MotoGP Brazil – Carnival Of Chaos

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 830 for March 23rd, 26.

Cardoval in Brazil. I'm your host Jim McDowell. With me from across the pond, Richard Jowell. Richard, Brazil did not disappoint in any way, shape or form, I think. Would you agree, sir?

I would certainly agree with that, Jim. As I just said, it was beautifully chaotic, but also a huge crowd there. So I think you have to conclude in that respect a massive success. But there were one or two issues across the weekend which we'll talk about. We will.

Now, the biggest issue was, I think the weather was a big thing. It was so hot down there. I was going to probably play into this a little bit. But speaking of like weather, because that's what we do, we talk about the weather here. For me yesterday, it was 83 degrees Fahrenheit.

And today, just 24 hours later, it's 43 degrees. It's 40 degrees colder today than it was yesterday. That's crazy. Yeah. It's not fun.

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Greatly appreciate it. And with that, Rich, let's just get into the news. Let's just get in here. Oh, there is one thing that I don't think I did. And I need to correct this.

It reprains the Gareth lock. I had said that Gareth had sent us information about the track in Australia and Adelaide, the bend. Apparently, it wasn't Gareth who had sent that information. I'm not sure who did. Brenton Edwards.

There it is. Thank you, sir. I looked it up earlier. Because I, in the transition to my new computer, lost that email. I don't know how I either accidentally deleted it or something.

So Brenton, thank you for the information. And Gareth, thank you for correcting me because I was wrong. So that is a little shout out there. One of the things since we're on Adelaide, Rich, I'm going to say this and you can either agree or disagree here. I'm wondering if Adelaide is going to try to create a MotoGP at Indy-esque track.

Because you did have the walls. They were in close approximation. But there were things done at Indy to create chicanes and other things that were done to give that little bit of room that made it safe to race at Indy. Now if they do use part of the park and don't use the whole circuit, I wonder if it's going to look something, the whole, what was it, Australian V8 Supercars track or the old F1 track. If they don't use all of it, I wonder if it might be semi-okay.

It's just a thought that occurred to me since we're talking here this little bit about Adelaide, I thought we'd just throw that in there a little bit to start off with. Yeah. My recollection, well it's not a recollection actually, I was watching the 1992 Adelaide Grand Prix on YouTube last night. Generally rather more entertaining than modern day Formula One in my view, going back to the 80s and the 90s stuff. Anyway, that's an aside.

But the Adelaide track, I don't recall there being any part there, it's certainly not in a part like Melbourne's Albert Park is. Adelaide was very much a street race in the middle of the city. So I don't want to prejudge it, I don't want to sort of second guess what they're proposing. But like a lot of people, I struggle to see without some sort of major demolition of buildings and stuff, how they're going to create quite the amount of runoff that would be needed to make it safe. I mean on the back of what we're going to talk about later on in terms of tracks getting signed off, obviously there are a few additional concerns after this weekend in terms of just what passes for fit for purpose.

I agree. Don't get me wrong, the Brazilian track is we're going to talk about, I thought was a really good track. Nice layout, pretty quick. But as we said, a great crowd there and so we'll look forward to future events in Brazil because obviously with one and a half Brazilians on the grid, if we say that Frankie Morbeau Del is half Brazilian, it's mother's Brazilian. There's obviously going to be plenty of people that want to go and see that event, particularly now that Argentina's dropped off the calendar.

So the event itself and the track itself was really, really good. But the questions are being asked, and some fairly hard questions are being asked about just how some of these things get passed as safe to race. But again, I don't want to prejudge what they're planning in Australia and who knows if it will be Adelaide or not. I think that piece of news is still kind of slowly but surely unfolding, isn't it? Very much so.

All right. Well, let's look at Brazil, concentrate here. So this is the first visit to Brazil in 22 years, the last one being 2004. And you had a Japanese Moto GP rider win that one, which was weird because Ayagura was looking very good as the weekend went on, at times during the weekend. This track, if I'm remembering correctly, this is going into the way back machine.

If I don't have the dates right here, folks, please correct me. But I think this track was used the last time in 1987 when Gardner won there. And then the track in between this one or the track that was there, they'd race that with the 990s. I cannot think of the name of that track, but it was not Guyana where we are this time. No, it was Rio, wasn't it?

I think it was Rio. Was it Rio? Jacopagua or something like that. And then it was renamed to the Nelson Pique kind of name got attached to it. I think that track doesn't actually exist anymore, certainly not in that full format anyway.

But I'm pretty sure it was Rio de Janeiro was the last venue in Brazil that we visited. I thought it was Rio too, but I wasn't 100% sure because it's like all I could come up with was like Interlagos, which is the Formula One race track. And I know they did not go to Interlagos. Now, again, that one's deemed to be far too dangerous in terms of wall proximity and so on. So I can't see what's ever going there.

And there's no need to because I mean, this track is fundamentally very good in terms of its layout, I think. And there's some overtaking opportunities there as we saw. So some good racing across the weekend, other than the other issues. The one thing that I think the riders started to complain about the first thing was that the amount of gravel outside of turn one slash two, they thought wasn't enough. If it was raining and you fell off, you would have slid forever and could have gotten to the wall or the barriers out there.

Now no one did, but that was the first thing. But let's get into the track as it is, right? So before the weekend ever started, the track was flooded by torrential rains that happened. Now that then led to some drying and a heroic effort by everyone there to scrub the track, get it clean and get it ready to be raced upon on the weekend. But Friday went off.

I don't think Friday went off with a hitch at all, to be honest, other than it was raining most of the day. And there was some dry lines that developed and whatnot in practice. But the first problem that you sort of ran into on Saturday was a sinkhole that opened up on the main straightaway just at the rear of the grid marks. And there was a picture that was floating around the internet that showed track officials or workers or someone waist deep in a hole they had dug that was roughly, I don't know, it looked to me to be like, say, what, two, maybe three bike lengths long and about 24 inches wide. I don't know what the metric of that is, folks, but let's call it like a meter and a half maybe, a little less than a meter.

So that was rather entertaining to watch. That threw the entire schedule for the day into chaos as the practice rounds had run. MotoGP qualifying had happened and then the sinkhole came into play, which then said, okay, we're going to work towards fixing the sinkhole and having the MotoGP sprint. And then we're going to do Moto3 qualifying afterward and then Moto2 qualifying after that. That didn't work because the effort to repair the sinkhole, what was supposed to be 30 minutes became an hour, became I think an hour and a half.

And so they did eventually race, I think 30 minutes late. So that would be 3.30 p.m. local time. The sprint race took off for MotoGP and directly after that they were able to squeeze in Moto3 qualifying sessions one and two. But the sun was too low to continue.

So Moto2 classes were then pushed to Sunday morning, which, okay, that was rather interesting. But on top of all of that, you then got into race day and I think this is the appropriate place to put all this, as here in the beginning as we're talking about the track, that you had an issue again with the track. So after they had raced a full length Moto3 race, a full length Moto2 race, there was, the bitumen was starting to peel apart in I think it was like turns 10 and 11, which was resulting in rather large aggregate or stone being thrown up from the bikes. And just before, I mean, what was it? Probably no more than 10 minutes before the start of the MotoGP race.

Suddenly without warning, the race was decided to be what was originally 31 laps, was dropped to 23 laps, which means they took eight laps off of it, which meant that that was exactly two thirds distance so you could get full points for the race. And everyone agreed that that was a good thing to do. Now the race being shortened was not really an issue for anybody. I think the real issue was that the teams were told just minutes before the start, leaving no time for some to change tires if they would have elected to. So I know Acosta quickly changed over from a medium rear to a soft.

I don't recall anyone else changing, but other people were left speechless by the fact that as the word circulated down the grid, the people in the last couple of rows literally had three or four minutes before the warm up lap was to commence, which isn't a good look, but at least you got a race in it, right, Rich? Yeah. Okay. You've covered a lot of ground there, Jim. So sorry.

Yeah. I've got a few things I want to say. Well, you do owe the Brazilian Grand Prix a slight apology, Jim McDowell, because you said it was never going to happen. I said I wouldn't believe it until it was there. Although in retrospect, it might have been a bit of a rush job in certain respects to get it ready, because I think they had like an army of people there in the week preceding and even up to the Thursday, kind of hurriedly trying to get stuff finished off.

And I mean, Brazil is by no means on its own when it comes to these sorts of issues, because I mean, blimey, look at Silverstone a few years ago where we had a resurfacing job that had to be completely redone. That was the famous year that we had the heavy rain and the track was just basically flooded. It just would not drain away. So a huge expense, no doubt a fair bit of insurance money involved. Silverstone had to completely repave the entire track, don't mind it's one of, if not the longest track on the calendar as well, Silverstone.

I believe it is the longest. I hope they were Cota anyway, I would think. So there was a problem on Friday, however, I mean, as you've correctly identified, Jim, there was torrential rain. It's Brazil rainforests are nearby. Rain is not a problem.

