IT'S RACE WEEK!!!! Round 1 - PT Thai Grand Prix

warthog1 said:

I missed the pass on his bro at the end. Where was it? Out braked him somewhere I guess. He was biding his time.

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Last corner, made it look pretty easy.

Mav getting beaten by an unheralded rookie in a Honda is just a bit funny. Insane decision to switch from a bike that seemed to suit him to a bike that was never going to.

Ogura killed it this weekend. Embarrassed everyone else on an Aprilia IMO.

Still very early on the season to figure out what’s going to happen other than Ducati domination.

Gotta feel for AM.
"Marc was sitting there saving tyre, when you are in front you can't. I was using everything"

Congrats to Alex as well. Obviously the gap between 24 & 25 bikes isn’t
Iike it was last year but he still rode to successive second places on a year old bike.

JFM01 said:

Last corner, made it look pretty easy.

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Just got the replay in between it freezing. Cheers

That's gotta be scary to the rest of the field.

Marc played with 'em.

Notables

Ai Ogura
Mir crashing from 6th not 16th.
Miller didn't crash
Ogura
Solid ride from Alex.
Hows this weekend for Ai Ogura? Superstar rookie.

Did Chantra beat Mav in the end?

Barbedwirebikerr said:

Did Chantra beat Mav in the end?

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16 Maverick Vinales (Tech3 KTM) +28.770s
17 Alex Rins (Yamaha) +31.095s
18 Somkiat Chantra (LCR Honda) +31.480s
19 Pedro Acosta (KTM) +42.115s
20 Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia) +46.827s

warthog1 said:

Just got the replay in between it freezing. Cheers

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Where are you ?. I can usually watch the race on my phone if that is the only option with no problems including for this race.

It would be a boring race if not by Marc needing to raise the tyre temperature. The next 2 rounds will be like this, both suiting Marc style and he running away from the start. It's good to have him back, he needs to take advantage of these 3 first rounds to collect maximum points. Pecco lost setup time during tests and he promisses it won't happen again, now he has everything dialed in. Excuses? 50/50. After he got married he seemed to enter downward spiral. Got married, got beat by Martin and then Marc signed for Ducati, lol. Well, at least he's rich and has f*cked a bella dona.

Alex looking really good but everybody knows he will vanish and play mid-field as the season goes.

Ogura is very interesting. Bezz is a frustration. Acosta needs to leave KTM immediately, it's one of the biggest waste of talent such rider on a crappy bike. KTM is done. They're racing with name only. How could they have a competitive package if not even the factory is doing well with production bikes? Sounds like they have been bankrupt.

Quartararo, a shame. Honda is getting to the grips. Whatever... I think the most impressive thing that happened this weekend round was Miller finishing the race. And all of which with a completely new bike for him.

#22 said:

I think the podium battle is going to be between the Marquez brothers and Bagnaia.

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Easy guess that one is... Marc said that he has feelings like 2020 Jerez performance wise. Ominous

Would love to be a fly on the wall when the Marquez bros. discuss strategy and when and if to go for it. Not implying Alex "let" Marc pass, but when it happened - it sure looked effortless, especially given how close their race pace was in the sprint and then again today. Almost makes you think that Marc is just doing the bare minimum to win. For sure, Pecco will have his better days at tracks that favor him, but his inability to get past Alex in both races does not bode well.

MGP really needs to offer an option for watching and hearing the race without Moto-Mouth yammering away with endless cliches and high-pitched shrieking for purposes of vainly trying to make dull parts of the race appear more exciting. I've come to think of him as Birt-Brain. And the new guy on pit-lane.... Jeezus, sounds like a frikin' leprechaun with a lungful of helium.

Vinales moving to KTM allowing Ogura a seat may be his most valuable contribution to the sport. What a schmuck!

Wow.... Great display there from Marc. Considering what Marc has been through, this makes for an amazing story in motorsport. I don't see things being much different for the rest of the season. I see Pecco taking the fight to him on some weekends but I doubt Pecco will dominate a race unless Marc has an issue.

Aguro shining while Acosta struggles with the KTM.

Great to see Alex keep it on the road to 2nd. Morbidelli deserves the break!!

gui22a said:

Ogura is very interesting. Bezz is a frustration. Acosta needs to leave KTM immediately, it's one of the biggest waste of talent such rider on a crappy bike. KTM is done. They're racing with name only. How could they have a competitive package if not even the factory is doing well with production bikes? Sounds like they have been bankrupt.

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I share your point of view about KTM. Despite Bierer's official statements on bike development, race commitment and even interest in building a brand new 500cc engine for the next gen Moto3, I can't believe that KTM financial situation didn't affect 2025 race program.

I'm not in the motor racing business, but I can guess that every technical step has to be planned several months in Advance after being financially approved and covered... How could an almost bankrupt brand leave space for such futile expenses? How could they plan them without the certainty of being financially alive in the near future?

I'm persuaded that KTM RC16 25 spec development was freezed at the end of the last season, while other manufacturers where catching up... Ducati deliberated the definitive GP24.9 at the last day of test, as the result of over an year of technical development.
Try to imagine what would mean to put every decision on hold until you have your creditors' and lawyer's thumbs up... A huge gap performance wise.

