A trip to Portugal should never be dull. One minute you’re walking down an un-swept street looking for something to eat that isn’t salted cod the next you’ve had your wallet pickpocketted and then you’re attacked by a massive jellyfish. A ‘rubbish Spain’ it may be – but Portugal is usually not dull.
Then there’s the locals who, for whatever reason, are bike mad. They pour into Portimao in their thousands to watch MotoGP enthusiastically cheering on any rider from Portugal or with a dubious criminal record.
So with all that in mind the big question is why was the Portuguese MotoGP race so mind-numbingly dull? The answer can be solved with Cosmology!
Dark Energy: The podium riders
Scientists reckon dark energy makes up 68% of everything (once adjusted for James Corden’s carcass), yet we’ve never seen it, touched it, or even gotten a selfie. But despite being basically the introvert of physics, it’s somehow expanding space faster than Sebastian Piffleton’s waistline during an open buffet event.
And it seems that dark energy was once again at play in Portugal as the top three MotoGP riders of the day, Bez, Marquez Lite and the Stoat, were kept apart by the universe’s most mysterious force. If at anytime one of the podium finishers looked like closing the gap to one of the others the fun-ruining dark matter stoically stepped in-between and ensured both bodies were expanded away from each other.
All this calculated physics ultimately meant we were left knowing that nothing was everything that was going to happen.
The Multiverse: Bagnaia vs Bulega punch-up
The multiverse is the universe’s infinite group chat where every version of you is a different kind of disaster. In one branch you’re a sentient toaster and in other you’re still arguing with your cat. Every quantum coin flip spawns a new universe meaning maybe there’s even one where Bradley Smith has hair and Chantra isn’t shit. Try wrapping your head around that if you can.
This leads us to the floppy haired Italian Nicolo Bulega who turned up at Portimao ready to rock the factory Ducati and hopefully the Ducati boat. Everyone, with the exception of Bagnaia and his family, wanted to see the two teammates clash on track.
But sadly nothing materialised. Bulega was good…but not quite as good as we secretly hoped he would be and thus wasn’t quick enough to catch Bagnaia. Meanwhile Bagnaia was so uninteresting that he fell off and no one really noticed.
But don’t despair. The multiverse means there was an actual universe where Bagnaia and Bulega went at it against each other – it’s just us poor bastards weren’t in it. And even though we’ll never know what actually happened you can guarantee it involved a lot of irate Italians waving their arms in the air in an ‘aggressive unless challenged’ manner.
The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: Franco Morbidelli
The Measurement Problem in quantum mechanics is a particle that’s chilling in all possible states at once—spinning up, down, left, sideways, and doing the Macarena—until you peek, and it instantly picks one, like it was always that way. “I was never in superposition, bro!” it lies, while the wavefunction collapses faster than a bad soufflé.
Physicists argue that Schrödinger’s Morbidelli can also be in superposition where’s he’s both amazing and awful at the same time and it’s only by observing the VR46 seat-hogger that his actual state is revealed.
If not observed Franco can be both shit but have a good race. Usually steadily working his way up through the field to a strong finish at which point we all think “Oh Morbidelli did well, I never even noticed him”.
However, as soon as the Italian-Brazilian hybrid lunatic is observed the waveform collapses and Morbidelli goes random. This is great news for the casual observer and terrible if you’re on the track anywhere near him.
It was unfortunate therefore that we were able to observe Morbidelli on lap one careering out of control, off the racing line heading towards the other riders who (unlike Franky) had decided to slow down for the oncoming corner. Luckily Morbidelli’s bike is painted dayglow yellow – this isn’t for sponsorship reasons but so the other riders, who enjoy not being confined to a wheelchair, can quickly spot the Italian-halfwit fast enough to get out of the way.
But that wasn’t quite enough for Morbidelli. If the laws of quantum physics say he must crash the crash me must. So Franco fell off trying to recover from not falling off. All this on lap one meant we were robbed of the excitement of it happening later on.
Matter-Antimatter Imbalance: Miguel Oliveria
Right after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were supposed to pair up like cosmic Tinder dates and annihilate in a blaze of glory—poof, equal parts gone. Instead, matter ghosted the explosion, leaving just one extra particle for every billion pairs. That lone survivor became you, your car, and every bad decision on X.
When MotoGP first returned to the Algarve homeboy Miguel Oliveria was absolutely sensational. Miguel didn’t just win that race – he decimated the field. In fact the Portuguese rider was so far in front that he inadvertently ended up scoring points in the Moto2 race that had started over an hour before.
Sadly these fantastic results are seemingly constructed entirely from anti-matter with matter making up the bulk of Oliveria’s performances. For every anti-matter-Miguel outcome that sees the cod loving Yamaha rider perform brilliantly there’s a billion matter-Miguel outcomes that make us wonder what his sister sees in him.