It's just a fact of life there. You know, you're going to get that whether it was unprecedentedly heavy rain, even for that region, I don't know. I guess, you know, they would have done their best to get all the necessary drainage in. But there were pictures floating around on the sort of the cheesy Wednesday of the track underwater, weren't there? And you were thinking, blimey, is this thing going to even get to go ahead if they can't clear it?

It's extraordinarily dirty, the track, even some of the sort of offline bits didn't really clean up at all across the weekend. So that resulted on the Friday, even though the rain sort of stopped and the track did sort of start to dry out, there were what commonly referred to as weepers everywhere. We just basically had subsurface water leaching up through the surface, and that was creating quite a lot of problems. And in fact, it was still a big issue on Saturday morning. And although I didn't actually watch it, I've heard that there were quite a lot of very big crashes in the Moto3 Saturday morning free practice session where you were going on slicks, obviously from dry to quite damp patches.

And that was causing a lot of high sides and so on. So that was an issue. Then yeah, the famous sinkhole. I mean, I saw the photo that you're referring to of the guy, which is why it's not first of all, I thought it was kind of like a Photoshop kind of joke. I mean, I don't recall this ever happening at a racetrack before.

Somebody will correct me if it has happened before. I guess it might have done, but it's a pretty unusual thing. And they were damn lucky it wasn't on the racing line. Otherwise, I think that would have been weekend over at that point, because how could you not have guaranteed that sinkhole reemerging with, you know, a live racetrack with bikes going over it? That obviously wouldn't have been bad thinking about really.

So it was sufficiently off the racing line as to be, I suppose, manageable. Although, as you said, Jim, it did create quite a large delay in the proceedings and all of the follow on kind of disruption to the schedule from that. And then, yeah, come race day itself and the track's breaking up and on the face of it, you think, well, OK, the track's breaking up. What's the big deal? But Alex Rins almost had a broken finger.

Somebody got clattered in the knee by one of these stones getting thrown up. Bear in mind, you sort of an approach speed of probably well over 100 miles an hour with a fairly large piece of aggregate is painful. I mean, if you get just a chipping on the on the normal road, you feel it. And somebody got one in the shoulder as well and had quite a big bruise. So, I mean, it is serious.

Arms and stuff. Yeah, it's a really good bruise. I mean, I lived it with third track. You get that just for running a peagre owl and you'll get bruised. You're family.

We would run hand guards all the time. Just so you and I had hand guards broken by stones get kicked up. Yeah. And what not? I mean, you're not going to get a Moto GP bike out there and you're not going to throw hand guards on it, but it was crazy.

Again, I saw a photo and you would initially think it was a joke, but top rack revealed two or three stones that had gone into his boot during the race. Oh, wow. And stuff sort of flicking up in the air and just, I suppose, the way the airflow works around these bikes, you know, you get these kind of low pressure zones, I suppose. I don't know. I mean, but he had various bits of aggregate in his race boot.

So, I mean, he did a good job to finish the race with that stuff floating around around his feet. So, yeah, it was causing some minor injuries. And of course, if a stone gets flicked up and goes into a visor, that's a whole different level of problem. So track break up is a big problem. As you've said, Jim, why the hell they didn't just have a five to ten minute delay to the start time?

Because you often see this, Irta or whoever it is that are making these calls and communicating this to the teams, they tend to sort of go front row to back row. So by the time we got to people at the back row, there was literally no time to change, whereas some people had a minute or two further advance warning. But why they didn't just delay the start for five minutes and safety grounds to give everybody a chance to adjust fuel levels, make the change in tire choices or whatever. I mean, obviously it ruined some people's races. I know David Tardotzi, you know, the always want to call him granddad because he's such a nice old white head man.

Absolutely apoplectic with rage in the pit lane, apparently, because all the team managers and, you know, higher ups of the team personnel kind of got together with the race organizers. And he was going bonkers because, of course, Mark is very good on worn rubber. So I think their whole strategy for the race was to sort of hang around at the beginning and then go for it at the end. And so lopping off that amount of laps was a big thing. It also would have affected Ayagura because he always come strong at the end of the race.

Ditto Fermin Aldegas really good on his rubber and Bastianini actually did work his way just into the points by the end of the race. But he was another person you probably would have foreseen coming forward because they knew tires were going to be a problem. And again, we have the heat treated rear at this event to sort of try and ward that off a little bit. So, yeah, it was very just very sort of chaotic and a bit badly handled. Never mind.

And I don't know whether we want to get into it now, because again, social media and the usual suspects are kind of going to have a bonkers over the way that I'm going to continue to call it Dawner because that other name is just a bit too much of a mouthful to me. And it still is sort of Dawner, effectively, because we've still got the Mafia in charge. And it's very much misinformation or no information. Almost outright lies, really, in terms of the reasoning and some of this and sort of covering up what's going on to try and keep it secret. When obviously we all know what's happened and the truth always comes out.

Ultimately. So, yeah, just all a bit sort of shambolic, really. And you said nobody was affected, Jim. I'll take issue with that. Oh, OK.

If I'm standing in the stands as a fan, I haven't paid my hard earned cash to watch a race. I feel a bit hard done by when a third of the race gets taken away. Admittedly, I don't disagree with you. Safety grounds, you accept it. But, you know, there are implications to people that have, particularly in a country like Brazil, which is not known as being, you know, one of the wealthier countries of the world.

People would have dumped up a lot of cash to be there and they didn't get to see the full race. I doubt they get any recompense for that. Yeah. Oh, no, there wouldn't be. I mean, gosh, look at the bizarre and the Formula Race in 2005 at Indy with the tire debacle.

I mean, the four car race or six car race. Oh, yeah, whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody on Michelin's quit and whatever.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. But, you know, I do owe Brazil an apology because it did have a race and it was a really good race. I think it was entertaining. Yeah. Very entertaining.

Very. I didn't like a lot of the crashing. Turn four seemed to be taking a lot of people by surprise. Now, whether that was the dirty track, the wet, not having time to adjust. Was it the wrong tires brought by Michelin?

I don't know, but it seemed to be rampant across all classes that turn four was just a place where everybody and her brother was just losing the front. And you can see all the paint marks that were destroyed. And it's all in a very nice little V shape where you can say, all those crashes correlate with one another because they're all in the exact same direction, which I thought was interesting to watch. But again, I mean, we had a race. We had good racing, I think.

I mean, you could argue that the GP race was not that great, but we shall see. Well, let us continue down the path of news. Now, this is a whisper that came out of the paddock this weekend. The fact that and what it is is that Grissini may be switching from Ducati to Honda for twenty seven. Now, that's an interesting move in and of itself.

I think it's pretty much true that Honda is courting Grissini very hard to put another set of bikes on the grid and they be Hondas. And I think it is to do with Honda needs more bikes, more riders and more time to develop their bikes to get them back to where they want to be. I don't know about you, Rich, but so far this year, has Honda taken a step forward with their MotoGP team? I don't think so. I think they've either stagnated or are slightly worse than what they were.

Although I think we would have to wait for some judgment. We get back to some of the Spanish tracks and places that people are more familiar. You know, you had a very hot race in Thailand. Weather was incredibly different than what they were expecting as far as heat. And then you came to Brazil and you had a track surface that really didn't hold up.

So not sure how that's all going to play out. But, you know, remember, Grissini started as a Honda team and then they became an Aprilia team and then they became a Ducati team. Now, I think what makes this interesting is that if Grissini does this, it would be interesting because and part of the reasoning behind it is that Algar is linked to going to VR46. We know he's got a four year contract with Ducati that he signed the year that he had that great season in Moto2. And so obviously, you know, Ducati is not going to want him on any bike other than a Ducati.

So does that mean there's only going to be one satellite Ducati team? That being VR46, it's extremely possible. Now, we also know that basically Alex Marquez is going to leave and go to KTM to ride for the factory. Not confirmed yet. But OK, the rumour whispers are that he's leaving Grissini to have a full factory ride on a KTM, replacing Acosta, who's whispered to be Mark Marquez's teammate at Ducati for next year.

All right. Well, that's very interesting. OK, it's also then throws into doubt that there's whispers that Digia is going to move to the factory Yamaha to take over Rens seat. But I guess it would be in the 850 era, it'd be Toprac and Digia on Yamahas because the rumour is that Quattraro has gone to Honda. And all of this becomes really wild, is the fact that it's believed then that Bastianini is going to go back to Grissini if it is Honda powered.

And also riding alongside of Bastianini would be David Alonso, because Honda has been trying to get that boy's name on a contract for ever, apparently. So all of that makes things wildly speculative. But man, does it make for some silly season fodder, don't you think? Yeah. And again, I think we're stuck in this kind of bit of politics and war that's going on between the teams and the organisers, let's call them, over revenue and distribution of revenue, which is holding up some of these deals, which are believed to be done.

