The Cream Stays At The Top

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk. Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 836.

The cream stays at the top. We're recording this on Friday, the 8th of May. I'm your host, Carl Hunn, and joining me this evening is my co-host, Danny Smith. In this show, Danny and I will report on the latest action from both round four of World Superbikes at Hungary and round one of British Superbikes at Alton Park. Before we get into the bike racing action and before we discuss bikes, Danny, there's been a few incidents in your life since the last podcast.

Yeah, things have slightly developed. Shoulder was recovering nicely and then on the Sunday before last, woke up in the morning, bit of a chest pain, didn't think much of it. Went and sat on the sofa, other half came in and she said, what's wrong? You look white. I'm like, don't feel great.

Chest's a bit tight, struggling to breathe a little bit, hopefully not a heart attack. She persuaded me to call triple one. GP appointment straight down there. He did a couple of wraps on the chest and he went, you need to go to the hospital straightaway. You've got a collapsed lung.

No rhyme, no reason for it at all. It's just one of those things being tall, lanky and hitting 40. Yeah, just happened and it was a full collapsed lung and I've been in hospital for a week with a tube coming out of me, pumping all the air out of me. So yeah, happy days. Oh mate, I mean, when you messaged us to say that your lung had collapsed, so worried about you, but also I must admit, I thought it was probably a byproduct of your shoulder surgery, but you said they don't think that's the case.

No, they couldn't see anything on the scans or anything. I've obviously got follow up appointments and stuff, whether they'll do a CT scan, I don't know, but I've had about eight different x-rays just watching my lung slowly inflate back to normal. But yeah, they couldn't see anything else on there. They said it's just one of those things. So you might hear some heavy breathing on this podcast, but don't get too worried.

Yeah, but what about you? Anything new? Bicrelated. I think the last time we spoke, yeah, the last time we spoke, I'd already done a track day at Donington and then I did an evening track day the Monday after, but that was just a complete washout. Well, it wasn't a complete washout.

We did the first 20 minute session and then thunder and lightning and storm came in. So fortunately with the evenings as well, you only get a couple of hours split between two groups. So I did have my wet set up with me. I did have wet wheels and tires, but it was absolutely hammering it down with rain and thunder and lightning. So I thought by the time I get the tires on and get back out, I just said, let's just call it a day, early bath, so back home.

Straight back, put the bike to bed and hope for the next time. Yeah, next time's towards the end of May. So that'll be good. Alton Park. Oh nice.

Yeah, which we'll talk about anyway in a minute. Nice and close to you apparently. Yeah, only 40 minutes away. That message from Jim had him in stitches, didn't it? So anything else or should we get into the news?

We can go into the news, Dan. Yeah. So I started off with just a bit on the Northwest 200. For those that have listened to the previous podcast, we're going to talk a bit more about what they class as the real road racing. It started this week, started on Wednesday, practice and qualifying.

It's the 8.9 mile triangle circuit on the north coast of Northern Ireland. We'll obviously cover a bit more of this in a later episode when the whole racing scenario is finished. Unfortunately, a bit of sad news. Today's qualification, Kamil Holan, died following an incident at Station Corner. 48 year old rider from the Czech Republic.

He was highly respected racer, succumbing to his injuries and the team have paid tribute by saying that he was an inspiration, support and a partner in life and on the track. Your humility, passion and smile will be missed every second. Your legacy will live on in hefty 74 and in our hearts. Yeah, real sad one. Obviously, all here at Motor Pods send our deepest and sincerest condolences to Kamil's family, friends and all the racers that are still over there.

It's a bit of a weird one, the road racing, isn't it? This is the 20th fatality in the Northwest since it started, but these riders seem to have an ability to just get on with it, put it into the back of their mind and get back to the racing. I know the family gave their permission for the racing to carry on. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, unfortunately, with real road racing, without trying to sound glib, it does kind of come with the territory.

Unfortunately, the nature of the tracks that they're racing on, well, they're not tracks, are they? They're real roads. So if you make a mistake, it can cost you your life. And the Northwest 200 is kind of the precursor to the TT. So it happens two weeks before the riders go to the TT.

It's very much seen as a warm up or a shakedown for these guys before they get to the island. And, yeah, as you mentioned, it's the triangular circuit. They put quite a lot of chicanes in probably about 10, 15 years ago now to try and slow the riders down because there were some, there's still a lot of long straights on this triangle course, but it's just to break up the straights a bit. But these guys on the super bikes, they're still exceeding 200 miles an hour down the straights. And again, I'll just point out the fact that these are public roads that have been closed for racing.

The Northwest 200 is safer, safe for the right word, there are less fatalities on the Northwest 200 than there are on the TT. I guess that's the nature of the course with the triangle course, as opposed to the TT, which has got, well, I don't know how many corners, but it's spread over 37.7 miles. Yeah, so a bit harrowing to see that. Yeah, like you say, there are more fatalities at the TT, but you are racing through the lines of the trees and over the mountain and you've just got sheer drops either side of you. But nonetheless, sad news to start off with.

And like I say, all our thoughts go out to those that are involved. We'll get on to the news from British Superbikes and World Superbikes. Okay, Dan. So from BSB side of things, nothing really to report from the new side of it. And we're going to discuss soon about the first weekend of racing last weekend at Alton Park.

From the Superbike side of things, Jake Dixon is still out. He's still injured from the PI test pre-season. Jonathan Ray has been standing in for him, but now they've got this guy called Yuki Kuni. I think he was a Japanese Moto2 rider. Yeah, he's standing in now.

So Jonathan Ray has gone back to his test rider duties for Honda, but they're saying that Jake should return at the next round, which is in the Czech Republic at most. Yeah, I think he's been struggling, hasn't he, with this injury? It's taken a bit longer than he expected. Obviously, they get good rehab and stuff. But yeah, hopefully see him back at the next race.

Yeah, the next item of news is regarding long lap penalty. So we mentioned it in the last podcast when Petrucci, he was given two long lap penalties and he just completely screwed up the first one when he came into the entrance of the long lap. Far too fast. Well, I guess it's normal speed for long lap, but there's a big bump on the entrance to that one at Assen and it threw him offline into the gravel and he lost a lot of time, but then he ended up having to do both long laps again. So there's actually been a ruling now and apparently this ruling is in line with MotoGP that if you did a long lap and you mess up like Petrucci did last time, if you lose five seconds or more, then you don't have to repeat the penalty.

