MotoGP Indonesia– Aldeguer Arrives

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 That's the end of the Radio Show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 817, October 10, 2025. We're covering the Indonesian Grand Prix.

I'm hosting Jim McDowell and with me as always riding alongside Richard Jout from the UK. Richard, good evening. Good evening, Jim. We've got lots to talk about. That was an entertaining weekend in various different ways and shapes.

Many, many, many things to talk about. There's so much in this show that I think everybody better buckle up and hang on or at least get a camelback because you're going to need some refreshment during this one because wow, there's so much. I've got a beer on the go already. I'm ready to go. I've got a lemonade here.

So, you know, we're all good with that or whatever. So I want to thank everyone who listens to the show, everybody who subscribes to the show, everybody who donates to the show. I want to thank you so much for all that. Just remember guys, we need you to help us get through and cycle up to the top of the algorithms. So if you can, it may not be the easiest thing to do is what Jake Roller said.

They will actually find a way to comment or put a note on a podcast. If you can, please do. If you can't, that's fine. Just share on social media. When we post up a pod, tell your friends, everybody that it's out there and let them go look for it.

So appreciate that. I have one shout out. Made some friends over the weekend, Rich from Pennsylvania. They were into the road racing scene, motorcycle scene and talked about the podcast and they found out that they were fans of Marc Marquez. So I hope you guys listen to the podcast.

She said you were going to. So shout out to you guys. Enjoy the weekend with you and hope you enjoy the show. Take care of that. Nice.

So as you say, Rich, you wear your gear and people make all kinds of interesting comments about you. You never know who you're going to bump into. Always keep the business card and the sticker handy. Absolutely. As you're older.

So with that one other piece of like listener feedback, this was from Michael Leety. I hope I got that right, Michael. It's just that this past October 2nd, I believe, right, Rich? October 6th. Sorry, the 6th.

Sorry, I'm sorry. This October 6th, Jim Race would have been would be 63, I believe, or turning 60th. Not sure kind of what really happened, but I just want to say that, Jim, wherever you are, I hope that you're listening and I hope that Rich and I are doing a good enough job for you. Jim was sort of the standard. He brought a lot to the show and there's been many people before us, Rich, there'll be people after us.

Yeah. It's just this. This is just our turn behind the bars. And just as long as we're doing Jim proud, I'll be okay with it. When I started listening to the show, it was when Jim and Jules were kind of like front and center.

Martin was, I guess, in and around it then and then Dave came shortly afterwards. So yeah, I started MotoPod with... Harry. Yeah. That was a little bit late one again, I guess, wasn't it?

But certainly Jim Race was the main guy, the sort of the bullion one. Jules was that very much more kind of down to earth kind of a guy I always used to feel and Jim was kind of a bit out there and I loved that. And as Michael Leek said, those famous kind of interviews with Miller. Yeah, Bart Miller. And yeah, it just made me sort of reminisce a little bit because we kind of...

You do forget, don't you? Because years have gone by and we don't know what happened to other Jim and I guess we'll never know, but it's nice to remember people. So it was great that Michael took the trouble and also Michael saying that he's been there since day one. It's crazy to hear that. When Bob started the thing off.

So I mean, really brilliant. I mean, I certainly haven't been around that long because as I say, I started listening, I guess around about 2012, 2013, I think it would have been somewhere around about. Hard to remember back. It's quite a long time ago now. Yeah, just nice to remember people, fallen comrades and stuff and wherever he is, we hope he's sort of doing okay either in this world or the next.

So yeah, happy birthday, Jim. All right. With that, Rich, let's just delve into the news and talk about what we know. So let's start with preseason testing dates have dropped. So market calendars, people, the shakedown test happens the 29th through the 31st of January that then there is the CPound test three third through the fifth of February.

Then the season launch happens on the sixth through the seventh of February. And the Buriram test happens on the 21st through the 22nd of February, assuming that we're talking either that first weekend of March or possibly to be the first race of the year there in Thailand. Yeah. So that is where things are with that. So, you know, there is no offseason now, Rich.

Well, exactly. I was just about to say that. I mean, it's three months, isn't it? Effectively. When is the last MotoGP race?

I'm trying to think. It's right around US Thanksgiving. Balancer in mid November. It's early mid November. So yeah, I mean, long gone are the days of, you know, half a year of racing and half a year of not.

We won't get into it now. It's possibly one for the offseason. But, you know, is the season too long? Is there not enough time? I mean, it's good for people that like to watch the racing.

I mean, you know, we're like pigs in the proverbial SH, you know what? But for the everybody that's involved in actually putting the show on the road, it's a grueling calendar, isn't it? Yeah. When we were doing the triple headers, that was grueling. That was enough to break me.

And set to get bigger, according to what we were talking about last week. I mean, what are we at? Twenty one, twenty two rounds. They're talking about twenty five. I mean, it's almost to the stage where how the hell do you get an off season into that, really, of any sort of meaningful use?

Yeah. Ridiculous. I'm of the look that like, hey, racing's great and I'm all for it. But there needs to be some time for the crews and everybody else to be at home, honestly. And I always thought the right number, and maybe this is just because when I came into the sport was they had between fifteen and eighteen rounds in a season.

I thought that was about right. OK, we stretched it to twenty. I'm good. OK, that's fine, because you can do some double headers, have a weekend off, double header, have weekend off. You're staying relevant to this, to it.

But I don't want it to be like Moto America in the US where they have maybe ten weekends and it's a month off in between. It's not it doesn't stay current. In today's society. I'm sorry, it just doesn't stay current. You need to be current.

Every weekend, but every other weekend, you know, and hey, let's have a summer break, right, which is fine. But yeah, it started twenty five is because that's if there's twenty five, that's fifty races for Moto GP. Yeah. And obviously it brings into question, particularly with Moto GP with, as you say, the sprint as well as the main race. You know, if you get injured, there's just no time to recover.

Really. I mean, we've already seen this. I mean, Indonesia this week, we can just go on as a good example. Several riders missing. And it just isn't time to rest and recuperate now.

And, you know, in my ideal world with Liberty in charge of World Superbike and Moto GP, I can't see why they can't kind of keep Moto GP where it is or even shrink it slightly. I know that's almost like a heresy to say that. But say 20 rounds and take World Superbike, which is, you know, again, has these crazy long gaps and is basically only running by one or two races in Europe. So we increase that a little bit. I have them visiting different venues, not kind of having weekends where they clash, which does happen quite regularly during the season, albeit there aren't that many World Superbike races.

Yeah, to me, they ought to be promoting both series properly and avoiding clashes and making the most of everything that they've got. I know Moto GP is the premier class and it will always be that. Everybody knows that and everybody accepts that. It's always been the case. But I do think they're kind of, you know, squeezing a court from a pipe pot on that one.

And as you say, go back years gone by, you maybe not in bike racing, but again, with the old Formula One cap temporarily on, you know, you literally had separate teams that were involved in testing and then you had the race crews and stuff. And so they were able to because money was not restricted in those days, they could run these big separate teams. And it's almost we've touched on this before. It almost feels like you need separate teams now for Moto GP so that some people do get some downtime because I mean, flipping out, people have families for goodness sake. I mean, these guys and girls are away three quarters of the year pretty much.

It's not great. I have this wild idea. It just kind of came to me right now. It was we were talking about how maybe the Moto 2 and Moto 3 guys weren't going to be traveling the world from a financial standpoint. How about this craziness?

I'm just I'm throwing this out here. Let's make an assumption. This is based on one assumption. The assumption is that Liberty will change World Superbike from a 1000cc to let's call it a 600 or 700cc max capacity kind of and make it a very super sporty thing, right? Based more on a super sport rules or a super stock kind of rules.

I think that's where it's going. Yeah. So if they do that in twenty seven, how about you have a world championship where you got flyaways with the World Superbike and Moto GP running on the same weekend. So you come to Kota, I see World Superbike and I see World and I see Moto GP. I can easily tell you the difference between the two bikes, right?

Yeah. I think you'd be fantastic because it makes the World Superbike a world championship because we've looked at the calendar and commented how it's in Europe. So it's more of a European championship. Yeah. So I think it'd be I think it's kind of like why not?

It seems to be like the right idea. But I'm hijacking the news with ideas. No, no, no. I think it's a eminently sensible idea. I know Moto GP twenty seven onwards is set to become a little bit less sort of space age in terms of all these gizmos and appendages and stuff, but it's still Moto GP, right?

So I mean, it's still going to be not the sort of thing that you race on Sunday and pop down to the dealer and buy on the Monday. So having some crossover into a more production based category running at the same time, at least at some rounds, to me makes an awful lot of sense. Yeah. I understand why it hasn't happened before, to be honest with you. And we do get that the Moto two and Moto three teams are a bit stretched financially and a twenty five race calendar may just be beyond the means from a sponsorship standpoint quite apart from the logistics of it.

So if you could fill some of those slots, particularly on some of the more distant destinations that we go to with an expanded production series like World Superbike, particularly if it goes more super sporty. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, Jim. I think that's a great, great idea. Well, some of you think folks run in Moto podcast, Moto podcast dot com, whether you like my idea or not. Let's continue down the Moto GP theme here with the next bit of news that Mark Marquez after the weekend, he had the crash.

We'll talk about the crash and dissect it later. But he has a fracture at the base of the core adequate process. Now I had no clue what that was. You know what I did. I asked my wife, she looked at me.

It's a shoulder blade. Yeah. OK. He's sort of cracked his shoulder blade and he has ligament injury also to that same right shoulder. Now, none of that has anything to do with his humerus bone.

There's no problem whatsoever with that. He will miss the next two rounds as he as he is recuperating and letting the fracture heal on its own because no surgery was determined to be required. But he's going to miss Australia, which that's going to kill him because Mark loves the island. He's not going to really care about the bank because he's never really done well there. It's not one of his favorite tracks like a mandala is not one of his favorite tracks either.

So, you know, so that's going on with him. But I have to say, I am glad that he has, as he had told him, Jorge Martin, you need to rest. You got to stay off the bike. You got to recuperate. You need to do this for you, for your body, for your health, for all this.

If he would have gotten some surgery and been back on the bike at the island, I would have been severely angry with him other than if he was in a title race, I would have granted a pass, a hall pass for it. But there was no need for him to be back. So stay home, recuperate, rest, get it to where the doctors say, yep, we're OK, then come back. And if that isn't until testing after Valencia, so be it. Yeah, I think he's opened and closed a few too many windows to make that mistake again, Jim, to be honest.

