#the highsides

[punkrockmixtapes]

Listen/purchase: Never Coming Home by The Highsides

[burirammin]

"The cat lands on his feet again"

Commentator on Marc Marquez's crash during Q2 in Thailand 2019, where he would go on to win both the race and the championship a day later.

[racingisle]

Alright Marc seems fine in the garage. My heart can rest a bit easier now

[nyehhh-hh]

Rins updating his conditions and we still don't know wtf happened to him during the race

[aprilias]

HOW DID HE DO THAT OMG

[collecting--stardust]

Glad that cele is fine that's some nasty highside and he lands on his head too 😭😭😭😭

[protocolseben]

NAH MAN I AINT WATCHING MOTO3 WILL ALL THAT FKN BIKES NEAR HIM

[motocorsas]

here's my rundown of all the new 2027 tech regulations:

the most important news is the reduction in engine capacity. the pistons are going to be reduced from 1000cc to 800cc, meaning they generate less power with each stroke. the bore of the pistons is also going to be reduced, which is the width of the piston head. the wide bores that have been in use for some time deliver more power, so reducing bore size means less fuel and air will be used with each stroke. this makes the bike slower, but more fuel efficient.

fuel efficiency has also been taken into account with the new gas tank and fuel regulations. gas tanks are being reduced from 22 to 20 liters for full races and from 11 to 10 for the sprint. essentially, since dorna has reduced bike power, they've reduced fuel capacity as well, since less fuel is needed.

this is where the new sustainable fuel comes in: the new fuel will be a mix of biofuel and synthetic, both of which have a lower power storage by volume compared to gas fuel. this will also reduce power. are you seeing a pattern?

the last time 800cc bikes were used in MotoGP, they were absolutely hated by riders. from 2007 to 2012, engine capacity was reduced from 990cc to 800cc for similar reasons as today; concerns about safety and overtaking. but the bikes were considered some of the worst to ride, due to low torque and inconsistent power delivery, meaning the bike performed best a very narrow rpm and throttle range -- step on the gas for just a milisecond longer, and you'd get shot off the bike. that made highsides much more frequent. mat oxley explains here:

the title of the article is MotoGP 800s - Rot In Peace, which feels like a grim portent of the years to come.

attempts to mitigate the engine's problems with electronics also sacrificed power and overtaking.

sound familiar? right now, riders, stewards and engineers are all complaining about overdone electronics. this brings us to the next point revealed in the presentation, that holeshot and ride height devices will be banned.

these devices program the bike body to shift up and down under certain conditions, carrying momentum and reducing drag. holeshot devices specifically program the bike to start, resulting in the classic rocket-powered starts we see today. riders plant their feet, tuck their heads down, and let the bike do the rest. holeshot devices have their negatives, especially combined with heavy aero -- plenty of crashes occur in the first few corners of a race because the overpowered start combined with heavily engineered aero shoots a rider directly into another's rear tire. this is the sacrifice made for overtuning bikes so that they're perfectly optimized.

but notably, these changes don't mitigate crashes! despite claiming to prioritize safety, reducing power on its own does not reduce crashes. less torque = slower corner exit = riders prioritizing quicker roll speed and engineers seeking higher rpms. and less power = less braking = less overtakes.

none of this is to say that the original 800cc era was inexcusably terrible or that the new era will be as well. but i don't think liberty media or dorna understand what draws viewers to the sport. in the presentation, they justify most of these changes as making bikes more "road relevant", increasing mileage and sustainability. but world superbike already exists to fill that niche, making motogp obsolete in that sense. i'm all for safe and environmentally conscious racing, but as stated above, these new regulations don't make motogp more safe. they also don't make it more eco-friendly either; ethanol fuel is nice, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the absurd emissions generated by transporting the entire traveling circus from racetrack to racetrack. if there's anything motogp can learn from wsbk, it's a reduced calendar. less travel means less emissions, and longer breaks gives riders time to recuperate from injuries.

in their attempts to make motogp a better entertainment product, liberty media are challenging the integrity of the sport. their unnecessary limitations ignore the true root of most problems -- overworked riders and teams and a bloated schedule -- and waste money in the process. constantly changing concessions and regulations forces manufacturers to spend more and more money developing new bikes; no wonder teams have been dropping out. these concessions don't help anyone but liberty, since they can claim they've "revolutionized" the sport and made it into a safe, sustainable overtake-fest. all they've really done is sanitize it.

