Winners
Pecco Bagnaia
A win in the main race was always going to be a good result for Bagnaia who openly admitted to not liking this track or the Germans in general. But what made his worst track into a wurst track was seeing his key championship rival Jorge Martin throw it into the Käsespätzles to the comedic tunes of a trackside oompah band.
Such mis-krauten antics meant that Baggers bagged himself 25 points and the championship lead for the first time this season.
Gresini Ducati
A typical weekend for Marc Marquez is to screw up qualifying, then tear through the pack to finish on the podium to the gushing praise of the world (minus the yellows). Obviously if he didn’t screw up qualifying then his podium might not look as good – but this way the Spanish Antichrist allows for the “what if?” variable to carry his cause.
And it was the same again in Germany. Marquez, distracted by a suggestive Bratwurst, crashed in practice at the infamous ‘waterfall’ corner – so called because of the amount of water that was needed to wash away Carlos Checa’s skin after his crash in 2005.
Marc injured his hand so was forced to go through Q1 to get into Q2 – which he failed to do thanks to Stefan Bradl trundling around in a confused state on the racing line.
So, as usual, Marquez started way down the grid but finished on the podium. But what made this different was his brother, Ralf Schumarquez, also found his way to the podium on Sunday.
Horrah for Nadia Padovani!
Luca Marini
Wait what? What’s Morris Marini doing in the ‘winners’ section? Surely he has less right to be here than an academic at an Australian’s BBQ party? Read on…
In Germany Luca scored a point! Which has increased his tally by an infinite percentage – who else can say that? Okay he didn’t really score a point – instead the noodle-limbed Italian finished outside of the points but the officials felt sorry for him so penalised Token Nakagami, who finished ahead of Marini, for having too smooth a face which elevated the famous-brother-sponging Honda rider into the ‘one point’ club.
And, unlike his career, Marini wasn’t gifted this. Luca had to see off the likes of Remy Gardner who was riding the Yamaha for the first time and Honda’s very own test-Kraut Stefan ‘why has he still got a job?’ Bradl.
Franky Morbidelli
Wait what…again? Surely a rudimentary ‘copy & paste’ error for Franky’s performance has caused him to be inadvertently dumped into the ‘winners’ section?
No! He earned it. Sort of.
For reasons unknown Morbidelli wasn’t terrible. Well actually we probably do know – it’s contract time. With that in mind Franco decided to put his best haircut forward with the aim of earning yet another plum ride for 2025.
In the end Morbidelli only beat one other Ducati finisher, and none of the factory riders – but this was still his best result of season.
Miguel Oliveira
After several unpredictable seasons with bizarre bad luck in MotoGP Miguel the random number generator (MRNG) can literally do anything and it wouldn’t be a surprising surprise. If he were to win it wouldn’t be unbelievable. If he were to finish last we’d accept it. Hell, if he were to be attacked mid-race by a team of monkey commanded ospreys in Nazi uniforms we just shrug and chuckle “classic Miguel bad luck”.
Why does this happen? Is it because he married his sister and his gene pool’s gone for a burton? Who knows? But what we do know is that lately the Trackhouse rider’s results have been randomly poor. So why not introduce some random good luck from bad luck?
Last weekend the very experienced Aleix Asparagus suffered an inexperienced crash and smashed himself up a bit. To the point where he turned up in Germany wanting to ride but was given ‘Das Boot’ by the medical officer. This meant Asparagus’s crew were at a loose end so decided to see what Miguel was up to and if his sister was also hanging around.
The factory Aprilia engineers soon started fiddling with the Portuguese rider’s electronics which led to an unexpected, yet totally expected, jump forward in pace to the point where Oliveira qualified 2nd on the grid.
Was it randomness? Or have his actual engineers been rubbish all along? It’s hard to predict with the complexities of the chaos theory but Miguel had his best sprint race finishing second and his best race on Sunday finishing as the top Aprilia rider in 6th place.
What crazy antics will follow?
Losers
Jorge Martin
With the knowledge that Ducati will be slowly winding down the performance on his Desmosedici GP24 it was up to the Martinator to score a psychological blow to Bagnaia on a track that the Spaniard is known to be good at.
And all signs were positive with Martin claiming pole and a win in the sprint race. ‘Take that y’grey bastard for not signing me’ said his face Saturday night. But it didn’t come Sunday night.
A fall whilst leading with just a handful of laps remaining gifted the win to the beard of Bagnaia and with it he lost the championship lead to his hated rival. A chump-de-force – as they say in France.
Ibiza pedestrians
It’s that time of year again when the MotoGP stars hang up their helmets, let their hair down and have some fun. And in Pecco Bagnaia’s case this more often than not also involves crashing a hire car whilst drunk at the wheel.
With the VR46 Neverland Ranch riders heading over to Ibiza to celebrate Pecco’s latest success you can bet the cheeky ‘I hardly ever drink’ Italian will be up to his comical frolics once more. So watch out Ibiza – here comes trouble!
KTM
It seems French tyre manufacturer Michelin, who are probably still miffed about the whole Hitler debacle, decided to get even with Austria by designing a new tyre for 2024 that the KTM team wouldn’t be able to use. And where better to highlight this than the home of the Hun?
KTM couldn’t even get off the landing craft at the Sausagering as they struggled continuously with the Michelins. The Austrian’s top finisher was once again the stoat Pedro Acosta who could only finish 7th 14 seconds behind the race leader.
Can they sort the mess out? It’s looking less and less likely.
Stefan Bradl
Local scheinwerfer hero Stefan ‘Herman’ Bradl had his towel down at 5am in the pitbox to ensure he got to race in front of the lederhosens of his countrymen. And he didn’t disappoint by ensuring he was never ‘a blur’ and instead riding around so slow he even lost sight of Luca Marini.
In terms of performance he was a big disappointment. Luckily he has his normal day job of “giving incorrect feedback to ensure the Honda gets worse’ to fall back on.