MotoGP Misano – Bez’t Yet?

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 815, recording September 16th, 2025. We'll be discussing the San Marino GP.

I'm Jim McDowell hosting, riding alongside Richard Jallett. Richard, how are things in the UK? Dark, cold, autumnal Jim, unfortunately. The lovely long hot summer that we've enjoyed here is I think pretty much over now. And of course this weekend we're into the, for me at least, the kind of five o'clock start to watch some of the MotoGP action from Motegi we have coming up, don't we?

Yes. But we've got to get Mizana out of the way first. So here summer has roared back in with temperatures in the 90s for the next few days. Oh, look at you. Yes, that usually happens in September.

We usually do have a few days of 90 degree weather, but it will become cool. It is, the nights are still cool, which is nice. So I'll take that. Anyway, we're going to talk about the San Marino GP, but first got to thank everybody who listens to the show. Everybody who donates the show can't thank you enough for all of that.

If you can't make a donation to the show, we understand, but hey, go tell your friends about us. Give us a like, give us a review. Tell your friends about us. Every little bit of that helps and we would greatly appreciate it. And with that out of the way, Rich, let's get to some listener feedback.

Now this comes from Jake Rowler and Jake was asking you about the Yamaha, new Yamaha V4 that was going to race this weekend in San Marino. And he's like, Hey, is this thing an 850? Is it a thousand CC? And I'm like, well, you know, not really sure because nobody has said in the media or asked the question that, Hey, is it an 850? Is it a thousand CC?

And my reply back to Jake was, you know, Hey, if I'm Yamaha, I'd build an 850. I'd put it in a chassis. I'd start racing it just to get a steal to march on my competitors while they're playing around with thousand CCs. I'd work on developing that and moving forward with it is, you know, as long as it doesn't circumvent a rule or something like that, to which I'm not aware that you can't run a bike that's sort of under capacity, right? I mean, it's your thing.

And then looking at the lap times that that thing was producing, it was like a second off the pace of what Fabio Quattrar could do on the inline bike. And I'm thinking maybe they are running an 850, but you found out something interesting, didn't you? To be completely candid about it, I didn't know the answer to it either, Jim. I mean, as you say, they haven't really, at least I haven't heard or read anything on the coverage that we follow to say anything much about it. I mean, rather embarrassingly, I was talking about the V4 Yamaha last time out, completely.

Well, either I'd forgotten or I didn't even know that they were actually going to be bringing it out. So Yamaha obviously have been quite confident about the state of its development to put Augusto Fernandez on it and stick it out in a race weekend as they have done. So that's the first thing. So that was my bad. I didn't know, I didn't realise that was going to happen even.

Anyway, I didn't know the answer to the question. So I, because I've got a WhatsApp kind of connection with Simon Patterson, who does know these things, I just shot, having read your email and interaction with Jake, I just shot him a message to say, is it an 850 or is it a 1000? And he came back straight away to say, no, it's definitely a 1000. And the various manufacturers had a, in fact, it was gentlemen's agreement, as they call it, not to run an 850 before 2027. Which would imply that the rules might allow it.

Whether you would score any points doing that, I don't know. Somebody has pointed out that whilst Yamaha might elect to run the 850 bike or even race the 1000cc bike, actually, no, they were talking about the 1000 actually, they can't, the official riders can't do it because they would be immediately breaking the homologation rules on the aero for one thing, which would rule the bikes, sort of, what's the right word? Ineligible. Ineligible. Thank you.

I was going to say illegitimate. That's definitely not the right word. Ineligible. Thank you, Jim. And yes, yes, well done.

Normally the other way around. So, and Simon made the point actually, interestingly, that they probably wouldn't even get to race it because the bike would be deemed illegal through practice and qualifying. Therefore, it wouldn't be allowed to start a race, which I hadn't even thought of that before. So, yeah, interesting the way the rules kind of work on this. But no, it was definitely 1000cc v4.

Yamaha are obviously chucking an awful lot of resource at this thing, which makes some of Fabio's comments, which I guess we'll come to because we've had the one day test yesterday. And Fabio Quattraro has been, as he tends to be, somewhat vocal about things. I guess we'll come to that in a minute rather than touching on it now. But I mean, you said that the bike was a second, second and a half of the pace. I think the conventionalism was actually pretty good because probably the engine's toned down a bit, I would imagine, just so that they don't have public failures going on.

Because I remember, would it have been Randy Dupunier came out quite early when Suzuki came back in with their 1000cc? What would that have been? Probably 2013, 2014, perhaps, somewhere around about there. And I remember that thing spectacularly blowing up once or twice in front of the world, which the Japanese certainly back then didn't like and still don't particularly like that sort of thing to happen in the public gaze. So I wouldn't be surprised if the bike was running a little bit kind of lower down the power range than it's ultimately capable of.

But anyway, we'll sort of get to see as time goes on how that thing performs. So from my side, from like an engineer's point of view, OK, if it's 1000cc, he's like, yeah, you're chucking some bucket loads of money at that bike. But if you did it smartly and you said, OK, if we're going to go to 850cc, you have a couple of different ways that you could do that. You're either going to have to have a shorter stroke and have the same size piston that you have in 1000cc, right? Or you can say, well, we're going to have a smaller piston and keep the same stroke in 1000cc.

So you get those sort of your two options because physics demands with an aluminum piston that as it goes up, it has to have so much force that it has to resist as it slows down, stops and then reverses and immediately goes back the other way to suddenly stop and go back again. There's also so many feet per second that I could go find the equation for it. It tells you, well, you can't go beyond this because then they can't withstand that whole thing and all that good stuff. So Yamaha may have said, look, we pretty much think that we want to have a high revving or as high as possible. I'm sure there's some regulational thing in the book that says 850 can only rev to X.

And if it's I think they have gotten to the point where they don't want pneumatic valve trains and all that other stuff that's in there and take all that out of it, which is good, right? That's a cost thing. So conventionalism would say you're between 15 and 18000 for a red line. So if you start there and you start working it backwards, more than likely, Yamaha has built that bike with the stroke that they want the 850 to be. And then they're just simply changing the cylinders and the cylinder case and the cases.

So a lot of that work that they did, you know, as far as size, layout, positioning of where they want it in the chassis, all that stuff is also going to work on the 850. And the rough design is still going to be very similar with a small chain within reason. I'll call them small changes. And then they're going to pay a different cylinder configuration as in size and a slightly different head that you're going to have to cast to accommodate that smaller piston or whichever way Yamaha decided to do it. Right.

I don't know what they would do, but my guess is they're going to my guess is they would use a shorter stroke, which means they'd have to have a larger piston. So that being said, how I see it, I don't think they've, you know, they're obviously chucked a bunch of money at it. But then again, I'm sure that Honda's chucking a bunch of money behind the scenes for an 850 development. I'm sure Ducati's chucking buckets of money at doing an 850. And so it was a perilia.

So I remember when the rules came out, Jim, and we did talk about it at the time, although it was obviously quite a while ago. There are some quite prescriptive, obviously rules in place for these engines because what they were conscious not to happen was what happened in the 800 CC era when they were revving massively highly and producing similar power, I guess, to the 990s, but deploying it in a more dangerous way almost. So I'm just having a quick look. I'm not being rude. I'm reading messages.

I'm just was Googling what are the rules for 27. So as we know, 1000 to 850 maximum bore is reduced from 81 to 75 mil, but that's a max. Obviously, we've got 100% sustainable fuel, which will impact power to some extent, I'm sure. And OK, there's a I think a reduction in the number of engines that you can have in the season, which will, I suppose, help to quell things as well. So your theory makes an awful lot of sense to me, Jim, that they'll sacrifice next year in the bid to kind of get the 850 as right as they possibly can.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yep. So let's talk about what Quattro had to say at the post-Mozano test. He got his first taste of riding the V4 and he immediately comes back says, yep, got the same problems with the V4 that I got with the inline four. Whoa, not exactly what Yamaha wants to hear from their number one rider.

But I mean, this is a completely different departure in what Yamaha has essentially done throughout their entire time. I mean, let's face it, since the 990s, the 990 era, the OK, how about this? Let's say this way, the four stroke era. Yeah. The Yamaha has not built a V engine.

It has always been an inline engine, which is what they've wanted to do. And they've been somewhat revolutionary with it with the crossplane crank idea that they have and other things that they did. So they're kind of known for that. So for them to go the other way and say, look, we're going to do it as a V4, they really don't have a huge database to draw from. And they're going to have to spend the money to catch up to the people who have V4s, i.e.

KTM, Aprilia, Honda, Ducati. Now, granted, I think we know that the Honda is a 90 degree V, sort of rotated backwards, I guess you could say. Ducati is a 90 degree, but it's in an L shape as the first cylinders are basically pretty close to horizontal. I think KTM uses like an 88 degree V to kind of close that up. I don't know what Aprilia is.

It's somewhere in there. So the only way you can get, you know, you can put an engine on the dyno, run it forever, right? You can do all these other things, but until you put a rider on it and you test it in the crucible of racing, you have no idea what it's going to do. You can think about what it's going to do. So I mean, I applaud Yamaha for showing this much gumption to put a bike out and do this and go for it and try to get all this data, try to figure everything out.

And they're obviously going to have to do with the bore of 75 millimeters. They're obviously going to try… They're trying to build a torquey motor because I think what almost all the rider aids are pretty much turned off at that point. I think it's something close or equatable to like the 990 era of the electronic control that they're going to have on these. So a torquey engine is going to be your friend. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of, I'm really sort of on the fence when it comes to Fabio Quattraria.

I mean, I said last episode, I believe that I considered Fabio, well, I said two aliens in the category at the moment. I suppose arguably it's three with Acosta, although that is still not fully proven yet. Certainly Quattraria is incredible over a single lap, but I'm sure I've kind of maybe sort of read rather than heard commentators saying it out loud, but I'm pretty sure I've heard people sort of poking that accusation that he's maybe not the best development rider out there. Put him on a fast bike and he will be really, really quick. And obviously we've seen that he's a world champion for a reason and he's got that many pole positions for a reason.

