July 15, 2025 • 46 mins
The King of the Ring reigns again! In this episode of Pit Talk, we unpack Marc Márquez’s dominant display at the German Grand Prix, and the chaos that unfolded behind him.
From wild crashes to unexpected comebacks, we break down all the drama and dive into what it means for the championship.
Plus, we look ahead to Brno and what to expect from MotoGP’s return to the iconic circuit
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The King of the Ring returned and was crowned once again,
and going into round eleven of the twenty twenty five
MotoGP World Championship, it wasn't a case of I wonder
if Mark's gonna win. It was more I wonder if
Mark's gonna win by X amount of seconds? And that's
exactly what we saw this weekend. Pitt Talk is brought
(00:22):
to you by the team at Shannon's Insurance. I'm your host,
Rinita Vanmullen. Joining me is the Mark Marquees of motor
GP Stats, mister Matt Clayton. Matt, We've been catching up
off air on everything that's happened over the weekend, but
Saxon Ring it delivered. It showed us the good, the bad.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And the ugly.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, certainly the last part with so few riders finishing
the race will definitely get into that. But you know,
it was weird, Like I wrote this in the lead
up to the Saxon Ring, like the fact that Marquez
is leading the championship on the best bike in the series.
That's probably not a surprise, But the weirdest bit before
Saxon Ring was that he kept winning at these tracks
where he hadn't won for so long, Like you're thinking
Katar and Magello and Ascent and the tracks where he's
(01:03):
normally really good, like Kota and like Harrath, he actually
hadn't won though the few races this year he hadn't won,
so it kind of felt this was something had to
give weekend, like are we going to get normal service
resumed with Mark winning at the Saxon Ring because he's
done that forever, or is this going to be one
of those weird blips in this season. But it's good that,
you know, if you want some predictability in your life,
(01:24):
then Mark Marquez and the Saxon Ring is about the
closest things you can get to a sure thing. But
either about you, there's something super cool about watching a
driver or a rider or anyone in a particular sport
when they're in their absolute sweet spot and you know
that it's them against themselves somewhere where they're super dominant.
He was absolutely awesome on the weekend, and I'm sure
(01:45):
we'll get into it, but the sprint race for me,
the fact that he actually had to fight for it,
that was the most fun part of the weekend for me.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Well, that was what I was just thinking then, as
you know, you're saying, you know the sweet spot and
what you see, But then I'm going yeah. But in
the sprint, he ran wide at term one, got a
hairpis art round white, and then he had to fight
for it, and it's like, okay, cool, here we go.
Now we've got a race on our hands. It's not
Mark Marquez riding off into the sunset.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And the best part about it, too, was because you
could see there was almost like these two competing voices
on each shoulder. It's like, chill out, you've got the
championship lead. It's fine, like whatever you can get in
this race. The points in the sprint are so marginal
between first and second and third and whatever anyway, so
there was the sensible all right, I'll just roll home
and I'll probably finish on the podium and it's fine,
(02:31):
and I'll protect my championship lead. But then there's the
instinctive racer in Mark where he hates to be beaten
at anytime, and he certainly doesn't like being beaten at
circuits where he's the man. And you could see that
there was this like sort of inner dialogue going on.
It's like do I push? Do I push? And there
was one lap about I think it was about four
laps from the end where I think he took six
(02:51):
tenths out of a second out of Betzachi once he
got up to pee two, and I reckon that was
the moment he would have looked at the pit board
and gone, Okay, that's it. I'm going for this. I'm
just going for this because I can't help myself. And
with the lead that he's got in the championship, he
did not need three extra points. He needed three extra
points like a hole in the head. But he's just like, no,
I'm going to go for this, went for it, wanted
on the last lap, and then almost apologized for not
(03:13):
being able to turn his instincts off. I thought it
was just really funny, like it shows you how hardwired
he is to win even when he doesn't have to.
I thought that was pretty interesting for a moment there.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Though.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I'm watching bet Zechi and like you said, you're seeing
mark this gap maintaining.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm thinking, oh, got this.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, we might have a prillier step and what that
could do once again for Betzechi and the whole Joe
Martin drama which we'll get into.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It a little bit. But then yeah, like you said, all.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Of a sudden, it's like like that switch and Mark goes, no,
you know what, I'm just going to go and do this.
Why not?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, and then almost apologizing for it afterwards. It's like, yeah,
I know, I said, I should be thinking about the championship,
but my instincts took over and I'm sorry, but here's
another win. But you do wonder too, like the psychology
of him in that circuit. Had it it been anywhere else,
he might have just gone, maybe I'll just take the
second place and live for another day. But it's like, no, no,
this is my track and you're not beating me here,
so I am going to go for it. It was just
(04:07):
funny watching him sort of wrestle with doing the sensible
thing and doing the thing that he has made a
habit of doing it the saxid ring, and it's nice
to see that the instinct won out over being sensible.
It's be honest, I.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Think as well, you just said that like it is
his track, but it's he needed to claim it on
aored you Caddy. I think there's also that mental aspect
of well, as well, of I need to be the
king of the ring now on a ju Canti and
not just back in the day on the Repsole. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And also you forget that it was twenty twenty one
that he last won there, so I think it was
between shoulder surgery two and three or three and four,
I can't remember which, and it was that really unlikely
win on the Honda. But you remember a couple of
years ago when he was there on the Honda and
it just about broke him. Like I think he had
six crashes over the course of the race the weekend
before he pulled out, and that was the ultimate case
(04:55):
of him just raging against the dying of the light.
It's like, I know this bike isn't going to be
able to allow me to win this Grand Prix, and
I'm probably going to hurt myself, but I'm not going
to keep I'm not going to stop trying. He just
kept coming off and coming off and coming off. What
amazed me that day is there was a point where
he just threw his hands up and said, look, I
cannot break myself anymore. I have to get off this thing.
(05:16):
That was the moment where you figured that, you know,
or he really is going to leave Rebsolond and not
knowing where he was going to go. But I think
it puts a lot of those wins from that era
at the Saxon Ring into perspective because very rarely did
he turn up there with the best bike. It was
just that he was the person that made the difference
in you know, the other hand, riders weren't really doing anything.
Now that he is on the best bike and in
this amazing form that he is in, I mean to
(05:39):
expect a different championship outcome when you put the best
rider on the best bike is sort of wishful thinking, really.
But we're halfway through this season. He has an eighty
three point lead, and you could argue that he's probably
thrown away about twenty five or thirty points through dumb
things like crashing at Kota and her wrath when he
came off earlier on. I mean, it's a case of
when is he going to win this championship? Not if
he's going to win this World championship, but I think
(06:01):
the way that he's doing it and it's made us
reassess a lot of what the other writers have been
doing for the past couple of years. Because if anyone
thought that the injuries and the surgeries in the time
between the last championship had sort of, you know, quietened
his star a little bit, I think we've got the
answer now. I know he's thirty two, he's one of
the older guys in it now, but the ferocity of
(06:22):
the competitive spirits still there. And when you think about
what he's gone through between then and now, I'll be
super interested to see how he processes is the World
Championship when it comes to him this year, because I
suspect he's going to be really really focused until he
gets it, and then I also suspect he's going to
be incredibly emotional once it comes out, because you will
(06:42):
always think back to probably your worst moments when you
get back to the top of the mountain. Again, it's
been so long since he's been there. It'll be a
really interesting insight once he lets his guard down. When
this happens, and the way it's going, I mean, it
could all be quite frankly, it could almost be decided
before they get to Australia towards the end of the
year if he keeps this, Because right now you have
to think to yourself, if he's not going to win
(07:02):
a race in who he is.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, I mean potentially Alex Marquez, potentially. But even this weekend,
which we'll get into, in the main race, he was
handed second place. It was like he was there fighting
for it, right. Yeah, you had to be on your
bike to actually cross the line at the end of
the day. But yeah, Alex is second in the championship.
But he's how many points behind Mark?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Did you say?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Eighty three?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Eighty three. That's more than two it's more than two
perfect Grand Prix weekends, which, by the way, if we're
still counting at home here, that's four weekends in a
row where Mark scored the maximum thirty seven points. So
it's he's not leaving too many points on the table
right now. The craziest stat of all of them this
year is when you look at the sprints. He's in
eleven sprints. He's had ten wins in one second place,
(07:46):
so he's three points away from a perfect score in
the sprints. That's bad, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's wild wild The thing that this is his first
year on the factory Jucati team, right and all of
a sudden, it's breaking all these records all this is change,
but also the downside is we're seeing Peco Banyaya so
far behind and just struggling. Is like, yeah, it's exciting
to see Mark Marquez because we were always wondering what
could he do on the best bike. But then I
(08:13):
think I've mentioned this on the pod before, as I
remember Peco Bannaya saying previously, Oh, I want to win
a championship when Mark Marquez is on the best bike
as well and.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I'm fighting against him.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
We're seeing that now and we're not seeing Peco performing
at his best.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, I reckon that's one of the probably the biggest
disappointments of the year. I was super excited to see
what a fight between those two was going to look like.
And I mean, at the end of the day, hand
on heart, we all know who the better rider is
of the two. But I thought what was going to
be interesting was that Pecko's been there in that team,
and he's so embedded in that team, and that team's
been around him, and he's won. You know, the last
four years, he's won two World championships and finished a
(08:49):
very close second a couple of times. He's been the
guy for the last four years. And I thought, Wow,
this is going to be so interesting someone of Mark's
talent and ambition trying to do this in Peco's team.
That was the way that I saw. I thought, that's
going to make a really interesting championship fight. And we've
talked on the pod before that Peco when he's in
his sweet spot and he's confident with the machinery and
(09:09):
things are just in the just so for Peco, he's amazing.
He hasn't got into that groove at all this year,
and every week he must look up and there's marketing
another trophy, and the margins a bit bigger, and the
margins a bit bigger, and the margins a bit bigger. Psychologically,
this has got to be pretty deflating for Banyai, and
it's got to the point that the rest of this season,
(09:31):
I mean, look, he may win a race or two.
We don't know how it's going to go towards the
end of the season. But the second half of twenty
twenty five to me, is almost like the world's longest
extended preseason for twenty twenty six, because when everything is
reset to zero and he now knows what he's up
against and he knows the machinery he's got on his disposal.
There's a lot riding on next year for Peco in
(09:53):
terms of how we're going to see him when his
career is over, because we may very well look back
at this, and so we'll look there was this five
year period where Mark Marquez was either broken or not
on the grid at all. He emerged as the guy
during that time, but then when the guy came back,
when the guy in hooks came back, then it sort
of made us reassess a little bit about where we
(10:15):
see Pecko. So I think next year we'll get a
better indication because I think Pecko's very aware of now
what he's up against. You'd imagine that next year will
be pretty similar to this because we've got some stability
in the rules as everyone sort of gets ready for
twenty twenty seven. But I never in a million years
expected the gap between them to be this big. I
thought that it was a fight that Mark would win,
(10:36):
but not like this.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
No, I'm just looking at the results from Saturday. And
if you haven't seen Saturday Spring, it was trenchial rain
and now we gorote a Sunday which was completely different. Yeah,
cold temperatures, but it was a dry track. Now, looking
at the results from Saturday, Pekobanyaya twelfth place plus twenty
point three three nine seconds. Right, then we go to
(10:59):
Sunday's result. Okay, majority of these guys.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Didn't finish the race.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Pekkobaanyaya, let's say he was also handed third place, because
yeah he was.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
But even the.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Gap back from Mark to Peko there is plus seven seconds.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So this is showing you what his season is like.
