Ola, campesinos! It is your old camarada Jorge Lorenzo, taking a short break from his spectacular life to bring you some expert insider MotoGP information. This will of course prove invaluable should you wish to waste some of your pitiful life savings betting on the various chumps who make up the grid these days; personally Jorge would rather set fire to a million Euros than fritter it away on any of this crop of losers (he would still have more millions left than you escoria will earn in a thousand lifetimes but we can’t all be global racing superstars, can we). I should point out that, as befits a global megastar such as himself, Jorge has decided to refer to himself in the third person from now on.
So sit back, relax and prepare to bask in the glory of Jorge’s peerless wisdom as he takes a break from supping Dom Pérignon from the navels of international supermodels, polishing his countless trophies and molesting various Mallorcan quadrupeds, to bring you the inside scoop on the MotoGP championship.
2022 has been another terrible year; the world has seen war, rampant inflation, surging energy prices and a new Florence And The Machine album; and on top of all this horror we have suffered through yet another tedious MotoGP season. Jorge has discussed this with Camaro Esperanto of Dorna numerous times: how he can expect the fans to watch this drivel when they have been spoiled for years, being able to watch perfection in racing action – Jorge of course – as he famously hammered his butter and buttered his hammer around the tracks of the world?
“Jorge” Caramel says in reply, “we know that you are the ultimate MotoGP champion, with your unrivalled blend of charisma, chiselled physique, supermodel looks, racing talent and sparkling personality; but we have to make do with your excrementos now you have retired. As that bald fellow Sean O’Connor famously said, nothing compares to you.”
Of course the 2022 title is all but decided now; long gone are the days when Jorge had sewn up yet another world championship by the fourth round, but at last we are nearing the end of the tedium. Ducati have spent the year telling us how they definitely, absolutely haven’t cheated by fiddling the rules and outnumbering the other teams by about 86 bikes to 1, while doing exactly that. Suzuki have recovered from the fever dream of seeing the most anonymous champion in history, Joan Mir, win them a title and decided that the millions they spaff every year on going round in circles would be better spent on designing the updated X-90 everyone’s been clamouring for. Honda’s latest bike is so terrible that they’ve basically gone into hibernation until next year; and Yamaha have realised that Quartararo’s mental fortitude in the face of competition is about as robust as Val Kilmer’s self-control at the all-you-can-eat buffet.
So, before the depressing inevitability of seeing a bunch of cheating Italians take every title in the book becomes a dreary reality, let us try and see who is the least awful of the 2022 grid in comparison to Jorge.
FRANCO MORBIDELLI?
Franco loves a good virtue signal; whether it’s banging on about BLM or slapping some PC nonsense paintjob on his helmet, he never misses a chance to score himself some brownie points on the soshuls. What he isn’t quite so keen on is managing to drag his crappy Yamaha round a lap within 30 seconds of his teammate; so all things considered he has about as much chance of keeping his ride next year as James Corden has of being voted ‘Most Likeable Celebrity’. A poor score of 2 patatas bravas for Morbid’s title challenge this year.
ALEX MARQUEZ?
Much like Maggie Gyllenhaal, Luke Hemsworth or any Baldwin except Alec, Alex suffers from basically being nowhere near as good as his famous brother. Rightly shuffled off to the LCR team by Honda after they realised he is actually a bit crap, poor Marquez junior has never escaped from the shadow of his elder brother’s teeth. Has played the “but I’m only on a satellite bike” card with aplomb, even though the only difference to the factory bikes is a slightly different colour of anodized tyre valve cap or something (they are in fact equally awful). Another stodgy 2 patatas bravas for Alex.
POL ESPARGARO?
Much like Alex, poor Pol has spent the year being compared to Marky Mark Marquez; unfortunately for him he can’t use the old excuse of being on an inferior bike. No, he is riding the same turgid piece of mierda be burro that the toothy tosspot is on – the equivalent of an AR125 engine with a sticking piston ring in a Boss Hoss frame. Nevertheless, Pol has spent the year doing his level best to achieve absolutely nothing of note on the Japanese junkheap – and he has surely succeeded in this ambition. 3 patatas bravas for Pol.
MAVERICK VINALES?
