Saturday was sunny and hot. Sunday was…. mostly…. cloudy and hot. The first of two Italian GP weekends kicked off a treat.
Moto3:
Piqueras would start the race with not one, but two Long Laps to his name for assisting Kelso in properly flying off into the gravel during Saturday morning practice. This would be Furusato’s fiftieth GP start. Well done on that milestone, Taiyo.
The race had hardly kicked off when, at Turn Two, there occurred a multi-rider pile-up involving (amongst others, who did not actually crash) Rueda, Muñoz, and Rossi. It looked like the centre of a bridge giving way under a massive flood as the middle of the pack caved in, tumbling off in a wave of motorcycles and riders while those around them took every evasive action in the manual in order to not get swept up by it.
Fernández and Lunetta were both informed that they’d jumped the start, and thus had to do the Long Lap twice each. During the fourth lap, Pérez and Bertelle both crashed, separately. But what had everyone nailed to their seats, gnawing at their thumbs, was the epic battle unfolding amongst the leading five – between Ortolá, Holgado, Alonso, Furusato, and (to a lesser extent) Kelso, they racked up more hard passes than a vegan hot dog at a braai.
The greatest comeback of the year! Piqueras, two Long Lappers down, suddenly popped up in the lead battle, and before anyone knew what had hit them – rubbing is racing – he had taken the lead on the last lap. And kept that lead for a photo-finish victory. Ángel Piqueras had won his maiden Moto3 race, after having to take two Long Lap Penalties, dropping down the order and nearly off the Timing Tower, and raging his way back up through the field. Win of the Year Award, easy.
Holgado just missed out across the line, and had to be happy with a very close second place. And, having led much of the race, Ortolá ended up third. Later, arriving at his pit box, Alonso sailed off his bike, stomping into the garage and flopping down on his chair, showing an unusually peeved side of himself that we rarely witness. He’s always so chipper and all grins, but this Sunday, he was dragging a thunderhead around.
Moto2:
Just in case you missed it, Orradre’s bizarre incident on Saturday morning is worth another mention here:
Unseen by the cameras, Orradre – substituting for Escrig this weekend – allegedly collided with an errant marshal in Pit Lane, whereafter his bike went feral, leaving its rider behind in order to attack the Aprilia mechanics in their own garage. We were assured nobody was seriously hurt. Can Moto2 bikes get rabies? Maybe that mechanic(s) should go get his/their shots, just in case.
López’s race started off miserably, with a Lap One skidding-off at the final turn, all on his ownsome. He remounted, only to have a Long Lapper added to his pains later in the race for touching too much green paint. It’s been one of THOSE weekends, eh, Alonso?
Somewhere along the way, we lost Pasini. Another rider with his sights set on the victory was Vietti, but much like Lopez before him, Vietti ended up sliding off across the gravel; difference being he did so at Turn Fifteen during the twentieth lap, and his bike tried to stand up by itself, in reverse, while sliding over the pebbles. Obviously this did not work.
Ogura came out the champion of a fantastic fight for the win, leaving Canet in second – again. Arbolino claimed third position, and was pretty happy since he wasn’t feeling as fresh as he’d have liked all morning. His win in Italy ensured that Ogura took the lead in the Championship. Considering he still had a few broken fingers, that was one mean feat indeed.
Though mostly unmentioned by the commentators, Darryn managed to fight his way up into a final position of tenth, after having started the race in twenty-fifth. Well done, Daz! Sergio García, having lost his Championship lead on top of his promised rise up to MotoGP in 2025, and after riding the wheels off his MT Helmets motorcycle just to make up what points he could, entered his pit box a broken man. The Moto2 star fell into his chair, not bothered to conceal his breakdown into sobbing misery. Give the kid a break, folks – sometimes one needs a good old bawling to reset the emotions. Cry it out, Sergio, and show them you’re stronger than that next race weekend.

MotoGP:
Sprint Race:
A stomach bug sidelined Joan Mir for the weekend. Martín must’ve engaged some top-secret rocket boosters off the line, the way he catapulted from fourth straight up into the lead before they’d even completed two corners of the race!
On the second lap, DiGi’s poor luck of recent races struck again, the Italian slipping off at Turn Fourteen. Though he did rejoin the race, DiGi called it a day by Lap Eight, popping into the pits for some cold ice tea. Bezzecchi’s Ducati refused to turn into Turn Two during the fifth time of asking, then promptly began smoking where it lay on the side of the tarmac.
Track Limits Warnings were being handed out like cheap sweets on Halloween night, though only Fernández, Augusto was upgraded to a Long Lap Penalty. One he appeared to not have taken before the end of the race.
From a perplexingly good hop off the starting line, to another Sprint Race victory: take a bow, Martín! In second, Bagnaia made no secret of how much he disliked ending up second. We quote: ‘…absolutely not happy…’ Meanwhile, Mister Mellow Morbidelli was entirely satisfied with third, and took his maiden Sprint Race podium. (They need to pass some of that stuff Frankie smokes to Pecco. Seriously.) Binder finished the race in seventh.
Main Race:
Oh dear. Someone order a dash of controversy again? All this on the day we witnessed the four-hundredth modern-era MotoGP race, on the best-attended weekend at Misano in the Championship’s history. Ever. With Marini sidelined due to illness, there were no more Repsol Hondas left to start the main race.
A main race that started with a threat of rain. Oi, Martín, stop ‘crying’ on the grid. FFS!! Focus!! We approve of the very monochromatic tributary paint job Gresini was sporting. Looked good, should keep. It was a Flag-to-Flag race from the get-go, a fact that’d prove vital to the outcome. The start, at least, was considered ‘dry’.
