MotoGP 2025 Top 10’s

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 Radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 822, the first of the new year, January 14th, 2026. I'm Jim McDowell wishing everyone a happy new year and especially happy new year to my co-host from across the pond, Richard Jow.

Richard, happy new year, sir. Yes, happy new year to you as well, Jim and to all of our lovely listeners as well. Good to be into 2026 and it's not that long before the racing starts, is it? So we've got a fair few things that we want to do before season gets going towards the end of February, isn't it, this year? So it's scarily early.

World Superbike gets going at the end of Feb. I need to double check when MotoGP starts, but it's much, much earlier than it used to be obviously because there's so many damn races to cram in. Yeah, there is. There's way too much to cram in. So I would like to take it and thank all the people who are our donators to the show.

Can't do the show without you guys. Really appreciate you staying with us and whatnot. If you want to donate to the show, you can go to www.Motopodcast.com. There's links to PayPal and to Patreon to support us and that's great. They appreciate it.

Hey, if you can't, we understand. We know how things are, but if you can at least leave a review, a comment, share the podcast. Don't keep us a secret. Help us get bigger. We want to be that number one fan podcast and according to millions of podcasts, we're number four for MotoGP.

Love to try to get to number three. You can't do it without your guys' help. Speaking of help here in the US, still looking for somebody willing to step up to the mic and cover Moto America. Maybe occasionally do a MotoGP show if Richard and I are traveling to help out. One, two people is all we're really looking for.

So if you have an interest, want to get behind the mic, see how the sausage is made as it were, travel to a race or so, get some passes for Moto America to get into PADOC, talk to the racers, all that kind of stuff. Shoot us an email at motopod.motopodcast.com, host in the subject line and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Rich, how is the search going for World Superbike BSB recruits? Very well in fact, Jim. Yeah, so I was contacted again by Carl Hearn, who's one of our, I can't remember if it's Patreon or PayPal subscribers, but anyway, Carl's been very kindly contributing to the show a little bit each month for quite some time and has expressed some interest in the past.

So my bad really for not following up on that previously, but we want to sort of kick on again if we can in 2026. So Carl hopefully is going to come on board. Also really nice chap called Danny Smith, who I met on holiday in Corfu back in August of summer last year. I reached out to Danny just to see if he would be interested because he goes to a lot of races, does a lot, well I say a lot, he goes to some of the roads stuff as well. So I felt he could be a really good guide to get on board as well, just to give that extra bit of colour and breadth.

So yes, I'm looking to try and get some stuff arranged with those two guys and we'll have a little kickoff show with them obviously prior to BSP season kicking off. We'll try and do it before World Super Bikes again, although again, I'm just looking at my notes here, World Super Bikes gets going on the 20th of February, so not long. You know, the season comes around very quickly, doesn't it? So yes, good progress here. So that'll be kind of more Super Bike and roads focus.

So that allows us to focus purely on MotoGP, Jim, as you said, and if we can get somebody to come in and do a bit more on the AMA side as well. Listen to me AMA, God, I'm showing my age again. Moto America, I apologize, then that would be superb as well. Yeah, just as a reference, Rich, the very next weekend MotoGP kicks off at the 27th of February to March 1st in Thailand. Yeah, I thought it was the end of February.

It's a fast and furious coming at you. So that's great news, Rich, from that side. Looking forward to hearing from the new guys and seeing what they can bring to the show. Always good to have more people involved. And with that, Rich, let's move to the little bit of news that exists.

So first up, training crash. This seems to happen all the time. This time a training crash has caught out out of your who has a fracture to the shaft of his left femur. Apparently a motocross accident, I would assume of some kind here. Don't do triples when you're a MotoGP rider.

OK, the bigger question, I think, for out of her for me, Rich, is, was he on a Desmo for fifth? Well, I don't know the circumstances of the crash other than I believe it happened in Valencia. So whether it was motocross, flat track, A little supermoto. Yeah, it could have been. I mean, these guys, when you see them out practicing, I mean, they're hard on it every lap all the time because they have to be.

That's how they sort of try and maintain some level of bike fitness. So a crash is going to hurt most of the time. You can ask Jorge Martín about that 12 months ago, for example. So this is a real setback for Fermin Aldegaard though, because femurs are not a bone you ever want to break and they can be quite tricky and long to heal. Yeah, I mean, he's very young, obviously, and he's exceedingly fit.

So that's in his favor. But this close to testing, which is only a matter of a few weeks away now. February 3rd. Not ideal preparation for the season to come, particularly given the momentum he had on the back of 2025. So, yeah, shame for him to have that happen so close to action resuming.

All right. The next bit of news. This one pertains to, it's not in the notes Rich, but I remember seeing this, the possibility that Brazil will not be ready to be the second race of the season. There has been talks that the track is not going to be finished or complete, or at least will not meet grade one FIA status. More on that to come.

I mean, we have all the controversy in the Olympics and the Olympic village and what's going on there. And now we add this on top of it. It's like, oh man, like the world forgot how to build stuff. I don't know. It's weird.

Yeah. It's a shame if that doesn't happen. Although I don't suppose the teams will be shedding too many tears because they've got a packed enough travel schedule as it is. But yeah, it's not good first time out if the track doesn't make it in time. That's poor form, really.

I know these things are complicated and very expensive to do and all the rest of it. But if you make the commitment, you should make sure you got the way with all to do it, surely. What was it a few years ago? It was India started, right? The quip of it was when they did the track was that legitimately, I think they had finished the last asphalt like some two days beforehand and teams reported paint being wet in the garages, if I remember correctly.

Yeah. Oh, people come on. And I don't understand, Jim, why? Well, I mean, I suppose I do because again, you'd have to have a lot of preparation with no potential revenue. But in a case like a new track where you might have some doubts about its readiness, why isn't there a reserve place on standby to host the race if they want to get the full 22 in, not in Brazil, but somewhere else?

You know? Yeah, that's an interesting one. When you think how many good tracks there are around the world that you'd love to see MotoGP at, provided it met the relevant safety grade and whatnot. But I'm thinking of somewhere, for example, and I'm not saying it's necessarily MotoGP ready, but I don't think it would take much to get it there would be, well, Turkey would be an obvious one now. I was thinking of the new Nurburgring actually, which is a track I actually quite like.

I went to a World Superbike race there some years ago and it was actually quite fun to watch the bikes going around the Nurburgring. So my point is there are plenty of other places and obviously this happened in COVID, didn't it, where tracks suddenly appeared that could host a race under the constrained conditions of running under that particular period of time. So it'll be a shame not to be back in Brazil because I think everybody's been looking forward to that because Brazil is a great country. Yeah, I mean, obviously Interlagos is not capable. It's not suitable for bikes.

It's not suitable. It's a great racetrack. Walls are too close. Well, I was just wondering if you could shorten the circuit where you bypass the very fast sweeps onto the main straightaway, if you will, and if you could have a goofy kind of chicane that would then get you out from like the Senna S's on out, it would be a fabulous track for motorcycles, I think. Again, that's money and money talks and bullshit walks and all that other stuff.

Yeah, I mean, why can't you go to like the Hockenheim circuit? I mean, it's neutered from the very fast chicane ridden thumb portion that went out into the forest. I know I'm talking from a standpoint of being old as well, if you remember the thumb portion of Hockenheim. Yeah. The new circuit is not great, but if it was one of those things where it's like, hey, we have a schedule of 22 races, these people aren't coming on.

You are a reserved track and hey, we're kind of booking this weekend. That's empty per se, but I would think that'd be a lot of like legal contract mumbo jumbo and there'd have to be money paid to hold the date. And if that didn't happen, there'd have to be some cancellation fee stuff, you know, on and on and on. So I love the idea of having just something in your back pocket. Hey, go here.

But I guess realistically you'd need to know kind of like probably two months in advance if there was going to be a change of plan like that just because of the sheer complexity of the logistics, getting everything right. Oh, yeah. So I mean, it would be a big challenge, but yeah, it strikes me as a bit silly that we might arrive in this situation anyway. Let's see. Hopefully it'll go ahead.

All right. Well, here's a big one for everybody. This is a rule change to MotoGP. I will read through the rule change, Rich. And World Superbike.

Oh, and World Superbike. Sorry. I'm sorry. Both series. Yeah.

Applies to both series. I'm sorry. This one's a big one. This is a big one, folks. So here from the 2026 season, riders in MotoGP and World Superbike will not be allowed to restart their bikes from trackside after a crash.

Fair. Attempts to restart a bike whose engine has stopped after the crash must take place behind the trackside barriers on a service road. That's fair. To this point, I don't exactly have an argument. We shall continue.

But, and here's the but, if a bike has remained running, i.e. it's in the gravel trap, it's on its side, grab the clutch, pick it up, bike is still running. The rider can rejoin, but the marshals are able to prevent them from rejoining if, on inspection of the bike, they deem it to have sustained damage, which could cause a dangerous situation for it to rejoin the track such as a fluid leak. This is going to cause some serious heartburn throughout all of this. So if you would like to dissect first, Rich, you may.

