Winners
House of Habsburg
A second place ahead of his nearest challenger at COTA means the somehow-likeable Frenchman Fabio Quartarararo now has one sticky croissant on the MotoGP trophy. Fabio, as his lower jawline indicates, is a direct descendant of the Habsburg dynasty who once were one of the most prominent royal houses of Europe in the 2nd millennium.
Sadly thanks to dubious inbreeding and family splits the once powerful house had all but dissolved away by the 18th century.
However, thanks to some fantastic results and bare-chested antics, Quartarararo looks set to put House of Habsburg back on the tapestry and prove to all that mating of organisms closely related by ancestry isn’t necessary a bad thing.
World Superbikes
Motorcycle racing is often viewed by many literary herberts as being similar to the universal balance – as the dark energy of MotoGP pushes the racing into a more exciting universe the dark matter of World Superbike reigns it all back in. Where Bradley Smith sits in it all we’re not entirely sure.
But what we are sure about is last weekend the push of the energy and the pull of the matter swapped places. Like an 80s comedy.
World Superbikes was actually far more entertaining than MotoGP as hated rivals Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlıowsrfsdafrweyrethdsf battled for supremacy – resulting in a fair few skirmishes and gravel enriched fairings.
Artem Laguta
On a day when we’re struggling for positives let’s instead raise a glass of freshly squeezed Novichok to the new, and Russia’s first ever speedway world champion Artem Laguta.
It was a battle of the knocked-off Adidas tracksuits and dodgy accents as Russia took on Poland. In Poland’s corner we had Bartosz Zmarzlik – a rider with a voice so high he makes Michael Jackson sound like a baritone. Russia had the aforementioned Laguta.
The championship went down to the end of the final round where the Russian Artem beat Zmarzlik in front of a packed Polish crowd.
If there’s one thing Poland hates it’s not having cabbage in a meal. If there’s another it’s losing at their favourite sport – but being beaten by their ex-evil overlords and filthy commies the Russians? You can bet there were tears a plenty in their tripe soup that night.
Never really watched a speedway match? Here’s Laguta taking a GP win earlier in the year:
Losers
European bosses/managers: Sleep lag victims
If you were watching the race live in Europe then chances are you were settling down on the sofa in the evening expecting some entertainment. As we know MotoGP wasn’t the most entertaining of races. Indeed, as mentioned above, the World Superbike races were actually more entertaining – which gives you some idea to what we were working with.
Most of us fell asleep. And by the time we finally woke up it was actually time to go to sleep…but now we couldn’t. The peril of ‘sleep lag’.
Unable to get a proper night’s sleep a majority of European fans were forced to yawn their way through Monday doing the absolute minimum to get by. ‘Working from home’ staff took to the feather with their laptops conveniently claiming the internet was playing up.
Deniz Oncu
This season, probably more than ever, Moto3 has been utterly wild and reckless. Great for TV but somewhat less-so for the parents of the 15-year-olds banging fairings at 150mph.
Until this weekend Deniz Oncu’s main claim to fame in the GP paddock was that he’d managed to grow a lot in a year. However the Turk was about to become very famous very quickly.
During the race Oncu ran fellow lunatic Jeremy Alcoba off the road as the pack hurtled down the main back straight. Front wheel caught back and Alcoba was sent flying off with his bike left stranded in the race track.
Several unfortunate riders, including championship leader Pedro Acosta, hit the stationary bike and were sent flying through the air in such a violent manner that it’s impossible to make light of the situation. Thankfully everyone was able to walk away from the accident – but more through luck than anything.
Dorna had no option but to clamp down on Oncu and issued him a 2 race ban forcing him to stay at home selling fake Mulberry handbags from his father’s market stall. But if Jeremy Alcoba had stayed upright then chances are nothing would probably have been said – and that’s the worry.
This year we’ve seen an unfortunate and very worrying rise in teenage fatalities in motorcycle racing and
Dorna really need to take the lead and start clamping down on dangerous riding even when accidents don’t happen.
Marquez haters
It was a double blow in Austin for the haters of the Spanish Antichrist:
- Blow 1
Marquez is noted for being ‘rather good’ around COTA. He likes anti-clockwise tracks, he likes uneven surfaces and he loves tacos for breakfast. So there was always the fear that Marc would perform well in America.
And he did. Despite voodoo dolls dressed in Repsol gear been feverishly stabbed and thrown into the sand around the globe Marquez the elder cruised to an easy looking victory. Utter misery for the haters who are already running out of excuses to why Dorna are cheating and fabricating his results.
- Blow 2
A few races ago in Misano Marc used the Honda wildcard Kraut Stefan Bradl to tow him around and secure his position into Q2. The haters went stratospheric. They angrily jumped on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else where simpletons can create an account to furiously bash their keyboards claiming the Spaniard was the biggest cheater ever and that he should be destroyed in a blast furnace.
Back to Austin and that very same group of bitter blockheads quietly ignored Pecco Bagnaia being towed around by his teammate Jack Miller to claim pole…then waved through during the race. Not to mention fellow Ducati rider Jorge Martin conveniently running wide to let Bagnaia through.