Mandalika was hot, hot, hot, with many riders describing it as “like being inside an air fryer”. Toprak had a perfect weekend to take the treble, but his miniature rival Alvaro Bautista just had to follow him around to steal his number 1 plate.
Tricky Track
The Indonesian track is excellent because it doesn’t have a kilometre-long straight and therefore isn’t a Ducati track. To add to the hilarity, the track had been resurfaced just over a week earlier. This meant that there was a rubbery racing line about a foot and a half wide, and anybody venturing beyond it onto the oily, brand-new tarmac lost their grip faster than a Twitter employee when Elon Musk took over.
Toprak Treble
Right from the start, Toprak was insanely fast even by his standards. His weekend was pretty much perfect as he crushed his rivals to take his second treble of the season.
However, Alvaro just needed a couple of podiums in order to sew up his first WSBK title. The ridiculous thing was that he pulled off several outstanding overtaking moves during the races. They were even more impressive given that nearly everyone who went more than a foot off line for any reason was rewarded with a massive highside and trip to the medical centre. It clearly showed that he simply doesn’t need a bike that gives free overtakes down kilometre-long straights. He very likely would have won the title even if the Ducati wasn’t such a missile in a straight line, just due to his speed and consistency. So next year they should load him with 15kg of ballast, knock off 1,000rpm and let him overtake his way to the title.
Bau-Bau’s Booze Boo-Boo
Turkish superstar Toprak avoids alcohol due to his personal beliefs. He doesn’t make a big thing of it and he doesn’t want to spoil everyone else’s fun, so when the bubbly is sprayed on the podium he quietly excuses himself and stands backstage for a minute.
So it was jaw-dropping to see Alvaro celebrate a podium finish by spraying a load of the fizzy podium paint stripper right in race-winner Toprak’s face, then chasing him off stage with a long blast of the carbonated, allegedly alcohol-based substance.
Given that Alvaro and Toprak have shared podiums a couple of dozen times this year alone, it was a bone-headed mistake that Alvaro quickly apologized for and won’t be repeating. What is it about Ducati team leaders and alcohol? Does Ducati hire stupid people as lead riders, or does signing for Ducati wipe out most of your brain cells?
Sublime Supersport
This year’s new World Supersport rules have transformed one of the most tedious categories in motorcycle racing into one of the very best. Until this year, the WSSP category was for 600cc sportbikes. Unfortunately, for about the last 15 years these highly-strung middleweight screamers have been as unfashionable and hard to sell as Bradley Smith merchandise.
However, the 2022 rules were opened up to bikes that people actually buy. The Yamaha and Kawasaki 600cc inline-4 bikes are still legal, but now they are joined by the Triumph 765cc and MV Agusta 800cc triples and the 955cc Ducati V2. They’re equalized using technical limits that are unique to each manufacturer so they all perform about the same, and it has made the racing truly outstanding.
In race 1 at Mandalika, Finnish hard-nut Niki Tuuli won, making MV Agusta the 4th manufacturer to win a race this year. The only bike not to win a race so far this year is the Ducati V2. Probably because Ducati’s equalization rules were set very conservatively due to them being a bunch of ch… uhh… chaps who are very good at reading between the lines of the rule book. (Ahem.)
Domi Aegerter finished off the podium but took enough points to win his 2nd WSSP title in a row.
Looking at the results you’d see that Domi has won nearly all the races and assume that the racing must’ve sucked. In fact he has usually had to produce epic battles back from about 4th or 5th place and only led for the last 2 or 3 laps. In race 2 he outdid himself, fighting from 9th place to take the victory.
Red Flag coming out any time now… No, now… Alright then, NOW!… Seriously, where the hell’s the red flag???
The newly-surfaced track was so slippy off-line that anyone running wide either sat the bike up and ran off the track or was highsided to the moon. At times it was like watching a 1990s 500GP crash video.
Niki Tuuli was running in a podium spot in race 2 when he put the back wheel about a millimetre off the racing line and the bike viciously highsided him out the front door. He managed to stagger off relatively unhurt, but his MV was left lying right on the racing line.
So the officials immediately red-flagged the race, right? Right?
Wrong. They outrageously let the field complete another lap because that put the race over two-thirds distance so it wouldn’t have to be restarted. The red flags should have appeared within about 20 seconds when that bike landed on the racing line. It’s as if the WSSP officials were trying to outdo the Moto2 officials in the field of idiotically failing to red flag a race. It’s like the Ass-Clown Olympics in Race Control these days.
Next Race
Philip Island hosts the next round to finish off the season. It also hosts the round after that as it returns to being the season opener next year.