Well, I think it's a sensible rule in the sense that, you know, you commonly see riders trying to bump start bikes back into life on a live track, often with marshals in close proximity or giving them a push. So obviously there's a safety issue there to the riders, but I would say more primarily to the marshals, actually, because they're there on their own dime, putting themselves at risk and you shouldn't put them at more risk than necessary. So in that sense, I do get it. I mean, there are a few things that spring to mind, Jim. First of all, service roads and behind retainables, that's quite often quite a long way through the gravel trap on a MotoGP approved circuit.

So I don't really see that practically by the time you've got there, got the bike going again, what's the point? I mean, you're going to be so far behind if this happens in a race, it wouldn't really be worth rejoining. The next thing is you're going to see riders clinging on to clutch levers for dear life and grinding through gloves and fingers and bones and God knows what, which you already see from time to time. But they'll be even more imperative to do it, of course, now that the bike stays running, unless some clever engineers figure out a way to stop the bikes stalling. But obviously they're not meant to run on their sides, are they?

It's not good for the engines. So there's an issue there. But my biggest fear, you know, I can think of at least two occasions last year when Fabio Quattroraio got a slap on the wrist for arguing with marshals in gravel traps. Now that is likely to become even more of a problem now with riders who want to get going again and have been told they can't. So the last thing I'll say is that BSB have been running a more stringent version of this rule for quite a long time now and everybody's kind of got used to it.

So it doesn't really present such problems in BSB as a general rule. But the rule is a bit more stringent in the sense that if the bike goes over, if you come off it, the bike goes on its side. If it's running or not, you're out, end of in a race in a practice or qualify. And I believe the marshals are allowed to inspect the bike. And if they're satisfied, you can ride it back to the pits or via a service road.

But they are very stringent on this in BSB. The context to it was going back many years was the bike went down at Brands Hatch on the Indy Circuit. I think it was the first round of the season. I can't remember what year it was. It was probably about 10 years ago and it was a swilling wet day.

And this bike went around and dropped, I think, petrol, a fluid out of the bike anyway. And on a wet track all the way around, it just completely buggered the whole track. And it was quite early in the day's racing on the Sunday. And they basically had to cancel the whole day thereafter because with the conditions being as they were, they just could not remove the slippery surface adequately from a safety point of view. So after they said, look, if you go down in the gravel trap, well, if you go down full stop, that's it, you're out.

So it's been a long time coming to MotoGP. I'm surprised in a way it's taken them this long to do it. But this caveat about marshals being the arbiters of whether you can or can't continue, I think is asking for trouble. Anyway, that's my two pence worth. Yeah, I like the first part of it because I think it's hard to argue against safety, mainly from the standpoint of I really don't want to see a marshal that's attempting to push start a bike.

Generally, they are pushing in the direction of the racing, which means they cannot see the racing coming up from behind them. Heaven forbid that there's some crash, two guys bump into each other and wallah, they're suddenly there and it's bowling for marshals. Like, I don't want to see that. I have seen one, two, three, four marshals that I know of killed in Formula One via accidents that I can think of off the top of my head. We could argue how many there really are, but off the top of my head, I can come up with four incidents.

So I don't want any of that to happen. The idea is, as you said, and I agree with you, is that, wait a minute, there is acres of gravel between where your bike has stopped, where you're going to have to push it to, and then attempt to restart it, then get it back out across all that gravel. Well, yeah, you might as well just pack it up and go home because you're going to be highly unlikely that you're going to get any kind of points in it whatsoever. The arbitration was by the marshals of inspecting a motorcycle. I don't know how I feel about that.

I know that when I was racing, when we were running WIRA, which is the Western Eastern Road Racers Association here in the States, that if you crashed, you could bring your bike, pick it up, back up by the help of the marshals, you could get it going again. But because you had crashed, you had to go back to tech inspection. So that meant you had to go. And I believe, and it's been a long time for me since having read the rule book, and the rules probably have changed somewhat, but I'm talking about in the time, you know, some 30 years ago, the rules said that you could then ride your motorcycle off the racing line, slowly to tech inspection, which is wherever you teched your bike that morning of the race, where then the tech inspector would look at your motorcycle, determine it to be sound to be continuing on. And by the way, their definition of a crash was if the handlebar touched the ground.

So you know exactly what all of us bozos did, right? Everybody had bigger, thicker cases on the side of the engine so that if it fell over, the handlebar wouldn't touch the ground. Or you sliced part of the weights in the end of the handlebars down so that they didn't touch the ground. So we had a Weara setup and we had an everything else set up so that you couldn't figure out if I had actually fallen off, if I had actually touched my handlebar to the ground. Now, the whole idea of making sure your bike was safe, I thought was sort of ridiculous, because if I was leaking fluids, basically somehow I would have been on the racing line somewhere because a track turns both left and right.

So was I going to cross the line where everybody's breaking to be not on the line in the corner? Or was I supposed to ride off the line to get to the corner? It just seems to be ridiculous. But the idea that a Marshall is going to have the potential to tell you to park a motorcycle when somebody's fighting for a world championship, because this applies to Moto2 and Moto3 riders as well, correct? Mm-hmm.

I think it applies to all series in those in MotoGP and all super bike, yeah. There's fine print everywhere in a rule book, right? And I haven't seen the exact wording of the rule, but there's going to be somebody who desperately wants to get back on their bike to try to salvage a couple of points to win a world championship, but they're going to be deemed unsafe as a result of something leaking or a cracked fairing or whatever. That's going to be wild for sure. So it's like, be careful what you wish for, because you're going to get the unintended consequence.

I think we're going to see a lot of unintended consequence. There's a lot of things you can do with technology now. And I suppose by the same token, there's quite a few things that on balance you shouldn't do, even if the technology does exist. But one thought that occurs to me is, well, I mean, they can do this already, and this is a problem that they're addressing, but we saw what happened in Malaysia last year with Rueda. What can happen when there's a bike moving slowly on the track?

Now, a rider, this has been the case for years, can pick up a bike that's crashed and move slowly around the track and go back to the pit. So I don't like 90 state stuff, but I would have thought if the bike goes down, then you probably ought to, in a race, that's it. You can't rejoin. Or if it's in a practice session, you've got to get back to the pits for a pre-inspection to say, okay, that's kind of what they do in BSB, for example, I believe. And I think that's fair.

Yeah, I think that would be sensible. But it's the thing about the marshals getting involved in this discussion, because adrenaline is involved here with riders, and we know what that's like. Things get out of hand pretty damn quickly if you're not careful, particularly if there's a lot on the line. As you say, Jim, if you're fighting for a championship. My point about technology was, could you have something like an accelerometer measuring the G-force and above or below a certain G threshold of a crash?

Because often you see a rider just go into the gravel and just sort of topple off. Well, is that a crash? This is the point where these things can get a bit sticky, I think. So it would be better if you had some sort of a line that you can cross, or if you cross it in terms of force. I don't know.

There's always a good aspect to the suggestion, and there's a hundred things that people will come and say, well, it wouldn't work because of these reasons. So I don't know. As I say, that's where the draconian rule in BSB seems to have been accepted now, and nobody really questions it anymore. It's just that is the rule. So there's not a lot of gray area around it.

We'll see how it goes. I suspect they might have to tighten it up a little bit based on experience, but we'll see, I guess. Yeah. Two other little news items. These don't pertain to MotoGP, but because I am a massive fan of the Dakar Rally, I will give you a Dakar update.

And I really only care about the bikes and well, the really big trucks, but that's neither here nor there. But in the bike class. Now they've actually changed this now called Rally GP and there is a Rally 2 class. So I think it is like MotoGP. Here's all the stars and the really fast guys.

And then think of Moto or think of Rally 2 as equivalent to Moto 2. These are the guys that are coming up and getting ready to jump to Rally GP. Got it. So in Rally GP, the rally is being led by Daniel Sanders, the Aussie as of right now, as of today, or from the last that I heard. And then Ricky Braeback, the American is second there in that one.

So it has been a pretty good fight. Braeback was getting set to open the stage on the longest stage of the year. Now, and what's interesting to me is this one out of the Rally 2 class. The guy leading it is an American. His name is Preston Campbell.

Now to off-road racing enthusiasts in the US, if that name seems like that should be familiar to me, that's because Preston Campbell is the son of legend Johnny Campbell, who won 11 Baja 1000s and competed in the Dakar. And he is leading the Rally 2 class as of right now. Still, I think like six, seven stages to go, but I love Dakar. So I wanted to give an update on that. And a side note, Supercross season kicked off here in America with a very horrible crash.

