Well, it was an okay race. Fun to see 4 riders with race leading pace for the first 10-15 laps. Maverick is looking good, though I'm not sure why he struggled so badly last week. He and the team must be relieved that he returned to form at Misano. Bastianini had a great ride as well, setting the fastest lap of the race on the final lap, while making a mistake. Championship possibilities look bleak for Fabio, at the moment. Ducati will probably have 10-15kph advantage at Aragon and Sepang, the latter has back to back straights. There are quite a few complex strings of corners at both tracks, but I'm not sure Fabio and the Yamaha will be superior enough through those sections to keep Ducati at bay. Bagnaia is still a long way back, but the gap will vanish if he keeps winning and Fabio struggles for the top-5.
Overall I'm not comfortable with the new racing paradigms. In the old days you'd say the riders were just stalking one another, waiting for their time to get by or preserving the tires. Now we know they can't get by one another, unless the rider in front makes a mistake or the rider behind is a solid 3-4 tenths faster. I'm also a bit confused with the Binder situation. It seems he collided with Zarco at the Turn 1 apex, causing a multi-bike pileup, but no one seems to care. I suppose it's always been this way. The midpack melee is the unregulated Wild West of MotoGP, but in this era of track limit warnings and penalties for unsafe riding during practice, the lack of concern seems out of place, though Binder's mistake, as I perceive it, was much less egregious than Takahashi's mistake, for instance.