Don't forget, in terms of Monster Yamaha, let's assume it's still Monster Yamaha next year, which I'm sure it will be. That looks like it will actually be Martín and Digia Antonio heading up that team to Toprac today in Pramac under that arrangement. Again, none of this is fully confirmed. And Martín might be sort of looking in the mirror and thinking, what the hell have I done? Because really, he ought to be staying where the hell he is.

Not moving. Yes, he should. Because if he thinks he's unhappy on an Umbrella, I don't know how he's going to feel on a Yamaha for a season or two, because it's going to take them a while, probably. Not definitely, but probably to catch up, even though the reset with the 850s provides lots of opportunity. I mean, if I was Martín, I would want to stay where I am based on the bike that you have right now.

But again, it's going to be a huge shakeup when you go back. You're also going to go back to bikes that don't have any ride height systems, no whole shot devices and 2014 through 16 Aero on it as well, which is going to be a huge reduction in what we see. So I don't know. I mean, you could say that, but honestly, Martín burned that bridge hard when he did what he did. He had a tire incident testing and all that.

And he had that really tough time with the fall in Qatar, that 11 ribs or something broken and a whole bunch of other stuff. That was just going to be difficult to get away from. But he did himself no favors. You know, it's one of those things you dug your own grave. Now you got to lay in it.

Kind of a thing for me. Well, it is absolutely is. And I mean, it's a shame, really, because and again, as I've said many times, never really been that big of a fan of Martín, although I'm much more of a fan now than I ever have been previously. But this weekend, he was back to the 2024 looking Martín when he won the championship on a Ducati, wasn't he? Oh, that's how he looked to me.

Sort of all over the bike, looking really quick, aggressive, sometimes a wee bit too aggressive, but he's still getting to know the bike. And so the potential is still not fully realized with him on that bike. And so hard to envisage him not winning a race or two, or maybe a few more than that at some point this year. Although clearly, Bez is really on top of his game at the minute. But can I just come back?

I want to come back to the Grissini Honda thing. OK, I wonder how much of that is actually Grissini courting Honda as well as the other way around. What makes you say that? Well, because, you know, Honda is the sleeping giant, which is making progress. I think we've got to be.

I thought just occurred to me when you said, you know, they haven't had such a great start, but we know the Honda's remaining biggest weakness. And this probably will not be resolved with the 1000cc formula is it's kind of traction limited. And it particularly hates that heat treated rear tire, which makes that problem even worse. So I think what we saw this weekend, again, rightly or wrongly, was mere pushing on trying to make up time in the corners and going back to crash in the front, trying to make up for the fact that, you know, the fundamental speed and traction of the bike just isn't there. Now, like you say, Jim, once we get back to Europe and back to sort of inverted commas, normality, particularly with regards to tires and tracks that are familiar to people, that I think will be the acid test for Honda in terms of how the rest of this season is going to go.

But given the heritage of Grissini with Honda and the fact that Honda, once 850s come along, they just might nail it. Might know they might. Yeah. You might want to just take that risk, particularly you catch us sort of on a bit of a downslope at the moment. And Grissini have always felt like slightly the poor relation of all of the satellites.

And I'd say Honda will chuck some money at Grissini as well to run a couple more bikes. So it makes a lot of sense really to me. And certainly, Honda will be getting their checkbook out for the signature of Holger or Alonso without a doubt. And I think it was on one of the I think might be on the race podcast. One of the journos on there saying that Alonso's team are sort of asking for stupid amounts of money for his signature.

I'll discuss stupid money. That's for sure. That's one thing they have in spades right now, is stupid money. Oh, yeah, they definitely have. But maybe Alonso is just perhaps at risk of pricing himself out of the market.

If he's not too careful, I mean, clearly is hot property. But got showed up by his teammate again this weekend. So but he is the one you would imagine would get the MotoGP contract put in front of him just because he just has that X factor, doesn't he? He does. We haven't seen it much in Moto2, but I think he was also had gotten hurt in Thailand with the crash.

And despite what anyone may think, I don't want to say may not. He might have been hurting a little bit, although I think don't think he would ever say that. But I think you get back to tracks, the more normal tracks, you're not learning a track and trying to go fast at it, which that's a talent that is absolutely underestimated or has never talked about. I don't think underestimate is the right word. It's just not talked about.

Guys that these guys are all professional, they're all very good. That's hard to learn a new track. It is so hard to learn a new track. It is just mind blowing how hard that is. A fast track as well, because they were.

Correct. Big turns, high speed approaches on a lot, which is why, for example, as you pointed out earlier on, turn four was claiming a lot of people. Because I think if you went through three, just got that line slightly wrong, you're up on the curb and then you were slightly wide into four and then you were going down because the track was so dirty. And I think that's why so many people crashed there. Plus, there was some seepage of fluid through the track as well at various points of the weekend.

So all of that conspired together to cause some mahusif crashes, didn't it? So, yeah, so to be on top of your game within a few laps at that particular venue. Yeah. As you say, Jim, that's a skill. All right.

Let's look at the last thing. It's a quick one. Just to note that Erda, as we know it, is gone when we get to the 850 era. And you now have all five factories negotiating with MotoGP, much like Formula One teams do, which is really going to be wild. Do they going to come up with some sort of Concorde-esque agreement?

Maybe, maybe not. My thinking is that I think Liberty would love to have a Concorde-esque type of agreement with the team because that gives Liberty a foundation and a guaranteed, hey, there's always going to be Honda and Yamaha and KTM and Ducati and whoever else in there as well. So because let's try to think of Perlia. I missed a Perlia, sorry. That was the one that I missed.

But that would really, I've already got the Brazilians amount of me. I do not need the Italians amount of me as well in this podcast. So I'm glad I came up with that one. I don't know what's going to happen, but I do think it's probably going to be good for the sport because you're going to guarantee that these people are going to be in the sport, because if you sign your name to an agreement of that sort, because you're going to get X amount of money as a result of it, then you need to be putting a bike on the grid. You know, we've seen that sort of weird thing happen with the CRT bikes.

And that was just really not a good part of the era. But it was I understood why they did it. You got any quick thoughts on that, Rich? I suspect there's a fair bit of horse trading going on here, because whilst the teams quite understandably, all of them will be looking for a decent chunk of the revenue, particularly as the sport grows under. What's it called again, Jim?

Moto GP, entertainment and sport. Yeah, I can't bring myself to say that every time. I'm just going to say Liberty Dawn for now, just until I get used to things. Yes. Obviously, they're charged with massively growing the sport in terms of audience, which obviously equates to revenue.

So that's what the teams are looking for. But you can bet your bottom dollar, pardon the pun, that in return for that, Liberty Dawn want an awful lot more back from the teams in terms of growth to make the whole thing bigger as well as by riders. Yeah. Promotions. All of that.

Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking like, you know, there'll be something where every weekend you're going to have bikes sitting in a hotel somewhere in the world and people are going to be able to come see it. Or there'll be some street event things that are going on. Something. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there.

No, I think that is definitely part of it. And quite rightly, I suppose, you know, there'll be a much heavier demand on the riders in terms of what they're giving back off track as well. And some of them are not going to like that very much. I mean, some of the older people within the sport. I don't know if this is definitely true, but I did hear somebody saying that part of the sort of the holdup around Mark Marcus's negotiations with Jucati were a that he didn't necessarily want to commit to the number of years that Jucati wanted him to sign for.

Plus, he wasn't necessarily massively keen on doing a huge amount of promo work. Well, he's the world champion. Liberty Dawn will want his time as much as they want it. Thank you very much. And obviously, riders and the teams will profit in other ways as part of that negotiation, that trade off.

So, yeah, I mean, everything was a double edged sword, isn't it? Thomas Sowell always says there's no such things as solutions, just compromises. And that is no doubt what is getting talked about every weekend between the teams and the organizers to try and get this thing across the line. But there will be a concord agreement, some sort of formal agreement, I'm sure that covers all of the financial sides and the commitment sides and media, et cetera, et cetera. All right.

So one thing I forgot to put in there, but because we're talking about the concord agreement, it was you had sent it to me and I can't find it right now, is that CFMoto bought someone. I thought it was Kalex. Yeah, I think it was Kalex. That they have now bought 50% or more of Kalex with an eye on creating their own motor and chassis for a Moto GP bid. So you would have six manufacturers.

Well, you know what? Everybody's going to like that. Here comes the Chinese. Right. And if they do, you know, we're going to go back to the Chang International Circuit.

Because if you have CFMoto as a constructor, I guess, we're going to start calling them. They're going to want to go back. They're going to want a race in their homeland. Yeah, for sure. I really thought that track was pretty decent for a motorcycle race.

