Marco Simoncelli

That's mad.

Yeah, so it's quite, but I've always, I've been going to MotoGP races since, I think the first one I went to, well, I remember it clearly was actually 2011 Valencia, the race after Simoncelli died.

And it was the most moving thing.

event i've ever been to actually um because obviously everything you're probably there pete i don't know or or you definitely remember it um but it was such a moving event it was uh you know all in the celebrating simoncelli and and um and then i've i've watched my gp since the early 2000s um and it's always been my favorite motorsport over say f1 which is weird because people think of me as more of a car guy And then in 2022, yeah, got my bike license and got myself a F100 GS adventure bike early last year.

I'm Manon.

This is the Motorsport Effect, and we are here at the beautiful Mezzano World Circuit, Marco Simoncelli.

We just finished the Grand Prix race here.

And while it's such a cool racetrack, there was over 100,000 fans just here on Sunday, which is phenomenal.

There was also so much passion, emotion, and activations that were happening on and off track that we were able to witness this weekend.

And I think I'm going to start off this episode by talking about something that really touched me this weekend and something that I love so much.

And that was the Grissini livery that they did to honor the late Marco Simoncelli that was ran by Fermin Aldegher and Alex Marquez.

And we know Grissini, they nail a livery.

I thought the one in Brazil was amazing, the Alex Barros one.

I thought the Sede Gibanau, kind of 04, 05... livery they did in saxon ring was also really good um saxon ring this is around them um and then i really liked this one as well the um kind of 2010 2011 white and red crissini that is very heavily recognized as the marco simoncelli livery um a really touching tribute to him to be riding under those colors at the circuit named after him after his passing and um Alex Marquez has some really beautiful words in the press conference after the race about the importance of, you know, delivering in that livery at this track with that name and how important it is for...

the the team and for the the family and for everyone who has been involved in that project for so long um because truly i mean the grassini team uh has suffered in a way that most teams on the grid have not i think there's actually something very like poignant and poetic about the fact that the team who has lost so much in a very human way over the course of their time in this sport is also the team who projects so much joy and so much positivity into everything they do with the way they handle their riders, with the way that they approach the media, with stuff like that.

The team that's always known as the little guys who are always partying every time they have a good result, yada yada.

I don't have a connection to it.

Anyway, it was bad timing as Tuck said because Grissini chose this week to pay tribute to Marco Simoncelli.

Yeah.

Which was lovely.

Because it's a brand.

Yeah.

And he changed it to Marco Simoncelli's colours to match the livery.

Yeah, right.

One of my highlights of the weekend was him tagging Pedro on, uh, Instagram stories of him beating Pedro, like overtaking him, uh, which is, which feels really pointed.

Um, a, on a completely off-topic note about liveries that I know that our colleague Jordan is gonna agree with me on, Alex Marquez should be awarded one extra championship point for ditching the blue number and running the Marco Simoncelli red color number.

It's just awesome.

It put, pulled the whole livery together in a way that, yeah, yeah, awesome.

It seemed like there was this strange telepathy between the two, which is not the first time I've said that.

But nonetheless, he, I think, was... bit um dismissive of my claim on friday that oh you know mark and bosecki seem to be in a class of their own he was like well you know i'm i think i'm there as well um and he proved it today um i think the last time he finished his highest second in a feature race here um in mizana was back in 2014 so it's not always been the best track for him um rocking the Marco Simoncelli tribute livery this weekend, which looked fantastic.

I think he even had the Simoncelli-esque helmet as well.

Yeah, two red lines, yeah.