He's he's just he's not there.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
No, that sprint on Saturday, Yes, it was raining, and
he's not like he's a bad wet weather rye. You
think towards the end of last year in Thailand when
there was a lot of championship pressure, he rode really
well in the rain there. But that was it was
borderline embarrassing that sprint. It was that bad. He was
that far off the pace. He was nowhere in qualifying.
That gap that you mentioned there, that's in the fifteen
lap race. He's a second and a half slower a
(11:44):
lap than the guy who won the race on the
same bike, and that's that's quite humbling for a guy
of Pecko's pedigree. Yes, he was better in the Grand Prix.
He did a lot of his good work in the
Grand Prix early, like he had a really good first
couple of laps from quite low on the greed, he
got himself into position to be able to capitalize on
other people's mistakes. That's the best you can probably say
(12:05):
about his race. And yeah, he got another third place,
and he seems to be getting lots of third places
this year because that's where he is. So it was
a decent save in terms of points, but there was
never one point over the weekend where you felt he
was remotely close to being on Alex Marquees's level, let
alone Mark Marquez's level. And this is kind of where
Peco's been this year. But that sprint on Saturday, I
(12:27):
struggle to think of a worse race or sprint that
he's had since he's been a top line Ticcattie rider.
That was absolutely dreadful.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Well, you did a stat for Fox sports dot Com
to a Ford slash Motorsport and we turned it into
a social media post as well. And we're talking about
since since the last time Fabero Cordorraro one in Germany,
which is twenty twenty two, Ji Catti's had fifty one
podiums and when you said the sat through, Vanyaya has
(12:56):
done twenty four of those on his own.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
The rest of Mark, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Won nearly half of Decady's races since twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
It's hard to believe when you look at those numbers
and then you see what the season's been like this year, Like, really,
is this the same packer Banyaia?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well, I think it puts a few things into perspective.
It looks at you know, it puts Spannya's last few
years into perspective. The one for me that I'm not
sure if you realize this. So Mark markuez onon his
tenth sprint for the season on Saturday. You know, that's
the most wins by any one rider in a season
in sprints since sprints came in three years ago. Oh hey,
Martin won nine sprints in twenty twenty three. Mark's already
(13:32):
beaten that with half the season to go. So this
is what we're dealing with here, Like, it's an absurd
stat to think, because you remember when the sprints came in,
we were all like, oh, this is all Hey Martin territory.
He's going to eat these things up. He's going to
be amazing in them, and predictably he was from day one,
but with no Martine on the grid, and we'll get
back to his return at some point in the rest
of this podcast. You're looking at these saturdays now and
(13:53):
Mark's just winning these things for fun, and it's so
demoralizing for Banyar at the moment because the only race
is one this year was when Mark crashed when he
was well ahead of him at Koser, and he inherited
that win. So given that we do have such a
decade dominated championship, I don't think it's a great surprise
that Mark's doing what he's doing. I think the two
surprises of the season one positive, one negative is how
(14:16):
consistently good Alex Marquez has been even when he's been
injured like last weekend, and the fact that Banyaya is
even struggling to keep him in sight or beat him
most of the time, let alone his own teammate. That
is not a conversation that you and I were expecting
to have at the start of this year.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Well, Alex Markez, like you said, came into this weekend
injured after that collision he had.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
With Pedro Acosta at athen and is his left hand
that he injured.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Ryan, He's on a left hand corner track, so straightaway
is already a negative there. Looking at the results from
the sprint, he was p eight, so it was what
we said, total wet race, twelve seconds behind Mark, but
then inherited that second place. I think in the long
term he's probably going to look out, look back at
this weekend and go, are, Okay, cool, I was injured,
but I'm got second place kind of handed to me.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, put that in my back pocket.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That's going to help me maintain second in the championship.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, but he's just.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
That diesel train, Like we said, that diesel truck is
just chugging along.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, keeps on keeping on. I think the key thing
for him over the course of the weekend is that
I always think it's funny when you think that bikes
and riders have body language that you can actually see
through the TV. His biggest success of the entire weekend,
like you mentioned, left handed track, when you were leading
on a left handed that had surgery. It wasn't the
biggest operation of the world for a motor GP rider,
But if any wanted to go to a track, any
(15:38):
track other than the Saxon Ring would have quite frankly,
a bit easier for him given that he had left
hand surgery. His biggest thing for the whole weekend was
just don't crash. Don't crash, don't crash, because if you
crash at the Saxon Ring, there's a fair chance that
you're going to injure or your left hand in one
of those accidents, given the way you come off there.
When you look at how many guys did come off
over the course of the weekend and how sketchy the
(15:58):
weather was and how diffy the track was on Sunday,
the biggest victory for him that he was able to
score a second place in the Grand Prix and only
lose five points to his brother in the championship standings.
But he didn't hurt himself, and that's the biggest thing
for him going forward, because we know we've got Czech
Republic this weekend and then a four week break. If
he can get out the other end of this weekend
with no accidents or no accidents that are going to
(16:22):
aggravate the injury that he's already got, that's almost a
bigger win than any points he can get quite frankly,
because he was one of the few guys I would
have to go back and look at everyone on the
list here, but it felt like everyone else crashed at
least once over the course of the weekend, given how
sketchy things were, and he was able to be fast
but also with a margin where he didn't hurt himself.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Well, let's talk about those crashes. But before we even
get into that, let's go Tech three were already out
this weekend with an a of as Shanini who was
diagnosed with appendicitis the poor thing going in, so he
was absent from the weekend. Then we had that crash
from Maverick Finnalez where he dislocated his shoulder I believe,
(17:02):
and then he went put back in but somehow managed
to do some damage or what not to the collar bone.
So then the whole tech to our team was out
for the weekend. Then we saw in Saturday's sprint that scary,
totally scary crash from Frankie Morbidelli where his whole leather
suit like you could see the airbag popped open, the
(17:25):
zip come down, he was just tumbling through the gravel trap.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
He was then out for the weekend.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So then if we go into Sunday's list, Oh, we
also had some Katchenra who was out from a pre
injury as well, so some and an AA not absent
this weekend. Then we have Maverick injured. We had Morbidelli
didn't race, which I think is a good thing because
the way that he tumbled, and we know what he
had earlier last.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Year when he had that injury to the brain. Like,
I think that's a safe thing.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Then you look at Sunday's Grand Prix. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight riders crashed. One of those riders crashed twice, and
that was when Iagura and Yuan Meir collided. They crashed
out on that same corner. Lorenzo Sabadori is coming through
right as the marshals were taking everything away.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Now we know most.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Of these crashes happened at turn one, But is that
just because turn one is the first right hand corner.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's a few things. It's a trickier corner than it
looks on the TV because of how steep it is.
So the straight there, yes it's straight, but it's also
massively undulating. They climb out of the final corner raise
over the platter, it flattens out, you climb again and
drop down into turn one. The biggest factor on Sunday
with all these crashes because five of those eight guys
(18:47):
you mentioned crashed at turn one. Five of the eight
DNFs were at turn one. There was no tire grip
on this track because it poured with rain all Saturday
during the spring, and then it really poured with rain
Saturday night and into Sunday morning, so the track was
super green. It was like it was the start of
the weekend. The weird thing there was that some people
on the ground were telling me that the wind had
(19:08):
flipped around on Sunday, so it was a tail wind
into turn one. So you're pushing the riders into turn
one downhill. There's no grip because the track is as
green as it is. And what was interesting was that
you notice that all the crashes in turn one they
were in the second half of the race where people
had worn tires right. So you got to about lap
fifteen eighteen, everything's fine, and then Jane Antonio goes down,
(19:31):
and then a couple of laps later, Bazeki goes down,
and then a guru goes down and takes Juan Miir
with him, and then Savadori goes down. They all happened
in about a five lap span, but after about two
thirds of the race were done. So you've got a
combination of worn tires, green track, tail wind, and you know,
people trying to change ginger maps with Jack Miller was
talking about this. It was a real survival race towards
(19:53):
the end there. And interestingly, Pecovannaya said afterwards, he said
he had a couple of moments in tern one where
he pretty much lost the front and managed to recover them,
and he said, all right, for the rest of the
for the last eight laps of this race, I'm not
pushing at all into turn one. I'm almost going to
roll into turn one and then I'm going to push
everywhere else to try and make up for her, because
the risk reward ratio just tipped over the edge at
(20:15):
turn one. But it was this weird circumstance of just
literally no grip. It was like Friday FP one. There
was no grip down at all because it had all
been washed away with the rain and that tail wind.
It changed everyone's breaking markers because you're coming up out
of the bubble and you're getting shoved along by this
wind and then by the time you're too deep into
the corner on a green track and down you go.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
That's pretty much what happened ten riders ten riders to
finish a race.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
When was the last time that that happened? In Rotor GP?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Matt, See, this is where I'm watching the race, and
I'm going, m Philip Island. I was sinking the day
that Casey Stone And won the championship, and I'm thinking,
I reckon it's that day. So I went back and
out of look and yeah, twenty eleven Australia ten Riders
finished that race. And that was another weird race where
very few people started. Oh hai Lorenz, I'd hurt himself
in the warm up. He'd taken off the tip of
one of his fingers. He was pretty much Casey's only
(21:03):
championship contender. How was that that? Yeah? And so Casey
just basically had to stay upright to win the championship
on home soil that day. And because Casey and Philip pilot,
he went won the race like he always did. But
it was one of those races that we only had
an eighteen to start with. Because of all of the
various things that you talked about in the lead in
and then when they just start going down like like skittles,
(21:23):
towards the end, you look at someone like Alex Rinns
took six points away from the weekend for Yamaha, which
you know, you look at it on paper in the future,
you're going, oh, that was all right. Alex Rins had
a top ten finish, Alex Rinns was last, and Alex
Rinns was last by a long, long way, which is
another topic we probably need to get into at some point.
But if you stayed on your bike and you kept circulating,
no matter how slow, you were going to bank decent
(21:45):
points because it was just an absolute race of attrition.
And I think the disappointing thing for a couple of
these riders was there there were guys who crashed out
of really promising positions, and I thought to jan Antonio,
had he sort of sealed the deal with that second place?
He was really impressive of the entire weekend. He was
really good through Friday practice. He was one of the
guys who looked like he could actually over one lap.
