A leaky rim – usually a worrying medical condition associated with unlicensed Indian street food but in Indonesia it could have illustrated a new avenue for Ducati to take advantage of…
What?
Spanish stoat Pedro Acosta landed a sensation podium in Indonesia but was immediately hit with a front tyre pressure investigation as it had fallen below the allowed PSI. Despite on the podium having a face like he’d had his picnic stolen by ants the marvellous mustelid ultimately received no penalty.
Why?
The official reason was that Pedro had a leaky rim and so the tyre pressure infringement was seen as being out of his control. And as it wasn’t his fault the powers that be granted the sneaky stoat a free-pass in a move that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So what was the real reason?
The stewards, sensing that Acosta’s podium performance would be more popular than finding out that Lewis Hamilton was on P-Diddy’s perpetrators list, had to quickly think of a reason to allow the result to stick. The ‘leaky rim’ idea was the best they could come up with which makes us at MGPN wonder how bad some of the other suggestions must have been.
So what of Ducati?
By allowing Pedro’s result to stand, despite his front tyre pressure being considerably lower than the minimum allowed PSI, KTM accidentally stumbled onto a great untapped resource of bending the rules…and when it comes to bending the rules Ducati’s Gigi Dall’igna stands above everyone (possibly by bending the rules and standing on a box or something).
Once word got to the single eyebrow of Dall’igna regarding the Acosta incident it was said he went on a furious torrent fuelled that himself and his team’s inability to spot this loop and use it to their advantage.
“He was so angry!” a trembling bystander told us. “He spent almost an hour yelling at his food to the point where the sauce in his Carbonari split. He was so flustered that it was almost impossible to tell where his Ducati shirt ended and his neck began.”
What are Ducati doing about it?
It seems that the top gnocchi at the Ducati’s ‘Centre Harnessing Extra Additional Tactics’ facility have spent all week on developing a wheel that will leak a precise amount of air through the rim and give the rider yet another unfair advantage. Should the pesky stewards attempt to throw the rulebook at the Bologniase team based for being filthy cheats then Ducati can simply counter is with “What about Acosta in Indonesia?” Possibly also following it up with “So you can’t touch us” whilst sticking their tomato puree stained tongues out.