next one is going to be you know these deep gravel traps and you know do you have the argument can be made do you have a paved runoff do you not etc maybe that next innovation is going to be you know an airbag that deploys or or some type of hans device maybe that formula one has or car racing uses in general to keep your head sort of from moving around I don't know if that would work well because you know as a rider on a bike you want to be able to turn your head so that's why I'm thinking like an airbag would perhaps be better I'm I'm kind of surprised they haven't developed a minute that pops up from the sort of the neck area of the sea yeah that way too I mean I know I just said helmet as a generalization but yeah some some it could yeah well I'm sure as you saw I'm sure the engineering is there it's kind of making it work and be safe in practice isn't it I suppose but yeah these bikes aren't getting any slower so the crashes as a result tend to get more energetic and that energy has to go somewhere and so deep gravel is one way of trying to cope with it but that has other running well well they are an unintended consequences and so there are other things you can do to mitigate it um who knows what's on the r&d tables at danese and rst and alpine stars and all the others you know hopefully but you would have thought that given that they have big expansion in the chest area and around the collarbone that's something that popped up from the neck kind of area of the top of the suit might be a development that you might see coming along next who knows I mean maybe they've done studies and they it's too dangerous who knows we don't know I'm not privy to that information so I'm speculating at this point halfway through it's olgardo munyoth dixon guilvara gonzalez and then lopez is there morera is in 10th and alonzo is 12th now gonzalez is finally by guilvara because that was a battle that was raging for a little bit he needed to get by if he wanted a chance at a podium to get there so he definitely had needed to get by guilvarro is then gets back by gonzalez so they have this sort of back and forth for a few laps dixon is now closing in on moon in on dani munyoth is like oh okay maybe all the energy that he put into his soft tire or whatever maybe he doesn't have any tire left so maybe dixon's gonna get back by here with 15 to go it was still horgardo out front munyoth dixon guilvara gonzalez lopez alonzo is now ninth and morera is 11th so in the third time of a few laps alonzo has now charged pat from 12th to ninth he's gained three places in doing so he's got a guy a lap which is not bad i'm like well he's not far off maybe alonzo's got some magic left maybe i don't know you hope right uh kinet has a crash that was a brutal crash which i never saw in the in the coverage on dorna rich you saw it in tnt you said it was brutal uh the only thing that i remember from the race i backed it up because i thought i missed it so i i backed it up and watched quite a lot of it again but i remember them saying oh somebody's down i can hear it in my headphones because you can kind of hear that that medley metallic gravelly sound that kind of comes through the headphones sometimes and then the only thing else they said of that was that kinet was going for a medical check uh afterwards that was like i'm like what happened to kinet and i'm like backing things back up looking for this incident that happened with cadet so tell us what you saw rich because i i did not see this well i'm trying to remember now i like you i think i heard the the telltale noise of the gravel uh get getting disturbed and then i looked at the timing taro and i saw kinets name dropping down as we were again talking pre-show because of this modern fixation and not showing anything that might distress us we don't get to see these i mean sometimes you see them live in front of you but they don't generally cut to a quick replay of a crash nowadays until they've established that the rider and so on is okay and i'm pretty sure that i'm trying to remember now jim and my memory is shocking but i think they did kind of show a brief clip of the crash because i wrote in my notes big turn seven crash for kinet and at that point i thought he was probably going to lose second place in the championship although that wouldn't prove to be the case quite um so turn seven is quite a quick place that's at the bottom of the hill as they go into that little flip-flop chicane affair before they had back up again towards the sort of the back straight so yeah he lost the front going in there and there isn't a huge amount of runoff so i think he had a bit of a kind of um tumble dryer kind of crash where he was over and over in the gravel again uh although the gravel did its job but i think you know they take these guys off to the medical center just as a precautionary thing don't they most of the time so i've not seen or read anything to say that he's in he's been particularly badly injured um so i'm sure we'll see him out because it's mizzano this weekend isn't it we back to back again yeah okay so i'm sure we'll see him at mizzano this weekend yeah we're back to back for about the rest of the year wow okay oh that's some fun editing to do then uh with five to go gonzales has finally made it by guvara then dixon was really closing in on munoz with four to go with three to go marrero receives a long lap penalty for track limits so he has to take that i think he took that on the very last lap two to go dixon gets by munioth at turn one but holgardo basically led every lap of the race to win his first race in moto 2 he was followed home by dixon which was a great finish for jake munos gets a third he gets a podium again he really should be on the ital trans bike all year long next year then gonzales guvara and viar uh sorry vieti sorry he is the one in six not viar that's very hard for me because it's v i e for veti for vieti but it's v i r or v e i j er for fire so yeah there there's just swapping letters around and being slightly dyslexic that really messes with me so you have to come to try to figure that out i'm writing those down and