MotoGP Jerez: Rainy Days And Sundays

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 835, April 28th, 2026. The rain falls mainly on the Moto GP in Spain.

Right Rich? Yep, correct. We're going to cover everything that happened in Jerez plus a little bit of the testing for Jerez. As you heard, Richard Giles with me to cover Moto GP. Let's start with a shout out.

Let's shout out Carl and Danny for another great episode of World Superbike. If you guys are only listening to me and Rich, you are missing out. You need to be listening to Carl and Danny as well. Just so that you know, for the record Danny, before you even said in the podcast, I was I'm already laughing myself silly about three hours to Alton Park. It is now the running joke of this podcast, which I think is quite funny.

Then another shout out to Jake Rohrer and Scott Bolton, who has been off the show for a little bit, came back on to help Jake with his first solo Moto America effort. Those guys sounded like they had actually been doing the show for 10 years together. It was quite impressive. If you're into Moto America, go check them out or just check them out in general. Just don't listen to me and Rich.

Listen to those guys. Those of you who do, tell everybody about the show. In this era of social media and pages and likes and clicks and downloads and all that stuff, the more people we have talking about the show, the more people we have downloading the show, the more likelihood of us being able to get better content for the show and better interviews. Also, if you can help out with the show, it takes a little bit of effort and money in the background to keep this going. It takes a little bit to try to get to some of the tracks.

If you can throw something in the hat, that'd be great. We have links on our website at www.motopodcast.com. If you could do that, that'd be great as well. As always, thank you to everybody who has been helping out the show since the last time we talked to you guys. Really greatly appreciate that.

I think with all of that, Rich, I guess we should just roll into the news. Absolutely. World Super Bikes and Moto America is being covered by our new compatriots. As you said, I just want to echo what you said, Jim. Absolutely outstanding.

These guys sound like they've been doing it forever. It's great to have more people on board, more content, more coverage. It's all great as far as I'm concerned. I would just add, anybody that's a long-term listener or has just found the show, do please check out the social media content that we're putting out on Instagram in particular and X as well. I think it finds its way onto a few of the other platforms as well.

Post, repost, like as much as you can. This is the age that we live in. Like it or low bit. It just helps a great deal. As Jim said, we just want to try and do more and more all the time.

Anything you can do to help and it doesn't cost anybody other than a little bit of time. So yeah, it would be greatly appreciated if you can do that. But yeah, we want to talk about Hereth because that was a bit of a crazy weekend at times, Jim. It was. It was.

But we first want to talk about the news that came out of Hereth. One of the first things I've got here is that the constructor talks with the sporting body is not going well. They are bickering about money, which means we're not going to know who's going where for what teams because they're not willing to announce it without there being some incentive that they're going to get or I said, not incentive. That's wrong word. Some guarantee that there's going to be money for the teams that's coming out of it.

So that's interesting that that's still taking time. It is a brave new world with Liberty Media running the show. I think the teams know it and they know what the teams get in form of the one. I think they want a piece of that rich and I think they're rightly entitled to it. Logical sense without the bikes, without the teams, there is no Moto GP.

So thoughts? This is the sort of the aspects that we're not perhaps quite so interested in. I mean, we like to watch the bikes going around the tracks, don't we? And all the kind of behind the scenes stuff is, I mean, as an element of interest to I guess. And like you said, the teams clearly know that they need to act now before the sport potentially starts to grow under the new sports entertainment group, Liberty, Dawn, a kind of leadership era that we're now in.

So it's a shame it's taken so long, isn't it really? Because it's holding up a lot of other stuff that would be noteworthy and newsworthy for us to talk about. I suspect this is going to rumble on for a little while because there's nothing like a bit of money or a lot of money to divide people. I understand that the espilettos, two top guys, father and son, are sort of heading the negotiations. But as you've got elsewhere in the notes here, Jim, some notable faces were on the grid and around the paddock at Haaretz this weekend.

Oh yeah. Madakali, Horner. The Formula One Liberty influence is creeping in more and more. We don't need to go down the rabbit hole of what that potentially means and the concerns that we've got. We'll cover that in future shows.

We've already talked about it. But anyway, yeah, it's just all this political shenanigans is a bit of a distraction really. It is. I mean, one of the problems with them bickering about the money is the fact that we're not going to know who's going where with what writing. So all we have is rumour and speculation.

So we're going to go through some of that that we know or what we hear. Some of this might be out of order, but it's all good stuff here. First of all, Alex Marquez, 2KTM. That's been talked about already. But the rumour now is that Digia will join him in KTM.

We only know this because Renz has affirmed that he is out at Yamaha. He has nowhere to go. Now he is rumoured to be replaced by Ayagura, which that makes sense because Ayagura has told Trackhouse he's not coming back next year. So where is he going? Well, odds are that he's already got a Yamaha contract.

That one surprises me, Rich, because I would have thought that Ayagura would have gone to HRC the first opportunity he had. But apparently that's not the case. Again, it's because all this is going on. Well, I mean, all this stuff is always kind of conjecture and never official till it's on a sort of press release. It's true.

But there's a couple of kind of maybe not kingpins is not quite the right word. But Maverick Vinales has been centred on all of this in this absence. Some of the shenanigans that tends to surround Maverick and obviously this ongoing injury issue that he's got. And again, I don't want to get sued here. What we hear is that KTM are quite frustrated with the way this whole thing has been handled.

And of course, he was meant to be a shoe in going up to the works squad. I think frustration has boiled over now. And therefore, that's where the digier to KTM rumour has come up now. Whereas he was previously been talented to go to Yamaha. So suddenly the space opens at Yamaha.

Aya Gura, OK, he's Japanese. That makes sense. He'll get paid a lot of money to go there and he obviously would be a good fit in a Yamaha. HRC possibly might have been banking on the fact that he would be available at some point in the future. They appear to be making moves for other people now.

So the whole thing is just very sort of, what's the word, fluid and rather dynamic in terms of what's going on behind the scenes. And of course, none of this is official. So it's hard to know what's rumoured, what's kind of solid. But there are a few things that we believe. But yeah, I certainly was very surprised by the Aya Gura to Yamaha speculation.

I mean, he was at pains in the press conferences. So I read to deny it, which is usually a confirmation that it's true. So yeah, I mean, there was all sorts of stuff going on. But digier to KTM. I mean, again, I'm a little bit kind of I'm not quite sure about the what's the word, the kind of the wisdom in that move, given what's going on at KTM.

And it looks like they might be down to two bikes next year as well, which is another not great aspect when you lose all that data. That's another room that we need to talk about in terms of what Honda are up to. Yeah, let's go to Honda because there's a lot of pieces here. So perhaps maybe Aya Gura doesn't go to Honda because one David Alonso has been suggested that he has put ink to paper on an HRC contract. You cannot underestimate Honda's desire to win at any cost.

They have the money to do whatever they really want to do. I think I think Ducati is kind of in the same boat. I think they've got enough money with Levano and Audi and all that stuff that they could pretty much do what they want. But there's a limit somewhere on it for sure. But Honda's able to spend anything for it.

So perhaps that's the question. Perhaps also if you lose Tech 3 as a KTM set of bikes, which seems likely that KTM is going to scale that back to a two rider factory effort. There's a lot of talk that Honda has been chasing Krasini to put them on Honda's. There's always that possibility that Honda wants or could get another team and take Tech 3. Honda could build enough bikes to satisfy everybody without much trouble.

So perhaps maybe all of that's what's going on. There's a lot of pieces on the chessboard and they're all moving real fast. That is for sure. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts and I think the last time you and I spoke, Jim, bearing in mind it's been two other shows that have come in the meantime. Well at that time, the talk was potentially that Honda were going to try and get Krasini on board, as you just mentioned.

That appears to have gone away now. I think Krasini want to stick with Ducati despite their warranted frustrations and some of the rider market moves around the Ducati thing. So yeah, Tech 3 have now opened up as a target for Honda to get another two bikes on the grid. So fascinating everything that's going on. And of course, Ducati's problem is that they've got almost too many riders on their books at the moment.

They might be short of one that they didn't expect to be, which is perhaps another bit of speculation that will come on to in terms of the top, top, top guy. I was speculating over X. I don't know if you saw it on Sunday. I mean, I don't want to jump too far forward, but I do wonder how much longer Mark is going to be around. I agree.

Leading himself up like this. I don't disagree with that. As you can see, as you can see, he's told he hit a gruesome injury, a severe case of road rash that was on his right forearm. And that was pretty gruesome. That looked like that thing had been down deep into the muscle.

Well, that was hideous. It was hideous. And this is like two or three weeks later. I mean, God knows what it was like on the weekend itself. I'm sure it was absolutely a struggle to hang on to that motorcycle.

So you have that issue. Where are we? Bounce back around here. There were incredible people in the paddock at Hereth. One Christian Horner, as you said.

He was spotted in the paddock with LCR. Is LCR for sale? We know one thing's for sure. Horner's flush with cash because he was getting ready to buy into, I hate to make this an F1 podcast, but I find this to be great. He wanted to buy into Alpine and have it as his own team, to which one Toto Wolf sold shares of Mercedes to buy Alpine to prevent Horner from getting back into the paddock, which is a level of petty that I aspire to get to.

If I had that money, I would do the same thing just because I could. So is Horner going to join Gunther in the paddock? Is he running LCR or does he run, you know, because Steiner has bought Tech 3 and, you know, could those both be there? Maybe, perhaps, possibly. Interestingly, the teams are complaining about the current format and about how every session except for the Friday morning is ultra high pressure.