The penalty still stands. Oh, I didn't see that one. Yeah, yeah, it was pointed out during the racing when some of the other riders were doing long laps. Yeah, right. Which it makes sense really, because, you know, they've paid for it more than they would with a normal long lap if they screwed up.

Yeah, it's a bit of a double jeopardy, isn't it? Yeah. The only other point and we'll perhaps touch it as well when we go into talking about the Hungarion, we'll see what round we saw these modified aero on the BMW, these slits at the back of the fairing, they're obviously there to direct air to the rear tyre for cooling. Yeah, I mentioned that because I must admit I'm not too hot on the homologation, but I didn't think that the manufacturers were allowed to make that sort of change to the bike without homologating it. No, I think it has to be available on the road bikes, doesn't it, to be involved in the worlds from what I was reading.

But obviously, I mean, I haven't seen any on any of the super bikes on the road, so I haven't seen any in, you know, magazines or anything reading about it. But yeah, maybe want to dig in a bit deeper with that one as the news breaks over the next few weeks, because I would imagine if it's that worthwhile of having other teams will be looking into it. And we've seen similar in MotoGP with the Prulia making advancements in their aero and the other teams following suit. But yeah, it was a strange one. Yeah, I don't know if they get dispensation because they're developing the bike.

So if they say, well, we're going to put this on the bike now and then it's going to be on the 2027 road bike or something like that. I don't know. But there's any listeners out there who do know and want to get in touch to to put a straight. That'd be brilliant. Yeah, definitely.

We'll give the email address out at the end again. Yeah. And obviously the social media. So, yeah, the SuperPole qualifying Nicolo Bulega again. It's getting like a bit of a broken record, isn't it?

Keep going into this. It's, Ballerton's not one of his favourite tracks. Doesn't really suit his riding style, but he absolutely smashed out of the park again. He did a 138.094 on his first run, which was six tenths clear at the entire field. Smashed the lap record again.

Fifth consecutive pole of 26 and that matches Foggy's run in 1993. I should have put that one in stack corner. You're definitely the stack man, Dan. Oh, I like digging into these little bits. And then Baldessari, the team Go 11.

He had front row start in second and then Jari Montella of Barney Spark was third. So we had an all Ducati front row, but Iki Laquena. He was handed a three place grid penalty, wasn't it? Laquena for impeding some lows. So that took him from fifth to eighth.

And then I think did Remy Gardner get another penalty as well? He got a three place penalty grid and that dropped him all the way down to 17th. Um, yeah, that's about all I had for the qualifying. So it was Boulogne, Baldessari, Montella, Oliveira, Laquena, Locatelli, Sam Lowes, Surra, Bautista, and then Alex Lowes in tenth. Do you want to dive into race one or is there anything else you want to cover on Super Bowl qualifying?

No, we can go, we can go into race one. Yeah. So for race one, twenty, twenty one lap race, first lap, it was contact between Montella and Locatelli shortly after the start. Um, Surra actually got up into second place by the second corner, but into first place straight away was, uh, Boulogne with, uh, lap two. Baldessari had a massive crash into turn eight, uh, Lorenzo Baldessari.

Bike was a complete mess. Uh, quite a fast corner, I think that one. By the time we get to lap three, so Sam Lowes, uh, he received a double long lap penalty due to a jump start. By lap five, Laquena overtakes Oliveira into turn one to take fourth place. Lap six, Laquena then he's on a bit of a push overtakes Montella into turn one to take third place.

Lap seven, Alex Lowes, he overtook Locatelli into sixth place in lap, lap eight. Surra was in third, but he was battling with Montella for third slash fourth place. But also Oliveira, he was putting on pressure from fourth, from fifth place. So it was kind of, they were kind of together. The three of them were together and, uh, in the process, Montella makes a mistake and Oliveira comes past into fourth place, but Surra holds third until, uh, lap nine, which is when Oliveira passed Surra into turn five to take third.

Surra was then overtaken by Montella and Surra's pushed back to fifth, but he was pushed back to fifth, but Alex Lowes was catching, he was catching up fast to Surra. And then by the next lap, lap ten, Alex Lowes, he was continuing to stalk Surra and then he couldn't make it stick during lap 10, but by lap 11, uh, Alex Lowes passes Surra into turn one. So he just managed to get the legs on him down the straight there. But Surra later in the lap, it appears he's just dropping back further and further. So it just looks like he's used up his rear tire basically, as he's dropped off the pace by about 0.5 seconds, half a second a lap slower.

Um, because Bautista as well overtakes Surra, but doesn't make it stick that time. Um, but then when we get into lap 12, Bautista passes Surra into turn one to take sixth place. He does push Surra, it's quite an aggressive overtake that one from Bautista on Surra. He did push him out of the way quite a bit, but there was no penalty or anything like that handed out. And then it's fairly static racing for the next few laps until we get to lap 20 when Bautista, he passed Alex Lowes into turn one to take fifth place.

And then yeah, last lap, one lap later was, uh, Bulega wins. Yeah. Bassani had an off, didn't he, on the last lap as well? Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah.

I've got it in my notes here. Bassani goes off into the gravel in turn eight. He does stay on the bike and rejoins, but he finishes in 17th place in the end. Yeah. Turn eight is the same place that Baldassari had the crash, wasn't it?

That, and like you said, that is a, that is a fast turn. It's the, um, it's the fastest corner on the circuit. I think Baldassari managed to walk away from the crash, but just had a couple of bruises and stuff, so beaten up, but able to race on in the next race. Yeah. So finishing order of that one was Bulega, number one.

Uh, Lekarona managed to stick it out into second. So that's both the Aruba Ducati's first and second, but he was two, two and a half seconds behind. Obviously working his way through the field, did Bulega sort of hold back a little bit just to maintain the lead enough. And then Olivera, now I've got plus 12 and a half seconds behind. That's some gap to third.