[batsplat]

seen people talk about how marcs 2012 season was the reason the penalty point system was introduced (that made vale start from the back in 2015 which is admittedly absolutely absurdly funny) so here i am to ask my favorite motogp historian for thoughts (and prayers?) mostly about what exactly marc DID to make that happen (kinda funny also that he was branded a track terrorist from day 1 😭) and why they struck it in the mid 2010s?

okay so I'm gonna be lazy here and start out by just including what I put in the marc race recs post:

phillip island 2011 was the worst incident, and marc was criticised by motogp riders too, including valentino and casey. that one was like... it was just straight up dangerous and also incredibly stupid, I mean you're trying to get an extra lap in at the end of fp1 and are putting yourself and other riders in serious danger (definitely a case where you can argue that the penalty didn't go far enough and a race ban would have been warranted). marc can sometimes be pretty bullish in response to criticism while still going away and kinda realising what he'd done was a bad idea, quietly adjusting his behaviour... examples include this, where he had his team appeal the penalty, as well as of course 2018 argentina, where he talked down the 'mistakes' he'd made and said he'd done more wrong in the aleix than the valentino incident (which may be true, but it's the rhetorical equivalent of saying it's better to go up to someone's home and throw bricks through the windows than it is to set it on fire) - he is fairly good at learning from his mistakes, even when he doesn't always fully admit to them

that being said, of course he did continue getting himself involved in a fair bit of controversy during 2012. but it's worth pointing out that the penalty points system wasn't just a case of 'oh this kid is so bad, we've got to do something' - it was also a case of 'yeah this is being handled in a super inconsistent manner, actually'. like, there were times people felt marc should be penalised more, yes, but other times where they felt it was too much... it was just a bit all over the place. luckily, inconsistent stewarding is a problem they've managed to fix in the intervening twelve years, so we never hear about that stuff any more. let's just give a quick summary of the four biggest 2012 flashpoints:

qatar: marc runs luthi off-track in a deliberate and pretty dangerous way and gets a slap on the cooldown lap for his troubles, plus a reprimand from race direction

catalunya: towards the end of a race in which marc made several questionable moves, pol espargaro attempted to overtake marc who had just saved a fall - marc cuts across the track to rejoin the racing line and ends up colliding with pol. he was initially given a controversial penalty in the form of a minute added to his final time, before that was rescinded (which was unsuccessfully appealed by pol's team). see here for valentino and casey's reactions

motegi: marc 'torpedoed' kallio in saturday morning practise, riding into his side while kallio was on the racing line headed into a turn and causing kallio to highside... which he was not penalised for. some responses to the incident below

valencia: marc attempted to overtake corsi in friday practise, causing him to crash. this time, race direction handed out a back-of-the-grid penalty

it's a subtle distinction but an important one so I'll just stress it again: the stated aim of the penalty points wasn't to hold back aggressive riders like marc but to attempt to reduce inconsistency, which had been exposed in part due to how differently these marc incidents were handled. what marc did was create several high profile controversies, in each case prompting some level of frustration with how race direction handled the whole thing. obviously, there were other non-marc-related stewarding controversies, but it is inarguable that he was a significant factor in causing a revamp of the system

by the way, here's valentino's criticism of marc after the valencia incident:

here's a quick explanation of how the penalty points worked:

and, you know, for what it's worth marc did calm down in motogp... he certainly became better at operating in the grey area of the rules, approaching his racing in a manner his competitors didn't always appreciate but was certainly a lot harder to penalise. though there were also incidents that of course people felt marc should be penalised for - say after jerez 2013, jorge did kinda go 'okay but surely you can at least give a few penalty points for this, isn't this what they're for'. but it's not like there was unanimous agreement on that, see the immediate responses of some of the riders:

(bradley smith saying that jorge's last serious race was motegi 2005 - the one he got the race ban for - is a bit of an insane stance to take and doesn't really match up to reality, but it did make me laugh so that's something. of course the general point that during the alien era most of them were avoiding doing much actual racing isn't exactly wrong but. still)

not to make this a riding standards post, but this is the underlying tension when you're trying to decide how to regulate the sport... jerez was the first serious test that system faced - and it's one where race direction ended up calling it a pure racing incident. which is a tough call! I talked about it a bit in the sete post and what his stance was on the jerez 2005 incident, where he feels like this isn't a contact sport and shouldn't be adjudicated as such. it's a fundamental philosophical difference that became very relevant again when marc showed up fresh from his controversial moto2 campaign and woke up the entire class with his own particular brand of racing. from a write-up of the jerez 2013 race:

(motegi 2008 not motegi 2010, which is something I remember because casey's pass also allowed valentino to immediately swoop on through. should be noted that casey may have apologised but he did not give the position back to dani lol. also motegi 2010 is pretty memorable if we're talking about hard racing. fair to say that valentino demonstrated he did not share the approach of his fellow aliens when battling jorge)

and more on the shift marc brought about:

this is the thing, right - a big part of understanding that time period is concerning yourself with what came just before. the general feeling (unsurprisingly not shared by casey, jorge or dani) was that the series desperately needed some new life breathed into it, that the racing had become stale and sterile and far too predictable... there were several factors that contributed to this, from the beloathed 800cc bikes that were only replaced in 2012, to the approach of those three aliens and how adept they'd become at racking up wins by dominating out front, to how valentino (generally considered the most 'exciting' racer of the lot) had taken himself out of the competitive picture... I mean, in all honesty the racing is still not great in 2013 compared to the rossi heyday (it had gotten better by the very end of the 2010s), but of course there's a lot more energy to it than the years before. which meant the sport as a whole was in a tricky place where they both had to be seen to be constraining marc, stopping him from being an active danger to himself and others, while also kind of... letting him loose. a little bit of controversy is hardly a bad thing, after all - love him or hate him, everyone had a take, and that's the kind of thing that's obviously healthy for a sport

marc did get two penalty points that year for ignoring yellow flags in silverstone and crashing in the same place as cal crutchlow had just gone down:

(for obvious reasons, 'ignoring yellow flags' is extremely dangerous, but there's no reason to believe he wasn't being honest here)

he was also given another penalty point for the contact that caused dani's crash in aragon, taking him perilously close to that back-of-the-grid penalty:

and that was basically their position - it's a warning. broadly they wanted him to not completely revamp his approach, but just apply a little more discretion, exercise his judgement. a little more caution, a little more restraint. it's still fundamentally a different philosophy of racing than the one that had been espoused for several years by the other aliens save for valentino - but marc could get to a place where he was engaging in hard racing that generally toed the line without crossing it. a little more detail on the aragon incident and marc's approach to racing in the context of the time period from this write-up:

this is the issue, right, marc was riding on just the right line of acceptable that race direction would not have in any way been justified in slapping out race bans - though you can certainly argue that in some cases, you could have handed out more penalty points, which would then have meant he would have faced more 'real' consequences. in any case, they couldn't actually 'teach him a lesson', because he'd already more or less learned it... if the lesson is 'hard racing and contact is fine, just don't overdo it'. which of course, not everyone would agree with. the odd memorable exception aside, throughout marc's premier class career he's been very aware of that line, and has taken care to avoid bringing the wrath of race direction upon himself too severely

the penalty points thing and sepang 2015... well, first of all let's quickly bring in what the actual ruling was:

honestly, I imagine that if they didn't have a penalty points system, they would've figured out a different way to penalise him, and might have slapped him with a back-of-the-grid penalty anyway. not in a 'oh the fim had it out for valentino rossi!!!!' way, more that they did need to be seen doing something. the penalty points felt like a fairly elegant way of giving a penalty that wasn't that harsh and wasn't making any judgement calls over whether valentino deliberately kicked marc, while also in an indirect way ensuring that valentino would suffer consequences. and yes, it is a nice bit of dramatic irony - but the piece says it, the penalty "had to be severe enough for rossi to feel truly punished". the penalty points happened to be the tool they had available and perhaps with a different set of rules, valentino would have been handed a slightly different flavour of punishment. but really, this is more 'fun historical coincidence' than something that massively changed the events that played out

