MotoGp is BACK!

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 828, March the 3rd, 2026, MotoGP round one. Richard's here with me, Rich.

MotoGP's back. Hardly went away, did it? Yeah. I mean, they were talking about it in the broadcast like, oh, it's been so long since we've had a MotoGP race. I'm thinking, I'm not even ready for this yet.

I'm not remotely close to being prepared for another season of MotoGP. But yet, somehow here we actually are. It was cool to have the racing back again though, I must say. I did enjoy it. Yeah, I enjoyed it too.

I'm sure all of you people out there enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy it and you enjoy the show, how about you throw a couple of quid, dollars, pounds, whatever it may be into the funds for the coffer. You can do that by going to our website, www.motopodcast.com. There's links for Patreon and PayPal. And it'd be really grateful if you could help us out.

Hey, I know we understand times are difficult at times. Maybe not everybody's got the time to go through the couch cushions to find some spare change. But if you just go to where you get your podcast and you give us a review, a like, share it amongst your friends, share it on your social media channels, it'd be greatly appreciated. Oh, so, you know, there's some stuff going on here, Rich. I got to throw a shout out here to Carl and Danny.

The guys that are going to cover BSB and World Super, that first show, it was refreshing to hear World Superbike being discussed on the show again. So, you know, I myself enjoyed it very much. I can't wait for those guys to sort of get on the rhythm and get with it. And I always loved it when Dave Neal did some BSB on the show. Hopefully those guys will do some real roads, you know, talk about the TT, whatever, you know, Cookstown 100, Northwest at the very least.

So first good show, guys loved it, enjoyed it. So that's my shout out for those guys. Yeah, no, same for me as well, Jim. I mean, talk about getting in there straight away and sounding like they've been doing it for ages. And Danny went off and did the edit on this occasion, did an outstanding job on that, turned it around in like 24 hours.

A bit embarrassing for me really, because I take days to do it, as you know. So yeah, the future looks bright with those two guys on board. I know it'll be the same, obviously, in terms of what you're doing on Moto America. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to this season. Obviously, it's lots of racing going on all over the place.

And now we've got more people to talk about it. So that's obviously that's all good. Even better, because then you could get into those. It's nice to have like a backup for me, for you. It's a for Moto GP as well.

That's always nice. Maybe, you know, I don't have to drag everything with me on vacation or work trips or whatever it is, right? Although I don't really care. I mean, I'm sitting in a hotel on a work trip, so who cares, right? But it's nice to have that luxury in here.

So with that, there is some listener feedback that we got to talk about. I put out the call, Rich, to ask about the bend. Any of our Australian listeners tell me about the bend. And Gareth Locke jumped in, told us about the bend. He said that it's like 45 minutes from downtown Adelaide.

So that doesn't seem like that's a horrible drive. I mean, that does. By the standards of what I can think of, and my reference point is always Coda, because Moto GP is there. You know, it's a good 20 minutes from the center of Austin to the track. So this is like twice that distance.

But if Moto GP is going there all the time, I would expect more infrastructure to show up, because I can show you pictures and you can just watch the housing developments just creep up on Coda from year on, year on. But he said that they have some facilities. There are building some hotel rooms, I think, above the garages are there. Obviously, I think the teams would probably be first come first serve to that whole idea. He says that the Grand Prix track has a few blind corners that he's done on some track days that are there that should prove challenging.

So many thanks to Gareth for giving us some information on the bend. And since we're also there, there's a whole deal that came from Brenton about Adelaide and the bend and everything. And he suggested that we check out Rusty's Garage podcast with Sam. I hope I got this right. Say him.

I'm assuming the S might be slightly under pronounced there. Not too sure on that one. But either way, if you guys are interested in getting more information about Moto GP going to Adelaide and the track, you guys can check that podcast out. That was Rusty's Garage. So feel free and I appreciate Brenton and Gareth writing in, giving us some information about the bend and all about Adelaide.

With that, Rich, I think we'll head to the news. So the first thing is that Dorna is no more. It is now Moto GP Sport and Entertainment. Yeah, that trips off the tongue, doesn't it? No, I mean, I'm going to borrow this one from Simon Patterson.

But if you're in the world superbike paddock, aren't you a little bit scared? I would be. So it's like, huh. So it's obvious that Liberty's focus is Moto GP if you rename the company to Moto GP Sport. But here's where I got to draw the line.

Is it sport and entertainment? That I don't like. I don't like that at all. And I will come on to that much later in the show when it's appropriately to be talked about. But for now, we'll just leave it there.

So unless you got something else about that, Rich, let the name change. Not really. I mean, obviously, it's early days, isn't it? But so far as I can tell, the main sort of people that are still figureheading the sport are basically the Dorna people, which, OK, you're going to expect that that's from a continuity point of view is going to be the case. I think I saw that Chase Carey, is he the guy with the handlebar mustache?

Yeah, he was originally in on the Liberty deal with Formula One. That's right. And I'll never forget his business card actually read Thought Broker. Oh my God. I really want to borrow that and put that on one of my cards.

I should have Jim McDowell Motopods Thought Broker because it's just anyway, never mind. Continue. So it's alarm bells ringing. So nothing more to add. I say the rebranding name thing seems a bit long winded to me, but it's just a name, isn't it?

The key thing is what they actually end up doing or not doing, as the case may be. So let's I'm trying to stay open minded about it. I mean, obviously, you've just touched on the whole Adelaide versus Victoria Park versus the Ben versus P.I. thing. I mean, it's all got a bit confusing really in terms of where this thing's actually like to be going because Adelaide kind of crept in as a kind of a bit out of left field, I thought.

Lots of people are saying in terms of journalists and stuff, they just don't see how it can be made safe. I mean, just returning to that email that came in from Gareth, he was pointing out that Jack Miller had been sort of wheeled out to try and sort of say, yeah, Adelaide could be good sort of thing. But Jack might not be around long enough to ride it. That's the thing. Yeah.

So I think where we're at here is we're talking about what Liberty announces. The first thing having taken over as MotoGP Sport Entertainment was the fact that they came out with this deal where we weren't going to go to P.I. after 26. We're going instead to Adelaide, but we're not going to the Bend in Adelaide, which is, I think, what everybody thought we were going to do. We're going to the street race in Adelaide, which they run V8 supercars on, which was the old F1 track that was used before Melbourne took over.

And I'm thinking here, really? This is your grand idea is to put motorcycles that are capable of 200 plus miles an hour onto a track that has no runoff in critical areas. And then you put Jack Miller out there to shill for you on top of it all? Wow. OK.

Boy, talk about one to ruffle some feathers right now, right? I mean, if you follow Simon Patterson, some Max Matt Oxley, and what they were talking about with this was that the first thing I thought was the riders got to stand up to this. They have to stand up. They have to have, much like Formula One's got the Grand Prix Drivers Association, there needs to be like a riders association here because obviously they're not thinking about the safety point of this. Now, motorcycles racing is dangerous and I get that.

You can tell me right now, I can hear everybody go, well, Jim, they race at the Isle of Man. Yes, but everyone goes there of their own free will to race the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is not a world championship. It's a money race and money motivates people. And I'm never going to go against anyone who's trying to make a buck racing a motorcycle.

But you are, I think everyone very well knows the dangers of the Isle and I think everyone goes there under their own free will. This is, sorry Rich, go ahead. Lots of people regularly get killed at the TT as well. So, I mean, yeah, that's why they don't have world championship racing there anymore. Exactly.

All credit to the people that go there and they go there with their eyes open and as you say, it's up to them if they want to do that. But you can't, this is sort of forcing riders or riders staying silent for whatever reason, apart from Jack Miller, evidently. Yeah, so yeah, this talk of a riders union, I think will gather a bit of pace. Yep. So inside of all that, you also have to take into consideration that some riders, depending on their paycheck, were not, were going to ride or maybe not ride.

That there was talk of, I don't want to say a rider boycott, but let's say some of the, since it would be sort of in the same timeframe as Philip Island, that late October area, that some riders who may or may not have locked up the world championship may decide, I don't need to race this one. I will calmly sit this one out, which that started a little bit of a stir that's been rolling around. And now they kind of, they kind of backed off of, hey, we're going to Adelaide for a street race. We're going to remake the track so that it's safe for a motorcycle, which I'm thinking, how do you do it? Because the part of it, I think there is a part of that is purpose built racetrack that then interconnects with the street circuit per se.

Now I'm not exactly sure. I know if I watch an onboard video of V8 supercars, there are areas where there's grass where they're going through with, you could say, yeah, that's safe-ish for a motorcycle. But then there are parts where it's 90 degree turns with concrete barriers because it's in the middle of town that I think everybody would like, much rather like to avoid as opposed to it. I'm wondering here, Rich, if this was one of those things where Liberty says, we're going to follow the F1 playbook that we use to great success. We'll take the cars and we'll put them in the city and all the people will come and everything's going to be great.

It's like, I don't think anybody understood the difference between a motorcycle race and a car race. I think they just thought race equal race and said this and said, this is what we're going to do, which I get what they're trying to do, but I think they have got to take a step back here and really think about what they're doing. There's going to be more on this because I've heard some underling rumblings from other journalists that are in the scene that are way more in the know than what we are that, hey, there's teams that are grumbling about this now. We're still a year and a half off before this actually happened. I'm going to mark this down as a watch this space because I think this is going to be a reoccurring thing every so often.

It's just going to crop back up with some other bit of information or detail and we'll have to see what happens. Okay. I'm going to ring my cynic alarm bell. Okay. Because I don't know if you caught it over the weekend.

It depends what coverage you're watching and listening to, of course, but there is quite a bit of talk going on behind the scenes as the teams now look to negotiate something that would be somewhat equivalent to what in Formula One is known as the Concorde agreement because the manufacturer teams have never received any revenue out of the sport, which I was quite surprised to learn when that came up at the weekend. Now, the independent teams have always been given a few million euros by Dorner to help them with their travel costs and so on, but the manufacturers themselves have always just pumped the money in and had nothing out with this takeover by, I've already forgotten what the long winded name is. I'm just going to call it Liberty for the minute. But to take over from them and the obvious attempts they are going to make to rapidly capitalise the sport, whatever you want to call it, I don't know the right word, but you know what I mean, make a lot of money. I think the teams are quite understandably saying, well, we want a bigger slice of this or we want a slice in the first place if you're a manufacturer team.

