Chaos in COTA

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 832, recording on April 4th, 2026, Chaos in Kota. I'm Jim McDowell hosting the show and since Kota is the US race, I had to get some extra help with all this.

So of course with me as my co-host from the UK is Richard Jout. You're doing good this evening, right Rich? Yeah, nice to be recording early on a Saturday afternoon, which is a nice change for me because normally about 11 o'clock at night, isn't it by the time we finish up? That is true, it's late for you. But like I said, I also need somebody else to help because somebody else from the show was with me at Kota and that's the guy that lives on the west coast of the United States, Jake Rohrer.

Jake, welcome to a MotoGP podcast bud. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to join you guys. It was a great weekend. Yeah, it was fun being there with you and hanging out with your friends and stuff, walking around the track and checking out all the racing.

So it's always fun when the hosts get together to do anything. But this was really fun, really enjoyed it. Yeah, we did as well. We really appreciated you showing us around. None of us had ever been to Kota, so it was really, really good time.

It was great to hang out with you and your friend and your boys. So yeah, we really enjoyed it. Appreciate that. Well, folks, if you can, be great if you could help us out in the show because it takes a little bit for us to get to Kota. It takes me a little bit to get to Kota.

It takes Jake a little bit to get to Kota. USA is a big place. So if you can throw a little something in the pot, that'd be really great. You can go to our website, motopodcast.com, PayPal and Patreon links on the right hand side of the page. If you can't put anything in the pot, that's fine.

It's great. We understand. Just leave us a review wherever you get this podcast. Share it with your friends. Follow us on our social media at Motopod official and Instagram and like the show if you would please.

With all of that, there was some listener feedback that showed up as we were down in Kota. The next one is from Don Barnes and I will go. We will now listen to what Don has to say. He says, I am thoroughly continuing to enjoy your podcast. I have a few things to rabbit on about in another email.

But for today, having just seen one J. Martin wobble over the finish line for the Kota sprint win, spoiler alert. And he says, I am emotionally ecstatic. I am suggesting that on the races thus far in 26, it is a golden era for MotoGP. The Kota camera angles may have had something to do with it, but some of the passing bike positioning and the ragged edge riding and commentary is unbelievable.

Aren't you proud of these rocket ships this year? So Don's question guys is, is this a golden era of MotoGP? Rich, I'll let you start with your thoughts. Oh, thank you. First of all, I just need to revive, given that it's five o'clock in the afternoon, I'm going to just revive an old MotoGP tradition with the beer can pot there.

Please do. Fuller's London Pride, outstanding Amber Ale. There we go. Just to enjoy. We didn't hear the can opening.

That was the signature sound. Oh, you'd have to put the little clip in, Jim. Anyway, back to Don's very interesting question. You answered it, Jim, didn't you? My initial thought was exactly the same as what you replied to Don, really, which is to say that I think we're just at the end of this rule set and everybody's had a chance to...

Well, not everybody's doing this as well as everybody else, but by and large, there are quite a few bikes that you can foresee winning a race at some point during this year. As the rules have stayed stable for a while, the manufacturers have somewhat converged in competitive order. Obviously, what I definitely think is a golden year is just the sheer amount of talent. Every single rider in the races in MotoGP, I think, is capable of winning on the right package and under the right circumstances. Whereas I don't think you would necessarily have said that in the 990 era, for example.

There, you had a very wide disparity of bikes as well. I'm always cautioning myself not to be too guilty of rose-tinted glasses because you tend to think of Rossi on the RC211V, the original four-stroke that came out from Honda. There wasn't a huge depth of field. You had great battles with Ghibonau and a few other people during that period, and the Ducati was pretty awesome. There was also some pretty tail-end Charlies in the field back in those days as well.

If we are in a golden era, I think it's just the sheer parity of the equipment and the stacked amount of talent riding it now. That's what makes it golden to me. But as you say, Jim, things will be upended big time next year. We may go back to having a very dominant one manufacturer again if somebody gets it particularly correct. Jake?

Yeah, I'll echo that. I think what we've seen is a big result of just the concession rules working as intended, really trying to bring parity to the field. It's definitely worked. I mean, it is a little sad to see the four Yamahas just at the back, decidedly, definitively at the back right now. I feel like that is the one exception to calling this a golden age of MotoGP this particular year.

It's pretty difficult. But we kind of know what they're doing there, and it's understandable. So yeah, it's definitely... I mean, it's fantastic to see the Aprilias actually taking another step and maybe being faster than the Ducatis now without any question. We'll see when they get back to Europe if that's really true or not.

But yeah, it's fantastic racing, extremely entertaining. And Koda was just incredible. I can't... I mean, I'm going to go off the script here, but you cannot appreciate a track without going to it. You just cannot understand the elevation changes and the camber.

And wow, Koda is just way beyond what I ever realized. So I really, really enjoy going there and actually understanding the track. And finally understanding why Marquez was so good there historically. There's all these crazy hard, fast, big braking zone left turns. There's like four of them.

And it's like, that's why Marquez dominated there for so long. The track really catered to his strengths. So yes, the long-winded way of saying yes, I agree. Yeah, I'm with you guys on this one. I think it has more to do with the fact that the rules have been stabilized and the rules for a while have also dictated what size diameter piston you can have.

So that means you were limited to a certain stroke, which puts everybody sort of into that box from an engineering sort of motor configuration thing. There was no rule about that in the early 990 era. You could come up with anything you wanted. Yamaha just went with an inline four. I think Suzuki created a V4 at the time.

Asaki came with an inline four when they were there. Honda looked at the rules and looked at the weight biases and everything and said, huh, if we make a five cylinder, that'll be the best thing to do. And they did and they dominated that era. For me, I'm going to be selfish. This is a great time in MotoGP.

I'm not going to discard that fact that the racing is great. The competition is fantastic. But man, for me, the golden era is 502 strokes. That was just the sounds, the smells, all of that is my childhood. I will forever think of that as the golden era.

But we are in a time at which there is some incredible racing. It is a second golden era, I think, perhaps. If you look through time periods, I think there's always a golden era followed by a downfall where there isn't the talent or there's not the people or something happens, the rule changes and then it all reforms itself again and you get another point of great racing and you think of that as a golden era. This might be, I think we consider or I think it's considered now since we're in four strokes that this is the modern era of MotoGP. This is probably the first golden, true golden era of the return of four strokes to this racing.

I have to agree with Don. Aprilia is peaking right now. Their bike is absolutely fantastic. They have done the homework. They've consistently made it better and better and better and now they have gotten 100% better than they were.

They've got, I think, the right rider at the right time and he has pushed them to where they need to be, which is what you want. So it's all good and Martin's getting better as seen from this weekend. I think he's healing and we're going to enjoy this guys because we get to the new rules next year in Pirelli tires. This can be a coin flip as to who comes out of the box. If there's any indication, when you went to 800cc's, this little kid named Casey Stoner got onto a Ducati with Bridgestone tires and walked the field.

Now the tires are going to be Pirelli's, but if you're a Ducati, how much effort are you putting into your 1000cc bike when you know the rule change is coming? You're probably not putting as much into it as what you may have. I think they have basically tuned it down a little bit. I think Apulia still went full force at it, but Ducati's got a lot of bikes that they have to build because they have to supply Grissini, they have to supply VR46 and they have to supply the other team. They have the most bikes on the grid compared to anybody.

You have four Apulias. I think Honda's got four bikes and whatnot. In Yamaha's got four bikes as well. That is that. Just a quick follow on thought about Apulia because something just occurred to me.

I've said this on the show before so I won't go on about it for too long, but I always really lament the fact that Apulia never quite got the cube right back in the early phase of MotoGP because that was a really awesome bike. Where they're at now, I think it's quite similar to that because that was such an ambitious project that cube. They could never get it down to the weight limit. Obviously you could run the bike lighter with a three cylinder bike. I don't think they ever did get it down to really take full advantage of that allowed advantage within the rules in terms of the weight of the bike.

Now you see them again, clearly I think the smallest factory probably with the least amount of financial resources, but really thinking out of the box and being very, very innovative and this time absolutely nailing it. I think where they have really scored this time is obviously with this ground effect thing and that's going to be interesting. Looking at the 27 rules, I think they will have quite a big advantage here because whilst the outwardly obvious wings and stuff are going to be curtailed, I think ground effect itself as a concept of aero is certainly going to remain. This idea of pinning the bike at certain angles by the way that you shape the fairing and stuff not having necessarily great big bolt on wings and stuff. That's going to be interesting to see how they manage to continue that level of development and I don't think aero is going to go away even though it's normally not banned but being kind of reduced.

I think it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that one and they have clearly really led from the front on this and I think we are now seeing the full effect of that along with other developments of course and they've got the right riders now etc. But yeah, it just made me think going back to the Cube and what an ambitious project that was. The thing was just crazy, it was like a digital bike and it just didn't behave itself. They had riders walking away from it in the end because they just didn't trust it. It was so vicious.

So yeah, it's funny how things sort of repeat themselves but sometimes they work out with the better as is the case now. So yeah, just a follow up thought on Aprilia and they've done a fantastic job and they thoroughly deserve the success they're getting now. Yep, they sure do. Let's cover some little bit of news here that's out there. So Grissini is strongly linked with being a Honda team next year.

Because Honda wants to put more bikes in there. It was in Brazil, it's been back here again and back here again with more vigor in Coda. I almost got to think that this is a done deal. Rich, do you think it's a done deal? Well, it's certainly a rumor that keeps cropping up and that normally suggests that there's a fair amount of weight behind it.

Not just sort of idle chitter-chatter or whatever. And I believe it's the case that Grissini are not terribly happy with the notion that they'll be losing Aldegaard straight away as well up to VL46, which looks like it's going to happen. So I think there's a few things going on which perhaps, and as I said when we spoke on the Brazil show, I think Honda will be caught in them pretty heavily as well because Honda will want more bikes out there because they know that the data game is key, particularly going into a new set of rules. And they do not want to, I was going to use a swear word, they don't want to foul up like they did with the 800s. Let's just put it that way.

The more data, the more stuff that they can gather, I think the better for them. And Grissini are obviously a little bit, well, I gather are a bit unhappy with some of the stuff that's going on politically and in terms of the management side. We'll have to keep on top of that one. So as I stated, I was in Cota, Jake was in Cota, so Jake, you and I might be having a little more of this conversation. I thought that the campground was fuller this year than it was last year.

I felt like there were more people who were there because the campground is a weird place because it's just a big field that you park in and it's a free for all event wherever you want to be. And usually we are sort of, because we get there sort of late on Thursday night, we tend to sort of be off by ourselves, especially because we're trying to find a place to put a 40 foot RV, but a bunch of people then filled in around us, which made me think that, well, perhaps maybe there was more people there. They have now taken it to where the grandstand that is at, what are those turns sort of looks at turn 12 and then you see 13, 14, 15 through their little switchbacks. That was packed for race day. Quite a lot of people that were sitting in there.

They do not let anybody into the grandstands that it runs parallel to the backstretch. They've taken that away. But I do have a complaint. Now there is a survey that has gone out from Kota to people who've been to Kota. Did you see that?

Did you get an email for that one, Jake? I didn't because my friend bought all the tickets, so he probably got it. Yeah. Have they, are they not releasing ticket sale figures and attendance figures? No.

