Winners
Pecco Bagnaia
For Bagnaia, who has made it clear that he doesn’t like this track or the Germans in general, a win in the main event is always going to be a good result. But what makes the worst track a worst track is the fact that it sees rival George Martin tossing it to Cassespetz with the trackside oompah band’s funky tunes.
Such mis-krauten antics baggers himself 25 points and leads the championship for the first time this season.
Gresini Ducati
A typical weekend for Marc Marquez is to finish qualifying, then tear through the pack on the podium to glittering global acclaim (minus the yellow). If he fails to qualify, the stage may not look good – but in this way, the Spanish Anti-Christ “what if?” He allows. Flexible to bear his reason.
And it was the same again in Germany. Marquez, distracted by a spectacular bratwurst, collapsed in the corner of the ‘waterfall’, practically known for the amount of water needed to wash Carlos Cheka’s skin after the 2005 crash.
Marc injured his hand and was forced to skip through Q1 to get into Q2 – unable to do so, with Stephane Bradl running in confusion at the race line.
So, as usual, Marquez started down the grid but ended up on the podium. But it was his brother Ralf Schumacher who found his way to the podium on Sunday.
Hooray for Nadia Padovani!
Luca Marini
Wait, what is Maurice Marini doing in the ‘winners’ room? Surely he has less right to be here than an intellectual at an Australian BBQ party? Read on…
Luca scores in Germany! Which increased the number to an indefinite percentage – who else can say? Well, he didn’t actually score – instead the noodle-legged Italian finished outside the points but the officials took pity on him, so Token Nakagami, who finished ahead of Marini, put on a very smooth face, elevating the famous-brother-sponsored Honda rider to the ‘one point’ club.
And, unlike his career, Marini lacked this talent. Luca asked Remy Gardner, who was riding a Yamaha for the first time, and Honda’s own test-cruet Stefan, ‘Why did he still get a job?’ Bradley
Frankie Morbidelli
Wait what…again? Surely a ‘copy and paste’ error for Frankie’s performance caused him to be unwittingly dropped into the ‘winners’ section?
No! That’s what he got. Kind of.
For some unknown reason, Morbidelli wasn’t scary. Of course we know it – it’s contract time. With that in mind, Franco decided to put his best haircut forward, aiming for another prim ride in 2025.
In the end Morbidelli beat the only other Ducati finisher, and none of the factory riders – but this was still the best result of the season.
Miguel Oliveira
After several unpredictable seasons in MotoGP Miguel’s very bad luck Random Number Generator (MRNG) can literally do anything and it won’t be surprising. It wouldn’t be incredible if he won. We would have welcomed him if he had finally finished. Hell, if he’s attacked by a group of monkeys in Nazi uniforms mid-race, we’ll shrug and laugh at the “classic Miguel’s bad luck.”
Why does this happen? Is it because he married his sister and the gene pool is gone for Bern? who knows? But what we do know is that the Trackhouse rider’s results have been randomly poor lately. So why not introduce some random good luck to bad luck?
Last weekend the very experienced Alex Asparagus had an inexperienced crash and broke himself a bit. It wasn’t until he came to Germany that he wanted to drive and was given ‘Das Boot’ by a medical officer. This meant that the Asparagus crew were at a loose end, so they decided to see what Miguel was up to and see if his sister was hanging around.
The factory Aprilia engineers soon began to adapt the Portuguese rider’s electronics to the point where the unexpected but entirely expected speed leaped forward and introduced the Oliveira 2.Th On the grid.
Was it random? Or were his actual engineers completely rubbish? The complexities of chaos theory are difficult to predict, but Miguel’s best race finish was second, and on Sunday, he was the best finish of any Aprilia rider in the top 6.Th place.
What crazy antics do you follow?
Losers
George Martin
Knowing that Ducati’s performance on the Desmosedici GP24 was slowly diminishing, it was up to Martineter to score a psychological blow against Bagnaia at a track where the Spaniard is known to excel.
And all signs were positive as Martin claimed victory in the pole and sprint races. ‘Take that gray bastard away for not signing me,’ he said to his face on Saturday night. But he did not come on Sunday night.
Leading with just a handful of laps to go, a fall gave Bagnaya Beard the win and he lost the championship to his hated rival. A chump-de-force – as they say in France.
Ibiza pedestrians
It’s that time of year again when MotoGP stars hang up their helmets, let their hair down and have a little fun. And in the case of Peco Bagnaya, this often involves crashing a rental car with a drunk driver behind the wheel.
To celebrate Peco’s latest success, you can bet the Italian’s ‘never drink’ cheek will be heading to Ibiza with the VR46 Neverland Ranch riders. So watch out Ibiza – here comes trouble!
KTM
French tire manufacturer Michelin, perhaps still worried about Hitler’s antics, has apparently decided to settle with Austria by designing a new tire for 2024 that the KTM team cannot use. And where better to highlight this than at Hen House?
The KTM couldn’t even get out of the landing position at Sausagering as they battled continuously with Michel. Pedro Acosta, who finished as the top Austrian, could finish only 7Th 14 seconds behind the race leader.
Can you sort the mess? It seems less and less.
Stefan Bradl
Local scheinwerfer hero Stefan ‘Hermann’ Bradl threw down the towel in the pitbox at 5am to ensure he could compete in front of his countrymen’s leader. And he didn’t disappoint, making sure he never ‘blurred’ and instead drove very slowly, even losing sight of Luca Marini.
In terms of performance, he was a huge disappointment. Fortunately, he has his regular day job of “providing inaccurate feedback to prove that Honda is getting worse.”