So they want some sort of a change. I don't know what they want to change it to. I mean, I've heard different rumors that have been floating out there that's been floated out that you have a practice. You trim both practice sessions by 15 minutes on a Friday. You then run a Q1 session for MotoGP at the end of Friday that breaks everybody into the traditional Q1, Q2 that we think of.

So think of it this way. It's a time qualifying session that sets everybody in an order that says, hey, the top 10 guys in that session are in the Q3 session, the last session to run, and everybody in between that is going to the Q2 session. I don't know if that's better. I don't know how that makes it less stress. You got two practice sessions that are now roughly 45 minutes long to work on your bike, work on your setup.

And then that afternoon you're qualifying. I don't know. That seems... I'm not sure about that one, what do you think? Yeah, I don't really follow.

I mean, I understand the fact that the riders in every session, they don't have any time to sort of to breathe or to experiment. So I can understand why that's potentially a bit of an issue in terms of trying a few different setups that might work on any given weekend. So perhaps that's the bandwidth that they're looking for. I mean, clearly, you can't use a race weekend really as a test session. The concessions system that's in place allows the teams that are struggling to test more.

So that's kind of covered already. Unless they're just trying to find reasons to push back as part of this whole negotiation in terms of what the future is going to look like. As a spectator, of course, we're not sitting on the bikes under pressure all the time to perform. There's a lot of work for the teams as well, particularly when you get crash motorcycles coming into the picture as well. I mean, it's just it's a full on weekend for everybody concerned.

From a spectator point of view, I've got to say selfishly, I love it. There isn't a dead session we used to moan about. Was it FP4? Yeah, free practice right before qualifying. Free qualifying on a Saturday.

And that used to feel a bit of a waste of time. I understand that from the team's point of view, it was an opportunity to run race setups and whatnot. But yeah, it always felt a little bit like a sort of placeholder session. Whereas now it's just like full on all the time, which is great from a spectator point of view, as I say, but obviously a lot more pressurized and tiring, etc. And resource hungry from the teams and the riders point of view.

So I do understand that. But quite why it's a big bone of contention in these negotiations at the minute, I just think that might just be a bit of kind of gamesmanship. Quite possibly. Here's one that I'll put a smile on your face, Rich. Could Turkey, the circuit in Istanbul or Constantinople, take your pick, whichever one it is, could be back on the calendar as soon as 27 or 28.

Toprak is a big name. He is Turkish. Number one has gone back to the Istanbul circuit. It's a great racetrack. I thoroughly enjoyed MotoGP when it was there, when the circuit first opened.

I think it'd be great for them to go back again. And if they go back in 27, that would just be fantastic with me. Sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned, because that is a great racetrack and arguably should never have left the series really. Yeah, I mean, Toprak being there obviously means that you're going to get a decent crowd or probably a huge crowd actually into there. So again, this all kind of smacks a little bit.

And I don't say this necessarily from a negative standpoint, but the whole kind of Liberty overlord chip means that there will be a lot of alignment between some of these venues. So Formula One is definitely going about that as official now. Istanbul is back on the F1 calendar. So everyone is expecting that MotoGP will follow suit. There's also gathering talk about a race in Africa.

I don't know if that would be at Kyalami. I would assume that would be probably the case because there are not too many venues that I'm aware of in Africa. What there's Welcome, which was inside of the Oval of some kind. Yeah, which is also South Africa, of course. Correct.

If they're going anywhere in Africa, they're going to go to South Africa. You assume that, right? You would assume that to be the case. So let's say be one of those venues. So the strong talk that Formula One will be announcing a race there fairly shortly.

And again, we've spoken about this many, many times that to be a true world championship, you need representation on each continent, really, I think, from my point of view. And I won't go down the whole too many races in Spain thing. We already know that Barcelona is going to be a bi-annual event. I think that's correct. And there's ongoing talk about the likelihood that Aragon will disappear from the calendar, which for me is a problem because that is a problem.

That's a great track. In a heartbeat, I would trade Barcelona or Valencia for Aragon. Valencia is going nowhere. I hate to tell you that one. Yeah.

But for me, it has no place on a MotoGP calendar. But we'll see. I agree. Obviously, Liberty will get more and more of a say on this as time goes on. I don't think they can realistically add too many more rounds.

But I suspect we might, for some of the European races in particular, we might see a bit more of this kind of alternating schedule thing going on. Yeah, I think that's where we're headed there. Yeah. Let's see. Where are we?

This is a bit of an interesting one. We found out that Bastianini does not go to the Safety Commission meetings because the powers that be do not listen to the riders. Ooh. The teams have their say, right? And they're bound by some concord agreement.

There's going to be like the haven't formed one. There's going to be the Grand Prix drivers. This could be like Grand Prix Riders Association, which is all about the safety aspect of it. I hate to say it. I'll have this rant later.

But there was one incident in Moto2 where, again, the motorcycle at serious velocity had gone to the air fence. Aaron Canette. Aaron Canette. Again, there's the other problem I have with this now is if you notice every Moto3, every Moto2 and every MotoGP rider is hanging onto the clutch when they fall on the bike because of the rule that you got to go behind the fence. I get that.

It's a safety issue. I'm 100% with you on that one. But we talk about unintended consequences. The unintended consequences is people are going to get their hands ground down and be missing fingers because somebody's going to get one trapped under the bar as a result of trying to hang on to that clutch. So there's got to be some happy medium in between.

There's a lot of times you can see a bike on its side. It's still running. I think it's OK if that rider can run to that bike and he feels OK. They can grab the clutch, pick the bike up and return without having to essentially go behind the fence. But if the motor is stalled, then yes, you must go behind the fence and restart your bike.

I think that's easy to do. I think it's clear cut. That's how it should be. Yeah. The Bastion Indian thing is interesting.

So I was sharing a few messages back and forth with something that I won't mention, but people will probably be able to guess. And we got into the whole what's going on with Liberty, what the MotoGP teams want, safety riders, their involvement in safety issues. Mindful of Bastion Indy having made a comment this weekend, which I think were words to the effect of there's no point going to the meetings because anything we say, nobody cares. Nobody ever does anything about it. So I mean, there's a whole can of worms, Jim, for another day.

Oh, yeah, sure. But, you know, just a general. I want to be careful how I phrase this. Just a general lack of aspiration to make things better from the teams, the riders, the organizers, everybody, really. And again, I don't know how much Liberty will kind of contribute to this or just let bygones be bygones.

I don't know. It's a bit concerning, really. I don't know. The other thing that's interesting, I don't know if it's on the notes, Jim, because you've got a lot of notes on the thing. But did you pick up on the news about what was going on with Honda's 850 at the minute in terms of behind the scenes testing?

Yes. So on the news, I don't know if you got it on there, but Alessio Spargro was testing the 1000 in terms of development for this year, had a big crash. I'm not quite sure where. I'm assuming it was in Japan somewhere, one of the test tracks there. He's damaged from vertebrae, so he's quite badly injured.

Anyway, at the same test, Nakagami was out on the 850, allegedly. Allegedly. But being reported by people that would know, turning laps quicker than the 1000. Correct. And my question to you in that, is it the Pirelli rubber?

Which I think we'd make a strong case that that's what's causing it. But supposedly, not to steal your thunder here, Rich, the 850 from Honda is supposed to be a weapon. That's the rumor. Yeah, as we expect it to be. But the point is, if the 850s are already on a par or quicker than the 1000s, then all of these issues around safety and what the riders are saying just becomes even bigger of an issue.

And we know that the Pirellis are going to be quicker because we've seen it in Moto 2 and Moto 3. They are generally anywhere between one and two seconds a lap quicker. So there's no reason to believe that that won't be the case with the Moto GP spec tyres, whatever they are. But the DNA of them will be similar. Why wouldn't it be?

Whereas we've been used in the past with Bridgestone had an awesome front, Michelin have an awesome rear, Pirelli have very good front and rear. And now you get the lap time. I mean, that's a big problem for teams to figure out how they make the tyres and the bikes work. That'll take a bit of time. Laptimes will be lower and the dropping capacity doesn't appear to be having an effect on the lap time.

If what we're hearing about Nakagami's times, unless, as you say, the Honda is like three seconds a lap faster than any other bike. But I don't think that will be the case. So this is only going to make some of these tracks even more of a problem in terms of whether the safety barriers are. And I don't know how teams and the riders are going to organize themselves. They just don't seem to be that willing to push it.

Yeah, there's something there. I mean, racing is dangerous. I think we all know that. I think we all accept a certain amount of risk that's involved. Yeah, OK.

The 850s, if you even remotely thought we were going to be like one and a half to two seconds slower because we're on an 850, you people are crazy. There was no way given the time that these guys got to work on the bikes, that they weren't going to be damn near as quick as a thousand right off the bat with lack of any kind of trickery, right, that we have in the 1000. I think it's because you fundamentally you go back to what you know when you're doing this 850. You go back to producing a motor that has got a really nice torque curve and you let the rider work it all out with his hand, which is what we're doing now. And if you got it figured out and you got a good torque curve and a good set of grippy tires, you're going to set some lap times because it's all about corner speed.

The straightaway is a straightaway. You're not gaining any time there. You can lose time, but you're not really gaining time. You're gaining time because if you exit the corner faster than you did previously, you carry all that RPM, you carry it all the way down the straightaway. You now go down the straightaway in a shorter amount of time because you're carrying more speed as you enter the straightaway.