And he doesn't need to race, does he? So why put yourself through it, particularly on the flyaways, because you're putting your body through strain anyway, just with the travel, never mind the healing process. I mean, the slightly more concerning part of the injury is actually, I would imagine and again, your wife would be in a better position to comment on this than I am, but is the ligament damage bit because ligaments around shoulders can be very, very tricky. You certainly don't want to push those harder than necessary too early on, because that's ended more than a few races careers. Take Maverick Vinales as a good recent example.

I mean, he's really struggling to come back, having mess his shoulder up in that crash at the Saxon ring. What was that all the way back in July? So July, August time. I mean, it's quite a while ago now, considering how often these guys come back really, really quickly because they are obviously super fit athletes and they do recover very quickly. But yeah, so it makes sense for Mark to sit a couple of races out because it's funny, isn't it?

You know, he goes all season without too many crashes and keep keeping out of trouble. And then as soon as he's won the championship, this happens. But at least he's won the championship, you know, coming back maybe for the Valencia round, the final round, it's just a little drive down the road for him, isn't it? It just makes sense to go the sensible route now. I mean, it's good to as you I think insinuated, James, he's a bit older and a bit wiser having made a few too many mistakes like this in the past and well done for keeping it together when I made my windows joke.

I plowed on through despite you laughing. It was so funny. Oh, so funny. Oh, okay. So speaking of other injured riders, Jorge Martín will spend the next few days at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center in Austria to focus on his recovery.

And so I mean, Red Bull has got this amazing facility there with the top flight doctors and their physical therapists and everything that you need to recover. They're used to dealing with high performance athletes. So it's a really good place for him to go to get himself back to get over all of his injuries. You know, for him to be there for a few days, week, whatever it's going to be. The market is starting to thin down now.

So in that news for Moto 2, Dennis Anciu has been confirmed at Mark VDS. So that is where he is going. Okay, great. Also in the now moving to Moto 3, Casey O'Gorman, who came in and subbed was that the Hungara Ring? That not hangaring with the Hungry Round or whatever Gorman came in and ran to you.

He ran a couple of races, didn't he? When the Nata was out with his broken leg post-Assen, I think it was when he picked up that injury. Yep, somewhere around there. And he was very good. So he has been signed to the sick 58 course of squat.

So good to see an Irishman back in the racing. All right. Well, I mean, we've passed comment just recently about how toughen of an environment that team is. So, I mean, obviously, given the opportunity as a full time ride, and it is as much as you can take this ever as being true, but it is a two year deal as things stand. So he's got time to establish himself, but he obviously showed really, really well, didn't he, Jim?

On those couple of sub rides. I mean, he's done very, very well in Britain over the years. So yeah, I mean, it's good to see another fast Brit making it into Moto 3 because it's a tough hole, as is the case for the Americans as well. It's tough to get into this championship. There's not a lot of money behind people to support these moves.

So I'm hopeful, but he is in a tough team there. If he doesn't perform, senior Simencelli will make his feelings known, no doubt. Through a blog. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Okay. Last thing is an injury related Moto 3 rider. And that is that David Munoz will have Munoz will have a has a fracture in his left femur. The assumption here is that he is done for the year considering the largest bone in the body, which is sad because of the, you know, that came from the crash that happened obviously this week past weekend.

So yeah, yeah, there was quite the craziness going on in Mandelica for sure. We will come to the reason for that injury, I guess, when we talk about the race, because it was a pretty poor move. So ironic that it should have been on David Munoz of all people that comes off second vest, but I'm not suggesting that there's any sort of right or wrong about that. But it's just funny the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. And quickly with World Superbike, it is the Esterel round, which is in Portugal and it is possible for top rack to take the title this weekend.

So keep your eye on that one, folks. Yeah. So it's this weekend and then they finish off a week or two after that in Jerez. So top rack has a not a comfortable points lead. I mean, Boulogne can still win the championship, but top rack's got some comfort level there.

For me, I kind of would like him to win the title. Nothing against Boulogne. I mean, Boulogne's had a really great season too. But I think if top rack comes to MotoGP as the reigning triple World Superbike champion, that would be pretty cool, I think. So for people to come from World Superbike to MotoGP, I think it's helpful if they come as a champion or the current champion.

So I've kind of got my fingers crossed for him a bit on that one. So one question here. Top rack first won his title on what brand of motorcycle? Yamaha. A Yamaha, okay.

And now he's back at Yamaha. No, no. So he won it on the Yamaha. Yeah, the BMW. BMW.

So he won the championship on the BMW last year. Right. And he's defending on the BMW this year. Before he goes back to Yamaha and MotoGP. I thought he'd gone back to Yamaha for this season of World Superbike.

No. Okay. My back is like, wow, if you win three titles on three different bikes, that would make you in some elite, very elite in any World Championship because nobody's ever really done it. In World Superbike, I don't think anybody's won on three different brands. No.

Nobody's done it in MotoGP, which is why I want Marquez to move to GTM or something at some point, just to prove it can be done. Anyway, that's it. That's the news, right? We're all good. Everybody's caught up.

Let's move into qualifying from the weekend. We'll start with, of course, the little bikes, the Moto3 class. Now the qualifying here, qualifying one, it was the qualifying was seemed to be like it was weirdly, basically boring in Moto3, which is weird, which doesn't make really any sense. But it was Rossi, Panini, Rolston, Lunetta, Pironi and Moodly are the kind of the names that are in there that you're thinking, wow, those guys usually are one or more of those guys are generally in the second session already. They were not there.

Now, Pironi was not going to take part in the qualifying session and would not take part in the race. He was declared unfit due to a crash that he had. So he was unable to do what he needed to do to pass fit to be able to ride. But at the end of the 15 minutes, Moodly, Lunetta, Rolston and Pini all got a ticket to go to Q2. Now in Q2, they waited around for a little bit before anybody wants to go out, which is weird and whatnot.

That would go to haunt some people because halfway through, Kylis was on top, followed by Fernandez, Rueda, then Rolston, Almanza and Lunetta. Now, when we got past that, we had like everybody was waiting to go back out again. Like everybody was looking to back time it to be like the last person to get to the finish line. And there were some big names that really were trying to get there and they couldn't because they left too late in the pit lane, which I just I cannot understand how we cannot figure out how to back time when you have to go down the pit lane. I just do not get it, Rich.

I don't you send your guy out on a bike, you take a stopwatch, you click it, you see how long it takes him to get to the end of the pit lane, click and then you figure, OK, if let's say the lap for average lap time is a minute 40 for a Moto3 bike, well, guess what? It's going to be closer to almost two minutes to get around because you've got cold tires. You would think so you add the two together, subtract from the 15 minutes you've got and you go out at that time. I'm sorry. We've spoken about this until we blew in the face.

We don't understand something here and clearly the teams do not understand something either. I'm not so sure it's the teams that are the problem because in this instance, everybody sort of kind of left within a reasonable amount of time to make that point. There was some lollygagging by the riders. That's the problem in this one. It's like, come on, guys, you're there to ride the bike.

Go ride the bike. This I got to have a tow thing. This I got to be following somebody or I want clear track and I don't want anybody following me. Just get over it. Get out there and get on with the job that you have to deal with.

That's one of the things I can't wait to. I mean, I can't wait till we get to the 500 or 700 displacement class here. We can get away from this idea of having to have a partner to draft with because I need those couple of tents because the straightaway is really long here or whatever it is. Right. But that's the bizarre thing at Mandelica though.

There isn't really a long straight. So the tow is not really a thing there. Of all the places that you don't want to be sat around in full leathers and a helmet, you would have thought they'd have been desperate to get out. I mean, not that you get much relief from the air in that part of the world anyway, because it's so bloody hot and humid. Yeah.

Sitting around in the pits, fully leathered up and stuff. It must have been just nightmarishly hot. That second sector is a fast flowing sector that leads into the third, which is kind of fast and flowing too. So I can understand having like a reference point to kind of go with there because the track is so wide. It's very wide track, but then it has a mile of pavement on each side of it, which how do you really know where your marker is per se?

Right. I mean, so, so I'm not justifying it. I'm just saying I can understand it a little bit here just because of the circumstances of this place. But there are some riders that generally just go out and do laps on their own and just run their lines, just get faster each lap. I'm surprised more riders in major three don't do it.

Anyway, who knows? But we talk about this often, don't we? And this nonsense of hanging around and then missing the flag is just, well, it's comical really. Yeah. So one with like essentially like one lap basically to be left to go.

Fernandez was on pole with Munoz second, then Kelso, Carpe, Furusato and Quiles. Now, as it turned out, a lot of guys just did sneak in to get that last lap past the time sheet. But nobody was faster than Fernandez as he would take the pole. Munoz was starting in the middle of the front row. Kelso jumped up from where he was or sorry, he stayed in third.

That was there. And then it's Carpe, Furusato, Quiles, Amanza, Luneta, then our championship leader, Rueda, and then Guido Pini, Picaris Foggia making up the first four rows of the grid. So I was like, OK, right. Well, now we get to get into the racing. Now, what we need to understand is that Rueda has an opportunity to clinch the world title here in Mandalica.

It's really kind of simple math. After this round, there's four races left at 25 points. That's 100 points. All Rueda's got to do is have 100 points or more lead over Picaris and he's got it. The simple math to all this is that if Rueda wins and Picaris is third, the title is his.

Now there's a whole bunch of other permutations, but that's the simple math. You can figure the rest of it out from there. So we get to the start and there was some serious jostling back and forth for these guys to the first three, four corners of the lap. It was really wild. I had to wait for things to settle out a little bit before I could figure out and put on paper who was where.

It was really some amazing racing there through the first few corners as everybody was all over everybody. It settled into Kelso leading from Munoz, from Fernandez and then Quiles, then Carpe and Picaris. Rueda, a terrible start. He was down in ninth to begin with, but he was farther even back. He was 13th.

So I'm on a Rueda watch because we've seen Rueda win from way back. So who knows what's going to happen here in this one. So we'll see what goes on. Munoz and Fernandez had taken control of the race and turn 10 as they got together. Now Munoz is banging on the bar as they come out of that turn where they've come together and it was like his brake guard on the front had come up.

So Munoz had just beaten that thing back into position. So good on him for that one. It was a true bar banging race at that point because we got everybody touching everybody and things are just crazy going on. But Fernandez is out front followed by Quiles, then Almanza, then Munoz, Picaris and Kelso. Now Rueda is 10th and he's 1.2 seconds off of the lead, which is not far in terms of Moto 3.

So this is looking good. Then Munoz is around the outside of Picaris, cuts off his front end and Picaris goes wide. Then Kelso is down at 16. He lost the rear. It's looked like to me he just missed the line by a millimeter or two.