of course, it was a controversial decision that few people felt 100% comfortable with. on the one hand, if you believe that valentino kicked marc, then you probably would have wanted him to be disqualified - three measly penalty points does not feel enough in that situation. on the other, if you believe that valentino engaged aggressively with marc but without deliberately trying to make him crash, then a back-of-the-grid penalty that essentially decided the outcome of the championship before the final race even started is a tough pill to swallow. (of course there's also a position somewhere in between where valentino didn't literally kick marc but did attempt to run him off track, which would make the penalty 'about right'.) of course, the championship standings should ideally not determine what sort of penalties are being handed out - but equally, it's something that did limit the intrigue going into the race, and over something that felt quite arbitrary. the other penalty point he'd gotten to rack up the four total was about a qualifying incident in misano - which either feels like a silly thing to determine the ultimate outcome of the championship, or instead is a demonstration of how the cumulative nature of the points system is supposed to work. but yes, it did get a lot of criticism in the aftermath, with concerns over whether future title fights could end up being defanged as an indirect consequence of relatively minor incidents earlier in the season

and of course, the penalty points were eventually scrapped in early 2017. here's a bit more on that decision:

basically, sepang 2015 was a contributing factor to broader changes in how motogp was regulated, which down the line had the knock-on effect of getting rid of that penalty system entirely. rightly or wrongly, race direction felt like they had better tools available to penalise riders and this system was now redundant. anyway [insert another lazy gag about how the switch to a stewards panel has completely failed in eliminating controversy from stewarding] [insert pithy closing line] [press post]

[moonshynecybin]

bro this year they’ve got to at least acknowledge each other, vale will be at some races and marc will probably win more and with a ducati! like cmon, DO SOMETHING

thinking about when marc got highsided hard at valencia last year and flew like 15 ft in the air and everyone's head IMMEDIATELY whipped around to look at vale bc a. nemesis and b. the crash meant pecco won the championship bc jorge martin was also involved. uhhhhh yeah sure theyll acknowledge each other. for sure. dont worry about it.

again i AM holding out for marc to honda 2025 with luca it would be saurrrr funny to me. like especially for poor luca who is maybe trying to prove something slightly outside of the enormous shadow of his older brother so he's coming into this like. fresh faced very much wanting to be excluded from this narrative. but unfortunately for him the rosquez divorce narrative seems to be actively transcending the boundaries of spacetime like. not only will your brother never get away from the sound of the woman that loved him but uhhhhh neither will you. his brother. and now teammate. have fun my man.

[topnotchquark]

Literally the MotoGP official Twitter will be like "Driver XYZ went through a massive crash and then his bike burst into flames and a chasm opened up on the track and a pair of giant snapping jaws came out and tried to eat the driver like chomp chomp chomp. Luckily the driver is okay tho, they walked away with only minor injuries" and the attached video with said tweet will be a driver being thrown around like a rag doll and slamming their head around after being highsided and later you will find out they broke 2 ribs one femur 5 fingers and dislocated a shoulder maybe.

[anitalianfrie]

a rosquez/motogp cyborg au would be sooo interesting.... motogp riders who enhance their bodies to become one with the machine (and like. sometimes sustain terrible on track accidents because of that. like imagine putting in yourself a device that keeps you attached to the bike in the small chance of saving a highside... only problem is that then you crash with the bike that migh. you know. kill you.) marc who has insane body modifications and doesn't give a shit in the whole world because he can simply enhance his body mechanically if he fucks something up. literally throws himself in harms way because he can simply replace the mechanical pieces with other mechanical pieces. Vale who has some modification but not too many, who's a bit old school on it (maybe sic had something to do with it. like. something that led to his death. idk) Vale and Marc that have a situationship for the whole 2013-2015 period. Vale who's scared because he keep seeing marc crashing without a care in the world and then simply. going to the mechanics to fix whatever problem he created in his body while falling. arms busted open wires and metallic pieces everywhere. Vale who accuses marc of being too much a robot in sepang. vale who in argentina says that marc doesn't think about the other riders as humans, but only as pieces of metal to destroy while he works his way up to the top, because he's not anymore a human himself. Marc who in 2020 looses the use of his entire arm and goes under emergency surgery to install new bodywork that isn't checked and is too sperimental. Marc who in 2022 looses the arm full stop and needs a cybernetic prothesis.

