NOT the MotoGP News: Another pleasant Valé Sunday…

Another pleasant Valé Sunday…
…Here in status symbol land

If you can remember The Monkees you weren’t there man.
Where man?
‘Nam man…..
What, like Chippenham?

But like us, hunkered down the bunker, you will probably remember Sea-pain 2015. The moment it all got fun and interesting (well, it did for us) between Marc and Valé. As you all no doubt recall, for ages Marquez looked at his hero, and Rossi looked at his protégé and all the fans said “Coo…” And then Marquez started winning a bit too much and beating Rossi a bit too much, and well, Sea-Pain happened.

Luckily that was one race before the end of the season then, so everyone went on holiday and cooled their heels for a while, and 2016 and 2017 season were, you know, ok. Ish.

But this time at Circuit de Thomas Nachos it went massively wrong for Marquez. He was so flippin’ fast in every FP that he was a shoe-in for victory. Yep, QP wasn’t his best, but the weather was as iffy as an Argentinian general with an Exocet in his hands. Put that to one side and this race was his. Until it wasn’t. You know those moments when you’re sat at the traffic lights and they’re on red so you take a chance to tweak the music or change the track to something all revved up to get you away from the lights faster than child runs away from grubby old man offering to show them his puppies? Well 9 times out of 10 it’s fine. The lights go green and you’re pulling Gees like your sat in a rocket to the moon, but every now and then you dump the clutch and stall. That was Marquez on Sunday. Metaphorically he’d got “Easy” by The Commodores on loop in his iPod. He was already thinking of the massive steak that was his that night. And up he rolled to his grid position and he stalled. Doh! But hang on! We’ve all done it sometime. No drama, just put you hand up. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T BUMP START YOUR BIKE AND THEN RIDE BACK ALONG THE TRACK TO YOUR GRID SLOT. That’s just cheating. Or wrong. Or just plain not allowed.

By now we should have mentioned Jack Miller, because as you all know he was on pole. And by that we mean he looked like he sat on the top of a pole with everyone else sat around underneath him. Pourquoi we hear you say. In reality this article should be called “The thriller from Miller” but a pair of prima donnas screwed that up for us. In Qualifying Miller had gambled on a drying track and went out on slix. That gamble worked and gave him pole. On Sunday he rolled onto the grid once again shod with slix. This buggered everybody else; the fools had come out on wets. The thing is, when there’s just one of you, you’re open to being bullied. Sure enough everyone else stuck one or two fingers up to the rules and piled in to change to slix too. This totally messed with all the heads of those in charge, who somehow contrived to give everyone but Miller some sort of penalty by making them all start 40 metres back from Miller. Have you ever seen anything so daft? Scroll back in your mind to Marquez screwing up his start. There, you have!

So Marquez screwed up his start, but soon got on with getting his head down. Within a couple of laps he was past Miller and cruising to victory. Except the daft old duffers in Race Not-In-Control had blown the dust off the rule book, cast a spell involving rabbit’s feet, and corned beef (this is Argentina ya know), and invoked the third eye. After which they gave Marquez a ride through. For a laugh… hahaha…..

Ever wonder what goes through a rider’s noggin when he gets a ride through? Well, we did wonder, so we decided to ask Marquez, but as we go to press he and his team hadn’t replied, so we’ll make it up. In Marc’s case we suspect the following names drift across his mind. Emilio Alzamora. Alberto Puig. Maybe even Livio Suppo. Imagine that. That’s some scary stuff right there. And now he had to make amends.

You know Marc though; re-join the race in 20th place, get your head down fella, and you’ll be pukka as Jamie Oliver would say. So he did, and we sat here in the bunker waiting for it to happen. And it did. Of course it did. Rossi. Oh flippin’ heck It had to Valé didn’t it. Why didn’t Marquez just wait. Pass along the straight. Chose a safe moment. But no. It went pear-shaped and it went ballistic 0.0001 sec after Marquez hit Rossi up the inside.

You kinda love moments like this and yet detest them. Love them because it gives us something to write about. Detest because it gives us something to write about. Anyway, Twitter had a hernia and Facebook nicked all your personal info and sold it to some fella in Russia (politics, huh?).

Marquez then did a Rossi (who when trying to apologise to Stoner received the best ever put down ever; “Obviously your ambition outweighed your talent.”), and tried to shuffle along to Rossi’s garage to all man-like, and make the apology. Just to make things really ace, Puig and Alzamora tagged along like two bullies desperate for a fight. Arses. But Valé wasn’t having any of that. No way. So brilliantly, he sent professional bodyguard and all ‘round hard-nut Uccio to give Marquez the flick. This was truly comedy gold. Who doesn’t love a fat guy with a wanky ‘tache telling a really small guy in leathers to jog on? Hopefully DORMA (one auto-correct will sort this out) will include this sort of shenanigans at every round. We’d buy a ticket!

Cal Lowcrutch won this race by the way. You might have missed this. But he won and leads the World Championship which, for a Brit, is something special as no-one else has done that since Lord Sir Barry of Sheene. Narky-Zarcy was second and Tilbury’s finest was third. That podium, ladies and gentlemen, is bloomin’ wonderful.

Oh, as you know, Marquez was demoted by having 30 seconds added to his race time, but believe it or not still finished ahead of Rossi. That doesn’t seem fair does it? Lorenzo beat them both. Which is funny.

So what happens next? Well already Marquez has been told to calm down, and the authorities are having squeaky-bum moments worrying about COTA, and the season has one helluva long time to go yet. Basically we want more garage fisticuffs!