One More to Go!

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 819, November 11th, 2025, talking about the racing from Portugal and Porto Maio. And right now I would be talking to Rich, who isn't available, but I did find a substitute and it's a good one.

Please welcome back former host Skyler Vicroy. How are you doing, bud? We're doing good over here. It has been a minute since I've jumped on the show, but I'm sure just like riding a time I come back on here, it's like, I remember this. I remember talking about racing and motorcycles and the script and notes and all that good stuff, but happy to fill in.

And I know we've been saying this last couple of years, but I've actually been watching all the races and we'll get together at Nice, Slow Moto America because this season was fantastic. It actually went down to the final race in a winner take all situation. So I'm excited to talk about this year, the season that we had and all that. But more importantly, just happy to be back talking motorcycle racing with you, Jim. I love it, man.

It's like old times, man. Old times, man. It's like, it's glad you're back. Glad to have you here. It's going to be great just to talk over the old thing, the old racing.

It's always fun to chat racing, regardless of who you're doing it with, right? Because that's what the show is about. Like two guys in a bar talking about racing. That's what it matters. That could be any kind of racing really, to be honest with you.

All right, folks, do us a favor. If you can, kindly donate to the show. If you want to, you can do that by going to www.motopodcast.com, PayPal, Patreon links. There's one time the older subscription. Do whatever you can.

Everything helps us out. Also, if you can, please leave a review wherever you pick this podcast up. That'll help push us to the top of the algorithm again, and more people will be able to find us. With all that, let's get into the news, what little bit that there is. I mean, we're at the end of the season.

There's not a whole lot going on. I did scrounge this couple of things up out of it. We learned that Vinales and Jorge Martín are going to be back at Valencia after sustaining injuries and being out for a while. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing for them. Given they've been out this long, do they really want to come back?

Or is this Martín trying to prove he's fit enough so that they can do testing? What do you think, Skyler? I think it's more the latter. Like you said, let's get back on the bike and shake things out. Don't expect much from the racing so we could turn around and test.

However, that obviously does come with its own risks of things happening during the race that, in all intents and purposes for them, doesn't really matter, which could scupper their whole training that they have set up for the final year test, especially for guys like Martín that have missed so much of the season due to injury. I would have liked to see him sit this one out and continue the healing process. He needs an entire winter and probably then some given the extent of his injuries this year. But these guys are racers and they do one thing and they do one thing well and that's race. So this was probably the bargaining chip.

They said, why don't you wait until Valencia before you get back on the bike? Was probably the real talk they had. I don't disagree with you on that one. Vinales has been nursing that shoulder for a long time and hopefully it's back enough for him to ride and successfully complete a race and a sprint in the weekend and then maybe let it hang out a little bit on the testing because I don't think anybody really wants to get off to a bad testing season. Mainly because, believe it or not, after we get done with Valencia, it is only three and a half months and we're racing again.

Legitimately, let's call it what it is, it's about six weeks before we get back to testing. Yeah. I mean, that's how... It's a pain in February, huh? That's a pain in late January, early February.

Yeah, so it's not long at all after we get this done, like a month, month and a half, which begs the question that I need to ask you. We have a lot of riders that were beat up this year. It's the longest season we've had ever at 22 rounds, which gives the MotoGP guys 44 races, right? Because you have sprints and you have this. Is that too many?

Are we just looking at the fact that these guys are hurt because the risk is so great that the odds eventually just caught up with everybody and that's why we got so many guys on the sidelines? Obviously, more races equals more risk. So it could have some correlation to the amount of injuries just because there's more opportunities to get hurt. I think the season is a bit too long, not so much in the exposure to risk, but in the exposure of these teams. They have to be out all this flying and traveling.

They don't get to go home and they're right back to the factory. And like you said, six weeks later, they're back out in a whole other continent, most of them, to do more testing and be away from families and don't get a lot of time to rest themselves. And the other thing that I worry about is with all these injuries and the longer season, which also means a shorter recovery time. And for those of you not into American football, you will know that as the NFL has lengthened its season, it has shown that now we're seeing a lot more injuries. There's a reason for that.

You need to recover and these guys work out year round and then they go and play for a much longer time to a very physical, risky sport such as like motorcycle racing. So extending it again will give great opportunities to have more injuries. But the thing that I think hurts the most is less recovery time just from a season alone. And even the guys that didn't get hurt, their bodies are going to break down faster due to more stress that's put on it with longer seasons. I agree.

I think we've reached, I think we've reached somewhat the limit of the human body. And what it can do week on, week on, week on, week on, right? Car racing is a different animal. Formula one's got, gosh, they're still racing and they've got, I don't know how many left. You probably know.

Three. Okay. Sorry, I just haven't been following it. I mean, I kind of know what's going on over there, but definitely haven't watched a Formula One race in years, to be honest. But I think it's easier if you've got a car.

Your body is not at risk. Yes, there is risk, right? The car, you crashed the car. You have these high GE impacts, but the cars are designed to absorb a lot of that energy, you know, throw it away, limit what you see. And these guys are doing better with it.

You crash five, six times, you're going to start to hurt because it's your body smashing the asphalt and that's all you have. There's no cage. There's no cockpit. There's nothing. And I'm wondering if it's just, is this like a Liberty influence you think that we're getting this many rounds or is it just, yeah, I'm not sure where that is.

I There's one thing that influences all of this gym and that's the bottom dollar. The more they can make, the more they will do. And let's be honest, a lot of this copying F1, that's why you have riders of the race. That's why you have sprints. That's why you have all of these things that were in another sport just two years ago.

Yeah. And because it's successful monetary plan. There's a lot of that and I know a lot of people are not going to want to hear that. A lot of people are going to be upset with the whole money thing. Racing is expensive.

Racing requires money and it's a con of the sport. Let's put it that way. That money has to be involved in the more we have, the more racing we get. So take it as you want it. Yeah, I agree.

It is monetary. It is literally the bottom line and that's where it is. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, at just some point, somebody's got to stop and go, this is, this has to be. It'll be riders. That'll be.

I have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was thinking there's, there's not, I'll use this term loosely.

There's not exactly like a riders union like they have with F1 and cars, right? I mean, not yet. Not yet. That's coming, I think. Yeah.

You can only take so much and people will be like, that's enough. And it's, it'll be up to them. And I just hope that it doesn't come down to what it only comes down to a tragedy. Yeah. Right.

