On The Mark

Last year, when we went to the MotoGP at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, TX, my amazing wife decided to bone up on MotoGP so she would know what was going on. Boy, did she! You wouldn’t imagine a mid-sixties retired elementary schoolteacher with a quilting problem would turn into a MotoGP junkie too, but she did. By the time we got to Austin, she knew the rider names and the bike brands and liveries of every team on the top circuit. I forked over the $20 for a program and she immediately went into study mode, although she already knew most of it. Occasionally we’d have to refer to the program for the undercard races, but we primarily relied on her memory, especially for MotoGP.

It didn’t stop there. She got me the MotoGP streaming service so we could watch every practice, every qualifying, and every race. Once we found out about Joe Roberts, the only American in Moto2, we had to start watching Moto2 races. Joe obliged us by taking second in Moto2 at COTA, doing a celebratory burnout right in front of where we were seated. That added Moto2 to the obsession, so we learned names like last year’s Moto2 champ, Fermin Aldeguer, (who subsequently upgraded to the top tier for this season) and Ai Ogura, the ‘24 Moto2 champ who also upgraded.

This season has been a regular pattern of her saying “There’s racing this weekend!” and the two of us settling down over dinner with the remote to cue up either the sprint race, the main event, or both for at least two of the three classes. We will even do Moto3 occasionally if the action has been particularly dramatic, which it frequently is because the Moto3 bikes swarm around each other like angry hummingbirds fighting over the feeder. Frankly, Betsy stays more in tune with it than I am, keeping tabs on the offtrack antics and contract maneuvering.

This is the “silly season,” where contract moves are typically made, and the other day I noted that there was only one slot left to fill. She immediately said, “Oh, the last I read, there were two, so they must have filled one of them!” We both held forth on how much we like Zarco and how he’s given the Honda faint hope a few times this year. We talked about the move to MotoGP’s Pramac Yamaha of Toprak Razgotlioglu, the amazing Turkish rider, World SuperBike champion, who is a great bike handler and who does amazing stoppies.

It didn’t end there: I mentioned how I was surprised that Toprak’s new teammate Jack Miller was still on the grid, as he normally either does well or crashes, and she replied, “It’s because he’s the only rider who knows how to ride the Yamaha right now and his contract doesn’t end until next year.” She also held forth on Jorge Martin and his struggles with the Aprilia this year, including the injuries that put the defending champion out of action for most of the season. My wife is now “Mrs. MotoGP,” with a far greater breadth of knowledge about everything associated with the sport.

I went off to an archery tournament last month and when I got back, I said something circumspect about the races that weekend and she simply said, “I know.” She’d already watched them in my absence. Who did this? Who kidnapped my three-decades-worth elementary teacher spouse – who never even considered being near a motorcycle until she was in her fourth decade of life – and replaced her with this MotoGP maniac? I know a few ladies who grudgingly watch a particular sport because they know their man is into it, but she’s way farther down the rabbit hole than I am when it comes to MotoGP.

Will it last? I suspect so. Although, neither of us is looking forward to the future, when they downsize the engine sizes in the top class and make other moves (she knows the details, of course). I hope they don’t ruin it, because it is something we share, but with the purchase of MotoGP by DORNA, the governing body of Formula 1, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll hose it up even more, like they’ve done with F1 and their dizzying array of rules and track steward decisions. I mean, they’re…they’re…CAR people after all. Maybe they need a retired schoolteacher and quilter as a consultant on the board. I have a recommendation and I’ll carry her bags to the board meetings and races.