Why is that? I mean, I feel like it's strange. I think that some of it, I think has to do with the popularity of Formula One, where there's definitely probably 150,000 people there on race day for the Grand Prix. I don't think that they want to say that they're only getting 65 to 80, 65 to 68,000 people there for a MotoGP race day because the track kind of looks empty. You know, and there's not, but if you, if you notice a lot of the camera angles cut away from grandstands that don't have people in them.

Now, to be fair, where those grandstands are isn't the best places to watch racing from. I didn't, I mean, it didn't feel empty to me. It certainly felt like it could have accommodated significantly higher numbers, but it didn't feel like, it didn't feel desolate at all. You know, I, I felt like we were at a pretty well attended event, you know, it's a huge place too, right? It's kind of like, they keep equating it to Silverstone.

Like it's really hard to actually make it feel full. But I thought I saw pretty big crowds, like on some of the grandstands and in some of the green areas, like it was, it felt busy. Yeah. For some reason, a lot of people like to be on the front straight away and they like to be in the turn on the hill and turn one. Turn one is a pretty awesome place.

We went up there for Moto2 and I was glad we did because it was, it was a pretty, pretty dramatic spot to watch that hill. You just can't, you can't see the hill on TV. It's crazy. Yeah, it's impossible. It's impossible.

So there, so if you went to Kota and you have gotten the Kota survey, I'm going to ask for my own personal selfishness that you asked that the grandstand in turn 10 be open so that MotoGP folks can sit in that turn because that is the best place to sit and watch the race from hands down. For motorcycles, it is the best place. It's where Mark fell off in practice. Oh my God. It's like forever.

It is, it is Simon Patterson actually put it probably the best way that I've ever heard anybody describe it. He says, go walk out to turn 10. It's the closest thing to being at the TT that you're ever going to experience anywhere else because they go through there with such aggression and such speed and so much wiggle and it's just super crazy how they come over that hill. So please, if you got the survey, you go to Kota, please say that you want that open because that would be fantastic if we could all sit there. That's all I got about things from Kota.

How about you, Jake? Anything else you want to add? I don't. I've really enjoyed it. I mean, I didn't nothing really jumped.

The only thing that jumped out at me is, you know, I'm I don't understand this. Just pattern of at every sporting event, there has to be a music playing whenever there's nobody talking and commentating. It's like as soon as somebody stops talking, they start playing music. It's like at the baseball games and the hockey games where they immediately start just piping music into your brain and can't get a moment's peace. That drives me nuts.

I don't know why they feel that that's so important to do. I think it's just irritating. So I think that's just a general entertainment problem. Probably not at all specific to Kota, but I would I would be the one to send a comment like that and they would reply and say nobody's ever complained about that ever. But yeah, other than that, I mean, it's really, really great.

Like lots of food, well distributed all over the place. Not the best food, but you know, acceptable, overpriced, but acceptable. And you could get around, you know, as you see all the different spots pretty pretty good access to most of it as opposed to, you know, some tracks it's really hard to walk around and be able to freely kind of roam and explore. Kota is pretty good that way, I think. So, yeah, I would recommend everybody go.

It's a pretty amazing racetrack. For racing in the United States, it is the premier racetrack in the United States. There's no question about that. It's what FIA grade one and FIM grade acceptable. So it is a stark comparison to the racing.

Some of the places that Moto America goes, just those are club tracks that are holding a motorcycle event. Now that sort of excludes Moto, sort of excludes Mid-Ohio, Barber, Road Atlanta. Those are all well known. Laguna Seca also as well. But some of the other tracks, New Jersey, Motorsports Park, where they had one in New Orleans, I think at one point they did a couple races there.

They're club places. Pit Race was a club and it was a nice track, but yeah, it isn't Kota. But you may as well just imagine it's not Kota. If you have the means and you like motorcycles or you like Formula One, even if you want to go see World Endurance there, race cars or go see NASCAR there, it's a great place to go. And there's a lot of fun things to do in Austin, a lot of things to see.

So you can make it a trip and it is well worth it. Yeah, I forgot to mention like the location of the track. It's very close to Austin and the airport is between Austin and the track. So it's a very, the logistics of the trip were pretty easy. We found a nice little Airbnb in the southeast corner of the city and it was just like very convenient, a nice neighborhood.

We ran into a lot of motorcycle people out at the places to eat and coffee shop and really close to where we were staying. And so the whole trip was just like, wow, this is a good, this is easy. Like it's all set up to be pretty straightforward. So I just wanted to mention that. And Austin's fun.

There's a lot of cool people out and about. And if you're into socializing after the races in the city, it's enjoyable. Yep, there's all of that. All right, let's actually get to what we're here to talk about the actual racing that took place in it. We'll start off with the Moto3 guys and what's going on there.

Now, first thing I'd like to talk about, you and I, Rich, we've talked about how Max Keelys has the it factor. He's the it kid of Moto3 right now. I think of it as like, well, what is that it factor? What is it that makes Keelys so special? Now, last year we didn't get to see Keelys at the Circuit of the Americas because he wasn't old enough to race yet.

So this is the first time that I've got to see Keelys on a motorcycle up close and personal. And where I saw a lot of him in practice and stuff, it was all during the transition out of turn six, going to turn seven. Now that's sort of the end of the S's as you turn to go up the mountain, if you will. It's not really a mountain, but go up the hill and then dive over at ten. And Keelys, first of all, I want you to understand that when you go out of six, you're doing it as a right hander to go to the left that is seven.

That is actually going uphill, then cambers off, flattens and goes the other way, and then comes back out and goes up again. So there's like three camber transitions that actually happen there as you're going up and cresting a hill and back down again. Most of the guys that go through there, Moto3 wise, I'm not limiting this just to the guys that are racing Moto3, the really fast guys kind of get through there with equal throttle all the way from six to seven, but they sort of have a pause as they come up from being on the right side of the tire. They sort of pause in the center and then they sort of then can position themselves and lean into the turn at seven as they go from right to left. Keelys doesn't do that.

It is one smooth fluid motion as he moves across that motorcycle into that turn. And it was amazing to watch because one of the things is that if I'm going to the right, I'm pushing with my left leg on the foot peg, my left foot on the foot peg, to get the bike to come back up. But at some point I've got to get myself set to be able to weight myself evenly on both pegs to move myself over the other side of the bike. And then I've got to push, for the left hander, I've got to be willing to push with my right foot on the peg. Usually somewhere in that transition you get that little bit of a pause or a stoppage or you get a little wiggle.

You get something out of the motorcycle that's happening because you're making it do something that it doesn't want to do naturally. But Keelys is a perfect smooth path from one to the other. It's just pure ballet. It's just pure motion that he somehow accomplishes, which was really impressive to see out of a kid that's that young. And if he's doing that now, and then the other thing that I noticed about him, he goes into turns and he's braking, his right foot will dangle on the peg if he's setting up to go to a left hander.

It's weird. Both of his feet tend to dangle when he's going into corners. Watch it the next time you watch Moto3 races. Maybe it might have been just specific to the Dakota with the dangling of the feet, almost always off the pegs going into a corner. I don't know exactly what that's all about.

They hover around the pegs. He's trying to figure out where he wants to put his feet and then figures it out as he goes. But I was really impressed with Keelys, Rich. I tell you, to be that super smooth, to be that age is really amazing. Yeah.

It's a subjective thing. Well, it's not in the sense that he's more often or not now. He's the quickest. There's a clear factor element to that, which is plain for everybody to see. But it's just a combination of things with him.

Obviously, I was watching on TV. I wasn't tracks like you guys were, unfortunately. But through that section of lefts and rights, lefts, rights, to find that first, third to half of the track, he's just putting so much strain through the front end of that bike. He's making it work. I think there's probably an argument that Aspar could be the best team in Moto3, looking at their track record in recent seasons and the riders that they've had going through there.

You do immediately think of David Alonso, another one. In fact, Acosta was the main one before that, wasn't he? And Kielis does feel like another of these seminal talents coming through. I think it's just a combination of stuff. The thing that really impresses me as well is just how polished these guys are, or he is in particular, off the bike when he's being interviewed and stuff.

The real deal, the whole package is there. It's hard to see him not picking up the championship this year with the form that he's in. It's really difficult not to imagine him being into Moto2 next year, which raises the obvious question as to where might he go? Because there's not a huge amount of room at the end at MotoGP, and obviously Holger and Alonso are currently riding for Aspar in Moto2. There was some talk about both of those riders potentially getting into MotoGP, so there could be a slot that opens up, but it's going to be a while before we find out on that.

But definitely Kielis is something else, really something else. Jake, you got anything you want to say about Kielis? I haven't really been following Moto3 much, but you pointed this out when we were watching Trackside, and I will confirm that he was the smoothest and didn't look any slower than anybody else. Faster, I would think. And yeah, you just could not see, there was no moment during that transition where you saw the bike wiggle or move.

It was just the smoothest transition, like you said. I saw what you're describing, and I will agree, it was impressive. Alright, let's get into the qualifying. In the first qualifying session, you had Yamanaka, Buchanan, Ogden, Krusias, Danish, all those guys were in there. So it was interesting, all the guys were sitting in the pits for the first session.

It was about 11 minutes to go they finally decided to actually go out, so they wasted 4 minutes of track time, which would have been two laps. No one understands why these guys do that, but they do. Danish had a high side, and they hadn't even had a very bad high side out of turn 20, so out of the last turn on the front stretch, Danish was down. He never even got a lap in time at all, so he started dead last on the field for all that. Yellow flags killed a lot of people who were on really good laps there at the very end, but Ogden, Matini, Krusias, and Carrara all got out of that first session to get into the second qualifying session.

Now at QP2, I thought this was a done deal. I thought Keelys was just going to roll off on everybody and be gone, because he was fast as I think in every practice session. He was looking so smooth. I didn't think anybody had anything for him, but we would soon see that there was other stuff that was in there. Keelys had gone out with everybody, but then he immediately came in at the end of the first lap.

Now there was some speculation, or I thought possibly he had been doing all the laps by himself, and he didn't really maybe give anybody a tow or try to tow anybody around and let them have him as a marker, so he sort of came back in, let everybody else go out, and then he went right back out again to get there. But Carpe out of nowhere turned like a 2.12.5 lap, 2.12.5 lap, which was pretty amazing. So halfway through it was Carpe, Prathama, Pini, Esteban, Ogorman, and then Keelys there. Keelys would somehow not seem to get a really clean lap anywhere along it, but Carpe got it down to a 2.12.1, which was pretty impressive for Moto3 equipment around the big track at Kota. So at the end of the session you had Carpe, then Ogorman, who was on the sick 58 Corsa ride, then Prani, then Prathama, Pini, Esteban, Fernandez, Keelys, Somalia, and Ogden rounding out the top 10 in Moto3 qualifying.

When we get to the Moto3 race on Sunday, now again I think it should be stated, it was extremely cool on Saturday at Kota. The high was like 70 degrees Fahrenheit, mild wind, it was a beautiful day. Friday was like almost 90 degrees, I remember being in shorts and a t-shirt. Saturday was a hoodie and jeans for most of the day, it was cold, which Jake will verify that one. So maybe the coolness had something to do with these lap times.