Justin Barsha basically couldn't clear a jump that other people were doubling or whatnot and had another motorcycle land on top of him in front of the pack. It was carnage that happened. The very scary part of it all for Barsha was the fact that he was laying in a rut for darn near a minute to a minute and a half. I don't know the exact time frame, but it was got off along before any kind of medical attention came to a motionless rider on a track, which is absolutely in my mind almost unacceptable. At the time they had done the interview with the guys that were stopped there as you would, you know, trying to get some comments.

The first thing they had asked, you know, like Tomak, well, what do you think about the red flag? He goes, all I want to know is whether my friend is okay. And I want to be sure Justin is fine. The original content was that he did not have any feeling in the one side of his body. He couldn't feel his arm and shoulder.

It appears that though that was because of like the bike landing and like taking some nerve or whatever. After 10 or 15 minutes, he started to get feeling back in that side of his body. I think he's got a broken collarbone or shoulder. Not exactly sure which yet. They're still doing some tests as far as I know at this point in time, but it's a super scary crash.

There's a lot of video from fans in the stands that are there that you can find on Instagram. If you want to go see it, you could more than welcome to. I will tell you it's brutal and I will tell you it's scary. And with that, I have nothing else as far as news goes, Rich. So it's a quiet time of year, isn't it?

It is before things really get to exploding again in a few weeks from now. So yeah, we'll take it. We will take it. And so with that, since it's the new year, we're going to talk about and we are going to rank the Moto GP riders and give out wooden spoons, if you will. That's a British thing, right?

Rich wooden spoon. I don't know what the origin of it is actually, Jim. Really? Now you say that. I've never heard it before.

I never heard of a wooden spoon thing. I'll have to research that. We'll have to figure that out for next time. You guys know where wooden spoon came from and what the American equivalent of it is? Let me know because I don't have a clue.

But yeah, so basically we've got like the 22 riders that were in Moto GP. We've sort of ranked them all. We're going to go through the top 10 sort of in detail, but we do want to go through the other 11 riders, right, Rich? And lay that out. So Rich, how do we want to start here?

We just want to run down like 11 through 22 for each of us with a comment or? Yeah, I didn't rank these guys from 22 to 11. I just sort of came up with the list. Worth pointing out, we have not included test riders or reserve riders in this. So although Salvadori, for example, spent a lot of the season riding in races, he is the reserve rider.

He was only there because my team was injured. So we haven't included those guys because if you look at it, you've got Polo Spargrove was in there at various points. Takenakagami was in there. Augusto Fernandez obviously did a few outings on the V4 Yamaha. So there are quite a few other riders that appear in the table.

So we've just focused on the main 22 formal team riders. All right. So go ahead, Rich. So OK, in no particular order, do you want me to go through my whole list? And then you can just give me.

No, go through the bottom people. We'll do the top 10 together. Yeah. So the bottom 11. OK, I'll quickly rattle through them.

So as I say, these are not in any particular order. So I've got Maverick Vinales. So I'll just quickly read the comment that I made on my notes. So Maverick Vinales, he was 18th in the championship. Promise emerging into the second quarter of the season.

And some potential embarrassment for Acosta at that point if you cast your mind back because Maverick was doing by far the best on the KTM early on, only for the Saxon Ring crash to ruin his year. Then I move on to, slightly surprisingly, I mean, you do question your choices sometimes, don't you? The sixth place championship finisher, Fabio Di Giantonio. Now, wow. OK.

Four podiums for him. But again, he was a rider that found the GP25 very tricky and hard to get to his liking. So there were some bright spots with the podiums, but otherwise it was kind of very up and down and inconsistent. So for me, that was enough to bail him out of the top 10. Then I've got 11th place finisher, Brad Binder.

Didn't have a podium all season on a bike that just didn't really seem to work for him. Pretty much at any stage of the season. The bright bit on the horizon, this is looking forward rather than back, but I'll just say, you know, he's got ex top rack crew chief, Phil Maron coming into his corner for this season to come. So it's worth noting, I think, because boy, does he need a good season this year. Otherwise, I think he's with the contract cycle as it is, might be looking elsewhere.

So that was my third one. Then I've got Aya Gura who finished 16th. Very good early promise, but again, a bit of an up and down season. Few crashes, few injuries that held him back, but definitely one to watch in 2026. Then again, I'm scratching my head at myself a little bit, but Luca Marini finished 13th.

Had an unbelievably impressive comeback after a huge crash testing for the eight hour at Suzuka, if you remember. And amazingly, when he came back from that crash, he missed, I think, three races only, which was not a lot considering the injuries that he had. He actually had a better second half of the season than the first, but sort of seems perennially sort of stuck with that development rider label and the sort of struggles to break out of that mold a little bit. I'm going to hold back on my three wooden spoons for now. We'll cover those together.

So next up is Anea Bastianini, kind of a slow to adapt to the KTM. He had a third in Barcelona and a sort of a promising run in the Czech Republic, but crashed. But other than that, he was pretty much absent and lost all season. Then I move on to Jack Miller, who finished 17th. Always quick early on in a race, but the late race pace just never sort of stays there.

So it kind of feels to me a little bit like he's stuck in this very fast test rider placeholder position at Yamaha and will no doubt be helping to lead the V4 development this season to come. But that's kind of how I feel about Jack. Two more then, if I exclude my wooden spoons for now. Miguel Oliveira, downward trend continued. But often, as has been the case throughout so much of his MotoGP career, the victim of other people's crashes.

So it really dented his chances of retaining the ride. So he moves across to top racks BMW, but they basically do effectively a swap, I suppose, for this year to come. And then the last of my non-wooden spooners is Puro Somkya Chandra. We all sort of got a bit hopeful for him on round one in Thailand, didn't we? Because he actually turned in a pretty decent performance.

That kind of petered out pretty quickly and just became a bit of an ongoing nightmare, really. And I think he was out of his depth pretty much everywhere that he went. And HRC, I think, just lost faith pretty early on. And so, yeah, it was tough to watch, really. So that's my bottom 11, excluding the three that pick up the wooden spoons, which we'll pick up in a minute, I guess.

That's fair. So mine are going to be in order. I did it in order. And I have some very pithy things that I wrote next to them. Sometimes you question your choices.

I was doing this in between lunch and that work and stuff. So I think I might have had a bit of an attitude when I was doing it. But I think some of it's kind of funny. I realize I am never as good as these guys, so I know my place, people. But anyway, at 11, I had Bashti Nini.

It was an up, down, and everything in between type season. It's Bashti Nini. 12, Bender. Too bad it costs as your teammate. Oh, yeah.

Sorry. In 13th, I had Jorge Martin. And he's there because he didn't know when to quit or to keep his mouth shut. ALICE and ALICE laugh Yep. Like I said, sometimes you question your choices, but that...

I say what I say, right? I think there's a little bit of humor in there, right? It's a little tongue in cheek. 14 was Marini. Made a Honda better than I thought it could be, but injuries hurt.

Which I think is very true. 15, Adrian Fernandez. A win gets you here. No more. Hang on, Raul Fernandez you mean, Jim?

Yes, Raul. Sorry, not Adrian. Sorry, Raul. I get all the Fernandeses messed up. Yeah, Raul.

You know, in Oz, right? 16 was Miller. Staying at the dance a little too long, but you can develop a bike, so enjoy your last season. So yeah, there. 17, I had Iagura.

Great start, slow middle, and injuries hurt. 18, Vinales. Gary's favorite rider. What can I say? It's all...

It's all I have. Yep. Okay. 19 was Morbidelli. Running into a lace on the grid is not a good luck.

No, and it hurts as well. Yeah, and it hurts as well, so that was there. 20 was Renz. I put, you know, never recovered from injuries. I feel sorry for Renz, I really do.

I think he was an incredibly talented person. I just think that the injuries that he sustained, he's never really been able to fully recover, or he just hasn't found the right surgeon like Marquez has to put him back together again properly. So it's just one of those things. 21 was Olivero. My pithy quote was, glad to have known you.

That's harsh, Jim. I know, but after... Okay, am I actually wrong here, Rich? Because after he was done at Tech 3, right? He pretty much just disappeared off the planet.

Yeah, that is true. But I'd say a lot of the time since he left Tech 3, he was injured, and other people were crashing into him. Yeah, so he was unlucky. That is unlucky, but hey, you had three MotoGP wins or something? At least two.

Definitely two, yeah. Definitely two, maybe a third in there somewhere. Times are tough and you're only as good as your last race. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

That's just where we are. In the 22nd, no surprise here, Shumkat Chantra. I like the kid, but he's a fish out of water. Good Moto2 guy, probably one of the fastest guys in Asia at the time. The level of the world riders is just that high that he just simply looked out of place on the Hondas.

It's not for me not liking the guy because he's far better racing a motorcycle than I ever was or could have been. And he's bagged himself an HRC ride on a superbike, so we don't need to feel too sorry for him. No, you don't have to feel too sorry. But like I said, I was in a pithy mode. Which of those are your wooden spoons particularly, Jim?