And obviously he's still conjuring up laps on the inline four this season to get himself on the front row and he's had a pole or two this year already. So I mean, he's amazing. I mean, he really is an amazing rider, but as to his development credentials, question mark, he's current world champion in terms of whinging and moaning. And I would have thought Yamaha would be getting a bit peeved with some of it at the moment. So for him to say what he said post-test, I think is a bit off really, given how much effort Yamaha are putting in and how early in its development phase this new motor and package is.

Because obviously it's a new chassis, everything's different, isn't it? It has to be. You don't just bolt the V4 into the existing package. So yeah, I'm a little bit kind of frustrated on Yamaha's behalf really, because they're chucking the kitchen sink at it. They're spending gazillions on this and it just would be nicer to have somebody that's a little bit more on board.

I can't see him being at Yamaha beyond the end of next year. I think he's out of contract at the end of 26 and I'd be very surprised if he's riding a Yamaha again, to be perfectly honest. So I mean, it's a good reason for them to have kept Miller for one thing. I mean, clearly he is a far inferior qualifier and racer to Quattroraro. I think that's, I don't think that's terribly contentious, but he's a much better development rider.

He's got a huge amount of experience, which will come in very usefully for Yamaha. And they're going to need Miller because I mean, Quattro, and don't even get me started on what that bloody necklace is all about. That is just, well, I don't know what the word is really. Aerodynamic. I think he's going for the golf ball theory.

If you have dimples, you get go faster. That's where I'm leaving it. I'm not looking forward to him falling off the bike because I never look forward to anybody falling off a bike, but when he does inevitably fall off the bike and that thing breaks and the pearls go shattering all over the gravel and he's running around trying to pick them all up, I'll laugh my ass off when that happens. I don't see. Well, I just don't get it.

Sorry. I'm on fashion. I just don't get it. I don't either. Back to Quattro and his, in what he said, I won't deny the development part of it, but what he said after I, his words could have been more, more censored, more Diplomatic.

Chosen. Right. If he would have said, you know, Hey, the bike's brand new. We have some teething problems. We're going to have to work through those and we're looking at the data to decide what we're going to try next and which areas that we need to improve.

I think is a perfectly fine thing to say. Yeah. You could say, you could even say, we, oh, Hey, I didn't make as much progress on the bike today as I hope to because it's new and we're not sure which way to go with settings. And I think maybe we went the wrong way. Any of that is acceptable to kind of be like, well, I got the same problems we got with the inline fours.

Like, Ooh, that's a bit touchy. Yeah. That's a kick in the teeth for everybody. It's working really hard and not getting paid fraction of what he's getting paid. Sure.

All right. Let's move on in the news back to Moda. Can you with MotoGP news? The Moto E championship will not continue. It might be on a hiatus.

Who knows? But the main reason that it's being dropped is citing no interest from the fans as the main reason. And quite honestly, I have no interest in watching an electric motorcycle go around the track. I do not. They did some of the bikes at Coda.

They had some e-bikes that were taking people on like that double up ride thing. You can't hear them coming. So you don't know to look because there's no sound. Again, I think it's perfectly fine to have like an electric bike for the city. If you lived in the city, in the inner city, some place where it's conveniently to be able to charge it.

I live out in the country. There's not a place to charge these things. It's not going to be functional for me. I'm old school. I'd like to go back to two strokes of street bikes, but we're never going to have that happen.

I understand why. You know, but I thought that the electric, I mean, just like formula E for cars isn't that great. You know, I don't think anybody's there now. The problem, I think the biggest problem for me to it as a racing motorcycle. I'm not going to deny that the racing and the championships have been close.

That's undeniable that that has been good racing and a good championship. It's not contentious, as you've said, Rich. Yeah. But the bikes weigh too much. Because the batteries are so heavy.

If you can somehow figure out a way to, you know, reduce the size of the battery, it still have the same capacity inside of it. That's where they need to go. And I don't think anybody's ready to step up or figure out how to do that yet. Or maybe there's not a way to do it yet. Right.

I mean, that's a tricky thing to do is store energy. No matter how you do it. Remember, you know, if you think back to the early dawn of the kinetic energy systems that Formula One kind of used, Williams had a flywheel that would continue to spin as it let off the gas. And then that developed energy that stored it in a spinning flywheel that then let the energy back out as the car came out of the corner or whatever. I mean, it's done with subway trains.

That's how the way the lights going to go dim in the subway. And then they catch back up because it's a spinning wheel that they've got. So maybe something like that's a little better, but then there's a whole gyroscopic effect that's going to be involved in all that. It's just the technology is not mature yet. And I'm not going to miss not having a Moto E-Class for sure.

No, I don't want to talk about this too long because I could care less, to be perfectly honest, but I think there are a couple of salient points. The first is, and I accept that I'm a 50 year old white male, you know, I like heavy metal music. I like blokey things. As far as I am concerned, and I appreciate I'm not necessarily the demographic that the sport is going after. I'm not interested in bikes I can't really hear.

I do accept because I have watched the Moto E-Racing and it has been quite entertaining, but obviously they're very short races because the battery technology hasn't allowed for long format races. And yeah, I just, I need a bit of noise in my life, really. I mean, we were talking pre-show about trying not to be overtly political and we've touched on things like Net Zero and electric vehicles and they definitely have their place in terms of cars. I get cars more than bikes in a way. I certainly get the inner city kind of modal transport where it comes to electric scooters and stuff.

It makes total sense to me for a variety of different reasons, but a bike that can't go much more than 100 miles on a charge out on the open road as a performance vehicle just doesn't make any sense. And I think this is the problem with Moto E. It just isn't relatable, it isn't transferable at the moment. That's not to say battery technology won't improve in the future because obviously it is going to do that. But sport is in essence survival of the fittest and therefore Moto E just is dead because it can't survive in this world.

There's no appetite for it really. And I would add to that that if Dawn or whoever is promoting this, but I guess it falls under Dawn's arena, really going for that demographic that should get it more than people of our generation, Jim, because we're sort of becoming oldies, then why the hell have they not done a better job at promoting it? Because the promotion of that series has been worse than World Superbike and that is a low bar already that I'm setting there. So for me it's no wonder that the hiatus, which as you correctly say is a sort of a fancy way of saying it's dead, that just kind of puts it on the back burner as to what's going to happen in the future and it'll just quietly forget forgotten for a while. I would imagine that's what's going to happen.

And parallel to that, no surprise to me that F1 are talking about bringing the V8 back once this next rule set in Formula One shakes through. In fact, they've even been trying to get the manufacturers to sign up to break in this new turbo hybrid regulation earlier than 2030, I think is when it runs to or 2031. They've been trying to get V8s back in by 2029 and the manufacturers are quite understandably said, no, we've spent a huge amount of money on these next generation engines. We want to run them, but they can see that there's a problem with this, some of this and sport for pure sport spectacle, which is what draws punters in, needs a bit of a wow factor and in bike racing amongst other things that is noise. And so for me, it's not a surprise that motor is gone and I've spoken way longer than I intended to on that, but I knew I was going to start ranting.

So I apologize. There's only one way forward, I think, and that is sustainable fuel. Yeah, I think that is the future. I think that is the way to do it. However you want to call it carbon neutral, whatever.

I don't care. I totally agree. The fuel is the way to do it. I mean, honestly, if you really want to do it right, it's a fuel cell or hydrogen powered vehicle. However, the energy required to do all that, blah, blah, blah.

We're not going there. Anyway, moving on to the next thing. Let's go back to the news. How about that? Comments welcome from the listeners, of course, on this.

With everything that we talk about, it does stray into politics, but sort of post-woke, I can see the end of some of this nonsense going on. Thank you. Oh, Mazana will remain on the calendar for a further five years. I don't think there's any real surprise about that. I think Italy is always going to have two races.

There's too much of an Italian contingent there for them to eliminate one of them. So I don't see that happening in the near future. I mean, not in five years, you know. Well, ironic that we were both sort of saying that we're not huge fans of modern day Mazana. You know, next to Mugello, obviously, they don't even get onto the same page for comparison purposes.

But yes, you are right, Jim. There's only two races in Italy. So you can kind of get away with that as opposed to the, what is it, five on the Iberian Peninsula, which clearly is going to have to change in the future. Yeah. And just some rider news, the rider market is kind of shaping up.

We know that Picaras is going to move to Moto2 next year. He will be on the MSI team alongside of Ortolla. So that's kind of a shocker move for me. I really didn't see Picaras moving, but he's got a plan and that's fine and whatever. I pay more power to you.

Yeah. I think he just fears Keely's. Yeah. And the trouble is you get kind of classified with those riders that's always in Moto3. Take Dennis Foggia as a prime example, was in Moto3 for way too long, left it too late to go to Moto2, didn't really get on with it back in Moto3.

And it's kind of game over territory at this point, isn't it? So I think Max, he's obviously much, much younger and you got to keep progressing. If he isn't going to win it this year, like you say, with Keely's, chances are he's going to struggle next year and he's just better off getting up the class really and trying to do better. Danny Munoz has been confirmed at a TaoTran. We had speculated that's where he was going, but it's been confirmed he's there.

He's going to run alongside Huertaas. Eddie O'Shea is out of a ride in Moto3. It's cut through out there people. I hate to see Eddie out of a ride, but you know where it is. This one- Jim, can I just add, again, cynic hat on slightly.

We know that Michael Laverty, who is one of the world's busiest people in terms of the amount of interest he has and teams that he runs and et cetera, et cetera. But that team, I think is fairly well known to be not the best funded in the pit lane. And it's obviously done its best to promote British riders, but budget's always an issue. I mean, the signings that he's got going there next year, which I'm hurriedly looking down. I think Adrian Fernandez is one, isn't it?

Yeah, that's the next one. Wow, that was a big surprise to me. And who's the other rider that's going to gym? I've got it written down. Joel Kelso and Adrian Fernandez are going to MLaf Honda next year, which I, that was shocking.