Um, but again, another podium for Olivera and then Montella, he was a further second and a half behind, then Bautista another second, um, and then Alex Lowe's was only seven tenths of a second behind Bautista. So obviously Lekarona started eighth and worked his way up to second, um, by lap seven, and then he was three and a half seconds behind Bulega. It's pretty good going, but again, they're on the best bikes, aren't they? But he's obviously showing that if Bulega wasn't on his form, then, and he was starting next to him, then potentially things might have been different. And Surra looks pretty decent until, like you said, his tyre started giving way and he started drifting back.

Yeah. I was going to mention, I was going to make a mention of Surra anyway, because as you say, he got into second from the start and it's early race pace. It was fantastic. You were, he stayed towards the front, but yeah, it just appeared to have used up too much tyre. Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. But that's obviously the satellite Ducati team. Probably one to watch for the rest of the season if he can manage that tyre. Super pole race Sunday morning. This was pretty chaotic and well, we'll obviously cover it, but it was a bit of a serious watch to start off with, wasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. So super pole race, 10 laps, lap one, just going into two and one. So just after the start, Montella, he nearly ran into Bulega, sorry, Bulega into two and one. So massive moment from Montella there. And Bulega as a result of that, he actually dropped to eighth place.

But then a couple of corners later, there was a huge crash between Olivera and Locatelli. So as a result, the race was red flagged. Locatelli was able to remount and go back to the pits on his bike, even after such a big crash, but Olivera was unable to restart. He was taken to the medical centre and actually, Olivera was ruled out of racing for the rest of the weekend. Yeah.

I'm not really surprised with the crash that it was. So for those who didn't see it, Olivera has kind of moved to avoid Laquona, who's coming around the side of him. That's pushed Locatelli off of the line. And then Sam Loews has come round. Locatelli has closed the door on Sam Loews on the inside of the track.

And Loews has made contact with Locatelli, lifted him up into the air, pushed him into Olivera. Olivera, as soon as he hit the deck, you knew it was a bad one because A, he's in the middle of the track with the bikes going round him. I think he's the visor came off of his, off of his lid. And he was a dead weight as soon as he hit that deck. So see that it had knocked him out.

Locatelli's obviously crashed. His Yamaha slid into Olivera. Olivera's bike also hit himself. And then like I say, Olivera put onto a stretcher, taken to the medical centre. He's, I've had a look at the injury updates and he's got a fracture to the scapula, so the shoulder blade.

And they were a bit worried about the damage that he did when he hit his head, but that's all come back clear, thankfully. So I don't know what the recovery time is on a scapula, but it's not going to be one that he's back for the next race. I wouldn't have thought. So yeah, red flag. Booliga was lucky with that red flag coming because that was not a good start for him.

And like I said, he put him back into eight. There was that first contact, wasn't there? And then he ran wide at the next turn. So yeah, definitely worked out in his favour. And then yeah, the restart.

Yeah. So the race restarted with eight laps instead of 10. The start of the race, Booliga gets a lot better start this time. But there was contact in turn two between Balduzeri and Montella. Montella was pushed wide.

And then it came up out that Locatelli has actually been given a double long lap penalty for the, for the lap one crash that red flagged the race. But that does seem very harsh because he wouldn't have been able to see Sam Loews from his position. No, exactly. And we had an email from Rich, didn't we? So another host, one of them that covers the Moto GP, he thinks that the penalty given to Locatelli was outrageous and he feels especially aggravated.

Yeah. And I agree. I agree. I don't, I'm not sure what they were watching with that one. It's, you know, it's the first lap of a sprint.

It's busy. There's going to be contact. There's going to be people sat up. It's a racing incident as far as I'm concerned. I just think it's, it's been blown out of proportion because of the injury for Oliveira, but definitely shouldn't have been a penalty given to Locatelli.

Yeah, very harsh that. But in lap two, Sam Loews had a technical issue and he conceded several places, but he did manage, he did manage to seem to clear the technical fault on the lap to Gatti. So I'm not sure what the issue was, but he did drop back a few places. He was looking down at the bike, trying to assess whatever was wrong with it. But he did manage to, whatever it was, he managed to sort that out.

With five laps to go, there's a good battle between Alex Loews and Gerloff, eighth, ninth place. But Alex manages to keep eighth place. Locatelli took his first long lap penalty smoothly, and then he slotted in between Alex Loews and Gerloff with five laps to go. Locatelli takes the second long lap penalty. And then on the last few laps, Lecce was closing the gap to Berlega, but he couldn't finally catch it.

He couldn't make it stick in the end. He couldn't get close enough to make a move, but he was closing that gap down. Or maybe that was Berlega just trying to save his tyre or push the pace back. Yeah, ended up less than a second ahead of him as he crossed the line. And again, win number 15 in a row.

He's smashing that record that top record set unstoppable at the minute. He really is. Unless we say every week, unless anything drastic happens, he's going to walk this and break every record going while he's at it. So finishing order of that one was Berlega. First, Lecce owner in second, Baldessari.

Third, Bautista Montella. And another good ride from Sura. So Oliveira, it was a fractured scapula and broken ribs, shoulder tendon damage and concussion. And Michael van der Mark is going to be replacing him for the upcoming races. So yeah, what's your, what's your take on the, the Locatelli double long lap?

Yeah. How could he know that Sam Loews was there? I don't know, as you say. And as Richard said on his email, it's the first lap of a sprint race, but it's not only the first lap, it's what two, three corners in. So it's still very busy in the pack.

Yeah. It just seems far too harsh for me. It just seems like a racing incident rather than a deliberate, deliberate mistake. Again, if anybody's got any other views or they've seen anything different, by all means get in touch and we can discuss it on the next one. Race two then.

This was the 21 laps and Boulogne got the whole shot cleanly straight to the front and Lecce-Ono takes second. Baldessari made a bit of an aggressive move on Bautista at the chicane and both of them run wide. Now I know this is another one that got to Rich as Baldessari didn't get any sort of penalty for this. And I think it actually took Bautista off the track, didn't it? Did, yeah.

So that was in the first lap. I think it was two, there was that turn 14, 15 complex, it's like a chicane or like a bigger version of a chicane. Yeah. So Baldessari was overtaken by Bautista at turn 14, but then he came back at Bautista in the next turn. And like you and Rich have said, very tough move.