So I know at one point Rich, you and I were going back and forth in the chat like, oh maybe MotoGP will get down to like a sub two minute lap or what not. But anyway, on Sunday the temperature was radically different, we had gone back to being very windy on race day and the temperature was in the middle 80s, so really we had sort of a weird arc of weather. Now this race is going to be 14 laps long. I think the other thing I forgot to mention here is that Munoz isn't riding and that's because he had to have another operation on his leg to help with the healing with his broken femur that he had from off season crash. And then Alcimora had a fractured elbow that he had gotten.

So those guys were for Munoz wasn't riding but Alcimosa was riding hurt. As we got in, yes sir Rich. All that talk of GP500s has taken you back into the 90s, you just said Alcimora. Oh sorry. Almanza.

Almanza, sorry. One wants what mine's one verse or something like that right? I can't help it guys, I live in that two stroke era of greatness. We're here to catch you Jim, don't worry. Yeah well thank you.

Somebody needs to, I've smelled one too many two stroke oil spills I guess, I don't know. Anyway, the Moto3 race at the beginning man, it was Carpe followed by Peroni, then Kylis, Pratima, Agden, or Gorman sorry, and then Fernandez. It was a really fantastic fight going on for like five, six, seven places there. Peroni would go to the lead, then Carpe was down to fifth as he went backwards. By lap 10, with 10 to go, Kylis had come back to the front.

I thought at this point he was just going to put a gap on everybody and just be totally gone, but he was followed by Carpe, Fernandez, Pini had showed up at this point, then Peroni and then Pratima. Pratima high sided himself out of that 11, a lot of action out of that 11 out of the tight. They call it the bobby pin turn. If you're ever at Kota and you look at the sign for turn 11, it says the bobby pin, which is rather interesting. Instead of a hairpin, they call it a bobby pin.

I guess it's Texas lingo. With 8 to go, it's a gang of five out front in Moto 3. Seven laps to go, it's still Kylis, still Peroni, Pini, Fernandez, and Carpe. Now, Pini got a big old draft on the way into 12 and he was wide as he was going through that. He was way wide coming out of 19, but he's still lead.

That whole weekend, Kylis was always using all of the track, which we've seen before. He is the master of using every bit of track that you are allowed to use and not a millimeter more, but running wide at 19 is not a penalty. It is, I don't remember the color structure. Blue is good, green is bad somehow, I think. He's a master of it.

I thought for sure there might have been a track limits warning or something for Kylis at that point, but he didn't. Kelso crashed out as well there. With 4 laps to go, it's a four-leader group up front as Fernandez is back leading and he's leading at that point. Three laps to go, Oh Gorman has crashed. Pini gets by Kylis at 11 and then Pini got by them again at 12 as Kylis drafted back by him down the long straightaway.

Carpe, who had been back a little bit, got caught up to the front three and it's a four-rider battle. Two laps to go, Kylis gets beaten up big time going into turn one at the top of the hill. He gets passed by both Carpe and Pini and Kylis was like dropping off. Carpe would go to second. This last lap was an absolute barn burner as basically they go into 11.

Perotti is there followed by Carpe. They kind of go after each other. Kylis gets by Pini. As they come back out, Perotti is getting really scrappy on the way down to 12 and through 19. Him and Carpe are just going at each other.

It's pass, repass or shove up the inside. When they wind up getting to turn 20, Carpe goes up the inside, takes Perotti. They both go wide. They go off the track. Meanwhile, as they're coming, Kylis gets passed by Pini going into 19 which was weird because nobody could touch Kylis at 19 all week until then.

Now Pini then kind of took it a bit slower into the turn or recognized the fact that the two guys in front were going to go after each other which they went off of it off the track. Then they came by which since they had run off, it allowed Pini to win, Kylis to get second. And then you had Carpe in third. Then Perotti. Fernandez would be fifth.

Salma, Jurate, Crucis, Bertelli, Ogden ran out of the top ten. Then O'Shea, Morelli, Danish, Jurate and Rios give you the last of the points finishers. An absolutely barnstormer of a Moto3 race. Rich, what did you think about that? Yeah, well it was certainly very entertaining to watch on TV.

Pini, I mean we mentioned him a couple of times in the last couple of shows. Obviously he switched over to Leopard for the season. Well Leopard were tired to get him. They certainly did, yeah. Because we know he's fast.

Unfortunately he spent most of the last year upside down at most of the tracks that he visited and the more he was that we would see more of this. I mean he's a very, very aggressive rider which is saying something in Moto3 to sort of highlight that with the rider in particular but he really is and that's part of the reason why he's crashed such a lot. But it looks as if the gem is starting to get polished a little bit in that environment. Now you might argue that he was perhaps a touch fortunate with what happened in front of him but I think he played that very cleverly kind of factoring in that Calpe and Peroni were going to have a bit of a ding-dong on the last couple of turns and true enough they screwed themselves really and he was there to pick up the pieces. I mean he was right behind them and Quiles couldn't quite nip him but again that was a great ride for Quiles as well because he looked like he was going to be fourth.

These are where championships are won when you grind out a second rather than a fourth and stuff like that. So just a good race. The other thing I was going to highlight was Keiser Gorman. I mean worth mentioning second on the grid. I think this is only his maybe fifth or sixth start.

I know he had two or three rides back in the last season. That sounds about right because he did have some substitute rides. Yeah, as you say he's in the 658 squad now. The thing that I wrote down is that you can understand that starting second on the grid this early in his full Moto3 career, I think it went through his head a little bit because he got into so many battles early on and he really kind of cost himself a lot of time and then that front group got detached and then obviously a Gorman crashed. So I'm hoping he'll take this as a great learning exercise that you just have to try and keep things a little bit more under control in the early stages and make sure you're there at the end rather than kind of costing yourself time and then crash trying to catch up sort of thing.

But a great weekend for him and very, very encouraging given how few races he's had in that team and then this full world championship as well. So other than that, yeah, I mean it's worth pointing out again that Almanzer obviously had that crash in Brazil and I think I heard that he's damaged either his shoulder or his elbow as a result of that crash. So that's why he wasn't there and they did have one rider in the LiquiMoly Moto3 squad and I'm just trying to think who it was. Just one rider went out there. I'm tempted to say it was another Fernandez but I might be wrong on that.

I'd have to look it up. But that's bad for Almanzer though because obviously he's had a pretty strong start to the season or looked like a strong start to the season but to be out already with injury, not great really, particularly with the killers and the sort of form that he's in. So I think that's it really. Yep. Let's look at the championship early on here.

Now Kylis is out on 65 points. He is 23, almost a race win ahead of Carpe, then Peroni, Pini, Morelli, Fernandez, Pratama, Almanza, I'll get it right this time folks, then Yuriate and Selma. So this is far from over. We're three rounds in. But anything can happen.

But Kylis is looking strong for sure right now. But the racing is still fantastic, which is what we're always looking forward to. Let's quickly move through Moto2 qualifying. In the first session there was a Screech, Piqueras, Kinet, Holgardo who had a really bad weekend. I'm like, what?

Garcia was in there, Vandenberg, Rueda and then Anju wasn't having anything going well with that VDS bike. Sasaki was down at turn three which caused a red flag because the bike was in the middle of the track. It had slid. He slid in the S's from turn three through four through five. I think the bike finally eventually stopped right there, which was pretty crazy.

They had to. There was no way you could have gotten the bike up and gotten it back out in the two each minutes that you've got to get around there. So that was the right call by race direction to get that there. Basically at the end it was Holgardo, a Screech, Kinet and Piqueras that got through. They were the four by halfway through and it stayed the same throughout the qualifying session.

When we get to the second qualifying session, Ortova went down as it went out. Then halfway through it was Alonso, Baltis, Piqueras, Lopez, Aegis and Quilvara. Baltis crashed with Huerta there on the last lap which kind of blew up a couple of people's laps but the person who was in the hot seat for qualifying was Alonso and then Baltis. Then it was Lopez, Piqueras, Vieti and Aegis. Now this didn't stand.

When we got to the track on Sunday, I didn't know this. Jake pointed it out to me when we hooked up for the Moto GP race. I was trying to figure out why Alonso was back in the pack. Turns out that the entire time in qualifying two, their tire pressure was 0.01 of a bar too low. Therefore, every lap that Alonso actually did was taken away and scratched as if he had never had any of that.

To put that in perspective, provided I did the math in my head correctly, that's 0.15 of a pound of air under the limit. I think that's pretty incredible they got gauges that are that good considering atmosphere and all that that's associated to every bit of it. I didn't realize, rightly or wrongly, that Pirelli had a spec for the tires for Moto that there's a pressure that they have to maintain. We hear so much about it from the standpoint of Michelin and the fronts in Moto GP. I was shocked that this existed for Pirelli.

They obviously game down along hard. Was it right and fair, Rich? Well, it's a rule. The obvious answer to that is yes. There's a line and they were on the wrong side of the line.

There's a punishment for that. They have to apply the punishment. Obviously, as you say, it's a tiny, tiny infringement in the overall scheme of things. But if that's the line, and I would imagine like you, I didn't know that there's a pressure parameter like that in Moto too. But I would imagine, particularly with coach in mind, given the speed that they're going down that back straight, you don't want rears blowing out.

And we have seen that happen in the past in various categories. So I would assume that's why the rule exists. Perhaps it's track specific. Maybe, I don't know. But like you, I was pretty surprised when the grid formed up or started to form up on the Sunday.

I was like, where's Alonso gone? And then it kind of got announced. I looked it up, what had happened and you and I had a little exchange on WhatsApp about it, didn't we? So yeah, it kind of, you're going to talk us through what happened, but it kind of ruined him for the Sunday, really, because there's a big difference between where he started and being on pole. True.

That is true. So as we get into that, we, you know, hey, Alonso has now moved from his pole position. He's now 17th on the grid. We start the race. That turn two, turn one is a tricky turn with the top of the hill.

Holgardo kind of fluffed it. He went in a little too deep. He wound up taking out Joe Roberts at the beginning of that race. So did you see the accident, Jake? I looked at it very closely.

Okay. So you're, you got thoughts on it? Yeah. So Holgado comes in hot and he loses the front and it looks like he hits Joe Roberts rear wheel who's ahead of him basically at the apex of turn one. But I don't know when I looked at it more closely, there was a nice slow mo video that they replayed a couple of times in the race video.

It's actually not that clear. It almost looks like it looks like he does basically climb his front tire onto the back of Joe's rear tire, but it doesn't look like it upset Joe that much. What it actually looked, it looked like what actually caused Joe to crash was when Joe stood up just a little bit and then his front tire looked as if it came in contact with David Alonso who was on the outside of him. That's actually, I think that's actually what caused Joe Roberts to crash. And I don't, I can't say for sure.

I mean, I don't know. It was not as conclusive as the way they initially announced it. So I thought that was interesting. I think that's, I think you're right with that analysis. That's, there weren't very good camera angles that they were showing on the coverage here, which is the world feet.

I guess it's the same for everybody, what you saw at the circuit. It is. Hulgado started the chain reaction, but I agree. I think he tagged David Alonso and that's what actually sent him down. Yeah, you're talking about, yeah, Joe Roberts.

It didn't, when Hulgado hit Joe or appeared to hit Joe, it didn't really upset Joe hardly at all. So that's what made me doubt that that actually caused him to crash. I think maybe it upset his line a tiny bit and then sent him, sent his front wheel into David Alonso. I think that's actually what caused him to crash. But yeah.