Or did you not earmark them out particularly in that way? I didn't earmark people out for wooden spoon, but wooden spoon ideas. Explain it again to me, Rich, because I can probably come up with it on the fly. Well, again, I don't really quite understand historically where the term comes from, but it's kind of the one or two, or in this case for me, three people that are kind of the bottom three basically. And it's as far away from the gold cup as you can get basically.

Oh, gotcha. In that case, if I had to pick, I would have Morbidelli would get one. Just because I think he banged in and bumped into everybody. And the capper was the last race of the year. Going to the grid and running into a lace, right?

So Morbidelli deserves a wooden spoon in that respect for that one. I would give a wooden spoon to Jorge Martín just because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. Dude, I don't think the Aprilia was trying to kill you. To sit there and try to weasel your way out of your contract because you were hurt was a bad, bad look. And I don't know who put that in your ear if that was you, your manager, your lawyer.

I don't know, but whoever it was shouldn't have. So that would be the second one on that list. And if I was going to do three to match you, oh, let's see, where would I be? I'd probably go with Miller for the last wooden spoon just because it's like you have promise, but you can't seem to accomplish anything on that great promise. And it was just like it starts great and it just goes downhill all the time.

And it's like we've seen that year after year after year, bike after bike after bike. And so that's my third. Yeah. Okay, I'll quickly give you my three that I didn't mention then and I'll rank these. So in third place, or the least wooden spoon of the three anyway, yeah, Jorge Martín.

So my notes that I wrote were hubris in terms of the big move away from Ducati and attention sapping contractual silliness off track made this one of the most anticlimactic title defences of all time. Still very fast, but does he command the respect he earned in his title winning 2024 season, particularly with, as you say, the contractual shenanigans that came up, which kind of cast some doubt on how firm he'll commit himself to people. Factories do think of things like that, I'm sure. I mean, but he is still very, very fast. But again, it's a pivotal year for him this year.

So that was Jorge Martín then runner up wooden spoon. And it pains me to say it, but it's Alex Rins for me, leg broken in Mugello 2023. As you say, Jim still looks like a big problem. But if he has another 2025, I think it'll be adios MotoGP, unless the V4 Yamaha sort of transforms his performance. But I don't feel terribly confident, to be honest.

And it will come as no great surprise, Jim, to you or anybody else on planet Earth that the largest wooden spoon of all goes to Franco Morbidelli. Oh dear. He was high in the standings. I mean, he did actually finish seventh in the championship, which is amazing, really, because if you look at his early season form, it's actually quite good. He was on the GP24, but a season marred by heavy crashes and avoidable run ins with competitors and race direction, hapless and on occasion dangerous.

Nothing exemplifies that better than what you've already pointed out, which is running into a stationary bike on the grid in Valencia, which was unforgivable, really. A lapse of judgment, a lapse of concentration. Who knows what it was. A lot of people point to that big crash he had a couple of seasons ago. I think in the preseason, I think he was on a Panigale.

I think it was in Portimao testing preseason and he got an almighty whack to the head. Some people speculate that he hasn't really quite perhaps been right since. So I'm not making fun of that because that's obviously very, very serious. When you hear him interviewed off the bike and stuff, he's very engaging, very enigmatic and stuff, but he's an absolute pratt on the bike sometimes. Sometimes it looks like he's deliberately trying to ride into people, which he's not.

Hence the hapless comment that I had for him. Unfortunately, somebody has to get the big shiny wooden spoon and it was Franke Mabedelli. There we go. So it's a top 10 time. A true winner for that one.

I mean, come on. Yeah. I don't think there's too many people that are going to argue the toss on that, to be honest. Yeah. I was wanting to look back.

We were chatting about this pre-show and it was something that went for the news notes. It was something I said that Simon Patterson had put out on threads. I think it was a new concussion protocol or there was some testing standard they were working towards. And I know that's what it is. It's something about concussions.

I'll look for it while we go through this. Simon is very much always talking about that and the insane absence of some safety control measures within MotoGP in this particular regard. Yeah. So if they are introducing something, it'll be a good step forward. I'm always reminded.

I know I've mentioned it on the show before, but a famous one years ago. This was a Formula One thing. Who was it now? It was Martin Brundle. I can't remember if it was the big crash he had in Australia or in Monaco.

It's ours. I know exactly what you're talking about. He ran back to the pits and the team is saying, you can't drive. And he said, no, I'm fine. I'm fine.

So he gets in the car and then he beckons one of the team personnel over to him and says, which track am I at? So he didn't even know which way to turn out of the box, driving the spare car out of the garage. So these people have to be saved from themselves sometimes. So this is why Simon in particular, but not only Simon Patterson, and there are many people that talk about this a lot. He used the tweet that I had, or whatever you call a thread that I had seen.

So that was my whole thing. There was some concussion because I remember him saying, well, will the doctors actually adhere to it? It was the big thing that we were going to talk about. But we'll go on there. So that gets us what?

To the top 10, Rich? Yeah. So I suggest we go, you do your 10, I'll do my 10 and we'll just work on down the list. All right. So my top 10.

At number 10, I put Juan Mir and I put him there because I felt like he made a Honda actually look good and made it look like it could handle. I thought what he did this year, I know the beginning of the season was extremely difficult for him and there were so many people that seemed to be crashing in front of him that involved him, that caused him to run off or to be in an accident that wasn't his fault. And I think if he would have had the whole season and didn't have all those races that got lost, he probably would have had a lot more top fives or a lot more top tens than he did. I just was impressed that he actually showed sort of the kind of rider that he could be if the bike is right, because there were glimpses of that 2020 rider that came back again. And I know the Honda is a difficult bike, but it also sort of showed to me Honda's complete concept of just we're throwing everything at this because we just don't like being beat this bad.

And so I had him in there at number 10 with all those reasons there. Okay. For my number 10, I've got another Honda rider, but I've got Joanne Zarco. Zarco. Okay.

Into my number 10 spot. Now Zarco finished 12th in the championship. So he had a really good first half of the season. And of course he had that utterly memorable win. That's not to forget he did win a race in the mall of all places on his home circuit, immediately followed by a second place at Silverstone.

But then I've only put him 10th because the second half of the season was just a bit of a crash fest really. And he did top the crash list for 2025 with 28 in total, which actually I was expecting that figure to be a bit higher than that, if I'm honest, because he did crash a lot in the second half of the season. But I would caveat it by saying, I suspect, I don't know, but I suspect he probably suffered to some extent from having a lot of test parts on the bike and often having to run compromised setups as a result of that. Because as you say, Jim, Honda are developing thankfully so fast again now and they're throwing so much at it that I think he is the guy that gets to do quite a lot of the race weekend parts and setup testing. So I'm hoping you can attribute at least some of his poor form in the second half of the season to that.

Hopefully. So I did find the Simon Patterson thread. So it is that the FIM has published a new and significantly updated concussion protocol. It finally treats loss of consciousness as a confirmed sign that a rider should be withdrawn from competition. And then he states that the big question is, will the medical team actually adhere to it?

Yeah. So he says, the reason I've got some skepticism about this is that this is also included in Grand Prix racing's medical code and we know that it's not necessarily obeyed. So yeah. So yeah, I'm a firm believer. You're knocked out.

You're done for the weekend. I'm sorry. I don't care how much of a warrior you think you are or that you want to be. It just isn't safe. And I'm not trying to be a nanny state here, but you got one melon, right?

And that's it. And you can really mess yourself up to a point where you can get to a point, maybe not immediately, but later in your life that you're eating through a tube and somebody's changing your nappy. And then because you thought you were okay to go back out beyond the reason of what somebody gives you, it's like, nah, I'm not there for that one. You want to ride with a busted finger, busted hand, something like, okay, yeah, maybe later on in your life you're going to have arthritis or you're going to lose some mobility in your hand or something like that, but you still have like another hand. And I know that that doesn't really make much sense as a logical statement of an argument for or against, but I think any professional sport people tend to play hurt, whether it's football, soccer to American people, or American football, or just hockey players, that stuff like that.

But at least now in the U.S., there's very good concussion protocols in the NFL, the American Football League, and in hockey. I mean, I was at the game last night, guy got hit with a puck on the side of his head, put him down on the ice for a little bit, they took him off. He had to go through concussion protocol, dark room, quiet. I don't know all of what's there, but it's a serious thing, right? Paul Anthony Yeah, riders like we all do from time to time, or have done in the past, you feel invincible and that you can do anything.

So you can't leave that in the rider's hands and you can't leave it in the team's hands either, because there's too much at stake really, they're under pressure towards being out there. But if you can't see straight, or if you're having lapses of judgment, or your reaction time is significantly reduced because of a head injury, even if it's a short term thing, you know, these bikes are so fast, and crashes happen so quickly and get so serious quickly. And it's other riders is the point as well. It's not just the rider in question, it's everybody else that's out on track. And then you factor in marshals.

