Welcome to our new feature, which compares and contrasts 2 riders after each round to see how they fared. This idea is “inspired” by the ancient historian Plutarch and his one on one comparisons of famous Greeks and Romans. Using Plutarch’s format means that MotoGPNews is now one of the most snooty and highbrow sites on the internet. Unfortunately, it also means that we can’t sue Mat Oxley when he rips off this idea for his next book.
Qatar
As usual, the MotoGP series started off in the dodgy Middle-Eastern hellhole of Qatar, which is now celebrating the fact that it officially has a better human rights record than Canada. (Entirely due to the collapse of freedom in the seal-clubbing, trucker-jailing, frozen hellhole of Canada rather than any improvement in Qatar’s appalling record).
Bastianini Versus Bananas
In this episode, we will be comparing two Italians. Eneo “What kind of name is Eneo?” Bastianini versus Pecco “How the hell can Pecco be an abbreviation of Francesco?” Bananas. Eneo “The Beast” Bastianini won the race, while Pecco Bananas ended up trudging through a gravel trap with a big, fat DNF.
Two Ducatis
Both Bastianini and Bananas are Ducati riders, but they don’t have equal machinery. Eneo is on last year’s bike whereas Pecco is on the brand new Bolognese Bucking Bronco. The trouble is that this year’s Ducati seems to suck donkey balls compared to last year’s machine.
At the end of last year, the 2021 Ducati was incredible. If it was any more of a missile we’d have to export it to Ukraine to help them shoot down Rooskies. But the 2022 Ducati is a complete mess. The factory team are using a mixture of 2021 and 2022 parts in the motor and clearly don’t know that the hell they’re doing. So Pecco has a nasty engine that can’t be trusted or understood (kinda like a Rooskie, or a journalist), while Bastianini has a tried and tested engine that damn near won the title last year.
Development
Pecco Bananas spent the practise sessions at Qatar trying to develop an ill-handling, horrible new bike, while Bastianini was cruising around on a well-developed machine, just making a few tweaks here and there.
Ducati desperately need to develop their crummy new machine, so they had Pecco out there testing random parts in all the practise sessions. Bastianini just had to fine-tune an already great set-up. Pecco spent plenty of time complaining about this afterwards.
In the race, Pecco rammed another Ducati then spent the rest of the day complaining bitterly about the development of the bike. So Ducati thought they had hired another Rossi, but it turned out that they had hired a cross between teammate-ramming lunatic Andrea Iannone and Casey “the whingeing bush kangaroo” Stoner.
Fairytale
Eneo Bastianini was racing in memory of his team founder, the late, great, total legend Fausto Gresini. Any good result would be a hugely emotional fairytale that brought everyone to tears, like when Hansel and Gretel hilariously set fire to the wicked witch. On the other hand, Pecco Bananas was simply racing for the honour of an evil, German-owned, rulebook bending factory. Clearly, Bastianini was a more popular winner than Pecco would’ve been if he’d won the race instead of ramming his innocent comrade Jorge Martin with a terrifying high-speed assault that left the Spaniard flying through a gravel trap into the darkness.
The Elephant in the Room (or the best friend of the elephant-sized Uccio anyway): Valentino Rossi.
Italian racers all idolize Valentino Rossi. All of them except Bastianini. He has nothing to do with the GOAT (Goatest Of All Time) Valentino Rossi and his friend the BOAT (Blubberiest Of All Time) Uccio. On the other hand, Pecco Bananas is one of Rossi’s best pupils.
So this race was a huge black eye for Rossi, and a huge feather in the cap for… well… not Rossi.
The Future
Will Bastianini and Bananas be fighting for the championship? Probably not. As time goes on, Pecco’s bike will get better and better. Eneo’s bike will stay the same, because Ducati have no interest in developing last year’s bike and they seriously hate it when random satellite riders make their expensive factory riders look like a bunch of incompetent, moaning muppets. We can also expect Bastianini’s bike to mysteriously lose about 20kph worth of straight line speed at the next round after the Ducati technicians plug their laptops into it.