Yep. Well, Alonso was lucky. He survives the first turn. They get through two, they head down. Now they're heading through six, seven.

They go up over the hill at 10. We're sitting at 11 and chaos, absolute and total chaos implied here. It was a wild seven rider crash that happened right in front of us. I have the video to prove it. And I was shocked when that all happened.

When it happened, I couldn't tell you who did what. I just know some bike went flying up the inside as if they had no brakes whatsoever, clawed at another two, three bikes and all of it went. But there was actually a, there was a crash and a crash. If you watch it back, a couple of guys at the front tuck, tuck, and they're sliding across the track to begin with. Then comes this large impact by another motorcycle and it's just complete and total carnage right there in front of us.

What was extremely scary to me was that you could see that Pete Karras was trying to get back up, but he couldn't. So I was like, Oh wow. Because anytime I see that I have that flashback to Emla 93, Wayne Rainey in the gravel trap trying to get up and he can't thing. And I just, yeah, I just curl up in a ball and want to go find a dark room. It was just brutal to watch.

Then my attention was then taken by a corner worker who was where another rider was down, but was down, face down to the pavement. There was no motion out of him whatsoever. You could hear above everything else him screaming for medical to get to that situation, to get there. At that point it was like, okay, what the heck is really going on? It basically, I've watched it a few times.

Ferrandez, I don't know what he was thinking. He lost the plot, missed a braking marker, maybe a throttle stuck. I'm not sure. But he just plowed into the pack and just started the chain reaction that involves seven riders. Garcia, Solache, Munoz, Piqueras, Ferrandez himself, Colin Vier and Alonso are all down in the accident.

Now, I believe Ferrandez was out cold, at least for a little bit because he was down and had no motion whatsoever. So that's where most of my attention was. I saw Alonso get his bike back up, restart it, take off. I never even knew that Vier was even actually in the accident until someone said it in the replay on the race. So I had no clue about that one.

But then, you know, Safety Car showed up. They immediately started to attend to both Piqueras and Ferrandez. It turns out that, or in Ferrandez, that it looks like Piqueras has a broken leg of some sort out of the accident. They said, you know, nobody else was injured. Okay, I'm going to say that Ferrandez is injured because once he woke back up and he stood back up, he didn't know where he was because you could see him wandering around.

The medical team was always trying to turn him and walk him in a different direction, of which he didn't want to go or felt like that wasn't the right way to go. So I'm going to call that as injured as well in there. I was okay with Race Direction, realized that, you know, they had enough time to understand they needed to get a red flag. They had the Safety Car was there with the medical team out and deployed. I think by my count, there was about 22 or 23 different quarter workers, medical staff and everybody all around, all these bikes trying to clean things up and get all that taken care of.

It was a scary crash from my standpoint. What did it look like for you, Rich, on TV? Well, yeah, I mean, like a sort of an air accident going off, didn't it? It wasn't very, again, perhaps it's a good thing, but I don't know. It wasn't kind of very clear from the footage.

It was kind of like a helicopter shot that caught what happened and you couldn't really see. So I had no idea who it was that came in and, you know, seeming in the out of control. I don't know if it was a brake failure or just a complete misjudgment. Going to go into a bit of a gripe rant at the moment. Given how gratuitously, let's call them Dawners still, TV coverage, given how gratuitously they like to continually replay these crashes, it irritates the hell out of me that on the MotoGP website, they don't give you any updates whatsoever.

In fact, there's no mention of a crash in the race. So I find that frustrating because we all want to know kind of how the people are and what their injuries are, because obviously if you're following, say, Piqueras and he's actually got a broken leg, you want to kind of know that because it's going to obviously affect how he does for the rest of the year. So I wish they would be a little bit more transparent with the follow up news, having kind of replay stuff over and over at the time that it happens. So that's a little gripe of mine to go alongside things like lap countdowns and whatnot. So it wasn't terribly clear.

I thought it was one of the Grissini bikes, but it was so hard to tell really. I mean, yes, it was obviously inevitable that they were going to red flag it because they were riders, you know, immobile for different reasons and so nothing too much more to say about that element of it. It was just a very scary crash. And again, I mean, these things happen on first laps in particular, don't they? When you've got so many riders in close proximity, but just, you know, thankful that nobody is very seriously injured because that was a obviously a very high speed impact with so many bikes and riders toppling, you know, bad things can happen.

And as you say, Jim, your mind is immediately sort of carved back to very serious outcomes like you mentioned in Imola. And thankfully, we haven't haven't got that to deal with this time. I mean, it was nobody's fault per se. I don't think it was just a sort of thing that can happen on the first lap, but it was a nasty one for sure. Jake, did you get any thoughts about the crash in turn 11?

I think it was definitely Ferrandes' fault, whether he had a brake problem or not. The footage was interesting because there was a camera angle from sort of the bottom of turn 10 or maybe it was the turn 10 camera. I'm not sure, but the camera angle was largely obscured or the camera view was largely obscured by this banner that stretched across the track sort of at the basically the entrance to turn 11. So that was really frustrating because it was there would have been a really great replay possible, but there was so much of that frame missing because of that banner obscuring the camera view. But you could see clearly that Ferrandes seems to just have braked extremely late for whatever reason.

We don't know, but he certainly got on the brakes eventually, and he was on the front wheel, but just completely out of control and just plowed into the pack that was ahead of him. So I will blame him. Maybe it was a brake problem and maybe that isn't his fault, but it certainly appeared like he just braked way too late. He was sort of jockeying for position, trying to pass a few people on the entrance into 11 and just sort of maybe lost the clock a little bit in his head and braked way too late. But yeah, that was a very dramatic, pretty scary, massive crash with, like you said, with seven riders on the ground.

So it was a big one. That's interesting because I might be misremembering perhaps and perhaps I got up and went and got another beer or something, but I don't recall anything other than the overhead view being shown on the TNT coverage in the UK. I don't know if they get the ability to decide what they want to show in terms of replays. There was a period when the two riders were actually down and not kind of moving or obviously injured. There was a brief moratorium on showing any replay whatsoever.

So I defer to your better insight on this one, Jake, in terms of if it was just missing his braking mark. And again, at the closing speeds on these things, if you get it wrong, it's so tremendous. And I was having this conversation with somebody else the other day about the crash that happened at the F1 race in Japan last weekend. You know, it all looks quite sort of up, contained and gathered up, didn't it, when things are going well. But when things suddenly go wrong, you understand just how much energy is being kind of released in these accidents.

And that was a, at Cota, was a prime example, a relatively small mistake with huge outcomes. Yeah, it's just a few milliseconds of delay on the braking point. And yeah, you're going in a lot faster than you want to. But yeah, there was a replay from a camera. I don't know if you saw that, Jim, but...

Yeah, it's in the MotoGP. I had the Dorna package or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was in there. They showed it several times from that Turn 10 camera.

Yeah. I think a couple of times from the helicopter. And they have, I think they showed it from a camera close to Turn 11 or from the inside of the 11, I think, once. So yeah, they threw a bunch of views up in the coverage. So I agree with you.

I think Fernandez just screwed up and lost the plot and braked way too late. If it had been a stuck throttle, I would have assumed that you would have seen skid marks from the tires as he would have tried to stop it in some fashion. But there was, and it was just like, I'm late. And the one thing I will take away from it was that dull thud sound that came out of that impact. When you were, you're talking about your first person witnessing of this, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that you hear this weird thud sound on the broadcast, but sitting there, this weird dull thud. And it's like, ooh, because it was like, I can't explain it. It was like that sound that's sort of like you get that weird door when there's a wind or something and it slams and it's that dull thud on a door. It's what it sounded like.

It was like, it was just a really weird sound. It was really bad. It's the sound of like, ooh, that's bad. There's not scraping anything. It's like just stuff, fiberglass shattering and breaking or carbon fiber, whatever they've got for fairings and stuff just all over.

And then they spent a lot of time picking up little bits and pieces and they had the blowers out trying to clean the track up and everything. But it did set the schedule back quite a lot. And there were some very vicious repairs going on as everybody tried to get their bikes back. They worked, the OnlyFans team worked really hard to get that running again. The crew was shorthanded and Joe Roberts' bike came back.

Joe went down with a couple other mechanics. He helped to push the bike back to get it there. They initially tried to get it going again. Didn't look like Roberts was going to be able to get out. But then they're like medical car pulled up like, whoa, hey, whoa, whoa, you guys got to stop or whatever.

You can't go. And everybody had to go back in again. And it was because some of the medical crew that go in that car and follow the racers on the first lap, they had not got back because they had went to the medical center with Ferrandez and Picaris. So once they were able to get them back, get them in the car, we went to a 10 lap race because that would be two thirds distance because they were 16. So it took six laps off.

That's two thirds. You got 10 lap. 10 lap dash for the cash to get full points for this thing. And his quick start procedure and onto falls off at 11. I don't know how he did that, but I only laugh slightly because it's one of those things that shouldn't happen.

He didn't get hurt at all. And he got the bike back up and report it to the report to the start finish line. So it was sort of like that little Keystone cops moment that made you laugh. And you kind of realize everything was going to be kind of okay sort of thing. If you guys can follow me on that one, but I felt bad.

I felt bad for him. Yeah, who knows what the hell happened, but they didn't really get any coverage of it. They just suddenly change and we're like, oh my God. I don't know. I watched the whole thing.

Oh, you saw the crash. I couldn't I didn't see it. Oh, okay. So you didn't see it. He he was out there and he was by himself real late real by himself.

He just got out on the edge of the paint and the end of the curb and it just spun out on him. It was just crazy. I think we're called Jake Dixon doing the same thing on the formation lap in front of you a couple of seasons ago. I think you're right, Rich. I think he did.

Yeah. Yeah, something about those curbs at Cota and now there's something there for sure. Anyway, but we got kind of grouped ourselves all back together again. We go through that signing lap. And then when Enchu gets up, he gets back to the grid or whatever and Selach is off the bike and the bike goes back into the garage.

I thought Selach was a little too beaten up. Maybe he just wasn't going to be able to get back on going again. Apparently it was a bike issue as they took it into the garage. Everybody went for their warm up lap as they reported back for the warm up at the end of the warm up lap informed for the grid. Selach went to the end of pit lane and he would start the race from pit lane.

All right, green flag, green light goes takes off Lopez with a shot followed by Vietti, Balthus, then Aegis and then Guevara. Alonso was down into 10th. Balthus got to the lead in this shortened race followed by Aegis and Lopez and then Vietti, Guevara and Escrige. Aegis got to the lead at turn 12 on lap three. Then Colin Vier was down and out at seven on lap four.

Four laps to go or sorry on lap four. Lap five Aegis is leading followed by Balthus. Balthus still hasn't taken his long lap penalty yet. He was he waited to the very last moment to take a try to stretch the fuel out of the bottom. It was a good strategy.

Then Vietti, Guevara, Lopez and Escrige. With five laps Balthus did then take the long lap penalty that he had gotten for inappropriate maneuvering off the start. That was what he had for that one. I think that's what they called it. Four laps to go Alonso was up to fifth, which was a great ride from him.

