#i actually like being a fan of valentino and marc because it continually gives me the chance to like. test my principles

[batsplat]

bat splat thank youuu for saying the pecco jorge rivalry is just for pecco as opposed to having the specter of Vale hanging over it. I want to ask tho, I have been seeing people say the only reason pecco wins the race is because he copies jorge's setup throughout friday/saturday/Sprint. Wanted your opinion on this because I have also heard that Pecco gives decent engineering input and builds his race slowly over the weekend. Was just confused about how much data sharing can actually help, and how much does it help with the ducati specifically!! Have a nice day, love your posts

have a good day too, anon!! and I will gladly spread the pecco narrative independence agenda!! it's something I really do like about the rivalry - expanded a bit in the comments under this, but it's neat to have something that really is Just Pecco's. from inception it's very much his own rivalry, his own narrative... idk, this sport is too reliant on valentino to provide any kind of narrative tension, and it's just sort of refreshing to see this multi-year narrative play out that has fuck all to do with that guy. enough

on the set-up copying, obviously that is bullshit. I mean, to be clear, I'm sure pecco absolutely copies the set-ups of other ducati riders, but that's very much a mutual process - it's something that benefits all the ducati riders, and they've all openly spoken about this. it's very helpful to be able to see the data from seven other riders!! that's a big part of why ducati has been so bloody good!! the main difference is that jorge tends to be faster from the start of the weekend, whereas pecco tends to take time to reach his level. which I suppose makes some people draw the conclusion that pecco is only fast once he's copied someone's set-up. again, this isn't the case - it is just a difference in approaches. points come... well, unfortunately, not just on sunday anymore, but they certainly do not come on a friday. pecco knows this, which is also why sometimes he's not even trying to top an fp1 session - this year there have been quite a few instances of jorge but not pecco throwing on a fresh set of tyres towards the end of fp1 and setting a particularly impressive lap time. there's also nothing wrong with THAT approach, jorge is playing to his strengths, but at a certain point we're just talking different run plans

(there is also a very obvious logical fallacy with this line of reasoning. if you are copying someone's set-up, then by definition you have the same set-up as them. and if you beat someone with the same set-up, then it stands to reason that you were riding better than them. sure, you can argue the success is less earned because your team... idk, just lazed around all weekend, but at the end of the day surely you still cannot be a bad rider if you are getting more out of another rider's set-up than they themselves are able to manage)

and yeah, pecco is known for giving good feedback! just being a good learner in general. here, actually, a little throwback from start of 2019 where pecco's crew chief gabarrini (who also ofc has worked with casey, lorenzo and briefly with marc) compared pecco and marc:

"A driver - all of them do this - starts at a certain level and ends the day at a higher level. What makes the difference is starting again where you were. Few have this quality: it often happens that a driver sets good times - without knowing why, without being aware of how he got there. The 'good' ones, on the other hand, have this characteristic: they achieve a result and know why they did it," explained the chief technician. Gabarrini even goes so far as to compare the MotoGP rookie with the current world champion: "I saw this quality in Márquez: I was with him when he made his debut in the MotoGP World Championship. His ability to not forget what he had learned impressed me. Once he had understood an aspect of the riding style, the set-up or any other thing to be faster, he had it in him forever. Pecco also has this quality." "In Valencia we started with a base similar to the one Lorenzo used: on paper it suited Bagnaia, based on what you could understand when you saw him riding a Moto2 bike. From then on, the normal changes to the set-up were made so that he could ride the bike as he liked. In the meantime, Pecco has worked enormously to adapt his style to the Ducati."

and there you have it - pecco's good at progressively getting better at stuff, including over the course of the weekend. as for the set-up copying thing, partly it's just typical competitive paranoia (even though it feels like the fans are currently doing it more than the riders). back in the day, valentino and jorge used to have the world's dumbest arguments about this every other week. led to one of my all time fave messy jb moments:

god I miss that guy so badly. they don't do ride-or-die like that anymore

the point is that both sides were engaging in pretty silly mudslinging, just kind of for the vibes of it. valentino/jb trying to get under jorge's skin and jorge a bit more earnestly aggrieved. as ever, if you want to read more about how that particular era of jorge/valentino unfolded, see here. this is just to say, this kind of faffing about is a tale as old as time and it's always a bit silly... you had jorge say that it was impossible for them anyway to copy each other's data in the very same answer as he accused valentino of copying his set-up. like, I'm sorry, I am not going to take this seriously. a lot of sports is about having dumb arguments