It's pushed Bautista basically off the track onto the track limits and no penalty for Baldessari. So you can argue the Locatelli point. Yeah. And very similar to Marquez and Acosta a few weeks back, but obviously Marquez got that drop one position. Yep.

And then we had Locatelli crashed out on the exit at the final corner on lap one, and then we go into lap two. Boudegrand, Lecrona have created a gap to the rest. Montella sort of settled himself into third and Baldessari and Bautista are fighting a bit more and Surrey's just behind. And then Bautista did actually get a penalty, didn't he? Cause he was penalized for cutting the chicane.

You've got a bit about Taz McKenzie on that one. Lap two. Yeah. So from lap two, Taz overtakes Baldessari with his turn one error, putting Taz into fourth position, but several corners later, Baldessari comes back on Taz on the back straight and overtakes him into the next corner to take that fourth place back. Another point is Bassani retired at lap four, looked like a mechanical issue.

During lap five, Bautista and Alex Lowes, they touched and Alex Lowes goes into eighth place. Also on lap five, Tommy Bridewell crashed, unfortunately, but he did rejoin, but there was no footage of it was crashed. So I don't know whether it was a low side. I imagine it was a low side if he could rejoin. Yeah.

I don't think I didn't see anything about Bridewell's crash. No, you just saw him rejoin in the track. Sam Lowes, lap six, Sam Lowes catches Bautista down the straight and tries to pass Bautista in turns one and two, but he just couldn't, he couldn't make it stick. He just couldn't make it stick to Bautista. But he did manage later on in the lap to pass on the inside at turn seven to go into ninth place on the same lap.

So on the same lap, lap six, Gerloff overtakes Taz at turn 16 into sixth place, lap seven, Taz takes the position back off Gerloff down the straight. And then Gerloff comes back past Taz in turn one. So a lot of two and a three in between those two guys, but that's still good to see Taz that high up in the order. Lap eight, so turns nine and 10, Alex Lowes crashes low side. He did, it looks like he, so he had actually caught Taz and it looks like he touched the rear wheel of him and came down on the same lap.

Gerloff, he managed to overtake Surin the first part of the chicane. So again, I think it's those in 14, 15. Lap nine, Gerloff has a big slide through turn 14 and loses ground to Surin. But Gerloff comes back past Surin at turn nine into fifth place. The next lap, lap 10, Sam Lowes overtakes Tazmacht into seventh place.

And then, yeah, fairly static. I don't know what you've got after lap 10. I've just got that Boulogne was extending. He was over a second clear on lap 12 and he was lapping three tenths a lap quicker than Laquona. But then Laquona picked up again, so I don't know whether Boulogne dropped off a little bit, just saving that tyre.

He was back within a second. Montella was holding on third and then Gerloff started making progress towards the end of the race, making a bit of progress back towards the top five. And then the last lap, Valdesari manages to close to Montella over the last few laps, but didn't get close enough to pass. And that leaves Boulogne to cross the line. He was over two seconds clear of Laquona and that is win number 16 in a row.

30 second of his career in World Superbikes and that puts him level with Chas Davies. This is 25th consecutive podium and that has equaled the all time record held by Colin Edwards and top rack. So yeah, finishing positions on that one. Boulogne in first, Laquona in second, Montella in third, followed by Valdesari, Gerloff, Sam Lowe's, Surra, Taz McKenzie, Remy Gardner and Stefano Manzi. And the two Yamaha R1s bringing up ninth and tenth.

So apart from Gerloff, he finished in fifth on the Kawasaki. Everything else was a Ducati. Yeah. As you say, until we get to the Yamaha in ninth place, there's only one Kawasaki in there, everything else is a Ducati lockout. So it's pretty clear which is the bike to have if you want to race in World Superbikes.

So with that, the World Superbike Championship standings after round four, Nicolo Boulogne on 186 points, Laquona on 117 points, Sam Lowe's on 82 points, Olivera on 69 points, but bear in mind he's now injured and out for some time. Alex Lowe's on 69, Axel Bassani on 67. Right. So just dive a bit into the World Super Sports. So we had qualifying on the Super Pole.

So Alberto Reynoso took pole on a 142.050 with Chan On Chu. He was second after breaking the standing lap record at 142.255. Matteo Ferrari earned the first front row start of his World Super Sports career in third, but then he was given a three place penalty for slow riding, dropped him back into sixth and then that shuffled Simon Jespas into third, Farioli to fourth and Valentin de Bees to fifth on the grid. At the minute, championship leader, Joao Massia, he had a low side crash during qualifying and that left the Ducati that was riding two damage to repair. So he had to start from 25th, which is the seventh row whilst obviously his championship rivals were fighting at the front of the grid.

Super sport race one, Saturday, 18 laps, Reynoso and Chan On Chu, they got to turn one in the same order, Farioli joining them at the front. Roberto Garcia on the R9 rocketed from seventh on the grid to fourth, but then Joao Massia, who was already starting in 25th, collided with the wild card, Andreas Koffler at the opening chicane and that damaged his bike too much to continue. So obviously the championship lead was going to be taking a massive hit. Lap two to three, Chan On Chu was passed by Roberto Garcia and he took the lead on lap four. There's four Yamahas that were running first, second, third and fourth when Farioli crashed out, but Valentin de Bees, he's running fourth and holding on against the Yamaha freight train ahead.

And then over the next few laps, we had Roberto Garcia was controlling the race at the front, leading by around half a second from Chan On Chu. Arenas was in third, De Bees in fourth. He was just sort of monitoring and keeping his pace, but the Yamahas were slowly edging away, but then he'd catch up. And Arenas had a race lap record of 142.737 on lap 10. Now lap 13, we had a key moment of Chan On Chu, who was four tenths behind Roberto Garcia when he crashed out of turn 15 at the front of the race, losing the front whilst he was pushing hard in the closing stages.

This was obviously a win that he'd been building towards and he just watched it disappear into the gravel. Chan On Chu then inherited the lead with Albert Arenas and Valentin de Bees, third. Arenas on lap 14, he passed Chan On Chu at turn one and took the lead and held it through following corners with Valentin de Bees still closing. Now half a second was covering the three of them at the front. And then the final lap of this race, we had Chan On Chu leading into turn 12, 13, Chicane, but he came in too fast, misjudged his braking and ran wide, losing all the momentum.