I mean granted there's a lot of bikes missing in the grid and he had an easier go of it than maybe he would have it from the whole time. But it was also a shortened race of 10 laps. So with three to go Aegis, Vietti, Guevara, Alonso, Gonzales and Balthus. And it finished off with Aegis winning, Vietti being second then Guevara, Alonso for fourth. Which is I think probably if there could have been a rider of the race given for Moto too, it definitely would have been I would have given my vote to Alonso.

Gonzales was fifth then Balthus then Lopez Escrige. Roberts got a ninth got a top 10. Arbolino, Artola, Juve, Tascanet, Munoz and Rueda got a point in 15. Thoughts Rich on this chaotic event. Well only two things having spoken at length about the crash.

My man of the match really is Celestino Vietti because how the hell he didn't crash out of the race is just quite beyond me because God he was having all sorts of front end trouble on that bike. I mean, I don't know if it's something just to do with the setup of that Bosque Skier that he's riding there, but the front kept tucking on him and he was supremely talented really on his part to A, keep the thing up and finish second. So that was kind of my I would say my tip for rider of the race. But Senna Aegis, I mean what the hell happened to him in Brazil? That's the question because obviously he had a very strong round one in Thailand.

We didn't even know he was in Brazil and then he comes out and wins the race in Cota. So I mean great result for him and because he is one of my kind of championship favorites as a few, but he's definitely one of them. So a great result for him and nice to see Joe Roberts get a night for me. It won't mean much to Joe, but given that he was effectively out in the first run in the race, I suppose that was a tiny little bit of comfort for him. But yeah, just glad nobody was seriously injured or worse in that race because that was a nasty crash.

Any other wrap up thoughts Jake? I'll just I'll echo Rich on watching Vietti have just moment after moment after moment. I noted that and it was it was very impressive to watch him have that many moments without actually crashing. So yeah, clearly he was something was a little off of his setup. It seemed like I mean he was pushing really hard.

But yeah, it was a pretty great race. Honestly, there was a lot of passing and it was great to see Alonso recover from 17th after his well, we'll talk about that later. The tire pressure infringement killing his pole position. So yeah. So with the championship Gonzales still leads.

He's on thirty nine and a half points. Guevara is second only three and a half points behind on thirty six. Helgardo is third in the championship on thirty three. Then it's Vietti Munoz Senna Aegis now on twenty five points, which gives him only fourteen and a half behind. So could be really cool racing after eight just in sixth Alonso is seventh on twenty four points.

Then Escrige Alonso Lopez and Ortola add in the top ten. So that's what all went down in Moto 2. But Jake, you met somebody interesting after the race weekend to ride Moto 2. Want to talk about that? Correct.

So we rushed to the airport immediately after the Moto GP race and there was a very long security line and we were standing in it for, I don't know, a half an hour and about ten minutes in. I sort of noticed this group of people ahead of us that looked like actual Moto GP people. You know, they weren't wearing, they were wearing some gear that looked like actual team gear, not fan gear. And there was a one particular guy who I joked was like, hey, that looks like Jorge Martin. And then I got to thinking, wait a minute, that's not Jorge Martin, but that is somebody.

And I didn't really recognize him, but I got on the app and kind of looked up some different riders and convinced myself that it was actually David Alonso. And he was right in front of us. Like, you know, my little group was walking along and he was right in front of me. And then his team members were ahead of him. And I just sort of said, hey, you know, I didn't know at the time what had happened in qualifying.

I had no idea. So I said, hey, you know, great job, fourth place in the race, sort of confirming that he was who he said he was. And then he he started to explain and I asked him, I said, is it OK if we record this? And I had a hell of a time actually getting my phone to work. So my friend Rachel actually recorded it.

But yeah, he just he explained what it what had happened with the qualifying and we just had a nice it was very it was like five minutes, but he was very sweet and generous with his time. And I could tell his his team members were rolling their eyes. They were just like, can we just get home? I'm so sick of this whole thing. But it was it was nice and he was a very, very sweet kid.

And so that was just a very fun little fun little chance encounter. So hopefully we can actually hear it when we get the get the background noise filtered out from the airport line, which was very noisy, as you'd expect. So you do you like the track? You like Tota? Obviously, you got full position.

Up and down. You know, it's very low. So much bumpy also. A lot of corners. How is like like turn one and turn eleven look really tight?

Like extremely tight. What gear are you in when you go through there? You go first gear first gear all the way down to first gear. For example, for the back straight, that is the long straight, you go six years and two hundred three hundred five kilometers an hour. Yeah.

And you slow down to third gear. That's that's almost 190 miles an hour on a motor motor too. From 300 to maybe to maybe 60 kilometers. Yeah. Yeah.

I can. Hey, it's so awesome. Yeah. The motor two bikes sound almost as good as Moto GP now. Like they sound amazing.

Those three cylinders sound so good. Yeah. Yeah. For me, the more beautiful noise. Yeah, really good.

Three cylinders. Really good. Nice work. It's just amazing. So why did you have to start from the back?

What was the reason? I qualified the tire pressure. I've been. Oh, they check it in qualifying. They check your tire pressure.

Yes. So it was nothing. It was one mili. Like one mili bar. Like too low or too high?

Too low. Low. Yeah. Front tire. Right.

Rear. Rear. So Moto GP next year? Oh, not yet. Not yet?

No. So you qualified on pole. You were one mili bar under on the tire pressure check. And they made you start from Pitley. No, I'm from 17.

Oh, from 17. The back. Is that the back of the grid? No, it's the back of the Q2. Oh, back of the Q2.

OK. That makes sense. That makes sense. OK. OK.

It's the right thing to want. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, you killed it if you had to start from 17.

One or two, how easy is it to pass at Kota compared to other tracks? Is it? Good to pass. Good to pass. Lots of opportunities.

Like you've got definitely 11. Turn one. Turn one is really good. 11, 12. One and 12 more.

That's the limit. Nice. It depends on the rider. Favorite track. You have a question, Rachel?

What's your favorite track? This one, man. You like this one? Really? I like this one.

That's great. Kota, how many times have you raced here? No, no, not even. I am. This is my fourth year.

I'm talking about South Fork. That's amazing. Yeah. We're doing an informal interview because we just happen to be behind you. And it's not often you get to hang out with a Moto2 rider in an airport line.

So I'm going to take advantage as long as they'll let me. He's a test rider. Oh, really? Test rider. He's really big so he's a test rider so he's special.

He waits a lot. Yeah? I think you're fucking with me. Pretty bad aero too, right? That was good.

Thank you. Thank you for your time. That was really great. Good job, Jake. We'll move to the main event, the MotoGP stuff.

Qualifying for MotoGP. Let's have a thought here for this. One, Marquez I think looked desperate most of the weekend. He was off the bike early at 10. He took a lot of skin off his palms, road rash and whatnot.

He wasn't his full self. But there's something more going on with him. He is hurt, I will say this, this is what I can say. He is hurt way worse than what is being let on. There are some issues that he is facing that he is going to have to figure out what he's going to do.

And that's scary, especially after everything that happened, the crash and sprint and stuff like that. One, I think is like, well, you got to figure out what's going on in Mark's head and whatnot. If things aren't, if it's truly medical, then he needs to take time off the bike, he needs to heal, he needs to come back. And if that means he comes back next year, then that's fine. If it's something bigger than that, then he needs to stop and say it's a career.

So we'll just leave it there for that, for a little bit about Marcos. But if we look at qualifying, we get into Mir, Outiger, Fernandez, Zarco, Miller, Morera, Toprak and Bender, all in the very, along with Quattroraro, are all in the first session. Quattroraro had a crash, very weird crash. It's like he was turned into the turn and he just was on the side. For some reason, the back tire just lost grip and he just sort of laid down on the side and got drugged along by the bike in a circle and then let go and got back up.

It's kind of funny, but when you watch the crash happen, I was kind of scared that he might have got his foot caught around the chain wheel kind of a thing and had gotten drugged much farther than what he did. But he picked it back up, came in, he's fine. But it could have been worse, as always. Halfway through, both Mir and Fernandez were going to go through, but at the end, Outiger threw down an absolutely amazing lap to get in, along with Mir. And so those two go on to second qualifying session.

We get into the second qualifying session and Benyaia went to the top early on ahead of Digia and Marc Marquez. Digia, Benyaia looked good. He actually looked like he had found some form. He sort of looked comfortable on the bike. When they show him in the pits, he's actually got a smile on his face instead of a wonderment of like, what happened to me today?

Kind of a thing. So, okay, maybe Ducati is making some progress because Outiger kind of looks pretty good on the bike. You've got to believe that Benyaia is looking pretty good on that bike. Apparently, the only people who can't ride the new bike are named Marquez. Because Alex can't seem to figure the new bike out and Marc either is injured or can't ride the bike.

Now, it came out over the weekend that Marc has trouble riding the bike the way that he wants on a new tire. But on an old tire, he's perfectly fine. Which sort of explains, Rich, when we were talking in Brazil, why Tardazzi was so PO'd about the race being shortened because of that. Which is an interesting concept in and of itself as that goes on. When we get to the second qualifying, after Benyaia had gone quick, then, again, I did not have this on my bingo card.

Mir went to the pole position with a 2 minute .591 on a Honda. Like, are you kidding? I was flabbergasted, shocked, and floored and somewhat happy as well. Because if anybody needed a good run and a good qualifying, it was Juan Mir. Halfway through, Mir was still on pole.

Benyaia was still second. Then, Digia, then, Bez, then, Acosta, and then, Jorge Martín. Kevin kicked Marc out of the whole thing. They ran through on another run. Benyaia got his lap spoiled.

Marquez got a lap spoiled. He was upset with Martín and Bezat. About taking his lap away from him because they were there. But then, out of nowhere, suddenly, Digia just turned on a lap that was even faster. It was like a 2 minute 2 lap or 2 minute .2 lap.

Somewhere down in there. That's what we were talking about. Could we possibly get to the 159.9s? Which, there. But we weren't able to.

But, with a minute left to go, it was Digia, Bezaki, Acosta, Mir, Marquez, Marc, that is, and Martín. Finally, it showed up. Digia got into pole. Two poles in a row. He had pole in Brazil, pole in Cota.

Digia is looking good on the VR46 equipment for sure this year. Bezaki got second. Pushing Acosta back to third. Then, Benyaia, because he couldn't get a good lap, because Iagura was in the way, which track direction did look at it and said, Nah, we're not doing anything to Iagura. Sorry about your luck, Benyaia.

Then, Mir, which fall back to fifth. Then, Marquez would start sixth. So, he was going to be on the outside of the third row. Martín would be seventh. Then, his brother Alex, Luca Marina, Fermin, Iagura, and Bastionini, around the top 12.

So, that was qualifying. We move into the sprint. Now, this might have been, in my opinion, the best race of the entire weekend, because this one was kind of a boner burner. At the beginning, oh, one thing also, I don't know if you guys saw this, I noticed here that on any siding lap that the bikes have to do to get to the grid, the Aprilias, all the time, are running in a very slow map mode, and Bez is putting around the track, tucked in behind it. I thought, well, okay, that's just Bez and what Bez wants to do.

Then, I noticed, because I'm at the track, every one of the Aprilias do it for every race. What is Aprilia doing differently? Because they had the sprint race and everybody was kind of pounding it out, trying to warm up brakes and tires, even though they're going to go back to the grid and sit, they were maybe testing something, but the Aprilias aren't. They're in a full-on gas conservation mode, which I thought was really shocking that they're either cutting it that fine, or there's something else up their sleeve that they're doing that we haven't caught on to yet. Anybody got a thought?

