Winners
Pecco Bagnaia
It was one of those weekends where Bagnaya was so much better than everyone else. Which was bad news for anyone hoping for entertainment.
Losers
Ducati firmware upgrade
You know the feeling – you turn on your PC and suddenly ‘Windows Update’ is forced upon you. At best, after an hour and several reboots, nothing has changed. At worst, you’ll spend the rest of the week trying to fix the problems the update caused.
So take that sense of dread when updating your PC and multiply it by ‘chuffin’ loads. That’s the risk Primark Ducati faces when software updates are released remotely to their bikes.
Here are the actual release notes:
Ducati GP 24 Release Update – August 17, 2024
what is new?
- Added a new menu to allow lap times to be displayed by driver on one page.
- Color coded front and rear braking data for ease of viewing
- General user interface updates
Bug fixes and improvements
- Fixed issue where back button doesn’t always work
- Fixed bug where users would get infinite spins on first boot
Other things we didn’t do
- From time to time the power of No. 89 has been rejected. We certainly didn’t do that, laughing mischievously at the ship’s cluster. So don’t think like that.
Something seems suspicious. And despite what the release notes say, it suddenly became clear that Jorge Martin’s Ducati wasn’t as fast in a straight line as the Bagnaia.
One to ponder.
Getting a shower
In an extraordinary incident on Saturday morning, George Martin managed to cut his thumb while getting out of the shower. The injury required stitches and at one point forced him out of a sprint race and seemed to hamper his drag career.
French pair Johan Zarco and Fabio Quartararo have been seen to be immune to such injury.
Counting to one
Counting to one is very easy. Counting down a second is just as easy. They start at zero, wait a second and reach ‘one’. So why do motorcycle racers never do it when they run off the track and need to lose a second to avoid a penalty?
“Oh I’ve got to lose a second… I believe that should be about a second if I’m going into the rider’s slide trying to pass before the foul.”
Every time. And they know the rules. We all know the rules.
Maybe they count as one, but do you think they’re moving, seen live by millions around the world, somehow going unnoticed?
The stupidity of George Martin’s long lap penalty in sprint competition boggles the mind.
Jack Miller
It looks like Miller, who will be preparing the crown with flavor, will be heading to the ‘winners’ section midway through the main event.
He finished 5 up to that pointTh He was in the same position in the sprint event and the main race. Better for the Australian he would eventually get his boot into the hair of a struggling Pedro Acosta.
But, predictably, Ozzy failed. one more time. So he fell back into the ‘losers’ class and humiliated the nation – along with that Raigun Seth.
Pedro Acosta
The Super Spanish stud has started the season with many press comments thanks to his impressive results. Pedro was the ‘next Marquez’ who would almost certainly win more MotoGP championships and perhaps ease the cosmic microwave background controversy when he successfully built a compact fusion reactor in his bathroom.
But as the season rolled on Acosta’s season began to fall apart—perhaps because he fell so badly and didn’t finish his repairs. To make matters worse, the show is starting to catch up with him as he is undermining his KTM colleagues (whom they all hate for obvious reasons). The once super stoat is quickly becoming a dirty ferret caught in a trap.
In front of people who had their wallets surgically opened to pay for his 2025 contract in Austria, poor Pedro spent most of his training session crashing and breaking his bikes.
This meant that going into the race, young Spaniard Muslida not only struggled to beat the factory KTM riders, but even his own team-mate – the same team-mate who, thanks to his relative fitness, is now looking at life as a bus driver. The end of the season.
A little embarrassing.
Mark Marquez
The Spanish Antichrist fell in the race for about 600Th During this season. This time in second place. A few years ago we were all warned that if he fell, his ‘shoulder would be broken forever’, good job.
While on the grid for the main race on Sunday (and coincidentally a few minutes after Ducati had done a personal ‘check’ on the bike), Marc Partbein’s Ducati experienced a curious issue with a tire valve failure. Confused mechanics rush to finish their pasta first and then to find out what happened to their bike.
Fortunately for Marquez, new tires and wheels were fitted just in time. But the much-maligned Spanish rider was now using a cold front tire and was told to brake to generate some heat during the showpiece lap.
Long story short – he had too much to think about on his disastrous sighting lap and the happy Spaniard forgot to set the ride height device… a predictably terrible start and ruined any hopes of anyone hitting the GP24s onto the podium.
Now enter the legend that isn’t Franco Morbidelli. I wasn’t comfortable with Morbidelli closing race two after carelessly ruining anyone’s race in the first corner, rectifying that by head-butting the struggling Marquez into the first turn. With a roll of the eyes, the pair ran wide and threw down the order.
In defence, Marquez made a charge to finish fourth and Morbidelli was held responsible for being the only GP24 rider not to finish ahead of the other riders in the first corner incident.
We
As always, the commentators in Austria like to tell us how amazing the Red Bull circuit is and how beautiful and ‘set in the Austrian hills’ it is. But for those of us who didn’t ‘live in the beautiful Austrian hills’ on a free pass, we had to suffer through the actual competition instead of looking at the scene with mouths drooling.
It’s true that the Red Bull circuit is a pile of dog shit when it comes to MotoGP. The racing is always fierce and the circuit is dangerous – at least if you want to have a dangerous track, make it cool. (See ‘Mount Oliver’ for more details)
“Oh, but what about Marquez Dovizioso’s battles,” a small whiny voice in the background chimed in prophetically. at once. Maybe it happened twice. So grab your soy latte and pipe down.
Both races in 2024 were terrible.
