Winners
Ducati
The Italian firm hasn’t won the MotoGP championship since their success with man-child Casey Stoner. Since then their championship achievements have been drier than a Frenchman’s bath mat.
To try to end the drought Ducati threw more bikes at the situation. When that didn’t work they instead tried throwing even more bikes at the situation. For some reason that didn’t work so the crafty Italians had to revert to plan c) – throw yet more bikes at the situation.
But finally this new-old idea seems to be paying off. Only Quartararararo’s heroics stopped the Bolognaise based firm claiming the first 37th places on the grid at the Redbull Ring.
In the race, once all the riders who were going to fall off fell off, Ducati hogged 4 of the top 5 places. Again with only Quatararararo being the annoying garlic in the otherwise perfect gelato.
The championship
It’s looking like game on again. Bagnaia’s win was his third on the bounce and proves Ducati were absolutely right to look the other way when the Italian rider got arrested. 👍
Pecco is now the most winniest rider on the grid and has closed the gap to Fabio at the top to just 44 points.
Takaaki Nakagami’s crap bike
In Honda’s 2023 cull Nakagami’s head was set to be ‘released’ from his body by the spirit of Miyamoto Musashi. Alex Marquez will go. Pol Espargaro will go. So why not the equally rubbish Takaaki? Because of his crap Honda!
You see HRC need a token Jap in their team to keep the emperor happy. It’s a “hey look our own grown riders are just as good even if the results clearly state otherwise” move. Recently Nakagami has been their only choice – ‘the least limp noodle in the bowl’ to quote an oriental proverb.
That is until now. Ai Ogura is currently leading the Moto2 championship and would be an ideal replacement for the tired and bruised Taka. But Ai doesn’t want to move. Why? Because he’s seen how bad the Honda MotoGP heap is and has decided to stay in Moto2 for another season.
A brave and slightly dishonourable move. But one that looks like securing Nakagami’s token Honda ride for 2023.
Losers
Enea Bastianini
Bastianini’s known as a “Sunday man”. This means that he can’t usually be bothered trying until the race. But who are we to argue? Enea’s already won several races this season usually starting from mid-pack so clearly he likes to save all his brilliance just for race day – like Bradley Smith did…apart from the ‘race day’ bit.
So when the lazy Italian qualified on pole on Saturday the other riders were concerned that his race pace would be so good and that he’d finish so far ahead that he’d not only win but score a podium in the Moto2 race before.
But sadly for ‘La Bastard’ things didn’t go exactly to plan. With the other Ducati riders all keen to ‘show the upstart good’ Enea was shuffled down the order where he ended up in a scrap with his hated arch-rival Jorge Martin.
The battle ended with the Italian hitting his wheel on the inside of a kerb and ‘bending his rim out of shape’ – a description that bizarrely wouldn’t look out of place on Sete Gibernau’s medical history.
Fabio Quartarararo
Fabio’s ride in Austria was sensational. Even the Hitler-loving Austrian crowd were forced to put down their Käsespätzle and energy drinks to salute such bravery and brilliance from a Frenchman.
Quartarararararo’s problem is that he’s on the Yamaha – that was woefully slow on a painfully fast track. Each season the differential between the speeds seems to widen meaning poor Fabio has to work harder and harder to stay in the fight.
This time the Yamaha rider was forced to take it easy in the opening laps as he nursed in his harder tyres. But by the end he was flying and having to make some daring passes on the superior Ducatis with the knowledge that one false move would probably mean a triple-long lap penalty from Freddie ‘I saw it from a different angle’ Spencer.
It’s impossible to tell but the smart money would be that if the Frenchie was on a Ducati, Aprilia or even a Suzuki he’d have won the race and would be chewing on schnitzel before DUI Bagnaia would have crossed the line.
Joan Mir
According to Wikipedia Joan was once the MotoGP world champion when we weren’t looking. Those forgotten days seem long forgotten now after Mir suffered yet another horrific crash. The Spaniard is now set to miss the next race due to the ankle injury he picked up.
KTM
Last year KTM won the Austrian GP with Brad ‘one chemical accident away from being a Batman villain’ Binder. This year though the South African could only manage 7th. Meanwhile his teammate Miguel the Random Number Generator (MRNG) rolled a mundane 12th on his 25 sided dice.
It seems that KTM have a big problem. And that’s that they don’t have a big problem. If there was one area of their bike that was absolutely terrible then the KTM team could concentrate their efforts on that region. But, annoyingly, it’s not. The KTM is in fact just ‘slightly terrible’ in all areas. So how do you fix that? It would be like a plastic surgeon attempting to make Kurtis Roberts’ face TV-acceptable with just one operation.
The decent Binder brother spoke of KTM having ‘many things in the pipeline’…which probably means they don’t really have a clue and are trying anything and everything.
Honda
Luckily for KTM it could be worse. Step forward the big-spending, small-achieving wok-bangers HRC.
With each race that passes Honda seems to be dishonourably setting a new record of ‘worst Honda result’ since the dawn of time. If this wasn’t Honda’s most woefully embarrassing MotoGP result then it certainly was a podium finisher.
Alex Marquez was Honda’s top rider. Now read that again, slowly, and let that all sink in. The crappy-Marquez brother finished in 14th almost half a minute behind Bagnaia. Meanwhile Pol finished 16th and that German test chimp 17th just ahead of Nakagami’s 176th DNF of the season.
Honda have built an awful bike. In the past they were accused of building a bike that only Marc Marquez could ride. But they silenced those critics by building a bike that not even Marc Marquez could ride.
Great work.