Yeah. Well, and again, I haven't just come back recently from Southeast Asia. I mean, it's everywhere you look is just bikes. Admittedly not great big sports bikes, although I did see a few when I was in Vietnam a couple of weeks ago, but it's just a massive, massive market. So you can only envisage more races in that part of the world, really, because much unlike the Western world, certainly in the UK, and I guess this would apply in the US, it's more adventure bikes or off road stuff that's popular here nowadays.

You don't see that many new kind of Leeta sports bikes on the roads now. Not that many midsize super sport type bikes either, for that matter. But that is definitely not the case in the parts of the world we're talking about there. It's a natural progression, I suppose. You know, China have done or CFMoto have done what the Chinese do.

They've bought the IP as a fast track to get them up to where they want to be. I mean, it still take a few years because you don't just rock up in MotoGP and be successful, but they've bought an awful lot of IP and experience by that acquisition. They won't just they won't be sitting on it. Well, they know they're going to make use of that at some point. If you spend that money, you are wanting something out of it for sure.

And they will. So, OK, let's actually get. Oh, sorry. One last thing. Well, it's your bike this weekend.

The round is from Portomai, which means Danny and Carl will be on the pod next week. Yeah. For the review, I'm looking forward to hearing the guys again from that one. Yeah. And Portomai is a great track.

It's been a long break since we had round one at Phillip Island. Obviously, I think that was four or five weeks ago. End of February. Yeah. Yeah.

Time flies, doesn't it? So and also, as the guys mentioned last time out, we've got Tommy Bridewell on this new Ducati squad turning up in World Superbike for round two. First time out. So that'll be interesting to see how that goes. So, yeah, looking forward to World Superbikes.

And obviously, it would be remiss of us not to mention, Jim, that you're about to start packing and getting on the road for next weekend. And Cota. That is right. I will be in Cota. Actually, Jake, Moto America host, is going to be there as well.

So looking to meet up with Jake and talk to him and watch racing together, which would be fantastic. And anybody else who's there are going to be around Cota. I should have Moto Pod gear on. It should be easy to spot. So looking forward to talk to everybody and trying to post as much as possible from the track since I'll actually be there.

But we got to get into the actual racing that took place in Brazil here. So we'll start with Moto3 qualifying as we usually do. So in the first qualifying session, we had Ogden, Bertelli, Fernandez, Crucis, Moodley, Yamanaka, O'Shea, Carpe were some of the big names that were there. Crucis, he had a wicked high side and was down at turn one. He sort of clipped the curb on the outside and then he kind of grabbed and on the edge of the tire, flipped him off over the high side.

But halfway through Carpe, Mitanami, Yamanaka, O'Shea were all in it to get through. Fernandez was down and then he made sure he grabbed that clutch and kept it running because as the time kicks down now, I think anything under two minutes and you go into the gravel trap, you cannot try to restart your bike. Or I think you're not allowed to restart your bike at all on trackside. You have to go to the service road to actually do it. Yeah, you're definitely not allowed at two minutes to even think about getting your bike out of the gravel at all.

You're done at that point. So everybody's adapting to those rules a little bit. But as it came down to it, Fernandez threw down a lap and he would go to second. But it was Carpe, Fernandez, Yamanaka and Mitani who were all going through to the second qualifying session. Q2 takes off and they wind up with a red flag with 13.05 left.

So two minutes into the qualifying session, there's a red flag. Cormac Buchanan had a big air high side of me. You don't see exactly what happens at the beginning, but all you see is sort of the bike sideways and him looking like a matchstick that got flipped out. And he just whacks and hits the ground and then, you know, bounces for a little bit and comes back in at the same time or just about the same time. Danish fell over at turn six.

I think Buchanan fell at turn four and then Danish turned six. So that was kind of crazy. So they had that red flag. They got going again. Kelso then went down at turn six.

Kielis went to the top for a fast lap, but then Kielis went down at turn six. Now his bike stalled. He had to push it off into the gravel and then he was trying to start the bike on the service road, which eventually he did after a bit of time. And then he got round to get back into the pits to have his bike looked at and so that he could continue on. What halfway Uriate was on top, followed by Peroni, Morelli, Kielis, Pini and Ptonum.

Now Buchanan got back out of the medical center. He'd been checked out, declared to be fit, although I'm a bit suspect of that one, given the the big hit and the way his head impacts the ground. I'm not so sure about that one, Rich. You got a thought on that real quick? Oh, you didn't see it, so I'm sorry.

You're talking about Buchanan's crash, are you? Yes, yes. His big air high side. That looked like a have the rest of the weekend off kind of crash to me. I agree.

I mean, again, I don't know. At least the rest of the day, for sure. Yeah, I mean, obviously, and this is not me taking the sides right. But the usual people started going on about absence of concussion protocols in MotoGP, which is hardly headline news, really. Yeah.

Moral. And he was out again, more or less straight away in the overall scheme of things, wasn't he? So yeah, it was. Didn't look like a sort of crash that you should be getting straight back on the bike. To me, but I agree, unless there are sensible people adjudicating these things.

We're just going to see this over and over again. I agree. Buchanan would get back out. He got at least, I think, one lap, maybe two. Uriate crashed.

Then Joel Esteban wound up going to the top. Then it was Peroni, followed by Danish, Pratima, Marrera and Uriate. Then Kielis was like down in 11th. He didn't even get a chance to rally from that. He was as good as Kielis could do.

So it was a bit of a shakeup. The way the grid actually lines up, it's Esteban with his first overpull, then Peroni, then Danish, then Pratima, then Morali, Uriate, Kelso, Yamanaka, then Selma, I think is how that one is. And then Carpe 10th. Now, Kielis was wide up being 11th, which means a lot of the good riders are sort of down in the grid. Pini, Almanza, Fernandez.

They're all starting way down just because of red flags, yellow flags. I think if anybody could have got caught out on any of it, that's what pretty much did it. So we go to the race on Sunday, 24 laps for this one. We start off, Peroni gets a whole shot, followed by Esteban and Pratima. Then it's Morali, Danish and Kielis.

Then Morali gets around Danish and Esteban's going backwards on the second lap. The first couple of laps of this race are really fantastic to watch. They're going every which way. Kielis was up from that 11th spot and he got to second with like a double draft going into the first turn, which was sort of like the prime passing place on this track. Then he was leading and then he got went wide because he ran into four, just a little too hot, and that made him wide for five.

And well, then here comes Almanza, who started way back. Almanza is 14th. Almanza is now by lap five. He's leading the darn thing with Kielis right behind him. And those two look like they're kind of pulling away at this point.

They've got a gap on everybody else. And that's pretty good for them. Seven laps in Esteban has a high side through turn four. Really kind of a goofy kind of crash is just weird. By lap 10, Almanza is leading Kielis and they are definitely gone.

They have broken away. They're leading Morali, Peroni and Fernandez and Carpe as well. And then you got to look at the pace that's in that chasing group. Like, do they have any pace at all to kind of catch back up? Well, by lap 13, Almanza is down.

He's off. The rear end just came around on him. By lap 15, Kielis is like three and a half seconds out front ahead of Fernandez, Peroni, Carpe and then Pini. But there's a red flag. So we get a red flag.

It's like, OK, what are we going to do here? There was a couple of things that happened. Scott Ogden had a crash and somebody else crashed as well. I can't remember who it was. I think it was I think it's the back to sort of like the Almanza crash.

They couldn't get everything all cleaned up. It's like 90 seconds to get around roughly for a Moto3 bike. So I don't think they had a lot of time. They eventually threw out the red flag. And then that brought us to the point where they said, OK, we're going to restart the race, which I thought was kind of weird because they had 24 laps.

This is lap 15, right? So lap 15 when red flag comes out. So to get to your 24 that you're supposed to be, you're talking about nine laps. So that's got to be close to two thirds distance. I'm not going to do the math here real quick.

But I was really surprised given all that, that they said, Nope, we're going to come back to a five lap dash for the cash. Really? Oh, I'm good with a five lap dash for the cash with Moto3 guys. But I just thought it was really kind of weird that they decided to do that. I just didn't think they were going to.

Again, sometimes like it's the question of was like, who's running the show? Is it the Liberty Dorn people or is it really the FIM? I mean, the rules are made to be breaking, right? The cynical Jim, you're starting to sound like me. Oh, this one did make me kind of cynical.

But anyway, they restarted with a five lap dash. Keely's got a great hole shot, followed by Fernandez, followed by Peroni and Carpe. Tell you and Rios were down at turn four. They were in their deep, lost the front as everybody else was doing it. Really, Keely's has sort of got this one here.

He's only got a few laps and to run on. But the battle for second, third, fourth and fifth is absolutely awesome between the guys. They're just trading it every which way. And of course, once they started fighting, Keely's was able just to get away. And nobody was going to catch him.

I think with two laps to go, Keely's had like six tenths. But Morelli finally came out on top of the battle. He had four tenths on Carpe, Pini and Petama. But the question was, is like, I don't know what happened. I didn't see it.