Very rare. It's humans. We tend to be more reactive and motorcycles or car racing in general, up until not too long ago was always reactive, never proactive. Now we've got a lot better about that, right? Airbags, safety fences, requirements on gravel space.

But given all that still inherently dangerous, but we can do better. And again, exposure to risk is always going to be probably the biggest thing that we need to correct. And if we keep adding on races, we're going to increase that exposure and we are going to increase the amount of injuries that are going to happen for motorcycle racers, period. Yeah. I think there's going to be like a, like Grand Prix racing has, they've got, I forget what they call themselves, but I, at one point I always remember like Alex Wirtz was the head of the GDPA, right?

Grand Prix driver's position. That's it. Got it. I think you're going to have the same thing in motorcycles and you're going to have someone, you know, a rider that's going to still be like president and speak for everybody. Like, Hey, enough is enough.

This has got to stop whatever. Go ahead. I was going to say, and that might already exist. It might be just my own ignorance and not knowing what that is, but I wouldn't say if they do have it, it doesn't hold enough weight at the moment. Yeah.

I think only there's only ERDA, which is the independent teams, right? They're together on that one. But then Dorna sort of has that control of everything else. And, you know, there's not really a limit to anything. It's like, it's really interesting.

I mean, it's one of these things that's going to change and shape the sport. Anyway, we must continue on in this because we can talk about this forever. In fact, maybe we'll invite you, you, me and Rich to sit down and do one of these because that whole Liberty thing is a huge thing and a three person perspective, maybe even better. Anyway, well, let's move on. The next little thing, a tidbit I had is that Marcus Ramirez is out at the All American Racers in Moto two.

His place is being taken by Slatch because I, as far as I know, as I understand, Slatch has money to bring and more money than what Ramirez has, which makes me wonder how much money does Roberts have? Because I just don't think Roberts has that much cash behind him or like, I'm not sure what he brings to it. Maybe you got, I think, you know, might have some info on that, right? Don't you know? No, but more than likely it might be silent investors.

It may be someone who's paying for things on the team. It isn't necessarily affordable. I mean, I've seen that in the teams that I've had. You get personal sponsors that are attached to the person off the team. And so they continue up there.

You know, they don't sometimes they have stickers and sometimes they literally do not. They just want to be part of the show. And given that he is really the only American hope at the moment, he may have some backing or maybe there's some potential lineup. But yeah, we just finished up bottom line. You got to have the money to race.

It's very expensive and it's not getting cheaper even though they want to tell you it is. The money's just shift to a different area on the team. But it's it is interesting that the American team is not going with the all American writers because of those two main two reasons. One being that we have to make sure we have the funding in place to make sure the team stays afloat. But if it to be painfully honest, we don't have anybody in the pipeline right now.

And I agree with you. Moto America is a very big reflection of that. This year you had the top four or five super bike riders are all former world super bike, Moto GP, Moto two, Moto three, rebel rookie guys that did not make that step. And those are the best and those are the only guys that are winning right now. There's nobody on the young side that really is a threat to be the next guy.

And I don't know if we're going to have that anytime soon, unfortunately. Yeah. All right. Well, now that you depressed me, we'll definitely get a GP. All right.

So look at Moto GP. Let's look at what was going on in QP one. Marini is there as well as Calchowaro, Bender, Miller and Beliga. We knew Beliga would be there. It's his first outing on the bike subbing in for the injured Mark Marquez.

But you kind of think going into this one, Calchowaro probably has this one because let's face it, he has put down some qualifying laps on that Yamaha that are absolutely astronomical. I've said it before. I'll say it again. It's a crime. Yamaha does not have a better motorcycle for him to ride because they are wasting some talent.

I'm sure Calchowaro's pocketbook is really nice and his bank accounts are doing just fine. But at some point you race to win. There's a part of you, I think, that races for a contract to set yourself up for life. But there's also a part of you that says, I want to just win, regardless of how much cash that you're going to throw at me. Either way, Calchowaro did throw down an incredible lap to get into the second one.

But the question was who was going to join him. Bender just missed out on taking that spot. But Miller did not. So the two Yamahas escape and get out of Q1 and get to Q2. Side note, Calchowaro, the Yamaha, the V4.

A lot of what I've seen read, the V4 is not any faster than what Yamaha has right now. I've been trying to figure out why they would spend so much time and effort building a 1000cc V4 when you know you're going to 850s. Well, I realize the rules say you cannot run an 850 in a 1000cc class. But given the amount of money that they're having to spend, I'm wondering if this is a losing proposition for them. Well, first and foremost, there may have been some promises they had to fulfill when signing Fabio that they had to have that engine by a certain time.

But I would also assume this is what they're going to be moving into as far as format when it comes to the 850s. And they're just trying to get an understanding of what this does to the bike, what this does to the frame, how does it change. And so this is all one big test. From what I've read that even though it's not faster than the bike, they also have it detuned for reliability. And it does have more available horsepower, but they don't want to tap into it because what's the point of testing something if you go out there and blow it up?

You don't get any usable data really anyway. It is a bit strange that they're doing this so late in the game. But I think this is a step to appease a rider in which you mentioned they are kind of wasting his best years, which is like Fabio should have just gotten the Ducati when he had the chance. And also it's them getting in some basically long testing of saying, hey, this is what it's going to take to build one of these type of engines. And they need to test their tooling.

They need to test their design. They need to test and understand the engineering and the data so they can do the simulations as well. So I think there's a lot of collection of data that they're doing so that when they do need to switch this format for the next engine design rules, they don't have to start from step one. They can just take a few steps back, shrink it down and continue moving forward. In fact, maybe it's just a sleeved thousand they're going to do to make it an 850.

So they're going to work with the same technology they have now. Yeah. That's what I thought is that they're going to sleeve it down to get to 850. The stroke is going to be the same. They're changing the bore.

So you get a smaller bore. What are you going to get? Longer stroke on a bore. You're under square, not over square. So you're not going to rev it.

You're going to have a torque monster. So it might be easily rideable, which is what they're looking to create. Anyway, we could go down that rabbit hole. Yeah. A guy who used to tune bikes, that guy is an engineer.

Yeah. Don't get us talking about what for format. But how do we use to do two and a half hours of these again? I don't know. We just trying to keep it to the hour for you.

It's old times, man. As we go right back into where we were. OK, let's get to that second second round of qualifying in there halfway through Alex Marquez, Buzeki. That's what I want to say. How much do you want to see Quattro on his silky smooth style on an Aprilia?