yeah so i'm more than likely i'm gonna want to mess those things up if we look at the championship here or you where we're invited and temp balthus was actually 10 so i should say that if we look at the championship here for the guys gonzales is on 217 he's only 38 ahead of canette and canette is only four ahead of morera but uh which is nothing now then baltus is hanging in there he's 22 behind morera dixon with that win came with that second strong second place uh vaulted up a little bit he's only one point behind barry baltus vieti is in sixth helgardo with the win jumps to seventh i think i might have said dixon with the win but i didn't mean that i meant dixon with the podium uh and then um onto stay stationary where he was and then reyness and santa aegis so this is still the best race for the title we have although i do think the moto 3 is hotting up just ever so slightly but this one's going to be yeah watch the rest of the way i'm interested to see if morero can morera can do anything with gonzales my worry with morera now that the uh still as yet officially announced but pretty much 99 percent expected announcement that he's an lcr rider on a multi-year hrc contract i just wonder if that might take the sting out of his championship push now i mean clearly he would want to win the motor two championship but i mean canette and morera had an absolute stinker on sunday gonzales okay you might say well he finished fourth he was off the podium but i mean compared to his closest two challenges job done very much kind of jose antonio rueda territory for gonzales at the moment and i would imagine he's feeling a bit aggrieved that he's been overlooked for moto gp really because again that was a very classy ride by gonzales poor qualifying but as you say jim amazing off the line to get sort of right up front early on and he just managed it from there on didn't he i mean the only other thing i would say is showing how important the experience is very clever race by jake dixon looked after his tires sucked it up when you know uh munioth kind of did that audacious round the outside move at turn one but kind of knew played the long game and knew that he'd have him at the end and that's exactly what happened so yeah it was a somewhat entertaining race but i mean holgardo it's been great all year as we were saying but that was a pretty sort of signature arrival on the top step of the podium wasn't it really and question now is can he back it up because things are going to get a bit tasty in that team you know given that alonso and holgardo are now back to back winning in motor two for the aspar team and there's a fair bit of ego in amongst all that lot which is a positive thing if it's managed and handled correctly and and is totally expected with these young guys but it'll be yeah i'm kind of expecting alonzo to bounce back a little bit because he was quite poor this weekend which was a surprise given how brilliant that win was in hungary you kind of think that once people have got that first win out of the way that they're going to go on a bit of a tear don't you and he kind of really struggled for whatever reason maybe just doesn't like low grip maybe that's what it is and things will be different in mizano another racetrack that i really dislike so this is not a sweet spot of the season for me i'll be glad when that weekend is out of the way we can move on to some slightly better tracks as well as i'm concerned but anyway yeah um motor two probably the pick of the bunch yeah probably um these the next three these three races in a row are the toughest ones for me i i i do not like um i do not like catalonia well i agree with you rich i just don't like the circuit you know i think everybody likes it because two turn five martin has his shoulder on the ground whatever fine yeah and it's famous for the rossi lorenzo race but that was a long time ago and it was just a one-off you know zano for the reasons stated previously i don't i know we're going the other way but i don't care and then we get a mategi and i i do not like the mategi track no no i don't either no it's always horrid sort of foggy well not always but it's often quite a dull place and it's just stop start stop start just very uninspiring i'd love to go back to zizuka but i know zizuka is not safe so i'm not going to even entertain that thought and there's not the room for zizuka to do anything to make it better so you know we just got to kind of deal with motegi there have been some interesting races there i will fully admit but anyway uh moto gp shall we i'll just say about japan and i'm again i'm having to stray my memory back a little bit here but oh what's the track that's uh around mount fuji the fuji circuit it is the fuji circuit is it yeah and you got the mountain in the background haven't you that seems a bit more likely to be capable of hosting a moto gp race if things could be configured correctly again cynic hat on obviously we know that hrc or honda own i think yes as well as i know you own inverted commas mategi as indeed they do zizuka as well i seem to recall that toyota had quite a big uh stake in the mount fuji circuit because so that is probably part of the issue but it seems to me that that would be a much more appropriate place for modern-day moto gp on safety and spectacle grounds but it's a shame that that just is never talked about i mean for me sugo yes let's go there but that is clearly not a not a viable option either all right so it's a shame really that because japan is given how important japan is in its contribution to motorcycle racing it seems a bit sad to me that we're stuck with mategi i know it's a modern facility and i'm sure it's there's some great facilities there for the teams and spectators and stuff but it's a bit soulless isn't it yeah since you brought up sugo i had i have to jump into the wayback machine because i was thinking sugo too because i remember i think it's either i see the first world super bike championship was in 88 and it might have been 88 or 89 there in sugo and i cannot think of the guy who was riding the bike but he was wild carding on a zizuki