I was watching it and still watched it back. I don't know really how he accomplished this. But Morelli caught Keely's with like about a lap and a half to go. I didn't see a mistake by Keely's. I don't know if he just mentally decided to slow down to be sure that he wasn't going to lose the lead.

Was there a confusion on how much of a gap he had on his pit board? I don't know. Never saw the pit boards there on the inside. And the camera angle we get is only going to show you the back of the pit board. So I really don't know what happened.

But also it's like, whoa, wait a minute. Morelli is right there with Keely's. I'm like, what is going on? This is now turned out to be a really fought battle. And Morelli does try for sure.

But he doesn't beat Keely's. Keely's wins the race. Morelli, he made him earn it for sure. Kept him honest to finish second. But the cool part was that Pertama, is he actually Indonesian?

I think he's from that region. He's from that Southeast Asia region. But he comes in for a podium, nips him for the podium. Then it was Carpe Pinni and Salama. They are your top six, which was crazy.

It was a great race by them, great race by Pertama to get that podium spot. Peroni was seventh and Fernandez, Ogorman, Danish, Jurate, Kelso, Crucis, Yamanaka and Edy O'Shea getting the last point in 15th. A fantastic Moto3 race despite the red flag, Rich. It was a really good race and justice for Max Kilos because obviously he had a huge lead when that red flag came out. Again, we don't know why the red flag came out.

I surmised perhaps that it was down to the Ogden crash and maybe he had gone into a tire, sorry, not a tire, an inflatable barrier and kind of caused it to deflate when they needed a bit of time just to get it back again. That recovery, that replay, if they did replace it, I did not see it. But if they did replace that, it was really quick by the marshaling crew to get that replaced. Some of the sort of the really key corners where bikes are likely to get across to those fences, they do quite often have inflated spares behind the barriers. So it's just a question of swapping one out for the other.

But I did turn it around pretty quickly. Yeah, I mean, Kilos would have felt a bit hard done by sitting on a what would it have been by then a five or six second lead, I think, out front. Something like that. Because once Almanza had gone out, I mean, they were way out front and helped, it's true, by that crash that Esteban had, that high side, that really broke the front two away at that stage. And it looked like it was going to be a repeat of round one, didn't it, with Kilos and Almanza going at it.

But again, just a slightly offline for Almanza going into four. And that is just like jumping into a pool of sharks. That corner, if you go slightly offline, you're going to get eaten alive. And so he was very upset with himself. He'll bounce back.

But they already look like the two guys that are going to be the ones likely to be duking it out for the title. But again, as you say, Jim, Veda Pratima, second race and he's on the podium. That's impressive stuff. Really impressive stuff. A talent.

He is a talent. He's going to be there on their backs, I suspect, for most of the year. And he's not afraid to get his elbows out, is he? So again, no, these classic Moto three fodder this kid. So he's going to be very exciting to watch.

The only other thing I wanted to mention is Morelli's crash helmet design is really cool. It is cool. Yes. It's kind of got an 80s vibe to it. It's the bell as well.

I really like the bell helmets. I might have to buy myself one of those, although they're fearsomely expensive. What helmet is it nowadays? Well, true. I mean, like my head will never go into anything other than an Arai.

Sorry, I'm an Arai guy. I've always run Arais, but the bell is a nice looking lid. I must say. Yeah, it looks really good. I'm not going to lie.

I was looking at one the other day, 800 quid, which is quite a lot of money. That's a lot of quid. A thousand dollars almost. So I might have to wait until the wife's away for a weekend before I try and sneak that one through the front door. Yep, that's true.

But anyway, yes, all in all, a great race. And yeah, I mean, it's a shame in the way that our match went down because it's had a bit of an effect in the championship standings. Yes, it did. Which you're going to tell us about now. Yeah.

So Kylius is now leading the world championship. He is on 45 points. Margaret Morelli is on 28 points, which leaves him 17 points behind. Pratima is third and he is an Indonesian. I believe IA is Indonesia as an abbreviation.

He's on 27 points, which only leaves him one behind Morelli, which is kind of really crazy. After that, it's Carpe Almanza because he only has points from the first win. So everybody else's collected points has basically got above him. But he's actually level with Peroni and then Fernandez, then Uriate, Gorman and Pini are as your top 10 for the championship. So that's all Moto3.

We shall move to Moto2. Actually, Jim, yeah, sure. Shout out to Pini for not crashing in the race. Oh, OK, that's fair. He normally does.

That's a very true statement. He's very, very, very quick, that lad, but he does crash an awful lot. So good to see him finishing. What was it, the fifth? That was a good result.

It was a good result. OK. So let's look at Moto2 qualifying. In the first qualifying session, it's Aegis Kinet, Holgardo, Baltis, Van de Gerberg, Roberts Rueda. Those are some fairly big names there.

I mean, Aegis won, right? All right. So it's like, huh, OK. Halfway through, it was Holgardo, Barry Baltis, Huerta and Garcia. With three minutes to go, Roberts went to being second quick and he had the exact same time as Holgardo, down to the thousandth of a second.

It was, yeah, thousandth of a second. It was zero, zero, zero. And it was like, OK, that really doesn't happen very often. But it did there. Aegis got caught out in this and he didn't get a chance to get a lap put together.

Yellow flags, other things really destroyed Aegis's attempt. He would be dead last. So your winner of the prior race is going to start dead last on the grid here at Moto2, which shows you how wild and crazy things go there. But the four people getting through was Holgardo, Roberts, Baltis and Garcia. Those guys get through.

So we get to the second session. By halfway, Alonso was actually ahead with Piquera second, then a Screech, then Holgardo, then it was these are going to be tough. It was actually Vier and then Munoz, because Vier and Vietti are really way too close to each other. Shouldn't be that way. Now, aren't you had some lured slide coming out of one of those turns?

Is it the Chicane looking turns there at 7, 789 or something? Just the back end out, just pure dirt track style. It was beautiful to look at. Wasn't fast, but it was beautiful to look at. Yeah, Canet was trying to get there.

He couldn't get up on with it. Gonzales had a mistake. He wasn't able to get anywhere. But it turned out that for pole, it was Holgardo followed by Alonso. So it's a Grissini 1-2.

Alex's Screech was a third, which was amazing for Screech. That's on the forward. He looked great. Gonzales got caught in the yellow flag, couldn't cut a lap together. He was going to start fourth.

Then it was Piqueras, Collenvier, Lopez, then Vietti, then Mario, Agi, Arbolino, Munoz and Ortola. That's how they would go for Sunday. Yes. Quick correction. Aspar.

Aspar, sorry. Not Prasini. Aspar. Josh. They get the same color.

I don't know why I confused it all the time. I do. Yeah, I'm the same. Yeah, they were having a good weekend, Aspar. They were.

They were having a fantastic week. So starting the race here, we get Mototu. Screech gets a hole shot and he is just going. Munoz is right there. And then it's Holgardo, Lopez, Gonzales and Arbolino.

By the second lap by, Munoz had made his way by Screech to be leading at turn six. Then Holgardo got the second because he got past Screech. But by lap four, Holgardo was now leading the race as he was setting the pace. Holgardo was then leading at five. So followed by Munoz and Screech.

Alonso had worked his way back up to fourth, then Gonzales and then Lopez. Now at lap seven, Piqueras has had a crash at that turn. Eleven, ten combination, ten, eleven. Gonzales then got by Alonso by lap nine. By lap ten, it's Holgardo, Munoz, Screech, Gonzales, Alonso and Guilvarra has now made up some time to get in there.

Alonso is slowly going with Guilvarra and he's right behind him. So it's like, OK, who's going to win out of that? Because Alonso is slowing, right? He's going backwards, what I'm trying to say. I didn't quite get that out there.

Hurry up for you folks. But by lap 14, Alonso is slowing and he's going sort of backwards. He's passed by Guilvarra and Arbolino. The Holgardo is still out front with Munoz, Screech, Gonzales, Guilvarra and Arbolino. That's your top six at 15 laps into the race.

Alonso then gets back by Arbolino at turn one and then Alonso gets back by Guilvarra for fifth. Didn't look like it was a mistake. He was legitimately passed by those two guys. I don't know if he wanted to cool the tire down, make a charge. It didn't make any sense.

I don't know if something was going on with the bike. I got to thinking Alonso had a really good qualifying session, which we know he's had trouble with that, you know, qualifying poorly, being back in that six, seven, eight, nine position. But I'm wondering, maybe they changed something on the bike. And I thought, well, maybe the tire was going away from him because they, you know, sacrificed to get the tire, to get the energy in it. They changed something.

They put a little bit more weight to the rear or they put a little more weight on the front for the front to work for him or something of that nature. And then it's like he started coming back again. It's like I really never did understand it, nor did I ever read anything that said why he had that little mishap in there. Did you fight anything, Rich? I haven't seen or heard or read anything about it.