Because I don't have one for this one. Probably using more fuel during the race. But it's a sprint. Why don't you just put a little bit more fuel in the bike and run it hard for that lap? Maybe there's no reason to run it hard on the siting lap.

It's just not... I don't know. It makes more sense for the race than for the sprint, but maybe they're just trying to be consistent with what they do on the siting lap. That could be, because they have had problems where they've changed maps and the map doesn't get switched back and all that. Maybe they've got a procedure and, well, that's the procedure and we're following the procedure.

It's working for them, so hey, don't change. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Just procedural, Rich? Yeah, I'm just running the bike as light as I can possibly get it. It might mean just that little bit, right?

An ounce here, an ounce there is going to be really there. So, Bezeki and Marquette has got a two-grid... We're getting a... not him... Bez and...

I'll get it out. Martín would get a two-place grid penalty on Sunday because of the infraction for running on Marc Marquez. Well, I'll get it out there. So we learned that during the sprint. So, sprint starts out, you've got the Benyaya out front, Acosta, then Marc, then Bezeki is down in seventh.

Marc and Digia are then down on the first lap at turn 12. Marc could come from a long way back as he usually does to try to get into 12. He was in there deep with it. Digia got out of the way, let him have it, but Marc folded the front end and Digia had nowhere to go at that point and basically Digia is on the ground too. Now, Marc did say that he underestimated the draft at that point.

I think the wind was also blowing down that straightaway. So you're also getting a tailwind pushing you along. On that day, he missed it. Marc did apologize to Benyaya in the pits. He's like, hey, sorry, I misjudged it.

I didn't realize. Sorry about that. And Digia looked back at him, sharply stopped, thought for a second, goes, just watch out on Sunday, which I thought was rather clever. You know, hey, watch out on Sunday. Okay.

Well, you know, I don't know if that was a warning shot or what, but it was rather classic, I thought. Anyhow, that ruined Marc's race. He did pick it up. He did remount. Ruined Digia's race for sure.

Benyaya is, meanwhile, he's leading ahead of Acosta, ahead of Mir, ahead of Martín, ahead of Bizecki. By lap five, it's still Benyaya. Still, now it's Martín, Acosta, Bizecki, and Mir. Toprak was out. He had a mechanical issue that plagued him.

Benyaya had like a 1.3 second lead. You know, four to go. Bez had gotten by Martín. You're like, well, all right, that's it. Bez is going to try to track down Benyaya possibly, because maybe he's being held up by Jorge.

With three laps to go, Bez wound up tossing it down at 11. Again, turn 11 took so many people there. And I think it has to do with the fact that there's a little, you're going downhill, you go back uphill, and right when you're on the brakes really hard, it just flattens off just for a little bit. And I think that little motion takes the weight off the front. And I think if you just got the brakes just squeezed a little bit much, you're just going to wind up taking it and folding it right underneath, and off you go into the gravel trap.

All right, so Bez is now done. He folded up the front. Two to go. Benyaya still got a lead over Martín, Alonso, and Mir, a lot with Alex and Bastianini. But man, Martín rode like the one lap of his life, it seemed like.

He just closed down on Benyaya, but Benyaya was also on a soft tire. And Martín actually rode the race, the sprint race, on a medium rear. And when they went over 10, they had the onboard from Martín. You could see Benyaya just spinning up that rear. And you knew, at that moment, you knew that Martín was going to get him.

And Martín did. He went on to beat Benyaya in the sprint. Then Bastianini stood on the podium in third. Alex Marquez was fourth. Then Marín, Eiger, Fernández, Acosta, Zarco, and Altaguer in the sprint.

A fantastic sprint. One of the best sprints I think that we've seen. Great action. I didn't do it justice, but it was a great race. Yeah, I just want to go back on a couple of things, Jim.

Because again, I might have seen a couple of things on the footage. Did you watch the sprint back on? I did. OK, I'm kind of interested in the Marc Marquez crash on lap one. Because I can't remember if it was turn seven or eight.

But did you put a really hard move on Marc on lap one? Yes, he did. And I can't help but feel that a little bit of red mist might have descended as a result of that. So I get the whole, there's a tailwind and there's weight coming off the bikes and stuff. But I just think that that combined with, again, going back to what you were saying about Marc, all weekend just doesn't look comfortable on the bike.

Clearly that shoulder is a lingering injury, but I just don't think he has strength in the shoulder. I think this is a not race fit problem for him. He doesn't have the level of power in the shoulder yet. And it could well be the fact that he's a little bit lucky now that we've got a big gap until we go to Harath because of Qatar being moved to the end of the season. So he's got some time to stay at home, get in the gym, really sort of work on.

Fitness and conditioning of that shoulder in particular. And again, so I'm always saying it'll be interesting, but we will see whether or not things go a bit easier on more familiar ground once they turn up at Harath on 24th of April. I think the weekend gets going. So a few weeks away. But yes, I couldn't help but feel that there was a bit of a revenge move on the cards there and it just kind of went a bit wrong.

And, you know, Marc is just not used to having trouble at Cotra, is he? You're particularly going into left hand turns. But he clearly has a problem, a physical problem at the minute. So that was one thing that I wanted to mention. Bez just can't seem to finish a sprint at the minute, can he?

I mean, I don't know what's going on. He needs to learn that if you have a little problem like that, you just pick the bike up and go straight. And then you win the race after that, you know, because he could have easily kind of collected that because the bike kind of kicked out a little bit on the first touch of the brakes. But he tried to make the corner and lost the front. So it was a bit of a clumsy one for him.

And the other thing, I don't think you mentioned it, was that Acosta got a tyre pressure penalty. So that's why he was eight because he finished third on the road. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I forgot that. He got an eight second penalty for a tyre pressure infringement.

So we had that one rear its ugly head again. But with the Martin win and particularly that last lap, which I was sat there thinking, this is redemption for him for now, it was Philip Island. Was it 2023 when he made that kind of spirited tyre choice and was miles out in front and then got hunted down and passed by Zarca on the last lap? You might need to cast your boat back. I think it was 2023, 22 or 23, he was on the Pramac.

And it's not the year that he won the championship, but he made a I think he went with the soft or something and had a huge lead early on and then they just hunted him down. I think he didn't even get on the podium in the end. So it kind of felt like a little bit of a redemption for him to come through at the end like that. But yes, it was a really entertaining race. No Maverick Vinales.

Again, that was another little piece of news. He had to withdraw because shockingly painful thing. I mean, we've been kind of lambasting him a little bit, but it now transpires that a plate in his shoulder, the screw has been coming undone, which sounds horrendous. So he's gone off to have it screwed back in again or replaced with something else. So that sounds pretty ghastly.

The only other thing that was classic was Peco Bagnar's interview after the race, where he used a double expletive when he was talking about the way Martino live television. This is what I love about MotoGP. I hope they don't stamp this out too much or start finding people like they do in the car racing series. Yeah, I was going to say the entertainment vacuum that is Formula One 2026. So yeah, that was a nice little moment for Peco to forget what he was saying.

Well, maybe he did it on purpose, but it was very, very funny anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine a screw coming back out of a plate in my shoulder. I don't even want to think about that.

And yet trying to race a 250 horsepower, maybe 300 horsepower motorcycle. No, go get that fixed, please. Put it back together again and whatnot. But yeah, it was an interesting sprint. It was like you're just thinking like, wow, I hope Mark's going to have a long lap penalty in that.

Other people got long lap penalties. They're thinking, wow, this could really be a pretty interesting race when we get to that on Sunday. But, you know, things didn't work out that way. Do we want to talk about the race then on Sunday? Because we'll leave the sprint move on.

Yeah. But one of the straights got things about the sprint. I think it's worth noting in terms of discussing Mark Marquez's current state. He had a pretty fast, scary crash on Friday in turn 10 in practice. And I don't know if that hurt him a little bit or not.

It wasn't very obvious to me, but I'm pretty sure it didn't make him feel any better. He was going 190 kilometers per hour and turned 10 and went off the outside and just slid forever into the barriers. And that was really scary. So yeah, I felt pretty bad for him and wondered if that, I'm sure that put a little bit of fear into his head. That is the scariest spot on the track, at least from a spectator's point of view.

Jim, there's a very pronounced bump in turn 10. Not just turn 10, there's bumps and a lot of apexes. Yeah, I mean, it's famously bumpy, coach, isn't it? But that is a particularly unpleasant place to encounter a bump like that, given speed and the angle that you're going at. But trackside, has that got worse, that bump?

Because obviously it's kind of sitting on an old lake bed, isn't it, in the circuit of the Americas? And so it moves around a fair bit, doesn't it? Yeah, I believe you're archaeologically correct. I think it's part of the Permian Basin, which was a sea so many billions of years ago or wherever, whenever, millions of years. I don't know.

I don't understand that kind of science. But yes, one of the things is that they always talk about the hills are alive in Texas. Well, that's because they move. The ground's constantly moving because it's a clay layer over some type of shale, which moves and shifts constantly. Mark said it best, so I'll kind of half-quote him.

I went out too fast, too quick, and I went to where I remembered the bump being, but the bump moved and I went down. So I think it's something like that. I thought, from my personal take on it, that the bumps were way less noticeable this year than last year with the bikes. Last year there were that big complaints about all the bumps and how bad it was. It didn't seem like everybody was complaining as much this year about it, and the bikes didn't look to be upset as much about it.

I think there's always constantly different parts that are being repaved at COTA. I would think that before we return next year, the section of track from, say, 8 through 9 and 10 and down is probably going to get a new surface of asphalt to try to grind that off and smooth that out a little bit. But yes, there are bumps everywhere in there because the one part that seemed to be much smoother to me was 16, 17, 18, 19. The other part was much, much smoother this year, or at least the bikes looked much smoother going through there this year. So any of those things are possible.

There are some rear end slow-modes of Acosta going through T10, and honestly it was shocking to watch. That kid has got big balls. I mean, they all have, haven't they? But the shots of him going through there and launching off that bump just really kind of threw the finger stuff, that is. It is a scary place to stand and watch because if you want to know how ragged edge they all are over something that's like, and they do not lift the throttle.

It's just over a blind brow and it just, they're full wide open and it's crazy. So it's, I think if anybody goes to Kota, I think you should definitely make the trek out there. Just be over the crest of T10 and watch MotoGP bikes go through there for a session. It is spooky fast. So, okay, so let's look at what happens on, in the race.

Got one more question. Sorry. I wanted to ask you guys. What do you think is going on with Bizecki sort of trying too hard in the sprints? It seems like he's done this.

This is the second or the second time or third time this year. He dropped in the sprint in Thailand. Right. And it seems like he's trying way too hard. My take is that he's in such good form at the minute and so fast that it almost kind of gets away from him a little bit.

And it takes a crash in the sprint to calm him down for the main race. It's kind of how I feel it. And it's remarkable to me how he's able to recover it on a Sunday because for a lot of people, their shoulders would be well down. You know, a combination of embarrassment, frustration, just anger at what's going on. And yet he's able to knock it out of the park on the Sunday.

