Winners
Dani Pedrosa
- Date: Sometime in 2018
- Location: HRC’s top secret evil bunker
In a dimly lit room an overweight Japanese man carefully tends his beloved bonsai tree. Without warning a flustered young male in a suit clearly too big for him bursts into the room – bowing profusely to the point he’s struggling to find his bearings.
“So sorry evil boss master, but I bring grave non-Oriental news!”
The portly boss calmly looks up – then, with a wave of his chopsticks, he orders the four young females dressed as schoolgirls to leave the room. The younger man, fearing his head might somehow become detached from his neck, remains in the ‘bow position’ and doesn’t look up…but really wants to.
“So what is this non-Oriental news that you have dishonoured my pruning time to tell me?”
“It’s Pedrosa-san master. He’s signed for KTM!”
The lardtastic boss takes a moment to reflect on what he has been told. He then leans back on his plush leather chair and lights a thick beansprout and begins to puff the smoke stylishly into the air watching each plume rise.
The young HRC employee nervously looks on. Eventually the boss sits up and points to a neatly framed photo on the wall.
“We have Marc Marquez. We do not need the little wide-eyed Spaniard Pedrosa. Marc Marquez is all we will ever need. He can not be beaten. He cannot be broken. Ever.”
Then, with a silverly flash, the young man’s head becomes detached from the rest of his now limp body.
The evil HRC man presses a button on his desk and within seconds the cleaners arrive, bag up the carnage and begin preparations to throw it all in the Tokyo harbour. Meanwhile the four girls re-enter the room now dressed as squids and carrying eels.
- Date: April 2023
- Location: The same HRC top secret evil bunker
The room now stands empty with a solitary neon light flickering sporadically in the corner. The bonsai tree is now long dead and withered. The photo of Marc Marquez is covered in dust, hanging at a non-Oriental angle with the glass broken. The occupier of five years ago has long gone and now shares the undignified watery grave of those he sent there before.
With the rise of KTM and the demise of HRC it looks like they did need Dani Pedrosa after all. And at Jerez he beat every Honda rider i both races.
KTM
Nothing seems to motivate the KTM factory riders more than the prospect of being beaten by a shoe-dwelling 52-year-old dwarf on the same bike.
Brad Binder and Jack Miller were both outstanding at Jerez. Both factory riders finished on the podium in both races with Binder taking the victory in the sprint race.
Pecco Bagnaia
Pecco bounced back from bouncing back down the road by claiming victory in the main race and taking the lead in the championship. I’ve now spent 20 minutes trying to think of something interesting and/or remotely funny about this but failed.
Losers
Fabio Quartarararo
If being stuck on Yamaha’s backwater Soviet era bric-a-brac heap wasn’t bad enough the luckless Frenchie also copped a punch in the beret from the racing stewards after the pile-up that caused a stoppage in the main race. Fabio, for reasons unknown to anyone with eyesight, was deemed to be the cause of the incident – and because he’s not the half-brother of a popular ex-rider was given a long lap penalty and told to take a bath within 7 days of the written penalty.
Worse still, after taking the long lap, Quartarararo was given another one for running over a white line exiting the long lap.
Sete Gibernau
Despite Sete Gibernau winning races in both the 500cc and MotoGP era no one really remembers or cares about that. Instead the only thing anyone can ever remember about Gibbers is when Rossi illegally punted him off on the last corner at Jerez in 2005 – and off course every commentator feels it necessary to mention this many times when at Jerez.
Sadly for Sete back in 2005 Valentino was so popular that no steward would have dared to penalise the Italian for an illegal manoeuvre so sadly for the Spaniard the result stuck…along with his miserable expression.
Thankfully these days such cheating would be instantly penalised. Unless, of course, you were somehow related to Rossi.
Yamaha
This was the race that Yamaha believed their hero Fabio Quartarararo would bounce back to winning ways. They believed by not significantly (or actually) developing their bike from last season’s already poor YZR-M1 they would be able to compete with KTM, Ducati and Aprilia – most of whom were already significantly faster than Yamaha last year and have made massive gains over the off-season.
So you can imagine Yamaha’s surprise when they were shown the way home by all the European teams – how on earth could not changing a bike that was already slower than their rival’s whilst letting their rival’s improve ever fail?
Lots of noodle scratching was seen by Yam at Jerez.
It could be worse though…
Repsol Kalex
To save time we at MGPN have created a generic template for inserting Repsol Kalex into the ‘losers’ section of these articles:
It was another disappointing round at [insert country/track here] for Repsol Kalex Honda. With Marc Marquez being out with a [insert current injury] it was down to Joan Mir to take up the slack. He did this by falling off in one race and finishing nowhere in the other.
Stefan Bradl, who has a full time MotoGP ride by temporary covering Marc Marquez, was also pretty rubbish.
All this means Repsol Kalex remain rooted to the bottom of the team’s championship and must be seriously considering ‘doing a Suzuki’ soon.