NOT the MotoGP News: You take my breath away

Welcome to NOT The MotoGP News – our blog by Guy Anderson. Oh – and when you’re done, make sure to go follow Guy on Twitter – @SirGuyGuisborne

 

What the heck were they doing holding Silverstone round in September? Rain on Friday, rain on Saturday and cold windy weather on race day.

But given the amount of iceberg floating down from the cold lands, the chances of rain in the Uk anytime between May and October is probably pretty high.

And being a home Grand Prix for us we had a weekend out of the office and annoyed the real journalists with the excitement of a yappy puppy in a ball pit.

For some reason the snooze fest that some folk call F1 was on and Bernie pulled rank on broadcast times. Sunday lunch in your stomach and hours and hours of paint drying and you’d fall asleep.

Luckily the two-wheeled fraternity have the antidote; it’s called racing. Moto3 stabbed a rat, shot the fox and woke everyone up. My god we’re running out of superlatives, out of hyperbole but not out of love. We’ve a sneaky suspicious that F1-humans like Alonso and Vettel would rather just watch MotoGP than race in the four wheeled version of Tamazipan. Does it look like we’ve got a downer on F1? Well yes. Thousands of bike mad fans basically got home late, rushed around last night to get ready for work and had rows with their loved ones because Carmelo didn’t tell Bernie to take a long walk off a short pier. MotoGP up against F1 on different channels? Who cares?

Obviously we’ve been to a real race in the flesh before; this year they let us back in with even better access. And that does cause us some worry. Privileged? Yes. Reverential? Nope. But did we have the balls to ask a daft, stupid question to a rider? Nope. Cowardly indifference swept over us like the rain on Saturday.

So the races. As ever Moto3 was just fantastic. And sorry, it was that thought that lead me into thinking why do we run scared of F1, and we ended up ranting.

Binder is the next Viñales. There, we’ve said it. No finer praise from this team of feckless idiots. Again the race was series of mad, crazy muggings on bikes. You know those kids who unnerve you on their BMXs when you go to the shops for another bottle of cooking sherry? These Moto3 riders are just the same. Man alive; as scary as an overdose of caffeine. The wondrous sight of a string of Moto3 bikes weaving as one along Hangar then breaking out to run into a corner five wide is awe inspiring and groin stiffening. Or moistening. As you like.

On the other hand, it’s a more than a bit scary. Up close you can almost see the dagger, the stiletto, the cut throat razor held out of sight ready to cut an advantage for its owner. No wonder some of them are cocky, upstart prima donnas. Come back Fenati. The South African Spear pretty much controlled the race in one way or another with his teammate Bo’selecta either blazing a trail or riding shotgun. Serious Spaniard and all ’round donkey thrower “Navaho” Navarro was nerfed off and lost pretty much all hope of catching the Zulu Spear boy for the title. Navaho Navarro is actually seriously close to being caught by Bag Packing Pacco Bagnaia. The pole setter stuck in the mix throughout and bagged second by a gnat’s cock hair. Bo’selecta creamed third and Mad Manzi missed the podium by under half a second.

We’d have been happy with just that race, but up stepped the perennial under achiever called Moto2. For once however Moto2 held some promise especially for fans of Lowes; he’d been fastest in every Moto2 session so far and was up for getting a good bit of patriotism going. Ha….. Vote for Brexit, and get a daft Frenchman reverting to type. Not content with allowing roads around Calais to be blocked, Charles Aznavour tribute singer Johann Zarco looked to throw a de Gaulle strop and ran too hot into a corner and took Lowes out. Bugger. Having said that the Gresini rider was angry enough and disappointed enough to set his fastest time of the race on a banged up bike. Personally we think he was chasing after Zarco to show him a large handful of entente discordiale. Prior to that monumental French cock-up Toblerone Luthi had smoothly slipped into the lead, never to look back. Luthi makes Lorenzo look rough. Lorenzo must have looked on wistfully.

And then the MotoGP race. DORMA must have been keeping everything crossed and had flung all of their 50p pieces into the electricity metre just to keep the cameras rolling for longer than normal. And then on the first lap, calamity. Loris Baz and Pol Espargaro collided on the first lap. No jokes from us, it looked serious. But mercifully they both escaped without great injury. Phew.

One lap shorter, the re-started race was simply fantastic. Viñales buggered off into the distance pulling gap after gap in his quest to get away from the circuit as quick as possible. Brno Beast, Calzone Crutchlow confounded us and got stuck in as many front of race fights as came along. Rossi and Marquez and Iannone all offered Calzone a scrap and all got the brush off from the bruiser. Next time Andrea, bring a hammer. And not a toffee hammer. Girl. (He set himself for a fall in his Saturday press conference; more of that later maybe. This is a bloody iPad and it’s not easy).

In the end Rossi got slightly lucky when Marquez made a forced error and ran on. Rossi consolidated his place to finish third behind Crutchlow

The only thing missing was Lorenzo. Go on holiday Jorge. It looks like you’ve left Yamaha already.

Apologies for a rambling review; I’m stuck at a fog bound airport trying to go on holiday, and the Misano race is six days away.