at sugo it was wet and it starts to dry and he comes down the pits going i'm making the motion of i'll point to the pit you guys can't see me what i'm doing so i'm pulling i'm waving my hand like i'm pointing at the pits the next lap right in your finger the next the next lap that guy comes in and they swap out the wet rear for a dry slick and it's a wet front on a rear slick on a drying track and he wins this world super bike race the first race of the weekend on there and i'm just thinking that is such the coolest thing you know i wish i could remember his name i thought he was i somebody knows whoever knows or whoever is going to go look it up on wikipedia i wouldn't remember back into the 80s but i mean well it's well actually gp 500 i mean who can forget harga turning up on a nsr 500 at suzuka back in what would that have been probably 92 93 mid 90s yeah somewhere around about there maybe probably a bit possibly a little bit later but and and doing amazingly well and world super bike was great uh in britain in america and definitely in japan in terms of wildcars oh yeah really really fast japanese championship superbike riders always turned up in world super back back in those days i think this guy was in australia his name was gary something i keep wanting to think gary taylor but i don't think that's right anyway somebody will find it somebody will let us know or oh so it wasn't a japanese rider it was not japanese right okay so it was i believe he was australian and he was like a world endurance rider that was his thing is like so he knew how to go through changing conditions like oh i need a tire we're gonna get i'm pretty confident somebody's gonna send an email to my i'm telling us the name of this person because i can't remember if you know tell us because i don't know the answer to that i must know i do not know the answer to that but i didn't really start watching superbike world superbike i guess until well once foggy started to really sort of get and it became very kind of preeminent and popular and essentially tv coverage started to pop up in the uk and that was the early 90s wasn't it so because tolodossi won the first race at donaldton didn't he in 88 if that's when it was yeah uh i think tolodossi won one race on the bemota and somebody won on somebody won on the ducaudy and he was an italian right i can't think of it is it cassoli or something like that probably but again somebody will know with a longer memory we're seriously off track but uh anyway that's half the fun right is remembering you you know when you say something that turns up a memory that you think about because we're old enough to remember most of all of this that happens or whatever anyhow uh moto gp qualifying in the first qualifying is mere quattrorara peco banyaya and jorge martin world champion world champion world champion world champion oh yeah that's quite a lot man yeah there's a lot the digia was in there vinyals is in there of course vince vinyals is coming back from his his injury or whatever um halfway through that first session it was digia and mere and then quattroraro and then alesh and and miller and then aldiger then out of nowhere fernandez is on top with a great lap and i and uh olivera is also got a good lap to be second and you're like okay what's gonna happen now and then quattroraro just smokes everyone with like a one minute 37 it's like the first 37 second lap around the circuit it's on the yamaha you know emphasizing you know quattroraro's determination talent and just skill to be able to ride that bike he was just he was riding all the way to turn one on the front end sort of you know top rack style if you will but it was just fantastic to watch and it was just absolutely crazy um basically digia and quattroraro go on to get out of that session and peko's problems persist poor peko is a man who is lost and right now he is completely defeated i think he's riding only to stay on the motorcycle because he has no feel in it whatsoever you know there was things from gg delinia that says that it pains him to see digia in this state they've tried frames they've tried other things he still can't get what he needs out of that motorcycle and i mean it's almost horrifyingly terribly difficult to watch peko qualify or ride that bike it's so disheartening and he can't fix it which is the other bizarre part of it when the other guy in red right next to you on the exact same piece of equipment is winning the championship by a landslide which that doesn't you know i mean i don't think peko has the has a fragile ego but he is the he is the he is the alan pros to to marquez's ayrton senna you know the thinking racer with the setup with the thought with the process with the feeling this is what i need now i've got that now i will go push i will go win and mark is like just give me a bike i want to go ride you know it's just crazy and i i don't know what ducati can do for him for next year if they're trying frames already and those frames don't fix it then there's really something very different about this 25 engine or the shape shifting equipment or something to that effect that either isn't in the same places or wherever and i don't know what they're going to do to fix it the intrigue jim is going to be i think if ducati can be persuaded by banyaya to go back more towards the 24 bike in its entirety uh if you believe that he's going to be able to do that i have some nice swamp land in florida i would like to sell you i well i'm sorry i i understand that they would that they should they should do something to help a two-time world champion get the bike better but again i go where is gg all the time he's always around mark's bike always talking to mark always listening always down on one knee thinking listening taking to heart what mark says and reading the body language that mark gives him and two two two things jim on this sorry i interrupt you i was done if i think marquez would beat banyar on if they did go back to the 24 bike because marquez is just a better rider i mean marquez is an alien and i just as nice as he is i just don't think banyar is a kind of what we're