and then somehow they reconcile don't ask me exactly how but the arm has a pivotal role in it and then they have insane cyborg sex. the end.

[screwdriver-and-souffle]

first two positions were boring but the rest of the field was fun, good race, hope the boys who crashed are fine, Rins highside was bad Marc gave me multiple heart attack

[duck7]

MotoGP 2023 ʳᵒᵘⁿᵈ ⁹ British GP 🇬🇧

Bezzecchi suffers huge out lap highside late in Practice.

[flyingfabio]

https://www.tumblr.com/flyingfabio/758077191028359168/if-miller-ends-up-at-pramac-im-burning-yamahas?source=share

Jack Miller is so funny like he truly has spent the last two years throwing jabs at an 8 time world champion who ended up 42 points behind him having missed 8 races on a murderous Honda and at a 1 time World Champion who ended up last year in front of him (and who is currently in front of him in the standings) in the slowest most tractor-est Yamaha. He really went and called Marc princess after a very bad highside that had him withdraw from Sachsenring and he really went and said 'other riders are slower and signed for 12 million' and while that doesn't really hold up because you know, he is in front of him in the standings, maybe the reason why that rider is slower is because he's riding the second worse bike lol.

Like I might miss him a Lil,with him being the only Australian and at times really funny, but be for real😭

i think i've already said it but the way his form collapsed just after his princess comment is so very comical... the way motogp works can humble you very quickly and you should remember that!

i've done quite my fair share of jack miller bashing recently, but i do loathe the way ktm handled the situation telling him his place was safe when it very much wasn't (ktm treating their riders like they're disposable stinky old socks, what else is new). that being said, i don't see what could justify him keeping a seat rn. looking back, it's criminal he didn't finish in the top 3 of the championship while being healthy on a factory ducati and his stint on the ktm has been supbar, even considering the bike weaknesses. but i guess we'll see, his personality and passport might very much play in his favor

[coimbrabertone]

Grip: A Story of How Three Different Racing Series Move.

I watched three different races this past weekend - the Assen TT MotoGP race, Formula One's Austrian Grand Prix, and the NASCAR Cup Series Ally 441 400 at Nashville Superspeedway. That's motorcycles, open wheelers, and big old stock cars on ovals, so you might think it would be difficult to find some pithy way to discuss all three, well...I found a way!

It is fascinating how these different racing series move and how they grip up.

Starting with MotoGP - this is the first race I watched on Sunday, probably my favorite series of the three right now, but also the one I've gotten into most recently - my take on that is that MotoGP is the most physical and natural movement of the three. Now, I know that's odd to say with 300 horsepower motorcycles that are increasingly fast and increasingly using state-of-the-art aerodynamics, but the rider still plays the key role.

The leaning, the manhandling the bike, the having to sit up when the bike has a wobble...you can see all of that, and that turns a very mechanical experience into a surprisingly human one. I've never ridden a motorcycle, let alone something as fast as a GP bike, but when Maverick Vinales went wide on the final lap, everything is so visible in MotoGP that I could tell exactly what happened.

He turned in just a foot or so too late, so his line was a bit off, and you could just see the weight of the bike dragging him out wide, off the rubber and into the marbles, which just compounds the issue because then he doesn't have the grip to get back on the throttle. So, Marc Marquez goes past into fourth - more on that later - while Fabio DiGiannantonio briefly takes fifth as well.