Very shocking to me. Initially, yes. And then I thought, however, that brings some sponsorship money with it probably, which is obviously very, very important. So that's the reality of modern day motorsport. I was, Fernandez leaving and going there, I'm not overly shocked by.

Kelso going there, I am because it's going to the Honda, which, you know, I don't know how much effort Honda is going to put into next year's bike because we know Moto3 becomes a 500 cc twin in 27. I mean, Honda being Honda, they're going to be like, no, we're going to build the best Moto3 bike we can and decimate all just because that's what we do. Doesn't matter. And instead of rules, we will win championships despite whatever rules you want to put out. I was like, I don't know, maybe that's what's going to happen.

I don't know. It was just, it's just interesting to me. I'm just surprised by both of them moving because Kelso had gone back. I forget the name of the team he's in this year's. Level Up MTA, I think.

That's it. Thank you. And that was a team that he had some association with earlier in his career. And it was kind of like the, you know, the son's returning home kind of thing when he went there and for him to be leaving within, well, after a year, that kind of surprised me a little bit. And certainly Fernandez out of Leopard to MLAV, which is not to say anything bad against MLAV, but I didn't expect a Spaniard of that standing to go there.

You know, it's surprising to me, but yeah, I suspect it will do a lot of good to the team in terms of finances, hopefully. But it's a shame for the British riders because they have a tough enough time as it is. So it's hard to see what the route is really for a lot of the young British guys. Yep. So we do know who's going to be on one of the Leopard bikes.

It's going to be Guido Pini because he moves there next year. I don't know who he's partnering with, but that's because I'm, you know, not because it's Fernandez and Almanza and we know Almanza is going, where was Almanza going? I don't know. I've actually got, I thought I was looking at Moto3 thing. It's actually the Moto2 list at the moment.

I think Moto2 is a bit further up in terms of who's going where than Moto3 is at the moment. So I think there's still a lot of balls in there with Moto3. So I'm not sure about Almanza. I mean, he's having one of these kind of weird seasons where he's been brilliant on a couple of occasions, but struggled elsewhere. So I don't know whether he'll stay at Leopard or not.

Yeah, don't know. But Pini's a good sign in. Pini is a really good sign in. I do think so, yeah. If they can stop him crashing because he's bloody quick, but he does, he needs sort of David Munoz, who's his teammate currently in Moto3, of course, that, you know, they are sort of the same piece of granite, those two, and they both crash a bit too much and a bit wild, but Pini might do well at Leopard, I suspect.

Agree. Well, that wraps up all the news that we have from the weekend. So let's move to the racing and start out with Moto3 qualifying, QP1. Lunetta's back after his injuries. He's now back riding again.

Carrero, Rossi, NEPA, Carpe. There's your interesting name. He shouldn't really be in the Q1, but he is. O'Shea and Moodley were all there. When it got done, Moodley, Carpe, Lunetta, and NEPA all got out of that session, went into the second session.

Almanza was down early on with Pini. I mean, that was a really weird accident. It was like Almanza crashed and sort of, I want to say, is it between one and two, you've got the, what is that, a left to the right and somewhere in there, it looked like Almanza just sort of too much gas and spun the bike out. And then so that caused the bike to spin towards the outside of the track, which then caused the bike to be hit by the other riders there. And everybody took avoiding action, sort of fell on the gravel.

It was really kind of just, it was weird. It was just a weird crash. It was, you don't really see these kinds of things too much in qualifying, but this time we did. Halfway through is Peroni, Munoz, Rolstein, Rueda, Furusato, and Kelso. Munoz, Rueda, Yamanaka, and Peroni, and Rolstein, and Furusato were now with two minutes to play were there.

Munoz was sitting in the pits at this point. And like, what, you think that you've got a time that's good enough? It's his Moto 3. Crazy things happened at the very last bit of it, you know, but so happened that Peroni would go to pole, Kelso would go next, Rolstein would be third, Rueda would be fourth. So Munoz, having not been out on the track, goes from being on pole position to starting fifth.

Yeah. I don't know if they didn't fuel the bike enough or what. I don't know. I don't really have an answer for why he wasn't out there, but it's Moto 3. Consistently tried and failed to figure out what the hell the Moto 3 teams do when it comes to qualifying.

Yeah. Fernandez would be sixth, then Furusato, Yamanaka, Kelis qualified in ninth. Carpe, Picaris then in 11th, then Fagi at 12th. All right. So we come back on Sunday morning.

We got 20 laps around the Mozano circuit, San Marino, Marco Simocelle World Circuit, or something to that nature. That's correct. I think it's like the longest name for a track of any of the tracks. I know it's a lot of words and letters and stuff that are all in there. Kelso had a great start and after a bit of a back and forth around the outside, the turns one and two, he would lead.

It was Gwen Peroni would go ahead and lead. So it was a great little battle there. The first few turns, it was different for Kelso because there was a bit of a fight back. Sometimes there has been people who have said, team managers have said, his own manager has said that he's not been aggressive enough at certain times. So it was interesting to see him sort of battling it out as they took to the start.

Kelso did recover to beat first, followed by Peroni, Munoz, Rolstein, Rueda, and Carpe. Munoz went from fifth to second within the first couple of laps, which was wildly crazy. I mean, he simply was just passing everyone and anybody. It just didn't seem to matter. Typical Munoz style, right?

It's elbows out and we're going to the front. Doesn't matter where I qualify. With five laps in, Kelso, Rueda, Perez, Munoz, Fernandez, and Quiles are there. Now Rueda would go to second on a very strong move at turn one to turn two on Peroni. I mean, he was a long way back, really outbroke him, didn't know if he was going to get a turn.

He did. It was a great move, great, great move by Rueda to get there. Munoz was then on the inside curb and he wound up touching Peroni and then he was off and into the gravel at turn four. So as they go to turn four, Munoz is trying to go up the inside, Peroni is on the outside. Peroni comes down, clips the front end, Munoz into the gravel trap.

Did you see when he tumbled into that gravel? Did you see when they picked Munoz's bike back up? All the gravel that came out of the upper part of the fairing, like where the air intake is? It was a huge pile come pouring out of that thing. I don't remember seeing him actually crashing the gravel.

Did he actually went down? Yeah, I believe he went down into the gravel and quickly had the bike back up and then you had the... It was just one of the things he just rode off and you got into the deep gravel and just fell over and then quickly got back up. I don't recall seeing that because there was quite a lot of issues with the coverage over the weekend, which we might touch on a little bit later on. There were some technical issues which meant that a lot of people didn't get to see replays of stuff.

Okay, we'll hold that for the end. I remember the incident that caused him and Peroni to go off at that corner. But yeah, I can't say that I remember seeing Munoz go down. But anyway, yeah, it's amazing how much gravel they pick up and then distribute all over the track. Rueda would get by Kelso at turn eight and Keles was trying to catch the front two.

So Keles is coming on. I'm like, the kid's coming. Well, this is going to be interesting. By lap 10, Rueda, Kelso, Keles, who is dragging the following pack to the front. Whoever was behind Keles was just coming along for the ride because Keles was going to the front.

I mean, it was kind of impressive because the front two had like a second or second and a half, which that's a pretty big gap that you get. I mean, I don't know if it was a second and a half. I'm sure it was like a second, but that's a pretty big gap by Munoz three standards to have. Keles would get by Kelso and then Kelso would go back by Keles. And then Keles wound up getting a track limits warning.

Well, OK, that's kind of normal for Keles. I mean, what race hasn't he gotten the track limits warning? That kid is using every millimeter of the track in just a millimeter more too much. But I mean, that's where it's fast. That's for sure.

Peroni was by Keles then at turn four. So Peroni and them are having this great little battle. There was good battles like up and down the entire pack, Rich. It was just fascinating to see and see what was going on with 15 laps in the book. Rueda was leading over Peroni, then Kelso, then Keles.

And then it was Fernandez and Picaras who were starting to fall off the end of it. It was becoming a four rider battle for the lead as those two guys start to fall off a little bit. But then Keles got by Kelso to get into third place on that lap as well. Four to go and Keles was flirting with a long lap penalty because he was over the curves on the absolute ragged edge. I mean, there's the spot where you're allowed to run wide at the very last turn because that's a green surface.

No, no, sorry. That's blue. Blue is OK. Blue is OK. That's so backwards.

We've had that rant. We're not doing it again. But he's on the blue. And then as he comes by, you got to get back on the curve because there's a smidge of green that you're not allowed to touch. And I tell you, some of the pictures show it looks literally like Keles' rare tire is no more than a millimeter away from that green.

And I'm just thinking, dude, no, I don't need you having a long lap because I think it's going to ruin the race if you have to go get that long lap penalty there. Four to go and Keles is flirting with this long lap penalty as we were talking about. Linetta was down at Canova or what do they call it? Is it Cavone? Cavone.

Turn 11. I believe it's called Cavone. That was a fast, fast crash. I mean, that's wide open on a Moto3 bike. But luckily, he was rolled around there and was able to get back up and everything was OK.

Almanza had actually hit his bike and somehow managed to actually stay on the bike, which was absolutely wild because Linetta had low-sum operator from the bike. Right. So when he separated, his trajectory goes off of the tangent due to the centripetal force of where he hits the pavement. The bike kind of goes forward because it has more momentum than him and goes spinning around. Poor old Almanza kind of threads it between where Linetta is and where the bike's going.

The bike kind of then pivots around and just nips it and he wiggles and I'm like, that's going to the gravel and this is going to be absolutely massive. Somehow got it back under control and went in. I would almost call that save of the year. It was quite impressive. I mean, I flinched.

How about you? Yeah, that's not a place you want to be getting caught up in an accident like that. And as you say, Jim, Linetta was lucky not to get hit there because Tommy Zawa was it some years back in Moto2. Had that same crash there and lost his life as a result because he got clipped by another rider. Completely blamelessly, obviously, at those speeds.