So this is where Simon gets hot under the collar about it. And I think he's totally right to do so. I don't agree with everything he gets hot under the collar about, but I think on this particular issue, he's absolutely right. And, you know, the specter of Dr. Costa sort of looms larger, you know, the guy that would always patch a rider up and get him out no matter what it was sort of seen as almost laughable at the time, it shouldn't have been really, but it's kind of put a certain pressure, I suspect on the people that come since and it kind of set that precedent, you just patch them up and stitch them up and send them on their way again, you know, and that's a culture that has to change.

I agree. Maybe is slowly changing, hopefully. Yeah. Without it becoming descending into 90 state territory again. Right.

Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want an A state. Well, I want to be clear about that. But if you can't see straight, then you shouldn't be riding a competitive motorcycle in any form, let alone MotoGP. Oh yeah, 100%. Right.

Ninth place for you. Ninth place for me. I put Digia here. I said that he was handicapped by a bike that only one rider on the planet could actually ride fast, but he had looked so good and he was there, there about, but it was just, he couldn't come to grips with the bike. Just, you know, I felt like of all the people he tried the hardest to make it work, unlike somebody else.

And he did finish sixth in the championship. I mean, I'd say with a heavy heart, I didn't put him in my top 10. I think it was kind of, I was tossing it between him and Zarko and Zarko got the nod because he got the win. And Digia is a super nice guy. He's a sort of a credit to the sport in a way, but he was just very up and down struggling with the bike.

It was the bike more than the rider for sure. Oh yeah, 100%. So my number nine, God knows where you've put him on the list, Jim. I'm surprised he's even in the top 10 for you considering what a bashing you've been giving him all year, but I've got Pekka Banyarin at number nine. Again, when I was looking at the table, you easily forget how many podiums he had in the first half of the season.

The problem for him was that in most cases he was getting beaten by Alex Marquez. So my note says slump in form in the second half of the season makes you forget the seven podiums prior to that. He had two wins at Circuit of the Americas, although arguably that was because Marquez fell off when he didn't need to. And obviously the weekend in Mategi, which was just like WTF territory. So it wasn't a total write off, but whether it was Mark or the bike or the team, who knows exactly.

2026 unlikely to be a cake walk as we say here, but he must do better than fifth in the championship this coming season. Or I think he won't be wearing a set of red leathers anymore. Yeah, totally agree with you on that one. My number eight is Zarco. I put down, the old man can still ride and with the help of a great weather app can win.

Yes, it was an inspired type of choice. Yes, it was inspired. I mean, to me, Zarco started the Honda revolution or not a revolution, but started the Honda revival. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. He kind of started that revival or resurgence is the word I was technically looking for.

He kind of started that. So I felt like he needed to be there because I think in the beginning of the season, he was the best Honda rider, bar none. Right. Yeah. I still think maybe Marini and Mir were trying to figure it out, but Zarco had figured it out faster.

So he was able to get that win. Yeah, I know it was tricky conditions, but he backed it up with that second place disorder after that. And I think it's sort of the inverse here as Zarco season fades off and goes downhill, Mir season takes up and goes upward trajectory mainly because Honda started throwing all the other parts, looking at what Mir was saying about the bike, looking at where the results were, test this, test that, test this, test that. And I don't know. I don't want to say Zarco lost his way in any of it, but he started crashing more because the bike wasn't what he wanted or needed.

But he soldiered on, did the donkey work that needs to be done. And I hope that Honda has a really good bike for this last year of the rule regs. And it's not going to pain me if Honda does pull off a championship, although I find it to be slim. Yeah. Okay.

That's eight. Funny how our minds work on similar lines, Jim, because in eighth place I've got Jamiya. So our eight and 10 are basically reversed. They're just flip-flopped, just how we think about it. And again, my note here is that it's possibly my bias as a Mir fan because I am a Mir fan.

Yeah. But to me, the championship position, which was 15th, so he was the third best of the Hondas because Marine finished ahead of him. Yeah. Marine was 13th. Yeah.

That was bad luck though. So I put the championship position doesn't really reflect his genuine speed or the progress of the RC 213 V. He was taken out in multiple incidents that he had 13 retirements, some of which were his own fault, but many were not. But without that, I think he would probably would have finished as the best Honda in the standings. And to me, amongst the Honda riders, he's really only shaded by Zarco, who had that back to back, first and second in France and Great Britain.

But I think you nailed it. Absolutely, Jim. Mir looked like a guy who really wanted to wring the Honda's neck. And at the minute the bike started to behave how he wanted it to, i.e. he wasn't losing the front all the time, he looked really, really quick.

And I wouldn't be surprised seeing Winner Ace this season. And I really, really hope he does. I do too. I think he's got one in him. If the bike continues to come towards the sort of setup that he likes, which is a very front-endy bike, I can easily see him having a very good season, provided people don't keep crashing into him.

And he doesn't keep over pushing the limit because he clearly did do that a bit. Number one, he's got to qualify better. And that, yeah. If you qualify better, you got to be at least on the front three rows. He was never a great qualifier, even in the Suzuki days.

That's part of the issue. But that's how the sport has changed. I've wondered about this. And this is a good point to have this conversation. In my mind, the question I have is the importance of where we qualify now based on the stagnation of the rules.

Because we've now come to the, by rules I mean, the technical regulations regarding the motorcycles. We're coming to the end of this cycle of bikes. So everybody's sort of figured out how to catch up, make their bike work, and they're all similar. They all have this trait. So is it because of that reasoning that we have this idea that we got to be here?

Is it the level of competition that exists because everybody is relatively equal in town, except for I think we agree there are two, possibly three aliens, or two definite aliens in it, and an alien elect, if you will? Is it because there's only those guys, and they're hamstruck by what equipment they happen to be on? Or is it something else that I'm not seeing at all? Well, I mean, in Mir's case, as I say, I don't, well, I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this, but I don't remember him ever particularly being a great qualifier on the Suzuki, bearing in mind he won the championship on the Suzuki. And I know people say, oh, well, Marcus crashed that year.

It doesn't matter. He beat everybody that was there to compete against. So he was a worthy champion in my eyes. But you're right, Jim. I think the sort of the increasing parity of the bikes as the rules have stabilized and people have kind of caught up makes it a harder job.

And yeah, I mean, it's a stacked grid of talent, isn't it? I mean, last year, the only person you would put a question mark against really would have been Chantra. And he was a rookie, coming off a not particularly stellar Moto2 career, I would think it's fair to say. It was kind of he was there because of the Idemitsu kind of sponsorship thing, which is all perfectly valid. But everybody else is a tough guy to beat.

So in that sense, Mir has a tough challenge on his hands, but he does consistently qualify poorly. But he really does know how to ring the bike's neck, doesn't he? So maybe he has been overriding. And that's part of the reason why he's crashed such a lot. So if I can just all calm down a little bit, what is it they say racing, you know, better than me, Jim, sometimes you go faster, you got to go a bit slower.

Yeah. Slow is fast and fast is slow. Yeah. So maybe that's how we see it here in the US. Yeah.

Okay. Right. Number seven for you then. Seven. I put Altegr here at seven.

Interesting. And I said that because he won a race and showed us the talent that Ducati saw and why they signed him because he was the first rookie to win a MotoGP race in quite some time because this is Altegr's first year on the Ducati. Yeah. In the team. Right.

And I thought that showed a lot of gumption in the kid because he had a lot to learn. He had that miserable season on a Pirelli in Moto2 because he was signed a year before Ducati didn't really have a place for him. He got shoved into Grissini, which is a fine team. It just so happened his teammate happened to be Alex Marquez on a 24 Ducati, which we'll talk about that later. And the kid could have easily just like turned it upside down and said, can't do this or had lost his way, but he kept his head down.

He kept trying. He started qualifying better. He started coming to no pun intended grips with the Michelin tires and the differences that they are and what it takes to set up. Plus the whole idea of the all knowing all gizmo-y bikes that they're on, which is a technological thing that he didn't have to deal with before. And somehow he put it all together, won a race and it wasn't that he just won it.

He wanted it in a dominant fashion. I don't care who was on that track with him that day. Nobody was going to beat Altegr. Sorry. Yeah.

It was that kid's day. Now he's got to have more of those days, right? But still for right now, that's why he gets seventh. Okay. Now that's good.

So for me in seventh place and interesting that you had him in your bottom 11, but I'd put Raul Fernandez. Wow. Now it's worth caveatting that he's had a very long time to find his form and gain experience in MotoGP. I mean, he's what's this is fourth or fifth season. I think just gone.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely at least four. So 2025, I think it was the sort of the crucial breakthrough that actually saves his career. Cause I don't think that he had much more time left. And obviously he needs to build on that further, particularly if I, Gera, having had a season on the MotoGP bike and at the tracks that he wouldn't have ridden the GP bike at before, the gear could be a bit of a problem this next year.

But you know, Raul Fernandez, again, he won a race. So that very fact for me means that he does deserve a spot in the top 10. And it's fair. Number six, right? Yeah.

