Winners
Pecco Bagnaia
It was another one of those weekends where Bagnaia was far better than everyone else. Which was bad news for everyone else who was hoping to be entertained.
Losers
Ducati firmware upgrade
You know the feeling – you turn on your PC and suddenly a ‘Windows Update’ is forced upon you. At best, after an hour and multiple restarts, nothing will have changed. At worst, though, you’ll spend the rest of the week trying to fix the issues the update has caused.
So take that feeling of dread when your PC is updating and multiply it by a factor of ‘chuffin’ loads’. That’s the concern Primark Ducati get when a software update is remotely released to their bike.
Here’s the actual release notes:
Ducati GP 24 Release Update – 17 August 2024
What’s new?
- Added new menu to allow lap times to be seen on one page by rider
- Colour coded front and rear braking data for ease of viewing
- General UI updates
Bug Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed issue where back button didn’t always work
- Fixed bug where users would get an infinite spinner when first booting up
Other stuff that we haven’t done
- Incrementally turned down number 89’s power. We definitely haven’t done that whilst slyly laughing at the ship jumper. So don’t think that.
Something seemed suspicious. And, despite what the release notes claimed, it was clearly noticeable that suddenly Jorge Martin’s Ducati wasn’t as fast as Bagnaia’s in a straight line.
One to ponder.
Getting a shower
In a peculiar incident on Saturday morning Jorge Martin managed to cut open his thumb whilst getting out of the shower. The injury required stitches and at one point looked like ruling him out of the sprint race and hindering his hitchhiking career.
The French pairing Johan Zarco and Fabio Quartararararo looked on knowing they were immune to such an injury.
Counting to one
Counting to one is fairly easy. Counting one second is also fairly easy. You start at zero, wait a second then arrive at ‘one’. So why is it when motorcycle racers run off the track and need to lose one second to avoid a penalty they can never do it?
“Oh I need to lose a second…I believe if I tuck into the slipstream of the rider I was trying to pass before the transgression then that should be about a second.”
Every time. And they know the rules. We all know the rules.
Maybe they can count to one but think they’re maneuverer, that was shown live to millions around the world, would somehow go unnoticed?
The stupidity of Jorge Martin’s long lap penalty in the sprint race boggles the mind.
Jack Miller
Miller, who arranges his crayons by flavour, looked to be heading to the ‘Winners’ section halfway through the main race.
Up until that point he’d finished 5th in the sprint event and was in a similar position in the main race. Better still for the Australian he was finally putting the boot into the furry chops of a struggling Pedro Acosta.
But, predictably, the Ozzie fell off. Again. And with fell back into the ‘losers’ section and let down his nation – along with that Raygun woman.
Pedro Acosta
The super Spanish stoat started the season with a multitude of gushing journalists comments thanks to his spectacular results. Pedro was the ‘next Marquez’ who would definitely win multiple MotoGP championships and maybe even suss out the cosmic microwave background conundrum whilst successfully building a compact fusion reactor in his bathroom.
But as the season has rolled on the wheels of Acosta’s season have started to fall off – probably because he’s fallen off so much and loosened the fixings. To make matters worse as his performances have plummeted his KTM teammates (who all hate him for obvious reasons) has started catching him up. The once super stoat is rapidly becoming a dirty ferret caught in a snare.
In Austria, in front of the very people whose wallets were surgically opened to pay for his 2025 contract, poor Pedro spent most of the practice sessions falling off and smashing up his bikes.
This meant when it came to the races the young Spanish mustelidae struggled not only to beat the factory KTM riders but even his own teammate – the very same teammate who, thanks to his relative performances, is now looking at a life as a bus conductor at the end of the season.
A bit embarrassing.
Marc Marquez
The Spanish Antichrist fell off in the sprint race for about the 600th time this season. This time whilst in second position. It’s a good job we were all warned a few years ago that if he crashes again ‘his shoulder will be broken forever’.
On Sunday, whilst on the grid for the main race (and totally coincidentally just a few moments after Ducati had done a ‘check’ in private on his bike), a bizarre issue regarding his tyre valve failing struck Marc’s partsbin Ducati. The confused mechanics rushed around to first finish their pasta then suss out what had happened to their bike.
Luckily for Marquez a new wheel and tyre were fitted in the nick of time. But the much-despised Spanish rider was now using a cold front tyre so was told to brake heavily on it during the sighting lap to generate some heat…
Long story short – with so much to think about on the sighting lap the crash happy Spaniard forgot to set his ride height device…which led to a predictably terrible start and ruined any hope of anyone beating the GP24s to the podium.
Now enter the legend that isn’t Franco Morbidelli. Morbidelli, feeling uneasy that it had been almost two races since he clumsily ruined anyone’s race on the first corner, put that right by pointlessly squeezing a struggling Marquez into the first bend. With a roll of the eyes the pairing ran wide and dropped down the order.
In his defence Marquez set about a charge to finish fourth and Morbidelli was able to blame the first corner incident on being the only GP24 rider yet again not to finish ahead of the other riders.
Us
Like always the commentators in Austria were keen to tell us how amazing the Red Bull circuit is and how it’s so picturesque and ‘nestled in the Austrian hills’. However for those of us who weren’t ‘nestled in the picturesque Austrian hills’ on a free-pass had to suffer the actual racing instead of gawping at the scenery with dribble dripping from the left side of their mouths.
Truth is the Red Bull circuit is a pile of dog shit when it comes to MotoGP. The racing is always awful and the circuit is dangerous – at least if you’re going to have a dangerous track make it awesome. (See ‘Oliver’s Mount’ for further details)
“Oh but what about the Marquez Dovizioso battles” predictably chirps up a whiney little voice in the background. Once. Maybe twice that happened. So take your soy latte and pipe down.
Both 2024 races were just awful.