And that's what they're doing. That's what happened on the 850s and the whole thing, or not the 800, sorry, I know I said 850. And that's where the problem was. It was all corner speed. You had to ride it on the front and it was okay if you had a bridge down.

But when you had the initial Michelin V Bridgestone thing on 800s, it didn't work. And so eventually Michelin just said, I've worked, done, we're out. And Bridgestone had a superior tire and blah, blah, blah. And we're like, oh, well, we're going to go to thousands now because there's really no difference. But we don't sell an 800.

We'll go to a thousand again. Okay. Well, that's just going to go back around in a circle. That's really what's going to happen. I'm trying to sort of formulate in my head why we sort of getting into this discussion because I don't want to wrap everybody up in cotton wool.

That's the last thing that I want. No, I don't either. But we do know that the current generation of bikes are pushing the limits of some of the tracks that we go to in terms of where the barriers are and stuff. And then we have this kind of stuff around ambivalence around safety and from the riders and the teams. It just kind of feels like it was all a bit kind of uncoordinated and it's going to come to a head.

At the same time, we have TV coverage, which won't show you a crash when it happens now for fear of upsetting somebody. And yet we're backing into a set of regulations that are likely to make the situation worse with teams and riders that either don't have a voice or aren't interested to make their voices heard. So it's just all a bit kind of odd to me. And it just I think the eyes are off the ball a bit in terms of what's going on. There's all this kind of political stuff going on around the commercial aspects of the sport.

Meanwhile, we're backing into a potential problem with bikes faster than the ones that we're replacing, allegedly to slow them down a little bit. Again, without watching to go down the Formula One route, look at what's going on in Formula One. You've got a set of technical regulations there, which are just absurd, are dangerous and are turning people off. I mean, I wasn't exactly what you could turn on to Formula One over the last few years. It was.

But this year is just a joke. I mean, you know, Max calling it sort of PlayStation racing. I think he's absolutely on the money. Yeah. So you can easily get kind of into these situations where you end up with something that is not at all what you intended and just makes things worse.

So I hope we don't end up there, Jim. I mean, I'm interested to know what people think about this. I like to see the bikes going fast. And as Alan always tells us, long time listener and supporter of the show, his prototype racing goes fast as you can. And that should be how it is.

The problem is in this modern context, this modern era, if people start getting seriously hurt on live TV or worse, that just inevitably end up with draconian measures taken, which make things from our point of view, not great. I just find it all a bit frustrating that we're kind of getting into this situation at the minute. Anyway, I'll quickly touch on this. I think they could do something with the barriers to help. Right.

Potentially, you could put some more fencing up, make it taller, a little stronger. So if a bike does get in there, it's obviously keeping it separate from the crowd. I think the last thing any of us want is a bike to go into the crowd. I think that they could also do things a little differently. You could have an airbag.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has this. They invented it. It's called the Safer Barrier. It was a steel and fiber energy reduction system. So essentially imagine some sort of foam that was behind a steel barrier that would take the impact.

Perhaps some of that needs to be in some of the crash areas. Not maybe that system, but something like it that is going to help absorb some more of the energy that these bikes are taking to it, besides the rubber tires, which seem to try to pick the bike up and throw it either back into harm's way or it wants to try to catapult it out. So this is going to be one of those great ones that you can talk about as an offseason and be like, this is the safety show and we could ramble on forever. I'm really looking forward to the 850s. You can get me wrong.

Oh, me too. And I hope it's a great success. But there are a couple of worrying signs emerging, but we don't. Yeah. We've talked about it enough for now.

Don't want to frustrate people listening. Yeah. Honda's 850s out there. Aprilia's 850 will run at Haereth Wednesday and Thursday after the test. That'll be the first outing that'll happen on that.

And we'll talk about it here, guys, because it's news. Just quickly touch on. Oh no, one thing I want to touch on was Trackhouse's new title sponsor, Superfile, which is a file sharing service. I think is incredibly cool about this is not that I like NASCAR in the US. I don't.

But that is a NASCAR sponsor. That is a NASCAR title sponsor on one of the Trackhouse race cars in NASCAR. It's a tin top sedan type series on Oels. Don't get me started, people. And they're bringing that sponsor to MotoGP to get more brand identity on a world stage.

So it's a really cool model that they're using. And I hope it works out for them. I thought the bikes are really cool and yellow and black. It kind of gave you that sort of Yamaha Bumblebee kind of feel because it's kind of that similar color per se. But for me, it's just I thought it was an interesting take.

What it also shows to me is that Justin Marks has a plan with this team. He's not just I had money and I want to buy. No, he wants some success from the team. He's bringing different sponsors. He's using a different technique to bring different sponsors to it.

We've talked about this many a time. I don't want to belabor the point, but tobacco money is gone. We've got to find something else besides an energy drink that is going to let us race motorcycles and more power to Trackhouse and to Justin Marks to find somebody like Superfile and bring them into the MotoGP paddock. I'm excited about it. I think it's a great call by him.

With that quickly testing. So we talked about all this testing has gone on. It happened today. Was it Monday? Yeah, it was happening on Monday.

So because today is Tuesday, my days are mixed up for that. Just the overall results. Ayagura was the quickest. Rael Fernandez was second quick on both Aprilias. Bizeki made it at all three people on Aprilias in the top three.

Mark Marquez was next on his Ducati, but they were working very hard on aero and they were trying to find a sweet spot of the aero something between 25 something between 26 that has a more rounded type of shape a la Aprilia to improve the cornering stability because I think that's what Delinia thinks is missing on this 26 bike is a cornering stability or at least Mark doesn't like how the bike corners and maybe they'll can get that sorted out. Who knows? Acosta was fifth. Then it was Alex Marquez, then Quattroraro on the Yamaha, then Jigia on a Ducati, Vignola is still way down in ninth and then Martin was there in tenth. One of the things was also Aprilia had a bunch of crazy new aero pieces on the front.

Those guys are working overtime to make aero work and I wouldn't be surprised if their 850 doesn't have something similar on that front wing. I think there's a lot to be gained via traction stability and cornering and braking because of what they're designing and how they're looking at the wings and what they're trying to do with it. I think a lot of that will carry over to 850s, again, but reduced to the size or the limit whatever you're allowed to have per the rules of regulations. That's everything for the news, Rich. I mean, I think it was just crazy how much stuff was out there.

Yeah. Well, news stroke rumour, I think is what I call it. Sorry. I have one more thing. Danny and Karl touched on this a little bit with Real Roads, but it's been confirmed now that there is a feature film tentatively called Isle of Man that starts production with this year's TT.

I just wanted to add that in there real quick for you Real Roads fans and to back up what Karl and Danny had talked about. I have one thing just to add as a news item before we move on to the Haereth Racing weekend. And that is just a massive shout out to Sylvain Ginterley. I don't know if you saw, Jimmy, he ran the London Marathon. Oh, really?

Which happened on Sunday. I don't know if you saw, but I mean, Sylvain has got quite a large family, but unfortunately and very sadly, they lost their six year old son, Luca, last year to a former cancer or brain tumour, something like that. Poor little lad passed away. So Sylvain set himself the challenge to run the London Marathon, which is what, 24 point something miles? 26.2.

Thank you. OK. You're one of them. Some athel. In a full set of race leathers.

In race leathers? Yeah, yeah. And it was not cool on Sunday in the UK. It was probably in London. It would have been low 20s for the race.

So he did it in something around about three hours, 47. Wow. Smashed the world record. Some nutter had done it before in leathers. Perhaps lots of people have done it.

I don't know. The previous record was four hours and something. So Sylvain, who's still an active rider in world endurance and stuff, yeah, absolutely smashed the world record and has set a target of 50k pounds to raise for charity towards cancer research and so on. And I think currently it's running at something like 140 something thousand that he's raised so far. Wow.

I'm going to chuck a few quid in the pot myself. If you look on social media and whatnot for TNT Sports or Sylvain himself, you'll find a link to the page where you can donate a couple of quid or dollars or whatever. Try to put that in the show notes or in the show notes on the pot. As a sporting achievement. And this is a man that's had lots of sporting achievements on two wheels.

To run a marathon in heat in full leathers is really quite something. So I just, yeah, we had to shout that one out. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, hopefully we can put a link in the show notes so everybody can know where it's going. I'll make a note to do that.

Let's get to the racing on the weekend. So we'll start with Moto3. Yeah. By this time, the track was dry. Friday was a great day.

Beautiful day in Spain. But we got into that Saturday and it was a nasty, rainy, wet kind of a thing. But it had dried for Moto3. Pini, who had won in Cota previously, is in the first qualifying session. Shows you how things turn.

Pratama, Danish Kelso, Buchanan and Moodley. Now Pini was fourth. He had a transfer spot. But he was in the pits with like two minutes to go. He got off the bike, then he got back on the bike, then he actually went out.

He did finally get one more lap at the end. It was really weird what was going on there. I never did read or find anything as to what they were discussing or what they thought might have been wrong with the bike or not. Because, I mean, the mechanics really didn't do anything to it. They just simply fired it back up and sent Pini back out again.

I don't know if there was like a misjudgment in time or he thought he wasn't fueled long enough or something. I don't know. Did you find anything about that little tidbit there? No, I must admit I didn't. I mean, Pini was just having a bad weekend, wouldn't they, up until that point?

Oh gosh, yes. Bear in mind, he won the last race. So yeah, I think there's just a bit of befuddlement all around in that pit and team. Yeah, could have been. Which I find weird for the layup hard team.