But that's a nasty place to go down, Cavone, because that is one of the quickest turn on the track and I'd venture probably one of the quickest turns all year long. I was wondering if somewhere on P.I. might like turn one at P.I. might be. Possibly.

Yeah. It's very, very quick. Super quick. With three to go, Peroni gets by Rueda and it's a melee at that point. I just you don't know because somebody is going up the inside of somebody and somebody's going somewhere.

It's like, OK, this is this is pure Moto3. It's like, this is what you want to see because it's like they're they're really going after each other. Keeley's would get by Peroni at one. He did it around the outside to take it back. But Keeley's came from so far back on the brakes, which reminded me of one Mr.

P. Acosta because that's how he did it on a Moto3 bike. It's scary how similar Keeley's rides a Moto3 bike to Acosta. If you watch the similarity is very close. It's really tight entries, really late on the brakes.

Somehow pivots the bike in the middle and squirts and goes back out again. It was fascinating to watch that sequence of events because Keeley's is riding the wheels off of the bike. This kid has some serious talent and it's pretty evident that he is probably the front runner to win the Moto3 title next year if he stays in the class. It's funny though, Jim, because I mean, OK, as we've said many times, Keeley's has not competed in all of the rounds this year because of his age prevented him from starting the season. You know, Rueda is the runaway leader, but the guy we're talking about is Keeley's and it's because of his all action style, isn't it?

And I remember when Pedro was kind of ripping the field up in Moto3, we constantly talked about almost redefining the way to ride a Moto3 bike. Extreme sort of Honda Marquez kind of front end, getting the rear out, everything on the front. And Keeley's does feel a little bit like that. I mean, we didn't, I don't recall us ever talking about David Alonso last year being like that. He was a bit more kind of in control in the sense of it looked a bit more Rueda-ish, I suppose, for Alonso, as I recall.

I mean, I may be wrong, but Keeley's is definitely all action. And as you say, he uses every last little bit of curb. Yes, he's going to be fun to watch next year with a full season to guard it. Yeah. So the final lap, Peroni blows it at turn 11.

He's wide. Rueda gets by Keeley's at the last turn. And so Rueda wins the race, just beats Keeley's. Then it's Adrian Fernandez snuck in to get third, which, you know, we're not talking about that at all because the action at the front is just so good that here comes Fernandez. Then Kelso was fourth, Picaris fifth, Peroni would be sixth, Munoz seventh after getting back on track.

Maybe he didn't fall. Maybe it was somebody else. Maybe it was qualifying or something that I have that confused with Rich. I need to go back and check. We have to go back and check on that one.

But he was definitely in the gravel. Let's put it that way. So then Yamanaka is a thin, peony, carpe, rollstone, who went backwards the whole time. Furusato could not make anything work. Usually you're ready for Furusato to be there at the end somehow.

I mean, you don't think it's going to be Fernandez if anybody you're going to think it's going to be Furusato, right? Then Foggia, who, man, that was just a terrible, he was nowhere to be found. I mean, he winds up, he's 13th, then Almanza 14th. Well, he had the off with Lunetta, right? And then Scott Auden got the final world championship point there in 15th.

Quickly, if we look at the world championship, Rueda is still leading. He's got 295 points. P. Keras slips into second place. He's on 217.

That puts him 78 behind Rueda. So still a lot to play for. I think you could say Rueda's got maybe a pinky on the world title, kind of. But the man of the hour is Keelys. He's third on 188 points.

He's 107 behind Rueda and anything is possible, right? But he's only 29 behind P. Keras for second in the world championship. That's nothing. Yeah, and P.

Keras has sort of got such weirdly up and down form as well. Whereas Keelys is much more consistent. I mean, he has crashed a few times, it's true. Whereas P. Keras is having a weird season where he's either launching it on the last lap and getting a brilliant win or he's just kind of bogged down, as indeed was the case in Misano last weekend.

You knew with sort of five, 10 laps remaining that he was basically out of the fight. So he just didn't have what the other guys had up the front. So it's a bit troubling, really. Yeah. There's a couple more wins in P.

Keras' future this year yet. I think so. I firmly believe that. Yeah, because when he's on it, he's brilliant. But he's just had a few too many rounds where he's been off it and that is reflected in the points.

I feel like Keelys in his breaking style is well suited to the Motegi track. I would not be surprised if P. Keras wins in Motegi. I wouldn't be surprised if Keelys wins in Portomayo. I wouldn't be surprised if he wins in Valencia.

So those three, I'm almost picking it right now. He's going to take this. I don't think he's not. I don't think he's going to catch Rueyda unless Rueyda does something really stupid. And I just don't see the kid doing that.

Yeah. So I think we have to say, I mean, it was a really solid win from Rueyda after a couple of by his standards this year. Slightly iffy rounds. I won't say he was lucky to finish as high as he did. I think he had a fourth, fifth type positions in Austria and wherever else it was.

Which were kind of championship winning rides. He got himself where he needed to by the end and scored good points after looking like he was going to have really quite poor point hauls at those rounds. So and then to sort of fire back and I mean, he only just beat Keelys. It's true. But he won.

And that's all that counts. All that matters at the end of the day. So really strong ride. As we said, Keelys has crashed a little bit of late and Picarros is just too up and down. So I just 78 points is insurmountable.

I think. Yeah. After Keelys Munoz's fourth and Carpe, Kelso, Fernandez, Peroni, Firasato and then Yamanaka in the top 10. That takes us to the Moto 2 scene and Moto 2 qualifying on Saturday. So in the first one is Cadet, Sasaki, Munoz, Ortolla, Arbolino, Ramirez and Roberts and Vier is in there.

So, you know, the guys who seem to do great last weekend, Vier, he's in the first session. Canet still there. This is becoming a common occurrence with Canet being in the first one. And then you sort of got like Arbolino is kind of there normally, right? Munoz after the really great weekend comes here and he's in there.

So it's like, wow, that's really sort of flip-flopped and messed up or whatever. But Arbolino, Canet, Munoz, Sasaki all get through. Those are the four guys that get out of that first qualifying session. We get into the second qualifying session. We find like halfway through Arbolino, Marrera, González, Holgardo.

They're the guys that are at the first four and three minutes to go. It was really starting to hot up. Like there's red helmets kind of going every which way. And you're not sure what's really a little bit of a flag that's in sector two. And I'm like, well, okay, is that really going to cause a problem?

Because Zonta-Mande-Gerberg had crashed in turn eight. So I was like, well, where is everybody? Because now you're trying to look at the little map, right? You know, you're trying to figure out are the fast guys ahead of that or is there going to be a lap disqualified because they didn't slow down? And it got really kind of weird out of there.

But it came out with Holgardo, González, Canet, Aegis, Vietti and Arbolino. Then Jake crashed. Jake Dixon crashed at turn six, which kind of shuffled things to where Holgardo held on to his pole position. Vietti would start second. Then González, I mean, sort of finally recovering some of the form that González has been missing.

You know, obviously he had that bike with the whole radiator and all that, but he hasn't really been doing that great. I mean, even Barcelona, he didn't look fantastic. So it's kind of good to see him at least be on the front road now, kind of riding the ship, if you will. Then it was Barry Baltis, Canet, Marrera, which is that's pretty far down from Marrera. Then Aegis, Arbolino, that's a pretty good qualifying for Arbolino.

Then Dixon, but that's a result of the crash because Dixon had red helmets when he went down. Then Arenas Alonso, who we know can't really get anything out of the tires in qualifying. But I thought he could have pulled a little bit better magic out of that because he was not in that first session, right? Alonso had made it to the second one. So for him to be that low, I thought was interesting as well.

And Sasaki was 12th. So there's your qualifying. Now that takes us into the race. We're going to go 22 laps around this with this. This one, Rich, it's not one to write home about.

You're not writing letters back home like how great it was. Hi, mom. Things in the Mozano were great. The racing was spectacular stuff for Moto2, which was really, but you know, that's kind of how that one's going on. There's really not a whole lot that gets into this one, but.

This is not on the list of races to watch back over the winter break. Put it that way. Yes, definitely not. Vietti got a great hole shot. He got ahead of Holgardo, Marrero, Gonzalez, and Aegis and Baltis.

Dixon got shoved out wide and was dropped all the way down to 16th. Kinet basically gated at 9th, right? To use a little bit of a speedway term there. With five laps in, Vietti was out front, followed by Holgardo, then Marrero and Gonzalez. Now, these two are kind of battling each other because Marrero had gotten the jump on Gonzalez, right?

Like, you know, from where Marrero qualified, I think like 10th, for him to get up there and challenge Gonzalez was pretty amazing. So, but you know, anytime Gonzalez would kind of get by, guess what? Marrero goes back by, right? He's got that, he has a very much a severe case of Troy Bayless, right? If you pass me, I will pass you right back kind of a thing going on.

And they're going back and forth. That battle is like the really good battle. They're really, really, really battling on each other. But the problem is that allows the two guys out front, who are Vietti and Holgardo, they're like, I got a second, second and a half lead nine laps into the race. You know, Holgardo would wind up getting a track limits warning.

Again, it's like, it's pretty much you got the question of like, well, who, who isn't getting a track limits warning around here and all that. Now, Marrero and Gonzalez finally wound up being joined by Baltas and Aegis. So he sort of had that gap between Marrero and Gonzalez. And there's then that was Aegis and Baltas. Now, Baltas from the very first couple of laps or first sessions, I should say, of the weekend had race pace.

Like everybody said, Baltas had race pace, race pace, race pace, race pace. And it looked like maybe that was going to be that way because they had caught them pretty quick. And it was going to be interesting to see what was going to happen right there. Finally, 13 laps to go. Baltas got by or 13 laps in, I'm sorry.

This that timing scoring pylon thing switching back. I can't handle that. So anyway, Baltas got by or sorry, Gonzalez finally got by Marrero. Okay. But Baltas also got by too because it took a very vicious move by Gonzalez to get rid of Marrero and it opened the door for Baltas to come through too, which is not exactly what Gonzalez wanted to have happen.

