The Title Fight Intensifies

Welcome to MotoPod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 837 recording on the 12th of May, 2026. The title fight intensifies after the race weekend in Le Mans. We have a title fight on and that's what we're going to talk about. But to help me go through all the stuff that happened at Le Mans is of course my famous co-host Richard Jowd.

Sir Richard, I see you with the vest on. Is it chilly in merry old England? Actually, Jim, it has been very chilly and is going to remain quite chilly. We had a lovely April, quite sunny towards the end and warm. Now May is my favourite month normally because it's when spring starts properly in the UK.

It's cold and a bit drizzly and chilly. So as you say, I'm wearing my gilet today to try and keep the hypothermia away. It's kind of been the same way here. We had a relatively warm April with very little rain. May has become very rainy.

It seems like there for a while it was not going to stop. We had a period of 18 continuous hours of rain that happened. There's a massive storm that came through. Anyway, it's back to being sunny and relatively reasonable. It's still very nippy in the morning.

It's between about 38 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit and then it warms up to like 70, 71, which is very pleasant for the drive home. But hey, anyway, folks, we would like to have your help. And if you could donate to the show, it does cost a bit for us to get tickets to go to the track to get some interviews, things of that nature. If you throw a little bit into the pot, that'd be great. You can do that by going to our website, www.motopodcast.com.

Put in what you can be greatly appreciated. If you can't, money's tight. That's fine. Hey, how about a little help on the social side of things in today's world of downloads and content and all that good stuff? If you could go leave us a review, download the show, tell your friends about the show, follow us on the social media channels.

Official underscore Moto Pod on Instagram, Sky Blue, all the other social means there. Danny's been doing a great job of being the social person for us all. We just tend to send our stuff to him and he posted. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it.

And so anyway, that's the housekeeping part of this one, Rich. You know, fair to say here, little shout outs in the here in the beginning. One shout out again, Danny and Carl, the last episode they did World Superbikes. Another great show by those guys. It's great content.

That's what we've been trying to do in the show. There's a lot of content coming out now. Shows coming all the time. We've got a gang of hosts that say MotoGP is not your speed. Go listen to the guys.

Danny and Carl do World Superbike or BSP or tell your friends about the BSP shows and World Superbike shows. And I know what I think they're doing. Northwest 200 show is the next one those guys are doing, which is going to be fantastic. Back to have some real roads on the show. It's going to be great.

If you know, hey, I'm an American and I don't really care about anything other than MotoGP. Fine. Great. Hey, how about Jake and Scott Bolden doing the road to America side of this show here? They've got some their last show, Road to Atlanta.

Absolutely fantastic. Top notch from those guys. Great history lesson from Scott about the track. So with that, that's my shout out for the show. I know you have a shout out that you want to do, Rich.

So I'll let you do that. Yeah, just very briefly. Hopefully, this will be a new listener to the show, maybe for this episode, I hope. I'll make sure that that's the case. So, yeah, young William Bolton.

Now, a professional associate colleague of mine, Chris, super guy, I'm doing some work with over the last couple of years, popped up and said, is son suddenly getting into super bikes and MotoGP and stuff, asking, you know, what a big attract to go and visit in the UK. So I gave Chris my thoughts on the matter. And, yeah, just said I'd give young William Bolton a shout out on the show and hopefully he'll become a regular listener subscriber to the show. And I'm hoping that I might meet up with those guys for BSP at Brands in I think that's coming up in June sometime. Brands, obviously one of, well, I'm slightly biased, I know, but one of the best tracks in the world for me.

Just such a shame it's not MotoGP friendly enough to host a race because it's an awesome place. And I will never, ever forget John Hopkins turning some laps on the, I guess it would have been the 800cc Rizla Suzuki MotoGP bike around Brands, kind of cold, foggy. It was the end of season round, which would have been probably October time. So that bike going down the back into the woods, it's just an awesome sight and sound, Jim. I'll never forget it.

Just made me think, what a shame we can't race Formula One or MotoGP at Brands Hatch anymore. But anyway, British super bikes are keeping that place real. Even though kind of outgrowing it a little bit. But it's a great place for young fans who are into bikes or getting into bikes to go and sort of see a full fat 1000cc super bike getting its legs stretched a little bit. So, yeah, hopefully William and Chris and myself will meet up there later in the year.

So good to welcome some new people onto the show as always. Sounds like a plan. How far is it from YouTube Brands Hatch, Rich? Oh, here we go. Yes, it's a massive two and a half hours, Jim.

Oh, the horror, Rich, of being on a bike or a car for two and a half hours. Yeah, get your vial in there. All in good fun, sir. All in good fun. It's just interesting.

It's the cultural difference that is so wild to me between, you know, the UK and here. And just the idea of the gap, how big things are between it's just it's just funny. It makes me chuckle. It's just different worlds. It's just different worlds and what?

OK, so with that, let's get into the news, Rich. So the first thing, we are back to silly season. Of course, we're going to continue to have silly season as long as we don't have an agreement between the teams in DORNA slash Liberty or whoever they are, whatever acronym they choose to be. MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group, Jim, which just trips off the tongue, rolls off the tongue. Yeah.

Uh huh. Yep, for sure. So this is the new rumor is that Digia is going to KTM and he's going to partner Alex Marquez. I don't know what I is this just fodder being thrown out there? Not rich.

I do understand why Digia would want to change, because I don't believe he's being rewarded for the great work that he has done here in 26 and his good, good each work that he's done the rest of the years. Yeah. I mean, he's an interesting guy. Fabio Digia Antonio. And if you remember, we did have a brief chat with him on the show.

I did a couple of seasons ago and that was his first season in the VR 46, having kind of rescued his career just about with Grissini, with that win in Qatar the previous season. And it just didn't work for him last year. But I mean, arguably, he's well, not arguably, I think he is the standout Ducati rider so far this year. I mean, we'll come we'll come on to Mark Marquez and a few things became apparent over the weekend, just gone. So, yeah, Digia is a guy kind of in demand and for a while it looked like he was going to be Yamaha bound, didn't it?

But KTM very much looking for a in-form rider. Yeah, come knocking on the door by the sounds of it. And again, it's just this frustration that we have at the moment with so much rumour going on, most of which is probably not rumour in terms of the people that actually know, because most of these deals are signed. It's just that this ongoing negotiation, I don't want to call it argument, but yeah, ongoing, yeah, back and forth between the teams, the manufacturers and the rights holders over who's going to get paid what. Now that this kind of new era is among us, there was an offer that went in, I heard, over the weekend or prior to the weekend to the teams, I think the teams and the manufacturers felt it was to use the technical term somewhat of a derisory offer in terms of the financial remuneration they were going to receive.

So that's been kicked back. So this will go back and forth like a game of tennis for a few weeks to come, I expect. But from all of our points of view as fans, it's attestable holding up the news on which riders are going where, although I think it's accepted now some of the moves are almost certainly done deals, they're just not announced yet. So we might come on to that. But yeah, certainly KTM's position is still slightly unclear because of the KTM situation financially.

Although it does appear that they are fully committed and actively looking for another team in terms of a satellite. So that's from my point of view, although KTM are not exactly having the best of times, it's true to say, but it's good to see that they're fully committed and looking to get some more bikes on the grid. Fair enough. Let's look at some Moto2 graduates. So it's rumored that Guevara will be going to Prema at Yamaha.

So does that mean Jack Miller is out of a ride? Possibly, right? Looks like it. Then Aegis to Tech 3 to support to be on the satellite factory KTM squad there with Kunter Steiner. Then Alonso going to HRC for what we believe to be a lot of money.

There's there is a lot of zeros between the number and the period and then the depth to the decimal point or whatever's there on that one, which is kind of crazy. Also throw in there, does anybody take a chance at moving Keely's from Moto3 directly to MotoGP? I think somebody's going to take a gander on that one, take a throw on it. Yeah, the only issue I've got with that, not issue, I just don't see which seats there are, really. That would be my main issue with it.

I mean, he looks like he's kind of ready and it would be kind of cool to see that we've referenced the fact that Jack Miller was the only guy that I can think of in recent history that's made that kind of missing out the middle formula. I mean, there's no rush with Keelys. I mean, as we've said many, many times, he couldn't start last season because he wasn't old enough. So he's only just turned 18. So there's loads of time and certainly Alonso.

And of course, we haven't mentioned in the Moto2 graduates that Elgardo is apparently signed with Grissini. Yes, that's true. There are two spots at Grissini, sorry, Aspar in Moto2. So Keelys would obviously be the obvious one to to go there and just hold time for a little while. The Aegis to Tech 3 thing, that is very much speculative rumour on my part.

But again, a few people were mentioning it on the TNT coverage that I watched at Le Mans over the weekend. And again, he's a guy that's ready to go. And certainly if Jack Miller gets ousted from Pramac, then I suspect that the rights holders will want an Aussie and admittedly a very fast Aussie up in MotoGP to keep that kind of continuity going. And there's no doubt that Senna Aegis is worthy of the spot and more than capable of delivering there. The other thing I heard, Jim, just to round off the KTM thing, is that it sounds as if Tech 3 will stick with KTM.

Yeah, I don't think they would go away from it. I mean, there was obviously talk about Honda looking to see whether they could get two bikes into there. But it sounds from what I was hearing. I mean, obviously, we're not talking to anybody directly, unfortunately. But from what I heard from the coverage, it does sound as if it's very likely that Tech 3 will stick with KTM and vice versa.

But the riders is obviously a whole different matter, because it looks like Bastianini is on his way out of there. And well, Maverick Vignale is, I mean. Where do you start? That's a done deal. I think he's done.

I can't see anybody wanting to invest in invest in him, to be to be honest. Not with the not the crop of talent that's sitting in Moto and Moto 2. I mean, there's some really talented guys riding there. This next one's a surprise to me because I didn't see this one at all. Is the question is, is David Brivio moving from track house to HRC?

You obviously put that into the notes, Rich. Tell me more about it. Yeah, well, again, this cropped up over the weekend. Very hotly tipped that he's on the way over there, which is a big loss for track house, if that is the case. Apparently, and I forget who I was listening to that mentioned this, but when because, of course, Brivio in the demise of the Suzuki Moto GP effort went over for a rather frustrating and short spell in Formula One with Alpine, if you recall.

Correct. And when he came back over to Moto GP, I think he was very much looking to go to HRC, but there wasn't room at the in or it just didn't work out. And that's perhaps how he ended up taking up the role that he's had for this last, what, two years at track house. I mean, I think Brivio is one of the standout kind of team managers of the modern era. There are a few that you would put into that category, but he is.

Well, just look at his track record. I mean, I had an interesting interview with him at Silverstone a couple of seasons ago, if people want to go back and listen to that. And he's done great things at track house. He's able to coalesce and motivate teams in a way that most people don't seem to be able to do. So.

