To the spoils go, um, the victor.
MotoGP announcer Matt Birt does, on the whole, a pretty impressive job calling races. He has an encyclopedic memory, working knowledge of the bikes themselves, an intimate familiarity with the various tracks, and mountains of facts and figgers at his disposal. He has literally forgotten more about the riders than you or I have ever known. The plummy British accent doesn’t hurt anything.
There are, however, two aspects of his announcing game that just grind me. The first is his reliable tendency (probably imposed by Dorna as a condition of his employment) to overhype every single aspect of the sport. As an example, given the fact that upwards of 99% of the people on the planet don’t give a rat’s ass about motorcycle racing, he uses the noun “glory” and its adjectival form way too much. He casually describes the outcome of, say, a Moto3 victory from 2016 as “his famous win…” On the other hand, I think MotoGP offers much more interesting racing than F1 and IndyCar, but he typically makes no effort to draw comparisons with 4-wheel racing, which is odd.
My second gripe has to do with Matt’s unceasing efforts at profundity. He doesn’t simply want to describe the action; he wants people standing around the virtual water cooler and commenting on online forums quoting his descriptions, which aspire to epic poetry. Occasionally he trips over his own metaphors. Which is what occurred (at least once) today when he got tangled up in mid-sentence, proclaiming in the post-Moto3 drivel that, “To the spoils go, (uh-oh) the victor.” It was clear he realized his gaffe in mid-sentence, but he was stuck. He couldn’t just say “ellipsis” and go on. He had stepped in it, had to scrape it off his shoe, and hope–probably with good reason–that no one other than a few journo-humps like me would notice.
As to the racing, most of the action in the premier class all weekend took place in the first ten seconds of the Saturday Sprint, when four or five riders got clattered in Turn 1. Readers will assess whether Jorge Martin or Maverick Vinales was to blame, but I think it was just the track layout itself, which funnels way too many big motorcycles with exaggerated wing things into a very tight space with everyone carrying full fuel and adrenaline loads. (One might argue that the beautiful track at Estoril, Portugal was taken off the calendar years ago due to an even more dicey first turn.) Bezzecchi, Oliveira and, eventually, Zarco would record DNFs as a result.
Some time later, the stewards decided to blame Martin for the event, after he had finished on the podium lol. This irked a number of riders whose day was ruined, although I’m not convinced it was exactly #89’s fault. He had to serve a long lap penalty on Sunday but still managed to score a handful of points on both days. Otherwise, it was all Pecco all the time on both days. One thing I can say without, as dad used to say, fear of successful contradiction is that Bagnaia will win most of the races out of which he doesn’t crash. His 62 point lead in the championship at the halfway point, while not insurmountable, is formidable. Martin and Bezzecchi look to be engaged in a cage match for the rest of the year and may become teammates at Pramac before all is said and done. Personally, I want to root for the skeletal Brad Binder and his KTM, as I am growing tired of the Ducati oligopoly.
Once again, the best race of the weekend was the Moto3 tilt. Heir apparent Pedro Acosta looked to be running away from the field in Moto2 until Celestino Vietti showed up late in the day to rain on his parade. Matt and Louis were anxious to proclaim that Vietti had, accordingly, been resurrected after a full year of whistling Dixie, but I’m not sold. Let’s see how he does during the Bataan Death March in September, October and November. Hell, let’s see how everyone does during the remarkably oppressive back nine. Dorna is probably going to discover, the hard way, that next year’s calendar needs more thought.
Late-Braking MotoGP 