But Gonzalez needed to get by Marrero that there was no question. Marrero was keeping him from being at the front. And Gonzalez, I think maybe was riding a little too patient, a little too cautious. And I think he finally got it together. He made a good pass.

He made a block pass and it just left the door open for Baltas to come along with him. But then Baltas immediately got by Gonzalez. So all the work Marrero did to get the place gets taken away by the fact that Baltas has got serious pace and he's going there. The question was, could Baltas do anything with anybody else? That's kind of where the question is because that's all you're really looking for.

Marrero starts to go backwards at this point. Because Aegis even gets by. Aegis gets a track limits warning. At five to go, Holgardo has cooked his tires and Baltas may be able to get to second. Because Vietti was gone.

Let's face it, Vietti is like a San Marino specialist. He's won there. How many times in a row now is this? Like three, four, something like that. It's crazy how many he's won in a row.

He has won a lot there and it always brings up this kind of home advantage track knowledge kind of argument. Because he's on the Bosco Scura chassis, which has probably not been the bike to be on for the most part this year. And then suddenly he turns up at Misano and he's kind of untouchable. I find it a bit kind of intriguing, I suppose is one way of putting it and a bit baffling kind of in another way that he can't make it work quite so well elsewhere. Weird.

He's resigned, I think, in that team as well, Jim, just in terms of another bit of news. So we'll get to see him win at Misano again next year. Yeah, for sure. Balthus gets by Hulgardo because now our attention is sort of like at the front. Where can Balthus go in all this?

Now, Aegis are by Gonzales. Gonzales had gone way too hot in the turn one. He was wide. That allowed those two guys to get back by. Then Aegis goes wide with a couple laps to go.

And then Morera and Gonzales get Aegis. The race finishes with Vietti winning, home track advantage, all that stuff. Balthus was second. Great ride. I mean, Balthus has put in some absolutely fantastic rides this year.

And this is another great one. I mean, this is kind of why you were watching this one is just to kind of figure out where Balthus was going to be. I felt bad for Hulgardo. He didn't get a second. He had to win and then he's here and then he gets third.

It's like it's still on the podium, right? Then Morera, Aegis, Gonzales, Kinet. Then Alonso made it to eighth. Then Arbolino, Boulvaras, Arenas, Munoz, who was a standout sensation in Catalonia, now comes in 12th. Then Ortolo Sasaki and Alonso Lopez.

As we look at the championship, well, Gonzales is on 227 points now. He's 39 ahead of Morera. Morera really needed to be farther up in this battle. He needed to be winning races, I think, to make this closer. So he's 39 behind.

Kinet is now tied with Morera, which shows you how misfortunate it was for Morera in terms of the points that he did because, you know, Kinet was nowhere to be found, basically. Balthus increases his points total of 173. Then Jake Dixon is now fifth. Then Vietti with the win is sixth. Then Hulgardo seventh.

Aegis ninth. Arenas ninth. Aegis eighth. Arenas ninth. And then Anju has fallen all the way down now to tenth because he's injured and not capable of being riding.

Not the greatest Moto2 race ever, Rich, for sure. Any thoughts that you want to add to that? Well, as you said, Jim, I mean, the main point of interest, well, I suppose there were two. I kind of have the feeling there's a bit of, well, I suppose friendly needles and oxymoron. There's a bit of needle, I suspect, between Gonzales and Morera over the whole MotoGP graduation thing.

Although I'm pretty sure Morera still isn't officially confirmed at LCR yet. I'm kind of curious why that news hasn't happened yet, but I think that is... Oh, do you know something? I think it's Motegi. I think they want to announce it in Japan.

That's a personal take. I swear I'm going with it. Yeah, well, let's say we'll be very surprised if it doesn't get announced there. And I think Gonzales can feel somewhat rightly aggrieved to have been sort of passed over for MotoGP, given that, I mean, the 39 points is not a massive lead. They're still a good few races to go.

But again, he's a bit like Rueda, isn't he, Gonzales? He just keeps chalking up the points. And he's won a bunch of races as well. So, I mean, he'll be a deserving Moto2 champion. If that, there's no doubt.

But he's the guy that's kind of not going up to MotoGP, which does seem a little bit unjust. But the main point of interest for me, as you've already indicated, was Barry Balthus, really. And if he'd had another two or three laps, that would have been a spicy battle with Vietti. We don't know what Vietti had left if he'd been looking after his tires a little bit. But Balthus is really good on new tires, isn't he?

He really likes, you can see the way he rides. He likes the bike really loose. So in that sense, a lower grip kind of end of race kind of situation is obviously a sweet spot for him. It's a shame he didn't get by into second a little bit earlier, really. Because another lap or two, I think he would have been right on him because he closed in massively quickly, didn't he?

He must have gobbled up four or five seconds from the point in which he got into second. And he was what? Well within a second of Vietti at the end. So, yeah, it was a shame that that didn't turn an otherwise pretty turgid affair into something with a bit of excitement at the end. But there you go.

I mean, we see this with Moto2 from time to time. And it's been overall a pretty good championship this year. Yeah, we can't complain. And the racing has been pretty good. Oh, let's move to MotoGP.

And that first qualifying session, Zarca, Quattraro, Bender, Vinalas. And that's expected. Vinalas is still trying to get some strength back in his shoulder from the accent that he had. Bastianini, you know, and Outaguer are in there. Now, Bender would be on his second bike again because he had chain issues on his prime bike.

That's a weird thing to have. I mean, it's possible, right? Occasionally, these things do happen. And it was just odd that it happened to Bender. You know, they said how he was slipping on the sprocket, which that's really weird to do.

Not impossible, right? I really have only ever seen chains slip on a sprocket when the sprocket is worn where the teeth are curved over into the direction of rotation of the rear tire. And then it kind of goes that way. But that seemed, you know, come on, that's really obvious to see. I can't imagine the factory guys at the KTM are going to go, oh, yeah, we're going to run that sprocketers.

So I think it's a brand new one every session, probably. I would think so. I'm sure there's a certain amount of kilometers that they know it can successfully go. And things are getting changed as they do that, right? I mean, we learned the hard way when we started road racing that as dirt track, right, we would use a chain and a master link.

And you have that clip that goes around the master link and holds your chain in place. That doesn't work in a road racer. It will produce enough torque that it will spread the clip and it'll toss it off. So you have to buy a riveted type of master link where you actually are deforming or mushrooming the cylindrical part that goes through the chain to couple it together so it cannot come back apart again, which is kind of crazy. But that's sort of how it goes.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that they had this issue and I kind of bring it up because I'm foreshadowing what happens later on on Sunday. Either way, halfway through, Quattraro has set a track record and he is in first. Outegar is then behind him, then Bender, then Fernandez, Iger and Renz. Now, Bastianini is down at turn 15. It looked like he had no temp in the front.

It just completely mid-corner, which should be off-throttle, if not maybe starting to slightly pick up the throttle. And there shouldn't really have been a lot of weight to cause a push condition at that point. Because at that point, you're trying to steer the bike off the corner with the rear. And down he went, off there. And I was like, wow, that's really, really wild.

Either way, Quattraro, who had another really good lap going, got scrubbed because of track limits. But Quattraro and Outegar got out of that session. We were getting dangerously close to the 92nd marker round of Masano. So it was like, well, maybe we could get there in the second qualifying. Who knows, right?

So they kind of laid this out. I'll talk about that for the sprint. Let's just get through qualifying. Alex was looking really good. He was followed by Bez and then Acosta, then Marrera, and Vignaglia, then Digia, and then Mark.

Mark was way down. He had turned his first lap. It was a pretty good lap. It was a really good, like 130 low, 131. And then he kind of went to the pits almost immediately, while everybody else was taking another lap.

And these guys all sort of went ahead of Mark. And you're like, ooh, this is kind of really weird. This is not a Mark Marquez kind of thing. But perhaps maybe the tire didn't feel right to him, or there was something in the bike that he wanted to change. There's all these different possibilities that kind of are floating out there.

But they're like, OK, well, let's see what's going on. Peco got turn one just completely wrong. I mean, it was eight ways of separation of bike and back and forth. And it was, you know, Vignaglia is that late breaker, very calm man, back tire off the ground, right into the corner, flipping in. And this is just wiggling and just going every which way.

It was just, it's horrifying to watch how bad. He just can't stop the bike, Jim, can he? He just cannot get the thing stopped in the way that he wants. And it's you kind of wonder now whether it's so bad. Well, either goes barreling in and just it doesn't stop or he's going in so slow so as not to crash that the lap time is not there.

I mean, this is his problem. He just that sweet spot that he had last year has completely vanished. And I mean, we keep saying that every time we talk, talk about a man who's got completely out of ideas now in terms of what to do. And I'm jumping forward a little bit, but I was listening to the race motor GP podcast earlier on. And for the first time in a long time, Bagnar didn't turn up to the admittedly the Sunday, but I think it was the Sunday, the post race debriefs, you know, the media scrums that tells you that there's some heavy conversations going on down in the down in the pit box.

Yeah, I can't imagine Bagnar being on a Ducati much longer. They would really have to change things next year. And I don't think they can make it better for him. Not when the other guy on the same bike is winning races at record pace. You know, I mean, it must be said, I did watch some of the Friday running.

I mean, I was at work people, but I had it sort of in the little thumbnail down in the bottom of the corner quietly. And it's one of the advantages of working for yourself. You can get them over these things. And I have to say that Mark and the Ducati like several other bikes in actual fact look a little bit kind of uncomfortable during the weekend, a bit sort of twitchy, not entirely kind of bedded in setup wise. But obviously, Peko is on a whole other level of discomfort when it comes to the bike at the moment.

And what do you say, Jim? Part of me just wishes kind of Martine was on the other red bike this year. If that, you know, in this alternative universe where this is playing out, probably, I'd love to see how that competition is going just to see how good Martine would have been on that bike on the twenty five, twenty four slash twenty five, whatever it is, because we just don't know over the last couple of seasons how good Bagnari and Martine really were compared with a fully fit on a good bike. Mark Marquez, who's making everybody look a bit silly this year, even on an off weekend, which he certainly had this weekend. Yes.