So there's a lot of talk going on behind the scenes in terms of some sort of teams organisation agreement over the long term with who now owns and runs the sport, whether that will involve them compromising some of their complaints or whether they will be using things like sort of objections and concerns over street races as a bargaining chip and getting the sort of deal that they want. I would imagine that'll be a big part of it. But it's certainly the reason why the Banyati Yamaha news hasn't come out and one or two other rider moves that were expected to be announced on the Thursday before the Buraram race weekend took place. And those announcements didn't come. And the word is that the teams are keeping their plans sort of secret.

I mean, most people know what's happening, I think, because this information sort of leaks out inevitably. But I think they're holding fire until they've got this deal in place with the new sport owner. It does make me sort of cynically wonder if there'll be some horse trading there, money for going to circuits that perhaps they wouldn't otherwise be that happy to go to. And the other thing with street races, Jim, I mean, I get why they want to do it, because obviously with Formula One, it has demonstrated that you take the sport to where the people are, not do it the other way around. But and I suppose that you can make a street race a bit safer to some extent.

But what happens if it rains? Because then the chances of crashes go up a lot and bikes and riders tend to go a lot further, even though they're going a bit slower when they fall off, which they inevitably do in the wet. And I really struggled to see how you could make it safe. I don't run in the rain. But that would be a huge change and I wouldn't, you know, that gives it levels the playing field, it gives other riders a chance, which they wouldn't necessarily get.

Some riders are really good in the wet and some are less so. So I would be very much against the idea that they don't run in the wet. And I'm not suggesting that's going to happen, but that might be one sort of compromise that they would need to make. And I don't think they should make compromises like that. Yeah, that's that's a great point.

I didn't think about the rain part of it just to begin with. Well, it just came into my mind then thinking the riders slipping down the road. You think, well, you're going to be slipping down the road towards a protected wall. But as you say, unless they're talking about knocking down entire buildings to create more space, how are they going to create the sort of level of runoff that would be needed? Yeah, I don't know.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, again, I think that they thought of this before they saw dollar signs, they jumped at it and didn't think about the real true cost because without the riders and without the teams, the show does not go on. So you need to take care of them. And obviously now the teams decided that they want a piece of this puzzle, which rightly so they deserve and more than likely they deserve it. They deserve a good chunk.

You know, I would think that, you know, I am shocked that the factories weren't getting something out of this and it was only the independent teams, if you will. So that's going to be interesting negotiations that will take place there. So, yeah, well, no surprise that you've got some ex Formula One people suddenly turning up in team ownership or leadership roles whilst all this is going on as well. So there's going to be a lot of horse trading and money exchange in hands. Oh, yes, there will be.

But that to me, again, I won't repeat myself too much, but that always involves compromises. And as usual, if the riders don't have the voice or the common sort of approach through a union of some sort to say, hang on, we don't agree to this, then things like this will just happen whether they like it or not. And it's really it's for the riders to come together and make their case, isn't it? Yep. Yep.

I mean, could you see something like what happened in? What was it? Was it 76 in Calamity or was that further on? 82 in Calamity? I think it might have been, you know, it's late 70s, early 80s.

There was a strike. Yeah, right. So you could see it. I mean, I know Lada was involved in that strike and he's like, we're not doing this. And he gathered everybody up and they all got on a bus, went to a hotel and had a.

What were those things? Yeah, well, there was a there was a thing. Then they call like a sit in or something that wasn't the term from back then. Something like that. Yeah.

I remember seeing pictures of them sitting around in the hotel bar. When they should have been on track and they're saying, sorry, guys, we're not I can't remember what their objection was. We would obviously have been a safety related issue. Certainly there it would have been in that sort of time scale. Well, wasn't it?

It was like something about it was the it was the FOCA fees award. And that is a hold on. Let's stop. Yeah, it's a formula podcast. We're going down the road.

I have to call time out. All right, let's get the last bit of news here on this one is that given the state of play in the world and particularly in the Middle East, could the Qatar round, which is scheduled to be the second weekend in April, could it be either moved to the end of the year or might it Argentina get a reprieve? And then you could have race in Argentina. But that would be weird because you're going from Thailand to Brazil to the US, then back to Argentina, which Argentina is very difficult to get to. So I'm thinking if you were in Brazil, you might as well just head to Argentina.

But who knows? That's what we hear right now. It's a possibility. But I'm leaning more towards a postponement of the Qatar round and then have it put in sort of after the Japan. Yeah, that sort of fly away.

Australia, Malaysia fly away sequence. So I sort of hit that on the way back as you're going back to Spain for Valencia to end the year. It does make you wonder, actually, Jim. There's so much freight having to be shipped around sort of backwards and forwards, east to west and stuff. I wonder how the teams will cope, given that they make a lot of these logistical plans so far in advance, of course, whether any of this is going to disrupt people getting the stuff to Brazil, which is the next round in what, two weeks time, two or three weeks time.

Yeah, right now, this coming weekend, it'd be two week. It'd be the weekend after order. Probably have got time to reroute stuff different ways if it was going through that region, because, as you know, I'm overseas myself and I've had to completely change all of my flight plans because I was going to go through Qatar, which clearly I cannot do. You and Simon Patterson this week. Yeah.

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, a lot of stuff goes through that. It's such a major sort of hub for international travel. So it is going to cause some some difficulties and some disruptions for sure. But yeah, I mean, again, I we always go on about Simon Patterson with the Simon Patterson fan club. We're not.

It's just that he's very prolific in terms of putting stuff out on X and and whatnot. So we tend to see stuff that he writes. But I spotted that just before we started recording. And he was sort of saying it's I mean, the term asteria, Honda is a Honda, something like that. No, Honda is the name of that Argentine track, I think.

And it was already very remote. So to get there as a sort of a last minute change, I think probably is he's pointing out would be logistically very, very difficult to do anyway. I suspect that that round might have to be canceled because it's on. I did write it down. I think the 12th of April is a scheduled race day, which is not very far away.

And it's hard to imagine things will have improved significantly by then, I think, with the eye looking. I mean, Formula One's facing the same thing and they've got three races there. So we shall see. We shall see what happens. So all last bit of news, just a quick one from Motor America.

Two hundred is this weekend. Oh, well, of course, it's the fifth or whatever. I mean, I live right on I 75 in the US. It's a I travel to go to work every day. There is the influx of campers, trailers and whatnot, all with bikes heading down for Bike Week and whatnot.

I think the Supercross has already ran. I think it ran this past Saturday down at Daytona. So, yeah, it's all interesting. All I see what happens there because that runs as a supersport class only nowadays, doesn't it? Correct.

Those are the super bikes there. Yeah. And they cut out the banking and of terms. NASCAR turns one and two. Right.

So they actually go to through the international horseshoe. They head down and then they instead of taking the kink and going to the left, they go to the right. And then they loop back around and go through the other horseshoe the other direction. And then they cut across on a fairly long stretch. It to the middle of the back straight, then the chicane.

And then they run through NASCAR three and four. So looking forward to doing that show with Jake and talking about Daytona for the first time in a long time. It'll be interesting to see what you and Jake make of it. I shall try and see if I can find someone that's either streaming it or watch it on a catch up, because I've not watched the 200 for a few years. I do actually quite enjoy that one.

So, yeah, yeah. OK. All right. Well, let's get to what we're here for. The Moto GP races that happened in Buriram.

So we'll start off with the Moto three in the first qualifying session was Munoz, O'Shea, Kelso, Buchanan, Bartelli, Moodley. Those are some of the names that you expect to sort of maybe think would have gotten through there, but they did not. Then on the ones that did get out of it was Danish, who is a new rider to the team to this to the series this year. Munoz, Kelso and then some Bella did as well, which, you know, different guys getting through than what we normal. So Kevin quite figured out where qualifying is with Moto three yet with all the new names that have been thrown in there.

But we will figure it out as time goes on. We got to that second qualifying session and by halfway it was Carpe, Almanza, Fernandez, Kylis. Then Patamama, Patamama, it's a tough one, because the R is pronounced silently. I've got to hear it a few more times before, but he is of the region and a local favorite. And then Pini was in there as well.

As it turned out, Almanza would take the pole position followed by Carpe, Fernandez, Kylis was fourth. Now, this was all turned out to be a tough one. Carpe, Fernandez, Kylis was fourth. Now, this was all turned over at the very end of the session in typical Moto three style, because everybody wanted to tow out of one all the way down to three. Then everybody wanted to tow from three all the way back to four, which did kind of juggle things up a little bit.

But I think it's Patamama there in fifth, then David Munoz, then Yakanama, Ogden and Pini as your first three rows as we head to the race. Now, the race takes place on that Sunday. And as it started off, Almanza had the lead followed by Kylis and Fernandez and then Carpe, then Yamanaka and Patia. Patamama, we got to figure that one out. I think it's Pratama.

Pratama, I think, I believe, yes. It's difficult for me as being an American when you put all the letters around in different plays, it just doesn't work every year. So I'm doing my best. But if anybody else knows the exact true pronunciation right, it's motopodmotopodes.com. I'd love to be able to get it right, because I've heard different ways of it being pronounced during the weekend by the guys who are the professionals.

So we'll sort this out here after a race or two. Yamanaka went down on turn five on the second lap. Buchanan was off again. He had fallen down. Then Pini was down with him as well.

It was just not just one of those little incidents where somebody loses the front while they collect somebody else because they're on the inside of you. And well, that's racing, right? Yeah. Oh, so basically there is a point where Almanza and Kielis start to pull away from the guys that are chasing them. And it's just where they just sort of got their heads down.

And Kielis did the smart thing. He didn't try to pass Almanza. He just decided, I'm going to go with you and we'll see where this all winds up. Well, the problem then was that the following group of guys decided that they needed to fight to figure out who was going to lead the charge there. So, Patama, Fernandez, Peroni, they're all battling it out and they keep battling it out.

They start this battle, which is actually a really good part of the race. If you're watching it, hey, you start to look at these guys, they're sort of figuring out where to pass every which way. And kind of Patama was sort of the star of the show, quite actually, Rich. I mean, he was pulling off some great moves. He was riding hard.

He's got a lot of track knowledge because he's from that Asia Talent Cup part of it there. So, local track knowledge is obviously one thing that makes it a lot better. But he was still riding good and he was cutting it up with the big guys, which was there. Now, by lap 10, Patama had a track limits warning, which I guess that's to be expected because he was running with the big dogs. And there is that idea of you're trying to get by.

And so you're running a little harder than what you've had before. And you're trying to impress. And I need a little bit of extra track. And again, this track, I think, sort of leads itself with the tighter corners that it has, couple tight corners where you want to go in there a little bit deeper than what you think you can go. You carry a little more speed than you think.

You touch the just touch the outside and you get zinged for a track limits warning. He never did receive a track, a long lap penalty. He was warned, he reined it in and he carried on, which I think was good of him. I think we can charitably say he's fast, but a little bit wild, Jim. OK, I will go with that.