Yeah, that's like almost like match made in heaven. Can we just take Martin and put him back on Ducati somewhere? Just put Quattro on an Aprilia because I think that's like almost a match made in heaven. Powerful bike. It handles get the most out of it.

It's like, oh, oh, oh, because I think you probably is the best bike on the grid. That's where I'm at. I don't know if it's the best. Hard to say. Hard to say because we could easily say, oh, it's got to be the Ducati.

It's like, well, yes and no, depending on the rider, I guess. It's definitely the most winningest bike and the ones up front the most. But it is tough because the Aprilia has had some tougher tracks to. Obviously, at that end of the field, there's a lot that goes into it. But I would say that in the right hands, it's very capable of winning a lot of races.

Fair enough. All right. Halfway through Alex Marquez, Bizecki, Acosta, Benyaya, Quattro and Aldiger are all there at the beginning. Basically, Alex winds up going down at turn three and it basically, it's Bizecki versus Acosta who's actually going to take that pole position. Acosta makes a minor mistake and he had to bail out of that lap.

So that left it with Bez, Acosta, Quattro, Benyaya, Alex Marquez and Zarco. That is the first front row this year for the KTM and the hands of Acosta. We took us that long to get there, believe it or not. So with that information intact, let's go to the sprint races. Now, I've not talked to you about this.

I want to know, do you like the sprint races? Do you not like the sprint races? Where do you stand on sprint races? So last time I came in about a year ago, we had a similar discussion where we were sitting at. And I said, well, I think it spoils some of the race for you, right?

Just because you see the front runners. Maybe more 50-50 with it these days. It is fun to watch more racing, but again, that exposure to risk we keep harking back to can happen. It did kind of get something this year. Like we saw, you know, Mark almost went to the mall.

That was kind of a cool streak to see. Do I deem it necessary for me to enjoy MotoGP? That is a no. I do not have to have it here. Do I want it gone?

I don't think that's necessarily something I want to see leave. Maybe I want to see it sprinkled in and not at every single race. Maybe more along that on the tracks where I think it's a little better to host a sprint and just give the weekend a little bit of a break. And just give the weekend's variable. But then again, we're just copying F1 at that point.

I don't think it's needed, but I don't think it's necessarily intrusive as I once thought it was. Okay. Let me ask you this then. I've thought that if the idea is that you want to have racing because people want to come and watch racing, they don't particularly want to watch practice or qualifying unless you're in an Iraq like us. Right.

I mean, we'd sit there, gobble it all up. What if you revamp the entire qualifying system and you've replaced it with qualifying races that happened on the weekend? So it's kind of a sprint. It wouldn't be, it was not by any means going to be half the distance of what they're running. Could you have a five lap mad dash in Moto three?

Could you have say an eight lap Moto two race and a 10 lap MotoGP race? And how you finish is how you start on Sunday. Does that make it better or worse? I'm not a big fan of that because I feel like qualifying is more about your individual pace and going out there and putting together the lap. I feel like racing, you don't have control of it.

As long as guys like Franco Morbidelli are going to out there and wipe you out from time to time. I just don't see that that's going to be something you want to deal with when you're trying to qualify and doing races and again, more injuries. But I would like to see a little bit of an update to qualifying, not so much where they race, but maybe splitting more groups and having limitations on your lap times. When you go out, this is a race track, gentlemen, not a cruising track. So you need to be within 80% of a lap time or your black flag and your qualifying is done.

So you pull on the track, get on the gas, ride your warmups, put your laps in. Don't sit around waiting for a tow. If you can do it, you can do it. You're a big boy. If you can't pull in the pits and go cry in your helmet somewhere because you couldn't hang with the big boys today.

Whatever the case may be, I'm not more racing for qualifying. That's not my jam when it comes to motorcycles. Well, that's fair. It was an idea to throw it out there. More to the effect that the Saturday seems to lack for me.

If I'm down at Kota and I'm watching a Saturday, I'm missing. There's a weird letdown. It's like, well, okay, the Moto two guys have ran. They got to practice. Cool.

Great. Now they're going to go call qualify. Yeah, they're done. Like, okay, well, now I'm just wait. There's a void.

There's like this 90 minute void between the last action and getting to that sprint race. It's in your summarize. Kota has that 90 minutes. And I just feel like I'm sitting there going like, yeah, I should be watching something. I get that you got to have time to feed your corner workers.

All that stuff is in there. And that happens during that time frame. But that race is over by like three track time. Use good until five. So there's a couple hours.

That's just like, I want something. I just want something else. I just have to fill it in. That's more. So it's like, if I had more races, maybe it would be cooler.

I'm just trying to figure out a way to. You know, what's a bummer is you went to the early days of the goodness sake of like I did. When it came back, there was always something on track. You had Moto America, you had stunt shows, you had sidecar races. There was always this.

What I found was the problem was Moto GP is that when they started wanting, basically they told Moto America or whatever it was called at the time, DMG, whatever. They said, listen, you can be part of our show, but we're collecting all of the gate fee. You cannot put up any of your banners and you basically get to have practice. If we deem that the track is worthy for you to go out and it doesn't interfere with our TV time. All of these rules drove all of that away.

People said, man, I'd rather just do my own thing and take a loss maybe on ticket sales because we're not making money being here. We have to pay to be here. And then you were just taking all of the money for yourself. And so the fans are left with warmup sessions and a race. And then that's it.

And that's something else they unfortunately learned from F1, as this bottom dollar agreed. So I think a lot of that's on Moto GP itself. They've ostracized themselves to remove the entertainment and the fact that nobody else wants to go there because they have to pay to play. And if you're in the business of making money, why are you going to pay someone else to put on your show? Exactly.

I totally, I 100% get that one. Yeah. I think because they made Moto America, we used to be at Kota, right? For the first couple of years. And Laguna.

And Indy. Right. And Indy did the other one. They did the 400s or something. Yeah.

What was that? Oh gosh. I don't want to spend too much time on this. They had Moriaki, Milwaukee chassis with like a 250 in them or something. It was like a Moto 3 class, but it wasn't called Moto 3.

It was Moto G Future Champions. I don't know. Whatever. We also had Rebel Rookies. We had everything.

There was the whole options. We had way more things to watch. In fact, the track was always busy to the case. Yeah, it's much different now. But like I said, you ran Moto America off because it's like they were so desperate to get out and get their own signage, their own TV money, their own gate money that they went back like in October to Kota for Superbikes.