I mean, the guys was even in the test, they were swapping between twenty four and twenty five chassis, trying to find something. And he was I saw this from Simon Patterson. So I'm stealing Simon Patterson's words here. He says, Benyaya being at the top of the time sheets at some point in the tests on that Monday or whatever was not the good, not the best thing that could ever happen to him because he'll go to my tagging being complete and total bewilderment as to where it all went. And I'm like, that's really true.

It's so sad to see Benyaya be so lost. I've seen people who have been champions who get on a different bike or not on their bike, but get on next year's bike. And it doesn't work, right? Because they change something and it doesn't work. And it takes some four or five, six races to figure it out.

But then they figure it out and then they're at the front. But I cannot remember. And please, if anybody can think of an exception to this, please tell me. Because I want to know. I cannot think of anybody who has been a past champion top caliber rider struggle so bad on the next year's bike as Benyaya has throughout this entire season.

Rich, give me one. Kenny Roberts Jr. won the championship in 99 or 2000. And I don't think he won a race the following year on the Suzuki. Still two strokes, obviously.

Right. Okay. I'll give you that one. I mean, that would be a comparable. That would be close, but that's a difference.

That was a different scenario because Kenny Roberts Jr. had won the championship. They were barely had enough parts to keep that bike running. Suzuki put Suzuki put nothing into the bike that next year. And he was like, I'm not pushing this bike because I'm never going to get it, you know, be competitive on it.

Rossi had stole the march with, you know, last year of the two strokes. And what Honda is going to build a bike, it's going to decimate you because that's what they do. All of that is true. But you're right. You are right.

That would be in recent memory. You're saying that 20 odd years ago, but that would be the only one that immediately springs to my mind. Nikki Hayden, 2006, 2007, my 90 to 800 switch because the Honda got that bike. Badly wrong. Yeah, that.

Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, yeah, but that, yeah, I'll give you that one. But I think Bagnar's situation, given the consistency of where he's at as a rider, in terms of same team, same bike, it's an evolution. Obviously, it's changed a bit. I mean, Nikki Hayden was going from a 990 to an 800 CC.

It was a completely different bike. And as you say, with the Suzuki thing, Suzuki were throwing all of their effort into the 990 as it was going to be a couple of seasons later. Kenny Jr., I think, has even said himself, he was not prepared to push beyond the limit and hurt himself in the process, particularly on his two stroke, because they were vicious, vicious things even by then. With Hayden, I'll say Perjurosa was just as equally miserable on that. It absolutely that bike was a dog.

This for Bagnar is the guy on the same motorcycle you have is winning. And winning lots of races. So it's a little different, but those are all good off the top of your head. I love scenarios of that. We must continue with qualifying.

Marquez was on a massive hot lap. He was red everywhere. And the guy behind him Pedro Acosta, who promptly falls. How many times have we seen this from Acosta? Get out there, get behind Marquez and crash or get out there and crash regardless, because you are pushing the bike too far.

What's going on with Acosta? Because this is becoming a worrying. I can't talk either, Rich. A worrying trend where he's got a bike that I'm going to call decent slash podium capable. He just needs to qualify in a good spot and he throws it away.

Just throws it away. We saw it in Austria almost. I mean, he almost threw away big time there. We hear and hear he did put it on the ground. It's just weird.

It just I don't know if it's a concentration thing or it's a pushing thing or what it's got. But you got any theories? I'm trying to make excuses for him now. I'm just wondering if he's doing what Mark used to do on the Honda, which is finding the limit of the bike in practice, ideally in practice, not in qualifying. Although he's had quite a few tumbles in races this year, I'm going to sort of unprove my own theory now.

But I think in general, Acosta is a better racer than one lap person, I think. We don't have a huge data set to work on in MotoGP, because he's not been around all that long compared to many of them. I think he's just overriding the bike, because the bike has certainly improved a lot in the last few rounds, without a doubt. But it's not a Ducati and it's not an Aprilia. I think he's having to push it to places that it doesn't really want to go.

So I'm kind of letting him off on that one. If he was on a more inverted commas dominant bike and he was crashing this much, I don't think that would be excusable. But I think we can kind of give him a bit of a let at the moment, because he's... I mean, well, it's tricky with Katia. Brad Binder has consistently underperformed compared to where we would expect him to be.

Vignales was a standout early part of the season, he's injured. Blastianin has kind of had some changes to the bike that he's been waiting for all season, and suddenly has been doing much better, although not this weekend. Although there's a point about that which we must return to. But through it all, Pedro's kind of been kind of there or thereabouts. More often than not, has been, certainly recently, has been the one that looks the most likely to get a podium out of it.

But yeah, but he's crashing a fair bit as well, testing the edges of the limits of the bike. I mean, but that's what the best ones always do, isn't it? True. Meanwhile, Marquez was on that hot lap. That hot lap only got him to second place.

He lost it all on the three fast right-handers that sort of end the... And are at the end of the lap. What is that, like 11, 12, and 13? What is that Cavone, that horrendously fast turn on the back straight, isn't it? Yeah.

It was just interesting as he was there. But Quattroraro would claim a spot in second, and then Bez would jump to pole. So as it turned out, Bezeki, on pole position, from the home crowd, on an Italian bike, Italian on Italian bike, the whole nine yards there, followed by Alex Marquez, who would clip Quattroraro for second, putting Fabio third, then Mark would start fourth, then Morbidelli, Luca Marini on the Honda in sixth. Very, very good showing. Again, I think you're talking about Spalding saying how Honda is the dark horse to win a championship next year.

I'm seriously in line with this, given how good Marini's qualifying has been. Then Digiantonio, Benyai would be eighth, Acosta because he'd fallen with his knife. Then Furman-Altiger would be the final top 10. Uvnihoray-Martin would be 11th on the grid. So we go into the sprint.

Now Bez is going on the outside of Alex as they go through that turn one-two complex, and Bez leads. Mark was on the outside of Alex, and then he ends up becoming second as they get to turn three. So Mark gets from fourth to second. Bez goes from pole, even though Alex had probably the better start. He rides around it to lead the sprint.

So it's Bez, it's Mark, it's Digiantonio and Morbidelli. Now not a whole lot is going on in this sprint. Five laps in, it's still Bez. He's still ahead of Mark, still ahead of Alex. And then Quattrarro, who falls at turn two.

Quattrarro was mad at himself. It was a stupid mistake. I don't know if he just picked the throttle up just a smidge too soon to try to stay with the bikes in front, but he wanted to kiss them on the pavement and smacking with his hand. Total disgust gets back up and like, well, go at it again tomorrow, right? Mark did get by Bez at turn six, which was a pretty impressive pass.

Mark always has done well in that turn six area of the track. But then Mark would fall at turn 15. I want to take a moment and talk about the fans because they in the door to feed. Mark goes down, he's in the gravel trap. Now Mark did slide across the gravel sort of Superman style hands out in front and his head does bump into a tire barrier.

There is no air fence. So it wasn't a very hard hit. Obviously Mark was not hurt at all by this, but that was scary because going head first into that can't be good. Just compression on your spine and any numerous things that can happen to you. Hopefully next year there'll be an air fence there in front of that barrier.

But the fans reaction to Mark falling off, it was the middles being displayed, cheering. I mean a huge cheer that you could hear on TV had come up and I'm like, that is completely wrong. I get it. You don't like Mark Marquez because he's winning all the races. I understand.

People hated Schumacher when Schumacher was winning everything in Formula One. People hate Max when Max was winning everything in Formula One. But nobody hated him in four straight titles and nobody could really beat him. I mean Dewitt came close to having perfect seasons. He'd lose one, maybe two races and what was there only 10 or 12?

But I think it's completely uncalled for. You could not like Mark Marquez, but you don't have to display that. Nor do you cheer when he falls off into the gravel trap. I think that's completely wrong. That's not being a fan of the sport at all.

I mean I think it's wrong. I think their attitude was wrong and I think Matt Oxley had the best quote. Those people can just bugger off, but he didn't use bugger. I'm a little bit more on the fence on this one. I mean first of all I'll just say I don't like fans cheering when somebody goes down.

I mean Mark was up on his feet fairly quickly. So although he did go ahead first gym, I mean he's quite right. He went in fairly, fairly hard. I mean I wouldn't want to go into barrier head first at that speed. So I mean there is that.

I get the partisanship, but given that Mark's leading championship on a Ducati, I would have thought there might have been a little bit more goodwill developing towards him. But clearly Malaysia, what year was that? 2015. 2015. I'm going with 2015.

It still casts a long shadow. That's the only thing I can put it down to. Another journalist has pointed out, I think quite sensibly or genuinely that the camera immediately kept to Valentino Rossi, who was track side as well. Now why did it do that? We want to see Rossi's reaction to it.

Playing up this animosity and trying to still get some mileage out of it. I just don't think that's a good idea or to be honest, I don't think it's necessary. Because I mean I like a bit of needle in the sport. It helps a little bit with the pantomime and the theatre of it within reason. But I mean for goodness sake, Rossi's been retired now for quite a while.

And as we've often said, and I will never be argued against on this, Rossi's hanging around two or three seasons longer than he should have done anyway. Particularly by the time he was on the Petronas bike. So without going down that particular rabbit hole, I agree with you. It was a bit unedifying to see. I kind of understand it, but it doesn't help when the coverage is still doing its level best to amp up that animosity.

Some of the journalists get a bit kind of over the top about it in my opinion. I mean if Mark had been sort of buried in the barrier for a minute or two, and people were cheering and they were showing coverage of that, then as far as I'm concerned that's just totally out of order. But so this one was a little bit more on the fence for me. I just, yeah, there's enough drama elsewhere in the series. Perhaps not quite enough in MotoGP at the moment because of the various state of the racing.

