We all have or preferences, even the most measured of posters which I consider you and Bern 1 to be on this forum, and as always your post is extremely well argued.
Much to admire about Bagnaia even if he is not my favourite, he is certainly overall the guy who has mastered the current aero/ride height bikes best up till now, and I guess somewhat to my surprise I have become a latter day MM fan, and as for several others he is the major reason I watch now. I remain a Casey Stoner fanboy in the larger scheme of things though.
MM I believe has a perhaps peculiar sense of sportsmanship. . He will barge past riders he considers uncompetitive as he did in the sprint race which I stopped watching after he crashed, but I think behaves differently with those he considers to be peers, and while I may have selective memory one of the reasons he has lost quite a number of races on the last lap is because he has accepted being passed legitimately and not counter attacked as Bagnaia did.
I thought MM’s pass on Bagnaia was fair, there was no contact and he left him enough room not to crash. If Bagnaia’s counter is legitimate as I said earlier in the thread then how is Bagnaia to be passed ?, given it is unlikely to be on a straight when he is on a GP24 particularly iby an opponent riding a GP 23. You probably can’t make that move on very many riders without both of you going down anyway, as MDub says MM is a “....... mongoose” with hair trigger reflexes who can respond. To me, along with MDub and others MM had successfully passed him, and the counter both involved inevitable contact with a rider ahead of him from the getgo as Bagnaia more or less admitted post race, and both of them going down was beyond his control and entirely dependent on MM, only imo of course.