Yeah, he certainly knows how to get his elbows out. But he's going to be fun to watch this year because he's clearly very, very talented that lad. Yep, he is very talented. At this point, I'm thinking, is Keely just biding his time? Is he playing this one just super cool?

OK, I'm just going to just deal with this and not going to worry about it. But no, Keely goes past Omanza. I'm in the camp like, yep, that's predictable. Been waiting for that to happen. Keely has now got this or whatever.

Then he promptly just goes wide at turn one, just in there deep. It's like, hmm, kind of like somebody else we know, right? Kind of like maybe somebody who's mentoring him a little bit. But we've seen that story before. Carpe made his way to third and he's trying to take Potama with him.

But Potama is just not giving up in any of this. Again, that's the race. The race is there for the last podium position. These guys were absolutely doing it great and doing it right. And it's a really good race as it winds down.

Keely's is trying to catch up. And he's got some work to do with like a lap roughly to go. Now, Keely's puts on a great lap. There is no question that Keely's is almost a half a second behind. And after one sector, he's almost right on the back of Omanza.

And the second sector, he's on the back of Omanza. Now you're waiting for the attack, because I think everybody realized, or at least everybody watching, was Keely's was going to go for it in turn 12. He was going to throw a block pass, put it on there or whatever. But I think Omanza was kind of thinking he was going to do that because he really left it to where he definitely guarded the inside and didn't allow Keely's to get up the inside. So Keely's decided, I'm going around the outside of this thing, which is the long way around.

But I applaud it for the effort. And Keely's is slightly ahead. But I think Keely's was I think Keely's had in his head that if I run wide, even though he didn't have a track limits, you leave the bounds on last lap. You you you are docked the position. So I think Keely's sort of kind of cracks the throttle ever so slightly.

Maybe he didn't. Maybe Omanza just got a superior drive because I think he braked harder going into that turn and was able to turn the bike and get on the gas sooner. Either way, it is a drag race to the line with Omanza by the thickness of a tire wins the race over Keely's, which was, you know, that last minute showdown that you were looking for. It was we had been waiting for it. Keely's didn't disappoint.

I mean, for the opening round, I don't think he was disappointed at all. But then it turned out that Peroni would lead because Peroni had worked his way through that pack of riders with Pataama and the other people to be third, barely beating Carpe to the line, fifth for Pataama, then Fernandez in sixth, Uriate seventh, Morelli eighth, Joel Esteban ninth, then David Munoz, who's still recovering from that broken femur he had, which is, you know, there. Casey O'Gorman got in the and that was the top ten. Although a quick mention to the point scorers, Casey O'Gorman, Scott Ogden, Adrian Krusas, Kelso got a point, got two points, 14th. And Eddie O'Shea there.

So there's a little little Brit, little Brit action there that we can feel good about, especially, I mean, I, you know, I realize that. That O'Gorman is obviously Irish, but we'll we'll take it right, Rich. I'm Irish. I'm allowed it. We didn't have anything we can get over here.

So that's that, Rich, something that you would like to add to the race to. Well, what was there? I think we have to say Poland win for Almanza. What a weekend on a new team. Yes.

Obviously, he got himself out of the Leopard team last year and went over to the Liqui Moly Dynavault. Is it still called that? Yes. Yes. And, you know, we when we were talking about the Moto3 and Moto2 riders that we thought would do well in the future, we did mention Almanza is one of these guys that clearly very fast, but just haven't ever really quite managed to get it put together.

Then he goes and knocks that one out, you know, on Sunday. So it was highly impressive from him. I was going to point out, as you just have, David Munoz, who you think is a championship favourite, probably still over the course of the whole season, will be. But he's had a really nasty time without like by the sounds of it. So he's had to have four separate operations, they were saying on it because it was repaired.

And whereas it was Indonesia, I think, wasn't it where he got taken out and broke the femur in the first place, that surgery. I'm not suggesting that anybody balls that up, but it had to be looked at several times again. So he's still struggling to walk. So for him to finish where he did for him just to be out riding, I think was credit worthy. And as you've just pointed out, nice to see the MLav bikes, both of them scoring.

OK, it's tail end of the points, but points points at the end of the day. And I don't know if that's Eddie O'Shea's first point, actually. He may have scored a point last year at some point. But again, very encouraging for Eddie in particular to pick up points in round one. So, yeah, MLav looked to have taken a bit of a step forward in terms of their general overall competitive and bike machinery, I think, in particular.

So, yeah, there are a few crashes early on, but it was quite a sort of sensible race by Moto3 standards, wasn't it? So that's and I said that a few times last year as well. So perhaps that's how it's going to be this year again. The the kids have sort of calmed down a smidgen, if you will. Maybe Simon's there in fear of the wrath of Simon Krayfar, perhaps.

Yeah, although there was a lot of dicking around. Yeah, I did in qualifying. I noticed I don't think anybody got penalized for it, which was somewhat surprising, actually, because I thought there might be a few red cards under that for that. I agree with you. I thought for sure.

But the one incident from the qualifying that I saw, it was like, who are you going to penalize? Because everybody was everywhere. So are you going to penalize everybody or do you just simply gather that group of riders and you call them to the headmaster's office? That's right. Right.

Isn't it? Right. OK, cool. And the principal's room. Yes.

The principal for me, I was thinking, boy, is it for you headmaster? I want it to be British for a moment. Anyway, so, you know, do you call them all together and be like, hey, this is not this off, because if you don't, you are going to get heavily. I suspect a conversation somewhat along those lines happened at some point during the weekend, because it was pretty dire on Saturday again. Yeah.

Yeah. That's Moto3. Yeah. But it was overall, I mean, I think it was a good race. I think it took a little bit of time to warm up.

You know, Keely's played it so cool and then really couldn't do anything with Almanza, which I thought was kind of a shock. I mean, I thought, you know, Keely's is ran wide. He can, you know, get back in on it. But, you know, he tried great last lap, but Almanza was just better. Yeah.

And I think I heard and I need to go and check this, but I think that's the closest ever finish in Moto3 history. Maybe not 125 included in that, but three one thousandths of a second was the winning margin, if you can call it that. So as you say, Jim, literally like a fag paper, really. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That would be three microseconds for those of us. Yeah. Micro. Yeah.

Because Millie's the other one. Yeah. All right. Good race. Good race.

Just kick things off. Yeah. It's a good way to start off the day, I thought. Or well, for me, it was early morning, but I wasn't watching it live. Oh, I'm not surprised.

I think it's like something like one or two a.m. here. You want to watch it live. Five in the morning for me. I didn't get up.

I must have. I couldn't quite face that, I'm afraid. Not anymore. Used to do it, but not anymore. And of course, we've got catch up TV that you never used to have.

You used to have to get up virtually to watch these things before. But now you have the luxury of. Yeah. Time delay. Yes.

Time delay is a great thing. And having an app that you can buy and just watch it whenever you want is also a great luxury of the modern technologies that we are all here. Anyway, Moto3 will change their standings. They are the way that the guys finished. So that's that.

We'll move into Moto2 and the qualifying that happened there. In the first session, we had Roberts, Zander Gorberg, Arbolino, Anciu, Alonso, Kennet. They were all there. So with Furusato, Rueda and Munoz. OK, that's Daniel Munoz.

But Rueda, we would expect. Plus, Rueda is still kind of recovering from the injuries he sustained from last year. Roberts, I kind of expected that. Furusato being in there, he's a rookie, I expected that. But Anciu and Arbolino, given the fact that they are now teammates at Help me out, Rich.

I can't. It's the Dutch team. Anciu is MarkVDS. MarkVDS, that's it. Thank you.

Is Arbolino in that team as well? I thought Arbolino is on the Pramac Yamaha. I believe. I need to go. It's all moved around, which is really difficult when I was watching to figure out all the numbers and the colors of the bikes have all changed.

The people are all in different places. So it's going to take a minute to put everything back together again. But either way, hastily looking. Kennet and Anciu are on the MarkVDS bikes. Kennet is there.

Arbolino, I believe, is on a Pramac Yamaha ride. I'm just looking at that. No, Arbolino is on the Fantic racing. OK, Arbolino went to Fantic. He was on last year.

Yeah, it's going to take a while just to get caught up. Yeah. But halfway through that qualifying session, Anciu was in the prime spot followed by Alonso Arbolino in Furusato. But when it came down to it, Munoz put in a lap followed by Anciu, Kennet and Alonso, and they just squeak in. Alonso was in only by like a few hundreds of a second.

So it was very, very close. We go on to the second session. And we got halfway through. We had Holgardo, Ortola, Gonzales, Solache, Aji and Alonso, they're halfway through. It really never did become that great of a session, although as it would work out, Aegis would go to pole.

And that would be the Osleys first pole position in the class. Well, Vara would be second, then Holgardo or Tola, the Eddie, then Vier. If you guys can keep those straight with C and Vie and Cvei, you are a better man than me, because that's so hard. If Colin Vier did not have the the orange around the 95 to denote he's on the Red Bull team, I would not know the difference between them. Just glancing at it.

It was very, very, very difficult. But Gonzales sort of got knocked down as well. He was seventh. Like, you know, Gonzales is in a good place and he just didn't put a lap in. And I think it's a little bit of a mistiming because he was done.

And then everybody else just got in to get that one more lap. And it just seemed like it was that. You know, these guys are a lot of these guys are X, well, are Moto3 guys, not X, but Moto3 guys that came up. So they're sort of like still doing that same thing where everybody changes, like in the last couple of minutes or last couple of laps of a qualifying session. So it's actually kind of entertaining.

It's just there's so much going on. It's like, how do you really follow it all? But it was fun. Jim, that there was a yellow flag as well towards the end, because I think that caught that catch Gonzales out that caught quite a few people out. I think that yellow flag, if you remember, a skritch went down and took Sergio Garcia with him.

So that yellow was up for quite a while. I think I was down in turn three. So that's a couple of few people's late plans as well. Yeah, but nice to see Agis on the pole position for the first time. One of our sort of hot faves for the championship this year.

So when we get into the when we get into the race, Holgardo gets a great start with Artola, Agis, Guevara, Vier and then Gonzales. Now, Piqueras was down at turn five on the second lap. And then on the third lap, Agis was going backwards and he was going backwards kind of fast. He was already at the fourth, then he was down to six. And then, boom, we get a huge crash.

What happened or so the crash is that all of David Alonso runs into the back of Agis. Now, that completely knocks him off of his motorcycle. They were in that transitional change, I think, which is what five to six in there where you're going, you're going to right to left on the track. I think it's five, six or it might be seven. I think it's a bit further around.