Quattroraro. And I said, great rider, shit bike. But at the end, any great rider can ride a shit bike fast for one lap, which is what Quattroraro did. And I'm sorry, a lot of this positioning here of Quattroraro in sixth was just the way Quattroraro attacked the season. Quattroraro always had a smile on his face for the most part.

Okay. I get it. There's times when he did not have a smile. That's okay. Right.

But for the most part, if you saw Quattroraro in the garage, he was smiling. He was upbeat. He didn't come out and really try to rock the apple cart with Yamaha. He kind of bit his tongue for a little bit. And then it kind of bowed over a little bit.

And I think it got a little blown out of proportion, but it just shows that he's hungry. And we've talked about it. He's really one of the aliens that exists because he got so much more out of a motorcycle that we know is completely underpowered and shouldn't have been on any pole position at all. Yet he would come through the first qualifying session and somehow go out there on his used tire in the first run, just sort of keeping himself in the groove, fresh, kind of checking the track conditions and then would bolt that one last soft tire he had on and would just throw down a lap that would just make you stop and go, whoa. It's kind of like that whole lap of the God sent at Monaco thing.

And that's kind of what he did, but he did it three or four times. He put that Yamaha on pole. It's crazy. More. I kind of wanted to put Quattroraro farther up, but I thought other people deserve to be ahead of him.

And it wasn't by much. Okay. I was just going to say, I think the smile on his face is probably where he's thinking shit bike, but the bank balance isn't too bad. You know, that's part of it too. He did get a set of pearls.

You know, I'm not one to judge, but maybe they cost a lot and they made him happy. I don't know. Yes. I think if this was a list that included sartorial elegance when it comes to dressing oneself, he wouldn't even be on the page. I know that's a discussion for another day.

So number six for me is Fermin Aldega. So we're pretty close there, Jim. Rookie of the year. I'd like to just add as well as the Grissini thing that you pointed out, a crucial partnership with Frankie Carchetti as well as crew chief, who is- That's true. Really top drawer as a crew chief.

That helped him get his one lap pace now by the end of the season, as you already pointed out. And the result was that he did actually start to put a bit of shade on Alex Marquez in the second half of the season. I thought at times. At times. With only really his kind of relative lack of experience throughout the whole of the season on the GP bike, letting him down.

But you always want to see progress from a rookie and the sort of progress that he gave, admittedly he was on the Ducati, it was 23, I think, or was it a 24? I can't recall off the top of my head. I don't remember, Rich. Sorry. But anyway, I mean, obviously he was on a very, very good bike.

So there is that. Where did he finish in the championship? Eighth in the championship. I mean, it's just an outstanding first season really. And all the more of the pity why we were saying earlier on in the news section that he's going to bust his leg, which is such a shame.

But he'll recover and he'll be back as soon as he possibly can be. Although again, Caviatsi shouldn't be back any sooner than is wise. He doesn't want to sort of do himself more long term damage, but a solid sixth for me. Number five is where I put Peco Benyaya. Wow.

OK. Yeah. So one, I don't know if it's because I rode, raced and I could really feel what he was going through. Like I'm trying everything and I can't do what I want to do with the bike and I don't know what to tell you to make it better. So I don't know if it's a bit of a sympathy plea by me to put him there.

But to me, it's the case of what could have been, what should have been one of the craziest teammate versus teammate seasons ever. And everybody and their brother won it. And again, Formula One analogy, sorry. The Ayrton Center versus Alonprost in a McLaren, right? Everybody wanted that.

Everybody thought that's what was going to happen. And it just fizzled out and went away like a dud. Right. And it's the why like no one can figure out the why. It's like, is it Peco?

Is it not Peco? Is it because he just doesn't understand the bike? Is it because he hates the engine in the bike? Well, no, we put that engine back. No.

But wait a minute, that guy over there in red is winning races and running off on people like, whoa, but you can't. But eventually we put something on the bike that was from maybe the test in San Marino that was or wasn't Morbidelli's bike or was or wasn't the ride height device of Morbidelli's bike. We're not saying, but suddenly like, oh yeah, we're great. We're confident. And you take off and you go to Motegi and you win the race and look like the guy that we've been waiting to see show up.

And it was this roller coaster of highs, lows, highs and lows. And did we figure it out? Did we not figure it out? It's like it's drama there that was being caught out the whole time. And finally it comes down to the fact that at least Peco got to carry the torch for the Olympics through Milan.

Wow. You know, there's this gold star. That's my reasoning. The thing about Peco, and I didn't say this when I, because where did I put him? I had him in the 13th or something.

No, I had him in 9th place. We would have understood it more clearly had Peco lost the championship to Mark, but had he been second, the problem for Peco is he finished fifth in the championship. That is hard to answer. And he had a demonstrably worse second half of the season than the first, which is kind of not the direction you want to be going. So that's his problem.

We've talked about this endlessly during the season that passed, haven't we, Jim, as to were Giacchetti just not listening? Were they just being intransigent or they were perfectly happy with the guy on the other side of the garage who was doing the business for them? Stoner's observation. Why the hell didn't you give him that in the first place kind of thing? Yeah.

All of these things potentially apply. We just don't know. But then Giacchetti had that sort of stupid spell where they were kind of feeding out false information about what had gone on at the test in San Marino. And it was just all a bit of a weird mess. Here's the one part of this whole mystery that is the part that bugs me the most is Stoner's at the test at San Marino, right?

I think it was a San Marino test, wouldn't it? I think it was because he stayed on. He was there. I'm going to assume. Talked to Pecco, looked at some data and goes, why didn't you give him this?

OK, what did you take away after Motegi then? OK, well, if that's what he wanted and that was the win, what did you do after Motegi? Because it literally went crashing back down. And arguably after that high of Motegi, it was just the ultimate and lows that sort of happened. And I'm confused.

I've never, ever, ever seen a former world champion have such a wild, crazy season that was two wins. OK, he got gifted one of them. Fine. That's fair. But he had a slew of podiums early on in the season and then had just such terrible form.

I mean, I remember back in the 80s, you'd have Lawson who would win in 84. Well, that's because the Yamaha was a better bike than the Honda. But Spencer would win in 85 because the Honda was better than Lawson's bike because they went in different directions or whatever and they couldn't get it back. But eventually somewhere in there, each one of those teams turned it around in the season that they weren't world champions to be second or third in the championship. As you said, Pecco is fifth in the championship.

It's like an enigma. It's a riddle wrapped up in something. I don't know. A puzzle. Wrapped up in a puzzle or something.

Yeah. Whatever the phrase is. Weird. It's like somebody get him a sports psychologist for Christmas, please. Seriously.

Because the mental games is what's really fun about this one. Right. The funny thing is though, Jim, I think the cross-centre comparison is in terms of their kind of characters and the way they carry themselves, the two riders, I think is probably pretty relevant. It's spot on. But they did appear to get on pretty well all season.

So I don't think it was Mark getting into his head on purpose or anything like that. I mean, it's bound to mess with your brain a bit, but it seemed quite harmonious between the teammates. It was the Pecco and the team that appeared to be where the rupture was. I agree. I think I have a theory of what happened to cause them to break each other.

This is my speculative theory because I've been thinking about trying all of this and we were going to get to this somewhere, but it happened at Kota. The rain. It's drying. Mark, what's my penalty if I go change to dry? And he keeps it a secret among the people in the team that are close to him.

Yes, I get it. There is a side of the garage that is Pecco Benyaio. I have another side of the garage that is Mark Marquez. I get that. But that move that happened and how it went down because Tardazzi, who's sort of trying to be in the middle, never says anything to anybody.

And I don't know whether Tardazzi knew anything about it, but that call, that move, that chaos that caused all that Pecco, I think felt left out because I think before whatever Ducati was going to do in a strategy situation of tires or bike swaps, however you want to look at it was like a team effort. It was Gigi and it was Tardazzi and his mechanic and what does Bastionini think about this as well? And let's make a decision together. That was a big decision that was not taken by Pecco at all. And he felt left out on it.

I think he got aggrieved about it and that's put this rift between him and the team, which as the bike got worse or as problems got worse, I think he felt more to the point that Ducati wasn't his team anymore. Their allegiance was not to him. Their allegiance was to the new shiny toy that was in the garage next to him. Whether I'm right or not, I don't know. I think you probably are right on that, Jim.

I mean, we must move on to the other ones, but I would be astonished if Bagnier is not in the VR46 camp come 2027. I would be shocked too. Anyway, we must get to number, I did five. Yeah, okay. So, I haven't done my foot.

So, your five was Bagnier, obviously, because we just spent the last 15 minutes talking about it. Although you arguably was the biggest talking point of the year, really, wasn't he? I think it was. For the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons.

Number five, I've got Pedro Acosta. Oh, five is Acosta. Interesting. Yeah. Now, Acosta finished fourth in the championship.