Arenas and Valentin de Bees capitalise on this and of the two of those, de Bees had the better exit on the final corner and launched to the line. De Bees beats Arenas to the flag by just 0.132 of a second and Chan On Chu is 0.37 seconds back in third. Alcoba took fourth and Matteo Ferrari in fifth. I don't know if you watched it, Carl, you said you didn't get any notes on it. That last lap was a cracking bit of riding.

De Bees was just monitoring the situation and then he could see the battle going on and he just cut inside. It was absolutely phenomenal, nearly as phenomenal as the interview after the race with a lot of preparation by Tozlin to stop de Bees from swearing. It went really well until Tozlin started to walk off with the mic and then turned around and de Bees said something that he shouldn't have. Worth a watch if you want a bit of a giggle. And then race two, we had Arenas, Alcoba, On Chu, de Bees, Garcia, Ferrari, and Macchia was in 25th again.

Arenas made a strong launch from pole, but Chan On Chu takes the whole shot. Garcia on the R9 starting in fifth, Rockets to third by the end of the opening lap, pretty much a carbon copy of the race one start. Macchia, who started 25th on the third Natura Panigale, he was already inside the top 15 from the opening lap and de Bees, he retired after his win in the first race after just two laps with a technical problem. Chan On Chu leads Alta Arenas in second, Roberto Garcia in third, all covered by less than a second, Jeremy Alcoba and Matteo Ferrari in fourth and fifth. And then Macchia on a little bit of a charge, he was inside the top 10 now by lap two and he was setting lap records to carve through that field.

By lap six, Macchia passes Jessverson after the back straight into turn five. He's now seventh, one second behind Tom Bouthaimos, who was in sixth. Half distance, Arenas makes his move, taking the lead from Chan On Chu at turn one and the two Yamahas are swapping lead repeatedly across the next few laps. Lap 11, Chan On Chu retook the lead and he's defending fiercely against Matteo Ferrari, who's trying to pass him constantly. Alcoba tries to capitalize on the Ferrari mistake and briefly takes fourth before Ferrari reclaims it.

Juan Macchia finally gets past TBA and that is on lap 13. The lead battle between Arenas and On Chu cost them both pace with Roberto Garcia and Ferrari close to within seven tenths with two laps to go. On the final lap, Chan On Chu and Roberto Garcia, they all set personal best laps, Arenas and On Chu are breaking free from Garcia briefly, but he closes the gap back up and Arenas crosses the line just 0.419 seconds clear of On Chu. Garcia misses second by just 0.090 seconds on his maiden World SuperSport podium. So again, Yamaha 1-2-3 and that's first podium lockout since MagniCore in 2025.

So race two results were Arenas, On Chu, Garcia, Ferrari, Masiya and Tom Bouthaimos. World SuperSports Championship at the minute is Arenas in first on 150, Masiya, who obviously had that horrendous first race, but fought back in the second. He's in second on 117. Valentin De Bees, who won the first race on 97. Philip Otto, he's on 89 points and Chan On Chu is on 88.

Definitely worth the watch. If you're going to watch a replay, there's some cracking racing. I think I'll try and cover a bit more as we go on through the pods, even if it is slightly briefer than we do in the WorldSuit bikes. Anything else from that little weekend over in Hungary? No, sounds like some great SuperSport racing.

Dan, yeah, apologies. I didn't watch it. I was too busy. I was too busy trying to watch We'll See Who I Can BSP and prepare for this podcast. So I might have to go back and have a look at the SuperSport.

Yeah, it's definitely worth the watch if you've got a bit of time. Yeah, it's a busy weekend this one, wasn't it? Yep. Right then you took a little trip or should I say long trip to Alton Park? How was it?

Ah, it's Alton Park. So it's one of my favourite tracks anyway. Yeah. So to have BSP at Alton Park, it's just mega. And yeah, as you've already mentioned, it's only 40 minutes for me to get there.

So I had a nice leisurely breakfast cause they went out on track until sort of half 12, one o'clock. Nice leisurely breakfast, took the dog for a walk, jumped in the car. Uh, fortunately the queue wasn't too big to get into the track. It's just, you can watch the race on TV and it's great because you can see everything that's going on, but you've got to go if it's, if it's, if it's close enough or if you've got the chance to go, you've got to go cause the atmosphere is amazing, the noise, the smell. Yeah.

It's just brilliant. So we were, yeah, we went on the Sunday, the first day, uh, cause for our international listeners, the Monday was a bank holiday in the UK. So British super bikes, the race in itself ran on Sunday and Monday instead of the usual Saturday and Sunday. Um, and obviously Rich was out with bad back and leg or hip or whatever it was from all of his walking in Malta. Um, so he didn't make it either.

So you were covering the BSB live from Alton Park. Yeah. Well, Dan, Dan, you've got a good excuse because you, you suffered a big medical emergency, but, but Rich is, Rich is just old. I don't think that's a good enough excuse not to attend. Rich, if you, if you're listening, I have not given Carl a fiver to say that.

Um, yeah, it was, it was my 40th as well on Monday. So it would have been nice to tie that in, but yeah, obviously it's a no go, but I've got tickets for Thruxton. So I'll be going to that later on in the year and hopefully get, see if we can get some interviews with some of the riders down there. So were you in hospital for your birthday? No.

Where'd you come out? Luckily I came out on the Sunday afternoon. My birthday was Monday. Yeah. That wouldn't have been the best way of spending it.

I'll, um, I'll put on the social media, some of the meals that I had in the hospital, they were left a bit to be desired to try and get people back to full health, put it that way. Um, yeah. So Alton Park, go for it. Yeah. Alton Park BSP.

So Super Pole qualifying order. First was Carl Ride, the reigning champion on the Tukati. Second was Bradley Ray. So there was only about one tenth between Brad Ray and Carl Ride in, in the Super Pole qualifying order. Third place was Leon Haslam.

He was about four tenths beyond that. Fourth was Max Cook. Fifth was Storm Stacy. Six in qualifying was Scott Redding. Seventh, Joe Tolbert.

That's quite impressive. I think Joe Tolbert's a rookie in BSP. He was supposed to be in BSP last year in the OMG team before it collapsed before the season. So he actually ended up doing Super Sport, but now he's back. He's, he's in BSP this season and yeah, impressive start.