Might be a bit further around. But it's where they're transitioning back and forth. Now, Alonso is off the right. He's off the right side of the bike. He can't really see.

He can see his apex and where he's going. But Agis is in front of him, which he doesn't see until he starts to come back upright. And it's just there because his bike had a technical problem. Agis is trying to get his hand up to warn other riders. But in that moment of time, there's just not enough time for Agis to react to what's happening to his motorcycle.

And there's not enough time with for Alonso to look and see what happened. It's just one of those racing incidents where it's happening so fast. You're unsighted and you're suddenly there and now wham. So he then goes in and then. Alonso hits the ground and he hits it hard, but then slatch is coming to and slatch hits Alonso like his bike hits Alonso and kind of knocked it around to where Alonso is kind of spinning on the asphalt, to which then they all sort of slide to a stop.

So latch is down and up and he is immediately sprinting back to Alonso. I think he feared the worst because I mean, I've I've been that way. Like dirt track, like it's something that happens that it's a three, four rider little pack and somebody goes down and you can't miss that person. And you want to miss him. You're trying to miss him.

You can't miss him. And you hit him. I've done that where I've hit a couple of guys. It's like, you know, we're all in a hump. And I realize I'm OK.

I'm charging to the other guy. I'm sorry I couldn't miss you. And it was, you know, it's sportsmanship, it's camaraderie. It's what you do in those instances, which, you know, I applaud slatch for heading over. I really thought Alonso was unconscious because he spun to a stop and he didn't move.

Mm hmm. Concerning, yeah, we never did see what happened when slatch got there because we went to the guys that were in the front of the pack. And then here comes the rant because they're still racing. This crash is obviously serious. I think we all can look at that and go this crash was serious.

It's only like 90 seconds to get around on a moto on a moto two bike. And, you know, this was in the pack slightly. I mean, by this time, Aegis was at least sixth, if not a little farther down that list, because Alonso did not start well. And yet here we are. We were almost back to the accident scene before we had a red flag.

And then you catch, oh, it's like there's guys running with a stretcher, with a rider on it, assuming it was Alonso. And they're running off out of the area out of the impact zone. Come on, can we just get a red flag just a little sooner? A lot a corner or two there. I understand we need to try to keep the race going.

And I understand that. But there's I think there's no excuse for looking at an accident of that severity compared to the next accident we're going to talk about. They got a red flag almost immediately. I think it's just, you know, that's bollocks, in my opinion. I like you.

I was surprised how late they left it. Although I suppose, you know, the signage around the tracks these days with the big flashing electronic boards and stuff. It's very hard for the riders to miss the fact that there is a red out. And, you know, they do sort of throw their hands up and slow down pretty quickly. So I guess benefit of the day, you know, the race director was trying to keep it going, but made the call right at the last moment.

It's true, because as we will find out when we talk about the MotoGP Sprint, they can make decisions and communicate them very, very quickly, which is something that we obviously wanted them to do. But yeah, it was just a horrible, horrible crash. And I would be surprised if Alonso hadn't been knocked out even momentarily, because his head took a quite a big whack from so much his bike as the two sort of went past each other. So and like everybody else sort of feared the worst. The happy news is that Alonso was actually absolutely fine.

Which was remarkable, really, because he went down so hard. Nothing's broken at all. There was a report that he had pain in his arm. But I think the result of it is that it was probably I don't think anything's broken, at least. Wow.

And obviously, he's got a few weeks to recover from it now. So lucky boy. Once again, a nasty accident that's turned out OK for those involved. But as you say, Jim, I just want to echo nice to see the camaraderie Salac, you know, dashing over there to check on his sort of fallen comrade, because a lot of riders we've seen haven't done that in the past. They've been more likely to remonstrate with whoever caused the accident.

Yeah. So that was good. Good. A Philip Salac, who's an all around good guy from everything that you sort of hear and read about him. And he demonstrated it again on Sunday.

So, yeah, that was nice to see. Now, don't take any of this as a bit of criticism against David Alonso. But if you qualify better. You're not going to be in that situation. Yeah, I mean, but I think all right.

He just had a had a bike problem. It happens, doesn't it? I recall actually that I'm sure it's exactly that same set of turns. Moto3 race where I'm tempted to say Munoz and Holgado were involved. There was another one where the bike stopped and the rider behind just the closing speeds are so fast, there's just no time to react.

And they sort of went slamming into each other. I think it was that set of turns two or three seasons ago. Yeah, something. Yeah, it's just nasty when that happens because there's nowhere to go. And as you say, you just can't avoid hitting things at those speeds.

So that takes us to the fact that, hey, we're going to restart the race because we haven't got two thirds distance. So now it's going to become an 11 lap race. What was a 19 lap race? I believe it's 19 becomes an 11 lap race. OK, cool.

But what we're going to grid based on the prior lap. So we throw the lights again. It's Holgado, Guevara, Otolla, Gonzalez. Then it's Vietti, Lopez. We get to turn three and here we go.

We have Garcia and Lunetta are down at turn three. Now, they hadn't even got around to basically start finish and they had already thrown a red flag again for this one. Now, granted, this one probably. In the scope of things, didn't look nearly as serious as what Alonso's crash was, because both riders were kind of up and then kind of both then sort of sat back down near the edge of the racetrack. Now, adrenaline is an amazing drug.

I think I could have a leg half ripped off and turned backwards when I was racing, and I could have got up and walked a mile on it because your adrenaline is just so running. And after a second or two, you sort of realize you don't have any air. You don't you do hurt and you kind of just like, well, am I safe enough to pass out at this particular point on the racetrack? I get it. Again, if we complain about the inconsistencies of how penalties are applied, which we'll get to, then it's like, be prepared.

It's then it's like, OK, should we have a little more consistency in what we're going to do with the medical teams out there? Because first and foremost, to me, you have most of the medical teams and whatnot that are there are volunteer. And there and in that instance, I don't want to see one of those people attending to a to an injured rider become injured themselves because we either haven't covered it properly with a yellow flag or if it's a more severe injury. We haven't stopped the race to allow them the time to assess that person to be sure that they can be. Safely, I want to say immobilized, I don't know if that's the right word.

Extricated. Thank you. There they can be extricated. Extricated. The English language is not my first language.

I speak American. So they can extricate them to where they can be in a safe place and continue the evaluation, put them in an ambulance, get them to the track center, all that kind of stuff. Anything for that crash that you'd like to say, Rich? Well, again, I'm going to sort of try and surmise the reason why the two incidents, incidents rather, were treated slightly differently. I suspect it's because with the second crash, you had both Garcia and Lunetta down in the gravel.

So there were two riders sort of momentarily immobilized. And bear in mind the speed at which the field will be coming down that front straight or first straight, let's call it. And the propensity for people to lose the front end on bikes, I think probably the chances of a mishap were much higher than the Alonzo crash. I mean, you know, the medical teams are in immediate direct contact with the people that are running the event. So or the race direction, I should say.

So I can only assume that they just needed a bit more time to figure out what was going on with both Garcia, because it was again, it was a nasty little crash. And, you know, if somebody's got a busted ankle or busted arm or whatever, you can't you just can't scoop them up, you know, dump them on a stretch like you've seen in the past and move them quickly. So I'm reading between the lines. I'm assuming that that's perhaps the reason for the difference. But that doesn't change my view that I thought it was a very late red flag call on the Alonzo incident.

I mean, they took that one right up to the sort of permissible limit, didn't they? But it was fine. So I guess that's what it was all about. Now we're going to restart again. But now it's a seven lap dash for the cash.

I mean, this is shorter than a MotoGP sprint. So it's like, OK, let's line it all up and get going again. Well, Gorgardo makes a great start again, followed by Guevara and then Artorla. I mean, I think there's a theme here. Gorgardo can get off the line.

But Roberts goes down to turn three. And then, you know, we've got we've got Guevara in front of Gorgardo, then followed by Gonzalez and Artorla and Vier. And then we know we there and we got another rider down at nine. And then, you know, we get to the point where we got about two laps left, where it's Guevara, Gonzalez, Holgardo or Artorla, Vier and Lopez. And you've got like four laps to go.

And you're thinking Gonzalez has got a shot at this one because he's looking pretty good. And he was actually at some pretty good time from qualifying. Just like I said, that yellow flag sort of put him out of place on the grid. It was like, all right, what's going to happen here with two laps to go? Gonzalez has is by and he gets it in the twisty bit that's there on the backside of the track and he gets past Guevara.

He then hangs on to win the race as Guevara as Gonzalez is first. Guevara is second. Then Holgardo gets a fighting third. Then Artorla, Vier, Vietti, Lopez, Munoz, Ancho, Sasaki, Canet, Escrige, Arbolino, Baltis and Fernandez earns the last. Alberto Fernandez gets the final point in Moto2.

I think a race that would have been a lot crazier and a really good race, not having two red flags. And you got this short little burst here. But I think it says something about Gonzalez's character, that he was able to win the first race out after the disappointment of the championship, the disappointment of not having the Moto GP ride, only getting the test. All the bike problems and everything he had with his, you know, his dyno ball intact team, the bad luck that he had there, he sort of shook it off and said, OK, I'm still the fast guy here. But wow, think about it.

Guevara, Holgardo, Artorla, Vier, those next four guys are all Moto3 guys who are coming good and coming good quickly on this on this this season. You know, they spent a year dialing themselves in learning again, another off season to train harder, to build the muscle, gain the weight, get the strength that they need to hustle the bigger bike. That's the thing you don't think that most people understand. The size of the wheel makes such a big difference in the bike and its movement from left to right. The gyroscopic effect on a larger diameter wheel is insane compared to like the smaller wheels of what's on a Moto3 bike.

And that gyroscopic effect is really crazy. If you want to know how bad it is, take your kid's bicycle, stand it upright in the garage, have somebody spin the front tire and have it spin it in the direction that you're that you would ride the bike, then try to take it and turn the handlebars. It's super hard. It's very difficult to do. Yeah.

But what's really weird is do that experiment again, but tell your friend who's spinning the wheel to spin it backwards to the direction of travel and look at how much easier it is to do, which is why MotoGP engines turn counter counter to the direction of travel, which is weird. That's your science. That's the racey engineering. Nice physics lesson there, Jim. Oh, yeah.

It's one of those things that I just don't think people grab hold of how how hard it is. That transition is so great for these kids to make because they've been on that Moto3 bike for two, three, four years in some form or another. And now it's like, hey, you spent however many years in Moto3 before you get your chance to get a Moto2 ride. And you're trying to go to those big wheels and take that bike, which is heavier again, because it's a bigger motor and everything else. And it's like, that's just something that's just difficult to overcome.