That rear got out on the dusty dirty part of the track and it just spun out from underneath of him. And there's a lot of other instances like that but I'll say it here. I'm wondering if this track, due to the hard carcass tires that they have to use because the heat, the humidity and the lack of use of the circuit, meaning it's dirty, coupled with the salty sea air that somehow wreaks havoc at Mizano every now and then. Is this track, Rich, the new Qatar where we used to have all the problems with the dew settling as that night race happened? What do you think?

Yeah, well, certainly it's one of the tracks where they frequently talk about and you can see if you go off that kind of bit of rubber that gets laid down as the laps go on over the course of the weekend, you are going to lose either a lot of time or you're going to lose the front or the rear of the bike. And as you say, Jim, I mean, you can see the waves crashing quite spectacularly onto the sort of the shoreline, not too far away. So that must have some effect. I mean, I did have that thought myself watching it over the course of the weekend and you do see a very distinct kind of dark line building up over the weekend and it is treacherous if you stray away from that. So, I mean, it must be a thing, mustn't it?

In the same way that, I mean, in Qatar, you get the sand blowing on to those parts of the track where the bikes are not typically running along. So again, if you sort of stray onto that, you're in bother. We don't see this at most of the European tracks because they're in the middle of big land masses and outside of incumbent weather. You just don't get these other sort of curve ball effects, do you? So, yeah, to me, and I say this as an armchair enthusiast, of course, it introduces a sort of a level of interest.

I don't want to use the word jeopardy because I insinuate I'm looking forward to people sort of running into trouble, which I'm not. But it does put an extra demand on the riders for sure to try and keep things sensible, which in Moto3, you sort of say with a certain degree of laughter on your face, don't you? Because these guys typically don't keep it sensible. Adrian Fernandes was just on a bit of a mission this weekend, quite what the mission was. I mean, it's up for debate because I think it was him that ran into Munoz early on to cause the whole brake lever or brake guard thing to be sort of a whack, which resulted in Munoz giving it a whack to try and get it back into position.

So a bit of a kind of crazy racetrack this. But it always runs up some pretty entertaining races because it was a good weekend across all three classes, I thought. Yeah, for sure. Back to where we were here in Moto3, we're like about lap seven or so. Keeley's moves to the front.

He's leading now. Ruraita now starts to slowly work his way and do some magic that he seems to have. He started out in lap eight at seventh. He's gotten from tenth to seventh in a couple of laps. He gets to lap nine.

He'd moved to fifth. Then he was the third with everybody else diving underneath everybody else and pushing everybody offline. Ruraita just simply floated on by past everybody and he just made it look simple. He made it look easy and it was quite amazing to watch him work. It's like you understand why this kid has the potential of being world champion and why he's so good.

It's just there. For me, I thought Pedro Acosta was a great Moto3 rider. I mean, he was, right? Then you had Alonso, right? He won so many races and Alonso tend to win them sort of in the last couple of laps, right?

He was always in the lead train, the lead group, right? And I thought, well, he's like, he's patient and he just knows and he boom turns the wick up. Gotcha. Ruraita is a different individual. I think he may be the most patient Moto3 rider I've ever seen.

He completely is non-Flamix if something bad happens at the start. I mean, if you watch the start again, you see he just simply is patient. He's like, okay, a little more break here. I'm going to turn in. Got this.

Oh, you've gone by. No problem. Hey, okay. I'm going to slot in here. I'm going to see what's going on.

Let everybody kind of get the crazy out of the way. And then he just methodically just picks up the pace and just rolls through the field. He has this internal clock of somehow knowing when he needs to go and push. And it's amazing to watch him work in that way. It's so different from from way Acosta did it from the way Alonso did it.

Right. But it's one of the coolest ways for me. You know, I don't know. Maybe it's the X racer. I wish I could have been that good.

But the way Ruraita goes about this is fascinating, especially these last races. He is not qualified well, really for the last four or five. He's had decent each starts to be quote in the top 10 and then simply just slowly rides through to the front. You never see it coming because there's no flashes, no fastest laps. There's nothing else.

And you're usually enthralled by the battle that's going on out in front anyway. And all of a sudden, boom, here comes Ruraita. There's another win. Fascinating. We've made the comparison with Lorenzo.

I don't really remember Lorenzo on one, two, fives as it would have been back then. I mean, I did watch it back in those days, but Ruraita is I mean, they're all incredibly fast. Obviously, they're in Moto three. But what he is is just kind of and it almost sounds like I'm sort of damning with false praise. And I'm not.

He's fast and steady, which most of them are not. They're sort of fast and crazy. Whereas, as you say, he doesn't panic and he has a real knack of just kind of staying out of trouble. But when he needs to pull the pin, he kind of can. And he's particularly effective once he gets out front, if he's allowed to run some laps, which is why so many people try to follow him in practice and qualifying, for example.

Again, I will always reserve judgment on Moto three champions until they've either started to do well or not in Moto two, because I think it's such a big jump to Moto two. If you can't make it, you're unlikely to succeed in Moto GP. So I think we have to reserve judgment a bit. But as a Moto three racer this year, he's been devastatingly good. But I mean, we said the same about Alonso.

We said the same about Acosta. Yeah, I mean, he is well, I won't jump too far ahead, but he's been head and shoulders the best all year long, really, despite some slightly patchy form just of late. But again, he hasn't panicked in the recent races and he's banked a lot of points, even though he hasn't won a lot of races. So you can't really ask for more. Yep.

It's been great. So you're at like lap 10, Picaris is in 10th place. It is amazing racing at this point. I mean, everybody's going somewhere, passing somebody, and it doesn't matter where it is on the track. You don't know where to look.

You don't know where to look in the pack. One of the best Moto three races of the year, I thought this one was myself personally, just because of everything that was going on. It's really crazy. By lap 13, Rueda is now in the lead. Shocking.

He's by Fernandez. Now, Killies and Fernandez go wide at 16. Rueda is like wide at 16. And then Rueda just slices back up the inside. So Rueda is way on the outside.

Here comes Fernandez and Killies. They're on the inside. And then boom, they're wide. And somehow Rueda knew this was going to happen. He just cut to the inside.

I swear, I think he had to have had eyes in the back of his helmet. Because it just, how did he know? But again, this is what makes this kid on another level of special from all the other ones. We always go back and we talk about the Moto three guys and stuff. We sort of say, well, Acosta was special.

Yeah, that was easy to see. Alonso is special. Well, that's easy to see. But this is a different subtle kind of special that Rueda really does have. And again, holding back the judgment of what's going to happen to him when he's on a bigger bike.

But man, he's got a great foundation to work from. That much I will give you. He has great racing instincts, that's for sure. So he kind of knew what was going to happen there. So he second guessed it, didn't he?

And it took advantage when what he thought was going to happen actually happened straight away. So yeah, no, no, he's a very effective Sunday racer. Yeah. So for Asado, Almanza and Carpe, there's like a crash there at 16. Now, for Asado, well, it goes under Carpe and then they go slightly wide.

And then Almanza goes up under and then he contacts with them. And then they all go down sort of in a hump. Now, Carpe smacked his head viciously as he went over as his bike, don't you kind of slid into his bike and that forced his bike to kick him up and throw him over the handlebars on a high side. And he came down and just went the whap on the back of that helmet. I'd be surprised that helmet wasn't cracked.

That pit was quite vicious, quite vicious there. But with 15 laps in the books, Rueda is leading Munoz, leading Fernandez, Kylis, Picaris and Lunetta. That would give him the world title because Picaris is farther back down than third. But Kylis and then Picaris get a long lap penalty because of a shortcut they took at turn nine. Now, in lap 17, Picaris then takes the penalty.

Kylis doesn't take the penalty, which he's supposed to, but he hasn't taken it yet. So Kylis immediately goes to the long lap, but you've got three laps to do it in. And so Kylis stays on the track, stays on the track. And we get with three to go. Munoz goes to the front.

He's now at the front. He's by Rueda and then Fernandez goes with him. So we move Rueda back toward the third. Fernandez then goes up the inside of Munoz at 12, at turn 12. And then Munoz has a nasty crash as Fernandez basically just, it's a Winner or Bennett move, smashes into him.

And that flips Munoz over the handlebars, causing that fractured femur that we talked about. At the beginning of the show. Now, at that time, that happens. They're going on to two laps to go. Kylis then goes to the long lap penalty loop to take his penalty, which is at the correct time because it's three laps have passed.

So he's going to the box. Fernandez and Rueda are going after each other and Lunetta and Pini. So that's there. Then it goes to a red flag. Because Munoz is injured, right?

They need medical attention because femurs, and you break a femur, that can be really bad because you can't cut one of the major arteries. If you had a compound fracture of the bone, you can cut one of the major arteries in your body and you will bleed to death from the result of a broken bone. So good on Simon Kreyfarr and the team to just go throw the flag. Now, this leads to a bit of controversy as Rueda now wins because he's out front. Kylis believes that he's technically second and they put his bike in second in Park for May.

That's not the case because he still hadn't taken the long lap penalty when the red flag was put out. So they gave him like a three second penalty, which dropped him down the list. So it's basically we get the race podium is Rueda, world champion because Picaris was nowhere close to him. Lunetta, who had snuck up along the way and through the attrition of all the crashing that's happening to end the race is in second. Then Guido Pini is third on the podium.

Then it's Kylis because of the time penalty, he gets dropped back to fourth. Then Rolston Fernandez, Picaris, then Yamanaka, NEPA, Kelso, Burtelli, Foggia, Moodley, Morelli and Eddie O'Shea gets the last point. A crazy ending to a crazy good race. It's a shame Munoz is hurt and I get that. But still, Rich, I thought great race, great race by Rueda.

He is world champion. He goes out. He captures the world championship with a win, which I think most people would like to do. Not just they rode around to get the points. I won and won the championship.

So congratulations to Rueda, your 2025 Moto3 world champ. Well deserved. Been the best rider in Moto3, consistently the best all year long. At the end of the day, it's over 100 points lead that he's got now. So you can't argue with the points, can you?

No. What else to say really? I mean, Fernandez had a bit of a Fernandez day, didn't he really? And I mean, we haven't really sort of touched too much on that incident with Munoz, but he basically just ran a line where he should have known another bike was going to be there. I mean, obviously because of the way, the sort of the messy end to the race, there was no penalty given for that.

But I'm quite confident he will have a penalty to serve in Philip Island as a result of that. Munoz, as you say, Jim, he's definitely done for this season. I mean, in a way, it doesn't matter too much because the championship is now in Rueda's hands. And, you know, again, with Quiles in mind, that was just kind of crappy timing, really, wasn't it? It was a bit unfortunate, but I don't imagine Quiles is going to lose too much sleep over it because these guys just are only interested in winning races and winning championships, aren't they?