So, again, I started my notes by saying more credit goes to team personnel, this time Aki Ayo. Let's cast our minds back 12 months KTM. Things were not looking very rosy with the financial problems, the fact is on shutdown, staff layoffs, doubts about the whole program. And here we've got the sort of the shiny new thing with Acosta making his way up to the works team and what the hell is going to happen to the works team? Ayo comes in at precisely the right moment.

Not for that reason, it must be said, but serendipitously good timing for him to arrive there and just like calm all the SHIT down a bit and just get focused. Now, Pedro, as I recall, kind of lost the plot a bit early on in the season. There's a lot of hype and expectation about him and from him as well. It was only his, what do Americans say, sophomore season? Is that sophomore season?

Second season, basically. But I think what happened was that you got a bit of a verbal dressing down from Aki Ayo and told to sort of shut up, put up and start working. Because by the way, you might have noticed that there's a guy on the Tech 3 bike who's actually doing some pretty decent performances, one Maverick Vinales. And from that moment onwards, progress was made, both with the bike and I think more importantly from Pedro himself, but he didn't win a race. And meanwhile, you've got Fernandez at long last win in the race and more importantly, Fermin Aldeguer as a rookie winning a race, admittedly, on the Ducati.

But for me, Pedro doesn't make it further up the list because he still hasn't won a race or didn't win a race last season and he must, must, must win a race in 2026. I mean, we don't know, he's possibly already signed a contract to go somewhere else, but he's a Marc Marquez in the sense that he'll do anything to win. All he wants to do is win. So if he gets a chance, obviously he's going to do it. He needs the bike and he's the team around him to help him to do it.

But ultimately it has to come from him at the end. And he's had quite a lot of good opportunities to do it up until now, even on the KTM as it's been both in Tech 3, particularly in Tech 3, but even last year, there are a few occasions when things just got away from him and he could have been further up. So for me, that puts him in fifth. Fourth for me is Alex Marquez, a good rider who happened to be on the best bike on the grid and happened to be there at the exact proper time to be able to do what he did. I'll take nothing away from the wins, but I feel like it was one of those things that it was just the universe aligned for him to be that good.

He will have a factory bike next year. Congratulations. Absolutely positively glad, stoked for him to have one. Let's see what happens. This season is, I think, the weird blip.

And so I weirdly blip him to fourth. I don't think he'll be runner up in the world championship next year. He may not even crack the top five. Yeah, going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting.

So fourth for me, I've got Fabio Quattroraro. Oh, wow. You put Quattroraro much farther up than a couple of places. Yeah. So I get it though.

Yamaha in line four came to the end of its life, but really only Fabio could deliver it maximum, which was never enough in a race with the exception of Silverstone, which he would have won had it not for his ride ice device having failed. He makes it as high up the list as he has because his one lap pace was just absolutely stunning. He remains an alien as far as I'm concerned, despite his horrendous clothing and jewelry choices. Five pole positions, Jim. He had five.

I counted them up. Wow. And Yamaha have to pray that the V4 is quick because if it's not, he's gone. He's gone. Okay.

Number three. Yeah. Ooh, now we're getting tasty. Pedro Acosta. Yeah.

Pedro hits number three for me. I thought he was magic on a bike that was not magic. He rode so well the last three quarters of the season. Now that's Accio corrected. Last half.

Let's say last half. Yeah, last half. Last half. That's Accio corrected, but sometimes you need that calmer hand to correct the raw talent and the raw motion that that kid has because he is like Marco Marquez. He wants to do nothing but win.

Win, win, win, and win some more, and win some more, and win some more. So Aki took an approach that has been well done. He calmed everything down, focused everybody, and they went back and, I'm sorry, some of the rides with no traction on the rear that Acosta put in at the end of the year were absolutely fabulous. They were master classes at riding to your particular strengths at a circuit and maximizing that, but minimizing to the utmost effect any area where you had a weakness. It was a master class from a kid who is on the verge of being alien-esque.

Yeah. Okay. Buy all of that. And in marked contrast, for example, although you're going back in the season or so, but to Miller, who was again a guy that always had rear tire trouble at the end of races, but where he went backwards, as you say, Pedro, with that bit of experience under his belt, managed to just about hold it together. And again, yeah, his run into the end of the season was far better than the beginning.

So that's kind of what you need to see. Okay. Third place for me is Alex Marquez. Okay. All right.

Again, obviously this is my opinion, but sort of threw off his crash reputation and humbled one of the works bikes. Yes, helped by being on the bike that Banyar actually wanted to ride himself, but he did beat Banyar by 179 points. Yes, he did. Which is a lot. It's a lot.

Gets a GP 26 this season, as you've already pointed out. So he faces a big test now on a sort of a level playing field with the other couple of guys, but you know, six wins across the sprints and GPs in the season was, as far as I'm concerned, very impressive. Silence a lot of doubt is myself included, whether he keeps it going, as you pointed out, is it a blip? We will find out, but it was a very impressive season. And that's, that's what I'm judging them off.

Sounds good. It means that our one and twos are maybe flip-flop, but I don't think that they are. My number two was Bezeky. Bez had great pace once he got that bike dialed in and he looked brilliant on it. Bez took a situation that sucked.

Martine having his problems, his crashes on a bike that Aprilia had that was good enough, but wasn't right. And Bez took his time, put his head down, started working on it. And by roughly assing, he was always in the hunt then. Like there wasn't a Aprilia always in the hunt. There wasn't just, oh, it was good at Catalonia.

This, as I said, I think Aprilia had the best bike on the grid by the end of the year. And I think Bez was absolutely awesome on that bike. Yeah, he had a hiccup. He did take Mark out in Buriram there. Yeah, everybody makes a mistake.

That's not a big deal. Yeah, he got penalized for it because he had to take the long lapse in Australia. But overall, Bez had a season that was a great one, including some of the post-race celebrations that were classic. And I missed those because Rossi was sort of the king of those. And I missed those and he brought those back.

And it had the ability to go so wrong because it was an Italian in an Italian team. And Pecco was an Italian in the Italian team. That went all wrong. And it could have been so wrong for Bez, but he didn't let it happen. And he wound up making the best of it.

And I look for bigger and better things from Bez next year. If Marquez hadn't come back from his surgeries and dominated like he did, I'd probably have Bez number one. I really thought Bez was really great this year. No, I agree. So I've got Mark Marquez in second place.

You did? Okay, we flipped them. Yeah, we did. That's fair. That's fair.

I mean, it's a nuts whisker between the two of them really, for entirely different reasons. So I don't have a lot of notes with Mark Marquez because really, nothing more to say. The comeback king, it was a shame his season ended. Was it Buriram? No, that's Thailand.

It's Mandelica, isn't it? Oh, it's Mandelica? Yeah. Yeah, well, I get those. Yeah, I do as well.

I'm not good at geography, people. We've already learned that. Yeah, it's a shame his season ended in Indonesia, but job done with the seventh title by that point. And I'd highly like to add another one in 2026. Really, I suppose I should put him number one, because it's to come back from what he has come back from.

Plus he did it in a sort of a new team, let's say, because it was his first year in the Fully Works team. So it was just an utterly impressive thing to behold, but it almost got a bit boring, in a way, which is a crazy thing to say. And I kind of expected him to do it. So if it wasn't for what I'm going to say about Bez in a minute, who obviously is my number one, Mark would have been in first place. But for me, there's just a good enough reason to switch him around.

And I kind of figured you'd probably have him the other way around to me. So I thought that would make for an interesting discussion. Yeah, that makes it all good. Right. Yeah.

Who's your number one, Jim? Who's my number one? The moment you've all been waiting for. Jim's number one. Yeah, it's Mark Marquez, people.

I'm sorry. Yeah, you know, take the recovery from the arm out of this one. This guy showed back up and showed dominance that he had early on in his Honda career, showing that even at his age, he was still the fastest guy on the planet, bar none. He had nine races in a row that he won. And I think he doubled like six of those or something like that.

It was incredible. I don't think he qualified worse than like 60 the entire season. It was amazing. His lead was so massive in the championship that he did not race the last five rounds and still beat his brother by a full 75 points. I'm sorry.

That is utter domination by a rider who wanted to put down a statement that said, I am not done. He has done that. He has tied Rossi for nine world championships. He will take it more than likely take a 10th championship next year. The goat discussion will now start from everybody about who is the greatest.

And that's fine. You can say whatever you want about each of them. They're both amazing riders. But the season he had was one for the ages. And then if you add the coming back from the injury, it is one.

And if he would have had a motorcycle like the 24 Ducati, let's say that the 25 bike was as good as the 24, he probably would have won more races and been farther along than he was. He did it on arguably a not as good Ducati. Right. Like this Ducati that he won a world championship on kind of was a Ducati that was a step backwards, if you will. Right.

According to the people that rode the 24s, it was. Yeah. I mean, it was one step too many, maybe. I don't know. Can't really tell you what really happened, but regardless, it was so impressive that it was boring.

