#cota 2025

[red-ruth]

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED AT COTA

30 minutes before race start, it rains. The track’s wet. The majority of the grid is on wet weather tyres. The track then dries. Marc realises they’ve got the wrong tyre choice. You can see, him, sitting on the bike, face up, hat off, waiting for raindrops and There Aren’t Any.  

He tells his mechanics he might leave the grid, he knows he's got a second, dry bike waiting.   At the 4 minute marker, he gets off the bike. Pecco notices. At exactly three minutes before race start, right as the title sequence starts, Marc dips and books it to pitlane. Pecco clocks what he’s doing in half a second. Alex thinks he’s forgotten his earbuds??? (LOCK IN ALEX) And soon the majority of the front three rows + some soon follow. They cut from the intro (which never got finished btw 🙁) to Chaos. Mechanics are everywhere. The riders engage in a 200 meter sprint to grab their second bikes and make it down the pitlane (keep in mind, the warm up lap is still going to start in like 2 minutes)  Maverick Vinalez appears to have unrelated mechanical problems and is running around bikeless. Marc nearly runs over some grid girls. A honda is on pole position. And so they red flag. Restart. And funnily enough the race ended there don’t really remember what happened after that.

  BUT, if you don’t know what happened with the rules, what Marc was plotting and why he’s now master of the dark arts, here’s a comprehensive explanation as to why this all went down...

  The rules state that if you leave the grid before the start of the race, you have to start from pit lane. If more than 10 riders leave the grid before the start of the race, the quick start* procedure is enacted.  

Quick Start: The riders that are in pitlane start the sighting lap from pitlane. When they reach the grid a single mechanic from their team will be standing in their qualifying grid position (unless the grid positions had been changed by race direction WAS NOT THE CASE) The mechanics will then leave. Riders start the warm up lap, and the race start proceeds as normal.  

If 10 or less riders had been in the pitlane, ergo, quick start procedure is NOT enacted. They would have started the sighting lap from pitlane, lined up on the grid in their positions, done the warm up lap, race start as normal etc EXCEPT they have to then take a ride through penalty once the race starts, likely within the first three laps. A ride through penalty is when a rider has to come through the pitlane during the race, taking 20/30 seconds out of their lap time.  

According to Marc, at 7 minutes he asked if the dry bike is set up, and he says he might leave the grid. Also according to him, he knew this rule with the quick start procedure, and he knew if enough riders leave, he would not take a penalty and still be on the right tyres. So why did he bolt at the three minute mark, and not as soon as he realised he needed to change? He was off his bike for a whole minute, waiting. My guess is that the closer to race start he got, the more chaos he’d create and put pressure on riders and race direction.

Remember, nearly a minute before the riders were supposed to start the warm up lap, there were still personnel on the grid, grabbing bikes, there was whatever the fuck was going on with Vinalez, mechanics in the pitlane getting new bikes ready, race direction caught with their damn pants down, they could notttt have safely started with all that going on.  

So Marc needed the grid to follow him, + the chaos essentially, or else the quick start procedure is not enacted and he still gets that penalty. And so what if Marc/no other riders left the grid? Well the race goes ahead as normal, but they'd almost certainly do a pit stop during the race to change to the dry bike anyway. A pit stop takes more time than a ride through because you have to pull in and swap bikes. Its more of a penalty to do a pit stop than the actual penalty for leaving the grid.

I know Marc is acting all confident that so many riders would follow him and the quick start procedure would be enacted, however, he is a lying liar. He probably knew that either option is still better than staying on the grid. That’s probably what made him leave. It actually points out a big flaw in the regulations that it’s beneficial to create more chaos than it is to just do a pit stop in these sort of circumstances where a pit stop to change bikes is inevitable.   Here’s the thing, according to Simon Patterson, MORE THAN 10 riders did not leave the grid. Exactly 10 did Marc Marquez, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Alex Marquez, Pedro Acosta, Franco Morbidelli, Pecco Bagnaia, Joan Mir, Jack Miller, Maverick Vinalez and Fermin Aldeguer Either this is a misunderstanding from race direction who thought the rules state “AT 10 riders in pitlane” rather than “more than 10 riders in pitlane”, ORRRR they DID know that there were not enough riders but because of the amount of personnel in pitlane, on the grid and the general chaos generated by a certain someone leaving it LITERALLY last minute, they decided to enact the rule regardless, which lines up the official statement from Race Director Mike Webb

“We called for a delay and then a quick start procedure for safety reasons. Given the amount of riders, bikes and pit staff on the grid and in the pitlane area, it was impossible to start the warm up lap.” 

HOWEVER, there is a chance that Johan Zarco is the 11th bike which made the red flag come out. If you watch the replay, you can see Johan Zarco come off the bike in the background of a shot.

Johann Zarco very clearly off his bike

The next shot is of the red flag. So either, the stewards saw Zarco appear to intend to leave the grid and immediately red flagged knowing he would be the necessary 11th rider. In which case the statement from race direction is an explanation of the regulation itself, not providing reasoning as to why they disregarded it.     But given that the shot of the red flag is so soon after Zarco gets off it could be his action is simply him reacting to the red flag and Simon Patterson is still correct, the red flag was put out before the necessary amount of riders actually left the grid.     Either way, the regulations are now going to be revisited. Marc is on a level of mind games undiscovered by man. I love this sport.

[multiseb21]

GOTTA BLAST

[fastianini]

moments from the cota race start chaos that are utterly hilarious to me (besides the obvious):

1. the absolute perfect COMEDIC timing of the broadcast JUST cutting to the intro/commercial and in the LAST second you see marc dipping

2. pecco *stressed italian noises* immediately running after him with his sippy cup in hand

3. tom maubant‘s face after suddenly finding riders sprinting down the pitlane around him

4. this guy dragging two pit girls to the side as a wild marc marquez after his heist hauls through the pitlane while chaos erupts completely

5. luca pulling his visor down 😈ready to race 😈 from sudden pole position as the whole front rows are gone (who said hondas can‘t start first???)

6. maverick hopping around like a lost rumpelstiltskin without a bike on the grid, everyone pointing to something different

7. marc almost fucking over his race start after everything anyway because he almost didn‘t get his front start device to activate

8. maverick having technical issues at the start after he managed to find his bike after a heartfelt search😶

[books4ever03]

I have so many questions...

[potato-sports-fan]

Cute moment from cota 2025

Ok but why do kids like stick to Marc Marquez is he a magnet or something 🤣

[llinnill]

LET'S GO LESBIANS!!

[aaron04jpg]

The Rossi fans too smug here after the dnf, my leg might slip

[muxas-world2]

everyone coming to congrats pecco but bezzz the one he hold on to more …oh I’m sure

[chaosinstigator]

he really tried to pull one on them too bad they caught on too quick

[multiseb21]

so when he took off his hat and moved the umbrella away to feel the rain on his skin he was, in fact, plotting a last second 100m sprint to his second bike that would inevitably trigger chaos

[chassisfucker]

pecco leading a grand prix after marc takes HIMSELF out

[eneasbastianini]

🙂‍↕️

[fastianini]

yet ANOTHER hilarious angle

[snowcloset]

WHO was going to tell me Fabio Quartararo has a sylvanian family/lil bear version of himself in his box??? 😭 that is so cute wtf

[agnus2718]

I love how we’re not even in the COTA race weekend yet and already things are looking like a shit show. Some would say this is because America is rejecting the Europeans, but it’s actually because of the homophobic spanish twink bringing bad vibes

[iloveandsuffer]

im losing it tom was just walking back to the garage when suddenly marc bolted past him look at his reaction LMAO