(22:06):
Take it to Marquez didn't qualify well because he tends
to not qualify well. But he raced well all weekend
and he sort of emerged out of that big battle
pack in the early part of Sunday's race, and that
he had Perzeki's measure and he had Banyaya's measure and
a Costa was up there for a bit. Digita looked really,
really good. He was the first of these guys to
go down at turn one, and I think it sort
of caught him by surprise, and then everyone else started
(22:29):
going down, almost in sympathy afterwards. But look, he was
to get to catch Marquez because no one was going
to But that was a ride that felt like it
probably deserved a podium in a decent result. And we've
talked about this for a couple of podcasts. Now I
do think he's going to come forward a fora a
bit in the second half of the year because the
speeds there, in the bikes there, He's getting more and
more confident. Just a shame that didn't work out for
(22:50):
him on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
I heard him say post race though, that he was
happy that he crashed out of the podium position because
it showed that he was fighting for it rather than
being fifteenth, seventeenth and crashing out further down the field.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I feel like you can kind of look at that
two ways, as in.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Why are you happy that you crashed out of like
why would you?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Why are you not wanting it more?
Speaker 1 (23:14):
But I think from his point of view, it's like,
my speed was there, you know, it was Mark, it
was me, and then it wasn't Aprillia.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
You know, where's Peco?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Where's Alex there?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Further back?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Okay, then the mistake happened, but it changes in the variables, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I reckon that he feels that that speed is repeatable.
I think that's probably why he was quite optimistic. I
don't think this is just some outlier one off at
this particular circuit. He'll be quick at Bruno, He'll be
quick in most places because I think he's you remember,
he came into this preseason super injury compromised after the
dumb thing that he did so pag what he decided
to do really at the end of the first day
of the Test and came off and broke the same
colo mode he'd broken last year. But I think he
(23:51):
realizes that the speed is repeatable, So yeah, you'd be
annoyed in the moment that you chucked a podium away.
But I suspect that we're going to We know that
decade's so good, and I suspect we're going to see
him on podiums plural in the very short term.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Another writer who I hope the speed is repeatable for
is Marco bet Zeki because I missed all the Joge
Martin drama that's been going on off track. It's been
so refreshing to see Marco abt Zeki fighting the front,
fighting for those podium places, and just to have an
aprillia there another manufacturer up close to the front. It's
a shame that there's the track house guys aren't following
(24:28):
suit and it's just been Marco at the moment. But
I mean another sprint prodeum for him.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I'm sure he's over the moon with that.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Yeah, I reckon that was an important one too, because
you know, we know he'd wanted Silverstone, and Silverston has
always been a good track for a Prillier. He was
very good at acid and that's always been a good
track for him. So it's almost like we needed a
bigger sample size of all right, you know you've bett
a good track for Aprilia. You've betted a good track
for yourself. Can you do it somewhere else? I think
this is super interesting for two reasons. A what you
(24:57):
just said about the fact that it's another manufacturer in
the mix. It looks like that's something that's going to
translate to multiple circuits now. But doesn't it get you thinking,
like hmm. Once Jorge Martin gets fully fit and he
gets up to speed with what Napullia can do, won't
that be interesting towards the end of the year, Because
if that's a bike that can achieve podiums, a fully
(25:18):
fit Jollgey Martine is absolute top shelf. We saw that
last year, we saw it the year before. On balance,
he's probably going to achieve more when he's completely being
Joge Martine than Marco Berseki's going to. So that's interesting
for me because right now that's clearly the second best
bike in motor GP. You add a world champion on
there that will have some level of motivation. We don't
know how much we're about to find out, but you
(25:40):
add Martine on that bike and he gets a sniff
of being competitive and having good results there, he could
be a bit of a random wild card for the
end of this season. Martine once he gets confident and
gets his full fitness and race fitness back, because he's
not scared of anybody. We saw it last year. He'll
go will to will with Banyai, He'll go will to
will with Mark. We've never really seen like a really
(26:03):
full on, motivated fit Martin up against Marquez in the
mood that Marquez is in at the moment. So when
we know that it's not going to be the championship
or anything super meaningful because the way the season's panned out,
but we might get some pretty explosive races towards the
end of the year, I reckon.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So Martin's coming back this weekend for Bruno, it's the
first time Reto GP have been to the Czech Republic
since twenty twenty. The track's been resurfaced, so it's going
to be really interesting, I think as well, because we've got.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
The veterans like Mark.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
The last time Juan mir was that he was on
a Suzuki, right, So there's all these changes. But johe Martin,
I think everyone's going to be looking at him this weekend.
Do you think I'm probably already jumping the gun with this.
But do you think Martin's going to come back and
be strong instantly or do you think he's gonna He's
(26:55):
going to take his time this time because of everything
that's been happening.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, I reckon. There's elements of both here because of
the way the calendar falls, Like we've got a full
week break after Bruno. The absolute last thing Jorge Martine
needs to do it Bruno is hurt himself. He needs
a full race weekend where he can do a full
sprint distance and he can do a full Grand Prix
distance and he can get used to fighting with people again.
(27:21):
The points are immaterial because who cares how many points
he gets this year? Really, and it certainly doesn't matter
this much for the time being. The biggest thing he
can do this weekend is shake the rust off because
there's going to be some race rust. He has not
raced a motor GP like properly. You know, he hasn't
completed a full race since last November, let's be honest,
So shake the rust off, get used to the way
the team works operationally. What's his motivation, Like, how does
(27:43):
he feel physically, because we know that he's only been
pas medically to ride in the last couple of weeks,
so he's clearly going to be underdone. The one thing
he cannot do this weekend is hurt himself. So I
think what you'll see is, because we've got this month
after Bruno, he won't be cautious or circumtant. He'll still ride,
but he's not going to be pushing at ten tenths.
(28:03):
He might be at like eight and a half tenths
or something, because it's like, you've got a championship to
think about. Get through that, have another month of training,
getting your fitness up a lot more, riding some superbike somewhere,
doing what you need to do, and then you know
how this second half of the season goes like it
feels like it just comes and goes in a flash
because there's so many double headers and it comes super
super fast. What he does in those last ten races
(28:25):
will be more representative of who he is. I think
this weekend the main goal is to get back deal
with a bunch of annoying journos in the press conference.
Like me, he'll be asking him a thousand questions about
things he doesn't want to talk about. Get some points
and then go on his holidays for four weeks and
do some training and then come back for Austria and
be ready to go.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
It is definitely going to be full on and I
fully jumped the gun there talking about Bruno when we
still have.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Heaps to catch up on from this weekend.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
But I want to talk about Luca Marini because for me,
just a phenomenal ride. You think it's his first Grand
Prix back after that nasty accident. He had well training
first to zook. You know, he was in a hospital
bed in Japan for so long and then he's come
back and you could see that camera after Sunday's Grand Prix.
You could see him just wincing in pain and the
(29:12):
fact that okay, he's not fully one hundred percent, but
you had to be on your bike at the end
of the day. You just had to ride the track
as you could cross that finish line. And he didn't
finish last.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
He was six.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
He was okay, twenty four seconds behind Marquez, but he
was six. He wasn't down with Alex Renz who was
forty seconds behind.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Well, and for him to come back this is we
know that it's not the highest speed track on the calendar,
Saxon Ring, but it's so random in that the configuration
of it, and you're hanging off the left side of
the bike the entire time. He was actually getting sore
on the right side of his body because he was
sitting in a different position to try and compensate for
the fact that his body's not really in any sort
of condition to do thirty laps around a track like that.
(29:57):
It's amazing what adrenaline does. And you give a guy
a chair as to you know, if you were telling
him that he was going to finish sixth and he
was going to do thirty laps and how sorry it
was going to be. If you told him before the race,
he'd say, no, thanks, I don't really fancy that. But
there's nothing like the smell of competition and getting back
into it so hugely commendable for him to be able
to clearly push through the pain barrier and come back.
(30:18):
It sounded like he probably came back a little bit
earlier than most people were expecting. But again, it's one
of those things like if he gets to through these
two rounds, doesn't hurt himself, can reset over the summer break,
but given what he's gone through in the last couple
of months. That was a really really brave effort by
Let's not forget he's a writer who's out of contract
at the end of this year, and I reckon if
(30:39):
he had the comfort of a contract for next year,
I don't reckon. That's a race that you do. Maybe
you might sit out for another round or two. It's like,
you know what, I'll come back after the break. I'll
be good. He needs to get back and show what
it is that he can do, be it for Honda
or for someone else who would like to employ him.
And coming back and doing that when you're so clearly
injury compromised, like big tick from me. It was a
really really impressive effort.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Have you heard is Luca going to compete in the
Suzuka eight Hour? Have you heard any updates on that?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
My understanding is that he will. I think when you've
got a chance to ride for a Japanese manufacturer at Suzuka,
that's not something you take lightly. So he'll clearly still
be there. I mean, look, it's the funny thing. It's
an the eight Hours. It is a true endurance test, obviously,
but it's a very different style of riding and you're
sharing the bike with two other riders, But to ride
for a Honda team at Honda owns Suzuka at such
(31:28):
a prestigious event, like you would not miss that for
the world. I mean, we obviously know Jack Miller's doing it,
but my understanding is that he's going to be there
because you don't put all that effort in to go
along and go through all of the training and how
particular it is to race it that particular track. But
my understanding is that it will be Zako and Marini
and Miller that will all beyond the grid start of August,
and you.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Guys can catch the Suzuka eight Hour on both Fox
Sports and ko all the race.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The whole eight hours is going to be broadcasted live.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So I mean, if you want to sit on the
sofa for eight hours and watch some rotorbikes go around Telly,
by all means do it. Otherwise you can catch it
up when suits you. But you mentioned Jack Miller there.
Let's talk about Jack because you wrote a really interesting piece.
Now we know that Jack's up a contract at the
end of this year, we know Top Racks sign with
Prama High. Everything like that there's your shot. Take it
(32:18):
if you're playing along. But let's look at Jack's results
from the weekends, because you told me a P five
from Jack that was the best sprint result he has
since last year?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Did you say Austria last year? So it was his
best sprint that he's had in the last twenty So
that's going back to Austria in August last year. So
he'd only scored one point in the sprints the entire year,
which is at Silverstone before last Saturday. And the really
key point here is that we know we're coming to
this crunch time here where Yamaha have said we want
to make a decision on who's going to be top
(32:52):
rax teammate by the summer break. Now, the summer break
starts on Monday, basically, so one day after the Czech
Republic Grand Prix. Jack picked a really really good time
to have his best weekend of the season and scored
thirteen points over the weekend. That's his strongest single weekend
of the season. Finished eighth in the Grand Prix. Obviously
stayed on which many people didn't, which was super important.
(33:14):
But it was more the fact that you look at
the two people that are potentially in the frame to
deny him that place. At Pramat Gamaha, he was ahead
of Miguel Olivera in every single on track session for
the entire weekend. Jack made Q two. Olivera did not.
He was well behind Jack in the sprint and then
he crashed out super early in the Grand Prix. So
Jack had that covered for the entirety of the weekend.