So anything else there, Rich, for this one? Yeah, well, Gonzalez looked like a man who wanted to make a statement after last year, didn't they? Because it was a rather un-Gonzalez-ish, if that's even a thing. So performance in a way, because he was quite forceful, wouldn't they, in a way that I don't recall him being like that last year. So that was, you know, that was good to see.

Super impressed with Ethan Gravara. You know, he's carried on because he looked like a guy that was severely at risk of being booted out of Moto2, you know, midway through last season, better than mine. I think this is now his fourth season, perhaps in the category. Certainly his third, but I think it's his fourth. And, yeah, he's carried that form over.

So that's pleasing to see. So he's clearly going to be up there and Holgado, you know, just doing a great job once again. And as you say, Jim, with, you know, a bunch of the other well, rookies from last year really showing that they have made the boasts of that first year, bulked up a bit more. Because as you say, the interesting point about what you were just saying with the Moto3 riders, of course, they riders have been in Moto3 for a few seasons, they're at the point normally where they're having to keep the weight off in order to be competitive. Then you go to the Moto2 bike, which has a huge amount more physical requirement.

And it takes time to build up that kind of muscle and the muscle memory and just the general conditioning. So, yeah, it's good to see that via an Autoda look really good over the weekend. So obviously Alonso didn't sort of help himself out with a poor qualifying and not a great start. And my boy, Senor Ages, just unfortunate to have a bike problem really. Because otherwise I think he would have been up there given that he was on the pole.

So overall a pretty good race. And just to really cause you trouble, I noticed that this new kid that's come in, Alberto, it's Ferrandes, not Fernandez. Oh, you're right. It is. Yeah.

So imagine what will happen next season if he's still in Moto2 and then Adrian Fernandez comes up. Don't know. Adrian Fernandez and Alberto Fernandez. That's going to be tough. Oh, no.

Yeah. I never did catch the other R in there. You're right. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I spotted it at the weekend and thought, Oh no, Jim's going to struggle with that. What? What don't I struggle with sometimes, Rich? Anyway, so it makes the show fun. Good to see him getting a point first time out as well.

So yeah, not heard of him before, to be honest with you. Yeah. I need to figure out where he's come from. Yeah. So again, the first race, so the championship points are in the same order of which they completed the race.

Oh, let's get the Moto GP. Yeah. This was one or two things to talk about. Well, just a few. Nah, not much.

Just a few. You know, just a few, just a few. So we get into qualifying one. In that first one is Marini, it's Vignola's, Morbidele Fernandez. Benyaya is back in his usual position of the first qualifying session.

Benyaya's back. Benyaya's back. Then Quattroraro, Bastianini, I wouldn't think Bastianini would be there. Then, you know, Diego Morrero is there. Yes.

He's the rookie. I fully believe him to be there, but then it was Miller and Rins with the Yamahas, Toprak and Piero were all in that first session. By halfway through that, Fernandez had a 128.7. He was flying on the Aprilia. Like the form he had from the end of the season that Australia, Valencia races, he's carried that form over here and he was just on it big time.

By this point, Benyaya was almost a half a second slower than Fernandez, which that's a 26 Ducati. Again, 26 Aprilia, I understand. But wow, that was just shocking to me that it was there. Now, and then Benyaya goes wide on a really good lap that he had going. He just couldn't make the bike turn.

Yeah. Or he couldn't make a turn or he didn't feel confident in the front to stop it and flick it in. He couldn't stop the bike either. Yeah. I mean, it was just back to the old horror story from last year, really.

Then he had like another bad lap and he was wide at like turn eight. It's just like, wow, it's like wash, rinse, repeat here. And we're in a completely different season with a completely different motorcycle. Wow. I mean, no wonder he wants to get to Aprilia and the sooner the better, right?

I'm going to, with all of these races, I'm going to treat Thailand as an outlier race because it's the first race. It's extremely hot there. As we know in MotoGP, they have to run a special heat treated rear, all of which things upset the Apple car a little bit. But unfortunately, from Benyaya's point of view, my concern with him really is that it just starts his mind off in the wrong place as the season gets going, because this is going to be horribly reminiscent of what two thirds of last year. And bearing in mind, he had a, you know, not a brilliant start last year, but it was podium, podiuming in the bike.

Most of the time, albeit he was typically behind Mark and Alex, but he was still getting third places. And this was a horror story right from the get go, wouldn't it? So although he had a quite positive Friday, I think, but just the wheels came off on Saturday and it didn't get much better from there. So yeah, not good. But Fernandez and Morbidelli got out of that first session.

We go to the second qualifying session, Bez right out of the gate, throws down a 128.9, only two tenths off of what Fernandez had done. And Fernandez sort of wound up that lap. He had a lap and then the one right after he kind of really smashed it. But for Bez, just to throw it down like that was absolutely crazy. Then Martin and then Alex Marquez and Mark Marquez was actually down in tenths.

So it was it was crazy there here at the beginning. Halfway through, Bez was leading Urbay, followed by Martin, followed by Fernandez, followed by Acosta. And, you know, so we got three, you know, first three spots were all Aprilia's, then a KTM, then Digia becomes the first person there with a Ducati, then Alex Marquez and then Mark and then Mir was there with the Honda. Marquez was out on a hot one. He moved his way to second.

He was only 300 slow of Bez, which shows that Mark can make it go fast when he needs it to. And I think this leads into the part where he had not the best testing. He had a stomach bug. And in that heat and getting on that bike and trying to do laps was probably very difficult. It had to be draining, taxing physically, had to be exhausting.

I don't think your mind is exactly right when you're sick trying to do that. And I think also it shows just how good the Aprilia is, because even when Mark decided to go fast, he only got within, you know, three hundredths of a second. But also with Mark, I don't think he's fully healed with that shoulder injury, because I saw, who is it, Neil Hodgson was on. And I saw it on Instagram. He was talking about the right hand turn and how good there was a left hand turn and how good Mark always is in a left hand turn.

And they overlaid Bezeki in the same turn and the distance Bezeki got pulled out of there was so good. Was insane, which told you that the Aprilia was definitely a better turning motorcycle, can get the bike turned, get the power down and was accelerating away from Mark. And what got to me was Hodgson basically said, the Aprilia is the best bike on the grid. And I wholeheartedly agree that Aprilia have got the sums right. They've done the maths and they've got the sum right.

That bike is fast, very fast. It looks to be, doesn't it? Again, I think we've got to be careful about drawing too many conclusions from one race, particularly with the rear tire that they were all having to run. With Mark, he didn't look comfortable all weekend. I saw a bit of the Friday action and he was sort of looking more like Bagnari, really, in terms of just not being able to get the bike to stop and turn.

Like you, Jim, I think probably it's going to take him a race or two to get back to full fitness. And this is assuming that the shoulder is properly healed or as close to being healed as it's going to get. He had the carry over of the stomach bug, which is, you know, anybody that's had a stomach bug in that part of the world when you can't escape the heat and the humidity, you're just drained and you can't really regain your strength very quickly. So I'm sure that was part of it, but that lap that he put in to go second, you could just tell he was really biting the screen to pull that lap out. And it was kind of like a crash or make it happen kind of lap, really.

And you just thought he's not going to be able to do that for nine laps or 10 laps or 11 laps, you know, in the racing. So it was classic Mark Marquez, wasn't it? But he just didn't look comfortable. Did you notice anything about Mark's bike during those laps? Well, go on.

I mean, I just thought he couldn't get the bike to turn. What I noticed, particularly coming out of corners, was the pumping action that was happening in the rear end. Now, was the tire slipping, gripping, slipping, gripping, or was that just this bike just pumping like the back end was moving up and down. And in this age of ride height devices, it should have just squat it and been off to the races. It was just up and down, up and down.

Now, I didn't notice it when they came back for the sprint race. They I think they made a change. Now, was it the tires because of this super hard tire? Was it slipping and jumping on them? Maybe.

I don't know. But that is something that I really want to watch when we get to another track is does that 26 Ducati have a problem where the back end wants to pump with the way that Marquez wants to ride it? I'm not sure if it does or it doesn't, but it's something to put in the back of your minds and take a look at. I think the jury is out on whether the Ducati is the best bike now. I mean, oh, yeah, it has strengths without a doubt.

But right now, it looks like the main strength Ducati has is Mark Marquez. Yes. Which arguably was the case through most of last year as well. In terms of the the sort of the current years model, because he was the only guy that could make the 25 work. And arguably, the 24 bike was a better bike.

And we'll be talking about the strange case of Alex Marquez in a moment, who might be feeling a bit like Bagnard did most of last year, wishing he was on his old bike. Probably would be either way, through qualifying. Bez went down at turn 12, just a low side, just easy to be in there deep, tuck the front. But it didn't nobody was able to beat his time. So Bez gets the pole, followed by Marquez as in Mark, then Fernandez.

So two Aprilias on the front row. Didge Antonio was fourth, Martín was fifth. So there's a third. And he just nipped Acosta at the end to get that fifth. Acosta is sixth.

There's your first two rows. Then it's Alex Marquez, Ayagura on another Aprelia. And then Morbidelli in ninth. And then, you know, shout out to Mir in tenth and then Binder and then Zarco. So two Hondas in the top 12.

And they're, you know, Honda's still looking good. Like, well, good. Like they didn't lose anything from last year, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And again, a Honda. That problem remains not rear grip so much as getting the power down.

And so they do not like that heat treated hard tire. You know, it makes a problem. They've got worse in particular with the Honda. So, yeah, given that, I thought that the Hondas did pretty well, really. Yep.

So we go to the sprint on Saturday afternoon in the heat of the day. So Marquez gets a great start. He's ahead of Bez, followed by Fernandez. Then, you know, we're got Didge in there it's all hustle and bustle. But, you know, as they get out of the first couple of turns, it's still Mark.

He's still over Bez. Fernandez is right there. Acosta's made his way to fourth because he had sort of a terrible start. They took advantage of the first, you know, hairpin at turn three to make up time. Martine was there and then Mir.

So it's like, wow, this is kind of really interesting. Then Bez gets by Mark to start the second lap. I think he did it actually, technically going into 12. And it's like, all right, here we go. And then it's like, you know, what's going to happen here?

Because Acosta sort of was like on top of the scene and right there now, too. He had gotten through on Fernandez in the same turn. We head off to like turn one and Bez just throws it away. Like. What?

The best, the guy who can win races for Aprilia, you know, the best chance because I, Martine's not healthy. He's healthier than he has been all of last season. But I think you're looking at Bez as being the guy at Aprilia. And what a brain fade. OK, it's hot as all get out there.