and yeah, again, pecco does gradually build up his level over the weekend. more of a valentino than a casey, it's fair to say. and that'll hurt him in the sprint format - which I talked about a bit recently while going through casey's latest interview about how sprints are satan's providence:

so yeah, casey thinks that if anything there isn't enough time to work on set-up, and mat oxley thinks it's rubbish to say pecco relies on sprint data to be better on sunday. (as I said in that post, I do find it fun if unsurprising that casey is so virulently anti-sprints, because you'd think a lot of aspects of the format - including less time for everyone for working on set-ups - really would have suited him. keeping it real.) so on the whole... y'know. maybe he just gets better over the course of the weekend. it's been known to happen. there's actually some pretty significant ways in which the current version of the sport isn't all that pecco-friendly, from the shitty michelin front tyre we're keeping for another year to the sprint format we appear to be stuck with. it's just that he also happens to be on the best bike - and the fact that he's winning a lot but simultaneously isn't highly rated by fans makes people want to believe that the current series is 100% ideal for him

a lot of fans are loathe to admit pecco might actually be a good rider so they'll find basically everything to justify that prior. including getting into increasingly conspiratorial territory. but my actual take is this - if pecco has been gaming the system so expertly that he is somehow the only guy able to take full advantage of everyone else's data, so shrewd and cunning that he can spread magic dust on his bike so that he suddenly leaps ahead of jorge, such a dastardly operator that he can steal the set-up that poor jorge perfected on friday morning to fix his bike five minutes before the sunday race, then... good. I support it. I hope he's cheating. the more unearned the success is, the better in my books. long live corporate espionage and foul play

[piastri]

so I got the motogp videopass thing which is great as you get all the races / press conferences / documentaries going wayy back in 720p and it’s FREE till the 27th. (just make sure to cancel it straightaway so you don’t accidentally forget and it auto renews)

to get the most out of it I’m watching the top 10 races of every season (and highlights of the ones I skipped which I might go back to and watch if I get the time) and I started with 2015. thank you to @dybain for helping me pick some of these and @fabioquartarar0 for convincing me to finally start watching! 💞

this is just a mess of my thoughts as I was going through the season and I wanted to record it

Ratings and Summary:

Qatar - 3.5

vale & dovi looked more like they were doing synchronised skating rather than racing, that’s how often they were side by side

Argentina - 5

rossi vs marquez on diff tyre compounds, tortoise vs hare situation... the ending was explosive to say the least

*jorge wins like 4 in a row from start to finish we STAN*

*mugello & barcelona... me and alex both suffered watching marc being the disaster child that he is 😫

Assen - 5

rossi vs marquez continued. 36yr old vs 22yr old. I swear I will never get enough of these 2, going at it till the very last lap. marc with a last minute lunge (boy never gives up and that’s why I love him). shout out to vale’s lil roly-poly celebration after :’)

British - 4

jorge & vale are tied for points at this stage. we get rosquez in the rain. quite a few crashes. ultimately wet weather master class from vale, how on earth is he STILL this good?

San Marino - 4.5

Mixed conditions, they had to switch bikes 2 times. absolutely fascinating, they don’t have radios so the riders have to make the decisions for themselves. and OH JORGE 😫 some unexpected podiums, imagine crashing and then still ending up on the podium? Scott Redding did THAT.

Aragon - 3.5

crash early on for marc he looked so angry at himself 😩 and SUCH a good duel between Dani & Vale till the last lap 

Japan - 3

wet race.... DANIIIII 🎉

Australia - 5++++

HOLY SHIT there’s a reason this is considered one of the best motogp races ever. overtake overtake overtake OVERTAKE (that one by iannone on rossi and marquez jeeshh) that last lap omg, I was holding my breath, could not call it. top 4 finishing within a second of each other! also poor seagull 😣

Sepang

the pre-race press conference is very important contextually for what happens next. vale accuses marquez of ‘playing’ with him in the last race and wanting to help jorge extend the lead in the championship. all around very awkward affair as jorge and marc are sitting either side of him. to a motogp noob like myself, it didn’t seem like the race was manipulated? but what do I know

bruh how do I even rate this race? I had to stop the race multiple times during the first 6 laps to take a minute because that duel between rosquez, holy shit that got PERSONAL, hand gestures and all. and then of course it all went up in flames, my mouth literally fell open. you NEED to watch this for yourself. in all of the chaos Dani wins ❤️

Valencia - 4

vale starts from the back of the grid after reviewing the penalty, his first lap was insane he overtook like 10 riders and had a great comeback. isolated, the race itself wasn’t that ‘exciting’ not that many overtakes but in the context of the championship it was everything (shout-out to the commentators for really building up the scene and the intensity) I thought for sure marquez was gonna go for a lunge at the end but he didn’t (all the people who say that he stayed behind on purpose can quite frankly fuck right off)

JORGE WINS THE CHAMPIONSHIP. I RESPECT this guy so much you can tell he puts so much into every single race and it takes so much out of him emotionally and physically.