But my only sort of surprising, I suppose, is that having got into what would it have been fourth or fifth place at that stage, quite a big gap up to Gonzalez in the screech. I think it was like a four or five second gap. And I just wonder if he kind of maybe just lost a little bit of focus. Arbolino and Gravara came past him and then that lit the kind of touch paper again and, you know, he's then got somebody to chase him to get past again. So I wonder if it's just like a little mid race lull, because as often happens in Moto2, you have a good action packed first few laps, then quite a sort of sensible middle part of the race and then a bit of action towards the end.

So I don't know. I mean, maybe that's what it was. He was too far back to make any impression on the podium battle. And then ended up in a bit of a race once you got overtaken and obviously got those places back, which is quite an encouraging thing to say, I suppose, from a long just point of view. But again, he does seem to just miss out on those early laps, doesn't he?

Whether he got kind of bullied out a little bit, because he just dropped back to down to about seventh, I think, on the first lap, having been second on the grid. So not a great start again, as we saw in round one in Thailand, you put yourself in the danger zone there. Oh yeah. Happily no crashes this time, but he did get kind of cut quite far adrift by the time he made his way through a little bit. So yeah, I think it was just one of those, Jim, to be honest.

Yep. Could have been. We got to feel like lap 21 and I was wondering, was the Screech in trouble because Gonzalez was catching and catching quickly and he was starting to bring Alonso and Guevara with him. But with four to go, Gonzalez has some pace and he is catching quickly to a Screech. Now, was the Screech losing something out of that?

Don't really know. But then with three to go, Munoz was then all over Hogarto and then Munoz passed him for the lead. I was like, wow, the guy who's been leading this the whole time, Hogarto, did he use up the tires? Did the Pirellis go off or whatever? But come with two laps to go, Hogarto just blasted by again, going into turn one.

Was the setups different? Was Hogarto maximizing the straightaway and breaking stability at turn one versus what Munoz was doing in the tight sections of like four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten? Not really sure. But it was interesting because I was like, well, OK, maybe there's going to be another attack. Perhaps Munoz is going to attack again when they get to the twisty bits.

But with one to go, Hogarto had eight tenths on Munoz. It's like it was as if Hogarto was just toying with him, like, oh, you caught me. Well, I passed you and I'll show you how fast I really am because I left something in the tank. And Gonzalez now was battling with a screech, a screech, I think, felt some pressure. He went a little wide at turn four and Gonzalez just jumped on that.

Like, thank you for the early Christmas present. But Hogarto will win the race. Munoz is second. Gonzalez will take a podium. Then a screech.

That's the best ever for a screech that I know of. It's also one of the best finishes for a forward chassis ever. I think, too, they may have had a podium with it back years ago, but I'm not certain on that one. I've got a vague recollection that Navarro might have put it on the front row in Jerez last year. Navarro turned up at one of the rounds last year and just like really showed that that bite has potential.

But it's been very few and far between. And I think prior to this weekend, the screech's best result was a seventh. So that was a marked improvement. Marked improvement there. Alonso would salvage the fifth place, then Guevara sixth, Arbolino, Colin Vier, then Vietti.

Right there. If you're watching 8 and 9, trying to figure out who they were. I was looking at it, I think. Not easy. Jim, don't get them around the wrong way.

Not easy. My own little personal stake on it is that the Vietti, E comes before I in the alphabet. And that's it. That's how you know it's Vier's with the E, V-E and Vietti's with the V-I. Yeah.

So that's how I do it. Ortolo would be 10th and Lopez, Huertas 12th, Agi, Baltis and Salach rounding out the points scores in the race. Anything you want to add before we do the championship standings, Rich? Again, I think although unfortunately just did miss out on that third place on the podium, chops to a screech really, because bearing in mind there's only two of those bikes out there. And so they have very little data to work with.

And he was definitely out of tyres by the end of the race, which is why Gonzalez was able to get him. I think he just looked as if he had no grip at all with screech at the last sort of two to three laps. So that was unfortunate, but it's still by far and away his best result. And as you say, Jim, probably one of, if not the best result in a race that forward racing have had. And I mean, they've looked a bit, I don't want to be unkind, but they've looked a little bit of a joke really at times in the past.

But that bike is looking pretty good, particularly with the screech on it this year, because he had a pretty decent round in Thailand as well. So I'm looking forward to sort of seeing how he goes for the rest of this year, because it looks like there's some potential there. And by way of a marked contrast, again, a chassis which is not massively represented out there, but the Bosco Skura, Mark VDS, they are in all sorts of trouble at the moment. They cannot work out that bike at all. So Kinet and Onshu, I mean, you would have been hard pressed to know that they're even in the race.

Indeed, any of the sessions across the weekend, really struggling to make that bike work, though they are all in all sorts of trouble at the minute. I mean, again, one of the best teams in the pit lane, without a doubt, and a lot of talent and skill there from a sort of a technical engineering perspective. But yeah, they're really struggling big time at the moment. Yep. All right.

So with that, the Holgardo leads the championship on 33 points. González is second, Amir four and a half points behind. Then Munoz is in on 24, Guevara on 20, then Escrige in the top five because of that, because he's got those nice points to have 15. Then Vier or Tola Vietti Alonso is 11. So he's 22 points behind Holgardo.

This is not over for the championship, although I do think Holgardo is going to make Alonso work for this. And I think González is going to make the two of them work for it. So this may be one of the most entertaining Moto2 championships we see in a long time, because I think it's going to be down to who makes the least amount of mistakes. Yeah, you'd have to say with the possible exception of Manuel González, that this feels like a proper changing of the guard as well, doesn't it at the moment? It's mostly former in the top six, at least in the championship, are all Moto3 stars.

Guys that we talked about and they're all there. So it's pretty wild, pretty amazing. I mean, Arbolino is looking like he's going to have a better year. I mean, it could hardly be any worse than last year. But he did not get on with that Bosca Corra last year.

No, not at all. But if you look at your Canettes, who else? Vietti, Joe Roberts. There's a lot of the guys that have been in Moto3 a long time who are looking like they're on borrowed time right now. I agree.

100%. 100%. There, yep. All right. Well, let's get into MotoGP then since we've taken care of the championship in Moto2.

And we'll look at qualifying. So in the first qualifying, you had Marini, Miller, Renz, Marrera, Mir, Digia and Bez. Shockingly, because of the rain, you had Yamaha, Toprac and Quattro already getting into the second session. I guess the big name really is Bez, right? Bez is in this first qualifying session and you're going, is the Aprilia not that good?

What happened? Come on, people, it was the rain. There's no doubt in my mind that the Aprilia is the best bike on the grid as of right now. Now, whether anybody can develop and catch them is a question that remains to be seen. But either way, halfway Bezeki and Marrera are leading.

Miller had a crash. He was down to turn one. Digia goes to second. Bez ran off at 910, so he wasn't able to improve. But Bez and Digia get out of that first session and they get into Q2.

Now, Q2, Benya is down. The front just gave out of turn 10. He whops and throws it into the gravel trap. It's like nothing has changed for Peco Benya on that Ducati, which is really, really strange to me. I don't know.

I think now it's mental. I really beginning to think that this is between his ears, Rich. He needs a change of scenery so bad that it isn't going to work any other way. A thought or two? Well, I have to conclude actually that I totally, 100% agree with you now because last year you might have said Marquez was the only person that could ride the bike.

This year you've got Digiantonio doing Digia type things on the bike. They're all on 26s, so other people are making the bike work. Maybe it's still not to Benya's liking or as you say, I mean, it's a tricky situation for him because obviously Marquez came into that team last year, wiped the floor with everybody. I know I had a horrid second half of the year and again, although it's not official, looks like he's leaving. So all of those things together just mean it must be, from his point of view, a very challenging situation to be in.

And, you know, again, he just sort of gets on these sort of downward spirals, doesn't he? It feels like as the weekend goes on. I mean, he used to be famous for having terrible Fridays and then sort of getting it all put together on a Saturday and a Sunday. It's kind of gone in reverse now. He looked actually pretty decent on Friday.

He did. Things kind of started to unravel Saturday onwards. So I don't know, it's going to be, I think, another kind of tough watch and a long year for broad Peco Benya. But he does at least have, let's assume rumours are true, he does at least have the Aprelia ride with his mate Bez. And that might be the best thing for him.

I think it will. As things stand at the minute, I think anything's better than what he's got at the moment. And bearing in mind, this is a champion that we're talking about. Two times and almost a third. Very much kind of the favoured son, given that he's Italian in an Italian team.

Won more races and more points than anybody on a Ducati or something like that, which I was like, wow, he even won more than Stoner. But Stoner had bikes that were really terrible. But Stoner won on them occasionally, which is bizarre. It's not a debate for now. It's probably one that we should have done over the off season or the off season to come.

