How did the riders rate in the 2nd Qatar race? Powered by nearly enough diesel generators to charge 2 Tesla cars at the same time, the floodlights turned night into day. But who shone brightly on track?
Top ten finishers rated out of 10
Fabio Quartararararo – 10 out of 10
A dazzling win after overtaking half the field, and a far better performance than Qatar 1. The improvement is believed to be because he spent the week between races repeatedly watching the instructional videos on Sylvain Guintoli’s YouTube channel so he could “learn ‘ow to use ze brake and ze srottle like ze MotoGP rideurs”.
Johann Zarco – 9 out of 10
Another great race puts MotoGP’s sulkiest rider in the lead of the world championship. It was also a historic day for his nation. The last time a pair of Frenchmen elbowed their way to the front of the pack to claim 1st and 2nd spots was on the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940.
Jorge Martin – 9 out of 10
Outstanding stuff from the young Spanish rookie. Of course, now he has to keep up this level of performance. Some riders shine brightly as rookies only to become annoyingly random as they gain experience, like his fellow podium-dwellers Zarco and Quartarararo for example.
Alex Rins – 8 out of 10
Good solid race to finish just off the podium and beat his team-mate.
Maverick Vinales – 7 out of 10
Couldn’t repeat last week’s victory, but going from 1st to 5th is far better than his usual habit of going from 1st to 12th from one race to the next.
Pecco Bagnaia 7 out of 10
Outbraked himself into the first turn trying to make up for the poor start he made after he couldn’t get the “shapeshifter” suspension lowering device to engage. (Sooner or later there’ll be a big turn 1 pile-up caused by these stupid things).
Joan Mir – 6 out of 10
Had an epic whinge after the race. Really needs to learn that if you don’t want Jackass Miller to assault you on track, it’s best not to ram your front tyre into his thigh bone while going for a gap so totally non-existent that even the most optimistic Moto3 wildcard would never claim to have seen it.
Brad Binder – 9 out of 10
Crossed the line in 8th place less than 5 seconds from the winner, with the other KTM bikes finishing in 15th, 19th and a gravel trap. Somehow managed to hang on to the bike despite having to run the ludicrous twin-compound, asymmetric medium front tyre, which made tipping into a right-hander as frightening and dangerous as a Jack Miller overtake.
Jackass Miller – 5 out of 10
Another poor race from the factory Ducati rider. However, it was livened up by his clashes with Joan Mir. Outback ockers like Jackass aren’t exactly known for letting insults slide. In fact they’re renowned for drunkenly leaping into billabongs to viciously punch any 15 foot crocodile that looks at them funny. So it wasn’t that surprising to see him try to run Joan Mir into the side of a marshals’ post in a fit of rage. Made such vigorous obscene gestures at Mir on the slow-down lap that he was forced to undergo arm pump surgery after the race.
Aleix Asparagus – 7 out of 10
Not much he could do once he was sucked into the pack on an Aprilia too gutless to overtake with.
Selected other riders
Valentino Rossi – 1 out of 10
In a pre-season interview, Bradley Smith claimed that Aprilia should clone him so that one Bradders could ride in the races and the other one could do the testing. It turns out that Bradley actually did clone himself. Then he stuck a curly hair wig on the clone and taught it to hang around with Uccio and say, “I amm-a not verry ‘appy. I struggle a lotta with-a the rubber-a”.
Freddie Spencer – 9 out of 10
When Jackass Miller brutally rammed Joan Mir, Fast Freddie leapt forward to study his race monitors. Then, seeing that Zarco was hundreds of metres away from the collision, he sank back into his seat and said, “Heck, if Ah cain’t penalize Zarco, I ain’t fixin’ not to send no dang smellhound across no bayou after the trail o’ nobody on account o’ nothin’ nohow, y’all.” The other race stewards agreed that they couldn’t possibly argue with that kind of Cajun-spiced logic, so no action was taken. This has led to some truly hilarious complaints from everybody involved. A highly entertaining decision from Freddie “Magic 8 Ball” Spencer.
Last and by all means least, brought to you by popular demand:
Lorenzo Savadori – 0.6 out of 1.0
Finished the race 10 seconds faster than last time out, which is a much better improvement than Valentino “Italian Bradders” Rossi managed, so that’s something at least.
(Note that Savadori is marked out of 1.0 rather than 10. It would be futile to mark him out of 10 given that he is basically a mid-level Superstock 1000 rider. He probably still would be if the “Stock Thou” category hadn’t been abandoned due to lack of interest and because even the best riders weren’t good enough to step up to World Supers).