‘Wallop and he’s taken the win!’
Brilliant to see Toprak on the top step again… incredible! He must have grown up seeing that last-corner pass that Rossi did on Lorenzo and thought ‘why not?’ Then wallop, no hesitation, straight through. He passed Bautista so hard that Iannone got through as well… brilliant.
Moving on to MotoGP, I say a lot of things in this column and sometimes they backfire on me. One of those relates to Acosta, but I love the fact I called it wrong. I said Portimao could be a real challenge because it’s a tough, upand-down track and he won’t have ridden a MotoGP bike there… and he absolutely proved me wrong!
You have to commend the kid, he’s the real deal and whenever he’s on track it’s hard to keep your eyes off of him.
The other big talking point is the Marquez/Bagnaia crash which for me was all down to Bagnaia. It was amateur. The fact that Acosta had caught him that fast and cleared off showed that Pecco was in trouble. So he should have settled for sixth because Marquez was all over him. In my opinion Marquez passed him fair and square. It was a typical hard pass from Marc, but he didn’t touch him.
Pecco cut straight back, gave him no room and rode straight into him. Marquez wouldn’t even have seen him coming. For me that’s frustration, frustration of being the top dog and getting roughed up by a few rookies. He probably thought ‘I’m the world champion, I’m not taking that’. But at the end of the day he’s not going to be getting much respect from Marquez.
Look I get that there’s a lot of fuss about it because Marquez was involved, but surely when the dust settles, Ducati are going to be having a go at Bagnaia, not Marc.
Pecco is strange because he seems to either win at a canter or end up frustrated. He’s seen Martin three seconds up the road and then his pit board says Acosta is behind and catching. I think his head was all over the place.
Marquez being at the front and making passes is what we all want sat on the sofa, but if you’re Ducati it’s exactly what you don’t want!
‘Toprak must have grown up seeing Rossi’