Eighth was Rory Skinner. Ninth was Ryan Vickers and tenth was Lee Jackson. So that takes us on to race one. Race one is 18 laps. Alton Park's a bit of a longer circuit, so they have less than 20 laps.

And that one, actually Carl Ride, he didn't get the best start. He was shuffled. So he was, he was first on the grid and he got shuffled back to fourth place from the start. Uh, Brad Ray led into the first corner, but by turn three, sorry, by turn 10, Ride overtook Storm Stacy to take third place. And this turn 10 is going to become the theme basically of Rides, Rides overtaking over the race.

Uh, in lap two, Haslam overtook Ray into turn one. So Haslam actually took first place and then Ride overtook Ray into second place again at turn 10 and Storm overtook Ray at turn 16 into third place. So in a space of one lap, Bradley Ray has lost, he's gone from first back to fourth, fairly static for until lap four then, uh, Ride managed to pass Haslam into first place at turn one. Um, and sorry, just mention about the turns again. We're going to see this as kind of the running theme for Kyle.

It's his, uh, his overtakes seem to be mainly at turn one and turn 10. That seems to be where he can capitalize on that to cut his performance. He did try to line it up and turn 16 large corner, the turn before the straight, but he, uh, he backed out. He decided he wasn't close enough, but then he managed to make it stick into turn one. Ray passes Storm into third at the same corner.

So on that lap four, you had Ride pass Haslam in the first turn and then Ray passed Storm Stacy at the same corner. Fairly static then for a few laps until we get to lap eight, where Ray passed Haslam into second place. And then from lap eight until the last lap, fairly static racing. Uh, on the last lap, Redden passed Cook at turn 10 into fifth place. So the finishing order is Kyle.

He was finished first. Leon Haslam was second, Bradley Ray third, Storm Stacy fourth, Scott Redden fifth, Max Cook six, Rory Skinner seventh, Ryan Vickers eighth, Christian Hidden ninth and Joe Tolbert tenth. Again, we mentioned Joe's a rookie in BSB. So impressive place there for Joe. Yeah, he looked good.

He looked good. And he's on the, um, the Bermuda, isn't he? So we've seen how they're doing in the worlds. Yeah. Nice to see it carry on and, uh, getting used in the British superbikes as well.

Leon Haslam, he's what, 42? I think he's 40. There's nothing wrong with being 40 something, mate. Well, no, I know that now. But yeah, I'm sure he's 42 and he's still, still up there in second.

Superb performance. It's hell of a track, isn't it? Alton Park, the ups and downs and the cambers and that, it looks superb. It's an awesome track, mate. Honestly, if you've never ridden it, you need to ride it.

It's the topography up and down, up and down. It's yeah, it's fantastic. It can be quite intimidating actually, just because of the topography rather than the actual, um, the track itself and the surroundings. Yeah. Cause a lot of the corner entries are blind.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll leave you to it. Yeah. So in that first race, Kyle's finished by four, nearly five seconds ahead of Leon.

So 5.18 seconds. Yeah. 5.18 seconds. Okay. But like you said, that start wasn't the best, was it?

It doesn't seem to be getting that one off the line. No, and we'll see. That was, that was kind of the theme for the weekend for, for car ride. He, he didn't manage to get a good start on any of the three races, but we'll move on to that in a moment. Yeah.

And then race two. Race two. So it's the short race, the sprint race. I'm always tempted to call it the super pole race, but they don't call it the super pole race at BSP. I'm not sure why, but anyway, it's the shorter race, 12 laps in total from the start cook max cookie led into turn one.

As you just mentioned, right. Makes a bad start. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but he doesn't make the optimum start. So he's pushed back into fourth, fifth place. But then, uh, as, as that one goes on, right.

Passes Ray into turn 10. So another turn 10 pass by ride and he takes third place then later on in the same lap, so still in that one ride, try to pass house into second at turn 16. So that's lodge corner. We can't make it stick. Has them as actually, he did actually shut the door on him into that turn 16.

But rides my managers one lap later into lap three, ride passes has limit turn one into second place. Max cook still in, in first, but ride manages to pack to catch cook in turn 10 to take first place. So again, it's this, it's this turn 10 overtake that he seems to be able to capitalize on. So that turned 10, it's part of a complex. Um, and it's at the bottom of the hill.

It's quite hard breaking downhill into a, into a right and then a left to right left chicane. Um, yeah, I'll find that turn 10 court difficult. Actually it's quite scary because you're breaking downhill and it's kind of a 90 degree turn. That for has them passes cook into second place. So cook's slipping back a bit now.

So turn four, that's island bend. That's a really fast left-hander. That five Ray passes cooking to turn 10. So we can see a cook's getting shuffled back. He runs really wide in that turn.

I'm not sure if Ray Ray's pass spooked him or not, but again, we're talking about this turn 10 and that cook running wide actually allows redden and storm through as well. So cook goes from third place to six in, in one turn. Um, and then shortly afterwards in the same turn, there's a bit crashes. He got it wrong going into turn 10 and then he goes off onto the grass. As we just mentioned that turn 10, 11, it's a right left chicane.

So he's come off of 10, gone onto the grass and the bike slides out from underneath him. Um, and then fairly again, static racing from lap five until the finish car ride, finish first, uh, Leon has them second. Brad Ray third, Scott reading fourth, storm, Stacey fifth, Max cook six, Ryan Vickers, seventh, Rory Skinner eight, Joe Tolbert ninth and 10th was Lee Jackson. Uh, Kyle's winning margin that time three, three seconds, three, nearly four seconds. So again, that's a healthy margin to win by BSP.

Yeah. Cause they're tight tracks, aren't they? Yeah. Pretty similar to a Booliga. Just absolutely romping it.

Even with the bad starts, he's working his way through, isn't he? Yeah. The champions for a reason. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And all the practice that he's been doing over the winter months on that Ducati as well, obviously paying dividends and then bank holiday Monday. Yeah. So moving on to the Monday race three again, Kyle. So if we start from that one, from the start, Kyle gets an average start again. And he shuffled back to this fourth fifth position and then Ray leads out of turn one followed by Haslam then read in.