And it's like 107 degrees there. But you know what else? I just thought about this is going to make other people mad. You know, they're talking about taking Moto 2, Moto 3 off the main schedule for like flyaways and stuff again. Yeah.

So what are they going to do then? So those races. Can you imagine? Like Japan? Here's your Moto GP race.

Good night. Like Kota, what are you going to do? It's like you have nothing else. What are you going to put in there? It's like, my gosh, you figured the practice session stuff.

You're done by noon. Well, it's two hours between everything. I mean, I could tell you it's like we do F1 now. I did F1 in 2021. It was just F1.

I think there was actually there was the ladies one, what do they call that? I can't remember. Anyways, but usually you would do practice and then it's two and a half hours until the next thing. That's it. And you had three sessions that day and that was it.

That makes the 18 hour drive to Kota for me like, oh no. Yeah. So they need to, yeah, they got to put on more and they have the money. They need to do better about it. Yeah.

And just need more Moto GP races, just racing period. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Racing period. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't care. Oh, speaking of racing, we should get onto the sprint race here. Whoops. We're supposed to do a race review, not pick the bones out of what's wrong with it.

That's what we did all the time. That's how we did. We picked the bones out of everything. Okay. Anyway, we're at the sprint race.

Now, Raul Fernandez was ruled out or had withdrawn, I should say after he had a vicious crash at turn two and free practice too. I think the kid was concussed. He has a history of concussions. They said it was because of his wrist or shoulder or something or whatever. I mean, I just think that's like an easy thing to say, right?

Because there's no protocol for any of that. So anyway, we're going to go 12 laps. Now, Bizecki got off to a great start followed by Acosta, then Alex and Quattrarro. Now, Acosta, I thought Acosta with that K-team was going to win that drag race to the first turn, but he had a small wheelie and I think he just had the lift off and that let Bez get in front of him. So then it was Bez, Acosta with Alex next, then Quattrarro, then Benyaya, then Digia and Zarco.

And the front two, Acosta would get by Bez and then they had about a half a second on Alex. It was like, okay. Then it was like another one second to get to Quattrarro. So obviously the top three guys had pace on everybody in the sprint. Alex did get by Bizecki, kind of put his head down, either got into his groove, found his rhythm, got Bizecki, got past him and then tried to get by Acosta at the exact same time because he had the double draft down that 900 meter straightaway, which that was that track.

I love Portimao because that downhill braking, there's so much opportunity there to get by because it's all about the drive you got coming up over the hill and how much do you dare drag the rear brake to slow you down so you don't wheelie yourself into infinity like one Sommecat Chantra almost did. Did you think Max Biagi had burned out? Oh, absolutely. But Biagi is still the best because I think Biagi darn near touched the tail section on his bike and Chantra was close, but it's like there's an example of what not to do. That's why you jeg the rear brakes over your hill people.

That's how you keep things on the front ground. Little rider tip there from me to you on that one. Anyway, that turn, that braking, that finding that blind point and when you're going on faith, then you're playing with the faith that the front end is going to stick too because you have the normal weight transfer onto the forks, but then you now have that energy that's being created by going downhill to the bottoming point, which the forks want to bottom out anyway underneath the braking load these things got. So you're back putting more oil in it to keep them from bottoming out because the last thing you need is that fork to fold under on you and you're downspin to the gravel trap, which isn't any good. So it was a great racing into that first turn with that.

Then Booliga was down at turn 13. He rode off through the gravel. In a moment, he said, I was riding it like a superbike. Yeah, I could see where you do that. It's where you come from.

It's like they're not the same. They're not the same weapon with all the other whiz bang stuff that's on these bikes nowadays that's there. But side note, speaking of super bikes, did you see the Penagoli Mark Marquez version? Yeah, I did. That is so sweet.

Yeah, those two are very cool and I'm not in a position to afford that right now. Nor will I be anytime soon. Yeah, they took the inspiration from that testing colors he had. Yeah. I thought that it was that red on red sort of ghost.

I mean, that's always been the cool thing about Ducati. It's racing first and they love to have stuff that reflects their racing heritage and I think that's awesome. They continue to do things like that. Yeah, their 450 dirt bike is absolutely sex on wheels for a dirt bike. I mean, what else do you expect from Ducati though, right?

I don't know. It may not last the whole race, but it's going to look damn good out there. I showed my kids a Cycler World that I kept that had the first 916 on it. Oh, they're like, oh my God, dad, that bike's cool. Who builds it?

Ducati. What year is that? 1990. They're like, what? Side note, that's the bike that got me into motorcycle racing.

I've told the story before on the show where I was on a road trip and up here we have all the hills everyone rides around in. Sartorius in the bay. Well, I'm not in the bay anymore, but at the time and a pack of Ducati's went by and a bunch of 916s were in there. I didn't even know sport bikes could sound like that. I thought they were all four cylinder rev it up and I heard that go by and I was like, dad, what are those?

He says, those are Ducati's and I was like, what's Ducati? He took them by, passed the dealership on the way home to look at them. I remember looking at those going, whoa. That's how all of this addiction started. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is that. That will happen to you.

Oh, let's see here. Anyway, Bez goes out way wide from turn one from a double draft. That draft was powerful. Usually you don't see it. It doesn't seem to be that powerful in Moto GP.

For here, it really is. I don't know if it's a combination of that breaking down the hill and you just leave it that second later and you're just not ready for it, or your mind doesn't compute that, which way it is, but it did allow for some good racing. In fact, this was probably like the best sprint race of the whole entire year. Because once Alex gets by Bez, Alex goes after Acosta and those two, like Alex would get by at one and Acosta would strike right back going through five and they flip it back around again. It was all about who could get the drive up out of 15 over the hill and get there.

Alex would try it again. He'd get the draft. He'd go in. He tried to break this a little bit later. This just repeats for like four or five laps.

It is really good racing. I think that was the racing we expected the sprints to be every single time that we had a sprint race was guys just totally going for it. It didn't work out that way. Fundamentally, if you're paying points, somebody's going to figure out that you either win it and take the points or you say, nope, you'd use the Wayne Rainey effect that I talk about all the time. Nope, I can't really beat you and I don't feel like running the risk of falling off and hurting myself because tomorrow there are 25 more points on the table.