Vinales fights back into the final chicane, retaking the position, but in the process, he just rolled off the edge of the curb and touched the green paint on the outside of the track, leading to a track limits infringement - which on the final lap in MotoGP, automatically converts into a drop one position penalty - meanwhile, Marc Marquez got a sixteen second penalty for being below the mandated minimum tyre pressures, dropping him to tenth.

Marquez would later claim that he had slotted in behind Digia earlier in the race to get his tyre pressures to climb back up to legal limits and would've been fine, had Enea Bastianini not pushed him wide in turn one when Enea overtook him.

The problem with that is one: pushing people wide in a turn one pass is pretty ordinary in MotoGP, no small part due to the fact that it's a Marc Marquez signature, so...bit hypocritical if that's your stance.

Two: That means his tyre pressures were illegally low to begin with and he almost got them into the legal zone for long enough to get away with it - I'd argue that's on Marquez and his crew, got anybody who overtook him.

In any case, that incident also plays into this story, because Marquez had to slow up big time when he was just a few feet off the line, and it would take him a lap or so to catch back up to DiGiannantonio, Vinales, and Bastianini.

The MotoGP bike moves how the rider guides it to move, it appears so fast and beautiful when the rider gets it hooked right up in the perfect way, and when the rider doesn't, well, then that's when you really see them struggling with the weight of this giant 1000cc racing machine between their legs.

Likewise, when the bike has a wobble or slides, you can see all the weight and momentum going through the bike, and the most horrifying example of that is a highside.

A highside is when the rear wheel loses grip, slides out from under you, but then grips back up and pulls the whole bike the other way - the force of that is so severe that it bucks the rider off the bike and into the air - it is one of the most scary-yet-common things in motorcycle racing.

Compare that to the lowside, which is when the wheels lose grip and just slide downwards, which is the more common and less dramatic way of losing it in a MotoGP race.

That being said, as Aleix Espargaro showed in the sprint race on Saturday, a lowside at speed can still be dangerous, and with a little help from a kerb and/or a gravel trap, they can send the rider and the bike tumbling through the air just like a highside can.

With how exposed MotoGP - and motorcycle racing in general is - you can really see everything, and once you see it enough times and start to understand it, the way these things behave becomes surprisingly natural and intuitive.

Compare that to Formula One.

The moment that inspired this blogpost was that, after MotoGP ended, I switched to the F1 race and the first thing I saw was the field going through sector two at the Red Bull Ring. These cars were on rails, just one right after the other, moving so fast and in such a floaty manner that it just didn't look right.

Now I'm sure part of this is down to the fact that I had just watched MotoGP and their comparatively slow cornering speeds, so seeing F1 cars tearing up the Austrian Grand Prix was always going to serve as a culture shock. That being said, the way these cars moved looked so weird to me that the first thing that came to mind was, of all things, the F1 Manager games.

I remember a few years ago now, I watched a bit of F1 Manager 22 gameplay and just though "oh wow the way those cars move looks so bad and janky" so...imagine my shock that in 2024, F1 cars are kinda moving in the same way.

Now, once the initial shock wore off - and I suppose their tyres started wearing out as well - I got used to it and could see the moments where F1 cars went beyond their grip. Particularly in turns three and four - either end of the DRS straight at the top of the circuit - where time after time, cars would slip wide or otherwise fail to pull off an overtake, and then the size and weight of these things became apparent.

Particularly when Lando Norris was trying to pass Max Verstappen, having speed over him and being faster in a straight line when his McLaren had DRS, but otherwise that Red Bull was as ridiculously OP and dream crushing in a straight line as usual.

Like in the F1 sprint the day before when Max passed Lando - who had DRS - without DRS.

So Lando was working damn hard to get this move done, divebombing and such, but that was eating into his track limits allowance, which Max was keen to mention over the radio in that lame little way that F1 drivers try to give each other penalties. The very next lap though, things got controversial.

Lando had speed again running up the hill to turn three. Max knew this.

Max uses his one allowed move to protect the inside, forcing Lando to try it on the outside.

Lando is still gaining on the outside.