I ADORE the tiny 5’2 spanish man dani pedrosa ❤️ on his day he is incredibly fast and he just comes across really positive.

I LOVE my sometimes overeager, aggressive demon (but also very sweet, humble and incredibly talented) child marc marquez. He sort of reminds me of my favourite f1 drivers (lewis and max) at the start of their careers and I’ve heard he’s matured a lot since 2015 and I’m looking forward to seeing that.

side note - the way marc pronounces victory as bictory 😂🥰

I am in AWE of Valentino Rossi. There’s a reason he’s considered the GOAT. he’s just seems technically so on point as a rider and no one else really comes close in the rain. he’s incredibly passionate about his racing, sometimes maybe even a little too passionate (perhaps if he hadn’t made those comments in the press conference, the outcome of the race in sepang and the championship could’ve been different) but it’s somewhat refreshing to see a guy really wear his heart on his sleeve and say what he actually feels rather than give robotic PR answers. also I’d never realised before just how big the #46 fan base is, every single time he overtakes someone the cheer from the crowd is insane and this is at every race track.

Nick Harris could give Crofty a run for his money with all the shouting, I thought for sure he was gonna lose his voice multiple times 😂 no joke he could commentate on cows grazing in the field and make it sound riveting.

random - I really like how the interviews at the end of the race with the top 3 are short and snappy and straight to the point unlike in f1. and they get to take their helmets up to the podium.

overall this was such a good season of racing, I really picked an amazing season to start with and will defiantly rewatch parts of the season in the future for a serotonin boost.

[batsplat]

hello!!! i read something pedro said about yesterday's race and i wanted to share it, it was in spanish so i translated it for you!

"I think that this cannot be punished, I say this from the point of view that it was not done to me. I think that they are overtakings like those of before. Valentino with Sete, Marc with Lorenzo...here there was a very cool race with Rossi and Lorenzo in 2016. All the great riders in history have done overtakings like that. And even more so in the overtaking on the last lap, since we have been saying for two weeks that we cannot overtake on this circuit. Jorge needs to settle for second!"

cheers anon!! yeah see that's the kind of thing where you do go... he's so into the sport! motogp is on the sharp end of sports where you do feel like most of the athletes are proper invested in the history of it and are more or less read up on their origin stories, which you'd think would be the norm among athletes given it's like. what they spend their life doing. and yet definitely isn't in some other sports lol. maybe it's something about just how insular and close-knit the paddock is... like it does seem to become your whole world, even more so than with other professional sports

but one of my favourite things about pedro is that, even by paddock standards, he's a proper nerd for the sport. like,, it's neat that all these years on from valentino being a massive kevin schwantz fan as a kid and then casey being a kevin schwantz fan (admittedly less than the others) and jorge being a massive kevin schwantz fan, somehow we've still ended up with the Next Big Thing being a massive kevin schwantz fan. still ride or die for a rider who's been retired since the mid nineties. it's really sweet! some of what he actually says about schwantz's authenticity is a touch adolescent, which,, y'know, I think he can probably be given a pass on, but it's also not like I'm one to dissuade him from his general commitment to wanting to inject some drama into the sport

blimey what did scott redding ever do to you

anyway,, yeah, it's fun that his immediate reaction to a racing incident is to bust out a selection of different historical precedents precedents, jerez 2005/13 is still pretty normie but he really elevates it by adding in misano 2016 - relevant given the circuit but still definitely a more niche example, like it wasn't THAT big a deal and the main outcome was jorge and valentino being snippy at each other in a presser. just a guy who's very aware of the history of the sport and is constantly using it as a reference and is very... not self-conscious exactly - but certainly self-aware, purposeful, in how he wants to continue that legacy. he's got his heroes to emulate, his very particular idea of racing, his ideal of what the sport should look like. he wants overtakes like that to still be allowed, because to him that's an important element of the sport he wants to be a part of. does give off a bit of a jorge vibe, students of the sport and all that. very conscientious legacy builders. hope he has a similarly fun go at it to those guys who came before