(33:36):
The other name that had been floated around, which I
mentioned in the piece you just referenced there was There's
been a lot of buzz about Diogo Marrera coming up
through Moto two for a lot of obvious reasons. He's
clearly really talented, he's clearly really fast. He has an
association with Yamaha Brazil from a lot he trains on
Yamaha bikes, and he's back home in Brazil, and of
course we have a Brazilian Grand Prix next year, so
you know there's a lot of boxes being ticked for
(33:58):
a young, up and coming rider. And when Yamaha started
this second team, it's a bit like we see it
in Formula One with Red Bull and whatever. The second
team racing balls this year is being called. The second
team is almost like a proving Ground training school to
bring young guys in to potentially elevate them to the
main team, and because Pramak Yamaha was new this year,
(34:18):
they went with a couple of thirty year olds because
they are available and they needed data and they needed information.
The long term future of that team for me is
to bring younger riders through to see if they've got
what it takes to step up to the main Yamaha team.
So you're not going to have a pair of thirty
year olds in there for the long long term, short
term this is what plays to Jack's favor, but also
short term. Marera did I don't know how you feel
(34:42):
about this. That Moto iiO race on Sunday at Saxon Ring,
he showed you why he's probably going to be in
Motor GP. He also showed you why he's probably not
going to be in Motor GP yet because he was
twenty fifth on the grid where he screwed up qualifying
in the rain, and he was awesome in that Grand Prix.
It was like watching twenty twelve Via and Mark Marquez
in Moto two is just carving through guys and all
(35:04):
of a sudden you look up and you go, oh
my god, he's fourth and there's still plenty of laps
to go in the race. And then he came off
second best in a bit of a skirmish with Jake
Dixon for third, and then went off onto the grass
and pulled straight back onto the circuit, not really looking
at where he was going or what was coming up
behind him, and David Altso ran absolutely full speed, never
checked up straight into the back of him. I'm far
(35:27):
too old and cynic all these days to get too
excited about crashes all things like that, but that literally
got me out of my seat with my hand over
my mouth, going, oh my god, that's like an aeroplane
accident because you don't see crashes like that. They are
so lucky, the pair of them that they didn't sustain
major injuries. And Marrera has been hit with a pit
lane start for this week's Moto two race at the
(35:48):
Czech Republic, and I reckon that's pretty lenient, quite frankly,
because he did an absolutely crazy thing that endangered himself
and another rider, and I wouldn't have minded them parking
him for a race and said sorry, you're not racing
at Bruno next weekend. That's just absolutely crazy. So I
think in one Moto two race we saw the speed
(36:10):
and the decisiveness and the ability that the guy's got
which makes him look like a murder GP rider in
the future. We also saw a completely stupid crash where
it probably shows you that that future might be twenty
twenty seven or twenty eight or whatever that's going to be,
which in a very long winded way, which if you've
read my story, it was very long winded. Everything aligned
this weekend to me, I reckon that Jack Miller has
(36:32):
one hand and four fingers on a murder GP contract
with promat Gamahah next year, and it would not surprise
me if at all, if that gets announced at Bruno
this weekend.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I think, Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on
the head.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I completely agree with everything you just said that the
Diego Morera thing. Let's move on to Moto two because
we've pretty much wrapped up GP there. But let's talk
about Moto two and then let's come back to Diego Mora.
But Jake Dixon was on pole jumped the start. Oh
and then once you saw it and he knew straight away, right,
(37:05):
you could just see him shaking his head. Then he
had that small collision with Jake into turn one, so
then Sena got that double long lap penalty. Then as
the race progress, let's then go obviously that incident with
Marrera happened.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
I think I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I think Marrera, you can just tell he's still a teenager,
you're a young adult. Like he needs to get that
experience because he's only been in the World Championship, the
Moto GP World Championship for a few years now, right,
so he's come up from Junior GP. I think that
he needs to still get a bit more of that
(37:46):
thorough experience before you do go.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Into Moto GP.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
I don't think we're ever going to see another Jack
Miller go from Moroto three straight up to Moto GP,
because I think you have to do you have to
do your exams, you have to past the test and
then you'll go up right.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
But for me, in Moto.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Two, the fact that Aaron Connett still finished in the
top ten and you see him in pain, I mean
Saxon Ring and the crashes and the fact of like
the red flag and everything, and you could hear Barry
Belts and Jake Dixon being like wipe all out the
red flag. You know, I will saving my tires until
(38:28):
the end. But when you saw that camera on Aaron Connett,
in him wincing in pain or you could feel it.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I could feel it through the TV map.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Yeah, that was a monster, monster crash. I was pretty
surprised he even race, quite frankly, but we know he's
pretty tough and he's certainly not one who's going to
be backwards in a battle. That was hugely impressive. I mean,
the red flag. No one likes to see a race
stop with a red flag, let's be perfectly honest. But
we know that there's world TV time schedules to keep
and that sort of thing, and you know, by the
(38:58):
time they would have cleaned everything up and re started
the race for what two laps at the end, it
was probably not going to be worth it for everyone involved.
So that was a shame tactically for some of these
guys that were saving tires, but probably the correct decision.
But I must admit there was a part of me
when I mean the sometimes with these jump starts they
look a little bit marginal. That was so not marginal
by ages on Sunday, unfortunately, and as soon as that happened.
(39:19):
There was a part of me that literally pushed the
chair out from the desk and just put their head
down and went, well that's the end of that then,
And I mean it's the way it worked out. He
managed to get back through and at least score some points,
but you could just see on the rundown to term
one he was absolutely filthy with himself because I think
he knew he had the pace to probably finish on
the podium. So that's definitely one that got away for him.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, so soon I finished eleventh, and I'm just looking
at the results. Seven writers crashed out of Moto two,
so we had eight and a Moto GP and obviously
X four that didn't start, and then we had seven
writers crash out of Moto two. Then let's go to
Moto three, our favorite, where it's the fifteen or so
(40:01):
writers in one group going into turn one together a
lap after lap. Munios finished first ahead of Gears and Rueida.
Now Matt for me, Ruaida, he is missed a consistency
this year. It's not always about winning the race, it's
about banking those points. It's like the it's the Peko
(40:22):
Bagnyaya version of when Peco was trying to get the
championship right.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, yeah, he's read the book on how you build
a championship. And I use the word build because it's
not about getting like one or two headline results and
then being nowhere. He's always there and thereabouts. He'll win
races when he can, but he'll bank good points when
he won't, and that's how you build a championship over
twenty two rounds. I'm frankly not surprised at all to
see him move his way towards the front of the
(40:48):
group and be there when it matters towards the end
of the race. But I guess the fun thing for
us was that, you know that front group of about
eight or nine that broke away at the end. It
was nice to see both see both ossies in that
shot and you look at them going, Okay, they're in
with a chancey, they're right in the train. And to
see both Joe Kelso and Jacob Rolston particularly have strong
results was nice because that was a no holds barred race.
(41:10):
There's Moto three years in most places, but at the
Saxid Ring, My.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
God, yeah no, like you said, so, Jacob Wilstone was
pa across the line, Joe Kelso six and our key
we across the Pond Cormack Buchanan.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
He was a top ten his.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Best results so far in the World Championship. So yeah,
it was nice to see the guys from down Under
and obviously New Zealand representing us and being closer to
the front. And I think for Jacob just to touch
on that this is the confidence he needs. We knew
in I think it was Migello where he was strong
there and then he had that technical issue and wasn't
(41:48):
able to finish the race. You could see that really
got to him and I think he needs this boost
of this top ten. While okay on paper it's only
a PA, I think for him it's that set because
he is going into the second part of the year.
He doesn't have a contract for next year, he is
with Red Bull, Katim Tech three, the pressure everything starting
(42:09):
the season a few races late, everything's adding up. I
think he needed that PA to boost him for the
rest of the season.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
And it's a nice base, like it's a platform which
you can build, like this is all you want to
sort of wrap up this first half of the season.
A couple of decent results. I mean, he gained ten
places in the race from where he started, which is
pretty impressive in itself, but just moving steadily forward and
we know there's a good rider in there. Like you said,
there's been so many things that have tripped him up
this year that's been difficult. It feels like he's been
sort of swimming upstream for the whole year to try
(42:38):
and get back to where he wanted to be at
the start of it. So if this is the first
building plot for that, then that's terrific. But yeah, I
just enjoyed seeing both OSSI's in the front group.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
So as we mentioned a little bit earlier when I
was really excited to talk about Juai mantine A Moto
GP heads Sabruno next weekend of the first time since
twenty twenty, I was looking back at some old footage
for a sports socials earlier today, and like I said,
Juan Miir was on the Yamaha and even like the
previous races where Lorenzo and Rossi and whatnot, like Bruno's
(43:11):
a pretty iconic track that's been on the Moto GP calendar,
says Shane that it hasn't been on for a few
years now coming back there. It's resurfaced now and this
is where I'm starting to think, Okay, how's he going
to play out this weekend? Matt, and I want to
get your opinion on this because we've got so many
rookies in the Moto GP paddock now Moto GP grit
who've never ridden there. Yeah, absolutely, or on a METOGP bike.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
But then you've got Mark Marquez, Alex Runs, juanmir All,
these guys who've ridden there on past GP bikes, but
the track's been resurfaced. How do you think that's going
to play out and we're going to see the veterans
exceeding quite early on in the or do you think
it's just going to be an even playing field.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
The one name that you didn't mention there and he
never gets to run on this podcast because you've been
kind of invisible all year. The last rider to win
when we went there for MotoGP was Brad Binder on
a case And you forget that was such a strange
season twenty twenty because it was round three, but it
was about August because we went race the first six
months of the year, there was no one there. It
was a really really strange one. It's the last time
we went to Bruneau. It's obviously it's usually such a
(44:13):
vibrant race. It's such a massive crowd that turns up there,
so to see them racing around that awesome, big open
circuit with no one there was really weird. Yeah, been
to the most recent winner there, bizarrely, not someone we've
talked about very much on the pod this year. But
getting back to what you just said, then, I think
guys who've got motor GP reps around there are going
to start with a significant advantage because we're not going
(44:34):
back to the same Bruno because if you know, after
the teams had tested there the other week, they reckon
that the lap times might be about two seconds faster.
And that's not a slow track to start with. It's
a proper iconic motor GP track. I'm super glad we've
found a way to get back there because you know
those big, wide open tracks with massive crowds, and the
thing I love about Bruno it's so wide as a track,
(44:58):
so it's not just one line into corners. You'll see
guys fan out into the breaking zones and it's a
track where you can pass and repass. It's a track
that invites fights. It's one of the great things about
that particular layout, So it's one of the best layouts
on the calendar. It's going to be a top five
layout on the calendar. It's really good that they found
a way to find the money to get the thing
(45:19):
resurfaced and get it back on the calendar. I'm just
really looking forward to see bikes on that circle again
because it's one of the best ones and it always
throws up good races. But going back to what you
were saying, I think experience counts. I think guys who've
been there before on motor GP Machinery are going to
start with a pretty significant advantage.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Well, Bruno is up this weekend, like we just said,
and you guys can catch all the action live on
Fox Sports and KO big thanks to the team as
Shannon's Insurance for sponsoring the Pittok podcast. If you want
to read any of Math's articles that we spoke about
or the ones he's got coming up, which he was
telling me before there's something pretty cool coming out at
(45:57):
the time of this podcast as well, you can head
to foxsports dot com dot au, Forward Slash Motorsport or
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But from Matt Clayton and myself, Rinita.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Vermullen, that's all for now, and we're going to be
back real soon with more motor GP. Pittalk Well
The King of the Ring returned and was crowned once again,
and going into round eleven of the twenty twenty five
MotoGP World Championship, it wasn't a case of I wonder
if Mark's gonna win. It was more I wonder if
Mark's gonna win by X amount of seconds? And that's
exactly what we saw this weekend. Pitt Talk is brought
(00:22):
to you by the team at Shannon's Insurance. I'm your host,
Rinita Vanmullen. Joining me is the Mark Marquees of motor
GP Stats, mister Matt Clayton. Matt, We've been catching up
off air on everything that's happened over the weekend, but
Saxon Ring it delivered. It showed us the good, the bad.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And the ugly.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, certainly the last part with so few riders finishing
the race will definitely get into that. But you know,
it was weird, Like I wrote this in the lead
up to the Saxon Ring, like the fact that Marquez
is leading the championship on the best bike in the series.