The tires are heat treated. It's definitely different than what it is at any other circuit. You everybody gets a mulligan. Just wow, I don't think you needed to take the mulligan at this point in time. But if anything, he did it in a sprint, which, OK, that's fair.

Don't do it in a race that's worth 25. Do it in a sprint where it's only 12. So minimize the damage that you're going to do to yourself. After this, it becomes a Marc Marquez Acosta race, and it's a good one. Oh, yeah.

Anytime Acosta gets near Marc or goes by Marc, Marc just simply goes back up, passing, going into 12. It's like you can watch these guys. It's as if there's one point where Acosta goes deep into 12 and he gets by Marc and he's on the outside. And you can just watch him just look over at Marc. And all he's doing is looking to see where the finish line is.

And he's putting it in his mind. Oh, I can't do that because he beats me back to the finish line. It was phenomenal over these. I think what was it? What do we run?

12, 12 or 13 laps, the 12 laps, 11 laps, something. Doesn't matter. Yeah, I think over this. I think it might be 12 over the course of the laps. It was fun to watch these two.

And I'm thinking, this is what we've all been thinking about. Here is the king on his throne. And here is the here's the here's the man who would be king, actually giving it to him. And I'm like, this is great. And it was great theater to watch these two go back and forth with each other.

Back and forth. Now, as it gets to the end, we get down with like three to go. Acosta puts on a great move to get past Mark. I mean, it was amazing because Mark was wide at three. And then Acosta snuck by, but then Mark went back by.

And then they're back in that area of like five to six, seven. And Acosta comes around the outside in an attack that nobody saw coming. Even the announcers are kind of all this, which I caught something that they didn't when I saw it. Now, I have the hindsight of being able to back things up and watch it again. But Mark with the tire up at a time when he didn't need to light that tire up.

And he did. And that little bit of drive lost allowed Acosta to get in there. Now, that sets them up going into 12 when Mark just is now a fair bit back because Mark, because he let the tire pass, it let off. It's a momentum thing. It's a flip flop back forth where you want to be able to ride through at a certain amount of throttle, which you're trying to play catch up.

So you you've screwed up your apex at one corner, which now translates to the next corner. So it's time a huge time loss. So here it is, Acosta sort of out front thinking, wow, Acosta is going to win this thing. But Mark being Mark decides that, nope, not going to let the kid win because if this guy is going to be my teammate next year, I'm going to put my stamp of authority on him and go, hey, pal, this is my team and you are not going to ransack this. And so which Mark then comes from way back, which is what Mark does.

His attacks are from way back. He doesn't let you know that he's there. He goes way back. They go into the turn together. Acosta picks the bike up slightly, puts it back down, turns it again, but he's off wide while Mark accelerates away.

Acosta sorts himself back in and they go through it. They're on to the last lap. As we go through that last lap, it's sort of settled. It's Mark Kez's race. Acosta will be second.

Fernandez will be third, which is going to be a great result for him in track house. Well, we get around to the straight leading to 12 and there's or what we had turned three was incident under investigation. I'm like, are you kidding me? We're going to investigate what is hard riding. Apparently we do.

And then that left it open to where Mark receives a penalty of drop one place, which he didn't see on his dash until he got out of 11 heading to 12. He lets off the gas, lets Acosta by almost let's Fernandez by because Fernandez is sort of caught up to the whole situation. You know, Acosta goes by, looks over at Mark like, what are you doing? What happened to your bike? Kind of a thing.

And he cruises to the sprint win. Mark is second. Fernandez is Fernandez is third. OK, we get there. And it's obvious that, you know, Mark was given a penalty for aggressive riding.

He had crossed over Simon. He endured the wrath of Simon Krafar. And Mark shows up to the podium interview. And I love this. What do you think of the penalty, Mark?

Oh, you know, all I know is I obeyed the rules and we dropped one place. And that's that. And it was that diplomatic answer. He goes back to Tardazzi and I see hand motions of him showing him against Acosta versus this that it's like, I've seen that language. I've spoken that language.

I know that this man is upset by this. Acosta interview goes on. He goes, what do you think about the marks penalty? Oh, is that what he got? I didn't know what the heck was wrong with it.

Heck, if I was me, I would have done the same thing kind of a thing, which is just more fueled with the fire of all of this. So here's my take on the penalty that they gave Mark. One, I don't think the penalty was warranted. I think that was a legitimate pass. I will tell you, I say it's a legitimate pass because essentially Mark did not take Acosta out.

He took him wide, which is fine. But Acosta made a choice to leave the track, in my opinion. Also, Mark was clearly able to make the corner. It wasn't like he completely dive bombed it and didn't get there. If you go in deep and you park it in the corner and you're ahead on the racing line, it's your line.

So that's where I see it, Rich. I know we differ on this. I want your side of it. Yeah, well, I keep sort of flip flopping in terms of it's such a 50 50 call, this one. I mean, there's the argument that Acosta repeatedly overtook Marquez in that turn.

But, you know, as a result, he kind of kept sending himself a bit wide and Mark was able to get him on the cutback. He did demonstrate that you can pull the move without kind of forcing contact. Whereas the move that Mark pulled, I mean, it's just Mark Marquez. He just he will not give up the win. So he shouldn't.

He's a he's a motorcycle racer. And I love it. I think I messaged you. And I just love the fact that he just never, never relents in his desire to win a race. So that's great.

I mean, he came from absolutely miles back. And I think it's a bit debatable whether he sort of truly made the apex, because I think, you know, contact was made with Acosta, who initially tried to avoid it, but then wanted to get through the turn himself. And that's when the contact happened. And I believe that's really why Simon Crave made the call that he did, whether Acosta made a bit of a meal of it in terms of going as wide as he did. I don't know.

I mean, two heavy bikes like that making a bit of contact is going to have those sorts of consequences. So I think I tried to clarify my position with you because you sort of came on immediately saying that's a, you know, big decision. And I was like, well, no, I think that's, you know, that's a fair call. I think where I was coming from and I clarified it later was that in the modern context of the sorts of penalties that get given these days, I didn't feel that they could not penalize that in the old days. That would have just been, you know, a move.

Somebody came off the worst and on they go. And to the eternal credit, both Marquez and particularly Acosta, I think felt that that is how it should have been handled. I mean, Acosta said, and I wrote it down. It doesn't feel like I'm the real winner or worse to that effect. And I thought fair play to him.

He just won his first sprint. OK, it's not a GP, but he's won his first sprint race. And he's kind of got it in a slightly controversial sense. And, yeah, he doesn't feel like it's a win. I mean, that tells you everything you need to know about Acosta as well.

He wants to win and he wants to win in a straight fight. Fair's fair. So. It's a tricky one. What I will say is they made the decision extremely quickly, and to that, they should be applauded because we didn't have this stupidity of them having to change the result, you know, when everybody's gone home from the racetrack sort of thing, which is just a ludicrous thing.

So I think Simon Crafer and his team should be applauded for having made the decision as quickly as they did. And Mark had the message, I think, halfway around the lap. He just didn't see it, as you said. So in the end, it was a bit of a kind of obvious thing, because had he seen it earlier, he may well have done the overtake again and got the position back. So that was a little bit on Marcus' base, but you can hardly criticise somebody for not seeing a message on their dashboard when they're racing at that sort of speed and in those sorts of temperatures right at the end of the race.

So, yeah. So I still kind of think the penalty was justified in the modern context. I just wish we didn't have 80% of the penalties that we do get full stop. I think if you do something that is quite obviously dangerous and you go out of control and then you take somebody out. Yeah, that's a penalty.

That clearly was not what Mark did. He took a bit of an audacious move from miles back and it kind of just about worked. And under the circumstances, it was a tough call that he had to take. And he clearly wasn't very happy. Ducati being Ducati did what they always do.

And, you know, he started giving all that's not fair and moaning and groaning. Had the boot been on the other foot, of course, their response would have been somewhat different. So, you know, hey, hope all is fair in love and war. OK, so did you expect Tardazzi to not whine about it? That is his.

He did that as a racer. He whined. That's his job. He's a racer. He even did that.

OK. Yeah. For me, I did. I thought I want to see good, hard racing. I think that's what it was.

If I'm sitting in that box, I don't make that call. And I don't make that call because one, Mark did make the corner. Arguably, maybe he didn't make the apex that everybody else makes. But he made the corner to Acosta never fell off, which is not necessarily a I mean, if Mark had hit him hard enough to knock Acosta down at that point, then he was definitely not by him. Therefore, you get the penalty for sure.

Right. If Mark had run off the track with Acosta penalty for sure. You went too far. But that's the now let me put my tinfoil hat on for a second here. And we go back to the point that it's Moto GP sport and entertainment.

Here it comes. Yeah. You said you were going to do this. Yeah. OK.

So is there more entertainment factor in Moto GP if, hey, Liberty knocks on, hey, Simon, give Mark a penalty so he can't win. So that way, everyone's going to argue about this on Instagram or X or whatever for three weeks, debating which way it's going to be. Because if you if you're Liberty and you look back to the Marquez Rossi incident in Malaysia, it's a pain that went on for weeks of people arguing about which way that one was. Still is going on. So OK, I was trying to get off, but yes, it still goes on and on.

Eleven years later, 11 years later, they're still arguing about it. So if you're if you're Liberty, you know, wouldn't you want you want people talking about it? We're talking about it because that's what they want. Now, is that really what happened? I don't think so.

But I mean, you you you have something that's called sport and entertainment, and suddenly you have this. You kind of got to go, oh, is anybody is anybody in there taking that a little too literally? Because as you said, Rich, in our long Liberty rant, it's about the story. So what's a better headline than these two guys going after each other? Oh, there's bad blood now between them.

There's this, there's that blah blah blah. Oh, whatever. Anyway, that's the sprint race, guys. So yeah, that's where that but I mean, we should point out it was a bloody great race as well. I was pumped at the end of that race.

My heart was beating 10 to the dozen because it was just they were and I was just astonishing how close the cost was running to the rear of Marquez as well. I mean, it's like Nori Hager levels of closeness all the time, amazingly skilled and very trustful of each other. So overall, it was a fabulous race. And just a quick point before we move on on bears. I think the silver lining in that is if he was going to get a silly crash like that out of the way, best to do it in the first race and then really feel the pain of it.

And I think perhaps it might just calm him down a little bit because he's clearly got a bit of an advantage at the moment. Now, whether again, if that carries forward into future rounds, we'll have to wait and see. But the prudler does look like the best bike. Just on a technical point, Jim, have you seen this thing about the F duct? Yes, I find it.