They are one of the better teams. But Moodley, Pratama, Kelso, Danish and Danish all go through. So they get out of Q1 to get to Q2. Halfway through Q2, Fernandez is ahead of Ogden, ahead of Kylis, Iriate, Krusus and Pratama. Now, you gotta have believed Kylis had been killing it all weekend to this point.

Untouchable basically. Sort of in that vein of what was happening at Kota where the kid was just absolutely spectacular. And with about five and a half minutes to go, finally Kylis went to the top. Basically Munoz would then come out because now David Munoz is back from his fractured femur, broken femur. And so he had a pass fit, was able to run.

He would jump to the top. Then Fernandez went down and Kylis was on the gas to try to get the pole. And you're going like, oh, OK, that one's not going to count, which you thought that was going to happen. It didn't. He just got by before the yellow flag had been shown.

It was by a whisker. But it was very close. As Stuart's deemed that hey, he could not have seen the yellow flag. It had been happening behind him, therefore that lap stood, which meant that Kylis would get the pole. He would pit Munoz.

Then in carpe, Joel Esteban with a great run in there at the end. Brian Oriate would be fifth. Then Fernandez and Calso, Almanza, Bertelli, Danish, Morelli, and Peroni finishing out the top four rows on the grid. The question really becomes in this qualifying. into the race is hey can anybody got anything for this Keelys kid because he's looking pretty he's he looked like okay he's gonna be unbeatable but he saw what happened in Texas so it's like well let's see what goes on here.

At the start of the green Munoz gets a jump on Keelys and then it's Carpe, Esteban, Kelso and Fernandez. Bertelli was down in the first turn it was one of those racing incidents got bumped took a handlebar out tucked the front tossed him into the gravel it was investigated and the Steve Stewart's decided that nope that's a racing incident and everything's gonna be a okay there which was really good. Yeah good call. It was a good call it was the right call I mean people got a race we can't go to any state we can't overestimate everybody like we can't do it. Now Keelys and Munoz and Fernandez are the guys out front then Carpe Fernandez is making a move up the pack which is interesting as they go through all this.

Then Munoz and Keelys are together and they're looking like those two guys are gonna break away. Munoz is putting up a great fight against Keelys because now at this point we're four ish five laps in thought well Keelys is what's you know is Keelys gonna break everybody he should the Munoz has got a broken we're coming from a broken leg this should be pretty easy but Keelys goes in front but Munoz goes with him and they kind of pull away they put a gap on people they got about a second or so they're getting away but Fernandez winds up turning a bunch of fast laps in the middle part of this race where he's just on it and just going. You have to give a little bit of credit to Fernandez because he's turning the laps but Munoz has not let Keelys get away which causes them to kind of want to go back and forth because you know Munoz seizes all opportunities to pass someone when it's when it's viable and he did which kind of slows those two guys down and suddenly voila Fernandez is to the front and he's even by Keelys like oh okay wait a second what's happening here now with Keelys it's like is he what got some problem we don't know about that he you know because everybody was started on the exact same tires so it wasn't like somebody had a soft and oh no that's right Fernandez had a soft everybody had mediums. No Keelys was on hard front rear. He was on hard front rear okay.

Yeah he was like an outlier oh and I'm sure that's right because I wrote it down. Okay I might have heard it wrong or had scribbled it backwards in my notes I do things like that but either way it's like oh maybe he cooked off a tire whatever there was but by about halfway roughly in this race it's Fernandez it's Keelys and Munoz they've got a huge gap over everybody else so it's like those three guys are going to figure it out who's going to be on the podium and where they're all going to stand but you got it but it was really cool that like Carpe Veroni they're falling back but Morelli he starts to come on as you get past halfway it's still Fernandez it's Keelys it's Munoz but Morelli is now moving through the pack and which was you know Fernandez had come through now Morelli is coming through like oh this is kind of interesting didn't think Morelli had this kind of pace but he was actually like four tenths of a second faster than these guys in the middle section of the race or the I could say the second the last third of it he was flying I mean you know I didn't think this was coming from him at all but Morelli was you know he is only like 1.2 seconds behind with five laps to go Keely goes to the lead Munoz has got by Fernandez because Fernandez is now going backwards slightly and basically it got to be about right about those five laps Keelys decided to do what he should be doing all the time is being in the pack conserving his tire doing what he needs to do and then drop the hammer and he did and nobody and I mean nobody had anything for Keelys Keelys rockets off to this lead he just checks out like it's as if he had another gear it was so wild to watch how he pulled away from everybody and how he did it it was a dominant performance at that point it was like there was no doubt in your mind that Keelys was the fastest person on that racetrack from that class but it was impressive to see how he pulled away from a they're not all equal but a fairly equal Moto3 class it's not the norm to see this happen very often sort of the last guy who did it kind of like on a regular basis was one mr. Acosta because he kind of did that too which is where we might be headed here is sort of like the sequel to that yeah but the interesting part is is that it's still Morelli who's coming on hard right he's the guy coming in fact it's by the last lap he pulls off a brilliant pass on Fernandez and Munoz to make himself into second it didn't last as Munoz and Fernandez would get themselves back to it and get back by but it was a hell of a race by Morelli to even be at second place near the last lap I mean yeah he did but it was a great second effort at turn six he was the third but you know Keelys killed it man he it was awesome and again it's the run to the line for the final three guys the guys are gonna be second third fourth it was three wide it was all about who could get the drive out that last corner and it was kind of cool to see them all three wide hit the line and then figure out that you know Fernandez he did pit Munoz and then he did pit Morelli which I really felt bad for Morelli because he had an absolutely fantastic race so there's how it is it's Keelys Fernandez Munoz Morelli top four Carpe's fifth Pratama sixth Peroni Almanza Rios Esteban Uriadi Ogorman Danish Jolcalso and then Salma burning the last point a really good Moto3 race rich the way to set the morning off on that Sunday morning with a great race and that one was one of the better ones and you saw what was great well I think also was direction showed you that Fernandez was catching they showed you that Morelli was now coming they were on top of that situation so you got a little more into it like oh there wasn't oh gosh this guy just disappeared you knew that they were coming and now your anticipation was like hey does there enough time you know you start to do the mental math of is there enough labs at four tenths a second there thoughts sir well yes just to make you what you just said race stewarding decisions good TV direction much better much made good use of this or the in picture shot to show other things going on so that you could concentrate on other interesting battles be that at the front or further back into the midfield or whatever so that was really good to see yeah I mean getting boring at blowing smoke up Max Keelers is our something really I mean the kids good I'm sorry the kids fantastic I've always reached a conclusion that he likes to deliberately stay in the pack and race for a bit you know because we used to see this with Alonso didn't we in Moto3 he'd hang around in the pack for quite a while and then bolt at the end and this is certainly whether it's an aspar thing in terms of the way they coach their riders I'm pretty sure he was on the hard front and rear so that might have explained part of the reason why he didn't make the break early on and he saved his tires and as you said Jim when he decided to go with what four or five to go I mean he was like gone I mean he was two seconds up the road in a flash but he was shot from a can yeah I mean the win was never in doubt was it because he's a big kid as well for Moto3 so I mean he's got that kind of against him which might have been part of the reason why he went hard front and rear as well just to help with tire life yeah so the interesting thing was the battle for second through to fourth wasn't it and on that last lap going through those really fast right turns there was a bit of elbow action from David Munoz going on I was doing quite a lot of Xing on Sunday I've hurt my back so which I won't go into but I've been sat down a lot more this weekend than I would normally so I was doing a fair few tweets or X's or whatever so I can't equipped about fair play to whoever's done a factory mental reset on David Munoz because I mean you know he'd have been up the road and taking somebody else out on lap two in years past wouldn't he oh yeah and he rode a really steady race apart from the last lap where it did get a bit kind of handy or elbowy with Fernandez who was equally adept at dishing it out it must be said and you know going through the final turn it looked like Morelli was gonna have them both because they kind of sent each other wide and they said that kind of formation flying three wide as they came to the line and must have been like thousandths of a second separating the three of them oh at least sure so just really kind of entertaining race and I did make a note that Rios actually finished on the road in sixth I think but he had a two-place drop for some infraction or whatever which is why he ended in ninth or tenth or something so that was a good race from Rios as well didn't get to see an awful lot of that but he's one of the new kids on the grid I think this year and starting to show why he's there so there was a bit of interest elsewhere but yeah I mean the story the headline again is Maximo Chiles isn't it and I keep on going on about it you know he's so good in Park Fermi when he's been interviewed as well he's just absolutely the polished all-around superstar X Factor kid and part of me wishes that he'd do a Jack Miller and get bumped up to MotoGP next year there's a lot of talk about that yeah I think he's kind of ready kind of I think yeah I mean it's an 850 it's gonna be much faster but I don't think it's gonna be as big of a jump there's not as much going on I think right we don't have all the you know launch devices and ride height devices and everything else that's complicating all of it it's just go it's more pure more pure racing which is yeah as you said Munoz there at the end I think he kind of re-engaged default Munoz mode like there was a software reboot and we got back to like real Munoz you know what the virus crept back in yeah something you know somebody dispatched a virus against it or something like that got downloaded to him it's like oh that's right back where we were before but Moto3 doesn't usually disappoint and it did not in this case I mean it was a fairly steady race in a way but had a very exciting conclusion I'll put it that way yep it did it lived up to the expectation I think you know I think we sort of take a look at Moto3 we think oh the first five laps are gonna be crazy is there because we're figures it out the last five laps are gonna be crazy because everybody's trying to figure it out another the little parts not crazy but it's it's interesting you just got to figure out who's fast and who's not which they did a great job of allowing us to know who was coming and who wasn't so we sort of keep our eye on that so we kept it was again is entertaining as you said great great calls by race control great directing as there as well so let's look at the points real quick for these guys no no surprise Max Keelys is on top of 90 points he's a 37 point lead over Alvaro Carpe then we have Fernandez in third followed by Peroni Morelli, Pitama, Pini, Almanza, Uriate and David Munoz with that second place gets 22 points so he's already tenth in the championship so four races in and in the top ten so who knows what's gonna happen but Keelys is almost got like a death grip on this thing already already yeah and I don't expect it to change no I do not either not paying attention to my changes all right so let's look at the Moto2 guys so in Moto2 in the first one we have Arbolino, Roberts, Van de Gerberg, Anshu, Canet and Huertaas these are starting to be sort of the guys that we see in there almost all the time and as much as we talk about MotoGP needing a reset of people and taking some of them out there's some in Moto2 that need to go to to bring room for the guys that are in Moto3 I think we'll have that as our own separate show or talk about it another time because that's a long discussion that we need to avoid in this one I think either way Fernandez will start from the pit lane no matter where he would qualify because of his infractions at Cota having just completely flubbed turn 11 I again I think that yeah pretty much I think that fits punishment fits the crime is what I'm looking for there however at the end of the end of Moto2's QP1 Sasaki, Huertaas, Canet and Arbolino get out and go into that Q2 part in Q2 halfway through it was Alonzo, Escreage now remember Escreage had a set a quote-unquote track record there in some testing the forward seems to be coming around and I'm beginning to wonder if anybody's going to take a punt next year and say we want a forward chassis because it's starting to look good and not that Escreage is not a good rider they're all very good riders but is Escreage the Alonzo, Aegis, Hulgardo type talent? I don't think so so it's interesting to see where things may go in that respect. I don't know Jim yes you might be underselling him there I mean he's doing this on a forward which means if he were a CalEx or something he might be you know you could you're right I you're right I'm super impressed with him I mean I am too I'm not gonna lie I know you are because you have all people know what he's doing out there it can't be easy with two bikes because I've only got two right out on the whole of the field I think that's it forward two forwards and you know let's be honest that Jorge Navarro on the other bike is not exactly having a great time of it so it's not as if Escreage has been pushed by his teammate at the moment so he's kind of a one man band at this point in time and doing an outstanding job because this is not like a flash in the pan it's been pretty much every round so far this year he's been there or thereabouts.