The role at HRC sounds as if it's some sort of a consultative role, which kind of fits because, I mean, Brivio, I don't know how old he is, but he probably wouldn't want to take on, particularly with HRC, full kind of team manager role. And Alberto Pooch occupies that role at the moment. And whilst Pooch is highly regarded and I think he's very effective in that role, he's not perhaps quite so great from a public facing point of view. So if Brivio came in to sort of do that presentation, media facing PR kind of role for HRC and relieve Pooch from that, that would make sense. And of course, HRC are putting now that there's glimmers of hope there, they're putting everything in place ready for next year.

And so Brivio would be an amazing acquisition for them, even if it was in a kind of not part time, but not full team manager role, because as I say, that role already exists for Pooch. But he would be excellent if he did go there and a huge loss for track house. But already people are speculating about who might slot in at track house. So, well, Grodotti, who was at KTM a couple of seasons ago, kind of disappeared, has been mentioned as a possible guy that could go in there. There's a few names as one or two of the ex Yamaha people.

Wilco van, I can't think of the surname now. Yes, Wilco van Zielenberg, is it? Yeah. I don't think that's right, but that's what came to mind. I could be right.

Yeah, it'll come to me in a minute. But there's a few people anyway that could slot into track house. But it's hard to see anybody really replicating the magic that Davide Brivio brings. I mean, he's the guy that signed Rossi over to Yamaha. Let's not forget and look at that.

Then, you know, then what he did at Suzuki speaks for itself. Agreed. So, yeah, I just feel like with HRC, the phoenix is rising from the flames again, bit by bit. And as we'll come on to, I think there'll be a complete clearing of house in terms of riders there. We've already mentioned that Alonso is, you know, highly likely to be there.

And it's believed, but not yet official, that Quattroraio will be there. So Quattroraio and Alonso in HRC with, you know, the stellar amount of talent they've got in terms of the technical and commercial backing and, you know, the the Brivio's, the Pooches, the the, what's the guy, the Romano Albacino is it, Albacino, he went across from Aprilia to head up the sort of the top side of HRC. Yeah, I can't. Yeah. They've got a lot of talent there, Jim.

And you've got to believe that 850 is going to be a weapon when it comes out. I think it will be. You know, I think it's a good, Brivio goes, I think he's very good at managing the team, getting the riders what they need and being able to communicate with the factory, say, hey, these are the parts that we need next. This is going to help us solve X problem. I always thought of Alberto Puget as the guy who was a great talent spotter, who found people like I think he found Danny Perurosa, right out of that.

I think that was sort of like one of the big ones, I think. But he's been able to spot some some Asian talent, stuff like that. So he kind of knows what to go there. So if you have both of them working together, it's probably going to make HRC really a big name again, right? They're not going to be the also also rands that they have been for the last few years.

They're going to come back. And quite honestly, they're probably going to come back with a serious vengeance, because if they don't win a thousand CC title in the era of all wizardry, gizmo, tech, they are definitely going to come out with that 850 as an absolute weapon and dominate 850 world just to prove that, hey, this was not this is not who we were. This is who we are. And this is where we're going to be. So I think that's all really interesting.

I think with Honda, there's there's a sort of an element of hubris involved in where they've been for the last few years and some particular circumstances around things like Covid that really set them back. And also, I might venture to add the Mark Marquez factor. Oh, that's that's a big part of it, too, right? You have various things, various things that sent them down a particular path, which is, you know, and as Aprilia have shown, it takes seasons to get to the point of where you can start to consistently win. And Honda just climbed their way back out of the pit that they got into for various different reasons.

I think Pooch is actually he's a Honda man through and through. If you think back to the two stroke era, I mean, he was a Honda rider as well as I can recall. Yeah, I think so. I think he's extremely efficient in terms of that role that you mentioned about that communication with the factory in terms of what's needed. I don't know if he speaks Japanese.

I suspect he probably has pretty good Japanese. Whereas Briveo, I think, is just the guy that will in terms of the day to day aspects and that rider management talking to the media. I think he would slot in there and just fill that gap that Pooch doesn't really very effectively fulfill. He's not, you know, when you see him interviewed and stuff, it's very sort of, you know, one word answers and a bit monosyllabic. So Briveo, you know, he's Italian, he's very eloquent, you know, massively knowledgeable, just really engaging.

I mean, he has X factor in the way that we sometimes talk about some of the riders as well as I'm concerned. He's just very sort of compelling individual and would do really well there. Briveo might be able to be the person who finds a huge title sponsor for Honda. Not that Honda needs it. They're going to go, they're going to go racing regardless, right?

But they have no need for it. But I just think that that's, you know, he has that. He has that. I think this is right. Genesis to where he would just is that guy that you I need to work with him.

He needs we need to be on that motorcycle kind of a thing. From a management point of view, he would fill a gap that they clearly got. And I'm now actually going to say to me, which I wished I would never have to say, but they need to lose the riders that they've got. Yes. And if they're bringing in the ones that we think that they're bringing in, although I'm going to have a moment about Fabio Quattraro a little later in the episode.

But let's say a rejuvenated Quattraro on a good bike. Just imagine what that can deliver. That's a scary thought. Scary thought. Yeah.

Anyway, let's move on. We must. Yes, we must. Speaking about that too. That's OK.

So Miller's going to race is a Zuka eight hour. That could be sort of a mm showcase of world of talent for maybe going to World Superbike, perhaps. Yeah, I think that's I think that's an audition there personally. So now we come to sort of the bigger news. Mark Marquez had a very, very, very big high side that happened in the sprint race.

We'll come on to the reasons of why and all that during that part of the race. But he was he left the track. He was declared unfit to be able to ride in the Grand Prix on Sunday, and he is not going to ride in Barcelona this coming week. He had moved up an operation that he was going to have on his shoulder because part of the reason that he can't ride correctly is the fact that there is a from a previous surgery to repair something, assuming in the shoulder somewhere that a screw is broken. And one is bent.

And then these screws were pushing against the nerve that gives you the feeling in your right hand, which now, when you know that and you think about all the stuff that Mark has done in between. And this is apparently had been going on sort of since the beginning of the season, as I kind of can decode from the Marquez speak, if you will, that he's doing all this on a that's why he can't ride the bike. The bike's actually fine because what have we been talking about with Ducati the whole year? Hey, why can't Mark win on this bike? He had a bike that everybody hated in the 25 bike, but he was able to master that bike and win races as if it was going out of style.

And our conclusion was the immense talent of Marquez simply overshadows any small imperfection that the motorcycle may have. Plus, he never had a 24 Ducati, so he doesn't know what a really good bike is. And we're all there. Then you get all this pick up the business of what happened to Pekka Benyaya and all this, blah, blah, blah. But then we get to this year, we still see Mark having problems.

But Digi looks pretty set up on that bike, has been consistent with it. And we know Digi is a good rider, probably not a great, but a good rider, very good rider to that extent. So there was something going on and we just didn't know what it was. And then with the test at Haaretz, there was new aerodynamic parts. And we thought, OK, maybe this is the problem.

And then he sort of shows up Le Mans and like, wow, things are kind of good. It looks better, but it's still not right. And now we know what's really going on. But it was a successful surgery. So that's good.

He did in the crash at Le Mans break a metatarpal bone in his foot, somewhere. Metatarsal. Thank you. The fifth metatarsal. Yes, that's it.

Fifth metatarsal. Thank you, Rich. So they're going they went and fixed that as well. So apparently he just get it. I somehow I have this vision of when Mark Marquez is on an operating table, there's like five surgeons doing five different things to his body at the exact same time, like a pit crew changes tires on a Formula One car.

I don't know. Literal definition of a work in progress, I would imagine, from a surgeon's point of view. Probably so. It's funny, the fifth metatarsal is the one that footballers always seem to break. It's kind of the one of the toe bones, I think, isn't it?

Is that? I believe so. Yes. I mean, that to be fair, that is where the comparisons with footballers end, because the soccer players just for the for the for the US audience. Yeah.

Yeah. Most most soccer players or football players, you know, have to leave the pitch if they roll over and, you know, a slightly uncomfortable fashion. You know, Mark Marquez will be agitating to get back on the bike whilst he's still in a plaster cast. Hopefully that won't happen this time. But yeah, what we didn't find out, Jim, and I'd love to know, and probably we never will know, is when were these screws that are either broken slash bent, are they from the surgery that he had following Indonesia last year or these older shoulder injuries?

Because he's had a few. I mean, we don't know if he's been slamming windows shut particularly vigorously at home over the winter or quite what's behind it. But yeah, I mean, maybe we'll come on to it a little bit later on. But this is, again, a bit of classic Mark Marquez, you know, struggling all year. Nobody quite knows why.

And now we do know why. But it's taken this incident for him to sort of fess up to the fact that, yeah. And the funny thing is, window opening and closing jokes aside, he says, and let's assume that this is 100% honest, is only when he's on the MotoGP bike that it's actually a problem. He's been riding motocross, no issues. He's been going about his day to day life.

No issues. It's just the particular massive strains of riding a MotoGP bike in the particular position that he's in, I guess, sitting on that machine that's causing this radial nerve issue to manifest itself. Yeah, apparently it has something to do with just he gets into a position that's required him to ride in to be fast. And suddenly it now causes a problem. It's wild that, you know, he can ride a motocross bike or whatever and not have a problem and all that.

But yeah, as long as he takes his time and doesn't get back on that bike until, hey, everything is healed well enough to be able to do it, then, hey, everything's good. Again, I think he he's got his sights set on. I think he needs to set his sights on the 27 season with the new bikes, with the 850s and Pirelli tires. If anybody is the ultimate adapter to a motorcycle, it might be him. And he simply will be able to ride around any other problem that's going to exist in there.

And it's very well he could be the first person that I can think of, or at least the first person if he did it, the first person in modern times to win on three different tire makes. Which would be wildly crazy if he did. Yeah. So there will be no replacement for Mark at Barcelona this weekend. I guess they're having a it's going to be hard to find someone in the short time.

And there's World Superbike running at the same time. So you couldn't get like Booliga to come over and ride Mark's bike or something like that. So that's going to be an issue there. Moving on in the news, is Aspar returning back to MotoGP in 27? Well, no, but they want to get back in.

They, you know, they initially were with KTM, but later they are what they want a full CF Moto factory effort. Who knows when the Chinese will have all that ready. But you have to believe that they're well on their way considering they own half of Kalecs. So what I'm. Thinking may happen purely speculative on my point, we've seen Honda before give motors out where people then built their own frames.

I give you Kenny Roberts team with the V5. That was his own frame that they built that housed it. I can't I could see at least for a couple of years, potentially, that perhaps Kalecs builds a frame or a chassis, if you will. And then they slip a Honda motor in it until, you know, the guy that until they have their own motor with enough time and experience or whatever on it for them to be able to race in MotoGP. So that could be it's been done before.

It's speculative. But who knows? Well, in actual fact, Jim, towards the end of the Kenny Roberts project, they slipped a KTM engine into that bike. That is true. I that is very true.