That's probably not a surprise, But the weirdest bit before
Saxon Ring was that he kept winning at these tracks
where he hadn't won for so long, Like you're thinking
Katar and Magello and Ascent and the tracks where he's
(01:03):
normally really good, like Kota and like Harrath, he actually
hadn't won though the few races this year he hadn't won,
so it kind of felt this was something had to
give weekend, like are we going to get normal service
resumed with Mark winning at the Saxon Ring because he's
done that forever, or is this going to be one
of those weird blips in this season. But it's good that,
you know, if you want some predictability in your life,
(01:24):
then Mark Marquez and the Saxon Ring is about the
closest things you can get to a sure thing. But
either about you, there's something super cool about watching a
driver or a rider or anyone in a particular sport
when they're in their absolute sweet spot and you know
that it's them against themselves somewhere where they're super dominant.
He was absolutely awesome on the weekend, and I'm sure
(01:45):
we'll get into it, but the sprint race for me,
the fact that he actually had to fight for it,
that was the most fun part of the weekend for me.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Well, that was what I was just thinking then, as
you know, you're saying, you know the sweet spot and
what you see, But then I'm going yeah. But in
the sprint, he ran wide at term one, got a
hairpis art round white, and then he had to fight
for it, and it's like, okay, cool, here we go.
Now we've got a race on our hands. It's not
Mark Marquez riding off into the sunset.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And the best part about it, too, was because you
could see there was almost like these two competing voices
on each shoulder. It's like, chill out, you've got the
championship lead. It's fine, like whatever you can get in
this race. The points in the sprint are so marginal
between first and second and third and whatever anyway, so
there was the sensible all right, I'll just roll home
and I'll probably finish on the podium and it's fine,
(02:31):
and I'll protect my championship lead. But then there's the
instinctive racer in Mark where he hates to be beaten
at anytime, and he certainly doesn't like being beaten at
circuits where he's the man. And you could see that
there was this like sort of inner dialogue going on.
It's like do I push? Do I push? And there
was one lap about I think it was about four
laps from the end where I think he took six
(02:51):
tenths out of a second out of Betzachi once he
got up to pee two, and I reckon that was
the moment he would have looked at the pit board
and gone, Okay, that's it. I'm going for this. I'm
just going for this because I can't help myself. And
with the lead that he's got in the championship, he
did not need three extra points. He needed three extra
points like a hole in the head. But he's just like, no,
I'm going to go for this, went for it, wanted
on the last lap, and then almost apologized for not
(03:13):
being able to turn his instincts off. I thought it
was just really funny, like it shows you how hardwired
he is to win even when he doesn't have to.
I thought that was pretty interesting for a moment there.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Though.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I'm watching bet Zechi and like you said, you're seeing
mark this gap maintaining.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm thinking, oh, got this.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, we might have a prillier step and what that
could do once again for Betzechi and the whole Joe
Martin drama which we'll get into.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It a little bit. But then yeah, like you said, all.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Of a sudden, it's like like that switch and Mark goes, no,
you know what, I'm just going to go and do this.
Why not?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, and then almost apologizing for it afterwards. It's like, yeah,
I know, I said, I should be thinking about the championship,
but my instincts took over and I'm sorry, but here's
another win. But you do wonder too, like the psychology
of him in that circuit. Had it it been anywhere else,
he might have just gone, maybe I'll just take the
second place and live for another day. But it's like, no, no,
this is my track and you're not beating me here,
so I am going to go for it. It was just
(04:07):
funny watching him sort of wrestle with doing the sensible
thing and doing the thing that he has made a
habit of doing it the saxid ring, and it's nice
to see that the instinct won out over being sensible.
It's be honest, I.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Think as well, you just said that like it is
his track, but it's he needed to claim it on
aored you Caddy. I think there's also that mental aspect
of well, as well, of I need to be the
king of the ring now on a ju Canti and
not just back in the day on the Repsole. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And also you forget that it was twenty twenty one
that he last won there, so I think it was
between shoulder surgery two and three or three and four,
I can't remember which, and it was that really unlikely
win on the Honda. But you remember a couple of
years ago when he was there on the Honda and
it just about broke him. Like I think he had
six crashes over the course of the race the weekend
before he pulled out, and that was the ultimate case
(04:55):
of him just raging against the dying of the light.
It's like, I know this bike isn't going to be
able to allow me to win this Grand Prix, and
I'm probably going to hurt myself, but I'm not going
to keep I'm not going to stop trying. He just
kept coming off and coming off and coming off. What
amazed me that day is there was a point where
he just threw his hands up and said, look, I
cannot break myself anymore. I have to get off this thing.
(05:16):
That was the moment where you figured that, you know,
or he really is going to leave Rebsolond and not
knowing where he was going to go. But I think
it puts a lot of those wins from that era
at the Saxon Ring into perspective because very rarely did
he turn up there with the best bike. It was
just that he was the person that made the difference
in you know, the other hand, riders weren't really doing anything.
Now that he is on the best bike and in
this amazing form that he is in, I mean to
(05:39):
expect a different championship outcome when you put the best
rider on the best bike is sort of wishful thinking, really.
But we're halfway through this season. He has an eighty
three point lead, and you could argue that he's probably
thrown away about twenty five or thirty points through dumb
things like crashing at Kota and her wrath when he
came off earlier on. I mean, it's a case of
when is he going to win this championship? Not if
he's going to win this World championship, but I think
(06:01):
the way that he's doing it and it's made us
reassess a lot of what the other writers have been
doing for the past couple of years. Because if anyone
thought that the injuries and the surgeries in the time
between the last championship had sort of, you know, quietened
his star a little bit, I think we've got the
answer now. I know he's thirty two, he's one of
the older guys in it now, but the ferocity of
(06:22):
the competitive spirits still there. And when you think about
what he's gone through between then and now, I'll be
super interested to see how he processes is the World
Championship when it comes to him this year, because I
suspect he's going to be really really focused until he
gets it, and then I also suspect he's going to
be incredibly emotional once it comes out, because you will
(06:42):
always think back to probably your worst moments when you
get back to the top of the mountain. Again, it's
been so long since he's been there. It'll be a
really interesting insight once he lets his guard down. When
this happens, and the way it's going, I mean, it
could all be quite frankly, it could almost be decided
before they get to Australia towards the end of the
year if he keeps this, Because right now you have
to think to yourself, if he's not going to win
(07:02):
a race in who he is.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, I mean potentially Alex Marquez, potentially. But even this weekend,
which we'll get into, in the main race, he was
handed second place. It was like he was there fighting
for it, right. Yeah, you had to be on your
bike to actually cross the line at the end of
the day. But yeah, Alex is second in the championship.
But he's how many points behind Mark?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Did you say?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Eighty three?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Eighty three. That's more than two it's more than two
perfect Grand Prix weekends, which, by the way, if we're
still counting at home here, that's four weekends in a
row where Mark scored the maximum thirty seven points. So
it's he's not leaving too many points on the table
right now. The craziest stat of all of them this
year is when you look at the sprints. He's in
eleven sprints. He's had ten wins in one second place,
(07:46):
so he's three points away from a perfect score in
the sprints. That's bad, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's wild wild The thing that this is his first
year on the factory Jucati team, right and all of
a sudden, it's breaking all these records all this is change,
but also the downside is we're seeing Peco Banyaya so
far behind and just struggling. Is like, yeah, it's exciting
to see Mark Marquez because we were always wondering what
could he do on the best bike. But then I
(08:13):
think I've mentioned this on the pod before, as I
remember Peco Bannaya saying previously, Oh, I want to win
a championship when Mark Marquez is on the best bike
as well and.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I'm fighting against him.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
We're seeing that now and we're not seeing Peco performing
at his best.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, I reckon that's one of the probably the biggest
disappointments of the year. I was super excited to see
what a fight between those two was going to look like.
And I mean, at the end of the day, hand
on heart, we all know who the better rider is
of the two. But I thought what was going to
be interesting was that Pecko's been there in that team,
and he's so embedded in that team, and that team's
been around him, and he's won. You know, the last
four years, he's won two World championships and finished a
(08:49):
very close second a couple of times. He's been the
guy for the last four years. And I thought, Wow,
this is going to be so interesting someone of Mark's
talent and ambition trying to do this in Peco's team.
That was the way that I saw. I thought, that's
going to make a really interesting championship fight. And we've
talked on the pod before that Peco when he's in
his sweet spot and he's confident with the machinery and
(09:09):
things are just in the just so for Peco, he's amazing.
He hasn't got into that groove at all this year,
and every week he must look up and there's marketing
another trophy, and the margins a bit bigger, and the
margins a bit bigger, and the margins a bit bigger. Psychologically,
this has got to be pretty deflating for Banyai, and
it's got to the point that the rest of this season,
(09:31):
I mean, look, he may win a race or two.
We don't know how it's going to go towards the
end of the season. But the second half of twenty
twenty five to me, is almost like the world's longest
extended preseason for twenty twenty six, because when everything is
reset to zero and he now knows what he's up
against and he knows the machinery he's got on his disposal.
There's a lot riding on next year for Peco in
(09:53):
terms of how we're going to see him when his
career is over, because we may very well look back
at this, and so we'll look there was this five
year period where Mark Marquez was either broken or not
on the grid at all. He emerged as the guy
during that time, but then when the guy came back,
when the guy in hooks came back, then it sort
of made us reassess a little bit about where we
(10:15):
see Pecko. So I think next year we'll get a
better indication because I think Pecko's very aware of now
what he's up against. You'd imagine that next year will
be pretty similar to this because we've got some stability
in the rules as everyone sort of gets ready for
twenty twenty seven. But I never in a million years
expected the gap between them to be this big. I
thought that it was a fight that Mark would win,
(10:36):
but not like this.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
No, I'm just looking at the results from Saturday. And
if you haven't seen Saturday Spring, it was trenchial rain
and now we gorote a Sunday which was completely different. Yeah,
cold temperatures, but it was a dry track. Now, looking
at the results from Saturday, Pekobanyaya twelfth place plus twenty
point three three nine seconds. Right, then we go to
(10:59):
Sunday's result. Okay, majority of these guys.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Didn't finish the race.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Pekkobaanyaya, let's say he was also handed third place, because
yeah he was.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
But even the.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Gap back from Mark to Peko there is plus seven seconds.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So this is showing you what his season is like.