I think he's had to come out of Q1 several times this year oh yeah he's made it and he's made it which is which is a huge quantum leap from where he and the forward were last year like oh they're in Q1 they're staying in Q1 they're not getting to Q2 so room to get there is incredible again it shows how good the forward has become it's like everybody had that time where they all took the punt and went to Bosca Cora well then they everybody kind of like and then they sort of shuff some shuffled back some stayed some people who were on K-Lex went back but it's good to see that at least teams are trying something different to find a competitive edge as opposed to to there that's the whole idea here is you have the same engine but what chassis do you have and how do you set it up and how do you race with that which is kind of what you want it's you took the big variable of the engine out of it because if somebody makes one a bad one or you you can be screwed by that anyway as this all settles out we'll go straight to it here Colin Vier would go to pole position he would retain that Escrige would be second then Manuel Gonzalez finishes off the front row Aegis would be fourth then Lopez Alonso had a terrible time looked like he had it in the bag because he was quick on it but he is doing better at qualifying on the Pirellis he's in those front two rows which I think we all agree Rich that's where you need to be in moto 2 you want to be in those top two you kind of do it off the third row if you have to but you definitely want to be in this top two to avoid the other problems I mean he used to be qualifying 9 10 11 12 he's not now they're making some progress there for sure yeah and he had a big crash on Friday as well correct destroyed the bike so it was a good Saturday recovery yep good Saturday recovery uh Holgardo his teammate was seventh sort of like not sure what happened Holgardo has been good up until he got to coda and now a bit of a dip in form as you might say he knows maybe he puts it back together again here but then Balthus Guevara Munoz Kanat-Suzaki now coming out of that Balthus was talking about how I just didn't get a clean lap I had yellow flags I've got pace I can win this race I was like oh that's a big statement from from Barry Balthus that you know he can do this so it's like well what the heck was going to happen on what the heck was going to happen on race day so at the start Alonzo had a very very bad start I don't think he had the bike in gear I think it was like in a false neutral because you could watch him when he pulled up he put the bike into gear and then he's sitting there and then he kind of lets the clutch out a little bit to get that drag and it doesn't go he's like oh and he picks his foot up and smashes it down the gear again get down into first gear and then everybody takes off because it sort of happens just like a millisecond before the light turns green so he's got a very very bad start Gonzales gets a very good start and Vier has an okay start he's not got the best I think he's like third or fourth as they come through the first turn but by the time they ended up that first lap Vier does get to the lead ahead of Gonzales then Aegis and Lopez, Holgardo, Oscridge Alonzo is back in like 13th Aegis is the man on the move because he's up to second Alonzo's moving up he's up to like ninth Balthus is up to third so maybe in talking about hey I've qualified eighth but I've got race pace and I can go at this maybe there was something to this one but by five laps it was Vier and Aegis and Gonzales then Balthus, Lopez, Holgardo, Oscridge and Alonzo now Aegis and Vier are kind of going at each other here and they're doing what they can Gonzales is going towards second Alonzo has finally worked his way works his way past his teammate in Holgardo and he goes past Oscridge in one lap and he kind of clips by some people you know Alonzo's got the elbows out and he's really pushing and so is Oscridge Alonzo winds up being like wide and then Holgardo would get back by it's a great little race that's happening again race direction or camera direction saying hey check this then we get to like lap seven where Kinet crashes that was a big one on the entry to I think it's eight it's a really fast corner there and man that bike almost left the track again I had my rant earlier I'm not going to talk about it but hey there's we need to do something about we can't have a bike leaving the track I don't care what we do we cannot have that happen and we need to be sure that we do something to keep that from happening unfortunately Balthus crashes at turn six and then Lopez has a crash it's like everybody decides to crash on lap sevens I don't know what it was why that particular point in time but it was kind of crazy Aegis finally gets by Gonzalez at turn nine that was a good battle that was going on there Vier is Vier is still leading Gonzalez Gonzalez is second he gets back by Aegis then there's Oscridge he's still hanging on there and Oscridge got a chance at this a podium possibly Vietti's there and Alonzo's coming hard with 11 laps it's Vietti is is by Oscridge and then Aegis is by Gonzalez I mean this time he makes it stick Alonzo winds up getting by Oscridge like a lap or two later so the guys that you expect to be going to the front are going to the front with at lap 14 Aegis gets by Vier a great clean super smooth move Aegis was looking stellar on that bike then Gonzalez also got by as well because once Vier was out of the way Gonzalez was not going to let any opportunity to let Aegis get away from him happen so he jumped on that immediately to get through all of a sudden you turn around it's like oh Aegis is looks like he might be the man to beat but Alonzo was the fastest man on the track he Alonzo works his way up gets through everybody and actually gets himself to fourth at three to go it's Aegis Gonzalez Vier Alonzo Vietti Guilvara then on the last lap Alonzo he just does try to nip up side of Vier but he can't do it Aegis wins the race kind of going away Gonzalez is second and then you have Aegis Gonzalez Vier so a podium for Colin Vier then David Alonzo then Vietti Munoz Guilvara Arbolino Oscridge fell back to ninth but still that's pretty good for Oscridge from where he was with the forward it looked like he lost some a lot of grip on the rear so maybe they need to work a little bit to get that a little bit better then Ortola Horgardo with a miserable 11th place and all of us you just didn't expect him you know I mean Alonzo is in fourth you figure Horgardo to be there Horgardo won like the first two races of the season or whatnot and that is there the Sasaki was 12th Ancius Latch and Roberts picked up a point in 15th it was a good race Rich so my thought is with the exception of essentially Aegis and Gonzalez it's all the kids from Moto3 are now starting to come to the four in Moto2 Vier's got it going Alonzo is there Horgardo has been there kind of slipped back a little bit but those guys those kids are all getting to the front and they're all showing what talent they had we always talked about that group of kids like Vier, Horgardo, Guilvara those kids were all really fast Moto3 kids give them a year to season figure it out they're going to be super fast Moto2 kids and I guess they're not kids anymore but they are showing promise right so it's kind of interesting yeah I mean I've got three comments I mean the first one is that David Alonzo who we love and again another person that we continually blow smoke up the arse off with very good reason but he had a win in the Ballaton Park in Hungary last year didn't he I think that was Alonzo win yes because he took he came from deep in the park to win that one yeah and you know this has been the story of his Moto2 career and it does actually set a few alarm bells off for me it's sort of flattered to deceive so far and it makes the rumored HRC big money contract because it's been widely reported that Alonzo wants to be a MotoGP next year of course he does after two seasons what will be two seasons of Moto2 but was only going to ride from factory team had a high aspirations in terms of what he was going to be paid to go and I would argue that perhaps the Moto2 results don't quite back it up certainly not to the extent that the Moto3 performances did bearing in mind he was on Moto3 bike for a lot longer and he's still quite a small kid as well I mean I wonder physically whether the MotoGP bike might take quite some time to adapt to mind you having said all of that so he had a terrible start yet again and according to my notes on lap one in the first few corners he was down to 17th now fair play to the kid he was up to ninth at the end of the first lap so that was a hell of a first lap I mean that's kind of center at Donington 1993 levels of performance so it's just a little bit hard to read with Alonzo and then you take a kid like not kid a young man like Senor Aegius who has come a very unconventional route very much reminiscent of Casey Stoner this lad he's come halfway around the world left one parent at home he hasn't come through the sort of the Spanish or Italian lower leagues and stuff he went straight into Moto2 you might record that he did a few substitute rides for the Mark VDS squad I expect when this sounds horrible to say but I expect when Sam Loews was out injured because you know Sam did fall off quite a bit and injure himself when he was in that team I just recall Senor doing quite a few or you know three or four sub rides in that squad and then got the full-time ride and he's been building and building and getting his pace and that is a statement back-to-back win but because you know he won the last race in in America right at the time when the last few coveted MotoGP seats are up for grabs and you know I think he will he's in the window he is in the shopping window again I wrote on X on Sunday straight after the part Fermi he said something like and I'm paraphrasing but he said this is a very important moment for me and it hinted at the fact that behind the scenes there are some crucial decisions to be made and probably some offers on the table and he definitely needs to move up to MotoGP I mean if you get the chance you go agreed particularly now because I know you can have a separate discussion about Yamaha but there are no bad bikes in MotoGP not like there were five ten fifteen twenty years ago I mean you could literally be on a career ending Neil Hodgson great example great rider world superbike champion went on to that Dantene Ducati which that team had no money in it you know he was out within a year so that was a career killer back in those days not now and I'm convinced that he will end up in MotoGP next year he deserves to go up to MotoGP and we need another Australian or a replacement for Jack Miller I mean we were quipping before we started recording that in our far as Pramak Yamaha I'd be looking at Senna Ages and thinking well you know Jack's not getting any younger they could retain him on a test riding capacity and bring Senna Ages in as a young hot shoe straight off you know a lot of success in Moto2 onto the new bikes Pirellis all the sort of stuff that makes sense make it makes sense to me and equally Colin Vaya or Vaya I think Vaya is actually how we're supposed to pronounce it now okay Vaya okay fair somebody I was listening to the other day said it's Vaya not Vaya again should tech three be looking at him potentially there are slots available in some of these teams potentially because we know there are some MotoGP riders that really shouldn't be there next year I can think of four or five easily straight off the bat that you think they've had their chance they've had the time they've been