Keshav said:

MGP really needs to offer an option for watching and hearing the race without Moto-Mouth yammering away with endless cliches and high-pitched shrieking

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I watch on the website. You can switch camera between the main feed and a few on boards, one of the choices there is "Ambient". It's the main feed, but without any commentary, just ambient sounds from the circuit, mostly the bikes. My preferred way to watch.

I was hoping for a two horse race this year, but I guess not...Pecco couldn't take advantage of MMs problem.

Every race will be Marc sailing off into the sunset, the other Dukes picking up the scraps, and the occasional lesser bike getting a taste.

But hey, at least there's a new wunderkind rookie for the commentators to blather on and on about to distract no action happening during the race...

I managed to see the final 6 laps on my phone before boarding this morning. Uh, yeah at this point Marc is just racing against himself. I think he knows how to ride the aero bikes better than Pecco who I thought was the gold standard. But I guess it was easier for Pecco in bygone seasons to get away with taking his time on setup since now it's starting to appear he had little competition due to the current spec Desmosedici generally being far ahead. He just had to cover the other same year spec riders who weren't great outside of Martin.

Marc showed me he hasn't lost a single bit out there. Is he toying with the competition? Probably. But that boy can ride. Probably the most talented rider in GP since Michael Doohan. I'd say Stoner but I don't think Casey could have beaten Marc in a full season.

michaelm said:

Where are you ?. I can usually watch the race on my phone if that is the only option with no problems including for this race.

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Central Vic, away at work. Tested the "5G" speed. It was 14Mbps.
Oh at home, or at least, last year it was, over wired internet.
It was mostly ok last year when away over 4G

I was watching the races later on motogp.com, so didn't come here to avoid spoilers. I've seen everything so far except the MotoE race.

Moto3: Utter Mayhem. As with new seasons of Moto3, it interests me to see riders appear that I wasn't aware of before. I don't follow the entire field, and Alvaro Carpe and Matteo Bertelli are both riders I'm not familiar with, despite their racing histories so far. Both looked interesting. Rueda's win is well deserved, with him being able to break away from the group and therefore be insulated from Piqueras doing Piqueras things. And quite a few other riders taking each other out as well it seems. I was interested to see if Ogden might take a step forward. Which he definitely did in qualifying. Then in the race he dropped way back to nearly out of the points. Moved forward when about half the field in front of him crashed out or was punted out, and then fell off on the last corner. I'm not sure what the championship will be after one race, but Rueda looked good today.

Moto2: Some mayhem. I was thinking Canet would be the class of the field. Holgado looks very good, and like Ogura in MotoGP, looked very good. I noticed in Q2 how we did a lot of laps rather than changing tyres so that he could learn the bike better. His performance particularly compares well to Alonso, who was simply unimpressive all weekend. The talent is there, but it certainly wasn't on display this weekend. While things may have looked different if Vietti stayed upright, it's looking like we're back to situation as normal, mostly a Kalex cup.

MotoGP: Pretty much no mayhem at all. Ogura was great. I won't be unkind and go and look up who said that the Aprilia might not suit Ogura's riding style Ogura wasn't riding on the ragged edge, or having to save the bike. Or making bloopers. He seemed very smooth and simply fast. It'll be interesting to see how he compares to Martin once Martin is back. When I saw that Ogura was straight through to Q2, I thought that was impressive, but expected him to be down near the bottom of the top 12. Wrong. Then in the race I thought his qualifying position was stunning, but he would drop back during the race. Wrong. Then in the feature race I thought that over a full race his lack of experience would count against him and he would fade. Perhaps using up too much tyre. Wrong. Now I'm really looking foward to seeing how he performs in future races, and how he compares to a returning Martin.

It seems to me that the GP25 isn't, as of today, yet better than the GP24. I think I heard that it still has the GP24 engine. Even so, Alex Marquez was really impressive. He beat Bagnaia cleanly and not due to any luck three times if we include qualifying. The Gresini crew looked extremely happy. It can't be a good thing for them to lose Marc even if it was obvious that he would go somewhere, but Alex gives me hope that we'll see more Gresini wins this year. Note, that's hope. I'm not sure it's better than 50/50 that he'll win one. I hope he does.

Marc Marquez still has it. He looks very comfortable on the GP25, and I think that his GP23 experience is all he needs. He beat Bagnaia in every way this weekend. I'm not sure that Bagnaia can fight back, and I predict that this year will be an easy championship for MM93.

While he fell off in the sprint, I think that Jack Miller certainly justified his Pramac Yamaha seat. As of today he's the top rider on a Japanese bike, including being ahead of FQ. OK, I predict that FQ will win out over Jack during the year, but based on this weekend Miller absolutely deserves that seat.

KTM - oh dear. Woes continue. While the bike may be the deciding factor, Acosta looks quite bad compared to Ogura so far. Binder and Acosta looked very close, but then Acosta fell off. And now Binder is quite a bit higher up.

EDIT: No MotoE races until May.