He's he's just he's not there.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
No, that sprint on Saturday, Yes, it was raining, and
he's not like he's a bad wet weather rye. You
think towards the end of last year in Thailand when
there was a lot of championship pressure, he rode really
well in the rain there. But that was it was
borderline embarrassing that sprint. It was that bad. He was
that far off the pace. He was nowhere in qualifying.
That gap that you mentioned there, that's in the fifteen
lap race. He's a second and a half slower a
(11:44):
lap than the guy who won the race on the
same bike, and that's that's quite humbling for a guy
of Pecko's pedigree. Yes, he was better in the Grand Prix.
He did a lot of his good work in the
Grand Prix early, like he had a really good first
couple of laps from quite low on the greed, he
got himself into position to be able to capitalize on
other people's mistakes. That's the best you can probably say
(12:05):
about his race. And yeah, he got another third place,
and he seems to be getting lots of third places
this year because that's where he is. So it was
a decent save in terms of points, but there was
never one point over the weekend where you felt he
was remotely close to being on Alex Marquees's level, let
alone Mark Marquez's level. And this is kind of where
Peco's been this year. But that sprint on Saturday, I
(12:27):
struggle to think of a worse race or sprint that
he's had since he's been a top line Ticcattie rider.
That was absolutely dreadful.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Well, you did a stat for Fox sports dot Com
to a Ford slash Motorsport and we turned it into
a social media post as well. And we're talking about
since since the last time Fabero Cordorraro one in Germany,
which is twenty twenty two, Ji Catti's had fifty one
podiums and when you said the sat through, Vanyaya has
(12:56):
done twenty four of those on his own.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
The rest of Mark, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Won nearly half of Decady's races since twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
It's hard to believe when you look at those numbers
and then you see what the season's been like this year, Like, really,
is this the same packer Banyaia?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well, I think it puts a few things into perspective.
It looks at you know, it puts Spannya's last few
years into perspective. The one for me that I'm not
sure if you realize this. So Mark markuez onon his
tenth sprint for the season on Saturday. You know, that's
the most wins by any one rider in a season
in sprints since sprints came in three years ago. Oh hey,
Martin won nine sprints in twenty twenty three. Mark's already
(13:32):
beaten that with half the season to go. So this
is what we're dealing with here, Like, it's an absurd
stat to think, because you remember when the sprints came in,
we were all like, oh, this is all Hey Martin territory.
He's going to eat these things up. He's going to
be amazing in them, and predictably he was from day one,
but with no Martine on the grid, and we'll get
back to his return at some point in the rest
of this podcast. You're looking at these saturdays now and
(13:53):
Mark's just winning these things for fun, and it's so
demoralizing for Banyar at the moment because the only race
is one this year was when Mark crashed when he
was well ahead of him at Koser, and he inherited
that win. So given that we do have such a
decade dominated championship, I don't think it's a great surprise
that Mark's doing what he's doing. I think the two
surprises of the season one positive, one negative is how
(14:16):
consistently good Alex Marquez has been even when he's been
injured like last weekend, and the fact that Banyaya is
even struggling to keep him in sight or beat him
most of the time, let alone his own teammate. That
is not a conversation that you and I were expecting
to have at the start of this year.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Well, Alex Markez, like you said, came into this weekend
injured after that collision he had.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
With Pedro Acosta at athen and is his left hand
that he injured.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Ryan, He's on a left hand corner track, so straightaway
is already a negative there. Looking at the results from
the sprint, he was p eight, so it was what
we said, total wet race, twelve seconds behind Mark, but
then inherited that second place. I think in the long
term he's probably going to look out, look back at
this weekend and go, are, Okay, cool, I was injured,
but I'm got second place kind of handed to me.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, put that in my back pocket.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That's going to help me maintain second in the championship.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, but he's just.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
That diesel train, Like we said, that diesel truck is
just chugging along.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, keeps on keeping on. I think the key thing
for him over the course of the weekend is that
I always think it's funny when you think that bikes
and riders have body language that you can actually see
through the TV. His biggest success of the entire weekend,
like you mentioned, left handed track, when you were leading
on a left handed that had surgery. It wasn't the
biggest operation of the world for a motor GP rider,
But if any wanted to go to a track, any
(15:38):
track other than the Saxon Ring would have quite frankly,
a bit easier for him given that he had left
hand surgery. His biggest thing for the whole weekend was
just don't crash. Don't crash, don't crash, because if you
crash at the Saxon Ring, there's a fair chance that
you're going to injure or your left hand in one
of those accidents, given the way you come off there.
When you look at how many guys did come off
over the course of the weekend and how sketchy the
(15:58):
weather was and how diffy the track was on Sunday,
the biggest victory for him that he was able to
score a second place in the Grand Prix and only
lose five points to his brother in the championship standings.
But he didn't hurt himself, and that's the biggest thing
for him going forward, because we know we've got Czech
Republic this weekend and then a four week break. If
he can get out the other end of this weekend
with no accidents or no accidents that are going to
(16:22):
aggravate the injury that he's already got, that's almost a
bigger win than any points he can get quite frankly,
because he was one of the few guys I would
have to go back and look at everyone on the
list here, but it felt like everyone else crashed at
least once over the course of the weekend, given how
sketchy things were, and he was able to be fast
but also with a margin where he didn't hurt himself.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Well, let's talk about those crashes. But before we even
get into that, let's go Tech three were already out
this weekend with an a of as Shanini who was
diagnosed with appendicitis the poor thing going in, so he
was absent from the weekend. Then we had that crash
from Maverick Finnalez where he dislocated his shoulder I believe,
(17:02):
and then he went put back in but somehow managed
to do some damage or what not to the collar bone.
So then the whole tech to our team was out
for the weekend. Then we saw in Saturday's sprint that scary,
totally scary crash from Frankie Morbidelli where his whole leather
suit like you could see the airbag popped open, the
(17:25):
zip come down, he was just tumbling through the gravel trap.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
He was then out for the weekend.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So then if we go into Sunday's list, Oh, we
also had some Katchenra who was out from a pre
injury as well, so some and an AA not absent
this weekend. Then we have Maverick injured. We had Morbidelli
didn't race, which I think is a good thing because
the way that he tumbled, and we know what he
had earlier last.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Year when he had that injury to the brain. Like,
I think that's a safe thing.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Then you look at Sunday's Grand Prix. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight riders crashed. One of those riders crashed twice, and
that was when Iagura and Yuan Meir collided. They crashed
out on that same corner. Lorenzo Sabadori is coming through
right as the marshals were taking everything away.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Now we know most.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Of these crashes happened at turn one, But is that
just because turn one is the first right hand corner.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's a few things. It's a trickier corner than it
looks on the TV because of how steep it is.
So the straight there, yes it's straight, but it's also
massively undulating. They climb out of the final corner raise
over the platter, it flattens out, you climb again and
drop down into turn one. The biggest factor on Sunday
with all these crashes because five of those eight guys
(18:47):
you mentioned crashed at turn one. Five of the eight
DNFs were at turn one. There was no tire grip
on this track because it poured with rain all Saturday
during the spring, and then it really poured with rain
Saturday night and into Sunday morning, so the track was
super green. It was like it was the start of
the weekend. The weird thing there was that some people
on the ground were telling me that the wind had
(19:08):
flipped around on Sunday, so it was a tail wind
into turn one. So you're pushing the riders into turn
one downhill. There's no grip because the track is as
green as it is. And what was interesting was that
you notice that all the crashes in turn one they
were in the second half of the race where people
had worn tires right. So you got to about lap
fifteen eighteen, everything's fine, and then Jane Antonio goes down,
(19:31):
and then a couple of laps later, Bazeki goes down,
and then a guru goes down and takes Juan Miir
with him, and then Savadori goes down. They all happened
in about a five lap span, but after about two
thirds of the race were done. So you've got a
combination of worn tires, green track, tail wind, and you know,
people trying to change ginger maps with Jack Miller was
talking about this. It was a real survival race towards
(19:53):
the end there. And interestingly, Pecovannaya said afterwards, he said
he had a couple of moments in tern one where
he pretty much lost the front and managed to recover them,
and he said, all right, for the rest of the
for the last eight laps of this race, I'm not
pushing at all into turn one. I'm almost going to
roll into turn one and then I'm going to push
everywhere else to try and make up for her, because
the risk reward ratio just tipped over the edge at
(20:15):
turn one. But it was this weird circumstance of just
literally no grip. It was like Friday FP one. There
was no grip down at all because it had all
been washed away with the rain and that tail wind.
It changed everyone's breaking markers because you're coming up out
of the bubble and you're getting shoved along by this
wind and then by the time you're too deep into
the corner on a green track and down you go.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
That's pretty much what happened ten riders ten riders to
finish a race.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
When was the last time that that happened? In Rotor GP?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Matt, See, this is where I'm watching the race, and
I'm going, m Philip Island. I was sinking the day
that Casey Stone And won the championship, and I'm thinking,
I reckon it's that day. So I went back and
out of look and yeah, twenty eleven Australia ten Riders
finished that race. And that was another weird race where
very few people started. Oh hai Lorenz, I'd hurt himself
in the warm up. He'd taken off the tip of
one of his fingers. He was pretty much Casey's only
(21:03):
championship contender. How was that that? Yeah? And so Casey
just basically had to stay upright to win the championship
on home soil that day. And because Casey and Philip pilot,
he went won the race like he always did. But
it was one of those races that we only had
an eighteen to start with. Because of all of the
various things that you talked about in the lead in
and then when they just start going down like like skittles,
(21:23):
towards the end, you look at someone like Alex Rinns
took six points away from the weekend for Yamaha, which
you know, you look at it on paper in the future,
you're going, oh, that was all right. Alex Rins had
a top ten finish, Alex Rinns was last, and Alex
Rinns was last by a long, long way, which is
another topic we probably need to get into at some point.
But if you stayed on your bike and you kept circulating,
no matter how slow, you were going to bank decent
(21:45):
points because it was just an absolute race of attrition.
And I think the disappointing thing for a couple of
these riders was there there were guys who crashed out
of really promising positions, and I thought to jan Antonio,
had he sort of sealed the deal with that second place?
He was really impressive of the entire weekend. He was
really good through Friday practice. He was one of the
guys who looked like he could actually over one lap.
(22:06):
Take it to Marquez didn't qualify well because he tends
to not qualify well. But he raced well all weekend
and he sort of emerged out of that big battle
pack in the early part of Sunday's race, and that
he had Perzeki's measure and he had Banyaya's measure and
a Costa was up there for a bit. Digita looked really,
really good. He was the first of these guys to
go down at turn one, and I think it sort
of caught him by surprise, and then everyone else started
(22:29):
going down, almost in sympathy afterwards. But look, he was
to get to catch Marquez because no one was going
to But that was a ride that felt like it
probably deserved a podium in a decent result. And we've
talked about this for a couple of podcasts. Now I
do think he's going to come forward a fora a
bit in the second half of the year because the
speeds there, in the bikes there, He's getting more and
more confident. Just a shame that didn't work out for
(22:50):
him on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
I heard him say post race though, that he was
happy that he crashed out of the podium position because
it showed that he was fighting for it rather than
being fifteenth, seventeenth and crashing out further down the field.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I feel like you can kind of look at that
two ways, as in.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Why are you happy that you crashed out of like
why would you?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Why are you not wanting it more?