So it's a really curious sort of state of affairs. And then it must be driving Massimo Rivola and the rest of the team really sort of bonkers because he'd be miles out in the championship if he hadn't had certainly two crashes in the sprints. I'm just trying to remember what happened in Brazil. Jim, you talk about that and I'm just going to look at what happened in Brazil. So I think the Zeki has looked at how Mark won the championship last year.

Sprint domination, race domination. I'm wondering if, you know, Aprilia is the smallest of all the manufacturers. It's the last year of these bikes. Is there really going to be any kind of development that they're going to get? And is the Zeki riding so hard in the sprint that he wants those wins and wants those points because maybe Ducati is going to make the bike better, but maybe he thinks that we're not going to be able to make our bike any better.

So I better bag all the points I possibly can get now. And if that means taking a risk to win a sprint to get those nine points, I should do that because I want to put as many points in the bank as possible so that later in the year, if I do have a problem, if I do have a bike incident, if I do have something, I can survive and win the championship. So I don't know if that's true. That's what I'm thinking because I think everybody saw just how dominant Mark was and he did it in both races. And I think Bez just wants to emulate him and just grab as many points as possible.

Yeah, he did finish fourth in the sprint in Brazil. Just looked it up. I can't quite remember why he slipped backwards. But and then obviously, I'm pretty sure he won the main race on the Sunday. Yeah, he's undefeated this season.

Yeah, so it's a curious one. And again, we all say it and it's definitely the case here that these first three rounds, there's such outliers. It's only when they get back into Europe, I think that we really start to understand a bit better who is where. But it's hard to see Bezekia or Martín for that matter really kind of dropping back a long way. I mean, I think the question is, can Ducati recover some form once they're back on familiar ground?

Because they seem to be a little bit at odds and ends at the minute. And certainly Marquez has an injury problem. That's clear. But it's only really Digiantonio that's really making that bike work at the moment. Yeah, Bagnari had a better weekend, but it still wasn't a good weekend.

I think I was smiling inside Jim. You said he was smiling in the pit box. I think that's because he's put ink to paper on the Aprilia deal, probably. So likely. Which is a hell of a deal that he's got there.

We didn't mention that in the news, but it sounds as if he's on a 2 plus 2, doesn't it? Which is quite the deal for him given the last couple of seasons that he's had or the season he's having and the season before. So, yeah. Yeah, true. True point.

All right. Let's try to wrap this up with the MotoGP race here. I did not get a chance to rewatch the race, so I'm a little off here on what's going on. I know that basically, we'll look at it this way, Bizecki got off to a great start. He was, him and Acosta, Martin, all sort of got themselves to the front.

Marquez obviously had a good start too. He was there. He just didn't go anywhere because he had his long lap penalty. That's not, you know, that's a crumpled Mark's race completely there. Nobody was really going to touch Bizecki.

I think he led the first four laps and that wound up giving him what, 106 laps lead, which was broke the 2015 record of Jorge Lorenzo for laps lead. It's just pretty amazing what he was doing. I think the battle between like Digia, Acosta, Martin was really was the interesting point. Nobody was going to touch Bez, but he was going to go where in those final couple of spots. So I have to admit that the racing, sitting there, it was relatively boring.

There wasn't a whole lot that was going on. It was just watching people drum through it. But, you know, Acosta makes it exciting. Fab, Digia, Antonio makes it exciting. They're back and forth a little bit here and there, but Bez wins the race.

Martin gets a second there, then Acosta, then Digia. Mark would finish fifth after having gone through the long lap penalty loop. Then Bastianini was sixth, his brother Alex seventh. Raul Fernandez eighth. He is the best trackhouse bike.

I did the trackhouse bikes just look wonderful in Stars and Stripes. I thought they were immaculate. They're amazing. Then Marini was ninth. Benyaya was tenth.

Aldiger, Binder, Morera and Morbidelli getting a point and earning his first point. Toprac got his on the on the Amha with a 15th. But there was not a lot to say about the race. Whatever you guys want to add to it, we can. But that's kind of how I saw it.

Rich, you may have a little more insight. Rick, Jake, you please go. Yeah, you go first. Ayagura, Ayagura. That was sad.

He was he was looking like he was maybe even going to get a podium. I can't remember. Was he in fifth or fourth when his bike died? Fourth. Yeah.

He had gone by Mark. I remember catching the front group like he was faster than everybody else towards the end of the race. And I was really excited. And then something went wrong with his bike. I don't know what went wrong.

But I thought that was very I was very disappointed because I was I like Iger and I think he's he's a little underrated right now. And I'm I'm a new trackhouse fan because, you know, it's an American team and that's fun. So I thought that was and also for one mirror crashed out again. I don't know how I don't know how that guy he must know how to crash rather than anybody else because seriously, how does he not he never seems to get injured. It's incredible.

Yeah, I give you that one. Yeah. I always feel as if I'm the sole representative of the Johan Mere Defense League. But at least the saving grace is that he is generally the fastest Honda and he is crashing out further up much further up than last year. Oh, yeah.

So but the jury's out on whether Honda are going to want to keep him, I think, because he is crashing a lot. But as I say, there's clear improvement there. He just needs to start bringing it home, really. But either that or the Honda still got issues and he is exploring the limits of the bike and the others are not doing so as much. I mean, as we said, the Zarko continues to be a bit of a crash fest as well.

Yeah, he did. And he's not having anything like the sort of season they had in the first half of last year. So near is the shining light for Honda. But like you, Jake, it was such a shame for a guru who in year two really looks like a guy that's learned his craft in year one. And just he would have been on the podium, I'm sure of it, because he was coming forward fast.

He was coming for them. Yeah, he really had a late, late race pace. It was I was I was really excited and then just so disappointed when he did. Do you know what happened? Did he does anybody know what happened?

It sounded as if the bike went into some sort of idle mode or, you know, where the electronics just kick in and think there's a problem. And he just yeah, he said he made it back to the pits. It was not as if the engine blew or anything like that. But unless the system detected a problem and just, you know, went into the kind of recovery mode before something more serious occurred. But yeah, just very, very disappointing for him and for the whole team, obviously being at home as well.

But he's going to have some pretty stellar performances, I think, this year. And again, he's one of the few riders that really knows how to keep a retire alive. And that would have stood in. Well, the other one I do, I just wanted to pick out almost my rider of the race really is top rack for getting a point because, you know, first first Yamaha home. And he was by and large the best Yamaha all weekend at a track he's never been to before on a bike that he's only ridden four or five times.

I mean, it's a shame that Yamaha are so far back at the minute, given, you know, their troubles or challenges with the new bike package. But he is really knocking it out of the park in a way that nobody thought he would this year. Yeah, yep. He's the real deal. I think nobody should underestimate his talent.

It's he might not be less talented than anybody on the grid right now. It's hard to say, but it's starting to look that way. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. But it wasn't a terribly eventful race, certainly compared to the sprint and definitely compared to Moto2 and Moto3, as we often say.

Yep. You know, you're talking about like the idea of there you have Hologardo and Alonso and they might get going to MotoGP. The rumor at Cota was that Alonso is heavily courted by one HRC. Who could afford him? Yeah, because he's asking for a lot of money, I think.

Yes, I think he's asking for a lot of money. And I'm thinking Honda looks at it as this is a kid who came off of a bike that is going to probably be about as fast, about as heavy and about as powerful as what the new bike is going to be, the 850. He could be a match made in heaven. Who knows? Anyway, there's that.

Let's look at the championship here real quick on all this. Bizecki leads the World Championship on 81 points. Martín is second on 77, so he is four behind. Acosta is on 60-21 behind. Digiantonio is on 50.

And then Marquez is on 45, puts him 36 behind. Bizecki, a lot of time to play for, but man, Bizecki is in the catbird seat right now. Although I would not count Martín out in this championship race. It could be teammates battling it out for the entire season. On sixth is Fernández, seventh is Aguera.

So there's four Perleas in the top seven of the championship, which tells you how far Perlea has come. All of, all, Mazzalorolo Viale, man, you, my friend, you are doing magic right now. So it's great. Then Alex Marquez and then Benyaes and then Marini. And that's your championship order.

All right, folks, that's everything with MotoGP from Kota. But there is one last racing thing that we want to talk about. They do have the Talent Cup here in the United States with all the young up and coming riders. And that racing was going on. And Jake, you want to give the kids there a shout out.

Yeah, I just wanted to give a very quick brief coverage of the two MotoAmerica Talent Cup races that happened at Kota alongside MotoGP. So race one essentially was a four way battle for the entire race. And it's not even really worth describing because it was just Galker, Natsudaira, Page and Sam Drain going back and forth the entire race. And it just was completely impossible to predict who was going to win because there was no space between them. They just kept trading the lead.

But they eventually finished with Galker winning Natsudaira in second, Jake Page in third and Sam Drain in fourth. Also, I want to give a shout out to Sawyer Lafayette, who finished ninth. He is from the Seattle area. And I've actually shared some track time with him over at the Ridge last year. And he is fast.

So race two, there was a little more to talk about in race two. So at the end of lap one, Sam Drain ran really wide, went off the outside of the track, but recovered. And Galker put a really good pass on number 74 of Natsudaira, which is incidentally the Team Roberts bike. So Kenny Roberts has come back into the paddock. I don't know if this is the first year, but he has he's feeling a yellow bike with Natsudaira riding it in this talent cup.

And it looks great. They have a really distinctive paint scheme. So a little shout out to them. So halfway through the race, Jake Page puts on a huge pass and passes both Galker and Natsudaira through turn one for the lead in a very dramatic move. And then on the last lap of the race, Sam Drain, who's been hanging out in fourth the whole race, clearly decided to run a different strategy in race two.

Instead of battling the whole time, I think he decided to just hang back and not use up his tires and his body and just sort of he knew he could run the pace. So I think he used different strategy, which I think was smart. So at the end of the back straight, coming into turn 12, Sam Drain goes from fourth to first and another dramatic pass. But he ran really wide yet again. He did this several times.

He didn't seem to be able to to get that move to stick. He would get past, but then he could not could not hit the apex. He ran really wide. So the last lap begins with Sam Drain in second, Nathan Galker leading and Natsudaira in third with Jake Page in fourth. And they're all right on top of each other.

I mean, there's no gaps to speak of. So as they come into turn 12, Sam Drain puts another amazing move on everybody and gets through this time for the first time without running wide. And now it's just all four of them right on top of each other. There are no gaps. And a few more corners later, Natsudaira gets past Sam and they have a little battle, but it's still extremely close.

They go back and forth for the next couple of turns. In the last corner of the last lap, Sam Drain falls back, unfortunately, and number 55, Jake Page has a huge rear slide as he's most of the way through the corner, getting back onto the final straight. But somehow he doesn't lose it. It was a really great replay of this. He loses the rear and it slides around, but he just controls it perfectly and makes the corner.

But he did lose a bunch of time and ended up finishing fourth. So Sam Drain ends up getting third. It looks like he, you know, any of them really could have won. But Natsudaira wins handily this time with a little bit better strategy on the Team Robert's bike. Also, it was notable that at the podium, Natsudaira was approached by King Kenny and I think Junior was there as well.

