#to see if valentino still shamelessly continues to hold court until casey like. actually dives over and strangles him

[batsplat]

about press conferences, i haven’t really looked into how the rider lineups for 00s thursday/friday pre-race conferences were decided. in f1 they’re randomly grouped, so seeing your favorite drivers together each week feels like opening a blind box

i looked through some 2007 pictures, and clearly the lineups weren’t based on championship standings like they are now

this year i’m completely tired of pecco, jorge & marc in the same press conferences. seeing the same faces every week is driving me nuts😤

plus i feel like the seating arrangement in today’s press conferences is way less fun than the old-school setup. everyone’s spaced so far apart, no more whispering to each other. maybe they should just make the riders share one big couch

yeah first off they need to bring back this presser format at all costs. since my knowledge of the 2007-08 seasons is unfortunately reaching slightly pathological levels, I do know off the top of my head that the motegi/shanghai photos are from post-quali pressers. which is something sprints have STOLEN from us altogether. I miss post-quali pressers!! it was cool to get a lil preview for the race to come, and also there's plenty of narrative juice by getting the top three riders from motogp with the pole sitter from moto3 and moto2 in one presser, which could be a preview of storylines for future SEASONS. casey getting his first ever pole at assen 2004 my beloved

I also think they had post-sprint pressers last year but got rid of them this season?? I mean icl I do get why it's a bit much to ask of the riders. but also the sprints have been so dire this season that I'm really not certain this is a good trade-off in entertainment value

but anyway back to the point - yeah, back in the day even the pre-event pressers weren't consigned to championship order!! it was actually pretty rare for it to be just top four-six... off the top of my head, jerez 2008 a rare example I can think of --

-- but it tended to be a mix!! they almost always had the championship leader I think, but basically almost everyone could get traded out. usually you'd make sure there'd be a couple local riders where possible, sometimes they'd get someone from the lower classes, sometimes someone with a big announcement or just someone random... to some extent they still do this now, but they completely confine that stuff to the second presser. here's some back-to-back pressers from 2008:

mind u valentino gets kicked out the one race where he wasn't championship leader... valentino and casey both in all but one of these, dani is in half, but beyond that it's a completely changeable cast. and that was GOOD. they should bring this back. it gives them more options to chat to, it provides more interesting dynamics, it means every presser won't be the exact same... AND the table squeezes the riders a bit closer together, which just OBVIOUSLY makes it more likely that they'll talk. or at least meaningfully stare at each other. even valentino would have been hard pressed to have an extensive stage-whispered conversation with the bloke next to him if he's sitting like a metre away. bring back my family

I'm not personally a massive couch person, I'm a stick in the mud and prefer something a bit more formal - plus I quite like how they just got jammed together behind a table. but at this point... at this point I would take the couch. the first couple of years under covid they used to have like,, two rows of awkwardly distanced riders, but as time has gone on they seem to have used it as an excuse to just downsize entirely and split them up. I get that these things are probably extremely tedious for riders to get through and I imagine they prefer it to be more streamlined, but quite frankly I don't care. I want to see riders go through tedious situations for my entertainment. bring back the table, save motogp today