I did not think of that at this moment in time. But as you say that, I do remember they did have a KTM engine. Shane Shane Burn campaign that bike for a season. I can't think of the year now. What would have been back end of the back end of the 90s, perhaps?

So early part of the hundreds somewhere around there anyway. I mean, that would that would give Honda essentially another place to put two riders if they wanted to. It probably makes more sense that KTM would put motors in a Kalecs frame for and bad enough CF Moto, which they obviously have been doing in Moto two and sorry, not Moto two, but Moto three. I'm interested. An interesting thought has just occurred to me, but please.

OK, well, no, that's it. That's all I had was well, could be that I just think in the back, you know, again, the KTM situation and, you know, this idea when I do this, what we hear and read that, you know, financially, they've been in some trouble, but they are, of course, now backed by that Indian company and the name is momentarily escaping me. Buzz. It will come to me in a minute. But but with the Chinese.

Motorcycle manufacturers coming into the game, so CF Moto being one and there's QJ Motors doing good things in world super sports over in the other championship at the minute as well. I wonder if that kind of. Inspires the Indian owners of KTM to really kind of push the investment because India and China. I mean, China is an economic powerhouse. We know that.

India is one of the. Well, it would be wrong to say it's not a powerhouse already because it is, but it's certainly going to become one of the, if not the biggest economy in the world at some point, I should think, for a period of time. And so you can see a bit of a machinery financial arms race taking place between India and China. And Moto GP would be a perfect. Theatre for that to play out.

So to me, it doesn't sound ridiculous that KTM, despite their current apparent woes financially, look to get more bikes or engines or whatever onto the grid. But I can see that happening. Yeah. Well, we'll know more later as this goes on. I think this is a development.

I mean, it's obvious that they want to go to Moto GP. The question is when. So kind of I get the feel it's like a 29 thing, 29, 30 thing. So we shall see what happens. That's just.

Yeah, that's right. It's on the radar. So two more things left here in the news. The safety commission is being called out by the riders. This was due to the fact that the riders want it reduced use or no use of whole shot devices at Le Mans, Silverstone and Phillip Island.

This was then shot down by the safety commission, stating that. Everybody has these particular devices, so there's no difference in what's going to happen. And the teams didn't like the idea because, oh, well, now we get to reset things and recalibrate and do all this. And it was actually, you know, that was issue was brought forth to the safety commission as well by Jack Miller, like, hey, an extra place to do starts and practices on a Saturday so that everybody could get everything dialed in and ready to go. For it.

And it was completely shot down. In fact, it's gotten so bad that only Miller, Pekko, Ben Yai and Luca Marini actually attend the safety commission meetings. And that's it. Bastionini has said basically, I had issues with Balaton Park and going sliding across the track and to the oncoming traffic that he didn't like. And he wanted something changed.

The safety commission basically just said no. And or or I get the impression told him a fib. I won't say they lied. They just didn't hold up their part of the bargain. And he said basically, I'm not going anymore because you can't believe what they're going to do.

That is a really bad place for this to be right now, because if because if you watch the start of the Moto GP race on Sunday, Bizecki's bike was sparking violently as they went through what is technically turn two of the circuit. It had to have been some part of the ride height device dragging or sparking against the road. And it's like, thank goodness these things are banned and they're all going to be gone. But you would think given the fact that these three tracks that are mentioned are all high speed first turns. So it's very difficult to get to brake hard enough to get the system to deactivate and become a normal motorcycle.

That's in quotes. And there so somewhere, some way there's going to have to be some sort of organized rider led sort of like the Grand Prix Drivers Association that they have in full. They're going to have to be a Grand Prix Riders Association. I think, Rich, your thoughts? I don't think it will happen, Jim.

I don't really anybody's invested enough or bothered enough to make it happen. And I mean, it's up to them. I mean, it's up to them at the end of the day. But I mean, I'm so fed up of talking about ride height devices. And as you say, they're banned next year anyway.

So in a sense, it's sort of a nonissue provided we can get through the remainder this year without a nasty accident happening. But in particular reference to Le Mans, I mean, you might recall and I can't remember the absolute details or specifics of it. But Bastionini had a ride height that didn't deactivate in last year's race, which caused him to skittle into people and cause a crash. So it's hard as if this should have come as a surprise that it was going to be a potential problem this year. And as you said, Jim, I mean, Bazzacchi's bike was basically grounding out through the whole of that turn.

And, you know, by the good grace of God or whatever it was, the bike didn't bottom out enough that it kind of lifted the wheels or the front wheel and tire off the ground enough to cause a front end to go. Because, I mean, imagine what that might have turned into. However, I do believe it's the case that it has been agreed that Silverstone and Philip Island, they will enact that ban on the use of the start line of the ride height devices. I hadn't read that one, but hopefully they do. Well, they didn't do it in the month because it was too late to make the changes in time.

It's like, well, guys, you've had a year you knew about this, you know, based on the evidence of what happened in last year's race. Anyway, luckily, we dodged that bullet and they did all get through, you know, unscathed in the sprint, more or less, and in the main race on the Sunday. And thankfully, yeah, a little bit of common sense has prevailed because, again, at Silverstone last year, Mourbe Dele's ride height didn't deactivate and it caused him to go skittling into a couple of people in turn one off the start line. So, I mean, there's plenty of evidence that this is likely to happen. And it's a mockery, really, of a safety commission when you know that these are safety issues and nothing happens about it.

Although in this particular case, thankfully, they have decided for those two rounds in particular that they will take action. So good on them. But yeah, it all feels like a bit kind of window dressing and for riders to be actively saying, I don't bother even turning up to these things anymore because there's no point because anything we say is ignored is really concerning, really. But nobody's forcing them to go racing. So I suppose there is that.

And there are people that will be saying, just let them get on with it. And, you know, I do agree with that to a point. But when there's a known thing that could cause a nasty accident, which will have repercussions for the sport in this, you know, health and safety dominated age, then it seems odd that you're not taking action about some of these things. But that's just me. I think it's going to take a a rider's strike for them to get any traction anywhere.

That's what it's going to be, because the race can't go on without the riders. And it has to be all of them. It can't be can't be five of them. It can't be six of them. It has to be every single one of them if they want to do anything.

And it's they have to make that choice, as you said. Now, speaking of health and safety and common sense, let's talk about the last thing in the news. And that's the fact that Liberty is looking at Miami's F1 track to be the new Moto GP street circuit. And according to Liberty, it's only logical. Really?

We haven't even done Adelaide yet. And we're going to suddenly say, oh, well, we're going to go to go to Miami. This is absolutely ridiculous. It's like they actually said in the article I read on the race, you can read it yourself. Yeah, we realize that we're going to have to modify the track so that it can be safe.

Really? And it's, you know, they liberty looks at this and quite honestly, they're right. They need to grow the sport in the United States as they have grown Formula One. There are three races that exist in the United States for Formula One. They want to do essentially the same thing.

We've talked about this. Where are the tracks going to be that they could go to and do this at? And here they are looking at Miami, which I think makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I am not for putting bikes against concrete walls. We did it in Indianapolis.

Luckily, nobody ever got seriously hurt by that, although there was a fatality. It was in a lower class. Let's move off of that real quick and move on. But I don't understand. I don't understand their logic with this to try to do that.

I get the city center. I get that there's all everybody's right there. They can easily just pop into the track. But what's interesting is they they they have Coda, probably one of the better, more technical circuits in the modern era. We'll leave the classics out of this conversation for now.

They have that, yet they can't put people in the stands. That's why Coda never says how many people show up. The old you hear all weekend, how many people are at Le Mans? Another record of people coming to Le Mans for this. You don't have that at Coda.

Now, I am not going to be anti motorcycle. I love motorcycles. I loved racing motorcycles. I still love watching motorcycles. I drive the 18 hours to Coda to watch Moto GP happen in the United States.

I'm pro motorcycle. But the most of the country is not pro motorcycle. They are not. It is it is it is not looked upon. Motorcycles are not looked upon here in the United States as they are looked upon in Europe or in Asia.

Asia, it's a cheap mode of transportation to get people around. That's their thought. That's how they look at it. In Asia, Southeast Asia, that whole area there in Europe, it's a there. Not an oddity, but you're sharing the road with them in a much different way in which that you would share the road with them here.

And the problem with it is it all stands from one picture that was on the front cover of a Time magazine that showed a biker on an old Harley-Davidson back in the 40s, I think it was right after the war. And he's drunk, laying on the bike, and there's nothing but beer, beer bottles around him. And they were all considered to be from that picture hoodlums. It doesn't matter what you do with your motorcycle. You are a hoodlum.

You are a worthless piece of garbage that doesn't need to be around here. And trust me, I can find you enough YouTube videos of guys with their sport bikes doing stupid stuff on the roads that just absolutely keeps that tradition going here. And you're not going to get it. And OK, I don't know what they need to do to improve motorcycling as a sport here in the US. We have a big enough problem that just Bodo America actually races like only like at six racetracks here in the United States.

And they're forgotten about after Barbara. It's like a month off. So no one thinks about it because they don't go to these places. I don't know what Liberty thinks they can do to fix this problem. But the only reason that you have anybody following former the one, the way that they do is because of a show that's called Drive to Survive.

And it hooked everybody on it. And it's not the same. It just doesn't equate. I think for the most of Americans who are lazy people here in the United States, which there are, they can sit on their couch and they can visualize themselves driving their car. So they think they can be Lewis Hamilton or and her Antonelli or George Russell or Max Verstappen.

But most people can't ride a bicycle here, let alone ride a motorcycle. And they can't do it. So they're never going to be a part of it. And with that, I rant over, I'm done. I'm waiting for the hate mail.

Just let it come. I don't care. Sorry, that was a rant. I didn't need to be go that long, but I know we love a good rant on this show, Jim. I mean, I don't know where to start with this to be honest with you.

I mean, I think the Miami thing is an absolutely absurd idea. I mean, you know, obviously it works for Formula One, although, you know, Formula One is crashing at a high speed as a dangerous piece of equipment to the driver and everybody else around it. Let's be clear about that. But bikes crashing into walls, skittling across in front of other riders who are totally exposed compared to being in a survival cell in a, you know, a single seater or any other form of car. It's a whole different ball game.

And, you know, I just worry that we need to give Liberty or MotoGP Sports Entertainment group time to sort of figure some of this stuff out. But again, you know, let's take one of your favorite things, Jim, ice hockey. I mean, how many people actually play ice hockey? Compared to the people that go and watch ice hockey? Oh, it's very limited.

It's far less people can actually be that one percent that are good enough to play NHL level ice hockey. But, you know, every arena is probably twenty thousand people. My point is that I don't necessarily buy the idea that you have to ride a bike to be interested in bike racing. I think if you're interested in entertainment and things that are exciting, compelling and you have characters that you like and follow and enemies that you hate and, you know, just love to hate or whatever, that creates the environment in which people will travel eight hours or ten hours or two hours for me, you know, to go and watch it, you know. And so I don't necessarily think Liberty is quite on the right track here.