Speaker 1 (23:14):
But I think from his point of view, it's like,
my speed was there, you know, it was Mark, it
was me, and then it wasn't Aprillia.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
You know, where's Peco?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Where's Alex there?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Further back?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Okay, then the mistake happened, but it changes in the variables, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I reckon that he feels that that speed is repeatable.
I think that's probably why he was quite optimistic. I
don't think this is just some outlier one off at
this particular circuit. He'll be quick at Bruno, He'll be
quick in most places because I think he's you remember,
he came into this preseason super injury compromised after the
dumb thing that he did so pag what he decided
to do really at the end of the first day
of the Test and came off and broke the same
colo mode he'd broken last year. But I think he
(23:51):
realizes that the speed is repeatable, So yeah, you'd be
annoyed in the moment that you chucked a podium away.
But I suspect that we're going to We know that
decade's so good, and I suspect we're going to see
him on podiums plural in the very short term.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Another writer who I hope the speed is repeatable for
is Marco bet Zeki because I missed all the Joge
Martin drama that's been going on off track. It's been
so refreshing to see Marco abt Zeki fighting the front,
fighting for those podium places, and just to have an
aprillia there another manufacturer up close to the front. It's
a shame that there's the track house guys aren't following
(24:28):
suit and it's just been Marco at the moment. But
I mean another sprint prodeum for him.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I'm sure he's over the moon with that.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Yeah, I reckon that was an important one too, because
you know, we know he'd wanted Silverstone, and Silverston has
always been a good track for a Prillier. He was
very good at acid and that's always been a good
track for him. So it's almost like we needed a
bigger sample size of all right, you know you've bett
a good track for Aprilia. You've betted a good track
for yourself. Can you do it somewhere else? I think
this is super interesting for two reasons. A what you
(24:57):
just said about the fact that it's another manufacturer in
the mix. It looks like that's something that's going to
translate to multiple circuits now. But doesn't it get you thinking,
like hmm. Once Jorge Martin gets fully fit and he
gets up to speed with what Napullia can do, won't
that be interesting towards the end of the year, Because
if that's a bike that can achieve podiums, a fully
(25:18):
fit Jollgey Martine is absolute top shelf. We saw that
last year, we saw it the year before. On balance,
he's probably going to achieve more when he's completely being
Joge Martine than Marco Berseki's going to. So that's interesting
for me because right now that's clearly the second best
bike in motor GP. You add a world champion on
there that will have some level of motivation. We don't
know how much we're about to find out, but you
(25:40):
add Martine on that bike and he gets a sniff
of being competitive and having good results there, he could
be a bit of a random wild card for the
end of this season. Martine once he gets confident and
gets his full fitness and race fitness back, because he's
not scared of anybody. We saw it last year. He'll
go will to will with Banyai, He'll go will to
will with Mark. We've never really seen like a really
(26:03):
full on, motivated fit Martin up against Marquez in the
mood that Marquez is in at the moment. So when
we know that it's not going to be the championship
or anything super meaningful because the way the season's panned out,
but we might get some pretty explosive races towards the
end of the year, I reckon.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So Martin's coming back this weekend for Bruno, it's the
first time Reto GP have been to the Czech Republic
since twenty twenty. The track's been resurfaced, so it's going
to be really interesting, I think as well, because we've got.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
The veterans like Mark.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
The last time Juan mir was that he was on
a Suzuki, right, So there's all these changes. But johe Martin,
I think everyone's going to be looking at him this weekend.
Do you think I'm probably already jumping the gun with this.
But do you think Martin's going to come back and
be strong instantly or do you think he's gonna He's
(26:55):
going to take his time this time because of everything
that's been happening.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, I reckon. There's elements of both here because of
the way the calendar falls, Like we've got a full
week break after Bruno. The absolute last thing Jorge Martine
needs to do it Bruno is hurt himself. He needs
a full race weekend where he can do a full
sprint distance and he can do a full Grand Prix
distance and he can get used to fighting with people again.
(27:21):
The points are immaterial because who cares how many points
he gets this year? Really, and it certainly doesn't matter
this much for the time being. The biggest thing he
can do this weekend is shake the rust off because
there's going to be some race rust. He has not
raced a motor GP like properly. You know, he hasn't
completed a full race since last November, let's be honest,
So shake the rust off, get used to the way
the team works operationally. What's his motivation, Like, how does
(27:43):
he feel physically, because we know that he's only been
pas medically to ride in the last couple of weeks,
so he's clearly going to be underdone. The one thing
he cannot do this weekend is hurt himself. So I
think what you'll see is, because we've got this month
after Bruno, he won't be cautious or circumtant. He'll still ride,
but he's not going to be pushing at ten tenths.
(28:03):
He might be at like eight and a half tenths
or something, because it's like, you've got a championship to
think about. Get through that, have another month of training,
getting your fitness up a lot more, riding some superbike somewhere,
doing what you need to do, and then you know
how this second half of the season goes like it
feels like it just comes and goes in a flash
because there's so many double headers and it comes super
super fast. What he does in those last ten races
(28:25):
will be more representative of who he is. I think
this weekend the main goal is to get back deal
with a bunch of annoying journos in the press conference.
Like me, he'll be asking him a thousand questions about
things he doesn't want to talk about. Get some points
and then go on his holidays for four weeks and
do some training and then come back for Austria and
be ready to go.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
It is definitely going to be full on and I
fully jumped the gun there talking about Bruno when we
still have.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Heaps to catch up on from this weekend.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
But I want to talk about Luca Marini because for me,
just a phenomenal ride. You think it's his first Grand
Prix back after that nasty accident. He had well training
first to zook. You know, he was in a hospital
bed in Japan for so long and then he's come
back and you could see that camera after Sunday's Grand Prix.
You could see him just wincing in pain and the
(29:12):
fact that okay, he's not fully one hundred percent, but
you had to be on your bike at the end
of the day. You just had to ride the track
as you could cross that finish line. And he didn't
finish last.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
He was six.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
He was okay, twenty four seconds behind Marquez, but he
was six. He wasn't down with Alex Renz who was
forty seconds behind.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Well, and for him to come back this is we
know that it's not the highest speed track on the calendar,
Saxon Ring, but it's so random in that the configuration
of it, and you're hanging off the left side of
the bike the entire time. He was actually getting sore
on the right side of his body because he was
sitting in a different position to try and compensate for
the fact that his body's not really in any sort
of condition to do thirty laps around a track like that.
(29:57):
It's amazing what adrenaline does. And you give a guy
a chair as to you know, if you were telling
him that he was going to finish sixth and he
was going to do thirty laps and how sorry it
was going to be. If you told him before the race,
he'd say, no, thanks, I don't really fancy that. But
there's nothing like the smell of competition and getting back
into it so hugely commendable for him to be able
to clearly push through the pain barrier and come back.
(30:18):
It sounded like he probably came back a little bit
earlier than most people were expecting. But again, it's one
of those things like if he gets to through these
two rounds, doesn't hurt himself, can reset over the summer break,
but given what he's gone through in the last couple
of months. That was a really really brave effort by
Let's not forget he's a writer who's out of contract
at the end of this year, and I reckon if
(30:39):
he had the comfort of a contract for next year,
I don't reckon. That's a race that you do. Maybe
you might sit out for another round or two. It's like,
you know what, I'll come back after the break. I'll
be good. He needs to get back and show what
it is that he can do, be it for Honda
or for someone else who would like to employ him.
And coming back and doing that when you're so clearly
injury compromised, like big tick from me. It was a
really really impressive effort.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Have you heard is Luca going to compete in the
Suzuka eight Hour? Have you heard any updates on that?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
My understanding is that he will. I think when you've
got a chance to ride for a Japanese manufacturer at Suzuka,
that's not something you take lightly. So he'll clearly still
be there. I mean, look, it's the funny thing. It's
an the eight Hours. It is a true endurance test, obviously,
but it's a very different style of riding and you're
sharing the bike with two other riders, But to ride
for a Honda team at Honda owns Suzuka at such
(31:28):
a prestigious event, like you would not miss that for
the world. I mean, we obviously know Jack Miller's doing it,
but my understanding is that he's going to be there
because you don't put all that effort in to go
along and go through all of the training and how
particular it is to race it that particular track. But
my understanding is that it will be Zako and Marini
and Miller that will all beyond the grid start of August,
and you.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Guys can catch the Suzuka eight Hour on both Fox
Sports and ko all the race.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The whole eight hours is going to be broadcasted live.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So I mean, if you want to sit on the
sofa for eight hours and watch some rotorbikes go around Telly,
by all means do it. Otherwise you can catch it
up when suits you. But you mentioned Jack Miller there.
Let's talk about Jack because you wrote a really interesting piece.
Now we know that Jack's up a contract at the
end of this year, we know Top Racks sign with
Prama High. Everything like that there's your shot. Take it
(32:18):
if you're playing along. But let's look at Jack's results
from the weekends, because you told me a P five
from Jack that was the best sprint result he has
since last year?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Did you say Austria last year? So it was his
best sprint that he's had in the last twenty So
that's going back to Austria in August last year. So
he'd only scored one point in the sprints the entire year,
which is at Silverstone before last Saturday. And the really
key point here is that we know we're coming to
this crunch time here where Yamaha have said we want
to make a decision on who's going to be top
(32:52):
rax teammate by the summer break. Now, the summer break
starts on Monday, basically, so one day after the Czech
Republic Grand Prix. Jack picked a really really good time
to have his best weekend of the season and scored
thirteen points over the weekend. That's his strongest single weekend
of the season. Finished eighth in the Grand Prix. Obviously
stayed on which many people didn't, which was super important.
(33:14):
But it was more the fact that you look at
the two people that are potentially in the frame to
deny him that place. At Pramat Gamaha, he was ahead
of Miguel Olivera in every single on track session for
the entire weekend. Jack made Q two. Olivera did not.
He was well behind Jack in the sprint and then
he crashed out super early in the Grand Prix. So
Jack had that covered for the entirety of the weekend.
(33:36):
The other name that had been floated around, which I
mentioned in the piece you just referenced there was There's
been a lot of buzz about Diogo Marrera coming up
through Moto two for a lot of obvious reasons. He's
clearly really talented, he's clearly really fast. He has an
association with Yamaha Brazil from a lot he trains on
Yamaha bikes, and he's back home in Brazil, and of
course we have a Brazilian Grand Prix next year, so
you know there's a lot of boxes being ticked for
(33:58):
a young, up and coming rider. And when Yamaha started
this second team, it's a bit like we see it
in Formula One with Red Bull and whatever. The second
team racing balls this year is being called. The second
team is almost like a proving Ground training school to
bring young guys in to potentially elevate them to the
main team, and because Pramak Yamaha was new this year,
(34:18):
they went with a couple of thirty year olds because
they are available and they needed data and they needed information.
