If history has taught us anything it’s that the proud nation of France doesn’t have a good track record at putting up a fight against Germany. Within seconds of the Hun firing up their armoured vehicles the brave cheese eaters would be cowering in the attic of the Moulin Rouge writing letters to other nations to help them out…and then sulking about fishing rights with those nations afterwards.
So the chances of the beret brigade defeating the Krauts in their own backyard seems less likely than all the British riders staying upright…
Le Battle of the Sausagering
French Heroes
Fabio Quartararararo
Most French infantrymen can be identified by their sunburned armpits – but not Fabio. He’s strong, brave and most bizarrely very likeable.
In le Battle of the Sausagering Quartararararo was unstoppable. Starting from second on the grid he bullied his way past the Krauten-allie Italian Pecco Bagnaia into the first corner. The Ducati rider responded using superior horsepower down the start-finish straight to take the lead the next lap only for the brave Fabio to hit back immediately with a counterstrike.
Pecco answered Fabio a lap later, in true Italian fashion, by falling off and waving his arms around like it was someone else’s fault.
From there Lieutenant Quartararararo was relentless driving unopposed through Germany without resistance.
Johann Zarco
Unlike Quartararararo Zarco is a more French style Frenchman being quite moody when things aren’t going his way (see his tear-fuelled KTM career for further details). That said he is still very popular which again buffs against the common onion-clad stereotype.
Maybe in this brave new Woke world other websites should stop the tiresome typecasting of the French as being smelly, selfish cowards who spend all their days in cafes moaning about the fishing laws in the English Channel? Who are we to judge that Switzerland may not have an army but the French surrendered to them anyway?
Back to Zarco and he was able to show a clean set of moccasins to his rivals following home his Lieutenant to earn a silver medal of honour. In the end both he and Fabio ran riot through the Black Forrest unopposed to taste the victory Champaign and horsemeat sandwiches.
Defeated Germans
Stefan Bradl
Poor Stefan was the home-crowd’s only rider in MotoGP. That’s like having Bradley Smith as your only baritone vocalist. But Bradl’s problems were to get even wurst.
Germany is usually keen to get Japan to try to help them out. Usually unsuccessfully. So it was again as poor Stefan was forced to ride the Japanese built Honda.
The HRC machine is an absolute nail. Seemingly designed by five people who never met the bike is average a few things and terrible at everything else. The Honda fanboys with their Civics and matching lawnmowers have all mysteriously sloped off the MotoGP internet chat boards.
Up until 2021 Honda, in no small part thanks to Marc Marquez, had won every race at the Sausagering since 2010. This year, amusingly, was the first time they failed to score a single point in a GP race for over 40 years.
But there was a new problem this weekend in die Heimat. Overheating. To save costs it looks like HRC have been using discarded Samsung chargers for their electronics causing massive heat build ups. Poor Stefan felt like he was on the wrong end of a Flammenwerfer 35 suffering burns to his arms and legs during the race.
All of this meant that the German rider’s pace was slower than that of the leading Moto2 riders. We just need Fernando Alonso yelling “GP2, GP2!!” over the radio again.
The crowd
The German GP is always held as close to the summer solstice as possible. This allows for the best possible natural lighting for Herman and his friends* to clamber to vantage points at 4am and reserve their spot with their government issued Schumacher towels. One false move at this time of morning and it’s spilt schmorgurken and a grazed kniescheibe for the rest of the day.
So with their Kartoffelpuffer ready the loveable Germans were all set to watch a great day’s racing. Only they didn’t get that. What they got were three boring races.
Even the Moto3 race, which is famed for its close action, multiple crashes and random long lap penalties didn’t really deliver any excitement.
All in all the racing was very poor.
TV Company
The country of Germany runs efficiently and humourlessly to a strict set of rules. Everything is on a timetable and every timetable is rigid. Nothing upsets a German more than when foreigners don’t then obey these rules and run amok with the efficient scheduling.
The MotoGP race itself ran perfectly to the predicted time parameters. But then Jack Miller and Quartararararo ruined that.
Jack was first. He had an excellent race finishing third despite being given a long lap penalty. The loveable Australian, who looks up and down when crossing a road, had seen a sign in the crowd earlier in the weekend asking for his gloves. Miller finished the race then spent the next ten minutes riding down various service roads to get to the fan and pass him his gloves!! It was a highlight of a race mainly filled with lowlights.
Not to be outdone though Fabio was next running topless, as usual, around the track handing out various race clothing items like a MotoGP père Noël. All when he should have been doing his 47.2 second interviews.
As great as this was the German TV producers were sweating Apfelschorle. This wasn’t on the carefully crafted itinerary that had been saved in both hard copies and in the cloud. The extra frivolities were causing a serious overrun. And this overrun would then cause a scheduling discrepancy to the popular Bavarian TV show “Bademode Fabrik” – a formal soap opera based around a factory that produces those tight, black swimming shorts that only German men still wear at the beach. Worse still this was a special show where the team test the shorts by playing that annoying, antisocial bat and ball game on the beach taking up far too much room and irritating everyone with the none-stop sound of bat on ball.
* German Friends: People they know