But I've got my doubts really about the Benya and the Martín titles in terms of quite where they sit, given somebody who wasn't really around most of that time. I agree. I agree. OK, so Benya was down. Then Mark went to the pole and he had a super big twitch after he did that.

Acosta was down at turn four. Then Digia went to pole and then Mark was all the way down to fourth. Halfway it was Digia, then Mark, then Martín, Bez, Iagura and Quattrarra, which was kind of a weird mix. You know, you don't really think of Martín because he's been oft injured, but he's starting to make good on it. Bez would go to second, then Digia improves his time.

Then Martín was down at turn six. A luckily not hurt. Digia then went down at four. It's just plain flat chaos at this point. But it works out to where Digia is on pole.

I think that's his first career pole in MotoGP, I believe, in the MotoGP class. Second. I think it might be a second. Might second, I think. Then Bezeki, then Marquez.

So Mark makes the front row. Quattrarra was fourth. At one point, I think Quattrarra was the fastest person for a little bit. It was definitely looking to set pole. The last sector, he didn't quite put it together or whatever.

And so it was like, no, no, you can't have Quattrarra just put this V4 underpowered bike on there. But he almost did. I mean, he qualified for it. It was still amazing, I think. Having been rubbishing that bike to the media in the Thursday debrief as well.

I mean, he's a massive talent. Shut up, up and rock. F up sometimes, you know, you've been paid a lot of money. Yeah, it's frustrating. But, you know, there is potential in that bike already.

Uh huh. Martin fifth, Iagura sixth, Outagura seventh, Alex Marquez eighth. A bad year for Alex on the 26th, I think, or a corrected position for him. Take your pick. Yeah, I'd say business is back to normal.

Mm hmm. That's what I'm thinking. Acosta, because of that crash only got to ninth. Zarco was 10th. Benya had the crash and was out 11th.

Toprac was 12th. I don't even think Toprac actually, he definitely did not do well. I don't remember seeing him out on track, to be quite honest. No, I mean, as you said earlier on, he kind of made it straight into Q2, which was a great effort on his part with the rain the day before. And the rain's a great leveler.

Always is. And in mind, he's riding on tires he's never ridden on before or had very, very limited time on so far this season. So I think over the course of the weekend, he did an outstanding job. Ploprac showed up his teammate. Sure did.

Yep. We are on to the sprint. 15 laps. Green light goes and Aldiger just goes all kinds of sideways. It was like he didn't engage the launch assist or somehow something didn't turn and click on or something, I don't know, but he was just all kinds of sideways.

Digia stole the lead from Mark and then Quattrarro and then Bezeky. Quattrarro made his way to second as they were, as some of the guys started to go a little bit wide. And then Martín went to fifth. On the second lap, Mir crashes at turn six. So again, the Honda doesn't like the heat treated rear tire, probably overriding it a little bit and push the front.

And there you go down. By the third lap, Mark had got his way back to second. Quattrarro was wide and Bezeky also came through to push Quattrarro back. And for Bezeky to take third, Digia had a 1.2 second lead, which was impressive stuff from Digia. It's kind of like the Digia we expect to have as opposed to the Digia we had last year.

And then by lap five, it's still Digia, Mark, Bez, Martín, Quattrarro, and Iguirre has now snuck in to the top six. By lap six, Martín had gotten by Bezeky, who had made a small mistake, which allowed him to go by. Then Zarco crashes at turn one. He was down and out. By lap 10, it's Digia, then Mark, then Martín, then Bez, Iguirre, Quattrarro.

Nothing topping there. Five laps to go. Vignoles crashes out of the race. So he's done. With three to go, Mark gets by Digia at turn two after a very small mistake by Digia.

He was just a smidge deep, a little bit of the curb and then couldn't get it pulled back online. Mark took advantage of that. And Mark goes on to win the sprint followed by Fabio Di Giantonio. Then Martín got a third. He was on the podium.

He beat his teammate. He beat Bez because Bez is fourth, which I was super impressed by. Iguirre a fifth and looking really nice. Then Quattrarro a sixth. Then Alex Marquez.

Benyatta got an eighth. So it's like, oh, things are starting to look a little better. And then Acosta managed a point in the sprint. One of the nicest things about the sprint was the fact that Mark came up to Martín and they sort of had a chat, which Martín said it was great. He's really my friend.

He was there for me when I was all busted up and I really didn't know what I was going to do and hey, look, you got to be healthy. You got to get yourself back together. Getting da da da da. Whatever it was, I forget all of what Martín said, but a lot of accolades for how much Mark helped, hey, Martín get back to where he was. So that's a feel good story out of all that.

You know, I mean, Martín did not want to give up that bronze medal he had for that third place around his neck. He widely so. I mean, it was good to see him back and good to see him there. And I was impressed. He'd beat Bezeky.

Some thoughts on the sprint, Rich? I mean, it wasn't a particularly exciting race, I don't think, compared to the other races that we've just been speaking about. But just good to see De Giantonio on the pole and, you know, having a strong race out front, as you say, tiny mistake. And Mark was there as you just know, he will be. I mean, he just doesn't miss anything, does he?

If you give him a tiny little chance. I mean, other than that, nothing much really to say. I mean, Bez had a real struggle on the Friday and things still look to be pretty tough on the Saturday. And then I think, although I didn't watch it, the Sunday morning warm up, they tried something and that obviously helped a lot. But yeah, I mean, Martin on the podium, that's his first podium on the Aprilia, I think, isn't it?

Yes. Anyway, he pretty much missed all the last season, more or less. So, yeah, I mean, again, I just think it's a shame that he's leaving really, because I could really see him being a title contender on that bike, potentially even this year. I mean, he does look good. OK, the caveat being he doesn't need to be having any crashes and injuring himself again.

And he does tend to duff himself up when he crashes. But yeah, no, he looks as if he's really sort of finding his feet with that bike now. Yeah. All right. Let's move to the race on Sunday.

Again, it was a 31 lap race down to 23 because of track degradation. So they chopped eight laps off of it. When the lights go out, Bez just gets a flyer of a start. I mean, he just goes bonkers crazy. He's into the lead right off the bat, followed by Digio, followed by Mark, then Martín, Acosta and then Alex Marquez.

Digio goes wide at one that allowed Mark to get by on the second lap. Jack Miller crashed his bike. He was down on lap four. Bender crashed his KTM. He was done.

Well, on lap five, we have Bez, Mark, followed by Digio, then Martín, Acosta and Alex Marquez. By lap six, Digio gets by Mark and he goes very, very wide and Martín goes into second. So basically Digio got by Mark, pushed everybody wide as he did it. Right. He sort of took Mark out of the curbs.

All Mark Marquez, he sort of gave Marquez a Marquez move, but he didn't do it as good as Mark because he couldn't stop his own bike, which gave a really big barn door to drive through if you're Jorge Martín. Thank you very much, boys. I appreciate that. And off we go. By lap 10, it's now Bez followed by his teammate, Martín, then Digio, then Mark Marquez, Acosta and then Alex.

On lap 11, Peco has a crash at turn one and the front end is folded. Mir is down at turn four. Way to go with Juan Mir again. He riding it too hard and having problems. And I mean, he was up pretty far.

He'd come from P7 to be pretty close up front and he crashed out at turn four from P7 is what I'm trying to say. Got that backwards, but you know, he's out there trying as always. It's just, I just wish him to have some better luck. And I just hope the 850 is going to work for him when they get there. But I think it's going to be another bit of struggle this year with the Honda.

On lap 12, Alex got by Acosta. On 14, Acosta got back by Alex and they then flip flop back and forth. So that's all they did is Acosta was back by and Alex went back by. And that's why I'm talking about them flip flopping because it all happened on the same lap. 15 laps in it's Bez, Martín, Digio, Mark, Alex, Aguera now in there.

Cause he had gotten by Acosta. Five laps to go and Mark gets by Digio at the 6.7. Then Digio with four laps to go gets back by Mark and Mark was just wide that little bit at 11. He got in sort of the tarmac that was building up, lost the front of smidge, got on the curb, but it finishes off with Bezeky winning the race by a long shot. His teammate, Jorge Martín finishing second.

Digio gets the podium over Mark Marquez. He was off the podium in fourth. Then it's Aguera in fifth. Aguera absolutely strong ride. Again, you've got a question.

If we wouldn't went the whole distance, where does Mark and Aguera finish in that list? Did they beat Bezeky? I don't think so Rich, but I do think they had a great shot at being past Martín and probably Digio to get both of those guys potentially. I think Aguera would have got Mark actually. I think so too, maybe.

Aprelia is a better bike and Aguera is really good with the tires as well. I think he could have gotten a podium. I think Aguera is in for podiums this year somewhere. At least a couple. The Aprelia is just that good of a bike.

So let's see, Aguera was fifth. Alex Marquez was sixth. Acosta seventh. Then it's Aldegar, Zarco, Raul Fernández, Luca Marini, Mort Badeli, Marrero, Renz and then Bastianini. Those are the people who scored points from that.