Just thinking that they can run the kind of Formula One methodology and it will instantly translate to success for MotoGP. Because I don't necessarily think that's the case. And it will be very, very, very dangerous and might actually prompt action from the riders in actual fact, because, I mean, he wants me bouncing off a wall at 200 miles an hour. You know what? So I don't know what the solution to this is, to be honest with you.

But, you know, you've got great facilities like Cota, to be fair. It's great track. Great track. You know, you've got this flat rock facility that, you know, continues to build up and hopefully could be a venue. But all of these places are quite remote.

They're not population centers. And that's kind of Liberty's rule book now is to kind of take the race into where the people are rather than getting the people to go to where the racing is. Correct. So that is a problem. And it's not a small problem to solve.

But with bike racing, obviously, it's a different cattle of fish to car racing. So not an easy one to solve. And I'm kind of curious if anybody has any ideas that they want to fire in on the email to sort of give their sort of view on it. I don't have a solid solution to it other than making the absolute most of publicizing the fact that as we saw on Sunday, there's some great racing that takes place. There are some genuinely interesting and compelling characters in this sport who could be doing a lot more to make themselves more known.

It's true. And Formula One is just getting it right. And I know Drive to Survive and Covid was the perfect storm of opportunity that allowed certain things to happen to really help Formula One. But I mean, I haven't watched Drive to Survive for the last few seasons because it basically became like a soap opera and was so becoming so detached from reality in a way that perhaps the first couple of seasons weren't. I just tuned out of it.

But, you know, obviously has done Formula One a world of good. But I don't know if they've just captured that audience now. So those people are now lifelong fans rather than people that are just continuing to go because they're watching Drive to Survive. I'm not actually quite sure that I think that's what's going on there. But who's to say?

I mean, you need to be studying data and God knows what to understand that, you know, that whole thing. But, yeah, MotoGP is different and requires a different solution to it. I personally believe. And, yeah, the race is not always brilliant, but then, I mean, how many classic Formula One races do you see over the last since Drive to Survive happened? I mean, there have been some genuinely great Formula One races, it's true, but not every race by any means.

And so MotoGP isn't kind of guilty of not delivering up good racing every time they go to a different venue. You know, sometimes there's a great race and sometimes there's a dull race. Yeah, it just depends. It's always been the case, you know, so that's not the issue. The issue is getting engagement from people that enough for them to want to go to a track to watch it or to watch it on mass on TV.

And that's the the conundrum that has to be solved. Yep, I can't solve it. So let's just talk about racing. How about that? Yeah, let's get to the racing.

All right. So Moto3 qualifying and the first session is Panini, Carpe, Buchanan, Cruises, Moodley and Ogorman, which, you know, Pini is again in that first session is like, whoa, this guy wins at Cota and basically looks like he fell off a cliff roughly. But as it worked out, there was a bunch of crashes or yellow flags. There was all kinds of things that were keeping people from getting lap times in because, you know, Pini and Carpe never really got a lap time till their last running last lap that they ran. But Carpe, Cruises, Buchanan and Panini and Pini all get through that first session and get to the second session.

And the second session you had halfway through, it was Quiles, Fernandez, Marrera, Pothama, Ariate and Kelso. Those are the guys that were at the top in the first two rows. Now, what's interesting about this is that as it works, we had Rosso, when everybody's sort of kind of going out for their last attempt to get a lap, Reoso had a tire warmer that was wrapped around the swing arm of the bike, which caused him to have to stop. And then he's viciously trying to pull it off the bike without stalling the bike and then stalls the bike. And he never got it started again because there was not really an access point for him to actually get anywhere to be able to take it.

So he actually loses out on having a good qualifying position. But what was interesting was that you had Quiles was on pole at the time and everything was looking like, well, that's it. No, things going to happen. But everybody forgot one thing. The interesting thing was that Adrian Fernandez left earlier than anybody else on his second run and got around to get one more shot at pole.

And he took pole position away from Quiles with that lap, which was, again, this is what I don't understand about the guys in Moto3. Go out when there's nobody on the track and set a lap time or at least be running so that you can get to have not just one last chance at it and a group pack with everybody else, have two shots at stardom. It worked for Fernandez. So that left us with Fernandez on pole, followed by Quiles, followed by Kelso, which I thought was a good job by Kelso and the MLaf team. Right.

Yeah, that was really good. Then it was Morelli, Munoz, Protama, Bariate, Carpe and Bertelli. That's your first three rows in it. We get to the race on Sunday. Now, everybody was talking about rain and when it was going to come, well, there was an early morning shower that went through the track that left it wet.

Now, that was that it happened like somewhere around like 1010 local time, I think they said. Yeah. So that changed the nature of what was going to happen in the Moto3 race. So this is what happened because Moto3 did not have any running in wet conditions during the weekend. Pit Lane would be open for 10 minutes.

That would allow you to go out and run around the track while coming back through the pit lane, pit lane speed limiter and back out again to survey the track and get familiar with the wet, if you will there. Then because of this, they also dropped the Moto3 race to only 13 laps, which is only two thirds distance, which I found quite shocking. So, again, agreed. All of you conspiracy theorists out there like myself who said all liberty would never do anything to destroy Moto2 and Moto3. I give you the Lamont's weekend as evidence that they will because it doesn't matter to them about the classes that are bringing you talent up and allowing you to have sort of a connection or a fandom with these guys as they start on Moto3, carry that fandom to Moto2 and then carry it on to MotoGP.

But hey, the track was definitely wet. Sorry. Go ahead, Richard. Can I just chuck my two panths worth in here? Throw it out there.

Really, really aggravates me. It pisses me off. Because given how often Moto3 and or Moto2 is the best race of the weekend, and yet they get, you know, they get their legs chopped off when there's something slightly unusual that happens. Now, I get that MotoGP, I'm not going to go on for ages, I promise, because I know we're already going far too long. I get that MotoGP is the premier event and there's a start time which they need to respect as much as humanly possible.

So I do understand that. But wet weather on the Sunday was well known as a possibility. So rather than cut the races, why not just start them a bit earlier? Get rid of that pointless bloody MotoGP riders parade on a track which nobody's interested in taking part in or watching for the most part, and just pull the race forward for by half an hour. You can still give them their 10 minute acclimatisation if it rains.

If it doesn't, stick to the original start time. But take something out that's worthless rather than removing something that's valuable. Correct. I will hardly agree with you, Rich. It's ridiculous.

And it's annoying for the teams and the riders that have spent the whole weekend getting prepared and then suddenly everything has pulled, you know, the rug is pulled from under their feet. Never mind the people that have paid to go and watch the bloody thing in the first place, I mean, if I'm in the stands, I'm thinking, well, hang on a minute, I've paid to watch three races of this length, you know, these individual lengths. And it's been taken away because somebody can't plan for because of wet weather. It's totally unacceptable to me. And it's a massive insult to Moto3 and Moto2 as categories of brilliant racing.

That's my rant over. Sure. I'm going to add to it. Moto3 teams and Moto2 teams probably sell a good portion of their sponsorship based on the amount of TV time that they would be getting for a full race distance, to which they didn't. Yeah.

I'll leave it there. Especially in front of a... I'm going to take issue with the crowd number thing because they do this at Le Mans every year. A very, very large crowd, as happens every year. It wasn't 300,000.

It was a hundred and something thousand went Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The same people should have... You can't count the people through the gate three times. I mean, it's the same person. Anyway, putting that to one side, if they had 130,000, 140,000 in, paying customers, that's a bloody great result.

I mean, how much would Cota or Silverstone, for that matter, chop their right hands off to have those sorts of gate numbers coming through the turnstiles? So, you know, fair play, Le Mans. They pack them in. And there are lots of people that I'm sure we're a little bit disappointed by what happened, and I just don't think it's acceptable. And if this is the way Dawn are going to go, they're going to...

Whilst they're trying to build up MotoGP, they're going to diminish other parts of it and they will antagonise and annoy the likes of us, who are the hardcore fans. I agree. And most of the people are listening to this. Yeah. Anyhow, the race goes green.

Keelys gets a whole shot from it all. It looked like he had been shot out of a cannon, quite honestly. Uriadi would crash in the first turn. Munoz would go down as well, and then Buchanan would go down. So we already had three guys crash on the first lap.

It sorted itself out to be Keelys, Fernandez, Morelli, Kelso, Carpe, and Bertelli. Then, oh, Gorman goes down. Then Peroni goes down at turn three. Kelso goes down. Carrara goes down at the three-four at the chicane.

Carpe goes down. Morelli is now down. It's a cluster. It's guys going off everywhere. And it's typical Le Mans when it gets wet, right?

Everybody crashes at the turn three-four chicane. And then nobody knew what was really happening at the last two turns because you can't go through them at any kind of speed because you're forced to come through the pit lane. So, again, if you don't have a riders parade, you give them 10 minutes of actual track time. We'd probably avoid a good chunk of this, I would think. However, that's not what we think.

Don't think, Jim. Another mini rant, which is about the shortening the race distance. In a situation like Le Mans, this happens virtually every year at Le Mans, where they have these rain showers. 50% of them. People crash, but they generally rejoin.

Yes. And by cutting down the race distance, you don't give them an opportunity to catch up because some people are really effective in that kind of in-between, which is what happened where you go from wet to dry. And again, you just cut off the possibility for people to put in, like, really newsworthy career building, reputation building performances, you know, because it's, what, 13 laps, which is virtually nothing really. I mean, like you say, it's not half distance, but two thirds. And so, again, it's just so stupid to do that.

And so needless to do that. Back to the action. And Kylis has got this dominated. He's just completely gone. Nobody was going to touch Kylis in this one.

It was absolutely amazing. Bertelli had a long lap penalty for shortcutting at turn 10, so that was going on there. Oriate crashed again. He picked the bike up, got going, crashed one more time because now things are starting to get really dry. We're starting to see a dry line happen, all that kind of things going on.

Rio crashed at turn eight. Scott Ogden went down at turn three. Everybody's crashing. It's like if you were just to stay on the bike, you would probably wind up getting points. It was absolutely amazing with this.

I think Samela was down. And that was a major crash at turn 10. That bike was trashed when that one happened. Base. As we got sort of towards the end here with five to go, it was Kylis, Fernandez, Bertelli, Protama, Esteban and Pini are all there.

Now, Bertelli seemed to have caught pace. He's one of the guys. As it dried out, he seemed to be going faster. I don't remember nor do I have I look, but I think he may have had the hard rains on as opposed to the soft rains. So I think he was starting to, quote, unquote, come good, who also had pace at the very end with five laps.

It was Protama who had some lightning fast pace that was going on. Again, we're only going two thirds distance. If we had run the full 23 laps that was required initially, where does Bertelli and Protama go? Are they catching Kylis? No way.