used to praise as an alien so and marquez has never ridden the 24 bike because of course he came from the 23 ducati and went straight to the 24 slash 25 bike that they're on now so he might actually just say i don't care i'll ride whatever you give me and he'll probably still beat banyar as good as banyar was on the 24 bike but the the intriguing and interesting thing for me is if ducati were to do that and i don't for one moment think that they will but if they were they're kind of taking a retrograde step in terms of the bike development whilst everybody else is making progress and i'm reminded of the podcast that i listened to which had um what's the the technical guru guy um i've been trying to get him on the show for ages um neil i mean my mind memory is absolutely terrible jim i did this tiredness i think because i worked too much but um neil spalding okay he and i forget which podcast it was i was listening to him on but there you know that's irrelevant he was saying honda will win the 2026 moto ggp championship and everybody i was kind of looking at my phone i was listening to this whilst i was walking the dog thinking hmm really what but his point was that honda will push and push and push and push to get something out of this rule set true whereas other people's attention will be diverted into the 27 rules or into other factional things or whatever and we are starting to see the glimpses of the honda actually becoming a truly competitive package i rate joan mir very highly i think we're starting to see what a good rider luca marini is yeah we we saw earlier in the season how good zarka is he started to crash an awful lot just of late but that'll that'll wash its way out ultimately and they're going to have a sort of young gun on the other bike next year as well i'm not ruling honda out of surprising people next year and i listen to people like spalders because he knows what he's talking about and he can obviously see see the development and the progress that honda have been making and the sheer will that they have to get a bit like they did with the 800s you know they just persisted until they got it right whereas other people started to concentrate on other things i just wonder if you know there's a perfect storm coming here where honda in particular ktm as well and let's face it chicati i mean i know marco alex marquez has been sort of sporadically doing well had a bit of a different dip in form of late although not this weekend but really the only person that's really been doing brilliant things for them consistently is mark marquez so i mean i don't know who could possibly beat him if he's fit next year but but i am reminded of that podcast where neil spalding said he rates honda as a genuine likely contender for next year i don't disagree with him because we're seeing it come good and i do not i'm always reminded of denis noyes and his thing and he says how he always said that you know honda is like nasa they've got everything they're they're they're so far ahead in everything they've got the money they've got the resources they yeah if anybody exists to race honda does it's a sort of bloody minded determination to win which is a very it is such a rebel company to the other japanese makes it is truly a unique japanese company and it's a history that if you have never read it or thought or i think there's a book about sirichi honda's and how he started and how he was turned down at toyota and all this other it's a fascinating story it's a fascinating read and it's that dogged determination to make something happen out of nothing that i i agree with you they've got the resources they've got the money do they have the rider i i agree with you i think mere is a good rider is he on a good bike yes possibly but man you know i hate to bring this up but part of me says if martin was healthy and on a honda next year maybe they had a better shot i don't want to open up pandora's box there no no the jury is definitely out on that but interestingly another guy that i listen to a lot and again thankfully he's on the tnt coverage is michael laverti who is technically very very sort of strong in terms of explaining stuff and so he's been delving into the hrs hrc situation in moto gp and what he's reporting back is that they haven't actually changed that much on the bike a bit like ktm they've just because of the sort of and again this is not a slight on the japanese but because they brought in some of the european staff like um romano abitiano from aprilia they have just kind of brought this new structure and formula to the way the team is operating and they're just working refining what they've got and then sort of starting to evolve and develop the bike from there so i think we saw this in the first half of the year i mean the sort of the the thing that i'd take note of is things like the fact that joe amir isn't crashing at the front end of the bike every single race which is what happened last year they so they found a base setup to work with and now they're starting to develop the bike and it is getting faster and you know we've said many times jim to quote ourselves honda is or hrc is the sleeping giant and if if the thing wakes up properly it'll be a force again now that's not to say anybody can beat mark marquez on a 24 straight 25 but i mean it could be a bloody scooter at the moment and mark marquez would probably wins so i mean we have to keep that in mind but i do think honda are going to continually surprise us now yeah so let's talk about some more surprises as we go as we go that's a good segue rich as we go into moto to second qualifying session brad vendor who had been quick all weekend in fact the ktms have been quick all weekend he was not going to be able to use his number one bike as it had some sort of electrical issue and he was going to have to qualify on the number two bike now along with that and we talked about this a little bit pre-show and it i will bring it back up here they were at they were talking about menders sudden turn of form and they had talked about the fact that he was using special bolts and i'm going what is that code for