there a long time earned their money getting a bit long in the tooth give somebody else a chance you know so whereas the other person I was going to mention was um I don't want to sound condescending but poor old Mano Gonzalez really because he got beaten by his teammate having won that race last year and he's just sort of always in the shade didn't he and he's been in Moto2 a long time and he just doesn't have just doesn't feel like he has that wow sort of x factor that we talk about all the time he said all the right things in part fair may but I just think MotoGP will it'll be one of these guys a bit like Aaron Kinnett it just boat just sails and he's not on it you know and it's hard because he's a great great rider and it's a great result for him but he got beaten by his teammate you know and like you said Jim there's all this this sort of cohort of Moto3 riders from a couple of seasons ago they're just swarming some of these people and again Moto2 there's another four or five riders there that hard to see them clinging on to rides next year and that Arbolino, Roberts they all come to mind very quickly yeah right there's a few others but those are definitely ones that you've had a chance you've had your time you know I'd even put something like Dennis Onchew in that category yeah Onchew would be a good good choice yeah where's he been this year so far nowhere and Ethan Gravara trouble is the form is so up and down with him although he's being hotly tipped to move up to MotoGP as well so yeah Moto2 as it was largely through much of last year continues to be generally speaking the most interesting race of the weekend yeah now okay we're going to talk about the MotoGP but that's a weather related thing otherwise I think you know we wouldn't have much to say about either of the MotoGP races true well so let's look at the championship standings real quick after this with the back-to-back wins Aegis puts himself in second place he's nine and a half points behind his teammate Gonzalez then you had uh Gravara is sitting there in third Vieti is fourth, Hulgardo has slumped to fifth, Alonso is sixth but you know he looks like he's charging towards the top nothing's impossible uh then Daniel Munoz Escrige in the top 10 in points which is amazing then you have was it Veyer you said it should be pronounced I think so yeah yeah in ninth and then Arbelino is tenth so there's your world championship there so let's move into MotoGP now this qualifying session happens on a damp track that is drying a lot of people are speculating that in that first session you were able you could possibly get to slicks but unfortunately it didn't rain a little bit during the first session which kept it really really wet but in the first session is Mir, Marini, Zarco, Acosta and then all the amahas are in there as well everybody's on wets Morbidelli goes down Miller is down at the last turn Marrera is down at turn nine it just seemed like nobody could really stay upright but the person who was the person who could stay upright was Zarco he simply just stayed out he just kept running laps just kept getting faster and faster when the rain did let up a little bit Zarco did put in a really good lap to put himself at the top he actually knocked Acosta off of the top but Zarco and Acosta would go through but there was a little bit of drama at the end as Morbidelli's bike was smoking as he brought it back into the pits so I originally thought that given the cool conditions given the wet it was a little bit of steam coming from the radiator area especially because a lot of it was coming out up around the fairings near the top I assumed that because you need to be sure that you're running your MotoGP engine at its proper operating temperature and it being cold and being have water on the track all that water is going to go into the radiator which is going to create a way to transfer even more heat out of the radiator which would keep the bike cooler so I thought oh maybe they had taped off a portion of the radiator but it typed off just a smidge too much no upon closer examination it was obviously something up top some kind of oil that was getting somewhere might get could be a leaky valve cover could have been a line no idea but it didn't seem like it was that big of a deal however it did delay the start of the second session because they were looking at one of the corners there right before the pit entry I think and they were this looks like they had found some remnants of oil that possibly was there I you know was there oil there I don't know I mean we had everybody out we did the old sniff test with the old hand what's it smell like you know and then we'll figure it out that way but it did delay it a few minutes as things were there so it was delayed due to track conditions as we start the second qualifying session out of here goes down to turn eight then Alex Marquez goes down at turn nine it's like again everybody's falling off again because it's wet and it's like you guys got to stay up Zarco would go to the top Mark Marquez was at the top for a little bit Zarco bumped him off Martin was looking good until he fell off at turn one you Zarco actually had put on a new rear wet he'd ran the same wet the whole time he was looking for that edge it didn't work as though it was a good idea because it did get Zarco to second so it finishes off with Mark Marquez on pole position Zarco is second Digiantonio is third then then Bezeki on the Aprilia then Alex Marquez Acosta that's your second row then Martin Bastianini Fernandez then Benyaya Eiger and Outiger Benyaya looking lost as usual Rich although he did have a ticket directly into Q2 so we can't really fault Benyaya too much but he we spotted in the testing that he was out was he out checking the competition or was he out admiring the bike that he will ride i.e. the Aprilia who knows which way that one goes but that's what we're going to do is we would we would line up for the sprint now we had the qualifying for Moto2 had them all qualifying for Moto3 the track has dried so everyone is on slicks but there were dark clouds and there was a spot or two of rain as they went out for their siting lap they went to the grid either way it was the question was what was actually going to happen don't know but the light went out Mark got an excellent start with Zarco and then Alex made a good start to get up to third then Bez but Bezik kind of started to go backwards a little bit Martin got by Alex Marquez and then Martin's bike on the next lap had a wild disc problem wild disc brake problem you could see it as he went into one the one carbon fiber rotor on the right hand side was glowing absolutely cherry red i think that's got to be somewhere over 12 to 1500 degrees c that causes that to do that there must have been something that got stuck in it or they didn't find anything because Martin retired after this and he went to the pits and nobody really found anything that that could have caused the problem and they were not talking about it my speculation is this rich they must have changed the fluid they may have changed the brake fluid in the bike there may have been one small bubble that was keeping it locked and then with the heat of the disc heating up the fluid that made that bubble of air just expand ever more and put more braking on to that rotor and that's what i think caused it it's purely speculative on my part do you got an idea of what you think may have happened well i think i heard somebody else saying and forgive me i'm not going to be able to recall let alone describe from a technical standpoint but i think it was a bit of spanner trouble oh i think something was not fitted quite correctly and basically the yeah the brake was locked on huh that's uh not good either way glowing brakes which is jim yes sir one correction to the beginning of the race okay what did i miss bosecki dropped to 17th because he had a massive wheel spin off a tarot advisor tarot that is not meant to be there there is a i don't know if it's a rule or an unwritten agreement there is they do not let their bloody visor why the hell they need to get rid of one after the first lap or the sighting lab or warm up lap to call it proper name anyway i don't really understand that and i don't know if anybody has admitted or divulged whose tarot strip it is because normally there's a little number alex marquez let me go there is alex marquez right there is a rule they must have the tear off gone before they reach the the back of the grid he takes it off coming out of the turn and the last turn was a 13 he reports to his grid position the wind or whatever manipulates it around to where it winds up being you sort of kind of got caught like on bosecki's bike so it's so alex rips it off it floats in the air bosecki comes through it's on the front of the bike and then you know you stop so there's nothing sticking it to the bike so he then it then falls down and works its way under and then as he takes off that tear off goes away now there was a lot of speculation that that tear off then got into your horhey martin's bike and that caused the breaking problem or caused the cause the problem with the motor or something yeah i don't think that's correct i don't think that's quite right but somebody's bike ingested it may not have been either way we're back to the back to the sprint this is sprint so it's mark his brother alex and then zarko digia acosta and then relo fernandez one lap with we're at lap 10 laps to go and they throw the white flag because now the rain's starting to come down a little bit harder you are now free to change bikes if you so desire so the question was going to be who is going to do this now digia's are digia and zarka are battling they're having an awesome ding dong through all of this anytime that uh digia could get by zarko would run back up the inside of him again so you know zarko might be 35 but he still knows how to race he still knows how to how to outbreak people so it was pretty much a good little ding dong that was going on there fernandez got by acosta which is which is great again we're watching a good race so props to the direction of this one as well the there there's you know the battle for five six seven and eight is absolutely crazy there is they're going back and forth for at least two or three laps seven laps to go and alex winds up catching mark okay cool that's good digia had dispensed with zarko and got rid of that pesty fly and he was closing fast digia was flying i think he was at one point a second a lap faster than the marquez brothers out front when we get uh eventually with six laps to go alex gets by mark and he does it going around the outside of turn eight to be on the inside for turn nine you rode around the outside of a guy who is probably the best in the world at the left-hand turn and then beat him into a right-hand turn that you're supposedly far better at than he is so it was kind of impressive for him to do it now digia five laps ago digia's caught caught the both of them and he's caught alex and mark now top rack is down he took out guin is it not guin told it salvadori salvadori yeah salvadori in a very nasty crash which great sportsmanship by top rack he was over there in the gravel with him are you okay they had a little moment together a little embrace hey yeah i'm fine it's all good you know top man that rap top man that top rack guy yeah class act yes there it is so with five laps to go now the rain is starting to come down a little bit harder the question is because it's starting to buck it down on like the front stretch but the rest of the track is still sort of dry however mark trying to get back around his brother alex falls and then he's down again