Bipolar nutbox Mav was looking to have turned things around this year. Having been booted unceremoniously off the Yamaha team last year for trying to detonate his engine like a baseball-capped chav doing donuts in an RS Turbo down the local Tesco car park, Top Gun himself was beginning to look at home with the Aprilia, a bike that resembles a lorry-load of spare lawnmower parts that has fallen off a plane into an under-tens paintball tournament. People were really starting to think he had put his old ways of doing brilliantly in practise sessions before rapidly going backwards over the weekend, blaming everything and everyone bar himself, to bed – before he started to, well, do exactly that. 5 patatas bravas for Mav.
JACK MILLER?
Everyone likes Jack; the cerebrally-challenged Aussie has the IQ of a golf umbrella but, unlike the majority of the back-stabbing weasels in the MotoGP paddock speaks his mind and doesn’t give a toss about speaking out of turn. It was quite heartbreaking to see old thickie Jack fall for Ducati’s transparent lies as the year went on, promising him that he would stay a factory rider before asking him what size boots he wore in case he’d got any that might fit his replacement. But the likeable tinnie-swigging simplón has actually started to turn in some impressive results ever since the penny dropped and he’s signed with KTM (Jack was drawn to the Austrian team as it seemed the easiest to spell). 6 patatas bravas for Jackie.
CAL CRUTCHLOW?
While we’re speaking of big-gobbed retrasars that talk a big game but then singularly fail to back it up with results, Cal Crashloads turned in the biggest surprise comeback since Kevin Spacey announced his new role as the 2022 Green Cross Code man for primary schools. Once Yamaha had dusted him off and given his adamantium skeleton a light misting of WD40, it was hard to determine whether Cal’s amazingly solid results were due to his being far better than we remember, or to the fact that both Morbidelli and the retiring sad-eyed clown Andrea Dovisiozo have performed about as well as Ray Charles in the downhill slalom at the Olympics. A surprising 6 patatas bravas for Cal.
MARC MARQUEZ?
Jorge taught his old teammate Marc everything he knows about the Honda and how to ride it during his peerless tenure with the evil Japanese octopus-botherers; since then Marc has single-handedly turned the bike into an unrideable turd whilst simultaneously copping more sick days than Greta Thunberg (whatever happened to her?). Wisely realising about three races in that he wasn’t going to be able to stand up to the 362 Ducatis on the grid, he decided to pull the old schooldays trick of getting a mate to kick you in the nuts so you could pretend to be “ill” before spending the day eating Wham bars behind the cricket pavilion. Since his comeback from having a Robocop-style bionic arm installed, Marc’s results have been increasingly impressive so a solid 8 patatas bravas.
ENEA BASTIANINI?
‘The Bestiality’ as he’s known has proved to be a bit of a problem for the cheating bast hard-working folk at Ducati; riding the horrid Parma-violet coloured off-brand Gresini machine, which has the disadvantage of only having 180 horsepower more than the Yamahas, Suzukis etc., Enema started the year making the factory chumps look ridiculously slow. Since it started to look as though he was going to embarrass their big players he has started a mysterious decline; it’s a good job Ducati aren’t a known for being a bunch of manipulative, rule-ignoring, generally despicable dirtbags or one could get a bit paranoid about his downturn… a pesto-scented 7 patatas bravas.
And last of course FABIO QUARTARARO
Fabio is something of an enigma, in that he is smart, talented, brave, hard-working and likeable – yet by some bizarre quirk of the known universe he is also FRENCH. Jorge has also heard tell that he actually smells nice too – surely we are only a light drizzling of frogs away from the Apocalypse. Fabio started the year slowly, before sticking in some solid results and building up a decent title lead; unfortunately by mid-season Ducati were getting fully into the swing of bending the rules with their hordes of hideous Meccano monstrosities, and poor Fab found himself surrounded on all sides by Bolognese Bandits (yes, that kind) taking great chunks out of his lead at every race. By this time his inner Frenchman had started to show through, and so he decided to harp on about how terrible his bike is to anyone who would listen. The Yamaha bods are of course fully versed in dealing with this, seeing as Jorge’s ex-teammate Rossi famously used this same technique to distract from the fact he had realised the competition was actually now better than him. A disappointing, garlic-crusted 6 patatas bravas for Fab.
And so we await the final thrilling race of 2022; it will take nothing short of a miracle for Bagnaia to lose, so why not join Jorge in not bothering to watch and skim through the race on ITV4 in a few days time. Or better yet, why not treat yourself and dig out some old DVDs of my numerous title-winning seasons? That’s what I will be doing.
Adios, perdedores! Love, Jorge