But these two might be standing on the podium. However, they're not. With all that said and done, Protama never did get near Morelli or Bertelli, basically. Bertelli, Bertelli, Morelli. It all seems to sound the same to Jim at some point.

But you had in the MOTO in the end, Kylis wins the race, Fernandez is second, Bertelli is third, which that was a great thing for Bertelli because there was a point where Bertelli had that really bad crash. And it wasn't so much that he would the question wasn't just, oh, he could come back and race and maybe be successful racing. The question was, could he even have a normal life again due to the extent of those injuries and he's recovered completely and he's now on the podium? It was emotional for him. He said he was weeping in his helmet.

Great to see him actually be there on the podium. Thought it was fantastic. Protama was fourth. Then you had Esteban, Pini, Krishnas, Amanza, O'Shea, Danish, Peroni, Yakanama, Morelli. Then Ramsdorf, which I think was like a new Dutch rider that was in, and Uriyate got the last point because he remounted again after that crash.

So with that said and done, let's look at the championship really quick. This is Kylis' championship. He's on 115 points. He has a 46 point lead over Fernandez. That is absolutely amazing.

I think he is only 10 points short of being absolutely perfect on a point score. And those were the two seconds that he had, one in Cota and the other one. I don't remember where it was. So that's the only reason he's down 10 points. Otherwise, Kylis would have a perfect score at this point, which is absolutely amazing.

Fernandez is his nearest rival on 69. Then Carpe, Peroni, Protama, Morelli, Pini, Amanza, Uriyate and Esteban. That's your championship in Moto 3. It's Kylis to lose. I don't see the kid doing anything dumb, but he's not going to win a lot of them.

But man, he proved that he can race in the rain and be absolute dynamite. He can be on the track by himself and be dynamite. He's showing us that he's learned that maybe he can't get away all the time. So I need to sort of ride with the pack, conserve my tires and then end my energy and then just throw in like five or six really hard laps at the end. It's really, really wild what he can do.

So I'll let you speak, Rich, because I've rambled on enough. Just very, very briefly. I mean, as a Brit, I saw the rain, torrential rain just before the start of the race and thinking, ah, this is going to be interesting. The Brits, the Irish in terms of Kasey Gorman and the Southeast Asians are genuinely going to have a shot here because those guys, generally speaking, ride a lot in the wet, whereas perhaps the Spanish and the Italians don't quite so much. And then Keles just goes out and does what Keles does.

There's just there doesn't appear to be any weakness in the kids game. None. And that's all he trains and he's underneath the two leagues of the Marquez Brothers. What if look, do you think Mark or Alex is going to put their time into anybody that they don't think is going to be a world champion at every single level that he's at? No, they're not going to, by any stretch of the imagination.

That is anybody who can get to the world championship. I have great admiration for. So that's not a knock on these other people. But there are people who are the elite of the elite. And Keles is one of those.

Nobody's dominated this since like one P. Acosta, you know, so it's it's it's again, if you want to tell a story and you want to provide entertainment, talk about that kid. Talk about what he's doing. Anyway, that's my rant. Three three wins from five, Jim.

And as you say, the other two were second places. And this is what's deadly about him. A bit like a couple of guys before him. If he can't win, he banks maximum points. And that's why he's so far ahead after this few races.

I mean, it's a deadly combination, really. I mean, OK, he rides in Aspar, which is a top top team, but then he's a top rider and a massive talent. And it doesn't matter who you're managed by. It's the talent that counts at the end of the day. He just proved on Sunday that he's great in the way as well as like flipping out.

I mean, is there anything that he does which is bad? You know, so hard to say, really. And the only other thing I was going to say really was, yeah, but tell me, I mean, what a newsworthy, noteworthy performance that was for a kid. You say you had a serious head injury as a result of that crash last year. Quite possibly, you wouldn't have made it back to the championship.

And there is, you know, crying his eyes out on the last lap about to get his first podium in Moto3. And, OK, I'm not, you know, a youngster watching TikTok and Instagram all day long, but I've seen nothing about Battelli on social media and there's another story that is begging to be told in terms of captioning young people, young people in particular, that will see a young person that's come through battle through adversity like that. And what a great story that is. And you'd be hard pressed to know it even happened outside of the hardcore fandom like us. So since you mentioned the social media aspect of this and no one talking about Keeley's and what he's doing, nobody talking about what happened with Pertelli.

What I did notice on the MotoGP feed was Jorge Martin taking his girlfriend around on a two-up ride. Wow, that did a lot of good for me. I was, I'm glad he took her. I'm like, hey, that's nice. I mean, fair enough.

It's fair, right? Yeah. But not as this. But don't ignore everything else. Exactly.

I can I can cope with Martin taking his pretty girlfriend around. That's great. I mean, I've done I've not got an issue with it, provided you're giving everybody else spotlight to that is worthy of it. And there were performances across the weekend and across all weekends, which are shouting out for attention and they get ignored. Right now, Moto2 and Moto3 are an afterthought to Liberty.

100 percent. When you could be talking that story up anyway, rant over, let's get we got to get this pod done. We are way. Somebody needs to rant about it, Jim. I agree.

I don't disagree. If Liberty don't get on top of this, they are not going to turn this into a success story. I'm sorry. That's just as simple as it is because you can't live off Mark Marquez. What will happen is Mark will crash or retire, you know, suddenly.

And I'll face Rossi, you know, this sort of existential, you know, what do we do now? The big star's gone and then they have to start to build again. But there's nobody I mean, they were lucky with when Rossi retired that Marquez was there. Yes. But who is there after Marquez of that level?

I would say there's an Alonso, there's Aquiles coming through. But Alonso, Aquiles, Acosta. But what kind of maybe Acosta is getting the attention and rightly so. But in terms of a few years down the line, I don't think they're talking about these people enough, unless I'm missing stuff on social media and people must point out to me, you know, if I need to be spending more time on X, Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, Substack, you know, you know, I'll just basically give up a day job and just spend my whole time looking at my phone, which I'm sure would be very good for my mental health. But, you know, from the stuff that I do look at, I'm not seeing it.

And, you know, if Liberty want to crack this problem, they've got to focus on the future, not the present or not just the present. One hundred fifty thousand percent. There's no way around it. Let's move on to Moto 2. We'll go through that quickly.

So we can rant about it, rant about the same stuff we just said about Moto 3. I promise I won't. I promise I won't. Insert us from talking about Moto 3, just substitute Moto 2 in there if you want to, guys, for this one, because it's got carbon copy. It's really, it's really bad.

It's like, OK, great. Anyway, in the first qualifying session, Munoz, Roberts, Arbolino, Alonso, Escrige and Huerta are all in that first session. It's a mundane session, quite honestly, but in the end, Munoz, Alonso, Arbolino and Roberts get through. Shout out to Rueda, your defending Moto 3 champion, ever so close to pipping Roberts and actually making it to the QT, to Q2 for the first time. Given what happened to that kid, as we know in Sepang, that is amazing that he's there already, you know, so props to him.

Yeah, true. When we get to Moto 2 in the second QP session, Goulvaro was looking solid the whole way around. He was followed by Helgado, Baltis and Alonso. Roberts then suddenly finds the magic, which, OK, about time. And then Salach and Weier.

Baltis would fall off at turn six. It was a big crash that he experienced there for sure. Then as it worked out, it was like, OK, we've got Goulvaro, Helgado, Baltis, Roberts, Alonso and Lopez, but Salach was on an absolute flyer. And so was Gonzalez. It was the last people standing and those two guys had a time to perfection.

But they weren't fast enough. Goulvaro still held on to pole position. Helgado would be second. Salach would go all the way up to third with a great lap. Baltis, even though he had crashed, stayed in fourth.

Then Gonzalez moved himself to fifth to get to the second row, which was good for him. If he wasn't going to get higher up, he was going to have a problem in the championship more than likely. Roberts on the second row, last man on the second row. Then Alonso, Lopez and Vietti. And, you know, shout to Roberts.

He actually admitted on the grid on Sunday that, hey, we finally got qualifying figured out. So good on him that he's actually got something figured out because, I mean, I don't know how much longer he can be in Moto 2, to be quite honest. I'd ideally desperately would love to see him come back to America, ride, you know, super bikes here and race against Gagnier and Bobie and everybody. I think it'd be great. Anyway, yeah, so on the SDK, yeah, as well.

So anyway, Jim, can I just say, just very quickly, worth pointing out that Alonso, as in David Alonso, had injured his shoulder in a training crash. Oh, I did not know that. I didn't hear that. So that was causing him some issues this weekend. OK, all right, fair enough.

Which is part of the reason why he was in Q1, I think. Yeah, that makes more sense. Although he's not known to not be, he doesn't really get a hold of the grip. Not the best qualifier. Not the best qualifier.

Great. Absolutely fantastic racer. But yeah, yeah. OK, as we get to Sunday with the Moto 2 race, hmm, guess what? Same problem here.

We're going to postpone by 10 minutes the race start. We're going to let the pit lane be open for two minutes. Sorry, the pit lane is going to be open for 10 minutes. We're going to figure this out. What are we going to use?

Slicks or wets? Oh, and by the way, we're declaring the race, they declared it a wet race, even though everybody was going to start on slicks. So that way, if it rained, they didn't have to stop the race because, well, heaven forbid, we cut into Moto GP's time. Oh, come on. And then on top of that, they reduced the race to 14 laps, just like they did with Moto 3, they cut it to 14 laps.

Like, seriously? Like, oh, wow. Again, insert rant from previous race to here because it's the same thing. We won't repeat it. Right.

There's no point. It's the same comments. It's the same things. Anyway, if we look at this, the track was dry or dry enough that everybody was on slicks. Nobody was going to gamble on wets.

You declared it a wet race. For God's sakes, why? Almost to justify the race reduction, perhaps. That or they just if you had declared it a wet race and it ran and you were on slicks. Well, hey, that's your problem.

Because if they would have said it's a dry race and it rained, then they would have had to have stopped it and let everybody change the wets. Well, yeah. And it's it's what you do. I agree. 100 percent.

I'm with you. Oh, so as we start this one, Guevara gets a great hole shot, followed by Holgardo and Salach. So those guys are there. Holgardo, that hole shot was a thing of legend there. But the but Holgardo then wound up having a high side out of like turn seven there by the museum and then the bike ghost rode itself basically almost all the way down the hill to eight before it fell all over.

But it was a slow low side. That was pretty that was pretty good. So Guevara and then Gonzalez, then Salach and then Baltis, Vier, Lopez and Alonso all clear to start the second lap. Then Guevara crashes at the last turn on that end of that second lap. And he winds up having his bike and himself get up against the pit wall.

So now there's a problem. There's not an easy place for anybody to get to that motorcycle and assist Lopez trying to get it or assist Navarro, sorry, to get that motorcycle out of the way. So we have people on track trying to assist with this. And at the last minute per race direction, because that's what they do. The very last second, they throw a red flag so that nobody potentially is going to get hurt as they're trying to move the motorcycle off the track.