because i i know that ain't what's causing that bike to go anywhere go fast but then you had said about bender about he's changed his riding position radically rand changed his riding position and apparently as you've said he's had taken this long to sort of figure out that riding position to make it work for him yeah so i guess that's what special bolts mean and and likewise with bastionini he has been and this i guess goes to some of the woes that ktm as in the factory have been going through in the first half of the year which have started to abate a little bit financially i think and so they're able to start plan and build forward so apparently he has been waiting think back to horny lorenzo ducati era bastionini has been waiting for some parts that are to do with ergonomically how he fits onto the bike oh in order to ride the way he wants to ride those parts arrived a few races ago and all of a sudden voila it clicks into place so he was kind of forcing a square peg into a round hole before and now he's got the right size round peg to go in the round hole and instant you see the performance so whereas pedro has been doing sort of the mark marquez thing is kind of trading on his talent but crashing a fair bit as a result because he's been forcing it to fit and he's still crashing a bit because he's still you know relatively young into moto gp but you can see that across the entirety of the ktm and bearing in mind vinales is really injured at the minute and he's been their star performer arguably up until now ktm are looking quite strong again all of a sudden and it kind of dovetails neatly with the fact that financially some of their problems have diminished i mean they haven't gone away but they have diminished at least and allowed the factory and the whole thing to kind of settle down a little bit and i think we we just see that in the results on track yeah their new ceo was at the track again you know yeah he was there again i expected to be in mazano again as well be interesting looks as if he's just finished elementary school yeah he looks young and he had i think it was his son very small child you know maybe a five or six year old boy yeah that he was holding you know i mean like i love that i mean start him young right but it seems as though maybe ktm is approaching a point where they're turning a corner things are starting to come back around again here hopefully looks like it yeah but on the racetrack akasta had gone to pole in the second session but he got beat by alex marquez who alex was fast all weekend as well and that was there and you know basically here comes mark to take pole but i was wondering what could quattraro do because he'd come out of that session but akasta had a great lap but that got taken away by track limits then marquez was almost down at five it was so close in that qualifying session but he wound up actually being able to save save it and keep going but it was alex on pole followed by quattraro then mark then morbidelli sort of out of like nowhere he turned up this great lap akasta would fall to fifth again if akasta could keep it in in the boundaries of the racetrack he would have been third at least fourth right but he can't seem to do that then it was gg antonio zarco iagura finally looking for some form again now which is great then bastionini who was ninth that was a pretty good qualifying for bastionini you know we're talking you know he got some parts to you know make the ergo work for him then lucro marini on a honda then bender on the second bike and then besecki and 12th for the first four rows so that takes us into the sprint action now the sprint starts off with with alex leading quattraro second then mark and i'm like oh if mark wants this he's got to get past very quickly he's got to get past quattraro now akasta tried to run around the outside of of quattraro at the first turn he wasn't quite able to do it but mark wound up becoming second and then akasta actually then got by quattraro as they headed out of the headed out of turn three then digia got by akasta so it was 73 93 and 20 then digia and then a lot then alonzo and bastionini or sorry akasta season l is on my handwriting with the same whoops i'm sorry costa bastionini i'd lap six i thought wow alex alex has got a shot of this alex is pulling away from mark alex had been faster than mark all weekend mark had been talking about alex's pace and that alex's pace was so good that you know he's the one to watch and i'm like yeah yeah yeah there i'm sure that mark being the guy that he is can find a couple of tenths if he needs those couple of tenths you know so i'm like okay let's see how this rolls out but mark or alex had actually got out to a seven tenths of a second lead on mark which i i thought was crazy quattraro was now dropping back from mark he couldn't run the pace of the two guys at the front um but uh both morbidelli and martin were now closing in on quattraro to potentially take those spots away from him when you get when they get done at the end of that one right so that was that was a part of it um then at that point you know alex was just checking out now he was just gone i was like there's there's probably no way that he's going to get beat you know um but bez would go down and outtiger and bez both went down outtiger lost the front and then sort of bez was kind of collected by it uh there was no further action taken on that i believe it was a racing incident i think it was a right call it that was racing it happened outtiger was trying to pass and he lost it that that's going to happen and you're on the outside of him that that's just the luck of the draw of what's going on you can't regulate it to the point where nobody wants to try to pass you at all right we certainly don't want to get there so i'm good to go with that at four to go alex is down he loses the front end going into 10 that's a very tricky corner it's downhill it seems like it's greasy low grip everybody seems to have trouble with that i you know um you're going left and you know you don't have a lot of energy in the left side as far as the temperature so it's like you know is