Winners
Fabio Quartararararo
A few years ago the idea of a brave, likeable Frenchman winning our hearts and the MotoGP title seemed more preposterous than a Chinese man eating a wet bat and ruining everyone’s lives.
But here we are.
But it wasn’t smooth sailing for fab Fab in Misano. Torrential rain on the first two days meant he qualified in his lowest ever position as he gingerly rode around the track worrying someone would throw a bar of soap near him.
In the race Quartararararo calmly went about his business working his way to the front. To be fair it never once looked like he’d catch Bagnaia but the aim was to recover as many points as possible from a tricky starting position.
After working his way to fourth the Frenchman was soon able to toast his macaroons with delight as he spotted Bagnaia picking gravel out of his earhole. He was world champion! And fully deserved.
Marc Marquez
“One crash and his career is over” ❎
“He’ll never win another race” ❎
“He’ll never win a race in the dry” ❎
“He’ll never win on a clockwise track” ❎
“He’ll never win another championship” 🔲
It’s been a season of ups and a lot of downs for the Spanish Antichrist – with most of the downs ending up in the gravel. But his win last time out in Austin seemed to be a breakthrough.
The next ‘breakthrough’ was for him to win on a clockwise track…and he did. The haters claim he was gifted the win…which is as stupid as celebrating about getting an A on a blood test.
A 2022 championship contender? Definitely.
Enea Bastianini
Yet another podium from the rider we’d hardly heard of mid-season. His race pace was that of the front runners – but his qualifying pace was that of a ginger Oxford-based rider.
Still, very impressive
Maverick Vinales
With all the world championship shenanigans kicking off it was easy to miss Mav’s excellent race. After a slow start Top Gun finished the race in 8th position – just 0.2 seconds behind his far more ‘Aprilia experienced’ teammate Aleix Asparagus.
Danilo Petrucci
It was Petrucci’s birthday and he was having a good weekend. The torrential rain and his collapsed mass meant he was continuously troubling the top ten on the timing sheets. In fact the KTM in general was proving a wet-weather tool for everyone but Brad Binder’s hands.
Sadly the race was to turn bad faster than the lettuce in his fridge. Outgoing champion Joan Mir lost control of his Suzuki and collected poor Petrucci sending him into a deep crater in the gravel.
But did the portly Italian kick off with Mir and start throwing bits of broken carbon fibre and gravel at him? No, instead he politely shook hands and walked away. Proof that nice guys really do finish last.
There’s literally nothing to not like about Danilo – so he’s a winner.
Valentino Rossi
10th place would have been a disaster on home soil for Rossi a few years ago. However atherosclerosis and hypertension from one too many carbonaras has taken it’s toll in the past couple of seasons. So this result was a fine way to say goodbye to his fans.
Shame for them then that Marc Marquez won.
Losers
Joan Mir
Mir officially lost his championship crown in Misano. He bowed out from the top-step by having a howler of a weekend.
Joan qualified poorly 18th on the grid and then made that even worse by jumping the start. The Spaniard claimed that he ‘got confused’ on the grid with the various launch control procedures which is said to be similar to the 80’s issue of setting a VHS up to record something while you were out.
Worse was to come, however, once the race started. For his jump start Mir was given a long lap penalty once the stewards remembered who he was and had finished searching Wikipedia to see if he really was a world champion. But before Joan could take his penalty he fell off and collected the lovable garbage bag of yoghurt Danilo Petrucci with him.
A low-key and fitting end for the most forgettable world champion since Alex Criville.
Pecco Bagnaia
Mathematically he could win the championship but logically wasn’t ever going to. Despite that Bagnaia had once simple task – win the race. If the beard-shot Italian took victory then the championship would be carried over to the next round and we could again listen to the commentators explaining to us incorrectly all the permeations of the championship title.
Starting from pole and blasting away at the front it looked as if the plan was going perfectly. Then he fell off and suddenly the plan was going terribly. And the championship dream was over.
It’s hard to be too harsh on Pecco though. He’s the top Ducati rider and the only one able to step up and keep Quartarararo honest.
Jack Miller
The Jackass is a popular rider with the fans and the media. He’s probably not that popular, however, with his employers Ducati.
Miller had one job to do – finish behind Pecco so the points gap between his teammate and Quartarararo would be as large as possible. This would keep Ducati’s dying championship hopes on the life-support machine a little longer.
It was all going well until he fell off. Again.
The fall has now dropped him behind Johann Zarco on the Primark Ducati in the world standings with Marc Marquez lurking menacingly close.
Rossi’s telepathic skills
A few races ago the antique Italian claimed he used his telepathic skills to steer Bagnaia into to choosing the correct tyres. Bagnaia did and also won the race.
This time out Rossi was once again using cranium transmissions to guide the Ducati rider into making the correct tyre choice. Sadly it went horrendously wrong. His corrupted brainwaves caused Pecco to choose the hard front tyre which was the wrong choice and subsequently blamed for his crash.
No other rider but Miller used the hard front tyre – although it’s pretty unlikely the Australian had at any point any spare processing capacity for telepathy.
The booers
It’s a special kind of moronic fan with a certain degree of forehead slope that would boo a rider. That half-witted subset seem to crop up mainly in Italy for some reason.
Marquez was boo’d on the grid. A tactic that ultimately didn’t work out too well at all.