Having been quite excited that autosport.com decided to start covering MotoGP*, I’m now very annoyed. Because I was working yesterday I recorded the first race of the season and returned home eager to watch it. However, I made the stupid mistake of checking my email and looking on autosport.com before sitting down to watch it. So, the worst possible thing happened that can happen to a motorsport viewer: I knew the result before I’d seen the race. Some might argue there’s no point viewing a race after you know the result – but not me. I watched it anyway and it was a lot of fun. What was astonishing was the difference in straight line speed between Rossi and Stoner – almost 15km/h, apparently. This sets the season up to be a cracker. It occurred to me, however, what the main difference between MotoGP and F1 is: aerodynamics. On the motorbikes there is very little: in a remarkable way, the rider himself is the most important aerodynamic device (and would be banned in F1 for being ‘movable’).

*Until someone invents SofaMoto, I’m afraid you’ll have to put with me blithering on about it here. Incidentally, the one thing I don’t like about this sport is its name. It seems too modern, and too much of an attempt to be cool, when in fact the sport has been running longer than F1.