Winners
KTM
At the beginning of the season KTM were all at sea and sinking fast with the weight of a crate of rival energy drinks. It seemed that Michelin’s new 2021 tyre allocation rules were the cause of the problems forcing the Austrian firm to hastily put down their Reichsjugendführer manuals and design a new chassis that better suited the French tyres.
But if there’s one thing the Austrians know it’s how do over the French. The Michelin annoyance then forced the free-flowing Pit Beirer to oil up his bearings and dump their then French fuel manufacturers Elf and replace them with the American fuel experts ETS – and if there’s one thing the Americans know it’s how to join a battle halfway once you’ve established who’s winning.
KTM claimed that they found macaroon deposits in the Elf fuel which forced the change. But whatever the reason the new fuel, along with their new chassis has elevated them from the back-of-the-grid losers to race winning heroes once again.
Better still if Brad Binder manages to win a race this season it will mean KTM have will have won at least one race in all three classes with all their factory riders. That should cheer Honda up.
Ducati
They’re just doing awesome! Fat bikes rule.
Marc Marquez’s surgeon
Upon returning to action this year in Portugal they said if Marc Marquez was to ever fail off again his career would be over as his shoulder would be knackered.
Since then Marc’s fallen off loads – including every race we can remember. And again in Spain. Each time he’s been okay. A tribute to ‘an idiot’s guide to surgery’ and superglue.
Losers
Zips
Zips are pretty decent – they’re analogy Velcro. Like holograms hardly anyone understand how zips work but most of the time they do. Sure, once in a while we may suffer the dreaded ‘lower detachment failure’ where the bottom parts unzips and you have no idea which way to move the zipper leaving you with an X-zip effect until you crawl out of your coat. But other than that they’re pretty splendid.
But, thanks to Quartararararo, the zip community in Spain came under a lot of unnecessary and unfair criticism.
The problem was that Fabio decided to ride the later half of the race with his leathers unzipped. Afterwards he claimed that the zip failed, like his boys in ’39, and slowly started to open up and he couldn’t do anything about it.
Not entirely true I’m afraid. After the race Alpinestars examined the suit and found out that the zip was functioning fine and the airbag had not gone off. The reality is that Fabio, a man who enjoys exposing his smooth chest at every opportunity, was messing about with his zip before the race started and had not had it fastened all the way up.
But the poor zip took the blame.
FIM/Dorna/Stewards/Organisers
Someone should have black flagged Quartarararo. Asking a rider to give up his own race because of a safety issue is like asking James Corden to give up his career because he’s monstrously unfunny. It’s not going to happen unless someone forces it – hopefully in the latter case with a house brick.
Then, just to be more stupid, Fabio was given a three second penalty after the race for his perilous actions. After?? This is a splendid way of giving every rider in a similar situation the choice of “either come in and lose all your points or stay out and take a three second penalty that may lose you a few points”.
Utter stupidity. The rider’s safety should be the number one priority of the organisers, the stewards, Dorna and the FIM.
Honda
Honda are now doing so poorly that they risk being demoted to a ‘concession’ team for 2022. For those not in the know the concession rule is awarded, using podium results, to any team that has been proven to have been absolutely terrible over the course of two years. Think: Aprilia 2017.
This would be mighty embarrassing for the honourable yet evil Japanese firm – and would probably cause Tokyo harbour to overflow again like it did the year Rossi left them to join Yamaha.
The upside of being a speshal concession team, other than the sticker that says ‘I’m trying my hardest’, is that they get increased testing privileges to allow them to develop their bike quicker and in theory catch back up. This is ideal if they had a great test rider like Dani Pedrosa…oh….
Joan Mir
The current outgoing World Champion is rather quickly becoming the king of sulking. We used to like him but now we’re not sure. A bit like Zarco in reverse.
Mir’s picked a media fight with Marc Marquez every race since the crash-happy Spaniard’s return and loves to gesticulate on-track to him. It’s almost like he’s feeling inferior?
In Spain the Spaniard had a couple more beefs. Firstly he bemoaned his teammate being injured nd not riding as this gave him less data to look at which, he claims, affected his qualifying. Championship material right there folks.
After the race Mir was livid with Quartarararo’s antics and immediately went about grassing him up for being stupid. The fact that Fabio’s leading the championship and he’s not had nothing to do with this.