Ola, Gringos! It is I – no, not LeClerc from ‘Allo ‘Allo but someone even more impressive – your favourite motorcycle racer, racing driver, team owner, lover of supermodels, beater of donkeys and internet superstar Jorge 99! (‘Allo ‘Allo is of course considered among the finest TV shows of all time in my native Mallorca, portraying as it does with uncanny accuracy those two most detested of all races – the filthy, brie-stained, snail-quaffing French surrender artists; and the snooty, tea-bothering, sexually repressed English rossbiffs. And not to mention it starred Vicki Michelle as Yvette, who I would gladly have allowed to liberally lube up my Akrapovic).
Anyway enough of that; I have once again deigned to take a short break from my superstar lifestyle and grace you with my presence, and to allow you to bask in my unparalleled racing wisdom. So please join me as I examine the grid for the upcoming 2022 MotoGP ‘championship’ (obviously the word championship is not really applicable, as without me there is nobody worthy of being called a champion – I have lobbied that Caramel Esmerelda fellow on numerous occasions to demand that the series be labelled instead the ‘Jorge 99 Tribute MotoGP Parade of Second Raters and Back Markers’ but he must be extremely busy, whenever I reach his secretary he never has time to take my calls). Oh well, it is his loss.
So, once again the riders are getting ready to line up on the grid in Qatar for the season opener (probably a good job as it’s now pretty much the only country on Earth that can afford to keep the lights on for more than ten minutes in the evenings). Who will end the year with the hollow, worthless trinket that I wouldn’t give space to in my discarded chorizo skin cupboard? Could it be:
POLIO ASPARAGUS?
This fellow spent last year trundling round at a pace akin to Uccio on his school sports day, gasping along at the back while breathing into a paper bag and pretending to have sprained his ankle. Was completely rubbish on the Honda that I meticulously developed to perfection – has already said that the bike is much improved now (clearly a lie), so expect lots of back-pedalling by the third race and Carl Fogarty levels of blaming the most ludicrously obscure bits of equipment for his terrible results (the DID sticker on the swingarm was flapping around in the breeze too much and slowing me down, etc. etc.) A rating of two dead donkeys – freshly chucked out of a bell tower – out of ten for Polio.
MAVERICK VINALES?
Maverick – or Goose as he likes to be known – is everyone’s favourite bipolar bar of fruit and nut. I will admit that on a good day he is amazing, perhaps a third as fast as me; unfortunately for Mav those days are about as common as spotting Lord Lucan rogering Shergar through a telescope on Halley’s Comet. And to make matters worse he has now stuck his flag in the Aprilia camp, to race a bike that looks like it fell off the ugly tree into a skip fire. A generous four donkeys for Mav, let’s hope he doesn’t decide to ram the Priller into the packed grandstands at the first sign of a bad performance.
TAKAAKAAKAAKI NAKATOMI?
The anonymous Japanese (has anyone actually seen him without a helmet on? Can we be certain he isn’t actually Bradley Smith sporting some offensive oversized comedy teeth and a Monkey Magic haircut, still desperately trying to get that ever-elusive top fifteen finish?) will continue to be polite, anonymous and underwhelming while towing the evil Honda company line and finishing outside of the top six. Three donkeys.
FABIO QUETZLCOATL?
Fresh off the back of his worthless 2021 ‘title’ (honestly, they may as well decide it by tossing a coin and etch the trophy with ‘best runner-up to Jorge 99’), the flying Frenchie has defied convention by being a) French, b) somewhat liable and c) not nauseatingly arrogant; I personally think this is just a trick and that he is actually Mallorcan. Anyway while Fab’s talent is no longer in any doubt, the ropey Yamaha is – currently it is tripping the top speed traps at a slightly lesser pace than that time I took the hot dog cart round the track as one of my victory celebrations, before I ditched them as that scumbag Rossi had started copying me in a vain attempt to come off as having some sort of personality. Five donkeys for Fab.
JACK MILLER?
Ah, Jack – everyone has a bit of a soft spot for the Antipodean wonder; after all is is hard to dislike the atontado kid in the class, no? Once again riding the Ducati that I honed to perfection, the Bolognese Bandits – yes, that kind – will be looking to Jack to blast his way to a dominant title. Unfortunately I think, much like last year, they could be in for a bit of a wait; after all Jack considers it a win to get his boots on the right feet before the race (the Jimmy Cricket-style comedy ‘L’ and ‘R’ have been a big help here, bumping his success rate up to a good 70%). If Jack doesn’t start to show some results I think he will be finding a horse’s head in his bed pretty soon; although being Australian he will probably just crack open a tinnie and try and punch it into submission. Only two and a half donkeys for Jack.
FRANCESCO BAGLADY?
A bit of an unknown this guy, ending last year with some spectacular results (and making Jack look even more of a tonto in the process); but has been nowhere in this year’s testing. Will he be able to bag an elusive title for Ducati, allowing them to for once actually get away with acting like they are winners (even though it was in 1986 or something that that crying enfermizo Stoner actually won for them, before tragically exploding in the Bologna hospitality suite Mr Creosote-style after getting too close to Ciabatta’s Munch Bunch yoghurt)? I very much doubt it, unless he takes my advice and insists that Ducati bring a choice of seventeen different hand-crafted titanium tank braces to every race at a cost of £22,000 each. A benevolent five donkeys.
And lastly, MARC MARQUEZ?
After spending the last two years trying to fake illness harder than a lifelong DSS sablista at his last back-to-work interview before the cheques stop coming, Marc has finally decided to bother turning up for a race. Assuming he doesn’t fall off thirty times in practice and smash another bit of his puny body to oblivion, things could actually be looking good for the workshy Spaniard; his eyes have been glued back into place (even if they do pop out under hard braking and bounce up and down in his helmet like a pair of 80s comedy glasses) and his shoulder has been Meccano’d up to near-Crutchlow levels of reinforcement. And the evil HRC have ploughed more money into sorting out the turgid pig of a bike that Marquez ‘developed’ for them than Rossi wasted on hiring escorts in a hopeless attempt to convince us all that he isn’t a maricón. So assuming he can finish a race it could be that Marquez is actually looking good for this year’s title. Six donkeys for the toothy one.
And that, mis amigos, is all of my precious time I am willing to waste on you for now; let’s be honest without me to cheer on nobody really cares who wins anyway. So adios for now, I am off to tend to my YouTube channel to see if I can finally get more views than that skateboarding weasel.