I'll take the eight or seven or six or whatever I'm going to get and carry on. Anyway, that racing is absolutely fabulous until Alex essentially breaks it or whatever. At the very end, Alex wins that race followed by Acosta, Bizecki, Quattroraro, and that is how they finish it out there. That was your people that were on the podium. Basically, everybody gets a medal and whatnot.

The other thing too was, and they didn't show you this, was the fact that Aldiger got by both Zarco and Benyai in the final two turns and Aldiger was actually on the curb on the inside of the curb at 14. It wasn't like, no, he was by the curb. No, it's like his knee is in the grass trimming the lawn as he goes by with both wheels firmly planted on the painted curb. Zarco has that moment where he sees it coming. He looks and double takes like you can't be over there doing this.

It's like, is there an internal track limit that you have to maintain? Because I was like, it isn't green. If somebody had splashed green paint there, he would have been done, but he wasn't over because he took the run down the, I think it's slightly downhill there. It is. Yeah.

He takes the run downhill and then winds up beating Benyai on a drag race to the finish line. It's like, why weren't we watching that battle earlier on, I guess, because we actually had a battle in the front for the first time. Best sprint race of the year, hands down in my opinion. Yeah. I thought it was a great sprint race.

I think there's a lot of things to talk about. One, it's like, wow, Alex Marquez just proving this entire year that nothing was a fluke and he's for real, for real now. It's cool. Pedro's still showing that the KTM needs a bit more to do things. Marco showing that given the proper setup, he could do things and we'll talk about that here in just a second.

But again, I think the biggest standout to me is something we've been talking about is poor Fabio, man. He should be higher, but he has to make that thing work the way it is. And if you're looking for any other Yamaha around him, you're not going to find it. Yep. They're not.

I mean, he is head and shoulders beyond anybody else on the Yamaha. It's absolutely crazy that it goes down that way. But yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Quattro was, was fourth in that race.

Then Didier, then Aldiger, Zarco, Benya, Bender and Espargaro. All right. Before we talk about MotoGP race here for the last few minutes we have, the curious case of Peco Benya in his Ducati, the, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work.

Oh, it works. Now it doesn't work, but it does work, but it doesn't work. What's your take? What do you think's wrong? You tuned enough bikes.

I want to hear your thoughts because I've had mine. So I think the bike changed this year from last year, maybe to fit what Marquez was asking for, not at the cost of what Benya liked, but they were trying to get both their guys up front and whatever change they made to adapt to what Marquez likes, it negatively affected Benya's ridership. Now two things happened after that, which had been a bit of a detriment to them. One, the fact that they've been throwing anything and everything as far as setup to get him going again, and he has not been comfortable in any of it. And I could tell you from someone that either did this or watched riders around him change everything all the time.

You never get better. You change the bike all the time. You can't figure out what actually makes a difference. And I used to watch guys flip suspensions upside down, changing even like all the, let's move the motor forward or back in the frame. This kind of like, dude, no, no, it's breaking 20 feet later here.

That's where you're missing it. It's perfection. It's nothing else. And I think, by my personal opinion, it's just that his cage is rattled right now. I think he needs some time to go away and reset and remember the great rider that he is.

And when he steps away from the bike, the muscle memory will start to go away a little bit and he can go back to his good habits and go, okay, now I know that I'm starting from zero again. Let's just go out here and build back up, get the confidence back and his team can find out which direction to put his bike. And hopefully with a little bit of redesign, obviously they don't need to, to, to drink the ocean here over the winter. You know, they need to go ahead and get him right. I think he's, I think he's got a bit of a mental blocker and like in golf, you get the yips, you know, and they've got to get him back to base so he can start being the exceptional rider that we all know that he is.

I agree with you. I it's a mental game now. I had some wild ideas that there was something about his chassis that he had that weren't right, that just didn't work. Take your pick, right? There was all kinds of theories that I had, but none of it was right because it wouldn't, it wasn't the same week in week out.

And so you got to sort of turn yourself around and look back inward and realize that between his ears wasn't right. And I think what happened to him was one Marquez got on that bike and he's in the same, he's in the same team. And when Mark just basically took that bike and just started winning right out of the gate, then Yaya got rattled slightly like, Whoa, he's doing things on a bike that I can't do. Because I honestly believe Ducati is the best at sharing data between all their teams. It's an open book.

Here's the data. And you can see that Mark was, I don't know, for sure, one thing probably carrying a little more corner speed and Mark is more comfortable breaking later and having the front end moving around on him than Ben Yaya is. He wants that more planted front end where Mark just seems to want to ride with the back end and just spin it around dirt track style. Like, it's okay. Give me close.

I'll finish it off with the throttle and turn it around, which I don't think Ben Yaya likes. I think he's more 250. I'll call it 250. He never rode one 250 style, right? About clip your apexes, find your points, which is where all the ride height devices and everything work on Ducati well, because the wheel base is changing to help you turn that corner.

So, but Mark just doesn't do it. Plus Mark was using, and I'll take, I'll give credit to this one to Neil Hodgson. Mark was using the back brake a lot more on the Ducati than Ben Yaya really ever did. And I think he saw that in the traces and he's like, I can't do that. Or if he tried to do it, it made it worse.

And it just, he lost what he understood about the bike, which was, which, you know, there's more to it than that because of the ride height, the ride height system, how it worked. They took one off of the old bike, Morbidelli's, and put it on Ben Yaya's. And that was like, ooh, magic. But if you think about it, any place that there was like a long radius corner or turns that you had to like, where I, I'm going to go with your fast, if you sort of slide it dirt track style, Ben Yaya was terrible. But point and squirt circuits where it's just come in, slam on the brakes, basically stop, turn and accelerate back away again.

He was doing okay with it was those other circuits he couldn't. And I think he was just looking at Mark's data going, I can't ride around that that fast. And instead of, and Ducati is like, well, I think they had like what they did with Rossi. Well, here's the data. He can do it.

Why can't you do it? Kind of a moment of, you know, rider mismanagement and not understanding that you need to sort of hold it, hold and pat your two time, what two time world champion and say, look, hey, buddy, it's okay. We just got to find your way. You, you, you worry about you. It's stop worrying about what this guy over here is doing.

So I think you hit that one on the head completely and totally. So anyway, that's, that's the Ben Yaya saga. So let's look at the race. 25 laps around it. This time, Desney, no mistake again, got a whole shot.