And he did have the good grace, don't know if he spotted it, as he sort of trudged slightly crestfallen at the pit lane. He did hand his second place cap over to somebody to take back down to part for him, to give to Lunetta, who inherited that place. But not inherited, he obviously won it according to the rules. So the only other thing that I thought was just noteworthy and wouldn't normally get a mention, but Jacob Rulston in fifth place, who is without a ride next year, let's not forget. That's true.

That was a very, very good position and a good result for him because, I mean, he definitely deserves to stay in Moto3 next year. If he's out of Tech 3, as we know, most places are taken, but I'm hoping that he will get picked up by another team. He definitely deserves a bit more time because he's had quite a bit of bad luck this year as well, with engine failures or technical failures anyway, and some strong performances. So that was another one on Sunday. And Kelso obviously crashed, got back on and finished in 10th place.

So again, fair play. Furusato crashed and then remounted and immediately crashed again. So there is some debate about whether riders having crashed should be able to get back on the bike. Not a debate for now. Again, that's perhaps one for another day, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But fair play to Kelso. Because again, in that heat and that humidity, you haven't gone down, it would be easy to sort of go and jump in the ice pool and just cool off a little bit. But no, fair play. He got back on the bike and got a good finish in the end. But yeah, just congratulations to Rueda, who has continued to embarrass me all season long because I completely missed him off my list of people that I thought were going to be in contention for the championship.

I'm pretty sure I said I thought Picaras would win the championship this year. And okay, he's in a strong second place, it's true. But he has had an overall disappointing season, I would say. He moves on to Moto2 next year, so I don't think he really cares. Well, no, I mean, obviously you have to move on at this point and hope to do better.

Yeah, I mean, it's been a disappointing season, I think, really for Picaras. So Rueda, he's going to Tech3 to partner Vire, right? Yeah. So he's going there as the world champion for Moto3. Sorry, not Tech3.

No, it'll be the I.O. team. The actual I.O. team. It's the I.O.

team. My bad, sorry. So Rueda goes to the I.O. team as Moto3 world champion. He's got 340 points, which is 109 more than what Picaras has.

There's only 100 points left, so you can do that math real simply. After him, it's Kielis, who has the best point reward ratio of anybody, considering he couldn't start two races because of his age and set two races due to injury. And he's third. And he's only 14 behind Picaras. And I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't take Picaras for second.

I wouldn't be surprised either. Yeah, especially with the last two rounds being in the Iberian Peninsula. I look for Kielis just to win those out pretty much. Because I don't think Rueda cares anymore now. I mean, he might if he...

I don't know what he's going to put into it, but I'd be on vacation mode for sure. Munoz is the question mark here because he's on 197 points. Kielis is 38 points behind, but Munoz is not going to probably ride for the last four races of the year. No, I think he's done. If Kielis can be in the top five, he probably has a good chance of being fourth in the championship.

Yeah, it's possible. Not that he will take much pleasure from doing it with a rider that's out injured. But yeah, Munoz's fourth place is a bit vulnerable, I would say. The only thing that we didn't mention earlier on, Jim, I just noticed in my notes is that, and this is kind of like a news item, but Almanza was confirmed to go over to the intact GP Moto3 squad alongside Munoz next year. So basically, Almanza and Pini have swapped teams because Pini goes to Leopard, and Almanza replaces him in the intact team.

So I forgot that one. Yeah, kind of got mentioned on the TNT coverage and I forgot to write it in the notes, to be honest. But I just spotted it on my written notes. So yeah, an entertaining Moto3 race with a slightly messy, disappointing end, all told, really, because it was building up to a bit of a crescendo, that one. And obviously the red flag had to come back, but it was a shame, really, because that was building up to something special.

Anyway, there we go. I think 2016 would have been really fantastic. Yeah, because that just invites trouble. Sure does. All right, let's move on to Moto2 and look at how Les guys qualify.

In the first session is Vietti, Guevara, Roberts, Lopez, Kinet, again, Solac and Agis. Now there's some guys who really shouldn't probably be there, but lo and behold, there they are. Agis was down at turn one, and that was a problem. Solac almost down. I mean, he was really close, because he clamped down really hard on the front and then went down.

Halfway through Solac, it was good enough to be getting out with Guevara, Juarez and Vietti. With about a minute and 50 left to go, Escreage went to pole, or to the fastest person, I should say. And that was pretty wild. Then he was followed by Vietti and Kinet, who were outside looking in. But at the very end, you had Escreage, Solac, Guevara and Vietti all get to the next session.

It was a bit of a botch up there, because people, again, didn't quite have it all together right. Some people were sitting and they were thinking, people are going to go faster than you, but they didn't do it, because Escreage didn't have another lap left. He rolled out and didn't go for a final lap. I thought for sure Escreage was not going to get through, but he made the forward look pretty good for that weekend, or at least for that moment in time. In the second qualifying session, Gonzal has got a time scrubbed because of yellow flags in the first sector, as he was trying to go super quick, couldn't because of that problem.

Halfway through, Alonso is ahead of Holgardo, ahead of Ramirez. It's the CF Modo team, which is Aspar, right? So the Aspar boys are 1-2, pretty wild. Then Ramirez, Moreira, Guevara and then Sasaki. Now Gonzales goes to second.

It's like, okay, cool, gets game on here with Moreira. But Guevara is then second because he bumps Gonzales. Then as we're watching that, we got a red helmet coming from Moreira, who then shoots up to pole because he's like the fourth fastest guy. Now he just jumps everybody to get to there. So then it's Alonso, so then it's Moreira on pole, followed by Alonso, then Guevara, then Gonzales.

Holgardo gets himself bumped back to fifth place in that second row. Then Ramirez, Vier, Dixon and Baltis. So that's how that goes down for the qualifying session. Anyhow, we get into the Modo 2 race. And the interesting, we got 22 laps here.

When it starts off, it's Guevara who hops out front, followed by Moreira, Holgardo and Alonso, then Gonzales. Now Gonzales gets by Alonso at 12. Then Ramirez is down at 16. Him and Escrige are down. I don't believe that either those two actually got touched to each other, but the replays were kind of inconclusive to know what was really going on.

But that's where it was. Now, can I go on a tangent about how they do laps, Rich? So for the past couple of weeks, it's been pretty even. It's been like we're counting up. This is lap one, lap two, lap three, lap four, lap five.

Then we get to the end and we say, hey, we got five to go. I'm okay with that. So that's how Modo 3 went. Cool. Modo 2, all of a sudden they're going the other way.

It's counting down. It's like it's 22 laps, 21 laps, 20 laps. And then, well, they switch it back and they make it lap four. Guys, get it straight. Which way you're going to do this.

I don't care which way it is. Just make it consistent because changing in the format in the middle of the race makes taking notes really tough. I know, first world problems here, people. I understand. Well, yeah, but I mean, even if I was not trying to write notes on the race, I still would want to be following that level of detail.

And I suspect most people that watch races are like us on this one, Jim. I've just come to the conclusion that there's a sadist in charge at Dornow when it comes to this aspect of the coverage. Because I can't think of any other reason to keep changing it. Literally, either within a race or between different races, just a completely different format. And why can't they just have the lap that they're on and the countdown next to it in smaller font?

That's what they do in F1. I mean, in fairness, F1 get this right. I tried to sit through the Singapore F1 race. I lasted about 15 laps and I just gave up because it was just hideously boring. So I fast forwarded pretty much the entirety of the remainder thereafter.

But they do at least get the lap counting aspect of that coverage. I don't even know why we're talking about it. It's the simplest bloody thing in the world. This is the lap number and this is how many laps there are to go. Just leave it like that.

Why keep changing things? It just makes no sense to me whatsoever. It is a first world problem. Obviously it is, but why make it a problem in the first place? I have no idea.

Oh, bizarre to keep changing it all the time. It is genuinely from our point of view, trying to keep notes of things. I'm not very good at remembering if it's a 19-lap race or a 20-lap race. I can do basic deduction and stuff. But if I can't remember how many bloody laps it is in the first place, then I'm screwed.

It's crazy. It is crazy. So on lap five, it's Marrera, Holgardo, Gulvaro, Gonzales, Alonso, or Tola. There are small gaps between everybody. Everybody's got a tenth on everybody else.

Alonso is down out of 16. He had a big nasty high side. He came down and cracked his head too. That boy had a headache. Where's the ibuprofen?

Because that one hurt. It was absolutely nasty when he came down. Now, Gonzales got by Gulvaro at 10. Nope. He had to go and try to get it at 13.

Nope. Couldn't get by there. Every time Gonzales got by, Gulvaro just simply came right back by him again, which actually was great racing for Moto2. Generally, we don't see any kind of an RG-Burgie back and forth kind of a thing. People do come through the pack and make passes, but not pass, repass, pass again, pass, pass back.

But that's what we had. I'm like, wow, this leads a little more attention. It's a little more exciting, right? Yeah. Because usually these aren't.

Well, particularly not with Gulvaro either. Although this is the year when he started to kind of reappear as the guy we used to see in Moto3 when he won the title. So having got to second, he was rather loathe to give it up, wasn't he? So, sure. And fair play to him.

Yeah. Doing the old Troy Bayless thing. Yep. Then, Hulgarro goes down and Vietti goes down. Separate incidents, right?

But it's like, whoa, we're losing people now. The top three now had a huge gap to anybody else in the field. So it was like, okay, you pretty much know that these guys stay upright. These are the guys that are going to be standing on the podium. Now, by lap eight, Gonzales seems to have finally gotten rid of Gulvaro permanently.

There was no more going back and forth. So it's like, okay, let's see how this works out here. Kinet had worked his way up to fourth. I mean, through all this, there's some attrition, there's carages, people falling off. But Kinet has put in a strong ride to be here.

It's like, you got to be in the game to get there. And Kinet is actually in the game, which, you know, is kind of shocking considering he hasn't qualified well for the past few races. And for him to be in fourth, I thought was really good. He had moved himself up 17 places. Yeah, I get it.

There were three people who crashed out, but that means you still did 14 people in a short amount of time, nine laps. That's pretty good. So I was impressed by that. So with 10 laps in, it is Marrera, Gonzales, Gulvaro, Kinet, Arenas, and Ortola. So the top three are literally have like 1.2 seconds between the first two, then 1.3 between second and third.