that a part of it too i i don't know if it is or isn't but he goes down loses the lead scums up and just knows that he had that knows that he had the victory was mad at himself but that meant that basically mark was going to win his uh win this sprint race that was his 14th sprint win out or sorry 13th sprint win out of the 14 possible sprints that are there it's like a 97 win rate or something for him in sprints it's crazy i mean he was gifted that one he was i'm not gonna pretty unforgivable error by alex marcus who was about a second and a half up the road at the point when he crashed i think uh but yeah that's motorcycle racing i mean yeah doesn't always go to plan qualter r would hang on for second digi and tony would grab third akasta slid to fourth bastionini was up from ninth to fifth in a sprint i'm like oh okay that's a little nugget you want to put in the old in the old uh on the old book you know just because like man we're gonna go a lot more laps on sunday you know bastionini is the tire whisperer man this this could be really interesting bender was good he was six that's like a resurgence for bender quite honestly zarko was seventh again it was it was a honda and zarko honda and luca marini and then it was ayagura on the aprilia and then olivera on the aprilia and that was a little pretty good little battle there at the end between the two hondas and the two aprilias to wrap up what was going on but what we didn't see until after they showed replays of it was the very last lap at turn 10 mark had the left had the right foot off the foot peg because he almost threw it away but he saves them doesn't he more often than that's the difference right i think that's if you want to know what's the difference between a great rider and an alien is is the fact that the alien saves the things that you shouldn't save right i mean i'll never forget that time of lamans mark mark literally had both axles grinding sparks on the pavement and he picked it up somehow i i don't know how you that isn't a crash but it's just like that kind of catlike sixth sense of knowing the crash is about to happen before it actually does and therefore saving it when it happens i think alonzo rather than trying to react to the crash as it happens which is you saw with alex marquez i think alonzo moto too has that in spades i think he's got that cat reflex where he understands that the crash is about to happen then fixes it just like mark so i you know it is it's a special intangible skill that very few people have clearly and that's what separates the the really great from the merely very good isn't it because let's be honest i mean anybody in mojo gp is that they are the top top guys in the world but there's still a couple of them that are much better than the others all right let's quickly move on to sunday the interesting fact here is is that if mark marquez leaves catalonia with a 185 point margin it will be match point in san marino next weekend so that's sort of what we're looking for in that one and mark did have 14 out of 15 sprint wins which is incredible i you know his this year and his i think he's his point score hall is like almost 90 of all possible points it's just insane to be honest yeah and it hasn't been roundly beaten in in the races that he hasn't won let's be honest he touched the white line at cota in the wet when he shouldn't have done yeah and he rushed in a bit too early at harath and crashed so if he hadn't made i mean again ifs buts and maybes but i mean he probably would have won the championship already if hadn't been for those two silly errors yep so everyone is on a medium rear tire for this and everybody except pedro costa is on the soft so everyone's on a rear on a medium rear but a costa i think i said it the cost is on the soft yeah yeah i think i said it wrongly um so it's like whoa that's interesting and they they talked to ktm about they said well we've been on it we've done the most laps on that tire we understand that tire we know where the drop is we're confident we can do this okay good you know i'm thinking game on throw something at take the chance why not worth a shot worth a shot i love the gutsy move that hey that's a tire i like i feel good on it i'm gonna run it you know what i can't fault the costa for that right not at all uh alex gets off the line he's leading into turn one but mark is tries to outbreak him and basically alex tries the outside of two but mark gets by him and so mark is going to lead this then it's going to be his brother and then it is um a costa and quadtraro now bez tries to pass morbidly but he loses that front uh and peko then checks up and digia then falls to avoid peka now that happens as they start the second lap as they go into turn one kind of a crazy thing that was going on there it's sad to see how far aprilia is aprilia is not racing as good here here at cattelonia as they have in the past as we said earlier rich in the pre-pod talk they seem to have made a better bike all around at maybe the sacrifice of a cattelonia special which you know good on them for finding a bike that's more of an all-rounder which is what you need uh so you know or you you're at least a three-quarter rounder right if you're good at three-quarters of the circuit you're gonna be pretty good off for championship tires and whatnot but again yeah with those guys all going down as they did and all the chaos that happened right there that kind of broke the pack up a little bit and there was no further action against anybody there because again all those were simply racing accidents that were taking place on that one alex then got by mark at turn one he was you know mark is the late of the late breakers but alex was on the inside and yeah he kind of got the fact that mark just didn't want to go that much bar to bar with his brother i mean i you know it was like anybody else i think mark would have probably charged in there with him and gone side by side but they didn't so alex at five in it's alex it's mark it's akasta it's bastionini it's quattroa at zarko it's a four rider battle at the front which is kind of nice to see i mean they're