Acosta jumped out there too. Then Alex, cultural, Ben Yaya and Zarko. Well, now I'm thinking, okay, here we are now. If Acosta gets by Bez or if Alex doesn't quickly get by Acosta, Bez may be gone because morning warm-up should Bez being half a second quicker than almost everybody ever like a five or six lap run. So whatever little tweak of Prilia found worked because everybody was saying, oh, it's going to be a medium tire, medium tire.

Everybody started with soft rear just like they did in they did in the sprint race. But Morbidelli was down at five because he made a late lunge, messed it up, went in and then at five, and I, this is a part about Morbidelli I don't understand. He's way offline. He's trying to try to go back to the line. But one of the things you do as a rider, you look because you're, look, you can see because you're turning to the right or sorry, you're turning left and you can look easily that way to see if anybody's coming online.

And of course he doesn't bangs into the out of your or somebody back there falls off and then seems frustrated by the fact that he fell off because he got knocked off. It's like that one's all on you, but it's a bit of an oxymoron to say Franco Morbidelli and spatial awareness in the same sentence. Yeah, that is, that is true. I will give you, I'll give you that one. Alex did get by, by Acosta early on and I thought, okay, well, this is going to be, this is going to be it.

He's, this is going to be an Alex versus Bez kind of a race. We're waiting to see what's going to happen. Mir goes into the pits and the second time he retired, he retired from the sprint. He retired from this race. The question was, was it a clutch issue on the bike?

I think Honda was trying to copy something that I think KTM either tried and has succeeded at or has removed. And that is the fact that they're, they're presetting the clutch for the start and they're using an accumulator for hydraulic fluid and they're releasing it slowly. So that they basically, as a rider, you just let go of the clutch entirely and it slowly lets you slide away. I think that system broke or failed. And I think that's why the clutches went up.

Don't know if you've got a thought on that one or not, but that's my engineering theory. I just think Honda's in test mode for next year. So like I said, this is a good idea that they may be trying something new. It's breaking. And speaking of talent that's getting wasted in their best years.

Mir? Yeah. Well, more so Mir. Marini, I don't know really. I mean, he's a good rider.

I don't know really how high of a ceiling he has. Obviously better than bikes that break down. But Mir especially, we're talking MotoGP champion looking pedestrian on that Honda and Honda hopefully will take another moment to go, okay, we need to listen to the rider, not the engineers moment here when they go into the next design bit. Because let's be honest, we need more bikes up front. And yeah, I need, I need Mir up front.

That guy's great to watch. You talk about smooth riders. He's another one. And makes you wish Suzuki never took their ball and left. But you know, I really do think Honda's in test mode at this point, because they know the season has been a wash.

And the fact that Mir's still walking around after all the hits he's taken this year is amazing. But I think they're definitely in test mode and some of those new parts or whatever they're trying to do, radical changes, like you mentioned, they're, they're going through some teething. Yeah, I do think that Honda is bound to determine to do everything they can to win one last championship in this, I'll call it era of MotoGP with the all whiz, all bang, all crazy, all everything. Because you can look back through history and you can see like 800s and stuff, they threw everything out the book at it to win the last 800, one of the last 800 seasons with Nikki. Right.

And that bike was experimental, completely. But anyway, I think Honda's in the same mode. It's win everything, do what you can win this win one title here, then we'll move into the 850 realm and see what we can do because they have enough money to build whatever they want, whenever they want. So they're just going to keep doing it. Anyway, this is where things get interesting is the fact that, you know, Bez is basically gone.

No one's going to catch Bez. He runs his own race, does his own thing. And he's going to he's pulling away. Alex is stuck there in second, Acosta is in third, but we did have some good racing that was between like Bender and Altegr. They had some great racing.

They went back. They showed us that there were some good passes there. They were fighting hard with each other, going back and forth. You know, we're at like lap 11 of the race and Peco just goes down. It was just it was one of the fastest front end fall outs I've ever seen on a bike because usually there's a warning.

You get that little something that says, oh, and you will watch a foot move or something off a peg as they're trying to save the front. There was none of that. It was just down and it was a weird front end down and it happened really fast because if you look at Benyias Leathers, it's his side, his back and his arms are all covered. Usually if it's just the low side, it's like, you know, usually they're down. It's just sort of on your hip area.

Nope, not this one. It was like all down his entire side because it left that quickly. So it just gave away without any warning whatsoever. Question now is, is Peco going to maintain third in the or maintain his third in the championship? I don't think so.

I think Bez is going to take that over. But momentum is Bez in his favor for sure. Yeah, momentum is definitely there in that way. Bender would get by Quattrarro as they had a good little squabble back and forth, but Quattrarro was way out of shape as he went into one when they did that one. Basically the race ends with Bezeki winning it.

Alex is second, then Acosta. Aoudegger would make his way to fourth followed by Bender. Then Quattrarro, Ayagura. It's not the greatest race you're ever going to watch. It's quite a boring to be quite honest.

But then Zarco, Polasparga, Marini, Miller, Renz, Oliver and Buliga gets a point for 15th. And that's how they finished. And we're going to look at the championship because it does have implications. Quite quickly for you, Skyler, Marquez, as in Mark, is still on his 545 points. His brother is 100 points behind him still with one round left to go.

That's insane considering Mark has missed four rounds. He'll miss the final four races of the year. Plus he crashed out of Mandelica. Thoughts about that? Is it just dominance by Marquez?

It is. It is dominant year. Next year's probably got more of the same lined up. It just kind of shows you where this guy's at. He's got his confidence back on a bike that he likes and it just makes you wonder if that Honda had been just a little bit better over those years and he didn't get injured.

What would we be looking at right now? He'd have 10 world titles. Easily. You figure he would have had 2020 if he would have said screw it and stayed on the bike. Third's good enough.

That's what I'm going to take today. He'd have been fine. You figure he wins that one at the very least and then he probably wins the year after. There's at least two in there that I think he could have won. He had seven MotoGP world titles, nine total titles.

Easily 10 if not 11 total world titles probably. His brother's in second. Vezeki's in third and Benya is now 35 points behind Vezeki. As you said, the momentum is all in Vezeki's case to stay in third place then. After that, it's Benya, Acosta, Digia, Morbro Deli, Aldiger, Quattro and Fernandez is in the top 10 basically from his good races.

I didn't realize. It's actually not Benya to Pistachio. It's Acosta to Benya. Benya going down to fifth actually. It's only three points between them.

Acosta again is riding well. I don't want to count back Naya out because we've seen if he gets happy on it, he's back to his old self. What was that at? Indonesia? He was running away with it?