And it's like, oh, OK, it's just getting bigger. So that just gets bigger and sort of bigger as you go on there. It's like, OK, we get down to like lap 17 and Baltis is now on the move because he's made his way up to fifth. You know, he's going to probably potentially get his way past Kinet or whatever. But, you know, Marrera is gone.

He's like 1.2 seconds ahead of Gonzales or whatever, despite the fact that, you know, Gonzales, that Marrera and Gonzales with like five to go, Gonzales puts his head down. I think he wanted to try to win this and, you know, sort of there's like a psychological warfare going on. Like Marrera was just really good, but Gonzales wanted to win because he hasn't won since the beginning of the year. I think it's been five or six races since Gonzales has actually won. So he kind of wants to be in front of Marrera.

He goes for it. He's pushing hard. In fact, he starts he gets really two big moments in the next couple of laps. And that was like a warning sign to Gonzales. And I think Gonzales just said, OK, I'm not fast enough today.

I'm going to take this handful of points. I have a 34 point lead. I'm going to take second place. I'm only going to lose five points. So no big deal.

Everything's cool. Let's just ride in. The worst thing I can do is fall off. And so the race ends with Marrera in first, then Gonzales, then Guevara, Canet, Barry Balthus and Uranus. But that's not what really happens.

There's more. A post-technical review of the equipment, which is done all the time, found that Gonzales' motorcycle was running a version of the firmware that runs in the ECU that was not an appropriately homologated version of the software. Oops. That's a bad, bad boo-boo. I don't know what they were doing.

I don't know if they had slid something into that electronics packet that they shouldn't have. I always thought, and I could be wrong. If anybody knows, please let me know. I always thought that the Moto2 guys were handed a electronics package and a motor at the weekend. So there's no trickery that could be applied to it.

Now, how this all happened, I don't know. It was obviously the crew somehow, some way did this because it was definitely there. Their fault because that allowed a disqualification. So Gonzales is then stripped of this podium. He's out.

So now it's actually your finishing order is Marrero, Guevara, Kinet, Balthus, Uranus, Roberts, Ortola, Vier, Dixon, Juartas, and 10th. So that changes things and strikes up the championship big time because what was a 34-point lead becomes only a nine-point lead for Gonzales with four races left to go. It is a battle royale now between both Gonzales and Marrero to see who's going to be Moto2 world champion. I think this is going to be a ding-dong battle here to get out. Although, I mean, I hate to see this happen from a technicality standpoint because Gonzales has just had terrible luck here.

But I really just don't understand how that actually happened. So if you got some insight, Rich, let me know. I'm racking my brain. I'm pretty sure this has happened to somebody else this year or within the last couple of years. And I'm thinking in Moto2 particularly.

Really? It will come to me. I always thought it was Moto3 and it was Layapart. They got caught with some bad electronics. Right.

OK. Well, quite possibly. Maybe that's what you're thinking about. I don't know. Maybe.

I don't remember a Moto2. I can remember this coming up. Now, the engines are basically, as you said, Jim, they're sealed units and they get kind of handed out to the teams. I think whilst the ECUs are control units, I think the teams have more than one. And my recollection is that when this came up previously with another team, that they used an older ECU which had the older software on it.

And they just used it inadvertently and then got kind of caught out after the event. I've seen or read or heard nothing about what's actually happened in this particular instance, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's what has happened. So I don't think it's kind of malfeasance or anything like that. Anybody trying to trick because people don't try to do that. There's so many regulations and post race scrutineering checks that go on.

I suspect it's just a very simple reviews on older piece of hardware and not realized that it's running the older version of the software, which is no longer homologated and legal for use in a race. That would be my assumption, Jim. But it's a body blow to Gonzales this one, because as you say, he's had some technical problems, a bit of bad luck, a couple of performances that weren't quite where they needed to be. And he's kind of on a bit of a downward trend at the minute, just at the wrong moment as Marrera is on a bit of an ascendancy now. And with a nine point gap and that kind of background, you kind of feel a little bit like Gonzales is really under pressure, like big time under pressure now.

You've got Marrera with his tail high with a MotoGP contract, we believe. It's still not official, is it? Or is it now? We're waiting for it. Yeah.

I think we're still waiting for the official. Anyway, that deal is done as far as everybody is concerned. So yeah, I mean, the fair wind is blowing with Diogo Marrera at the moment. And with nine points is nothing with four rounds to go. So I feel a little bit for Gonzales now because, you know, OK, not everybody can get a graduation to MotoGP, but we all felt he was going to be the champion and would have been, you know, probably MotoGP banned.

And things have really unraveled in the last, what, four or five races. Kind of the rot started in Red Bull Ring when he had that hold radiator, if you remember, and it's been tough to watch since then. And this is, as I say, this is a real body blow for him because he's done nothing wrong. It's just one of those things. And as I say, it's reminiscent to me of something else that happened very similar elsewhere in sort of fairly recent memory.

And you might be right. Maybe it was one of the Moto3 teams. So we'd have to look up. As you went through that and you said the statement of they had put a bad or an older ECU into the system. I remember what you're talking about.

I remember that clearly now. I just the first thing that popped in my head was the Moto3 guys there at Leopard. That was the first one I thought about because that was back way back or whatever. But anyway, it just what came to so anyway. It's always playful.

Can be an exciting running. Oh, yeah. So, man, this Moto2 World Championship is going to be fun to watch. I mean, I hate to say it, but I think Marrera is going to win it. I hate to say that.

But I don't hate to say it, but it feels that that's the sort of the direction of travel now, doesn't it? Just in terms of form and sort of rub of the green, as they say, in snooker and billiards, you know, that's just the feeling that I've got. And again, I would need to look back at past results, but I suspect he'll do well. Marrera, this is I'm suspecting Philippine unless there's some crazy weather event, which is always possible there. Yeah, I just feel like he's got the tailwind now.

It's going to be hard to stop him. I completely agree. All right, let's talk about the MotoGP race. Yeah, this is a great weekend for MotoGP. If you were a fan of MotoGP, you had to have loved this weekend.

It was amazing. But we got to set the table. So let's look at qualifying. In the first qualifying session is Marc Marquez. Yeah, first time all year he has been in there and he is.

Benyaya is in there. After the great weekend in Japan, he's back looking like the old Benyaya and not the new Benyaya. We'll have to come on to that later. Binder, Bastianini, Digia, Zarco and Morbidele are there. Ten minutes in, it's Digia, Morbidele, Marc, Binder and those guys there.

At eight minutes and 35 left to go, Marc is on top and he does go to there. But hold on, Digia is coming. So Digia now is the fastest person. Marc second, then it's Morbidele. Bastianini goes down at 10-1, turn one.

That made a yellow flag. That didn't give anybody hope anymore because it was all done. So nobody was going to get through. And basically Benyaya is 16th and Marc just squeaked by to get in. Then he got helped there by the yellow sectors there for Bastianini.

So like, wow, this is not Marc's track, right? I mean, this is a big high side with the Dilopia came back again. With his eyes and stuff. So, I mean, there's definitely, this is not a track that is going to work. This works for him.

It's like, it's a bogey track. It's just the place that he just isn't tuned to. So we get to the second qualifying session. Outagur goes out quick, followed by Acosta, then Digia. But then all of a sudden, Bezeky is just like a half a second faster.

He just threw down a 1.29.3. Just boom, mic drop. Like, wow, where'd that come from? Bez was just so insanely good in that second sector. He was so good.

Alex Marquez, we went through there with him like, man, I cannot hang with him. I must be like half a second or three quarters of a second off of the lap pace. And then he gets back to the 50, looks at the, I'm not bad at all. It's apparently just that sector that Bezeky is really good in. And he's got another sector he's sort of mediocre in.

And well, it's all sort of evening out, if you will. But anyways, like, wow, Quattraro was down in this second session. Like, did you see that coming? And like, I didn't, you know, it's like Quattraro on the ground. Wow, that's crazy.

The front end just folded. And I don't know if that's one of those things where it's that harder carcass that they have to have to maintain tire structure because of the heat and whatnot. But it's like, wow. But he destroyed his bike. So then he was going to have to go out on a second bike.

Well, halfway through Bez is ahead of Acosta, who's ahead of Luca Marini on the Honda. And then it's Fernandez, as in Raul on the other Aprilia, because there's only two Aprilias here this weekend. And then there's Alex Marquez and Autiger. It's like, holy crap. This is just so shook up.

You just don't know what to do because Acosta looks really good. Right. And then the Hondas look good again. And you're just like, well, this is crazy good. Right.

It's like, wow, you eliminate the two red bikes and suddenly the world's great or something. I don't know. It's just crazy how this was. Then Bez or Autiger goes out and he has like a he's a guy like a bike problem. There's something wrong with the brakes or something's wrong with Autiger's bike.

So they throw him on the number two bike. Well, that's never really like a good, you know. Oh, so then it was like, oh, it what the problem was that it was a no start. Like for whatever reason, the number one bike wouldn't start. So he had to go out on the number two start two bike.

Like, well, that sucks because, you know, despite what anybody will tell you, two motorcycles being built the same, they do not feel the same to a racer. I don't care. You can put the exact same suspension components in both bikes. They will work differently. And you as an average street rider will never see it.

Me as a glorified club racer kind of maybe understands it, but doesn't really because it I can never really tell. But these guys are that good that they can feel the difference between it, which is just the level that they're at, which I think is out to me having done it. I think that's absolutely incredible. That's still to this day blows my mind that these are different. Right.

Anyway, we must continue in qualifying. The best then goes into the 128. It's like, OK, how fast can he go? You know, then Alder goes the second on the second bike. It's like, I thought for sure out here was going to struggle.

Right. Maybe it's not the primary bike, but nope. He's just as good as it is there. Alex is then down at turn 13. Rins goes the third.

Like, I don't know where that was coming from. If you had Rins in your bingo card to be third and qualify, congratulations, because you are way better at this game than me because that was just insane that that's there. Mark was down to 12th. The whole front end just seemed sketchy. Like he couldn't find any feel.

He had no rhythm. He had nothing. Then Rins blows it and he's down at 16. All the good work to be third and then Rins blows it. It's like, really, really?

Really? Why would he just come on? Yeah. To be honest with you, crashing out from that position, I'm still guessing he's a pretty happy guy compared to where he's been all year. I cannot deny you that one.

Anyway, Bizecki would take the pole position. Outegar is going to be second. Raul Fernandez is going to be on the front row starting third. I mean, where's that been all year, buddy? Then Alex holds on to fourth.

Costas fifth. Luca Marini. Alex Marquez. Fabio Quattraro. Then it's Mark Marquez, Miguel Alvarez, Firmin Outegar and Juan Mir.