holds onto the clutch saves the motor got it running stands it up and he's facing the pit lane entrance he waits everybody goes by and mark dives for the pit lane and goes to get the other bike that's on wet there's going to be controversy about this move but let's finish it and we'll come back to the controversy so mark goes in he's got his bike well he's following bender who had just went through and bender has now gambled the opposite way of his great win that he had in austria he's gambled the other way and decided i'm going to go to wets now it's really coming down now and alex and digia are literally crawling along the racetrack on slicks again i hate fight to flag races just because of the fact that now these guys are trapped on slicks when when the water is at its worst and coming down it's so bad that alex falls and basically a straight line digia clamps on the brakes and just basically slugs down to an absolute crawl but now everyone goes in everyone's trying to get off of the off the slicks and get onto their bike that has wets outager is leading this thing bender who's the first man on wets blows it by crashing in turn one on the wet i don't know how he did that one but he did even bez goes down benya is now leading mark and they're catching outager to the point where outager looks like he's actually standing still on the racetrack when these two guys blow past him mark he takes advantage of benya's tentativeness to go by outager and goes up the inside and knocks benya out of the way which is interesting because i thought that was a pretty aggressive move based on what happens to benya and his bike and how it moves around but on when they showed sunday they showed the replay they showed it from the outside so you can see that benya has actually lost a foot off the foot peg because it's so slick even with the wets on that it makes the move that mark put on him worse because i was like for sure somebody's going to complain that he needed to be mark needed to be penalized for that move because it was too aggressive riding but he did not and it was mainly because benya was losing the front all by himself before it ever happened yeah it was a hard move but it wasn't a bad move no i mean arguably it was an unnecessary one because he's so much faster than benya we'll come back to mark we'll come back to that so now mark leads the race and mark winds up running home to win the sprint to win the sprint race he's followed home by his teammate benya then morbid delhi because he had swapped bikes too becomes third bender who had fallen on wets is fourth then digia fifth fernandez sixth quattro a seventh zarko slides down to eighth and lucre marina gets the last point in ninth now the controversy with mark marquez people were screaming that he should have been penalized because he went across the track and went to the pit lane okay number one he did you are all mad that mark did that because he understands the rule book and then and knows how to take every advantage of a situation that he could possibly have so he did nothing wrong he didn't disobey a marshal he did he safely crossed the track and re-entered the track safely he then went across the grass and he entered before the white line that designates a 60 kilometer per hour zone which is defined as the entrance to the pits so he entered the pits correctly changed his motorcycle and then left now there's the other controversy well he should have got a long lap penalty because he crossed over the white line when he exited out of the pits no it says it's a dashed white line which you can cross which is legal which is what mark did so everything mark did was legal everybody else needs to take a look at the rule book in my opinion because if anybody on the grid is a cerebral racer it is mark he knows what advantages he has and does not have based on the rules and if he doesn't he questions his team and they come up with the answer all that year at coda i thought it was a it's a chaotic race it's a great race it's absolutely brilliant rich your thoughts well my first question back to you feel free to answer it straight away is do we like flag to flag races or not because i'm really sitting on the fence on this one i am too i don't because i hated seeing all the guys that are on slicks fall which they can do that i mean if this is a motor two race if the motor three race that race is stopped shut down and people go get their wet bike but then you get a restart and all that satellite time i get why they do it i still stand that i don't like what i don't like flag to fight races they're going to get somebody really hurt really bad in this case where it's going to be if that rain had come two laps later everybody would have stayed out who knows who would have had a massive crash that's how i see it so i'm still opposed to flag to flag no fair enough i mean they're good arguments for and against aren't they i mean somebody made a good point the other day that if you read flag a race then you have a full kind of grid restart again and that's arguably one of the most dangerous points of any race because all those bikes together going into a first turn usually on a wet track in that scenario so that's quite dangerous in itself but as you say i mean we saw this in um i was trying to think where it was red bull ring a couple of seasons ago where you had some people out on slicks others had changed to the wets and the speed differential is like scary yeah closing speed is bad in this in that set of conditions which out of your knew they were coming so he did move off the line but still they were on him and gone in a flash yeah obviously as you say aldegaard we saw that very vividly on sunday in terms of that speed differential and as inevitably simon paterson pointed out that kind of a speed differential in practice or qualifying you get a long lap penalty for whereas it's a kind of a manufactured kind of random slightly chance thing in a flag to flag scenario then again we saw brad binder a few years ago stay out on the slicks on a wet track and win a race so i mean it's a hard one to call really i still kind of quite like the chaotic aspect of it because it just creates something different i mean who the hell would have had banyan and morbidelli on the on the podium in any other situation but equally as people say it's not necessarily a true reflection who's good in the wet because it's very much down to if you stay on on slicks before you change the bike and then how does the timing work and this is why as inevitably happens for a brief period of time the internet went swivel-eyed bonkers over mark marquez with people saying oh he crashed on purpose so he could change bike it's like come on really that must be coming from a twister farm in north korea that sort of thing just to create general consternation in the bike racing world i can't foresee anybody that's ever watched a race properly coming to that conclusion but i mean i don't know if mark marquez knows the pit entry rules quite as well as that jim i suspect he knows the pit exit rules very well apparently there was a rule that got scrapped a few years ago that said what he did on sunday was illegal but it's currently not and i suspect we will see a change to that rule as a result of what happened but he didn't break a rule and therefore he wasn't penalized you can't be penalized with something you haven't done exactly simple as that and an actual fact he was i have to say extraordinarily for mark he was the let's be honest the apex predator of competitors for him to wait for all those bikes to go by so that he could safely cross the track i think was very very much to his credit yes i don't want to name names but we can think of at least a few riders in that race that would have just gone straight across that live track with other bikes coming and hanging the consequences and mark wasted probably five or six seconds maybe even a little bit more than that waiting for the track to be clear so he was very correct in the way that he behaved in that regard and yeah i mean whether he knew or didn't know if he was breaking a rule he would just have taken that chance because he knew he didn't want to do another lap on the bike with slicks so fair play to him yeah i look at it this way the rule book is available to anybody i can find the rule book online if i want to sit down take the time to read through it why wouldn't you okay i just club raced but still there's a set of rules that are there yeah and i would read the entire rule book from cover to cover with a highlighter these are areas of things that i could potentially gain some kind of advantage in why not look into if there's a way to exploit this particular type of rule yeah okay in the same way that ignorance is not a defense when you do something wrong yeah correct now did he look into it maybe maybe he doesn't know the rules like that and he looked into it fine whatever it doesn't matter the point of it is he didn't break a rule and that's where it comes down i know whether he knows or not it's a completely different yeah it's relative to the whole thing it's irrelevant what's funny is you had zarko complaining about it it's like dude read the rule book if you have this issue read the rule book and that's fine you can have a different interpretation of a rule in that book which then you can you could formally protest or whatever or you could go to simon crafer and go this is what it says this is my interpretation of it what is the actual interpretation of the rule because some rules are written ambiguously and there are so it's like okay cool fine they then you know at this point they could then say well this is what this means well okay now like now you have set a standard which then simon and the rest of the guys have to implement that standard at every track from then on right so there's a slope there you gotta watch where you are but yeah i just think in the overall analysis of this and we let's face it we don't need to spend much time talking about the sunday race because literally nothing happened one thing happened yeah and then nothing else yes my take on it is if we just talk a bit more broadly briefly about mark marquez mark marquez is not quite right no physically cleated there's a problem yes from last year from indonesia there's certainly some hangover issues from cota as we saw from the photos of his arm yep mentally again i wrote on x when you fast-forward into the sunday race when he came back to the picture genuinely i meant this in a nice way but i wrote that he had the eyes of a man that's starting to question whether this is worth it anymore ross has had that same look yeah because there's literally nothing left to prove really and you know you just start hurting yourself more and more anyway so there are question marks about mark marquez and let's not forget in the sprint race he had been overtaken by both his brother and i think at this point fabio didge antonio as well both of the hemorrhagic artists yeah marquez got currently and i'm not saying this is going to be the case all this year because you know this is mark marquez we're talking about but currently there's something not quite right and the fact that he won the sprint was just an extraordinarily good piece of luck that he happened to crack well i wasn't lucky to crash but he was lucky to crash where he crashed whether he knew the rule or he didn't know the rule is irrelevant as we said he did what he did in a particularly safe way got onto the wet setup bike and he won the race a fair play to him but it was a bit of an outlier result really because this is not the season really that mark marquez is having and i think we need to reserve judgment i mean post-test