Japan. I think he was ahead in Indonesia but didn't lose a chain or something like that? Sipang, he won the sprint. He was doing well but the rear tire got a puncture which is really bizarre that you get a puncture. That's super rare.

Yeah, it's not to say that he can't do it but he's definitely in danger of falling down but I wouldn't count him out just yet. But the stop and go nature of Valencia, you think that's going to favor Benya a little bit with the bike and how he prefers his setup? With Acosta, we learned, I think this year we really saw Acosta step his game up and show you what he is. There's still that talent there that we saw in Moto 3 and Moto 2. The kid's still a world champion in the making.

KTM, it's a question whether he's going to do it on a KTM or whether he's going to do it on a different bike. That's the question because at some point Acosta is going to be like, yeah, I'm still 22, 23. He's still got some time left but you figure, I mean Marquez is telling you, he's 32 and wins another world title with a long gap between winning them in like five years which is more than anybody which is crazy. But you saw the potential in Acosta. There was so much potential in him.

You can look at these guys. Altegr is another guy I think who has so much potential in MotoGP to do well and you can say, wow, the changing of the guard is coming because there's a lot of guys that are going to disappear off this grid and you get there. So that's my take on it all from the race. I think there is a bit of a change in the and obviously this is always going to happen but I mean like you see your Zarcos, your Marbidellis, your, what we're seeing right now with, oh it's slipping my mind. Give me a second here.

It'll come back in. Last home race, Miguel Oliveira. His name has been around since KTM got back into it. We're going to see him dipping out in the Jack Miller eventually and some of these guys shout out to Paul Spargrove still finishing 10th in a race for a guy as a test rider. That's, you know, technically you shouldn't be a test rider.

You should still be in the sport. He wants a super bike ride from what I understand. He's doing great with that. So there's definitely a bit of a change in the guard. However, it isn't going to be handed to them.

Marquez is still a king for the foreseeable future and the thing about this year is that there are a lot of guys out there that are at their peak and they cannot touch him. And when he goes, they go. That's the thing. Like he's like, Cuartaral is not a lot longer. He's what?

Three years younger than Marquez I think. But Marquez can stay around that long because you got to fall from the top before you can climb to it. So if Cuartaral is going to go take the crown before Marquez will walk away, it is going to get handed to him when he leaves because then everybody else is good too. It is interesting to see. But then again, when we get this switch to these eight fifties, that can turn all upside down and we don't know who's going to be there.

All I know there's a guarantee that if Morbidelli is still there, he's going to wipe somebody out and then blame the other person. There's a theme here. Almost as if you don't like Morbidelli. Not a big fan. You know what?

I don't mind the close race between the contact. I don't like talking out of both sides of the mouth. That's the problem. It's everybody else's fault when it happens to me. It's never my fault when I do it to everybody else.

You're right. You're right. Yeah. Yep. I'm not a fan of that.

Yep. I agree with you. All right, man. I know your time's up. Appreciate you, pal, coming in, stepping in.

Good times. Great stuff. So all right, folks, Skyler is going to bow out and then I'll be back to talk about Motor 2 and Motor 3. Excellent. All right.

I'll catch you all hopefully in the not too distant future. Winter is coming and we will get out some other episodes with yours truly on it. So once again, many thanks to Skyler for jumping on and talking MotoGP with me. That leaves us with the Moto 2 and Moto 3 classes left to cover and I'm going to do that alone as a solo and we'll start off with Moto 3 qualifying one. The guys who got out, Esteban, Nepa, Peeni and Morelli, they all got out of the out of Q1.

In Q2, Keeley's had pole position by halfway, followed by Peeni, Picaris, Kelso, Peroni and Scott Ogden. Keeley's crashes and everyone, and I do mean everyone, was on a fast lap. They all had red sectors. At the end, though, Kelso had the fastest of all red sectors, followed by Ogden, followed by Picaris, Keeley's, Peeni and Esteban. So that is how the qualifying went for Moto 3.

The other guys in the Moto 3 that were there after Peeni and Esteban was Seventh was Ogorman, showing fine, then Adrian Fernandez, Almanza, Peroni, Farrosado and Carpe. Now, after that, we get into the race on Sunday. So 19 laps, what was going to go down? Kelso got a great hole shot from the pole position. He was quickly followed by Keeley's, Ogden, Esteban, Picaris and Ogorman.

Now Kelso had some pace. He was out front and he was looking good. Ogden at the very beginning was going backwards as fast as he was going forwards. So he's sliding back. Keeley's pulled a bump and run on Esteban at 14.

It was a whoa move. It was like, wow, that was pretty crazy. That was very, very hard, very aggressive. But we've come to expect that from Keeley's as he legitimately is the guy to be Marc Marquez like, if you will, when he's doing that kind of thing. Now, after that part of it, Peroni would crash.

Then Almanza would go down at turn 13. Kelso is still leading, but he's the only constant out front because Fernandez, Picaris, Keeley's, Pini and Ogorman are just simply trading places each and every turn. A lot of passing at one, passing at three, passing at five, then passing at four, I think it's 11 or 12, and then passing at 14. So really, really good Moto3 race here. Lots of passing, lots of going on.

First, Sato has made his way up to fifth. And with eight laps down, Kelso was trying to pull away. I think he thought that now was the time to get going and make a break for it. That would backfire slightly on Kelso as he would lose a couple of places when he ran wide at turn five. That allowed Keeley's to lead, followed by Picaris, and then Kelso fell back in line.

Kelso would continue to get shuffled back. He wound up going back to sixth. Keeley was shuffled back to fourth because he was wide at turn five shortly thereafter. Then somehow, in all the melee of that and getting back in line, or Keeley getting back in line, first Sato would lead the race and he was looking quite good on the Honda. Everyone is passing everybody everywhere.

A great, really awesome Moto3 race. Everybody is riding really good at the front. And Keeley winds up being back at the front again. At five laps to go, Pini went down at turn 13. Keeley was in lead at this point.

Looked like he was going to try to break away with Furusato as they kind of took a little bit of a gap over Picaris, Esteban, and Carpe. But that battle between those last three is absolutely, truly awesome. Picaris kind of gets the better of all those guys to get himself a run onto Furusato and winds up getting by him with two laps to go. But in the end, Keeley's will win the race. Picaris will be second.