I think they actually took it and went up the pit lane to the opening that they used to move people in and out on the Moto GP grid or on the grids in general, instead of taking it counter direction, which you could have at least been facing the people that were coming at you. It was weird that they is a weird crash, followed by a weird set of circumstances that race control really probably hasn't thought about too well, that then leads to the fact that we got a red flag, which then means, guess what? Aha, we're going to have a nine lap race at the end. So we went from two thirds to 14 to nine. Has Moto GP finished an entire race this year that hasn't been reduced by some count by race direction?

I think maybe Brazil. I think that might be the only one. It's not a question, Jim, is I felt that the I mean, I understand that there were well, let's call them corner workers, we always call them corner workers, they happen to be on the straight. But putting that to one side, I personally felt. Given how far over to the right hand side of the track they were, I thought a double wave yellow would have sufficed in that scenario, because you just know that they're going to reduce the race even further if they red flag it, which is precisely what they did.

And, you know, nobody wants to put marshals under any risk, 100 percent. Not suggesting that for one second, but that was for me, that was a double wave yellow scenario. And keep the race running. Yes, I agree. OK, so now we so now what had happened was, well, hey, wait a minute.

Arbolino was in the mix. Did Arbolino and Navarro actually come together? No, they did not. No. Arbolino had some sort of weird problem, though, didn't he was sticking his foot out, wasn't he?

Yes, there was I think the speed shifter or something failed is my guess. I'm not 100 percent sure on that. Haven't heard about it. I think there was a fault that he wound up clearing somehow. But he was out at the edge of the curve.

Now, I think Navarro may have saw that a little late and tried to turn a little harder to get away from him, lost the bike on a damp patch perhaps or slightly damped area and then slid the bike around. And then you momentum takes you to the wall. There he is. OK, great. Well, the question then was, is Helgardo going to be able to get his bike back together again and get working on?

OK, so the crew is working like mad. They're replacing the fairings on the bike and they actually made it. So, OK, cool. The whole guard gets another shot at this one. Great.

Everybody's going back to their original good good spaces. Pit lane open 60 seconds. Everybody's there. You come back to your mechanic. Is everything OK?

Yep, sure is. Mechanics walk off the grid. You go for your now you're not on a warm up. You're not on your starting lap. You now go to your warm up lap and we roll back in.

And then it's like, let's go racing. So we started with a nine lap and rainage. Guevara just just basically takes the same thing. He just whole shots the thing. Whole guard was second, then Baltus, who is then down after the Dunlap Bridge.

So Baltus is having a great weekend. He's tossing bikes away the whole time. So then Guevara basically just has just bolted off like he just takes off and is gone, nobody's going to touch it. Whole guard and Alonso, they're being very aggressive on each other and whatnot. Now, did you see how Horado's bike did not have a front fender on it?

They got burned at the at the end of the race for not having that on the bike, which I think is a bit weak. Yeah. Oh, that's a part that has to be on the bike and all that. Oh, come on. I thought that was just really if you remember back in the 90s, they used the Dunlap Shod Moto GP bikes used to not use a fender because the tire would overheat because the fender being there.

Just come on. And Jim, if you have a clutch in Moto GP and somebody loses a wing, they're missing a piece of bodywork. Why don't they get disqualified? Exactly. The rules are not the same.

Again, here is the whole deal that nobody gives a whole lids of. I don't know about another thing I appreciate people probably thinking, Jesus, what these guys got out of the wrong bed on the wrong side this morning. I'm surely thinking we have not. We're jovial people, guys, honestly. Why put I mean, I appreciate it was reduced to nine laps, but why put a whole Gardo through nine laps of a race without giving him the meatball flag?

You know, you've got a technical infringement on your bike. Come in the pits. Exactly. Making right the whole reduced reduced, reduced race, let's call it. But it's only to disqualify them in post, you know, scrutiny and whatever you want to call it, just absurd.

Absolute moronic stupidity once again. And this when we start to praise race control, race control now screws everything up. Well, this is I don't think it's race control, but you get my point, it's the rules, it's the technical delegates. It's like, what are you guys thinking? Well, he could have been given the meatball flag by race control.

I mean, I agree quite evident and obvious that he didn't have that front mudguard or front fender for the Americans on the bike. So, you know, you had in in her wrath, you had Drameer that dropped the bike, rode half a lap back to the pits with his phone hanging off. And he's got the meatball flag immediately and then got three grid three place grid penalty as a result of doing that. So it's not like they don't have the protocols to deal with this. It's like they forget the rules or something.

Oh, they don't care. Well, they don't care about motor too. And so, oh, he didn't have a front mudguard on. So let's disqualify him. Did somebody did this?

Was this one of these things where they everybody's turned the other way and we don't really care? And one of the other Moto two teams went, excuse me, here in this rulebook section here, that bike is disqualified. It shouldn't be for the it shouldn't be for the teams to point that out. No, this is why you have a technical technical delegate to whether there's a technical set of rules. That's why there's race direction.

That's all this should have already happened. And it doesn't. And I mean, if you want to give yourself a black eye in how you conduct yourself as a world championship that travels around the world and is the most prestigious motorcycle championship there is, what's wrong is a prestigious championship. But let's face it, Moto GP is the top of the top. And you do this crap.

It's mind boggling. Like sometimes I got to think that some people at Liberty have got to be going, what the heck did we just buy? Yeah, right. You know, I don't I don't know. Anyway, I feel the need to apologize to our new listener, hopefully William Bolton at this point, but you and I not normally like this.

It's just there were quite a particular set of circumstances unfolded at Le Mans last weekend that created some very poor choices in our in our shared opinion, because we don't normally rant on like this. But yeah, and for Paul Hulgado, he'd been spat off on lap one of the first start, got himself back, rejoined the race, did the nine laps and then got turfed out at the end, just, you know. Yeah, I know. It's absolutely wild. Either way, Guevara is definitely gone.

We learned that Vietti actually helped Balthus off, so he got a long lap penalty for that issue that he did. Basically, you know, Gonzalez is making a show of it because he's starting to turn some fast laps, but he's not. But then it's like Guevara just simply tried to up the pace again at that point and did or Tolo had some pace and was charging, but it didn't amount to anything. He got himself to a podium position and that's about it. The race finishes with Guevara winning, then Gonzalez, Ortolla, Lopez, Alonso, Vietti, Aegis, Roberts, Slatch, and then Kinet, Garcia, Van de Gerberg, Antu, Arbolino and Ferrandes.

There's that two R in there. And that's you guys scoring points in the championship. Gonzalez is on seventy nine and a half. He is 70 points ahead of Ethon Guevara. Guevara, I think, might nip Gonzalez in this championship.

It's going to be interesting to watch. It's a two man race right now. Aegis disappoints. He wins two in a row and then shows up here at Le Mans, which is a difficult technical track that's either really slick and if there's any kind of rain that really messes things up, I can see where he's not going to be comfortable, but Aegis needs to have a great weekend in Barcelona. He needs to be back on the podium if he wants to be considered in this championship because he's twenty and a half points behind Gonzalez, so he needs to get back onto the podium quickly.

Vietti is fourth, then Alonso is fifth, or Tola, Horgardo slips below these last few races of Horgardo, sort of having lost the plot are kind of weird in this sense, and then Munoz, Lopez and Escritch. That is Moto two. Rich, anything else we want to add to that or rant on about? No, no more no more rants because we haven't even got to Moto GP yet. I know it's crazy, isn't it?

It is, we're just pointing out that in the first start, Salac was running second, having qualified really brilliantly, and then in the nine lap restart, he got sort of either caught out or punted off across the gravel at turn three. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So he really did not benefit from that red flag one little bit. And the fact that he finished ninth, having pretty much dropped to the back of the field, you know, he had so much speed that weekend, and so it was a really disappointing return on a very promising weekend for him.

Yeah. So that was the only other thing that we didn't mention that I think was sort of relevant to. Yeah. OK, Moto GP first qualifying session. Well, guess what?

Mark Marquez is in that session. First time. Interesting. Followed by Ruel Fernandez, Miller, Morbidelli, Bastianini, Binder, Quattro. Who else there?

What's absolutely amazing about this qualifying session is the fact that Mark Marquez sets a track record. He set a lap of like, I think it's like a 129.4. No, it was a 129.288. 129.288. Yeah, 288.

That lap is absolutely crazy that he accomplished that lap. Given what we know about his shoulder, the nerve, everything else, that lap was stunning. In fact, it's so stunning the cut of Tardazzi going and shaking that hand off and the look on Benyaia's face of like, how the frick did he wind up pulling that one out of his backside? It's like, I don't know how he did that, which is absolutely stunning. So I think this is to say Marquez gets through that qualifying session.

And I think him and Quattroraro got through that session. Those are the two guys who got out. Yes, Rich. Well, we'll come to it in a minute. But the significance of that lap only really made itself fully known once later in the day.

Yes. So we must return to that lap. Yes, because that tells us something crucial. Yes, very much. About Ducati.

OK, all right. I'm interested in this because I'm interested. I think I know where you're going, but I'm interested. So let's get there. OK, so we get to the second qualifying session.

You know, Acosta is off at turn two. Digia was the fastest guy there. We talked about Digia being really good, kind of best Ducati rider. Then Bez moves to first place in there. Everyone was waiting to go back out.

Then Mark goes back out. Alash crashed his bike, but Bez went to the pole. Just sort of out of nowhere. And then before you know it, Benyaya goes to pole as well and takes that position. You're waiting for Mark to throw down another lap in that 129.28 range or 129.3 because Benyaya only got down to a 129.

I think six something. And Mark couldn't do it again. So Mark is second in this qualifying. Bezeki falls to third. Then it's Fabio, Digia, Antonio, then Acosta, Quattrarro, Mir, Martín, Iagura, Alex, Zarco and Rint.

Mark's lap could be repeated, which is interesting. And Benyaya was still some three and a half tenths slower. That is like forever in a day on a motorcycle, which is absolutely wild going into this. And even more so, Jim, given that less than one second cover the top 12. Yes.

So that Mark's margin, you know, in terms of that lap record that he set was, you know, dizzying, really. Oh, incredible. Absolutely. I mean, it was incredible. I want a poster of Benyaya's face and put it up somewhere because that's like, what do you think of that?

You go look at that picture because that was a particularly nice moment for Benyaya to react in that way, because, I mean, some people would have been a bit sour faced about that lap, but he just thought he reveled and enjoyed it. Yes, it was true admiration from somebody who was at the top of their game, who is a world champion, who looked and said, I have no idea how that man accomplished that, but wow, that was that was something special that we witnessed. That was amazing because I'm guessing they kind of knew because this shoulder surgery that Mark was going to have for the broken screw and the bit screw was known to Ducati. He was supposed to have it after Barcelona. So I'm assuming that everybody in that garage knew that Mark was having that problem.