I find it fascinating. What thoughts on that, then? It's a very clever way that they're doing it. I don't quite know how it works in terms of aerodynamic advantage. It gets so I'll see if I can help you.

Yeah. So this so let's go backwards a bit back. I don't remember when this was in Formula One, but Formula One came up, McLaren very cleverly figured out a way to stall the rear wing of a Formula One car. And it was done by bringing air in through near the cockpit, where a driver could then place his hand or arm over an opening in the cockpit, sealing it, which would allow the air to continue to flow. And then it was dropped out onto the rear wing, causing it to stall, which means there's a there's a boundary layer disruption, which is what happens like in an airplane.

You get too much attack angle and stalls and goes down. Well, that's what happens. There's no aerodynamic drag. The downforce of the wing had been reduced. OK, so the car goes faster in a straight line.

So what Aprilia has done, Aprilia, if you look back, they have they very much have been working with the sides of the motorcycle. They have a very shaped design. And they're there for the reason of high speed corners to gain stability. Remember, I think it might have been a Lace has been out two years from Aprilia. So I think it's two years back at Aston.

You have the very fast corners that are there. And he said, yeah, this new air package makes it very stable for us in the corners. What Aprilia figured out was that that air between that fairing and the ground is important. So if you build the shape like a wing on an airplane, that air speeds up. You create a low pressure in there and you create that partial vacuum.

That's correct. But basically the other side of the bike and the air on the other side of the bike then pushes that bike towards towards down. Better stability. Whoa, you're getting an aerodynamic advantage. OK, cool.

So they kind of added to that. The next year, which would be this last year. And the thing of it is notice how the top speed of the Aprilia was not that great. It was it was good. But generally, Ducati was in the first.

Honda was there a couple of times. And KTM was generally in there, too. Then it was a pretty. So it was sort of, say, the fourth fastest bike that's going on. Well, the reason is, is that if you have that wing, that wing shape on the side of your bike, as you go along, even down the street, you're producing a low pressure.

Well, what you're doing is you're increasing the drag on the motorcycle. So very cleverly, Aprilia took this idea and said, oh, if we create an exit where the riders generally hold their forearms against the fairing, if we have air coming out of there and we use their arms to seal that area and force the air out in where the bubble in behind that bubble, that puts air back in and stalls the aerodynamic effect, but it stalls it on straightaway. It doesn't stall that aerodynamic effect because in the corner, the riders arms aren't covering that that hole. So air travels out of there. Now the aerodynamic effect of that bubble and sucking it to the road in a corner still exists.

But in the straightaway, you've now stalled that area out because you're keeping the air inside and forcing it out in a different direction. So you correct that boundary layer, essentially. And that's how they're going fast, because now the Aprilia is like a missile in a straight line. It is almost as fast as the Ducati. So that's what they're doing, which is quite cool.

They've got some very clever people there. They do. They do have some very clever people. But, you know, again, you are you are at the zenith of what motorcycle road racing is going to be. These these 26 bikes are going to be looked at as fondly as we go back and look at like a Williams FW15B, you know, they all dancing, all singing, all everything cars.

These bikes are sort of that way. But that's your explanation. Hopefully that works for you. Yeah, no, that was good. That was a well explained.

Thank you. Yeah. So one other thing about the Sprinter, we'll say Acosta wins it Marquez's second, then it's Aprilia Fernandez, Aprilia Iagura, Aprilia Martín. And Bender is there in sixth with Acosta. Wow.

The KTMs look like they have traction. The Aprilias are obviously rocket ships and their their bikes are really good. So it's like, wow, this is fantastic. Let's see what happens when we get to the race. It kind of gets me to wondering, Jim, is Acosta about to jump off that bike at precisely the wrong time?

I mean, obviously, we can't know what the 850s are going to come out and be like in terms of the respective manufacturers. But he's been there on a KTM for two years and struggling with kind of late race tire life and pace and so on. And they seem to have turned that corner again. It's one race. So we need to be a bit careful.

But since you brought it up, this is where my thinking takes me. Ducati is not going to fundamentally change essentially the design of their motorcycle. They're still going to have this L4 configuration, which means that the front end of their motorcycle is much farther out. And it's much harder to bring the forks in closer to the engine to create a better handling motorcycle. So Gigi has come up with all this, like the mass dampener to get it to kind of pivot and flex in the middle of the corner and turn.

And then Gigi says, well, wait a second, we really can't make that work to our advantage of getting us to turn better. What if we figure out a way to get out of the turns and use our horsepower to get us to the next corner, the ride height devices? Well, that stuff's banned. And we're going back to wings that are sort of 2015, 2016 ESC wings, which are there just to sort of keep the front end down and allow you to accelerate a little bit better. So the natural tendency of a Ducati is to have a bigger sweeping line.

You can't pivot it, square it off as easy. So if that's the case and you go back to that, you think, well, the Ducati will do that with an 850, Acosta could be potentially going to a bike that isn't going to want to turn. Now, both Acosta and Marquez may be able to make it turn because both of them might just pin it on the front and just light the back end up and spin it around, spin it out. And I'm going to look like an idiot for saying it. But these two guys are alien and alien left, if you want to think of it that way.

So maybe they're going to be able to ride around it. I don't put down that Acosta could ride around darn near anything. I think we saw that sort of last year on it. But I am hopeful that KTM has turned a corner because I think we know Yamaha is in trouble again this year, I think. They're down on horsepower.

And how much are they really going to work on that V4 if it isn't going to help them with the 850 V4? I don't know. That's a question I can't answer. Yeah, we're going to have to keep returning to this. Yeah, we'll keep returning to it.

But in that sense, maybe he is moving at the wrong time. But then again, his talent is so immense that maybe he just can turn it like Mark's going to turn it. In fact, they may be better because they're both going to want to ride the same way with the back end out. Yeah. So anyway, we got to get through this.

Yeah, sorry. Well, I mean, the Sunday race isn't too much. No, there's not much here in this one. So, all right, we get to the Sunday race. And basically, Bez, let's just call it what it is.

Bez gets a whole shot in Rich and he rides off into the sunset. There was nobody going to touch Bez at all in this race by any stretch of the amazing. He was literally pulling away by like the second lap. And he was just putting down lap times like nobody else was going to be able to touch. You know, Acosta had moved his way up.

He started poorly again. So if there's a weakness, what used to be a strength of the KTM was the starts is now a weakness because Acosta can't seem to get it off the line. Yeah, they completely reversed fortune on that one, and they used to be rockets off the line. And yeah, again, might be that rear tire. It's anything in question there.

But it cost a lot of actually getting, you know, goodbye, Mark. And, you know, I turned 12. So you're thinking, well, these guys are going to battle it out sort of for that last part of the podium position or whatever. But it really wasn't. And you know, Bez was out front, Fernandez was second.

Then it was then it was Marquez. Then it was Acosta and they were going to actually is Martin. Sorry. And then it was Acosta, Marquez and then Didja. And as this wears on, basically, the Apres has sort of come to the fore here.

But as it gets to the late part of the race, Acosta tends to start really digging deep, excuse me, and starts to get to the front where he's making it happen. But we do get more like on lap 21 of it. We get the big moment where, you know, Acosta is there. And he started him and him and Marquez are starting to run down Fernandez. Right.

They're looking for that last spot on the podium. And it's a pretty good battle. I think Mark kind of realized, like, maybe I need to follow Acosta. Let's let him sort of drag us to the front of this. And, you know, really.

That was what was happening. But Mark screws up the turn. I don't remember which one it is, but he bounces over the curb. And then suddenly we realize that, like, whoa, he's in trouble. The bike's all wiggly and squirmy.

And as we get a close up view of Mark's bike, the rear tires flat. It's completely off the rim. And once he stopped, you realize the rim has actually got it's bent physically bent deep, one really deep bend. And like several other small bends that are in there that were, you know, you can see the rim is pulled away from where the bead would seal on the tire. And it's a wonder that Mark just didn't even just completely 100 toss that get tossed and to a point where when it's an unexpected sort of crash like that, he would have, you know, who knows what he could have broken or what damage he could have done to himself.

He was fortunate to keep it upright. Now, when I saw that, my first thought was, wow, the rim is bent. How did they get bent? And I thought, well, maybe the right height device had broken and had banged into the rim and caused the tire to go flat. And maybe that was why Mark, you know, had gone off initially.

But then I looked at it again and I'm I'm pretty sure there's a dark little gray spot in the white and blue of the curbing of that corner. And I'm wondering if that is a drain. And I wonder if Mark hit the drain and that caused it to bend. But it sounded like he was trying to get back on because, you know, Mark talked about this after the race. And I saw this one Instagram is like, oh, I wonder the curves.

It's OK, but you got to be really careful coming back onto the curves. That's where you wind up having trouble. And I think he was trying to ride the edge of the curb. And maybe it just has a nasty edge to that side of it. And it caught the bite.

I don't know exactly what happened, but I think they're blaming the curb more than anything else. Well, yeah. And on that turn, it's what they call the Mizano curb. So it's this very aggressive, sharp, edged kind of curb, which is precisely designed to stop people being out on it in the first place. And it could be that there was a drain cover involved.

That's a good spot. I hadn't seen that. From what I've heard, he just said, no, I went up onto the curb and it just, you know, just damaged the wheel. But it was like you say, I mean, the rim was completely stuffed. And he was very lucky not to have an enormous high side as a result of that, because obviously it wasn't evident to him immediately that the tire was down.

And he looked as if he tried to gas it and very nearly it flicked him off. So, yeah, he was lucky not to have another nasty crash there. Yeah, very much so. So Mark was out again, if you're going to have bad luck, have it in the first race, right, Rich? It was definitely definitely down and out.

But Costa is now all over Fernandez on this one. And with four to go, Acosta then finally gets by Fernandez at three. And we had Mir was had a tire issue as well. And then we started looking at everybody's tire, like even though it's a heat treated tire, the rear, you can see it definitely like a very thick, dark black band that was around Mir's tire, the Zeki had one at the end, Acosta had one at the end. Everybody sort of had a pretty poorly tire there at the end.

Again, it was it was abnormally hot there on a climate that we know is hard on tires to begin with, a surface that's hard on tires. But Beza has Beza has won the race, Acosta is obviously second here. Fernandez hangs on for third, Martins in fourth, followed by Agurus. So it's an Aprilia, a KTM, an Aprilia, Aprilia, Aprilia, and then another Ducati in sixth. What a difference a year, mate.

Because that was all Ducati's, wasn't it? Yeah. And this is what he said. This is the first time since like 21 or something that there hasn't been a Ducati. It's 80 some races where there hasn't been a Ducati on a podium, which is a staggering fact when you think about that.