Yeah, it was shockingly good. Yeah, really in a field as stacked with talent and with, you know, compared to say, if you go back to some of the Rossi titles. Yes. The thing about Rossi was he could pull out the win under any circumstance if he needed to pretty much until he jumped on that Ducati. He was virtually unbeatable.

So it's not really the same comparison to me because there just wasn't the amount of parity in terms of equipment. So that makes Mark's achievement this year, I think, stand out even more, really. But shall I go on to Bez now? Yeah, please. Yeah.

So just to be a little bit kind of creative, I did put Mark Oberzacki, who did finish third in the championship, but beaten by a GP25 and a GP24, I think is important to point out there. The reason why I've done it as a subjective thing is that for me, he was the sort of the standout surprise and overachiever of the season. That's true. Especially so as it was a new bike, a new team, which turned out to be a match made in heaven. It's true, but could quite easily not have been.

But more than that, because he was thrust into that number one rider position because Jorge Martins mishaps, let's call them. As well as I'm concerned, provided Delinia doesn't pull a miracle out of the bag with the 2026 bike this year, I think the Prilia probably will be the best bike on the grid or remain the best bike on the grid to take your point, Jim. And I think Bez could pose a genuine threat to Mark Marcus next year, or possibly the only person that will be a genuine threat to him. And I was worried you were going to steal my thunder. Extra points go towards the first position for the wooden leg celebration in San Marino.

That was classic. He won the sprint. There is a story behind that to do with an Italian song. Yes. And then the proposal to the bike.

Exactly. Yeah. And as you pointed out, in attitude and persona, the true successor to Rossi. So I just think as a package and given the circumstances and all the other thing, you know, the thing with Martina, it's not as dramatic as this. I kind of kept making me think a little bit about, say, Graham Hill, who faced with the death of Jim Clark in the Lotus team back in 67, was it?

Or 67, 68. It might have been 68. Anyway, it was a long time ago, but it was kind of a thrust into position he didn't necessarily want, definitely didn't ask for, but kind of just picked it up and ran with it and succeeded. And I kind of feel that Bez under a very difficult situation as an Italian and an Italian team could have very easily sort of crumbled in that. And let's not forget he had a wretched 2024 on the Ducati.

He just couldn't get to his liking. So he went to Prelia, which was a surprise to most people. And yeah, I mean, he just knocked it out of the park. So for that reason, I've sort of decided to be a little bit contrary and put him ahead of Mark. But you know, either one of those could occupy the first place position as well as I'm concerned.

That, yeah, I completely agree with what you're saying. And honestly, I initially wrote down Mark Bez is really quick. Those two were stand above everybody else. And then I was thinking about it a little bit. I'm like, man, I could flip these, you know, because you could.

Right. And I think that's what you love about motorcycle racing and MotoGP is like, there's always a story that you don't expect to have happen. Right. The main storyline was always Mark Bez is going to dominate Mark Bez is going to die. You know, who's going to see him?

Well, you know what, that kind of happened. But it took a little while for that narrative to deliver. Right. Yeah. It was a little scattered over the first three rounds or whatever.

And then Mark sort of got it all set down or whatever. And just when you thought it was boring, Mark's going to probably win another one. Best start to make it interesting. And you're like, wait a minute, maybe this is going to win this one. Like, look, the championship is done here.

People PECO is not going to win this thing. But this is here. Roof for this Italian. Maybe give him the torch to take through Milan. I don't know.

Whatever. Right. Yeah. And let's be honest. I mean, as bike racing fans, you and I, and all of the people that listen to the show and everybody else that does, it really takes something different from the sport in terms of what they love about it.

I mean, some people love the stats. So they'll be looking at the Mark Marquez thing, thinking he's number one for the stats, one more race than anybody else, massive haul of points, et cetera, et cetera. But then, you know, I'm always interested in the personalities and the psychology of the sport. And that is obviously a big part of it as well. The phrase I always love that you use is the sort of the color around the sport.

You know, it's not just about who wins the most races for me. Clearly that is who becomes the champion normally. But there's a lot of other stuff that goes on. And so like the whole thing with Martin suddenly not being there, the person that was expected to be the torchbearer and Bez going into the season or certainly going into the pre-season, I kind of looked at him as clearly the number two rider there. I think those roles are flipped going into this coming year, even though Martin is the sort of the superstar, probably on the bigger salary because he was the world champion last year.

It's true. So deserve to say, but for the reasons that we've said, all that shenanigans and stuff is a bit of a, I don't know what the word is without being rude, but it's a bit sort of damaged goods in a way. I don't see how the relationship would ever fully recover within Aprilia, given the lengths that they went to to quickly extricate him out of his nightmare with the contractual situation with Ducati, laid out the red carpet and then he unfortunately beats himself up and several times and he was very, very seriously injured in Qatar. Let's not forget. And then all of that kind of betrayal as I saw it with trying to get himself out of the contract, which I just thought was, well, you said it earlier on, he was poorly advised.

He sort of rescued it a little bit with the injuries and stuff. I think it's kind of changed him around a little bit. So maybe we'll see a slightly different or hey Martin from now on, but he's done himself a lot of damage, I think. And yeah, he's got a teammate who I think is a potential title contender next year. So it has way more experience on the bike.

No. All right. So quickly we should go through our new year's resolutions for each of the major manufacturers in MotoGP. I will go through them quickly. I did it alphabetically.

So I took Aprilia as the beginning. Take this a bit tongue and cheek, people. If it's not a broketa, don't a fixeta, right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That bike's good.

That's my new year's resolutions for Aprilia. Ducati, build a bike Peco can ride. You know, for once, listen to the riders and give them what they want as opposed to what your computer says. That would be like a great start, right? Honda's resolution for me is a little bit different.

Give up on 26 and focus on 27 and give us absolutely something special in the 850 era. I know you can't do five cylinders or whatever, right? Like you're kind of hemmed into four cylinders and whatnot, but I always think of Honda as being these people that are so outside the box. You know, they showed up for the 990 with a five cylinder. Like who builds a five cylinder boat?

I don't know. They had a six cylinder on the test bench at one point as well. Yeah, they had a six cylinder on the bench at one point, but you know, it's like, come on guys, do something like that. Like I know you want to win in this era, but give us something super special and wild. Like, you know, give us some kind of crazy wild VTEC that you hear it change tone when it gets on it.

Something, any, I don't know something. Just give me something, right? KTM, give across some rear grip, please. Rear grip, please over here. However you want to do that.

And Yamaha is give Quattrora a great V4. So yeah. Okay. I've got one sentence. I actually did it for each team.

So I've got the independence in here as well, but I'll go through this very, very quickly. So Aprilia racing, get bears into title contention. Yeah. Grissini, Giacchi continue to be the disruptor team that shades factories with gazillion dollar budgets and continue having lots of fun doing it. Cause that looks like a fun place to be that team.

It does. Yeah. Giacchi Lenovo, don't drop the ball with the final thousand CC bike. Mark should make the difference. HRC, a bit different to you, Jim, HRC, give it everything to at least try and get a dry race win before the eight fifties arrive.

And I think Mia could be the guy to do it. It's possible. I agree. That's a great one too. I like that one.

LCR cut down on the crash damage costs. Yeah. Monster Yamaha, please God get the V4 up to speed so that Fabio stays. Yes. VR46, Giacchi, encourage Frankie Mulberdelli to stop crashing into other riders and especially stationary bikes.

We should not seem to let that one go. No, well, we're never going to let that go are we? I'm not. I'm always going to remember that one. Pramat Yamaha, let Toprak keep on doing the stoppies.

Yes. Don't try and get that out of him. Red Bull KTM, stay financially afloat and try to keep hold of Pedro if it's not already too late. Red Bull Tech3, don't let Steiner turn Tech3 into an F1 Liberty Media Circus sideshow. Gunter Steiner, I'm on that.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I should have probably came up with something for that one. And then finally Trackhouse Aprilia, beat Grasini. There you go. Can I have one for Tech3?

You have as many as you like, Jim. Okay. How about a swear jar so that way the bike gets better? Well, yeah, they certainly increase their budget. Let's hope we don't have to put up with all that nonsense.

He's become a bit of a sort of parody really, isn't he? And he's done very well out of it for himself, but maybe he'd be a bit different. But as far as I know, he is now kind of the sort of the head of the consortium that took Tech3 over. So we're going to see a fair bit of him, I expect. I always think of him as a German because of his surname, but he's actually Italian.

Yeah, that's the weird part. He is Italian. But Steiner always sounds like a German name. He does. He must have some German heritage, I guess.

He does. Maybe we'll get to interview him sometime and he can tell me to f***. Oh, no, I'm not allowed to swear. Oh, bleep. I'll bleep that out.

Okay, we're done. All right, we're done. That was a lot of fun, Jim. That was fun. All right, guys, we'll be back next week, more than likely, with the top tens and wooden spoons for Moto2 and Moto3.

So look for that. In the meantime, until we're back next week, everybody ride safe. Yeah, cheerio.