And if that that makes this even greater, I'm not sure that anybody knew about it. Really? Outside of his close entourage, which probably doesn't include most of Ducati people. But there's not there's not like a four week gap. There's only like a two week gap after Barcelona.

Do you think Mark could have actually had that kind of surgery? Take that stuff out and be back. Vignola's had the same thing and isn't back still after five, six weeks. Well, I think it's you have to analyze what Mark has actually said. And I hope I'm not getting this wrong.

But he said the crash has just accelerated a surgery that they were planning to have. Correct. That is correct. I'm not quite sure he said that he was planning to have it within the next few weeks. I read that it was planned that he would have the surgery after Barcelona.

Was it OK? Fair enough. I hadn't read that. So if that is the case. But I mean, these guys go through those sorts of surgeries, you know, almost like we go down the shop to buy milk.

So that is possibly not a huge surprise, but perhaps do we want to do I want to raise my Jucati point? Should we wait until the crash? Let's wait till the crash. We'll talk about that. So let's go to the sprint.

The sprint's 13 laps. The debate was whether you wanted a hard front in the soft career or a soft front in the soft career. Some people changed there at the last minute. Renz was the only person that I know that went on soft, soft. All right, great.

So basically, did you have this absolutely wicked wheelie that kept him from leading the race? Bez had a whole shot, but Martine rode around the outside of turn three to take the lead in that sprint race. Now, is it I thought knowing what we only know from Sunday was that perhaps Zeke braked harder than he needed to to get into that first turn to be sure the ride height device had disengaged from his bike, which Martine gambled on it and went later deeper on the outside, braking hard to have it release and drove around the outside sort of like, wow, that was kind of really cool. That was pretty amazing by Martine. He did all the hard work.

And to be honest, all the hard work paid off because he rumps off to a sprint victory and that OK, we got that part now. And the next part was like, OK, what is it with Mark? He kind of got a pretty good start. He goes back. Acosta got him by him on the second lap, Mir then got by 93.

So this so so Mark is going backwards kind of quickly here in this. At this point, then Digia goes down at turn three, Acosta gets by Quattroraro, Martine and Benyaya are out front, followed by the Bez, followed by Acosta, Quattroraro, Mir, same things again. And then we got like two laps together where Fernandez then crashes. And then Mark has the mother of all crashes at turn 14. I didn't quite know what had happened to it.

I thought he's lost the front. But all props to Neil Hodgson, who was on the it was on social media. He says, look at what happens here. Mark goes into that corner. He touches the curb.

The curb causes him to lose the front, perhaps maybe a little bit of dampness on the paint still. Perhaps. Don't know that for sure. Then he's like, oh, OK, the front's going. He says, but look at Mark.

He's got his knee out. He's trying to push, but what's missing? The elbow. The elbow is not there for Mark to push that bike back up. He goes Hodgson's like, this is the kind of crash Mark saves.

He does it all the time, but he can't. Now the front's going, the rear comes down, it grips, straightens the bike out, flings Mark over the top or flips it up, sorry, sort of bucking, bucking Bronco, kind of bull riding style, to which then Mark, because he's got his right foot out, winds up slamming that into the ground, which that's where his fifth metatarsal gets broken. Him and the bike tumble off the end of the track. That's it there. He's done.

But Martin wins, Banyaya second, then Bezeki, then Acasa, Quattrarro, Mir, Aguera, Marquez, Alex Marquez and Marrera. And so now, Rich, what is the Ducati issue here? So we've watched Mark Marquez laboring this year. We've wondered what's wrong and what either what's wrong with him or what's wrong with the bike, because Digi Antonio aside, nobody on the 26th Ducati has really looked particularly as if they're enjoying life on it. That applies to Banyaya.

Certainly applies to Alex Marquez. I mean, we've almost forgotten about Alex Marquez, the guy that was running up last year. I mean, I know he won in Haereth, but he's a bit of a Haereth specialist, but he has crashed a lot this year. And OK, Digi's been grinding out the results on it. But my point is that lap that Mark pulled out suggests one or two things to me.

Firstly, he had one lap where the shoulder was not a problem. For whatever reason, he got the lap. And what a lap it was. So is the Ducati actually still the best bike on the grid is my question, because it has that lap time in it in his hands. Or in his shoulders or in all of them.

I'm speculating as to the fact that for whatever reason, whatever particular set of circumstances occurred, that he rode that one lap. Unimpeded and perhaps it's perhaps it's one of the very few laps of this season that he's ridden unimpeded as we learn subsequent to the crash when he admitted that this has been a problem all year on the bike, not in training and all these other things. When he's riding the Major GP bike, and so we saw a lap time come from that bike, which nobody else is able to replicate. And I mean, it wasn't as if he was a few, a couple of hundreds ahead. I mean, he was clearly almost four tenths of a second under the lap record.

So, no, in fact, he was more than under that from the lap record. He was four tenths quicker than what Bagnier did in second qualifying. So, I mean, Quattaro's lap record from last year. I think Mark's lap was like 0.6 or 0.7 quicker than that. Yeah, it says it was a lap of the gods, right?

It was. It was. It was an absolutely astonishing lap time. And Mark came in and I think said words to the effect of, I don't know how I did it. But the bike certainly did it.

And therefore it does raise this question as to where, you know, where are Ducati with this bike? You know, a fully fit Mark Marquez on this bike might be doing what we thought was going to be the case, Jim, because we said all of, you know, all of through preseason, nobody was going to see the dust. And that's not what's happened. And we've been thinking, is he going to retire? Is he just fed up?

You know, is he just banged up a bit and just can't really see the point of it anymore? That lap gave us a very small window of view into actually what is still possible if he can get fit. And obviously that is a very big if. For me, in terms of MotoGP across the weekend, that was the first really big question that arose. There is another one to do with the Prullia, which perhaps come to at the very, very end.

OK, I mean, what's your view on this? So. My take of it is. This. I still believe that a Prullia is the best bike in the MotoGP, MotoGP paddock.

I say that because the Zeke, Martin, Ayagura and Fernandez all on a Prullia is all are quick on that motorcycle. It is the better motorcycle because it is a motorcycle that is more adaptable, easier to ride. And so the lap times come to almost everyone who has a very good amount of talent. A professional top level rider on that motorcycle can make laps and they will do well with that motorcycle. So therefore, I grade that as the best motorcycle on the grid.

The Ducati is the second best motorcycle on the grid. But you can see the magic of a man named Mark Marquez when he's on that bike and he somehow gets it all right and his shoulders not bothering him. It's sort of like. Back, I hate this Formula One analogy, but back, I think it's an 88 in the last of the turbo era. It's the MP4 for McLaren Senna has a lap of the gods at Monaco.

He drives that lap and he's one point five seconds faster around Monaco than his teammate, Alain Prost, in the exact same car. Senna will tell you I was in the zone. I was somewhere else. That's what Mark was. He was on another playing field on another planet, seeing something different.

And he just did it. And it's a one off crazy. If Marquez is a healthy Mark Marquez after this short shoulder surgery, he may run the table of races just by the fact that he's that that bike apparently has what he needs in it to perform and perform. I don't know, miracles, maybe. I don't know what to say there.

But that's what I think. That's how I'm going to look at it. Yeah, I mean, it comes down to and people can chime in on this, whether the best bike is the most consistent bike that most people can ride effectively, whether it's the fastest bike. And I think we saw just for that one lap in that whatever it was, that one minute twenty nine point two eight eight seconds. A bike that went way faster than anybody else with a, you know, generational, if not a, you know, best of all time talent on it.

But that's a good we keep saying that's a debate for another day. And I said, unsolvable question. But yeah, is the fastest bike the best bike or is, you know, the most consistent bike the best? I mean, that's a matter of opinion, I suppose, at the end of the day. But yeah, and, you know, we've seen the stuff.

All Marks had a successful surgery or went swimmingly well. When do you ever hear about a bad surgery? I mean, we'll never know how fit Mark is. And I think, you know, the championship's gone. I mean, there's no way Mark can come back in the championship because if he misses we know he's missing this weekend, he may miss a weekend or two furthermore because he, of all people, knows the risks of coming back too early.

So this this year is gone. It's widely believed that he's signed another two years, you know, a one plus one as we go into the 850 set of rules. You can certainly see him if he does come back somewhat fit. And we've seen what the bike is capable of. You know, if he can make himself work on it, he might sort of win a batch of races towards the end of the season, but the championship will be gone.

So that's going to be really fascinating to watch. Meanwhile, I mean, with the rest of the Gcati's, I mean, it's not great for Gcati as a brand, is it, at the moment? Because they have lost the momentum, clearly, and by some margin by the looks of it. But again, we surmise that Gcati might end up in this position where Mark is the only person that can make the bike work. But you might be saying that if he'd gone to Yamaha or any of the other factories, for that matter, I mean, it's just that's what happens when you put a seminal talent on it like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go mask the deficiencies. Right. Again, we've said it millions of times. If Formula One, the car is 80 percent of it and the driver is 20 percent, it's the reverse of MotoGP.

It's 80 percent rider and only 20 percent bike. So let's get to the race. Let's go to race day on Sunday. Again, now it's like, is it going to rain? Is it not going to rain?

It's bright sunshine. No big deal. Best gets the whole shot. Bike sparking underneath him, as you said, Rich, by some grace of God. He doesn't trash that bike and fall.

But it winds up being Bez, Acosta, Quattroraro, Digia, Vignaya and Ogura, all there with all the sparking or whatever. Alex falls off at turn one or sorry, turn four. His race was done. It's basically this the same bit here until Peco gets by Quattroraro. Quattroraro is kind of like the rolling roadblock in this is the tires wear off.

He seems to be the person that's there. Quattroraro was starting to struggle by about six laps into this. Peco then winds up getting by Acosta at turn three. Digia gets by Quattroraro. Then Martín gets by Quattroraro as well.

Lap eight, Iogura goes by Quattroraro. So, again, Quattroraro is going backwards here, but he wound up going wide. He lost the place back to him. Iogura is finally by Quattroraro at turn 13. Finally pulled that off by lap 10 or 10 or so.

Marrera crashes on lap 11 and everything stays stagnant all the way to like lap 15 because it's Bez, it's Bagnaya, it's Acosta, it's Martín now, it's Digia and Iogura. Bagnaya then falls at turn three. It's just the front folded up on him. I think he was getting the hurry up or was trying to catch Bez and start to push it a little bit, and he's complained about fuel a lot in that motorcycle. He didn't have it.

It tucked. It went away. He was gone. He was down. It's right then that Martín gets by Acosta and you start to think, wait a minute, Martín could possibly win this race.

It was not out of the question. We know Bezeki is a Sunday man by every stretch of the map. He is the Sunday man. What could happen? Suddenly Martín is suddenly by Acosta at turn three.

Now he gets on to Bez. Mir winds up getting by Quattroraro. Quattroraro is still with Yamaha. It starts to go way back and fall way back. That was at turn three for six then.