Max moves a second time - F1 fans may remember Max being notorious for this around 2016-2017, so much so that the "Verstappen Rule" clarified that this was illegal - in reaction to Norris (defensive moves in reaction also being considered unsafe and illegal, pretty much across all of motorsport) which caused them to touch, giving both of them punctures, and ultimately handing the victory to George Russell in the Mercedes.

Now, for the most part I'm just happy that Verstappen's actions had consequences - he picked up a puncture and lost the race win because he was acting like he was entitled to a win.

That being said, it does aggravate me that, even when Max is clearly in the wrong, he gets off better than his opponents. Lando also had a puncture and ultimately had to retire, while Max continued in fifth place and the token ten second penalty he received was nowhere near enough to actually cause him to drop position.

MotoGP is so competitive a sixteen second penalty drops you from fourth to tenth.

F1, meanwhile, a ten second penalty changes nothing. You could've increased it to a sixteen second penalty just to keep all things even and Max would've still been in fifth.

This is why I'm hard on F1 in these blogs, because it was the first motorsport I fell in love with - I grew up watching F1 with my dad, I've made friends because of F1, and it hurts me so much seeing that my dad fell out of love with F1 like ten years ago and now me and my friends seem to be following in his footsteps.

I'm hard on F1 because it has quite literally been disappointing my family for two generations.

Speaking of two generations, that's about as long as it took for the NASCAR race to finish last night.

I am mostly just saying that to mock them but it really did take them 331 laps to complete a 300-lap race, 441 miles to complete a 400-mile race thanks to all the green-white-checker overtime restarts at the end.

That's not the focus of this blog though.

What is the focus is how NASCAR ties into this grip conversation.

So, Nashville Superspeedway, a 1.3-mile concrete oval forty minutes outside of Nashville, Tennessee. To help stock car racing here, NASCAR applied resin to the bottom lanes and also ran over the track with a tyre dragon - which is a really cool name for what is ultimately a tractor dragging a bunch of Goodyear tyres across the bottom lanes of the oval - which caused an interesting effect on the racing.

This is especially the case because, in the last couple of NASCAR oval races - Gateway, Iowa, and New Hampshire - the top groove had so much more momentum than the bottom, so it was constantly this challenge between the short way around versus the faster way around. Add in another third of a mile in track distance, however, and the script changes, which made for some interesting television.

It was apparent from qualifying that, once cars got out of the gripped up dark stuff on the bottom, they were going to have a problem. This was most obvious with Trucks driver Nick Sanchez spinning out on his qualifying run in that series, but even in Cup, Martin Truex was on a fast lap until he went wide in the final corner and got into the grey stuff in the upper lanes, which put him all the way down in seventeenth.

This trend continued in the race, particularly after the rain delay, when Buescher had a wobble on the bottom, which in turn caused Byron to go up beneath him, and Byron went all the way up until the gray stuff. Jumping the cushion, as NASCAR commentators tend to call it.

This was enough to send William Byron back into the midpack and he'd never really factor into the battle for the lead again in the race. Wow.

It also showed in the battle for the lead late in the race, when Denny Hamlin chased down Ross Chastain and was a lot more capable of using the higher lanes with four fresh tyres than Ross who only took right sides on his final footsteps, so we'd see Denny attacking the corners, while Ross - who had defended valiantly up until this point - was struggling on the top and he kept drifting up ever higher and having to slow down to keep the car out of the wall.

It almost made the day come around full circle, with Ross struggling in a similar way to Maverick Vinales.

It's an odd thing in racing where a motorbike and a big old NASCAR V8 Camaro can have similar characteristics.

Anyway, Hamlin took the lead, Ross was second, and ultimately neither of them would win because we'd get five attempts at overtime ultimately ending in a Joey Logano win with Zane Smith in second and Tyler Reddick in third. Yeah.

So yeah, the races I watched last weekend through the lens of grip and how these three very different racing vehicles behave. I thought it was interesting and I hope you did too.

Next week, MotoGP at the Sachsenring, NASCAR at the Chicago Street Circuit, and Indycar begins its hybrid era at Mid-Ohio. Looks like F1 will be at Silverstone as well. So...see you next Monday for whatever I want to talk about coming out of that weekend.