The long term future of that team for me is
to bring younger riders through to see if they've got
what it takes to step up to the main Yamaha team.
So you're not going to have a pair of thirty
year olds in there for the long long term, short
term this is what plays to Jack's favor, but also
short term. Marera did I don't know how you feel
(34:42):
about this. That Moto iiO race on Sunday at Saxon Ring,
he showed you why he's probably going to be in
Motor GP. He also showed you why he's probably not
going to be in Motor GP yet because he was
twenty fifth on the grid where he screwed up qualifying
in the rain, and he was awesome in that Grand Prix.
It was like watching twenty twelve Via and Mark Marquez
in Moto two is just carving through guys and all
(35:04):
of a sudden you look up and you go, oh
my god, he's fourth and there's still plenty of laps
to go in the race. And then he came off
second best in a bit of a skirmish with Jake
Dixon for third, and then went off onto the grass
and pulled straight back onto the circuit, not really looking
at where he was going or what was coming up
behind him, and David Altso ran absolutely full speed, never
checked up straight into the back of him. I'm far
(35:27):
too old and cynic all these days to get too
excited about crashes all things like that, but that literally
got me out of my seat with my hand over
my mouth, going, oh my god, that's like an aeroplane
accident because you don't see crashes like that. They are
so lucky, the pair of them that they didn't sustain
major injuries. And Marrera has been hit with a pit
lane start for this week's Moto two race at the
(35:48):
Czech Republic, and I reckon that's pretty lenient, quite frankly,
because he did an absolutely crazy thing that endangered himself
and another rider, and I wouldn't have minded them parking
him for a race and said sorry, you're not racing
at Bruno next weekend. That's just absolutely crazy. So I
think in one Moto two race we saw the speed
(36:10):
and the decisiveness and the ability that the guy's got
which makes him look like a murder GP rider in
the future. We also saw a completely stupid crash where
it probably shows you that that future might be twenty
twenty seven or twenty eight or whatever that's going to be,
which in a very long winded way, which if you've
read my story, it was very long winded. Everything aligned
this weekend to me, I reckon that Jack Miller has
(36:32):
one hand and four fingers on a murder GP contract
with promat Gamahah next year, and it would not surprise
me if at all, if that gets announced at Bruno
this weekend.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I think, Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on
the head.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I completely agree with everything you just said that the
Diego Morera thing. Let's move on to Moto two because
we've pretty much wrapped up GP there. But let's talk
about Moto two and then let's come back to Diego Mora.
But Jake Dixon was on pole jumped the start. Oh
and then once you saw it and he knew straight away, right,
(37:05):
you could just see him shaking his head. Then he
had that small collision with Jake into turn one, so
then Sena got that double long lap penalty. Then as
the race progress, let's then go obviously that incident with
Marrera happened.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
I think I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I think Marrera, you can just tell he's still a teenager,
you're a young adult. Like he needs to get that
experience because he's only been in the World Championship, the
Moto GP World Championship for a few years now, right,
so he's come up from Junior GP. I think that
he needs to still get a bit more of that
(37:46):
thorough experience before you do go.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Into Moto GP.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
I don't think we're ever going to see another Jack
Miller go from Moroto three straight up to Moto GP,
because I think you have to do you have to
do your exams, you have to past the test and
then you'll go up right.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
But for me, in Moto.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Two, the fact that Aaron Connett still finished in the
top ten and you see him in pain, I mean
Saxon Ring and the crashes and the fact of like
the red flag and everything, and you could hear Barry
Belts and Jake Dixon being like wipe all out the
red flag. You know, I will saving my tires until
(38:28):
the end. But when you saw that camera on Aaron Connett,
in him wincing in pain or you could feel it.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I could feel it through the TV map.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Yeah, that was a monster, monster crash. I was pretty
surprised he even race, quite frankly, but we know he's
pretty tough and he's certainly not one who's going to
be backwards in a battle. That was hugely impressive. I mean,
the red flag. No one likes to see a race
stop with a red flag, let's be perfectly honest. But
we know that there's world TV time schedules to keep
and that sort of thing, and you know, by the
(38:58):
time they would have cleaned everything up and re started
the race for what two laps at the end, it
was probably not going to be worth it for everyone involved.
So that was a shame tactically for some of these
guys that were saving tires, but probably the correct decision.
But I must admit there was a part of me
when I mean the sometimes with these jump starts they
look a little bit marginal. That was so not marginal
by ages on Sunday, unfortunately, and as soon as that happened.
(39:19):
There was a part of me that literally pushed the
chair out from the desk and just put their head
down and went, well that's the end of that then,
And I mean it's the way it worked out. He
managed to get back through and at least score some points,
but you could just see on the rundown to term
one he was absolutely filthy with himself because I think
he knew he had the pace to probably finish on
the podium. So that's definitely one that got away for him.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, so soon I finished eleventh, and I'm just looking
at the results. Seven writers crashed out of Moto two,
so we had eight and a Moto GP and obviously
X four that didn't start, and then we had seven
writers crash out of Moto two. Then let's go to
Moto three, our favorite, where it's the fifteen or so
(40:01):
writers in one group going into turn one together a
lap after lap. Munios finished first ahead of Gears and Rueida.
Now Matt for me, Ruaida, he is missed a consistency
this year. It's not always about winning the race, it's
about banking those points. It's like the it's the Peko
(40:22):
Bagnyaya version of when Peco was trying to get the
championship right.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, yeah, he's read the book on how you build
a championship. And I use the word build because it's
not about getting like one or two headline results and
then being nowhere. He's always there and thereabouts. He'll win
races when he can, but he'll bank good points when
he won't, and that's how you build a championship over
twenty two rounds. I'm frankly not surprised at all to
see him move his way towards the front of the
(40:48):
group and be there when it matters towards the end
of the race. But I guess the fun thing for
us was that, you know that front group of about
eight or nine that broke away at the end. It
was nice to see both see both ossies in that
shot and you look at them going, Okay, they're in
with a chancey, they're right in the train. And to
see both Joe Kelso and Jacob Rolston particularly have strong
results was nice because that was a no holds barred race.
(41:10):
There's Moto three years in most places, but at the
Saxid Ring, My.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
God, yeah no, like you said, so, Jacob Wilstone was
pa across the line, Joe Kelso six and our key
we across the Pond Cormack Buchanan.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
He was a top ten his.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Best results so far in the World Championship. So yeah,
it was nice to see the guys from down Under
and obviously New Zealand representing us and being closer to
the front. And I think for Jacob just to touch
on that this is the confidence he needs. We knew
in I think it was Migello where he was strong
there and then he had that technical issue and wasn't
(41:48):
able to finish the race. You could see that really
got to him and I think he needs this boost
of this top ten. While okay on paper it's only
a PA, I think for him it's that set because
he is going into the second part of the year.
He doesn't have a contract for next year, he is
with Red Bull, Katim Tech three, the pressure everything starting
(42:09):
the season a few races late, everything's adding up. I
think he needed that PA to boost him for the
rest of the season.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
And it's a nice base, like it's a platform which
you can build, like this is all you want to
sort of wrap up this first half of the season.
A couple of decent results. I mean, he gained ten
places in the race from where he started, which is
pretty impressive in itself, but just moving steadily forward and
we know there's a good rider in there. Like you said,
there's been so many things that have tripped him up
this year that's been difficult. It feels like he's been
sort of swimming upstream for the whole year to try
(42:38):
and get back to where he wanted to be at
the start of it. So if this is the first
building plot for that, then that's terrific. But yeah, I
just enjoyed seeing both OSSI's in the front group.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
So as we mentioned a little bit earlier when I
was really excited to talk about Juai mantine A Moto
GP heads Sabruno next weekend of the first time since
twenty twenty, I was looking back at some old footage
for a sports socials earlier today, and like I said,
Juan Miir was on the Yamaha and even like the
previous races where Lorenzo and Rossi and whatnot, like Bruno's
(43:11):
a pretty iconic track that's been on the Moto GP calendar,
says Shane that it hasn't been on for a few
years now coming back there. It's resurfaced now and this
is where I'm starting to think, Okay, how's he going
to play out this weekend? Matt, and I want to
get your opinion on this because we've got so many
rookies in the Moto GP paddock now Moto GP grit
who've never ridden there. Yeah, absolutely, or on a METOGP bike.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
But then you've got Mark Marquez, Alex Runs, juanmir All,
these guys who've ridden there on past GP bikes, but
the track's been resurfaced. How do you think that's going
to play out and we're going to see the veterans
exceeding quite early on in the or do you think
it's just going to be an even playing field.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
The one name that you didn't mention there and he
never gets to run on this podcast because you've been
kind of invisible all year. The last rider to win
when we went there for MotoGP was Brad Binder on
a case And you forget that was such a strange
season twenty twenty because it was round three, but it
was about August because we went race the first six
months of the year, there was no one there. It
was a really really strange one. It's the last time
we went to Bruneau. It's obviously it's usually such a
(44:13):
vibrant race. It's such a massive crowd that turns up there,
so to see them racing around that awesome, big open
circuit with no one there was really weird. Yeah, been
to the most recent winner there, bizarrely, not someone we've
talked about very much on the pod this year. But
getting back to what you just said, then, I think
guys who've got motor GP reps around there are going
to start with a significant advantage because we're not going
(44:34):
back to the same Bruno because if you know, after
the teams had tested there the other week, they reckon
that the lap times might be about two seconds faster.
And that's not a slow track to start with. It's
a proper iconic motor GP track. I'm super glad we've
found a way to get back there because you know
those big, wide open tracks with massive crowds, and the
thing I love about Bruno it's so wide as a track,
(44:58):
so it's not just one line into corners. You'll see
guys fan out into the breaking zones and it's a
track where you can pass and repass. It's a track
that invites fights. It's one of the great things about
that particular layout, So it's one of the best layouts
on the calendar. It's going to be a top five
layout on the calendar. It's really good that they found
a way to find the money to get the thing
(45:19):
resurfaced and get it back on the calendar. I'm just
really looking forward to see bikes on that circle again
because it's one of the best ones and it always
throws up good races. But going back to what you
were saying, I think experience counts. I think guys who've
been there before on motor GP Machinery are going to
start with a pretty significant advantage.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Well, Bruno is up this weekend, like we just said,
and you guys can catch all the action live on
Fox Sports and KO big thanks to the team as
Shannon's Insurance for sponsoring the Pittok podcast. If you want
to read any of Math's articles that we spoke about
or the ones he's got coming up, which he was
telling me before there's something pretty cool coming out at
(45:57):
the time of this podcast as well, you can head
to foxsports dot com dot au, Forward Slash Motorsport or
you can follow us on socials at Fox Motorsport on
all of the platforms YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter. We
do live updates as well for the race, so if
you can't watch it live, you can follow along there.
But from Matt Clayton and myself, Rinita.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Vermullen, that's all for now, and we're going to be
back real soon with more motor GP. Pittalk Well
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Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com