Furusato is third. That's your podium. Esteban, Carpe, Agorman, Kelso slids down seventh. Ogden, Fernandez, Linnetto, Morelli, Danas, Arreate, Foggia, and Nicola Carrara taking home the final point, championship point for 15th. If we look at this in terms of the championship, well we know Jose and Tanya are away to is world champion, but the battle is for second here as Angelo Picaris is only eight points ahead of Keeley's with one round left to go.

Keeley's is definitely the up in the cummer. You're getting that sort of changing of the guard as we always get to get with the Moda 3 class. But next year it's going to be wild to watch Keeley's, Arreate, Munoz, and Agorman. Couldn't think of the Irishman's name. I think those guys are really going to be really awesome in the class along with Kelso.

He'll be on the MLab, so we'll have to see what happens with that. But in the order, after Keeley's is Munoz, then Carpe, Kelso, Furusato, Fernandez, Yamanaka, and Peroni is 10th in the championship. Again, the battle for this is to see who's going to be second and my money is on Keeley's coming home with that second place. With that, we'll switch over to Moto 2. Moto 2 qualifying, we had in the first qualifying session Munoz, Salach, Van Deggerberg, and Screege escaping to the second qualifying round.

With the second qualifying round halfway through, Dixon was on pole, followed by Balthus Marrera, Colin Vier, and then Gonzalez and Vietti. Dixon would fall down at turn five. He was quickly up and was going again, although it was interesting whether he was going to be able to maintain or hold on to pole position because of that small incident. Marrera would go to pole, he would be followed by Dixon, and then Colin Vier throwing down a great lap to be third. Balthus fourth, Kinet fifth, Holgardo sixth, Munoz, then Gonzalez, and Vietti, Alonso, Screege, and Lopez rounding out the top four rows in that qualifying session.

Now we get to the race. This is the last championship that we have left for anything to be decided on. Basically, the reality is that Gonzalez has to be seventh or better to keep his championship hope alive, but Marrera has to be first or second with a little bit of help if he wants to win the championship here in Portemayo. The race is 21 laps. Marrera gets a nice whole shot followed by Dixon, and then after a couple corners Vier moves himself into second place, pushing Dixon back to third.

Then it's Vietti, Alonso, and Gonzalez. Now, Gonzalez has joined the fast six. There was a bit of a gap there, and he actually spanned that gap and got to it, which was good for Gonzalez because he needed to be near Marrera for sure. Vier would get into the lead, and he would look really, really good out front. Alonso gets by Dixon as Dixon starts to fade and go backwards.

With five laps down, Vier is leading. Marrera is second, then Alonso, Dixon, Gonzalez, and Vietti. At this point, Gonzalez has a massive scare at turn five. He gets all out of the seat up over the tank and gets it back together again, but he does fall back to seventh place. With him falling back, Gonzalez now has to worry about Balthus attacking him, while Vier is up front and he's starting to pull away.

With ten laps down, Vier has a nice little lead over Marrera, then Alonso, Canet has moved his way up into fourth, past Dixon and Gonzalez. Gonzalez would then get by Dixon, and Balthus would go by Gonzalez for fifth. Vier is still leading with 15 laps down and looking really good up front. This is the first time Vier has really put it together in Moto2. We've seen Helgardo and Alonso win races and put in some really strong showings, but Vier has always been just that little bit behind or that little bit off.

In this race, Vier definitely had it hooked up and was going really well. Five laps to go, Marrera was closing in on Vier. Not sure if Vier kind of used up his tire or what exactly was going on. It could be, you know, Vier is a bit of a lanky kid. He's tall.

He fits the Moto2 bike, but these guys work hard on their fitness and their training, but it's a whole different thing to be out front leading a race the whole time and being on a bigger bike that maybe there was maybe a smidge of fatigue, maybe a little bit of brain fatigue or whatever, but Marrera was coming and coming hard. Vier tried his best to hold him off, but Marrera got by Vier with three laps to go and he did it with a really sneaky, awesome move at turn 11 that he slid up the inside. Great move by Marrera, showing all the confidence in the world. This guy is leading the world championships. First time he's ever led a world championship and he is just as cool as a cucumber.

Jokes, laughs, kids around. I don't think anything really fazes this guy. And so he just was doing his thing and his thing was to go right up the inside at 11 and get past Vier. With one lap to go, you had Dixon going down at turn one, but the race was won by Marrera, followed by Colin Vier, his best finish in Moto2 on the podium. Then David Alonso snags another podium.

Then Aaron Kinnett, then Baltas Gonzalez hangs on and gets sixth, which he needed to be at least seventh to keep his championship hopes alive as they head into the final round. Seventh was Hallgardo, then Arenas, Aegis, Guevara, Munoz, Escrige, Vietti, Ortova, and Salak. So this Moto2 race for the championship is going down to the wire, which I said it would happen a long time ago. Honestly, I think Marrera has one hand and four fingers on this championship trophy. He has a 24-point lead going into the race in Valencia this weekend, but Gonzalez really needs to be looking behind him, quite honestly, because Barry Baltas is only 25 points behind.

Anything can happen, but Baltas has a shot at being second in this championship. We have seen Gonzalez make mistakes under pressure, and those mistakes have cost him dearly. I can think of three that he's done. Sometimes the pressure gets to you, but maybe now Gonzalez will ride a little freer. Sometimes when the pressure is off of you, you don't really care anymore and you're not thinking about it, because really all the pressure is on Marrera, but I think that kid's just too cool of a cucumber to even remotely possibly crack on this one.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens. Now, Kinet is in with a shot as only being six points behind Barry Baltas, so Baltas needs to keep Kinet behind him to guarantee finishing third in the championship. Dixon is fifth, 11 points back of Aaron Kinet, so anything's possible there. Helgardo has six, followed by his teammate Alonso in seventh, then Celestino Vietti, Alberto Renes, and Senna Aegis. I really thought that this race in Moto 2 showed us how the old guard is being replaced by the new guard, and the new guard is Baltas, Helgardo, Alonso, Colin Vier, Senna Aegis, and they're all right there in this race.

Next year, I think, this is going to be some fabulous racing between those guys with a wild card of somebody else being thrown in as per the norm with these things. So exciting showdown to come, the last championship in Valencia this coming weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. So everybody tune in, make sure you're watching the Moto 2 race for sure to see who wins the world championship, and after that weekend, Rich and I will be back to cover the racing action from Valencia and wrap this season up and prepare for season testing that will happen after the race. But until we are back after this weekend, everybody out there, ride safe.