So raised in first place, Andrew Irwin goes straight onto the grass at turn 10 on that one. So again, we mentioned in turn 10, but he does manage, although he goes off onto that wet grass, he does manage to rejoin. We rejoin between two riders and one of the rear riders, they're Halloween. It never gets taken out by Halloween. It's a very, very sketchy rejoin on the track.

Lap two ride passage ready into third place. So we can see again, this systematic working through of the, of the grid by ride from his poor start that took place at turn one lap three Irwin, but this is Reese Irwin, he crashes at turn 16 large corner. He, he just seems to run wide and he just slides into the gravel. It's, it's quite tricky calling that when it's off camber. And at some point between that free and that pay other, sorry, I didn't see where exactly what happened, but at some point reading gets, gets back pass ride.

So reading stirred and rides forth lap eight, Hickman retires to the pits with a mechanical issue. I mean, that team Hickman's team, it's, it's not good for those guys at the moment you've got David Todd, who's his teammate in the eight 10 racing team. David Todd, he did, he did want to race at the weekend, but he was not fit enough. And yeah, and I've got Hickman retiring with a mechanical issue, that nine Skinner overtakes Vickers for six place that one up later, that 10 has them overtakes Ray for the first place. Next lap, lap 11, right over to read into take third place at the first corner.

And then right over takes Ray in turn 10. Again, this turn 10 past take second place. Next lap ride takes first place from Haslam at turn one, lap 14 has them comes back pass ride into first place at turn 16. Ride did try to fight back down the straight, but Aslan manages to stay in first through turn one of the next lap, lap 15 and then lap 15, ride does manage to get past Haslam at turn 16 again, lodge corner and lap 16 Rogers retires to the pits with a technical issue. And then for the remaining, for the remaining laps again, fairly static race and until the, until the finish at lap 21 finishing order sounding like a stuck record here, but car ride wins.

Then has them second again, all three races. Third is Bradley Ray, fourth was Scott Redding fifth was Glen Irwin. Six was Rory Skinner. Seventh was Max Cook. Eighth was Ryan Vickers.

Ninth was Storm Stacy and 10th was Christian. Yeah. So the championship wise that's co-riding first with 54 points. Leon Haslam in second with 48 Bradley Ray, third with 42 Scott Redding, 35 Storm Stacy, 30 and then Glen Irwin on 17. Glen Irwin had a bit of a struggling weekend, didn't he?

It was, he was not happy with the bike. Yeah. It's quite stark actually, because if you look at the first two races, race one and two, he was nowhere really, I think even retired from the second race with a mechanical and an interview with him, which is saying the bike was wasn't working. It wasn't going into certain gears. It wasn't going into gears at certain times when he was pressing the gear lever, sounded like a really big problem.

But then they did something or changed something prior to race three and he was able to ride it as he wanted to ride it. I think the whole weekend was kind of putting him off the Northwest 200 as well. It was that drastic. Yeah. So in race three, he did manage to finish fifth as I've already mentioned, which should put him back up there.

I think basically he'd said to the Northwest 200 organizers that he wasn't going to go before that foot. So before the third race where he saw this improvement, he said he wasn't prepared to go to the Northwest, but I believe now he has actually gone. Yes, he has. Yeah. Yeah.

He's over there. Um, good weekend all round, really racing wise, but the two, the two top dogs are going to be at the top for some time. I think looking at the performances that we had. Yeah. As I've already said, all in park, what a circuit.

Um, the cream has risen to the top. Is the writing on the wall for car ride, winning the championship? I wouldn't like to say so at the moment, because that's what we thought about Brad Ray this time last year when Brad Ray was dominating for the first, what was it, three to four rounds maybe. Yeah. Um, but it's definitely a warning shot to the rest of the paddock.

We've seen in previous years tracks like Alton, Kyle hasn't been able to get to the start as fast as he's been doing now. It's definitely a power advantage without the K over his Yamaha. Obviously we said, we cover some of the, um, the real road racing a couple of weekends ago, so April the 24th to the 25th, we had the Cookstown 100. It was the 104th competition over there on the orator circuit in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It's the, it was the opening rate Irish road race of the season.

It's not all of your top riders. It's more of a local affair. And the, so the Friday evening, I mean, it's again, it's racing round similar to the Northwest 200. It's, it's a triangle. It's quick.

It's down country lanes where you could expect to see a herd of cows coming out of the side fields. It's insane. It's, it just doesn't look like it should be a race. I don't know if you agree. Yeah, those they're very narrow lanes, especially if you're riding a super bike.

I can't, I just cannot work it out. I really can't. Um, but just cover this quickly. Um, it was historic weekend, Michael Dunlop leading all time leading TT racer. He was entered as a last minute edition days before the event.

And he unofficially went inside of his own lap record with a one 22, three, seven, seven, um, during qualifying Paul Jordan was unofficially inside the existing super sport lap record. And then, so that was qualifying and then the classic super bike race. We had Darrell Tweed racing on the JLR racing Honda. He won the classic super bike race edging out Marcus Simpson on the David and Donna Buckley Honda. And Graham McAleese was third.

Tweed would go on to win the man of the meeting award for his consistency across the whole weekend. And then super twin B race was Joe Loughlin of the park car transport racing. He took the super twin B race on aggregate timing over William Grant in second and Daniel Pearson in third. Then on Friday evening, we had the open invitational, which is nine laps. This is what they call the headline Friday race, the top 23 qualifiers.

And obviously Michael Dunlop being there, a lot of people excited to see him racing lap one. Dunlop was challenged off the start into Gorton by the end of lap one. He'd already opened a one second plus gap to the reigning Ulster super bike road race champion, Michael Sweeney. Marcus Simpson is the Darrell Tweed and fourth Paul Jordan in fifth on lap three. Dunlop's advantage stretched to almost four seconds with Michael Sweeney, Marcus Simpson, Darrell Tweed and Paul Jordan all in a close battle for the remaining positions.

And then on lap six, we had a red flag. Michael Dunlop was over 9.42 seconds ahead when an incident caused the race to be red flag at this time. Michael Sweeney was 0.24 seconds ahead of Marcus Simpson third, Darrell Tweed and Paul Jordan close behind. The result was declared because it was over 50% of the race distance. And that is Dunlop's 127th Irish road racing win.