So as it rolls on, Iogura winds up getting by Digia at turn three and he's on the charge going down too. Bender falls off at turn seven. That bike got trashed. He lost it going into the turn. I think the front tucked and it just dug in and started flipping.

And that KTM was garbage. So man, there's a million bucks lost. Who cares? Iogura then winds up getting by Acosta at turn three and Martín is now on Bezeki. And you come to find out that basically Kenny hold him off and Bez has got nothing.

He's got no tire, no grip, no anything. And Martín just breezes by Bez at turn three. And then I'm like, wow, Iogura is on the podium now. It's an Aprilia 123. Never happened.

Has never happened in the premier class ever at it. I'm like, wow, Iogura might be on for a second, but he runs at a time. And Jorge Martín winds up winning the race. His teammate Bezeki is second. Then it's Iogura, then Digia.

He's first Ducati, then Acosta settles for fifth. Quattroa hangs on for sixth. Quattroa on the V4 Yamaha is sixth. Mind you, his teammates Toprak, who I think is an incredible talent, Miller and Renz aren't even I think Renz is 12th. Toprak is 13th.

Miller's 15th. That shows you the absolute talent that Quattroa has. If he is really going to be on an HRC bike next year on the 850s, Quattroa may do some damage. Quite honestly, he's an immense talent. But that's the race.

That's how that works out. Pretty wild. Rich, you're sitting there looking like you've got something to say. I know we need to wrap this up, really. I'll come on to my last big question in a minute.

But I was just going to focus in on Quattroa. So fifth and the sixth. So fifth and the sprint. Sixth. Now, OK, some people went down in front of him.

It's true. But that Yamaha was seven seconds off the win. Yeah. And if I'm Yamaha, I'm thinking, hang on a minute. Where's that performance been?

Because they haven't changed the engine. OK, they had a few aero upgrades, I think. They post the test in Haereth. And yeah, I mean, could it be that he was riding in front of his home fans? And so he actually made a bit more of an effort.

I mean, I'm not being... I sound massively critical of Quattroa, but that was a performance, wasn't it? It was, yeah. This weekend. I mean, he was fast all weekend.

And I know the Yamaha is not on anywhere near the level of, say, an Aprilia or a Ducati at the moment, but seven seconds off the win on an engine that's, you know, five races old or whatever the season is at. Yeah. And, you know, I know they've been developing it for the last year or whatever. But, I mean, I've been feeling a little aggrieved as far as the Yamaha management, but suddenly having been moaning about how awful the bike is all season so far. And then he turns that one in in front of the home fans.

He better be on his game in Barcelona and thereafter, otherwise... Barcelona is going to be harder because the long straight is going to really... Everybody's going to blow by. It's going to hurt. That will hurt because they were saying it was, I think, 7km an hour down.

And there is an engine upgrade coming a little later in the season, it's true. But, you know, I worry for Quattroa because although probably this HRC deal is done, the Japanese don't like people running their mouths off about how bad the machinery is and Honda in particular do not like that sort of thing. They don't like that at all. And Quattroa perhaps would do well to keep counsel a little bit sometimes. Yeah.

Particularly when he then puts in a performance like that, which makes you think, oh, actually, maybe the bike is not as bad as he says it is then. If it's not as bad as he says it is, then where's Toprac, where's Miller and where's Rennes? Exactly. Yeah. So I'm like, I mean, again, is this just not to steal your thunder, Rich, but is this supreme talent making up for a massive deficit that exists because this track is stop start, there really isn't a very long straightaway.

So is he just being that much braver on the brakes and has that opportunity? I mean, to me, if I'm watching from the outside, I'm wondering a little bit if I'm Yamaha, but then again, it's Quattroa on a track that is more. I don't want to say stop startish, but is not like the other tracks we've been to so far. Technically, he should have been just as good as this in Haereth, maybe, right? And he wasn't.

Yeah. I mean, each track is different, you know, undoubtedly so. But yeah, I mean, I just think it's odd that he suddenly turns in a performance like that, really. Yeah, it is weird. I mean, if I'm Jorge Martín, I'm perhaps thinking, oh, maybe my decision isn't going to be quite as disastrous as I thought it was.

Maybe from a performance point of view. I mean, it's obviously going to be excellent from a bank balance point of view. Oh, yes, 100 percent. But the Yamaha is coming on. Was Quattrora voted rider of the race?

I think he was. Wasn't he? You've got me on that one. I don't pay much. I don't pay a huge amount of attention to that.

At one point during the race, he was trending as the top guy. I don't know if he did or not. I just whatever. Doesn't matter. Anyway, you had any other deep lingering question that's out there?

So the big question is, is Jorge Martín going to be the champion this year? Oh, I think it would be. I think he has a great chance at being that. So here comes the problem. How is Aprilia going to handle these two guys fighting for the championship?

That's going to be tricky. Now, I can see this imploding really quickly. I can also see it to where these two run each other off the track really quickly. Now, does that mean I don't know who is going to be that person to suddenly become that champion, but wouldn't it be absolutely wild? And if you love a story that Mark comes back after the shoulder surgery, Aprilia implode because they can't manage these two guys for a championship.

And Mark suddenly sings by to win the championship in the last race of the season, that that's a wild story and probably not going to happen. But who else is going to challenge them? Benyaya is not going to. Is it Digia just based on consistency that he happens to? I don't think so.

Not across the whole season. Iger has lost too many points in the beginning of the season to be a threat. Right. I mean, looking at it that way, let's talk about the points and where is everybody. Right.

Bizecki is on 128 points and Martín is one behind him on 127. Digia is on 84. That puts him 44 behind. 44. That's a long way.

I mean, it's not quite two race wins, but that's a lot. Acosta is only one point behind Digia, just be based on consistency. Iger is 67 on 67, which makes him 61 behind. Like that, you're not making that gap up. I do see those two, those two being Bizecki and Martín.

I do see them having problems with each other. They will have problems with each other. But would it be absolute irony that Martín wins his second championship on a bike he didn't like with a team he didn't want to be at? It'd be a wild story. Exactly one year ago, he turned up at Le Mans and said, I want out.

Now, in fairness, to your point about how will Aprilia manage this and more specifically, how will Massimo Rivola handle this, if past history of the last year or so is ending to go by, he will handle it with a deft touch. Because Aprilia and Rivola managed that whole Martín, let's be honest, PR cluster F with some aplomb. It has to be said, they steadied that ship, put Martín back in the proverbial box a little bit. And towards the end of the year, although he was still crashing a bit, they sort of just managed the situation, which was a very difficult situation. And here we are this year.

And Martín is probably at this point genuinely thinking, I've made the wrong choice again. Because he probably ought to be sticking on this bike next year, excepting that it will be an 850 and it's a different bike altogether. But momentum and DNA is always a factor in these things. And I wonder if perhaps Aprilia are wondering if they signed the wrong guy to come across to replace him. No idea.

I mean, this is what's crazy about all this is how is this going to roll out? There's where the fun is. The fun is the management of what's going to happen. What happens with these two guys? Because obviously it's a two man.

It's going to be a two man fight to it. But Martín arguably is a stronger rider right now because he wins sprints. He wins Sunday races. If he's going to pull away from Bizecki because Bizecki has troubles in the sprint for whatever reason. So Bez has got to cure that.

Yeah, when Martin won his championship, he won on sprints. If you remember, he was untouchable in sprints in what was that year? Twenty twenty four. And I can't quite make my mind up about Bizecki. I mean, obviously he's a supreme talent, but Martin just has that little again useless for a podcast.

I'm doing that little thing where I'm running four finger and thumb together. He has that special something or other. And there is no doubt about the fact, Jim, that having come through all of his trials and tribulations last year and frankly, a fairly near death experience following the Qatar race when you had broken ribs and punctured lungs and God knows what. He does seem to be a more rounded, considerate or considered or both. Sort of guy now.

And that start line, a performance and into turn three, which I can never quite work out why they call it turn three at the moment. Anyway, oh, it's because there's a kink, two kinks that they call turn one, turn two. It is what it is. Jubious, but his sprint race start was sublime to get into the lead. Absolutely.

Outside at turn three. I mean, that was just coming from where he was on the grid. So, yeah, I mean, again, it's going to be the other fascinating thing with the Marquez comeback is what happens with the Aprilia guys. Now, I'm sure of sending money in brown envelopes to Dorner and sending kind of begging emails. I'm just so desperate to get some access at Silverstone because I so want to get an interview arranged with Massimilavola because there are so many questions to ask that guy whether we'll get there.

I don't know. We need more people subscribing to the show, downloading the show, giving us nice comments on the show, despite the fact that we've rented for an hour on this one and just to get the numbers up so that we can justify getting a media pass at some of these events because there are so many questions to ask and we're probably not going to get the opportunity to do it as things stand, which is very, very frustrating given what an interesting year it is. But anyway, yeah, all in all, Jim Lemons was a very exciting and interesting and frustrating round of the championship. Yeah, I mean, for racing, that was lackluster. We sure found a lot to rant about in this one.

Well, I wouldn't say the race was lackluster. I mean, it was made more lackluster than it needed to be by poor choices, I think, by the organizers. But anyway, hey, that happens this weekend. On the other hand, you've got Motor America at Barber. You got British Superbikes at Daunton Park.

You have World Superbikes at I think, well, where are they? Somewhere. I've forgotten where. Not Czech Republic. Are they at Balaton?

No, they just did. They just did Hungary. They just did that one. I forget where they are. Anyway, World Superbikes are out.

And obviously, we've got Motor GP at Barcelona. Though my wife won't be talking to me come Monday. I might be divorced by the weekend. And again, yeah, so who knows? But anyway, that's the show, folks.

That's it. Try to connect with us on our social media channels. Instagram, Sky Blue, whatever. Or even Blue Sky. Blue Sky, sorry.

The Jet Blue Sky, Blue, all about the airlines, whatever. I can't keep it all straight over here. Mergers and acquisitions are really a pain. Anyway, check us out with all that. Tell your friends about us.

Do all that. If you want to get in contact with us, you can write us at motopod at motopodcast.com where you can find me and Rich on Instagram and Twitter. We're all there. And with all that, Rich, I'm going to tell everyone just to write. Oh, I got one thing left.

OK. I just want to throw out there. We're thinking about whether or not we want to open a merch store with some MotorPod gear, aren't we? Yes, we are. Write in, please, and let us know if that's of interest, because it will cost a bit of money for us to set it up.

But if people are wanting to buy some T-shirts or some mugs or some beanies or whatever, again, make your suggestions. It's something that we're looking at, but we can do it if there's demand. So you can ride safe with your MotorPod gear on under your leather jacket or textile jacket or whatever it is. Yes, that's what we can do. Yeah.

So if you want merch and you want some branded merch that says MotorPod on it, it's pretty cool, I think. Let us know because we'll start the store again with all that. Anything else, Rich? No, I promise that. I promise that is it.

All right, then. Ride safe, everyone. Cheers, everyone.