It looks like they both came up to the podium and shook his hand. So that was really cool to see. And again, Sawyer Lafayette finished ninth as well, just a little shot out from the Northwest. So the final order was Natsudaira winning, Nathan Goukher in second, Sam Drain third, Jake Page fourth, Rossi Garcia fifth, Derek Sanchez in sixth, Reece Frankenfield in seventh, Nathan Bettencourt in eighth, Sawyer Lafayette ninth, and Ian Fraley in tenth. Just great racing.

I got to give. And one thing that's a little confusing to me. So these, I was looking up some numbers. These Kramers are making about 55 horsepower, give or take. And the Moto3 bikes are only about 60 horsepower from what I've read.

But I'm starting to not believe that that's true because they're, I mean, these guys are doing like 226s on the Kramer, which is a 350. It's significantly bigger engine than the Moto3 bikes. But somehow Moto3 are doing like 2 minute 12 laps. How the hell are they doing that? Like with us.

Cheating. Well, but I mean, Koda, those, there's a lot of that back straight is long. Like they're hitting terminal velocity way before, you know, they're not accelerating all the way down that back straight. Are they like they're, they're hitting terminal velocity way before they get to the end of the straight. So I can't make sense of the lap times between the Kramer, Kramers and the Talent Cup and the Moto3 bikes.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but. I mean, there's been so much accusations of cheating in Moto3. Like people are supposedly fiddling with the how the timing of the spark and some other things that you're not supposed to be playing with. And you know what I mean? Layapart has been accused of tampering with their Honda more times than I can shake a stick at, but nobody can find anything wrong with anything.

I mean, the thing of it is too, is that I think possibly you're looking at a small difference of a motorcycle that's made as a talent cup for young kids that maybe is. Detuned slightly from where it could be right. One reliability, you don't want the bike to break. And so I think maybe the other thing is you've got Moto3 bikes, which are by a factory who do one desperately win no matter what. So they're going to do anything to make that one run.

And I'm sure that a Moto2 bike has all kinds of unobtainium that you and I would never get a hold of, nor could the Kramer guys get a hold of. And I think that's where your difference is. But I still think some of the Moto3 guys are cheating. What rubber are they running on in the talent cup? It's Dunlop.

I think there's a few seconds there as well. I agree. The Borelli seemed to have really. Yeah, that was one thing we didn't talk about was like the Moto2 lap times and qualifying. They broke.

You know, they were two seconds faster than last year. Yeah, that's incredible. Much, much faster. Significant. Yeah.

Jim, you said you had a bit of juicy gossip to share. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you done that in a roundabout way already? Oh, I did. When at the beginning of MotoGP with Marquez.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's. Yeah, he was.

There's something really wrong with him still. He's not healthy. He's not healthy no matter how you look at it. Yeah. But yeah, it's clear.

But it's also there. I again, I don't want to go. I don't want to go too far. So but yeah, I think there's there's there's more than physical problems. I think.

Are you think you think he's having a hard time just with his mental state? Not not like he's not like mentally strong, but like you work like like me. Jake, you know, we're engineers. We're constantly thinking you're constantly evolving. You're constantly doing something.

You get mentally tired for a long stretch. You can't solve a problem. You kind of know what the problem is, but you can't solve it. I think he's in that world. I think his mind is.

Oh, yeah. And I it's not like he's like, I don't know how to fix what's wrong. And I think he's just the kind of guy that's not going to solve it. I think he's just there. And he's just just that's where he is.

That's how I'm going to maybe slightly like Bagnaio was last year where he just is at a loss as to how to address his deficit. Yeah, I've got a controversial closeout for. I won't. I like it. He's starting to weigh up the possibility of whether he'd be better off retiring at the end of this season before 850 start.

I think that maybe. Yeah, he doesn't want to keep hurting himself. And he's hurt himself bad a lot over the years and coming off last year, you know, winning the title like he did and then getting injured again. Yeah. And, you know, now facing potentially for certainly three April years, but, you know, again, it caused him a lot of trouble all year.

It must be hard to find the motivation and then to add on top of that, a brand new set of rules. And he knows how you can see will fare in that. We know part of the reason that the contract announcement as well as all this stuff going on, I think, is that he's going to be a little bit more difficult to deal with. As well as all this stuff going on between team and teams and the organizers and stuff. But you got to it sounded as if we're trying to tie him down to a longer contract than he was prepared to sign.

I just think it would be quite a neat closeout if he just buried out at the end of this year, having broken the record that he so desperately wanted to break or equal. I mean, I don't know. Maybe maybe he does want that extra one. It's not looking it's not looking nearly as easy as it was last year. I'm not going to hold him out yet this year.

No, no. I think once they get back to Europe and he gets a bit better conditioning in that shoulder, things could turn around pretty quick. But, yeah, I do wonder how much longer he's going to want to just go on with this, to be honest. And I think that might be weighing heavily. It would explain it.

I mean, as soon as you start making those considerations, the fire goes out, right? You just sort of think I've got enough money. What else does he have to prove? Like, yeah, absolutely nothing. Well, other than that one extra title, I suppose that's probably the only thing really that can justify putting yourself through this.

Yeah. But I think I think after you think about that for long enough, you realize it's silly. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. Yeah.

I think we'll know a lot more by the time we get to June, won't we? Once they've had a solid few rounds to collect themselves in Europe back on slightly easier, more familiar ground. Yeah. But he's got to be. Is he the oldest rider in MotoGP?

Probably not the oldest rider, but he's... Zarco. Zarco, of course. Yeah, Zarco is literally like a granddad to most of them. But the Mark is one of the more senior guys and he must be looking at the sheer amount of youngsters coming up.

As people once looked at him and thinking, Jesus, this is going to this last one's going to be hard to achieve. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be. All right. Well, let's get out of here. I say last thoughts here and as we sign off.

I'll just say thank you guys for having me on the show. It's it's it's fun and I'm happy to be able to get on a MotoGP episode. So I appreciate it. Rich, final thoughts? Yeah, well, I think we've covered it in pretty major detail.

I think we're running at two hours almost again, aren't we? As we always inevitably tend to do. So, yeah, it was a great weekend. Everybody made it out, you know, relatively unscathed, despite the fact there are a couple of big accidents across the weekend. So, yeah, good to see a slightly bigger crowd.

I mean, it did look a bit sparse in terms of TV coverage. As you said, it was obvious how many people stick to the main straight, which I kind of get it for turn one. Pretty dramatic. But the banks looked pretty empty. But again, as I always say, like Silverstone, it's a big place to fill up, really.

And there's actually nothing I will say. There's I haven't read it yet, but Matt Oxley's just recently put out an article on motorsport, which you can read online about code. Sorry about liberties challenge in terms of really going after the US market. So there's obviously going to be a big push and interesting to see your comments and your sort of vibe. Both of you from being there that it seemed pretty energetic and a bit fuller than previous years, which I know is perhaps a slightly low bar, because we know it's really struggled in the last few years as Silverstone.

And it will be interesting to see if I make it there this year, what the crowd looks like in Northamptonshire. Yeah, Jake, sorry. Well, I just want to this reminds me. I am going to be at Silverstone. Really?

OK. What for MotoGP? Yep. Wow. OK.

See you there. Yes. Don't do. Yes. I actually have family over there and I've got a trip planned this summer.

And so I'm going to go to BSB at Alton Park the week before and then Silverstone for MotoGP. Well, then you got to see Danny and Karl then. Yeah. We'll have to see if we can do a big group meet up then. And yeah, get some get some extra content.

Yeah. Whether you know the keys to the Golden Kingdom will be presented to us, I doubt at Silverstone this year. But we'll have another go. But there's other stuff you can do in and around the weekend and certainly at BSB. It's very easy to speak to people if there's anybody in particular that you'd like to catch up with their Jake, then we can definitely arrange that.

OK. Yeah, that'd be cool. And Alton has a been to. I have. I have.

I've never been to Silverstone. I have been to Alton Park years ago. Alton is awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

Fantastic place. Yeah. I know you want to write this up because you got a hell of a big on your hands. Even worse now, but I will have a shout out to Dan and Carl. Love your World Superbike coverage.

Yeah. We can. Yes, I do like to travel. Do you like to travel? And if you guys can come up with if I get every chance to get back again to England or to the UK and it's in the summer instead of usually in the winter when I wind up being over there, I will pack my gear bag and we will try to figure out how to get us all out of track.

How about that? All right. Nice. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

So with all that, since we're ending on track day, I'm just going to tell everybody just ride safe and stay tuned for my man for the few man about town at Koda interviews that I had. A couple of them are pretty cool. So listen to that and we're out. Back with another person here at Koda and they're walking around. I'm with Adrian.

Where are you from? Seattle, Washington. Oh, got some friends from Seattle flying in. One of the co-hosts I work with comes from Seattle too. Anyway, see you got an Apulia jacket.

You're in for Bez this weekend. I am also Mark Marquez, of course. Probably both of them. If you got to choose one, who are you taking? The second.

Think Bez will do it? I hope so. Mark is the king of Koda. It goes left. Yeah, but I don't know.

Maybe things will change up. We'll know Sunday, won't we? Yeah. Find out soon. Thanks.

Thanks. We're back again on Friday with another Mountain Reader interview. I'm with Brandon. Cameron. Where are you guys from?

We're from Wisconsin. Yeah, Wisconsin. Who are you guys rooting for? Mark Marquez for me, mostly. I'm just here with him, my friend.

What's your favorite part of the track to watch from? Honestly, I don't know. It's my first time here. We haven't seen all of it yet. Take my vice code.

Try to find 789. It's really cool back there. It was all there. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

All right, guys. Jim from Motopod here at Koda with Monks the People. Just a dude of man around the street kind of thing. Met some guys here. Tell me your name, where you're from, who you're rooting for.

David from Minnesota, and I'm rooting for Pedro Acosta. Cool. Dane from Minneapolis, Minnesota also. Jonathan, Minneapolis. I think I'm going for Marquez on this one, Mark.

Yeah, Mark does dominate this track. Marquez won in a while here. It is a left hand. It turns left counterclockwise, right? So he should be good.

But Bez is looking great on the Aprilia. What do you think about that? Bez is looking super good on the Aprilia. I kind of want him to take it. Yeah, I'm team Aprilia.

Bez, I'm hoping he wins. The Aprilia is looking pretty good this year. We'll see how it goes. I'm still going for Marquez. All right, well, I think he's going to...

He's a diehard. Diehard. That's the only reason I'm a diehard Marquez fan too. Although Acosta's probably second. But, you know, can't doubt the Aprilia.

They got it right this year. The Aprilia's got it right. All right, so let me ask this question. It seems like the Ducati is not as good as it was last year. And the question I got is, are you falling into that Mark Marquez thing where they build a bike that only Marquez can ride?

Not yet. I think they're at risk of it for the 27 bike though. But it seems like they're still trying to run all of the data from all the bikes and get all the riders. And Marquez is just so much better at adapting. I don't think the Ducati got worse.

I think just the other bikes got better outside of the Yamaha. And it's still early in the season. So once we get to Europe, we'll see how the Ducati actually looks. Yeah, I'd be curious to see how the European rides go. But the Ducati's not looking as strong as it has been in the past for sure.

Yeah, for me, I'm thinking about it from the stack point of if Mark doesn't win or be on the podium in second here, I think alarm bells go off back in Bologna, right? Because they've got something wrong. But did you look great in Brazil? So we'll see. Alright, thanks guys, appreciate it.