When Acosta tried to lunge down the inside of Morbidelli from a little bit too far back during Lap Two, Morbidelli’s Ducati yanked off the GasGas’ left whiskers, leaving it about as balanced as a cat forced into socks. Two laps and a handful of running-wide moments later, Acosta finally toppled over, sliding off at Turn Fourteen. He flew back into the seat and pulled off at a rate of knots that left the stunned marshals feeling like they’d walked through a sandblaster. The speed at which he rode off, however, also caused his bike to drop its newly acquired rock collection all over the circuit.
By the sixth lap, the rain got worse; at the start of Lap Seven, Morbidelli slipped on the damping track through the first turn. Was this part of the motivation for his teammate Martín’s choice to be the first rider to dive into the pits for a bike change by the end of that same lap? Who knows. What we do know is this: sometimes you gamble and you win; sometimes you gamble and you lose. Sorry, Jorge… Apart from Martín – who’d been running in second – Acosta, Rins, and three of the four Aprilias opted for an early bike-swapping. Acosta had nothing to lose; his Number One bike was already a nightmare to steer. Augusto Fernández also slipped off on Lap Seven. In case you were wondering.
Much to the fast-swappers’ dismay, the rain vanished faster than it appeared by Lap Nine. The track dried up too much for the Rain tyres to handle, and soon all of them were forced to pit for a second swap. Most importantly, this meant Martín emerged from the pits a whole lap behind the leaders.
While the weather conditions were still deciding what they actually were, Márquez (Marc) took advantage of the uncertainty to push up into the lead. He managed to keep this lead for the remainder of the race, too. Aleix Espargaró, also more than a lap astray due to the bike-change-follies, decided to call it a day by the seventeenth lap, pitting for his third and final time.
As noted a little earlier, Márquez Senior had used the weather to his advantage, took the lead, and held on to it, crossing the finish line first, over three seconds ahead of second place – who happened to be Bagnaia. Third went the way of Bastianini, who was quite lonely out there, more than two seconds of emptiness ahead of him, and over eight seconds of it behind him. Binder, a weird-weather specialist himself, ended up in fourth. Good job, Brad.
His first back-to-back main race victories in years, Marc was understandably ecstatic. Celebrations were going to go hard that Sunday evening. Bagnaia moved about Parc Fermé stuck in slow-motion, keeping his celebrations to a muted handshake and soft hugs here and there. This was probably due to the rib fracture he was nursing. How did he complete an entire race, and ended up on the podium to boot? Because MotoGP riders are aliens.
Ducati has now locked out the podium eighteen times, the most by any manufacturer ever in MotoGP. Fun fact, for those who like number patterns: ignoring Pecco’s #1 plate, and instead using his normal racing number, the top four finishers look something like this: 93, 63, 23, 33. (Had Miller and Alex Marquez finished one or two places better each, it’d have been even more numerically glorious.)
MotoE:
With the electric class Championship drawing to a close in San Marino, all eyes were on Casadei and Garzó – the reigning Champion, and the rider who was hell-bent on taking his title for himself.
Race 1
The final Race One of 2024 came with much speculation and far too many points-related maths problems. Simplest of which was that, should Casadei win the race, Garzó had to finish in fourth for him to claim the title of Champion.
For a moment, the Timing Tower looked more like a slot machine trying to spin out the correct sequence of numbers. It settled down soon after Roccoli became the first casualty of the day, crashing anonymously on just the second lap. The remainder of the race was dominated by Casadei/Garzó talk and footage. Until Zannoni crashed from the lead within sight of the Start/Finish line, handing Casadei the lead. Kevin had gone barrelling through Turn Sixteen’s gravel trap, legs flailing through the dusty air.
With Casadei now back in the lead, Garzó could simply sit in the fourth spot he was in, but that wasn’t Héctor’s style. Oh No! He simply HAD to go all in and snatch third, for funsies. Crossing the finish line, Garzó humped the fake tank of his Ducati in delight, then did a fairly nice Superman. He was officially the new 2024 MotoE World Champion, and boy was he happy about it. His team quickly ensured everyone had the obligatory white shirt with dull-gold print, while scampering off to hand Garzó his Champion helmet – a stylish white-and-gold piece, worth at least an eight-point-five out of ten on the Stylin’ scale.
It was Casadei who claimed the race win, with Zaccone in second and, ultimately, Granado in third. Casadei in Parc Fermé was looking kind of glum; winning the race was overshadowed by losing the title, and it was clear he wasn’t taking it that well.
Meanwhile, Garzó finally reached Parc Fermé, doing a nice little burnout before entering and subsequently dropping his bike (this and the picking-up thereof was all a team effort). His Champion-celebrations were kept rather platonic, since he still had one more race to complete later in the day, and partying like a rockstar now would be catastrophic.
Race 2
This was it – the final race of the 2024 MotoE campaign! And with the Champion already crowned – or helmeted, as it were – it was mainly a race for second-place honours.
Chaz Davies very casually announced his retirement from racing after the race, sounding like he was looking forward to joining the armchair-brigade on the opposite side of the cameras. Though it was an insanely close race throughout the field, there were surprisingly few incidents. The sole crash of Race Two involved Tulovic, who skidded off at Turn Fourteen less than two laps from the chequered flag. He did remount, but his race was over.
All the mayhem culminated in a final-lap three-way scrap for the victory between young Guttierrez, Casadei, and Granado. The trio crossed the line, tyres rubbing, in that order – Gutierrez, we think it’s safe to say, has had a brilliant rookie season, topping it off with a win in the closing race. Granado celebrated with a ten-out-of-ten burnout during his cooldown lap. We approve. More rubber-burning, please. Next year, of course.
With one Championship completed and a new Champion crowned, and three more pretty much still there for the taking, we leave you with a two-week gap before yet another run through the San Marino landscape. Yes, you’re getting a second helping of Misano. Rejoice!
~ Karr
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