from monday maybe they will have found something that helps him out apparently he's not liking the front end of the bike somewhat reminiscent of banyan last year it's a bit different problem i'm sure but something's not quite gelling is it you know the feeling is not there physically i think things are not quite where they need to be and perhaps they won't get back to where they need to be because he's been injured a lot and he's not getting any younger and it gets harder to recover and if he's broken something else and he famously doesn't tell people the truth when it comes to how he's feeling and physically and whatnot so i think we need to wait another sort of two or three rounds of the european season and see how things go but as we'll talk about in a minute he's quite far back in the points and okay bez fell off in the sprint as tends to be his sort of mo this year more understandable on saturday given the conditions but he should be sort of 60 or 70 points up the road at this point if he hadn't been making arguably silly mistakes in the sprint so yeah mark marquez is a really interesting kind of topic of conversation and is going to stay one i think as we go on through the next few rounds yeah for sure all right let's just quickly attack the race yeah so we get to sunday the race starts it's a carbon copy start mark's out front bez gets a much better start because he doesn't have a tariff underneath his bike then alex and martin zarko and digi now alex then gets by bez alex gets by mark and then mark goes down at turn six i mean he just destroyed a ducati there turn 11 he just the front tucked he couldn't save it it was gone at that point nobody on the planet was going to touch alex marquez and alex runs home to the victory bez is in second i'm good yeah i really want to win five on the trot but i can't i'm gonna just do the wayne rainy and take you know what buddy good luck to you you got this one this weekend i'm gonna take second place and i'm good with it so he did there was some decent little racing in the back of the pack between like akasta as he was dropping back and going back and forth but there is nothing going on at the front ben yay actually has a problem he pulls into the pits uh somewhere around like lap 14 i don't know what exactly his problem was but there's really nothing happens they just run home in the order of alex marquez bez digia gets on the podium martin finishes in fourth iagura kind of charged through the pack to get to fifth if he had a better start or better qualifying iagura might have probably been on the podium hell he probably could have won given the pace that he had in the testing on that monday then fernandez zarko basheen outager akasta fell all the way back to 10th bender morbidelli luca marini quadtraro and wanmere getting the last of it we go to the points championship this is important for the point for the point i would like to make about marquez as we talk about that bez is out front on 101 points he is 11 ahead of martin he is 30 ahead of digi antonio it's i mean it's two appraisals at the top and i don't think any of us predicted that that was not on my bingo card right i didn't expect to run away from mark but i didn't expect mark to be where he is he is fifth he is on he is on 57 points he has a 44 point deficit in there and that brings me to the point that i want to make rich is it time to panic in the 93 camp do we write the season off get healthy and come back for a great season on an 850 for one last great gasp at it and do one more title win 10 nobody's done that in the modern era he can lay claim to being greater than rossi on numbers alone and he hangs the helmet up yeah i mean the greater than rossi debate is definitely one for a different day or perhaps one for never given the vitriol that surrounds that particular argument yeah i kind of keep as we've discussed several times i keep kind of going between i think mark might retire at the end of this year to no i think he probably wants to have a go on the 850 but i can't quite make my mind up about it at the moment and i mean i thought he was going to run away with it this year i might have thought that as he lifted the trophy in metagie last year none of us knew how bad of an injury he carried from that indonesia crash and bez accidentally took him out that is obviously a still being a serious serious problem for him plus a bike that isn't quite what he was used to last year evidently but he hasn't looked comfortable all year on the bike so far i will caveat this this is my mark as we're talking about you know one of certainly one of the top five riders in history i think we can probably fairly safely say that you know you got aga you got rossi you know rainy i mean you can throw quite a few names lawson will be up to 10 or 15 or 20 won't be before yeah but it kind of feels like yeah what was your question is there worry in the 93 camp is this time to panic i think not panic but i think some fairly heavy worry is setting in at this point because how many points behind is he 44 is two seasons with his shoulder all screwed up he was like 35 and 25 out at this time so it's there was something that simon patterson had put out there i'll find that real quick it's a big gap it's a huge gap i mean it's a i'll tell you it would be a hell of a lot bigger if it wasn't for bez having a few needless crashes in the sprints yes easy for me to say of course but he has crashed out of race winning positions in a couple of the sprints this year marco bazzacchi so lucky for mark that that's the case he might be or ducati might be hoping or reckoning on what we've often seen which is a kind of late season collapse in form in aprilia i'm not so sure that's going to happen this year i hope not they've got that their system and they're kind of becoming a winning machine plus the other problem that mark and ducati have is digier is very fast and if he's off to ktm isn't necessarily going to want to tow the ducati line plus you've got two track house bikes that are very very quick and will be gobbling up points as well so all of that adds up to this is looking like quite the challenge for mark to pull this one back now i'm not going to write him off and say you can't do it because yeah this is mark markers we're talking about but it's looking like a real problem at the minute and that was a big crash on sunday yes i mean that was a big one this was a guy that went through the gravel trap at that sort of rate of velocity a few years ago when he was on a honda and it nearly ended his career so those things have got to play on your mind and he's going to go next to lamor quite a quick track there's some gnarly turns there chances are it could be a bit sort of inclement weather which increases the risk factor on a bike where you're perhaps not quite trusting the front end doesn't say to me that it's going to be a runaway success weekend for mark marquez so yeah yes hopefully i've answered that question jim oh yeah you know there is going to be a lot of consternation in terms of how the hell they turn this one around yeah yeah yep yep there's no question about that so here's what here's the statistics i was looking for from curtsy simon patterson okay mark has only had a deficit of 10 points or more after four rounds in three of his moto gp um season he was 26 points behind in 2015 32 points in 2024 and 44 points in 2026 2015 and 2024 are the only years where he was long-term injured but still beaten the championship because 15 lorenzo wins right because he hurt whatever i forget at there or whatever but yeah so yeah and what we have uh we have two weeks to france so there's a week in between here so i don't know if it is mark marquez i the man does not walk on water but the man is spectacular and if anybody had a shot at coming from 44 points behind to win a championship it could be him i would not put it past him to do it again it would further cement the legend if he can accomplish it it further cements the legend that mark marquez is right that might be enough at that point to say i'm done but you know the rumor mill is he has signed a one-year deal to race an 850 with ducati with an option for another year yeah so who knows what's going to happen the other point that's worth making is the stats are interesting but if you're going back into like the 16 17 18 you know that's what period of time there just wasn't the depth of field that there is now true and i think we can say now jim with some certainty that the aprilya is the best bike wholeheartedly aprilya is the best bike on the grid no questions asked no question that bike is the best bike they are going to steal points off all of the jucattis and mark you know will be part of that i mean mark may be the one jucati out there that's the most resilient to that on his day but it still is a problem for jucati and very little they can do within the season in terms of parts changes because they're not allowed to change anything yep that's true one or two aero tweaks here and there and stuff but engines are frozen there's not an awful lot they can do and if there's a fundamental underlying problem in that bike that mark can't get around then that's going to be very hard to solve really but i like the fact that there's a shake-up in the competitive order i think the championship needs that yeah what i'm interested in rich is the fact that digia has looked good on the bike all year not the fastest person but looks spectacular on the bikes whatever that 26 is it works for digia it just doesn't work for mark which is really bizarre digia i've read a couple of times has quite a different setup on the bike so maybe just this bike is just working for him yeah steal that setup and try it because the little badelli on the other side of that box is kind of pops up in the top three in like fp2 or something and then i mean just then they just disappears okay i know you got a podium on the sprint but that was not lucky he stayed on the bike and when he didn't but that was not a normal race in terms of what happened agreed yeah interesting times i agree which we love well that gives us all kinds of content because yeah this is like the best thing for liberty right as we close this one out is there's going to be controversy people are talking and talking about the marquez thing all week long in the gap in between us being in spain and going to france on eighth through the 10th of may so that's what they want there's controversy they love it it's going to drag you know it's going to have all the people talking about we're talking about gosh we've brought it on for this for darn near an hour and a half i think as we always do as we always do so but i mean there's a lot here in this show a lot there again there's a lot of racing left to go in this year quite a lot so it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out so that's the last thing i got to say yeah well we've got two weeks till the morning and i think we're on for pretty much back to backs and god knows what for weeks to come so they're going to come yeah they can fast now yep we go back to back because it's only five days between catalonia and france now france to catalonia then you have two weeks because you're at the end of may when you're in italy then you go directly to back to back to hungary a two-week break to go to chequia and you are right back from chequia to the netherlands i mean yeah that's much later in the year for the netherlands that's way late to be honest and then you have two weeks to germany and you've got two weeks to great britain yep it's fast and heavy so a lot of racing to come rather nice to come looking forward to it all rich as always everybody ride safe yep see you next time