Then you have Gigi Antonio, who I don't think likes the 26 bike at all. And then Bender on another KTM, Morbidelli, Benyai, he's, you know, in ninth there. Then Marini, Zarco, Bastianini, Marrero, Quattrarro and Rens scoring, you know, points for the Yamahas and all of it. Now, Alex Marquez had a crash. He went down.

I think he can't figure out that 26 bike. And I think he's like he said, wishes he had the other bike. But, you know, I mean, that's really it. That's the race. So, yeah.

I mean, there's only a couple of things I just wanted to add to that. Very, very briefly. Marrero finished 13th. Great result for the rookie. And what ran out of gas, I think I did it at the very end.

Yeah, because Miller and Toprak were pushing him. Yeah. OK. And although he didn't score any points, Toprak, you know, he didn't finish in the sprint. He did crash, but he was running well in the sprint and then finished 17th in the main race, but beat Jack Miller, his teammate.

Yeah, that's good. Right in right in behind Rens and Quattrarro. We all just mentioned that Quattrarro is not a happy person. No, no. No, I mean, if he wanted to, he wanted a V4, he's got one.

And now he doesn't like it. I had a question came into my mind. Would Yamaha not have been better off continuing with the inline four just for this last season and just concentrating on a V4 850? Yes. It's just money pissed away for no reason.

In my opinion. Yeah. Because they're going to struggle all through the year trying to get that bike. Apparently, there are likely to be some new parts come in around Lamar time, which might up the horsepower a bit. But I mean, everything's brand new on that bike pretty much, isn't it?

So it's a little wonder that the tail end of the field. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be a long season for Quattrarro. And it's not I was trying to think, you know, from the idea of a racing motorcycle for Yamaha, I'm not including street bikes in this.

I think that this is the first V4 four stroke race bike they've built, because the only other V4 I can think of Yamaha have, it was a two stroke. Yeah, I think that's right. So, I mean, you cannot underestimate the immense challenge of engineering that they have. It's all kinds of different vibrations that they're not used to. All kinds of weight in packaging that they got to get used to.

All of this plays a huge amount in it, and especially depending on where it's rotated, right? Is it how what's the distance between the V's and where is that weight forward? Is it weight forward? Is it weight back? Is it, you know, if that's the case, well, how does that do to your rear suspension, your rear shock link?

There's heat on that rear shock that you're not expecting to have because you didn't have it with your inline four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this list just goes on and on and on. And to be honest, Yamaha really never. Now I'm going to count street bikes in here.

I can't really think of a bike that Yamaha made that's actually a V4. I mean, I'm sure they did somewhere along the way. They had a V4 somewhere. The only one I can think of is the Yamaha V-Max, and it was a V4, right? But that was way back in the 80s, and it wasn't a very much a what you would think of today as a cruiser-esque kind of motorcycle because it had V-Boost where the carburetors fed both cylinders.

Anyway, whatever, it doesn't matter. But, you know, it's just this. This isn't something that Yamaha does. And somewhat disgracefully, Jim, they didn't allow or prevented which is kind of saying the same thing, I suppose, the riders from attending the media debriefs after the Sunday race, which was not a good move, really, on that part, because it just kind of indicates that the riders are going to say bad things. Yeah, you know, I just think that's a weird decision for them.

And they might as well have been breaking some rules in terms of what they're contractually obliged to do in terms of access for the media. And it was as somebody else has pointed out, it's probably Simon Patterson. It was particularly tough on Toprak, who had a good race on Sunday and finished his first full MotoGP race and didn't get a chance to talk to the media about it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, yeah, Yamaha and, you know, unnecessarily, I think, you know, trying to hide the fact that they're struggling, but of course they're struggling.

It's a brand new bike. Yes. What else are they going to be doing? You know, not only winning the championship, are they? Yeah.

I mean, look, things are obviously horrible. And there is a rift between Yamaha and Quattrora. That is absolutely enormous now because Hori, the rentho comes out and says, look, buddy, you asked for a V4. They're giving you a V4. And yes, it might be slow, but that's what you want it.

And they're doing what you want. So shut up. Yeah. Essentially, I'm paraphrasing what the rentho said. But when you're in, though, is taking that tact against him.

I think, you know, Quattro, I'm sure is a very nice chat socially and whatnot. But he's a bit of a whiner, isn't he? And, you know, things are better, be better at Honda, because, you know, it'll be a nightmarish if this carries on. But, yeah, I mean, I do feel him in a sense because he was able to come drop some magic on the inline four last year, wasn't he? If you remember, he got quite a few pole positions on it and a few decent race results.

But it's going to be a slog this year and it's going to be a tough listen for us if he carries on like this. Yeah. I mean, Yamaha is in a hard place. I mean, I can easily sit there and tell you, no, they should have ran the inline four, right? Well, there obviously weren't any money to develop the inline four anymore.

And maybe the inline four is at the end of its life cycle, unless you do something really crazy with it, where you, you know, change it from a chain running on, say, one side of it or gears to drive your valvetrain to moving that to the center, which is another whole problem and whatever. Right. There's all kinds of things you could do. But I mean, still, they probably couldn't afford to do two things. They probably couldn't afford to do the development of the inline four or keep the inline four going and then run a whole development program again.

And I don't care who you are, what you person you have on the bike that's running around testing laps, just putting mileage on a motor. It's not going to see the stress that a guy is going to put on it when it's racing. I'm sorry. There's some I don't care. That's what's magical about test riders who are actually really good is the fact that they can do race lap times on a bike when most people can't do that.

It's like they're just putting mileage on it. They just they're riding 95 percent, say, right? Where, you know, these guys are going to be riding it at 110, 112 percent to try to bring every last thing out of it. Well, that's when you're going to find out what breaks and what's going to move and all that stuff. So it's a difficult place to be.

Yamaha, it's a difficult place to be. Quattro Raro. Well, I think it's the divorce is imminent. You know, yeah. Just when do you when do you announce it that, hey, I'm leaving and I'm off the Honda?

Well, again, I think that's caught up in some of this bigger politics that's going on between the teams and the governing body. But last question, so I know we need to go. I presume part of Yamaha's calculation is that they can learn some useful stuff with the 1000cc V4, which will filter down in some capacity to the 850. And that's justification alone for running it this year, as opposed to the inline. I'm assuming that the easiest thing for them to do would be to decrease the piston size.

You leave the stroke the same. So theoretically, you're going to have a little bit torqueier motor, a little broader power band. But they're going to learn stuff about bearing life and where the fatigue is in the cases and where, again, suspension, that heat that's going to the rear shock, the linkages and the differences you have to have based on that. Where are you going to put all the mass? Because the mass of the motor is going to be pretty much the same.

It might it's not like it's all it's going to be five kilos lighter because it's an 850 now. But then it might be a gosh, a kilo is like two pounds. And I don't think they could take two pounds out of it if they wanted to. But, you know, if they if they do all that work and they're racing it in that environment, they're going to figure out what stresses it, what doesn't stress it and where it's weak and where it's not. We can like, oh, what kind of throttle control do we have and what do we got to do with our electronics?

How do we now because the engine breaking of the V4 is completely different to the engine breaking of an inline four. Right. So they have to figure all that stuff out in their electronics and what they're allowed to play with and all of that. So, but yeah, their test bed is massive. The data that they're gathering is going to be massive.

And again, I don't know this to be true, but there's every possibility that when you get to 27, Yamaha may have a very good 850 and top rack may look at look really good. Well, he's battling for podiums or they're in the middle of the pack with a hunt with the ability to maybe find a podium here and there. Great. And they might have a Martin on it as well, who I have to say, look pretty good over the weekend, didn't they? For a guy that's still coming back from, you know, a shaky few months.

So, yeah, I shouldn't be looking forward to 2027, really, because I already am. But on the strength of Saturday and Sunday, I think we're in for, you know, potentially a pretty good season this year. If Acosta can carry on those sorts of performances, it's going to be great. Oh, yeah, I think there's more likelihood that Acosta wins his first Moto GP full length race this year than any other time. I think that the KTM has come good.

And I look I would love to see Acosta win a race. I'd love to see I'd love to see Martin win a race just just because of all the injuries, right? Just to feel good, win a race. I love to see Ayagura win a race. That would be if he could win in Japan, that would just be amazing.

There's a lot there. There's a lot that I want to hope to happen. It should be pointed out, Jim, that Acosta look great. All of the other KTM looked pretty horrible. True, because they stopped listening to what everybody KTM stopped group think and started to go to Acosta think.

What does Acosta want to go fast? The trouble is they might find themselves in a Mark Marquez Honda situation. And that's the rub. And they look as if they're going to have Alex Marquez on that bike next year, which is a decision that I find scary and a little hard to comprehend, if I'm honest. Well, if you're Alex and the opportunity to ride a factory bike and have a factory salary appeared, wouldn't you take it?

I get it from his point of view. Yeah, from KTM's point of view, this isn't something really, really bitchy. I don't really mean it like this because, you know, Alex Marquez clearly is a very, very talented rider, but I think I think it shows a lack of ambition on KTM's part. OK. I mean, it depends who else will be on the other bike, I suppose, to some extent, if they don't retain Binder.

But I don't know. I mean, the sensible money at the moment is on a bone in mind. We're talking works KTM, not Tech 3, KTM, Alex Marquez, Maverick Vinales. That is a lack of ambition liner. Well, that's why I that's why I said that Tech 3 is going to wind up having like Holgardo and Vire or Holgardo and Alonso or something like that, because they've got to inject the fresh blood into it.

And why not do it in a more calmer, friendlier environment than throwing you on the factory team? I don't know. I don't think KTM can afford to waste time like that. I think they just got to put young, fast talent on the bike and as they did with Acosta, although he came, he admittedly he did come through Tech 3, but that's because they did airtight contracts to not put him out that kept him off of it. And they had gas gas as Tech 3, right?

So why not put your Spanish star on a Spanish on a Spanish motorcycle air quotes? My point is I get the whole thing about experience and Vinales on his day is unbeatable. It's just that he has one one of those days a season, if we're lucky. And Alex Marquez is a guy who had a great season last year, but has really crashed most of the time in good positions, you know, everyone else and did that exact same thing on Sunday. So I just think they need to be much bolder than that.

But again, I think most of these positions are done and dusted in terms of income paper. So they're not announcing them at the moment for the reasons that we've already said. So we'll find out, I guess, in the next one to two months, I suppose, is likely to be what happens. Agreed. But yeah, we'll see.

Anyway, that's it. Motorcycle racing is back. Moto GP is back. This is what we thought about it this time around. And everyone, the world's a weird place.

Just ride safe out there. Cheers, everyone. Take care.