Rich thoughts on the race. Things I may have missed. I don't think you missed anything because there wasn't really too much to talk about as far as I'm concerned. I mean, there was a bit of a back and forth with Acosta and Alex Marquez towards the end and as you said, Digio and Mark Marquez were going at it a bit. And fair play to Digio.

I mean, having lost that position, he fought really hard to get it back. And, you know, that takes a bit of doing because that's up against Mark Marquez. You know, not an easy guy to pass and not an easy guy to beat. So that was really goodbye, Digio. Special shout out to Firmin Aldegar.

Good points finish. I mean, bone in mind, he snapped his FEMA, what, in January, was it? I think. Yeah. Early in the new year.

For most mortals, that would be a four to six month recovery. And he's back on a bike scoring decent points within two months. I mean, that's bonkers really. Very young and fit, it's true. But I can never quite imagine the pressure of not crashing as well, because you don't want to be breaking or at least redamaging to some extent something that's not quite fully healed yet.

So, I mean, it's amazing what these guys do. Weird weekend for Raul Fernandez, really. You know, the track has completely swapped this weekend, didn't it? In terms of a gear look good all weekend. Fernandez looked to be having a struggle, unlike it was in Round 1 in Thailand, where it was completely the other way around.

So and just a thought occurred to me about Joanne Meir. Again, that's a rider I'd like to have a talk about one time with you, Jim, in terms of how good is Joanne Meir, because we just don't quite know, do we? No. He does crash an awful lot. Yeah.

But he crashes out of positions where he's really pushing hard. And yeah, that's a discussion for another day. I would be sad if HRC don't retain him, because I think he's Yeah, I agree. bone enough commitment, if not results. And bearing in mind, he got wiped out of a heck of a lot of races, for you know, I thought was own last year.

Qualified better. These first two rounds have not been in the Honda's favour. I mean, Marini was down twice on Friday. Those are collector items. You know, Marini crashes.

He doesn't crash often. No, he doesn't. He was down over the weekend. I mean, any guy in the Honda that looked pretty stable all weekend was Marrera, to be honest, in his second race on a MotoGP bike. So good weekend for Marrera.

He's been impressive on the Honda. Yeah, steady and just. For a rookie. Yeah, going about it very sensibly. So that's to do with credit.

But yeah, Meir being linked to Trackhouse though, at the moment, would be a sort of repartnering with Davide Brivio from the old Suzuki days and whatnot. So that might be a move that happens if he doesn't stay at Honda. But the one thing I just did want to point out, bearing in mind, again, the rumours of where he's going to end up and that is, I believe, last place, one Maverick Vignales again. Oh, yeah. As you can see, the tutoring by Jorge Larranto is paying massive dividends.

Well, and bearing in mind, this is a person who's tipped to have already been signed to go up to the KTM Works squad along with Alex Marquez, which again, I don't want to sort of create too much hate mail, but that is about the most unambitious Works team line up. Well, I can think of, to be honest with you. Yeah, I cannot fathom what is going on with KTM in their decision making with riders. And again, it does bring into question. And again, TNT sports commentators mentioned this a couple of times over the weekend.

And I'm proud that we were having this discussion in the off season, which is that perhaps there should be a kind of a signings window later on into the year, because a lot of these deals have been done before round one. Yeah. I mean, contracts are always there to be broken. It's true. They're always get out clauses on one side or the other.

But if both of those signings are actually ink on paper, if I was Pit Bari or Aki Ayo, whoever's been in charge of that particular decision making process, I'd be having a few sleepless nights at the moment, particularly given how much pressure KTM are under to perform. Agreed. Given the perilous state of the team and the brand overall and the money that's been put into the MotoGP program, they need people if they're losing a cost to which looks as if it is definitely happening. And Brad Binder, you'd have to say probably really isn't doing anything to justify being retained. It's early in the season.

But if these decisions have already been made, I just think it's absolutely crackers to be making decisions that early. And Vignales kind of gave up in Thailand and didn't appear to do much more. And don't get me wrong. I mean, on his day, Vignales is almost unbeatable. But I mean, the glory days appear to be long behind.

It'll be interesting to see how he does at Kota, because that's his favorite track. And he's done really well there over the years. If he can't drag one out at Kota, then it's game over. No hope. Yeah.

Well, just like if Mark doesn't win at Kota on the Ducati. True. There's alarm bells going to happen in Bologna, right? Yeah. You know, if Vizecki or Martín are winning that race and Mark's third, which is highly possible, then there's something wrong.

That's Mark's track. So I'm really looking forward to see how this all works out. There's an interesting question, Jim, and it's one for you to ponder perhaps and have a look at the next weekend when you're at the track and stuff. But has the Ducati become quite a bad bike, relative to the Aprilia I'm talking about, and Mark is obviously the guy that makes it work. The slight query to that now is Fabio Digiantonio, who you would not say is a Mark Marker's level kind of alien rider, as far as we've seen to date.

But he's making that 26 bike look pretty good. So maybe the bike is good. But what's happening with all the other Ducati riders then? So what's going on with the Ducati this year? Don't know.

It'd be interesting for you to observe trackside the various Ducatis and what's going on in terms of the 26 bikes, at least. Oh yeah. I agree. I'm looking forward to that. That's one of the things that's definitely on the list of to-dos is to find a, I'm trying to think of like where I want to go at Kota to watch it.

I think two would be very telling, just to see if they've got more weight on the front versus last year or something like that. Somewhere that's putting pressure on the front end. Yeah. Where it counts. Yep.

They're at maybe the exit of, what is that? 18, 16, 17, 18. That long right-hander. And they're, you in there, cause that's also bumpy downhill going then into 19. So you can kind of watch both areas and get a, get a take on it.

So I'll spend some time over there, see what happens. We'll talk about this some when I get back and we do the show from Kota. So anyway, the championship, Bezeki is now leading the championship on 56 points. Martina is second with 45 points. Acosta slipped to third with 42.

DJ Antonia is fourth with 37 and Marquez, Mark Marquez is fifth with 34 points. Okay. Do not panic people. He is only nine points out of first place. Although it seems really weird that he has not won a race yet, nor has he really had a good podium yet.

I mean, okay. He won a sprint race. I'm talking about winning on a Sunday. Here's what I meant to say, just to clarify myself. Iagura is in there at 33 points.

Ferdette is at 29. Marquez as in Alex in 13 points, then Binder on 13 and Marbodelli on 12. It's a long way to go, but wow. Do the Aprilias not look good? I mean, there are four Aprilias in the top 10 in the riders' championship.

Yeah. And I did not have that on my 26-bin go-kart. Sorry. Which year was it a Cota that Madriks Vignales won by like 10 seconds or something stupid? That wasn't last year, was it?

Cause it was well last year. It must have been the year before. But the Aprilia goes well at, well, the Aprilia appears to go pretty well everywhere now. I think it goes good anywhere. It used to be particularly good at Cota.

Yeah. That's years ago. Oh, that's back in the, when the Honda got really bad. So what, after 2020? So that might've been like in 2022?

No, I think it was 24 when- Was it 24? Maverick won. Maybe. Yeah, it was after 2020, I can tell you that. The famous year of the gorilla suit in Parc Fermé, wasn't it?

Oh yeah. Or the gorilla hat anyway. I tried to forget that. Yeah. I never quite worked out what that was all about, but yeah.

So the Aprilia goes well. So again, it'll be good to get your sort of trackside notes of where the Aprilia and the Ducati's kind of shape up against each other in terms of relative. Cause you can tell, can't you, in terms of where they crack the throttle, where the breaking points are, you can be looking carefully. You can tell what's separating the quick from the not quite so quick. I always liked to, it might seem counterintuitive, but I like to be near an outside of a corner because one of the first things that move on a rider is your feet because it's that reaction to what's happening and usually it's the feet.

But it's also nice to be able to see when they pick up the throttle, where they're breaking. I don't really judge a bike on their braking ability because everybody breaks differently. And it's how you feel on the bike. It's more of like, are you pushing at the apex? Are you not pushing at the apex?

So where's your front end at that point? Okay. Where can you pick up the throttle? Are you picking it up earlier than Mark is? Are you picking it up earlier than did you or what are those guys doing?

And then, you know, okay, what is that in comparison to say where the Zeki or Martin are picking up that throttle? So all of that's going to be really fun to watch and look at. I'm looking forward just to spending a lot of time in a lawn chair, watching that stuff and just trying to eke out every last little bit of what's going on. Yeah. I hope you have a great weekend and safe travel zone back.

Thank you, sir. Good for you to meet up with Jake as well. Yeah. It's got some photos for the social media and one thing and another. Post as much as possible, so we shall see.

But that's it for this show, folks. I'm going to drive safe because I got to get down there. So I'll do that for this weekend. That went off. You did right, Steve.

And that will be that. Yeah. Cheers, everyone.