all within touching distance of each other nobody's really gotten away bender falls off that was a nasty tumble into the gravel again the head thing in the deep gravel is a repeating theme that's happening here on lap nine alex is slowly pulling away from his brother it's like it's a it's a it's a half a tenth it's then three tenths it becomes four tenths you're like okay maybe he's really got this zarko who really needed to get by quattroa because quattroa's pace was falling off it fell off in the it didn't fall from the sprint but in the in the in the race on sunday it was and zarko had more pace and zarko needed to get around if he wanted to try to stay with the guys and try to go with them early on he had to do that move and took him a little bit to get by marini then got by quattroa at turn one so quattroa was now on the progression progressive movement backward bastionini would go by akasta at turn one and a battle the in the battle of the ktms so with that point it's still alex mark bastionini so now it's 73 93 23 all the threes are still there you know just replaced 63 with 23 or you know get put 43 in there you know it'll you're obsessed there's a lot of them man then it's a been and then it's a bignaglia zarko and marini zarko then goes down at turn 10 that's a tricky corner we've seen everybody go down there but at lap 15 akasta's rear is falling off there's not a lot of grip left there for akasta he is in trouble and i thought oh man he's really not even going to hold on to much of anything he's going to go so far backwards that his fourth place is probably looking in danger to almost everybody because he just has no pace on that tire rins is off and down at turn 11 and he actually travels all the way into the airbag like bender did it's like oof that's just terrible again the bikes are so fast we're starting to get to the point where the tracks are getting a little small and you see a lot more guys go to that go to that airbag and again real rinse had a bad head roll in the gravel too again it's a reoccurring theme if you watch everybody's heads they just they're all getting stuck in the deep gravel with 20 laps in there's really not a change it's alex mark bastionini akasta marini and quattroraro i forward go it appears that alex has broken mark because mark is is is is slowing down right or the the gap has opened up to the point where mark is just not going to try anything he's there's no way you know alex has got this and he just can't fall off again so you know you're hoping he's not going to fall off at 10 but morbideli did you know again 10 is a very tricky corner and there you go another one down two to go iagura is as close to fifth but he's he's got to get he's he can get the fifth but he's got to get past banyaya for seventh to get there if he wants it or not and he's right on marini and then he's you know because he's right there with marini quattroraro alex goes on to win the race it was a foreground conclusion his brother is second bastionini earns the podium on the ktm followed by akasta so two ktms in the top four ktm looking very solid right uh then you get quattroraro on the yamaha i mean that's a fifth uh at catalonia i would have never said that for quattroraro i would have betting man i would have been best for that iagura then six was a great result for iagura banyaya with a seventh which you know gives you hope that maybe banyaya can figure it out or they'll get something somewhere because he did get by marini now marini you know the honda probably isn't as good on its tires as the ducati is in any form right now so that's probably that issue the alaviera in ninth is a top 10 for him martin would get a top 10 then reloj fernandez wadmir madrigal is miller outiger chantra and a sparterot so that is how the race finishes out it's not a spectacular race it was a foregone conclusion that alex is going to win it doesn't do anything to the championship other than this fact that that mark is on 487 his brother is 182 behind him so there's no way that mark can wrap up the title in mizzano unless something really drastically wild happens to alex in both the sprint and you know like if alex scored no points in both the sprint and the feature race on sunday we can start to do math and say that it's probable but technically not yet uh banyaya is still third in the championship he is some 250 points behind mark um besecki is now 40 points behind banyaya and the way besecki is riding i would be surprised if he doesn't pass banyaya for third in the world championship akasta is fifth only 14 points behind besecki so that's a good place you know they're in a good play there's a good fight for that place i'll get it out i swear then more bedelian six gigiantonio seventh quattro eighth out of your ninth and johan zarko in tenth there are still 250 and nine points still in play to the end of the season and this is where we are getting ready to go into the san marino grand prix on the Adriatic coast of Italy i looked that up just so i had my geography correct yep i've learned my lessons the studies don't get any correcting emails trying to avoid this so not the best racing this weekend rich uh again a circuit i think both of us don't like but we're getting to the better circuits we just got to get through mizano and we have to get through um motegi and then we'll be to the other circuit i think are a little better worth pointing out jim that you kati wrapped up the constructors championship as did ktm and the back of the sprint win yeah so that happened not that that was a great big surprise um as it won't be a surprise when mark marquez finally does win the championship so yeah i mean i have literally nothing to add other than the fact that this week and i've seen no reports on it whatsoever but quattro i believe in mizano was out on the v4 for the first time yeah i thought he was staying over no doubt sworn to secrecy and silence in terms of media and stuff and i haven't seen any photos of him on the bike anything like that but it is starting to happen so we may hear a little bit about that perhaps a little bit about it at the mizano weekend uh but