Wow, that is a flip flop, twirmed up, twisted. I said, this is like guitar. Weird stuff happens at this place. And I'm like, wow, can't wait to see what the sprint's going to be like when we get to that portion of it, right? To be honest, Jim, the big surprise, and I can't believe I'm actually saying this considering what a weird kind of Q2 outcome that was.

But for Mir to be last was actually quite the surprise to me because I thought he would be better than that. But yeah, I mean, you'd have got decent odds on Bizecki, Alvarez, Raul Fernandez on the front row and Marquez in, what was that? 10th, 11th? Yeah, bizarre. Absolutely crazy.

All right, so then we get to the sprint. Now, Vinales has withdrawn himself from the event to go home, to get his shoulder worked on or rested or just get better or whatever. But hey, he's got to do something. So he's bailed out. He's not racing.

We start the sprint, Alvarez gets a hole shot, followed by Fernandez and Luca Marini. Now, Bez has a terrible start. He's back in eighth. So it finishes that like after the first lap, Bez has made his way to sixth. But your top three are Alvarez, Fernandez and Acosta, then Marini.

That's how they're racing right now. Acosta moves his way to second. Mark then gets a long lap penalty for bumping into Alex Renz. Justified, yep, 100%. Great call by the by the aficioning squad.

Mark was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. He's trying to force a bike somewhere where he couldn't get it to get there. And what did you get? He bumps him off. He bumps Renz off, gets the penalty.

I was slightly surprised by the penalty, actually. Really? I thought this one was a lot easier than the Gonzalez. I mean, this was on lap one going into turn 10, which is a kind of a known pinch point. I mean, there's no doubt that Marquez went in a bit hot and obviously compromised Renz race, which you know, Friday's race would have been particularly perturbing, really, given what a shocker of a year he's had.

And this was the first sort of glimmer of hope, really. So I do think he sort of just about deserved the penalty, but I was kind of slightly surprised that they would give it out on, because that happened on lap one, I think, didn't it? It's actually lap two. Oh, is it lap two? Okay.

But early on when, you know, there's still a lot of jostling going on, people close together. So yeah, we unfortunately, we're sort of talking about these penalties again, aren't we? Just a little bit in the last couple of rounds. Actually, we must just return at the end, Jim, to Gareth's email, because he did reply on the whole thing, didn't he? Anyway.

Yep. I'm in the wrong. Gareth and you and Simon all agree. I'm not a question of being in the wrong. I mean, people have a different view of what happens, but- I was just being funny.

But however, in this particular case, I thought it was a bit marginal to give Marquez that penalty, given that it was early in the race. I thought he deserved it. Because I looked at it and I was like, my God, that was stupid. And maybe it's, I think it's stupid because of the caliber of rider that Mark is. It was like, it was like, it's like, look, he took his brain out for some reason, and just botched it, just plain flat botched it.

But he didn't come from sort of miles back. And I always have to remind myself that through that kind of, well, we call it, or I call it a flip flop, they're probably going through their, what, 130, 140, probably a bit quicker even than that. And then they're kind of, they have a moment to sort of straighten up and then hit the brakes as they go into 10. There's an awful lot going on in those few seconds, you know? And you've got to be, you know, an inch or two later on your braking point.

And that's what's going to happen. So, I mean, tiny margins, aren't they really? Anyway, he got the penalty. He wasn't complaining about it, was he? After the event, I don't think so.

And it did ruin Rins's race. I mean, there's no two ways about that. But a few years ago, that would have just been classed as a, what's it happens? It's a racing incident, you know? Yeah.

There's a fine line because I told Gareth, I was like, there's a fine line between the nanny state and racing. Yeah. I'm old school. I very much believe what Senna said. If you no longer go for a gap, you are no longer a racing driver.

Yeah. I agree. I agree. It just seemed like, it just seemed to me like Mark was like, dude, that was just way too optimistic. You know, that's a pitch point and you still went there anyway.

And he's like, so that's how I saw it. But, you know, we are allowed to disagree on these points. It makes it fun, right? All the more colorful when we do. Yes, it does.

Oh, so Mark comes out of the long lap penalty in 13th. The Bastianini crashes out. Bez gets by Marini, but he's wide. And then Marini goes back by again. Acosta goes down at turn two.

You watch the front out. Now, he was the only person who started the race, I believe, on a hard front. Everybody else had this, I think the soft. I think that's all you get. He was on the medium front.

He was on the harder of the tires that you could have. I think that's right. Yeah. So because I thought they took away the hard and it's just a medium soft and a medium. Whatever.

I don't know. The harder option. He had the harder. Yeah. Yes, he had the harder option on and he went down.

Now, Altegr is now ahead of Fernandez, ahead of Bez, ahead of Alex Marquez. Okay, cool. That's where Altegr suddenly has a track limits warning. Okay, fine. We got to deal with that.

Bez got by Fernandez and could he catch Altegr? That was the question. Like, okay, let's see what he's got. By lap 10, Altegr is still leading Bez from Fernandez, from Alex Marquez, from Mir and from Luca Marini. Zarco goes down and out at turn on the last lap.

Bez has it down to a three tenth of a gap to Altegr. Then Bez actually gets by Altegr. He tried to go by. Then Altegr goes back by. But then Bez wins with Altegr second, followed by Fernandez, followed by Marquez as an Alex.

Then Mir, Marc Marquez finishes sixth. Then it's Morbidelli, DiGina and Olivera gets a point. It's a good sprint race because you're watching Bez come through it. You had a lot of different people out the front and Altegr looked incredible at this point. Somehow the switch got turned on.

This was Moto2-esque of Altegr because he had that talent, almost won that championship. Didn't. He put the charge on, didn't win. Dude, Koddy signs this kid to a contract a year early. He does another year of Moto2.

That's a bad year for him. And now poof, he's on this bike and whoa. There were flashes of brilliance. There was podiums early on in the year. Then they kind of went away.

And now we show up here and like, wow, he looks good. Looks like really good. So I was like, wow, I can't wait to see what's going to happen when we hit this thing tomorrow and see what happens on Sunday. So in Sunday, we get the start and Bez, he's just heading backwards, man. Big time.

And it's like, I don't know what the deal was. So Acosta's sort of out front with Marini. Then Bez and Marc Marquez touch and they go down. Now, Bez touches Marc in the back. It knocks the back end out and Marc low sides, which would have been perfectly fine.

He's sliding all the way to the track. But one of the bad things that happens to Marc is he spins his body spins around because he's got the energy coming from being on the bike, right? And the bike goes out first and it goes out from behind. So the energy is trying to whip you around. Well, that's what it does.

It whips Marc around to where he's not facing the gravel trap. So he doesn't know when it's coming. He knows it's there, but he doesn't know when it's coming. And in that instance, Marc goes into the gravel trap sort of backwards, if you will, and he bites into the gravel and flips himself and tumbles and rolls. And then that's where Marc gets the injury from it.

Now, Marc got up instantly. He did that hold your shoulder thing. And I'm like, oh, God, did he break his right arm again? Because that's the first thing I thought about. But he was moving his arm pretty well, but he couldn't make it go up.

And I thought, oh, my God, it's a collarbone. Marc has broke his collarbone. But then he sort of kind of got it up sort of halfway. And I'm like, maybe he just really banged his collarbone. Maybe he's got a crack in his collarbone.

Really thought he had done a collarbone thing later to find out that it's this actually his shoulder blade. Yeah, yeah, we talked about that in the beginning of the show. All right. So because Bez also goes down in this, which is weird. Marc's body gets caught up in the gravel, flips and rolls, and makes things difficult on his body.

Bez rides straight across the gravel and doesn't really stop until he gets to like the air fence, which we've seen that as a stark contrast of how the gravel works there versus what we've seen at prior rounds where the gravel is so deep, bikes dig in and just instantly start flipping. It's weird. Well, I think for both of them, what made it such a big crash was we ought to talk about how the crash started at the moment. But in terms of the gravel, it's this problem of a tarmac then gravel, but with quite a big step. And you were listening to the Race Moto GP podcast earlier on.

I listened to it the other day. And I'm pretty sure that they said that this has been pointed out during the track rocks on the Wednesday, Thursday, whenever they do that. And they had actually kind of skimmed it down a little bit to reduce the degree of the step in the gravel because the riders had sort of pointed out it was dangerous. Clearly, it was still problematic. And I wouldn't be necessarily hugely surprised if we don't see that that's all tarmac run off by the time we come back next year, because Mark obviously got launched as his body hit it.

And he came down hard on that shoulder. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually dislocated as well as the fracture. And he popped it back in with bears. I think what happened to him is he stayed on the bike, obviously. And I think he kind of was launched as he hit that step in the gravel.

And by the time the bike kind of came down, he was effectively into the air fence. And the camera didn't really catch it. But that was a big crash that he had as well. So all around, that corner has been problematical in the past. And I don't think they can afford not to change the runoff situation there as a result of this.

But I mean, anyway, going back to how this crash actually happened, you pointed out in terms of qualifying when Alex Marcus says he's gaining half a second through that series of turns. And bears just, I don't want to say he misjudged it, but he was just so much quicker that he just basically misjudged it and just ran into the back of him. By the time he tried to save it, it was too late and he just tagged the back of him. And then what happened happened. So yeah, I mean, it's just one of those things really.

I personally think Bez panicked slightly. He got another bad start. I think he was trying to make up too much ground too fast because he knew how hard he had to work to get to Alviger. And he just misjudged it. Didn't think about it.

Just disengaged the brain for a minute and had an accident. Now it's going to be interesting to see what the penalty is going to be because all of this was going to be reviewed afterwards because neither of them were able to continue on in the race. And everybody's injured now. I don't think Bez went to the hospital. I think they did some checks, some more x-rays, maybe an MRI.

I don't think they found anything broken. I think he's just beat up, viciously beaten up from the impact that he had. Again, slightly tongue in cheek, Jim. So have you ever seen the film It Follows? It's kind of like a reasonably modern kind of sort of psychological horror film.

No, I see it clear of horror films. I'm sure some of the listeners would have watched it. It's kind of this thing where you kind of you pass on your bad luck, basically. And it strikes me that Bez has inherited the Joanne Meir luck just of late because there was a time when Meir just couldn't stop people crashing into him and kind of or being involved in crashes anyway. And Bez has kind of become the recipient of this now, although he was responsible for what happened on Sunday.

It is true. But I think, as you say, Jim, he was just couldn't get the thing off the line in both races. And maybe there was an element of panic in it. I just think it was just so fast through that section. And obviously, Mark didn't look comfortable all weekend.