But I mean obviously they were happy to see an Italian go back into the lead, weren't they, on an Italian bike. So you know I do understand that. But again I can't help but feel that Dawn are doing their level best to keep this thing going. When we should have moved on from it some years ago to be honest. And I have to say of the two protagonists in that particular, and I'm not a big Mark Marquez fan, I've said that many many times, I admire him greatly but I'm not like a, I don't have a 93 t-shirt when I go to a bike race, let's put it that way.

Obviously I wear my motopod t-shirt but I've never been that big of a Marquez fan. But of the two of them, the person who keeps bringing up the past is not Mark Marquez. And you've got to ask yourself why. Because I think his old history, and frankly I'm a bit bored by it now. So it's a shame that Dawn keep trying to stoke the flame.

I'm probably making myself massively unpopular by saying that. But I don't care really. I'm entitled to my opinion. That is correct. It's a dangerous thing to say in 2025 but there we go.

Okay so that's it. The sprint's over at this point. Nothing else happens. Bizecki wins it. Alex is second.

Then Digia is on the podium. Then Morbidelli, Acosta, Ahtiger, Marini, Martín and Raúl Fernández. That's it. That's the show. That's where we are.

So job done. After that we realize now that Benyaya is completely eliminated from being world champion. There's a two-horse race at this point. It is between Mark and Alex. And Alex being second did not score.

I mean this is such a redundant argument. I'm not going to go to you Jim. But they keep going about the mathematical. It's like yeah come on just look at the bloody numbers. Yes somebody's got a spreadsheet and they want to use it.

Damn it. Anyway. But Mark can then clinch at Motegi because Alex having finished second meant that he didn't score more than 10 points in the sprint. So Mark has a chance to first match point to win the world championship at Motegi as we all said he probably would. On to Sunday's race.

Now Mark shows up to the grid out on the siding lap with a soft rear tire which everybody starts talking about. Oh my god Mark's going to be on a soft tire. Blah blah blah blah blah. Oh come on people. He's just going to the grid.

He's going to change the gosh darn thing. It was a lot cloudier and cooler however. So there was a bit of chatter on the grid about who's going to do what. But this is classic Mark Marquez as well. I don't think it was a well it was clearly a bit of a deliberate move on his part to send people potentially in the wrong direction which I love.

I love that. Those kind of games I loved playing when I was riding as much as what I love watching it happen here. I mean it was fun. My big thing was as a dirt tracker it would rain. I just have the biggest smile on my face.

I would just roll up in the you know we're pit lane and everybody's there and other guys are just like uh down like smack on my back. Come on man it's raining dude let's go. This is going to be fun. And it just would mess with people. I loved it.

It was fun. I loved it too. I mean obviously it was a masterstroke of like make people at least second guess what they're thinking about doing right. I don't think Mark had ever any intention of going the distance on a soft rear. I know no way no how but anyway more drama happened on the siding lap as Jorge Martín's bike appeared to have simply stopped or broken in some fashion.

Martín could be seen trying to bump start it again as if the bike had just simply quit as if it ran out of fuel which more than likely was some form of electronics disaster that happened. They don't know you know it is Magneti Morelli on the bikes. Let's be honest Aprilia have a bit of a deserved reputation for bikes starting to not behave themselves as the season gets towards its latter stages. Very true very true. So everybody's kind of settles out on the grid.

Mark does go to a medium rear to be medium medium like everybody else that was there. Bez gets off to the whole shot followed by Mark followed by Alex followed by Quattroraro Digia and Morbidelli. Zarco and Mir crashed together at turn four. I never did ever see anything conclusive to decide if it was two individuals crashing or what had happened with that one Rich. So I hinted at this earlier on and again I picked up on this through various post sort of race reporting and podcasts and stuff.

So although Dorna were not being particularly open about it there were clearly some technical issues across the weekend and particularly on the Sunday with regards to replay coverage. Either stuff wasn't getting captured or there was obviously a glitch going on. So a number of I mean we were getting used although I personally don't like it so it feels a bit nanny state to me but we're getting used to seeing such and such as crashed come up as a little kind of thumbnail on the screen but not seeing the crash until they've decided that you know we won't be hurt or upset by seeing the replay. So we're a little bit used to that kind of new normal in the coverage but they basically didn't show any of these things and for whatever reason they couldn't and I don't quite understand technically why that would have been the case. So we didn't really see any of the crashes that happened unless they happened on the feed live as we were watching it.

We didn't see Jorge Martin doing either of his long laps that was lost. So we were watching what we were watching and there wasn't really anything else. So yes big question marks Jim about who went down and why what the circumstances were but that's yeah that's just the way it was. I think there was this statistic that the whole time Juan Mir has been on a Honda and racing for the factory he has only he's finished like less than half of the races he started. Because he didn't even start the sprint because he crashed in qualifying if you remember on Saturday morning and hurt his neck so he didn't take part in the sprint but he did start the Sunday race didn't he?

Yep he did start Sunday race. I mean he wanted to to try to get data and progress with the bike and all that good stuff. Either way Renz and Augusto Fernandez had jump starts so they would get double long laps of which we never saw those two guys going through them either. Didn't see the jump starts either. Didn't see the jump starts either.

So it's like okay well I'll take your word for it. Iagura crashed Acosta got by by by Morbidelli on an aggressive move he was fifth at that point and then Acosta got by Quattrora so he got the fourth and then Acosta's KTM then failed him as the chain self-destructed and flung itself to the moon. There is a great picture I think Simon Patterson has it on his Instagram or threads feed. Go check it out it's a picture by a photographer it has the chain coming off of the bike and going into orbit as it has been launched out of there. Apparently there's a rash of bad chains or something at KTM.