And he was racing as an average of 91.77 miles, which is just outside of the lap record. And bear in mind, that's the Friday evening race. And then Saturday we had the Moto3, which is not to be confused with the Moto3 of MotoGP. It's the 125 Super Sport 300 race, which was Michael Dunlop taking his second win of the weekend. He cleared the chasing pack to cross the line with almost 10 seconds of a lead over Dan Sale in second and Chris Mayer completing the top three.

Don Gilbert, Kyle Parks and Gary Jordan filled fourth three to six. And then onto Saturday, the Super Sport race, which was five laps. Paul Jordan's, this was his race completely. It was a record breaking performance. He led Darrell Tweed by 0.779 seconds at the end of the opening lap.

Michael Sweeney, who was the, on the Martin Jones BMW, he was the first non next generation Super Sport competitor on conventional machinery. And he sat in third. Paul Jordan set a new Super Sport lap on lap three, and then he broke that record on lap four by two hundredths of a second. And then on the final lap, Paul Jordan sets his third consecutive new Super Sport lap record with a 123.927. And he won the race by 10.49 seconds.

Darrell Tweed in second, Michael Sweeney in third, Kevin Keys in fourth and Marcus Simpson in fifth. Then we had the Super Twin race on Saturday, which was Michael Sweeney's moment. He finished as a runner up to Michael Dunlop three times across the weekend, but Sweeney took the Super Twin race win and that was his sole victory of the event, but definitely deserved. And then we had Saturday's open race, which was six laps because it was red flagged. Michael Dunlop leads from the front.

Michael Sweeney in second, and he was lapping this time within 1.23 seconds of Michael Dunlop and the, this was on the two BMWs. Darrell Tweed on the JLR Honda, Marcus Simpson on the Honda and Kevin Keys on the Daracle Racing, Gabe Chase. On lap six, we had the incident that caused the red flag. Michael Dunlop had a lead of 0.9 seconds over Sweeney. And then after completing lap six, it says it was an undisclosed incident that forced the race to finish prematurely.

But obviously with the distance completed result was Dunlop, Sweeney, Tweed, Simpson, Keys and Chalk. The grand final Saturday, nine laps. This was the blue ribbon feature race of the Cookstown 100. Dunlop versus Sweeney, one final time over nine laps. Laps one to five was Michael Dunlop leading, Michael Sweeney right within.

Marcus Simpson kept pace at the front across the opening stages, covered by just 0.415 seconds at mid-race distance. Lap five, the three riders are still within touching distance and it is tight as the road racing gets down these little country lanes with hay bales and cushions against the tree. But then lap six, Michael Dunlop hit overdrive mode and he set the first ever 92 mile per hour lap at Cookstown at 92.142 miles an hour, smashing through a barrier that had stood since the circuit was first used for modern machinery. The lap time was 1.22377 and he shaved off a third of a second off of his outright lap record previously and that had been held since 2013. Michael Sweeney, the gap between those two that moved to over three seconds in a single lap.

And then lap seven, another record. Michael Dunlop took another three tenths of a second off of that race record and he's three seconds clear. That was pretty much the race done. He controlled the final two laps, crossing the line 8.659 seconds ahead of Michael Sweeney in second, Marcus Simpson third. And that was Michael Dunlop's 130th Irish road racing win.

That's some record. That's some tally. So yeah, that's where we are with the Cookstown 100 in a nutshell. Obviously the Northwest 200 is on this week, which we covered a little bit earlier on, but I'll study that in full and try and make some notes for the next one. Anything you want to say on that Cookstown 100?

Cookstown 100, very tight racing, as in the track is very tight. If anybody wants to watch the highlights from Cookstown 100, they can do that. If they go onto the BBC iPlayer and they search for bikes! It's there. The recording is done by BBC Northern Ireland, but it's covered on the iPlayer.

I appreciate that our foreign listeners, so US or the other guys, they can't access iPlayer unless you happen to have a VPN, which gives you UK access. But it's well worth a look because as I mentioned, super bikes on very narrow roads, yeah, it's definitely a spectacle. It is. It's not like anything, anything else out there. I just want to say shout out to Jake and Scott for the previous podcast that they've done on Moto America.

Well worth a listen if you haven't listened to that already. And obviously Rich and Jim still doing what they do best with Moto GP coverage. And they'll have another podcast coming up with Le Mans this weekend. So that'll be 837. Keep an eye out on social media for any notification of that podcast coming out.

That is official underscore motopod and that's on Instagram, Twitter, threads, X, blue sky, and we'll try and get a few more out there. And obviously you can listen to the previous episodes on any of the podcast providers, if you've got any comments or any messages, anything like that. And you want to get into contact, you can use the email of MotoGPOD at MotoGPOD.com. That's MotoGPOD at MotoGPOD.com. Yeah.

And if, if, like I say, if you do want to listen to any of the others, go to MotoPodcast.com and you'll get all of the previous episodes on there. There'll be a link. Obviously we don't get paid to do podcasts, but it does cost money to go to the races, to buy the tickets, to try and get interviews and stuff. Obviously the guys over in the US have done a lot of traveling around to go to the races, getting interviews, flying long journeys. It all adds up.

So any little help that can be given is greatly received. There'll be a link to that on MotoPodcast.com. Keep an eye on our socials, like we said, anything else as a closing bit. So as you mentioned, Dan, Northwest 200 is happening now and over the next, over this weekend. So you and I, I think we'll do a, we'll do a separate podcast, just covering Northwest 200.

Yeah, I think so. I think so. There's plenty going on over there. Be interesting to see how Storm Stacy does. He's, he's looked pretty quick from what I've seen of the coverage so far, but yeah, we'll bring you more on a, on a future podcast.

So keep an eye out for that one. And then coverage of MotoGP this weekend. Go on and watch that on TNT Sports, HBO Max, not sponsored by them at all. Whatever it is this week. Yeah, exactly that.

Um, but yeah, thanks for listening, Carl. Thank you. Yeah. Cheers, Dan. Thanks for joining despite the, despite the lung issue.

Yeah, that's right. Get well soon. I've got the oxygen tank next to me as fine. We survive, don't we? We survive.

Um, but yeah, right. That's that one done. Thank you. Cheers, Dan.