And just it was just one of those sort of unfortunate things that happens sometimes. Luckily, neither of them have been like seriously, seriously injured. And it must be said, actually, it would be remiss of us not to mention that, obviously, Marco Bezzecki was very, very apologetic about it after the event. And also, Mark Marquez was exceedingly gracious in his kind of, yeah, sort of review of what had happened and the fact that it was a racing accident. These things kind of happen.

I mean, he might not have said that if he was about to lose a championship as a result of it. Does at least have that in the bag. But Marquez, who is a rider that I'm starting to like more and more after all the years on the Reptile Honda, I didn't really care for him very much, if I'm totally honest, as I've said before, is in his older sort of more distinguished years now, starting to conduct himself with a lot more kind of decorum and humility than he used to do. And possibly that's a result of having come back from the injury that he had. So could have been a lot worse, but it was nasty to see anyway.

And I think a big part of the problem is the way that that gravity is configured on that particular corner. And I think that has to be changed. Agreed. We'll see what happens when they get back there next year. Yeah.

Mir went down to turn 10 in the second lap. Algar got himself to second. So it's a cost to Algar, Luca Marini, Fernandez, Renz and Quattraro. So Fernandez then tries to go past, but he goes wide. And then Algar goes by a cost that turn 10.

Now, not the both labor at this point, but at this point in the game, since now that Algar is in the lead, he disappears. I mean, just flat disappears. It is one of the largest winning margins I can remember in the modern era of Moto GP. Like he just destroys everyone. So Algar is gone.

Algar will win the race as a rookie. He comes the second youngest one to ever win a race. Mark still holds that record for youngest ever, but Algar does eclipse Freddie Spencer, who was second youngest because of Marquez. So that's something to think about. Anyway, so let's talk about this next section of it that happens.

You get some of the most fantastic Moto GP racing you've ever seen in your life in this era. With all the electronics, all the gizmos for ride height adjustments and everything else, this was a barn burner race with people passing everywhere and trying to pass everywhere. And it was just completely crazy cool. It's a great race between Fernandez and Luca Marini and Acosta. And the biggest part of it is Acosta just doesn't give up.

He's just fighting tooth and nail the whole way. And he's kind of the head of the, like they call it the DRS train in Formula 1. He's kind of the head of the train because he's not turning the laps that are fast enough. Everybody else is just that little smidge faster than him, but they can't get by him. Or if they do, Acosta just, you know, little terrier on your ankle kind of a thing, just drives right back in there and goes, nope, I'm taking this back, you know.

Troy, true, true Troy Bayless embodiment right there, right? I got passed. I'm going to pass you right back next corner. I don't care. And this leads to some absolutely wicked racing that happens in between there.

Now, Benyaya falls down at the last turn. I literally wrote, what the hell? Because that is the weirdest crash I've ever seen legitimately in a race that's there. It's the true middle of the corner right when you're getting ready to pick the bike. When you're at your slowest opportunity or slowest that you'll be, you're getting ready to just pick the throttle up.

The front really doesn't fall off. The back isn't falling off. Benyaya, who's been running around, basically turning laps at the speed of a Moto2 bike. I mean, he's like over two seconds off of it. Sombkat Chantra is pulling away from Peko Benyaya when Peko Benyaya falls off the motorcycle.

I'm wondering, Rich, if he did it intentionally. Now, I'm just saying, it's so weird. It's so odd. I don't think anybody would. I don't think he did.

But it looks so odd. So comical that you almost think that he was in the middle of the corner and he just simply said, I'm done and just let go. Just let go of the bike and fell off. I just, what do you think, Rich? Do you, I'm confused.

I don't know what to think. I mean, obviously we're sort of mid race and we're going to go on a bit of a banyaya. Why not a tirade? Because I genuinely feel for the guy. I really, really do.

Where do we start with this one? Without going on for too long or without me going on too long? Okay. So a theme over the weekend was this kind of what the hell are Ducati doing? Sort of confirming some stuff, denying other stuff.

You know, there was this rumor going around that Morbidelli's bike had been taken down to the Ducati pit at the Mozano test and that that's what banyaya had ridden. Ducati vehemently denied it. I think, again, from some people that are in the know, Matt Oxley being primary amongst them, who put out quite an interesting article on motorsport, which I think I sent you the link to that, Jim. Yeah, I never got a chance to read it. No, okay.

So it transpires that what happened at Mozano test, and I think this is close to the truth as anybody's going to get, is that it was banyaya's bike, but they put the 2024 ride height device on it, which operates in a slightly different way. So what Matt Oxley is saying is that whilst there are some very minor internal changes to the engine in the 25 version as compared to the 24, they haven't moved engine mounting point. The essential kind of mass of the engine hasn't changed. So it's not an engine related thing in terms of its position, you know, the center of mass, all these other variables and stuff. It's basically the same.

There are a few small detail changes internally around longevity and stuff, but the big changes that the rear ride height device in particular has changed, and it is much more, you picked up on this actually, Jim, all the way back at Cota, it's much more severe in the way that it operates, and it's robbing banyaya of front end feel. He allegedly ran the old ride height device at the Mozano test, did well, took it to Mategi. I'm assuming that he took it to Mategi. I don't know that that has been confirmed, but let's assume that it was, and we saw what happened at Mategi. Let's assume he brought it to Mandelica, but here we have the heat treated tires, which fundamentally changed the feel again.

And again, he's completely all at C. Mark didn't look comfortable all weekend, and most of the Ducatis didn't actually. It was only really Aldegaard that was kind of knocking it out of the park. And I have a theory on that. He's on a full fat 24 bike, so.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Is he not? He's got a 24 bike, right? That's true. But it isn't that he's on the 24 bike.

It's the fact that Aldegaard had experience on the hard as a rock Dunlaps on a Moto2 bike. Okay. He was doing it. He figured out how to run those Dunlaps hard, right? So he figured out how to put the energy into him on a Moto2 bike, and he wound up winning all those races, right?

Then they switched to Pirelli's the next year, which is a completely different sidewall, softer, gooey, whatever. It's completely different. Now he's back and he's like, he's been okay at times with the Michelins when they kind of reused like the harder tire. Now you bring this hard carcass to survive the heat. I think it was just magic that it just that just fit Aldegaard and what feel he was looking for.

And it was like a homecoming. Like he just, it felt right. And if it feels right, you're going to go fast. It's like Jeremy Burgess has always said, I don't care. If he thinks he needs gold plated handlebars to go fast, he gets gold plated handlebars to go fast because he's going to be comfortable.

That's what I think happened to Aldegaard. That's why I think Aldegaard is so fast this weekend is it that Huracan Dunlap Moto2 tire. And he was just dealing with it. He just knew how to ride. It's a great theory.

I mean, I would also point out that Frankie, I'm never quite sure if it's Carcetti or Carcetti. Different people pronounce it different ways. Anyway, he's crew chief. I always say it's Carcetti. Yeah, I've always thought it was Carcetti.

Anyway, Frankie Carcetti, let's call him, has been saying all year that Aldegaard is like really, really quick. What he hasn't been able to do is time attack and get himself on the front two rows of the grid. He's quick all race long and he tends to get quicker as the race goes on, but he's been mired down in the pack due to poor qualifying. So he is a bit of a Mandelica specialist. He's always did well in Moto2 at Mandelica.

So I think the litmus test for him now is in these last four rounds, he's going to go to Phillip Island next. It's what we're running in towards spring there. So it probably will be chilly, stroke, possibly cool, but completely different conditions to what they've just been at. Then they'll go to what, Sepang? Yes.

I don't know if they run the heat treated tyre there. I don't know. I assume they might do because it's very hot and humid there as well. Don't know, but let's see. And then what's the race after that, Jim, before they go to Valencia?

There's one more in the middle, isn't there? Porto Mayo. Porto Mayo, okay. So there's quite a mix of rounds in terms of conditions to come to. With this weekend under his belt, Alriguer might continue to fly high.

We might hit a few issues again, given the wildly different conditions. But a lot of credit has to go to Frankie Garcetti though for this as well. It would be remiss not to mention just how brilliant he is as a crew chief. We've seen it with De Giantonio. Obviously he did a lot to help Mark in that transition to the Ducati when he did that year on the Crescini bike.

He is really top drawer, Frankie Garcetti. And Alriguer is really firing on all cylinders now. And part of the reason why Pedro Acosta was battling so hard in second was that he did not like, I'm quite sure, the fact that his fellow Mercian, I think is the area of Spain. They both hail from basically the same place in Spain. They were very friendly growing up.

There's been a bit of animosity. I think it's cooled off a little bit or reduced a bit just of late. But there's a fairly healthy rivalry between those two. And Pedro is not going to be particularly pleased that Aldegaard has beaten him to the punch on the first win in a GP. So I think Pedro was, I mean, he's a battler anyway.

Do you know who he reminded me of actually? Because I wrote in my notes, you know, there's a big queue forming behind Acosta. And it reminded me for people with very long memories of Gilles Villeneuve at Haramma in 1979. He basically held up the entire field behind him for the whole Grand Prix because he had a Ferrari that was a rocket ship in a straight line and a dog through the corners. But nobody could get by him.

And he led start to finish pretty much with a mass, basically the whole of the rest of the field stuck behind him. And it kind of felt a little bit like that with Acosta. He was just using the strengths of the bike and his own, obviously, innate skill at getting the thing stopped and out of the turns and just frustrating people. I mean, OK, it didn't quite turn out that way in the end or did it? We'll come to that in a moment.

But yeah, it was a great ride. To me, the overarching thing was this is the future of MotoGP. We're watching it in front of us with Aldegaard, Acosta and even Raul Fernandez, who is starting to show flashes of the rider that everybody's been waiting to show up, really. For Alonso, Rueda, Hulgado and Hulgado in the mix. And you have top tier people.

Yeah, there's going to be a sea change here of MotoGP riders exiting stage left. Yeah, if you will. And new guys coming on that are just going to be there. But let's try to finish the review. Yeah, yeah, we can change it.

But what don't we do with Tange? Well, we were talking about Bagnar and what the hell caused that crash. We just don't know. Well, I was listening to the race and they were saying that like, OK, yes, Morbidelli's bike did go down there. The belief being that they didn't know why it was there.

But Ducati steadfastly said, no, he never raced that bike. Now, you telling me about Maddox, I think they took the ride height device off of Morbidelli's bike and put it on his bike. Now, supposedly, the motors are not that different. There's changes made to the 25 motor that was places where they made it more durable to last longer. Didn't change basically anything else.