Well who knows. I've taken particular notice of this and this was specific to KTM and of course a lot of people sort of said oh are they kind of running chains multiple races and they're wearing them out because they haven't got the money blah blah blah. No it's nothing to do with that. So it's something specific to the way the KTM's because obviously this happened to Binder as well and I think it might have happened to one of the Tech 3 bikes as well over the course of the weekend. Something specific to the way that they were running the setup with the chain the a combination of the chain the ride height device and the severity of the kerbs on certain corners at Mizano just putting so much load through that you know they were just they were just breaking the chains whereas other people weren't and somebody had spotted that I think they said it was Yamaha are running quite a tight chain guard now or some mechanism to try and control the travel on the chain a little bit because again with these ride height devices if you've pointed out numerous times Jim they're so severe in the way that they engage and disengage you know it's adding another complication mechanically to some of these other components which because how often do you see chains coming off or breaking on racing motorcycles I mean it's pretty rare isn't it it's extremely rare in 500s 990s there might have been one I mean you might have seen one I mean one in the entirety of the whole 990 era yeah exactly it's just super odd but for them to do it there but I get it I mean if you're running the chain you get the ride height you got to have that you've got this as the chain's got a torque it's trying to go up as you try to drop the bike down now the pivot changes now you get this you get a whip effect you I got my hands point up like in a triangle and it's going to snap it down that that snap force down is going to be huge yeah and you know apparently maybe that's KTM is now being so super aggressive because if you're wanting to run an aggressive angle on the swing arm to help you when it flattens out because that's your pivot point and that's a weight transfer idea to get traction or something to help them etc I could see where you could easily start destroying chains without too much problem and the comparison that again somebody else mentioned which makes a lot of sense where you see bikes you know more often throwing a chain is somewhere like the Isle of Man TT sure where bikes are jumping that you know they're putting the chain through travel that is not normal and with ride height devices and severe kerbs and a setup that's maybe just a wee bit off that I think is why KTM in particular were having some difficulties so I don't think it was a budget related thing because immediately people were kind of jumping onto the social media platforms surmising that that was the issue and I'm I'm certain that's not the case but yeah Pedro doing rude gestures at his bike was rather entertaining I thought rather reminiscent of John Hopkins doing precisely the same thing to his Suzuki at Aston in I was there I was literally sat on the other side of the track and I think that was it was the last year that Aston had the long track before they neutered it butchered it into what it is today it's still a great track but 2005 maybe 2006 perhaps I can't quite remember it was a long time ago but yeah I remember yeah John giving the his Suzuki the double bird as it expired on him right in front of me it was very entertaining yeah then we got a replay of Bez losing the little front aero device it sort of hangs off of the cover of the front brakes oh yeah and then kind of I guess cleaned the air up around the wheel and the spoke there one of them broke off I'm like well great replay where's all the other cool replays as you have mentioned again that's why I sort of lift that for here and put it in here because I then you know then Peco was down mid corner with the front washing out and turned 14 and you could see the disgust on that man's face through the helmet through the dark visor that like this I can't there was a realization much like Marc Marquez had with Honda that I can't do this anymore is kind of where Peco is he's not there but you know he's really close like he stood behind the tire wall for quite some time sort of gazing onto the racetrack trying to figure out what he was going to do sort of like Marc did at Saxon Ring with the Honda yeah it was really eerily similar to each other in my mind it's almost like the Ducati's gone back to the understeering monster that it was before Dovey turned up there and Peco can't get the thing to stop the way he wants now whether that's because Marc is so good with the front end of a bike which obviously he is or is he just taking the bike to the next level and nobody else can keep up and they're having to override it and make mistakes in the in the effort I'm going to go to something that was posted by the TNT group by Neil Hodgson early in the year was how much Marc uses the rear brake to set the motorcycle going into the corner yeah you kept mentioning it this weekend actually on the TNT coverage now you say that yeah I think that Marc rides that bike in a way that is demanded of it by using the rear to have the grip of the Michelin because we know the rear grip is amazing and uses that to set the bike and gets it down to a point where he then can pivot it with the throttle you know he kind of uses the back to maybe pin the front to change the weight transfer between the two so he's kind of unloading the front a bit so taking less pressure maybe yeah doing I mean I think there's something there I think that's where it is mostly to be honest but who knows yeah interesting can I just say something Jim yeah go ahead interesting world superbike that's been very noticeable this year kind of on the same way and that is the Bautista who's really struggled with the bike partly because of the the ballast that was put on but that's kind of just accentuated a problem that was already there I think and so he rides the bike you know it's really high at the back whereas Buhlerger has the bike like several centimeters lower setting on the on the rear clearly to get more weight on the rear tire and less on the front I just yeah it's just an interesting parallel I mean it might be completely unrelated but and there's been this trend in on the Ducatis in world superbikes to sort of put more onto the rear end and it kind of feels a bit as you say that that's what Marc is doing through the rear brake to take a bit of pressure off the front whereas Peco is famously a front ender and now seems to just not be able to slow the bike down and the thing just oversteers wide as he did on Sunday when he went down because he was quite wide at that point got out onto the dirty part of the track and down he went yep very possible back to the racing action here Bez screws up on lap 12 Marc gets by going into eight Bastianini was then down at 14 we heard and at that point basically the race is pretty much done at this point there's a bit of concern as Marc gets a track limits warning and there's also the fact that towards the end Bez actually starts to take the gap that was about six tenths of a second he cuts it to about three tenths but the very next lap Marc is doing the fastest lap of the race this is never in question whatsoever at all some people will say Bez kept it interesting I'm going to tell you no it wasn't for all that and the race finishes as Marc winning Bez is second he did his Bez and then Alex is third on the podium then it's Frankie in fourth Digia is fifth Outagher comes to sixth Marini's got a seventh it's two sevenths on the weekends for Marini the Honda looking really decent at least in his hands right now then Quattro eighth Oliveira ninth which is a pretty good ride for Oliveira given all things considered he really hasn't been anywhere near the front and that happens to be this time and it wasn't really I guess there was some attrition to it but he's in the top 10 then Bender Raul Fernandez Jack Miller Jorge Martin Augusto Fernandez gets a point or two points sorry on the v4 Yamaha then Sankatrancha and Zarca was classified as 16th that's the now we got the championship standings Marc is on a 512 his brother is on 330 that's 182 points difference I think he can Marc cannot win the championship in the sprint race in Motegi Marc has to win I think the sprint and then he can win and Marc Alex can be second and he would still be champion I believe otherwise there's a million permutations if Alex is at second but it's a foredrawn conclusion I think he just asked about score Alex by like a single digit of figures I can't remember if it's like five points or three points or something across the weekend is it eight maybe it's a tiny number really it's a tiny number yeah so I mean it's not a question of if it's gonna happen it's just a question of when it's gonna happen yep and really you know Bezeky with a couple good runs has vaulted himself the fourth over Acosta Morbidelli is you know sixth can anybody catch Benyaya I mean Bezeky has a great possibility he is only eight points behind I think that's what I've taken I fully agree with you Rich provided Aprilia don't have their annual breakdown of operations in the flyaways because that has been a problem but they really having had that problem in recent seasons they really shouldn't have it this time around but Bez is yeah he's starting to look like the real deal isn't he no he really is I mean I voted for Bez for rider of the race oh I totally agree totally agree yet the fans voted for Marc that's fine we're allowed to do fans are allowed to do whatever they want um but I thought Bez just all weekend was just I don't want to say superb but you know on top of his game or it's really shown that he can lead the team my overarching feeling about Bez this weekend is that and particularly in qualifying through Cavone I didn't mention it when you were talking about qualifying but the bike was like really really twitchy and you know they're going through there at what 160 170 miles an hour probably a bit more they're a tick under 300kms okay which would be 180 maybe old money let me look at it this way if you've got a bike that's moving around quite violently underneath you at those sorts of speeds you need to be fully committed to keep on doing it and the bike it's pretty clear that the they've and we said again we touched on this last time out the Aprilia has fundamentally changed this year it's not as at the places where it used to be great but it's generally better everywhere they've had one rider who's been injured most of the year and a stand-in kind of in Salvadori who's you know with the greatest respect to the guy is not a kind of front running MotoGP rider he's a brilliant test rider and he's a solid reserve but he's not Jorge Martín and Bez who I keep having to remind myself this is his first season on the bike and he had a pretty tough few rounds as he kind of got used or semi used to the Aprilia and he's now really starting to understand the bike and it still looks pretty uncomfortable to ride at certain tracks as I say through Cavonia in particular and particularly in qualifying the whole the thing was moving around in a way that I thought looked a bit dangerous quite frankly and I was worried he was going to kind of fall off at a high speed but he's got full commitment there's absolutely no question about his commitment to do the best he possibly can and Italian on an Italian bike in Italy yeah for me rider of the weekend by a mile because that's not to take anything away from Marc Muckers but he did crash out of the lead in the sprint he didn't qualify as well as he would normally do he was fourth and okay he won the main race but you know he's been winning most of the money so whereas I think Bez is just out performing the bike a bit at the moment and it's a shame that Jorge Martín's been as injured as he has this year and you know obviously he had a problem with the bike on the warm-up lap in the main race and so where did he finish 11th or 12th was it Jorge Martín with two double long lap penalties it must be 13th or a double long lap penalty so that was a pretty good ride and you know he's clearly getting better and if he can stop falling off and hurting himself you know he'll be a contender next year probably so yeah MotoGP although the 1000cc with all this horrible aero and ride heights and bloody bloody below has become a bit of a sort of a bore fest at times I think next year could be quite an interesting championship if pretty keep on this trajectory KTM are improving there's one or two Ducatis that are doing okay one of them obviously is doing really really really well I think next year could be quite good Jim best season ever as Martin used to say yeah I don't think next year is going to be dull part of it might be because Ducati is suffering Mark Marquez syndrome because he just can simply do whatever he wants with the bike that's why we watch right I mean unfortunately the biggest intrigue next year is going to be does Mark carry on after after 26 oh yeah oh yeah I'm not convinced but I think he does and because it would add to Mark's goatness so Mark would have won on thousands right he would have won on a Honda on a Ducati then he could win on an 850 and I think he wants to do that and I think he wants to put a couple of championships between him and Rossi so that because honestly the people who are the Rossi fans will say Rossi's the goat because Rossi has one more world championship than Mark does and Mark if Mark ties it right and everybody's gonna be like well it's equal but Rossi's still better blah blah blah blah blah if Mark wins the title again in 26 he'll have one more title than Rossi and people are going eh it's one title I think he wants to put it on a pedestal so far removed that there's no way that anybody could possibly look at him and go well Rossi was better than you you know what I mean I think he's driven I think he is driven to that point that that he wants to do that so here we go then Jim if Honda continue to improve in the way that they are do you think he will go back there to finish off his career oh gosh dramatic pause yeah sorry I've not contemplated this at all ever because I never thought even though the door was open I don't think he'd go back I still think his heart is at Honda to be honest I believe that right I believe that's true and an improving HRC now obviously there's the complication of the 2027 reset and do Honda come out with a RCV 211v or do they come out with that what was it the RCV 212 was it the 800 whatever they called it you know it could go either way couldn't it we just don't know I mean if Mark does decide to soldier on and Honda look like they've reclaimed their position I kind of I could see that happening which then begs the question if Bagnier is out and Marquez leaves who would be on a Ducati in sort of 27-28 this is wild speculation but we enjoyed this yeah I don't think Mark leaves Ducati until after the 27th season if he leaves it will be after that and then if he does go it's going to be because the Honda was really close to them or the Honda almost beat them or did beat them in 26 and he's going to go there and just have that if he goes back at that point it would be a one-year deal he'd probably win a championship for Honda and close the chapter and say I'm done this is it I won one more for the people that I cared about the most or who supported me the best or however you want to say it or whatever and then he you know basically walks off into the twilight and you're never going to see Mark Marquez again yeah because for me the psychology is always an interesting aspect to some of this stuff I mean Mark got to the stage with Honda where he had to leave because he wants to beat Ross's record I mean there's clearly although he doesn't carp on about it in the press like the other one does he wants that record and like you say he probably wants to put it fairly way out of reach for anybody else for me the Ducati thing has always felt like a move of convenience to help him achieve that aim and I sort of see his heart taking him back to HRC at some point if he wants to bookmark his career I really can see that happening so he has a guaranteed ride with Ducati in 26 correct yeah I think it would be very interesting to see what happens in 26 if in 26 he doesn't have a world title another world title on a Ducati he may jump ship to try to get another one to put it on his shelf above Rossi and then again he may say you know I don't see anything that Honda's got the rules better the devil you know than the devil you don't and stay there although all the ride height devices and everything are all gone yeah they're all banned it's a massive change 27 and it's colossal in so many different ways Mark Marquez is very clearly making the difference on the Ducati and okay Alex Marquez is very strongly in second place but put Alex Marquez on a 25 bite next year he might suddenly have a a banyan kind of problem and I you know the rest of the teams are really closing in fast now with the possible exception of Yamaha but they're clearly making great efforts Honda getting better KTM are getting better Aprilia is arguably maybe not quite at the Marquez Ducati level but it ain't far off so next year is going to be tight I think the Aprilia I think is the best bike on the grid right now arguably there's a strong argument to be made that Aprilia is the best bike on the grid at this moment yeah and the only thing that's making Ducati as good as it is is Mark Marquez and the 24s that are between him and Bizecki in qualifying I mean kind of to some extent right yeah but that's really only been Alex Marquez with any regularity I mean did you and Mourbidelli pop up from time to time who else is on it I mean Aldo is a rookie so you can't really factor him in quite to the same extent and that's it isn't it I mean yeah yeah they're sort of the Ducati and Marder that we were talking about a couple of seasons ago which was a thing it's kind of yeah sunk out in the deep water at the minute as far as I can tell and that is unlikely to get better for them next year and there is this kind of overarching doubt about whether or not Marquez is going to damage them in the longer term through his sheer brilliance which is a weird thing but Honda can tell you all about it yeah there's somebody's gonna write a book about it yeah it's crazy anyway yeah no interesting thoughts yep all right well I think that's everything Rich don't you I think we're all good there I do all right with all that said folks did you have a weekend off please ride safe yeah enjoy everybody and rest in peace Charlie