Winners
Ine Bastianini
Inea is nicknamed “La Bastard” because he is a lazy bastard who only spends the weekend in the middle of the race on Sunday. But when he finally comes out, he’s usually the fastest driver on the grid. “Oh why didn’t you do it all weekend?” We find ourselves screaming at the screen when he wins another race.
Experts tell us that Bastianini is a champion of tire maintenance – which is very believable given his lack of work ethic. But it was found at Silverstone. Even efficiently.
The result was a double win over the weekend. Hooray for rubber-governed races!
La Bastard now sit just 49 points behind the championship leaders. If he gets enough pro-plus to get his ass out of bed in the morning, could he now be a championship contender? No, but it is good to try to imagine that these things will happen.
Desmosedici GP24
What no fan wanted at the end of the 2023 season was Ducati taking another big step ahead of the withered race. Fortunately that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, cheeky Italians chose to make a ‘giant step’ rather than a ‘big step’.
The Desmosedici GP24 seems to be the only bike that can capitalize on Michelin’s new ‘20% less beret’ tyres.
Ducati have now had seven consecutive podium finishes – mostly with their GP24 bikes. It’s a new record – and one that none of us are particularly excited about.
Fabio D’Giantantonio
At the end of last season Fabio’s MotoGP career looked all but over – just like Jack Miller at the moment. He had no ride and was the only available one in the VR46 team. However, Di Giantantonio was not wanted by the team as he was not attractive enough to be invited to Rossi’s Neverland Ranch for a suspicious sleepover.
Thankfully, Dorna stepped in and thanks to some under-the-table threats, VR46 Racing reluctantly took Fabio on board for the 2024 season.
And the Italian was really good. Crucially, he managed to achieve almost double the points of his one-time rated teammate (and VR46 poster boy) Marco Bezecchi. Such speed has not gone unnoticed and almost leaving the sport Fabio is set to receive the latest Ducati in 2025.
Losers
KTM
The Austrian group can’t get the new Michelin rear tire to work. Super stoat Pedro Acosta was once again KTM’s best rider at Silverstone but even he struggled to break into the top ten.
Franco Morbidelli
It would be nice to have such a familiar face back in the ‘losers’ section after the luckiest man in MotoGP’s ‘Not Terrible’ race.
The Ducati GP24 was an unstoppable force at Silverstone as it marched through the police station like the local rioters. If you had Ducati’s latest bike you were guaranteed to be screaming for victory… to the point where even Bradley Smith texted (he’s not even on WhatsApp yet – baby steps) believing he had achieved a top ten finish. Unless you’re Franco Morbidelli.
Despite a large, slightly unfair advantage, poor Franco managed to squander it in his usual style.
Despite being on one of the four bikes with the aforementioned insane advantage, problems began for qualifying as the Italian seat-hugger failed to make Q2 and finished in 13th.Th.
From this midfield position, Morbidelli began the race with a strong desire to hold on to position and did so by cunningly choosing not to be late into the first corner when everyone else was braking. It can be assumed that the fool’s plan was saved when the Italian beat a mind-boggling Marco Bezecic and recalled the time when people thought he was a championship-winning rider. Both VR46 drivers were immediately out of the race.
Somehow, ironically, Franco found a reason to blame Maverick Vinales for correctly braking which caused him to swerve to avoid him and crash into the base.
But the stewards were having no such nonsense and the ‘fundamentally terrifying’ Morbidelli was handed a double long lap penalty for the main race which, coupled with his pace, meant he could not finish anywhere near as respectable.
Racing
Aero basically broke MotoGP. Oh how we used to laugh at F1. Nowadays, MotoGP riders know that they have to protect their tires and the best way to do this is to ride 20 meters away from the next rider.
Silverstone was another display of boredom as all racers were kept to a minimum in an attempt to save tire lives for the first two-thirds of the rally. And when we finally hit the final part of the race, the riders who kept their tires bested those who didn’t.
Ducati Scrambler Retro Livery
Come Sunday and everyone seems to be hitting 75Th But where are the good ones? Or were they different? The best paint jobs were from an era when smoking was cool, men couldn’t get pregnant, and bicycles were giant cigarette pack ads.
Unfortunately, the ruined sport forced motorsport sponsorships to be crippled when governments decided to criminalize smoking.
For 75Th For the anniversary, all teams were told to use Dorna’s retro livery. Some were good, many were different but the factory Ducati…
Ducati did not take this idea seriously and offered a vague ‘special’ known to mankind. With endless options, the Bologna-based designers thought that ‘red with a bit of white’ would remind us of other boring paint jobs that Ducati has used over the years.
They finally gave a shout out to VR46 Racing and decided to use all their best ideas to honor the man who owned their one-time livery team. Oh how we didn’t see that coming.
Trackhouse MAGA Aprilia
Very special 75Th Livey was unveiled at the trackhouse on Sunday in front of some of the greats of American GP racing.
Tragically, all of the sheep’s tails remained for two shakes when one of their riders fell and collided with the other. No prizes for guessing who the unlucky innocent party is.
Watching Wayne Rennie and Chimes scurry through the gravel wasn’t much fun.
Luca Marini
The usually fearsome Marini wasn’t the least bit intimidating as usual at Silverstone and managed to score points in the main event.
However, there was one problem. Marini set the tire pressures, believing that it would follow the pack, as always, as its engineers are usually last. But at Silverstone, Rossi’s half-gentleman half-brother somehow managed to get ahead of Honda’s struggling Token Nakagami.
This unexpected incident messed with Luca’s tire pressures, eventually causing him to suffer a tire pressure violation and another to have ‘incredibly thin’ arms. The penalty effectively knocked Marini out of points and raised the token instead.
Universal order has been restored.