Motor mounts, geometry, weight position, all the same between the bikes. But the race comes down to the fact where they're saying that basically everything about this is in Morbidelli's, not Morbidelli, is in Benyaia's head. After this weekend, you go and you win and you decisively defeat everyone at Motegi and now you show up here and Ducati swears it's the same bike. There was a lot of people talking about that Ducati cheated because they ran a 24 bike when they couldn't at Motegi. And so there were some people who were willing to talk, don't know who, who were like, no, emphatically, no, that did not happen.

They wouldn't do that. Right. So the belief is that this is all in his head. And I have said that Benyaia was not strong mentally, especially sitting next to the guy named Mark Marquez, because Mark was simply going to take that bike and win with it. And if you look about it, you think about the beginning of the year, Peco was there pretty good, pretty close.

He won at Cota when Mark fell off. Tricky conditions, I understand. Yeah. But then after that, when Mark kind of got together with it, you start to look at where Benyaia's races went. They started going farther back, farther back.

He just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And then boom, we magically make this happen. Well, okay. Mark's not really a fan of Motegi. He's done okay there, but he had a championship to win, which he did.

And so he wasn't going to rerace in that heart. But I still, I think, you know, maybe it is completely the way the ride height system works. Because like I said, watching it at Cota, it just would smash itself to the ground, like in a half a second. And maybe that doesn't work for Benyaia, that rides it. But I don't understand how that robs him of front end feel, because that's happening when you're coming out of a corner.

And you should be riding it off the back end anyway at that point. Well, unless it's the way in which it rebounds up when they hit the brakes going into the turns. Now that could be. That I'm assuming is what his fundamental issue is. Again, I don't know the rule book inside out, of course, but I'm assuming that they could run the 24 ride height device without contravening any rules.

I mean, there are certain things that are homologated, and I doubt that's part of it. It's like using a different swing arm. I agree. So the basic kind of outcome of what Matt Oxley wrote in that rather long article of his was that having got the feel back at the Bezano test and then taking it to Motegi, which is obviously an accelerate brake, accelerate brake track, where he did really well. He turns up at Mandelica with these different tires and he's just no again.

And his brain just completely went. And with all of this kind of conspiracy stuff floating around, spiraling around Ducati, Gigi Gellinia and sort of classic Don Corleone kind of summoning a few of the kind of tech guru journalists to the Ducati motor home. Obviously, Matt Oxley was there because that was the article. But I suspect Simon Patton was there, probably David Emmett from Pallet Podcast. These guys that know their technical bits and bobs.

Spalding? Peter Baum probably there. I don't know if Spalders is actually in the paddock all the time. A few different people that because obviously having listened to the race podcast, this was also the story. So Ducati allowed a certain amount of information to come out, having been denying various things that were being whispered.

I don't want to say they kind of threw Bagnari under the bus, but the conclusion is that he just turned up at Mandalica and the bike didn't feel right again. And he just kind of, yeah. Checked out. Not gave up because I wouldn't accuse him of that, but kind of checked out really. Because what else can you do?

And as I said to you pre-recording, he said in the Friday or Saturday press conference, I just say what Ducati told me to say now. That's not a good statement for a person in his position to be making, really. Because it hints at a total breakdown of trust and respect. Which in an Italian team of all teams is not good. Yeah, that's not good.

I mean, I thought after they quote fixed it, right? I thought, well, okay, this is going to turn around and we're all going to be okay. And we're all going to be good after this. It's a matter of deciding when the divorce papers are going to be filed. Because I just don't see this.

I don't see it working. I don't. I don't see any situation where Bagnari is not in the team next year. But I think. Correct.

For 27, I suspect a change will come. And again, I said to you before we started recording, I definitely wrote down in my note. You can easily see now Bagnari going to the relative comfort of the VR46 team. Because obviously he's a protege of Rossi and he's always been part of the VR46. He's been in the VR46.

Managed by him. You know, because Bagnari's situation is made worse by the fact of what Aldegaard did over the course of the whole weekend, but particularly on the Sunday. And that would have got Ducati's attention. Don't be under any illusions. Because I believe I'm right in thinking that when Aldegaard was signed, he's on a Ducati works contract and he was meant to go to the Pramac team.

But obviously the whole Ducati thing fell through with them. So that's how he ended up in Grissini. Which by the way, there could not have been a better place for him to go this year. Particularly with Frankie Garcetti in his corner. So a couple of years in that team and then works Ducati seems like the obvious place for him to land if this kind of trajectory continues to me.

Because we kind of got a bit sideswiped by his Moto 2 season last year, didn't we? And thought, oh, maybe he's not the rider that we look at. He's 20 years old. I mean, for goodness sake, I mean, it's depressing really as a 53 year old. So I think he's 20 years old and he's just won the bloody Moto GP race.

Got the whole world at his feet pretty much now. So fair play to him. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Let's try to get through the rest of the race. Sorry, that's gone on a bit. We went off way in the deep end, but it's a good conversation to have. Where else are you going to talk about it here other than that? Outegar is gone.

So then Acosta is just battling it out with Marini. They're going back and forth. They from turn 12 to turn 16, they just keep swapping places. It was just incredible racing to watch these guys go after each other. It was like a six to seven riders in a group that eventually got caught by Binder as he was bringing everybody up.

Fernandez was going up the inside of Marini and then he got into the chase to go past. Try to get by Renz for third. I know it's absolutely amazing racing that's here. I really, you got to watch the race. You need to watch the race guys.

It's just, it's that good. Renz actually got by Acosta at turn 12 and so Renz was actually second, but Renz had a soft rear compared to everybody else running on the medium. And so that faded at the end. So Alex, so everybody else started to go by like Alex Marquez got by Renz, Acosta got by Renz, Fernandez got by Renz. It kind of went backwards pretty bad for him at that point.

You know, for Renz is like, wow, this isn't really what he needed. Binder had drug everybody else back up the grid or whatever. And basically you get to the end of the race with all the shuffling, everything that's going on. You got out of your winning by a landslide, right? Acosta holds on to second, which actually Acosta started to run better laps after the tires got worn.

He's like, he had the grip and then he sort of lost it or needed to milk the tire because he's been hard on it for so long. Ran those laps in the middle as a consistent pace, had rubber left at the end and then used it to his advantage to win. Of course, he's got the fastest bike there, straight line. The KTM is a bullet from point to point. Alex Marquez on a worn medium was able to get on the podium and then Brad Binder just missed it.

So the KTM is actually looking good, right? Hey, they're three, four, or sorry, two, four, which is pretty good for them. Marini on the Honda looking good again in fifth. I mean, who thought Honda would be here and still despite the tracks? I mean, it's going to be a little different to see what happens at PI, you know, much faster, flowy track, a lot of horsepower.

I expect the Honda's to be down the grid a little bit, but I've seen Rens went on a Suzuki there when I never thought it was possible. So we'll see what happens. I'm thinking Mia might have a good time in Australia. He might. I hope he does.

I hope he does. We had Marini in fifth and we had Raul Ferenes in sixth. Quattro was seventh. Morbidelli eighth. Then you had Digia in ninth.

Rens settled for tenth. Then it was Olivero, Zarco, Chantra, and Miller. It didn't matter if you finished, you got a point because of all the other chaos that happened or whatever. And it's just all there. So Marquez, obviously he is your world champion.

It's already been wrapped up. His brother Alex is now on 362 to his 545. And with Mark sitting out those two races, he will not be able to surpass his 2013 points title thing where he had the most points or whatever. I think it's 13. So that's going to be pretty wild.

Benya is still third, but Vezekia is only 20 points behind Benya. So I think there's every possibility that Benya will be fourth in this championship. Acosta is fifth. Morbidelli is only eight points behind Acosta. So that's something to watch.

Morbidelli has actually got the better of his teammate in Digiantonia, which surprises me. And then you have Aldegar jumping up to eighth. And then Quattraro and Zarco is still tenth. So that's how everything finished. Oh, is there anything else we need to talk about, Rich?

I think this has gone on long enough. No, we need to check out. All I would say is that it was a very emotional Aldegar on the part of my interviews. Box office for Liberty, Aldegar, Acosta, all of this. If they can't make a hey when the sun shines on this lot, then they don't deserve to be involved because another box office talent really arrived properly on the scene on Sunday.

An achingly pretty girlfriend as well, just like Marcus. Do linger on the girlfriends quite a lot, don't they? Which is a red-blooded male I can't help but admire slightly. I'm impressed with Mark's girlfriend. She is very stylish, very classy, very...

Composed. Thank you. That's what I'm looking for. Very composed. I think she is the reason Mark is the way that he is now.

Well, you never used to see females around him, did you, back in the day? And yeah, it's easy to draw a correlation between his much calmer sort of... Yeah, considered. I mean, obviously he's matured and... It's matured.

What he's gone through in the last few years has helped him to gain perspective. But yeah, certainly she appears to be a very positive influence on the whole scene. I think she's that calming part that he didn't have. This is how I see it. She doesn't really seem very emotional during the races.

I think it's that calm, stable piece that Mark needed and he has. He's really well rounded out now. I mean, this guy could win two more championships fairly easily. Next year, I mean, he's got to be odds on favorite to repeat, I would think. You would think so.

No, and I was going to say his girlfriend appears to do quite a good job of keeping Mark and Alex's dad off the ceiling during the races as well, don't you? Because he's always there with his cross fingers, isn't he? They'll race long. Well, every session long. So yeah, there's a lot to look forward to, isn't there?

And the championship, despite some of the issues around the bikes, which we hope will be at least partially resolved come 2027, there's a lot to be looking forward to. And yeah, the talent just keeps on coming forward, doesn't it? Last thing, Jim, before we go. There was some really great stuff in the email that Gareth Locke sent to us. Obviously, he commented on the Vietti-Gonzales clash.

He then wrote quite a bit, which I think we should return to as an off season show about the Moto E and where internal combustion, sustainable fuels, electric power fits in the future. I'm going to keep that email folded up in my little pile. Perhaps that's when we return to as a little bit more of an off season chat because there was some interesting points in there, which we won't touch on that because we're about to hit two hours. But we do need to go back to that, I think. Yep, there's going to have to be a Liberty show.

There's going to have to be an EV show. Yeah, there's a lot of good conversational topics. Yes. To cover. Yeah, so thanks Gareth for that.

I know you replied to Gareth. I didn't because I was doing some other stuff work wise last week, but it does bear some further discussion. That's it for me. That's it. We're good.

So, all right, everybody, enjoy your weekend of non-racing. Part of Mestereel. Part of Mestereel. Watch the World Superbikes do that. And while you're doing that, ride safe.

Yeah, cheers everyone. See you next time.