Paddock Pass Podcast

In this episode of the Paddock Pass Podcast, recorded ahead of the final round in Australia, Steve English, Charlie Hiscott, and Gordon Ritchie get together to discuss the state of the WorldSBK championship. Steve also speaks to Jonathan Rea, who tells Steve how much harder WorldSBK has been for the six-time champion this year, and why Kawasaki has struggled.

The final MotoGP race is in the books, and so the Paddock Pass Podcast crew have one last race to look back at. David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler review the Valencia MotoGP race, and how Pecco Bagnaia came to be champion.

After Alvaro Bautista put one hand on the WorldSBK title in Argentina, Steve English, Charlie Hiscott, and Gordon Ritchie look back at the racing from San Juan Villicum, and have a very long debate over the merits and disadvantages of introducing minimum combined rider/bike weights. Steve, Charlie, and Gordo dive into whether a weight limit will fix this, finding other ways to penalize racers, and compare WorldSBK with Touring Car championships. They also ask how to make WorldSBK's other riders more competitive.

Then, Steve sits down with Aruba.it Ducati's Michael Ruben Rinaldi for a Renthal Street Session interview.

With the penultimate round of MotoGP in the bag, the Paddock Pass Podcast crew look bag at a tense Sepang race and its effect on the 2022 MotoGP championship. Neil Morrison, Adam Wheeler, and David Emmett kick off the show with the question of whether Enea Bastianini did the right thing in pushing Pecco Bagnaia so hard, given they are both in the pay of Ducati, and will be teammates next year. That leads into a discussion of team orders, and whether they were needed.

After a barnstorming race at Phillip Island, the Paddock Pass Podcast crew got together to discuss whether Phillip Island truly is the greatest race track on the planet. After the usual pleasantries, Neil Morrison, Adam Wheeler, and David Emmett dive into what makes Phillip Island such a magnificent circuit, despite its many shortcomings. We talk wildlife, circuit layout, negating the effects of aerodynamics and ride-height devices, Alex Rins' victory, and how Marc Marquez made the soft tire work.

The Paddock Pass Podcast WorldSBK crew look back at the Portimão round and discuss an eventful weekend and the last round on European soil before heading for the flyaways. Steve English, Gordo Ritchie, and Charlie Hiscott start off with an analysis of the sad news of Victor Steeman, although the podcast was recorded before the sad news of Steeman's death. They discuss the WorldSSP300 class, and the risk of motorcycle racing.

The Paddock Pass Podcast hits another milestone, so to celebrate the 300th episode of the show, we have 2021 WorldSBK champion Toprak Razgatlioglu on the show. First, the PPP WorldSBK crew gather ahead of the Portimão round to take a look at the current state of the series. Steve English, Gordon Ritchie and Charlie Hiscott discuss where WorldSBK stands right now, and it's attractiveness as a destination for Moto2 riders.

The Grand Prix of Thailand changed the face of the 2022 MotoGP championship, with rain throwing a spanner in the works for Fabio Quartararo. Neil Morrison, Adam Wheeler, and David Emmett chew over the results, and examine how it played out. We start, of course, with what went wrong for Quartararo, and how tire pressure impacted his race. We go through the compromises teams have to make when setting up bikes for the wet, and the guesses they have to make about the weather.

After a magnificent display of riding by Jack Miller at Motegi, the Paddock Pass Podcast crew chew over the aftermath of the Japanese grand prix. Steve English, Neil Morrison, and David Emmett join the pod, while Adam Wheeler phones in his thoughts on his road trip to the US for the MX of Nations. We cover a lot of ground, starting off with the strange circumstances of the weekend, and the effect a lack of track time had on results.

Part of that was Jack Miller's impressive win at Motegi, and we discuss why Ducati are seemingly incapable of winning a rider's championship. We discuss Pecco Bagnaia's mistake - and Aleix Espargaro's engine map misery - and how that gave Fabio Quartararo a chance to extend his championship lead. Then we talk about Aron Canet, how he revealed to Spanish media the secret behind his podium bowtie, and why he is dropping that custom. We ask whether he would be better off in the WorldSBK paddock where his tattoos would be less of a hindrance, after he claimed teams in the MotoGP paddock turned him down because of them.

The return of Marc Marquez left us all a lot to talk about on the latest episode of the Paddock Pass Podcast, and on Tuesday, Steve English, Neil Morrison, Adam Wheeler, and David Emmett took a long look back at the first-lap mayhem which unfolded. But before we got to the incidents between Marquez, Fabio Quartararo, and Takaaki Nakagami, we had a long and heated discussion about team orders. Should Ducati tell Enea Bastianini to stand aside for Pecco Bagnaia? And should Bastianini take a blind bit of notice if they did?