that's a noteworthy development or happening in terms of them ramping up getting that bike out sooner rather than later please please please yamaha give quattro a bike he can ride at the front with because man he is the only other person out there right now that i think is of alien caliber because what he's doing on that yamaha is absolutely amazing half the fun is watching quattro qualify because he is just he is getting 100 out of the tire out of the bike and out of himself and you're just thinking wow you are kind of wasting quattro's golden years where he could be racking up moto gp title after moto gp title after moto gp title and you're just not seeing it which is sad and there are so many riders out of contract at the end of 26 if if the v4 doesn't kind of make rapid progress i'm i'm very very certain that quattro will leave but you know that's people come and go so i mean that's just the way it is and there's plenty of top talent coming up through the moto 2 ranks at the moment as we've been talking about so uh again the only constant is change right so let me ask you one question i asked this to all the listeners this is not just specifically you rich when we get to 27 which is going to have a bigger impact is it the sustainable fuels not providing enough power for the bikes to be quick or is it going to be the pirelli rubber that they'll be running on that's the rubber you think i think pirelli is going to make a great tire i oh i'm sure they're going to make a great tire but it's going to create a big curve ball for everybody and it's going to be who who looks in or who adapts the quickest to working with the tire and that could literally be any manufacturer at the moment couldn't it i mean it's one of those things that a big rule set change some people get it right and some people get it kind of drastically wrong that's what history tends to show us in whether it's two wheels or four uh yeah you're right whether it's two or four big rule changes do shake things up because it's not it's not the tire is it it's the way the chassis works with the tire and indeed the way that the engine and the electronics and everything else it's and the pirelli is a significantly different construction it's a much more school of inverted squishy tire so clearly in terms of getting the chassis to talk to the time and vice versa that is going to be quite the challenge and let's be honest there's a hell of a lot of energy going on with a moto gp bike so it's it's a going to be a tricky puzzle to solve and i think this is a big reason why top rack's been brought into yamaha they're giving him a year where they won't put any pressure on him because he's got a lot to learn in terms of the current bike and particularly the tracks but that'll put him in a good position come 27 with that knowledge under his belt to try and make the adaptation a bit easier with the pirelli which he's obviously very used to running so i think it's a clever move by yamaha to be honest a lot of people are a bit skeptical about it i personally believe that these top racks should do well irrespective but it is a stern challenge but i think 27 is when we'll really see the fruits of that decision for the reason that you've just posed yeah i i i think i mean not that i mean this season has kind of made me really want to get to 27 a lot faster just because you know i want to see good racing i mean there is the whole thing about marquez coming back from a massively serious injury that is a very intriguing story but his domination of the season has been mind-numbing i mean just that he's just that you know again it's like a perfect storm the best rider on arguably maybe the second best bike on the grid now winning races again after basically busting his arm five times or whatever it took to get it working correctly so it's one of the greatest comebacks in sport i agree but man there needs to be a shake up somewhere and you know you know ducati sort of at the end of the the range now they say it's a five to seven years you figured everything out you could do with that bike you have to have a new concept of something to try completely new so maybe ducati changes it does something new or is ducati just going to kind of phone this one in and just give mark the same bike i don't really know what they're going to do i mean i don't want to see peco on another year of the same bike because that's going to be terrible but i'm not sure what they can do to be honest jim i'm not sure ducati really care who wins provided somebody wins on the ducati i mean that's the cleave their primary reason for being is that a ducati wins the championship and who is riding it is kind of immaterial in a way um it's a bit harsh to put it in those terms but i do think that is the way that it is uh and this is my fear for ducati in a way is that they're so they become so reliant in the latter stages of this rule set on marquez that it kind of distracts and deflects what they should be kind of focusing on for 27 and who's to say he doesn't retire at the end of next year i don't think he will but he he could conclude that he's done enough you know he will have beaten ross's record at that point and he might consider that a legacy that is going to be extraordinarily hard for anybody else to beat you know because i mean we could talk we won't because we haven't got time but we could go through the current list of moto gp riders and try and pick out which the aliens are but i think there's only two at the moment and one of them unfortunately is on a bike that is just not up to the job so on that basis mark marquez is effectively unchallenged i don't disagree with you at all pretty much whatever he's riding i mean okay it would be interesting to see how he'd be getting on all of a sudden on the honda if he was still there given that it is making some progress but yeah i mean again multi-universe is going on somewhere yeah yep yeah yeah all right well that's everything that we thought about with the catalan grand prix we are we back next week because we'll be covering the racing from san marino and until that time everybody ride safe back soon cheers