The Red Bull Award
Red Bull, the magical elixir that promises to give teenagers wings and toothache because nothing screams “I’m thriving” like a 16-year-old mainlining caffeine and taurine to survive another all-nighter of Fortnite and forgotten homework.
This licenced poison allows the youth of today to feel invincible and avoid sleep with a techno beat pulse ensuring a shortened life complicated with fried nerves, personality changes and chronic cardiovascular issues.
This award goes to the rider who was young, unruly and had wings.
Winner: Fermín Aldeguer
This weekend ‘The Vermin’ was IV’d full of caffeine and taurine and sent out onto his personal wrecking yard to claim a superb second place.
Starting sixth, dropping to ninth, then carving his way through the stunned field the 20-year-old managed to burn a hole in his boot whilst trying to nick Marc Marquez’s lunch money in the final laps.
But the biggest burn was comically reserved for his bitter short-legged predator rival Pedro ‘the Stoat’ Acosta. Vermin and the Stoat used to be good friends – growing up together in the same marshy wasteland but something happened a few years back causing both invasive species to fall out and hate each other. It probably involved a dead rat.
So there was clearly no love lost when Aldeguer stole Acosta’s podium hopes late on with an aggressive move at the chicane that was more offensive than his neck tattoo.
In the dying stages of the race Vermin even kept the viewers awake with his charge to catch Marquez…until Marc showed us that he was just pretending to race up until that point.
The Sound of Music Award
Set in Austria ‘The Sound of Music’ was a groundbreaking cinematic gem that featured Nuns twirling in the Alps, a governess who solved every problem with a song, and evil Nazis conveniently foiled by a family choir. Because as we all know the best way to defeat fascism is a family sing-along and some strategic yodeling.
This award goes to the rider who started off singing sweetly but by the third act was booted out by the Nazis (sort of).
Winner: Pecco Bagnaia
Pecco started the weekend telling us in the summer break that he’d been watching videos of himself winning races along with pictures of his sister. A bit weird but okay. The Italian was ready to forget the first half of the season and instead show us what he could do. And it was all going well…until it wasn’t.
The sprint race was the first crack…or the gaping chasm filled with screeching demons from Hades in this case. Pecco started the race with what looked like a “Jorge Martin world championship denying Michelin” tyre as he wobbled off the line. From that point the Italian’s bike was shaking more than Michael J Fox’s dog taking a troublesome dump. Bagnaia’s only hope was to shake his head continuously at the same time in the hope that this cranial mass-dampener would counteract the issues. But it didn’t.
But he always had the main race right? This should allow Pecco to copy the data of the other riders to hopefully claim a default 4th place finish? Sadly not.
Bagnaia was just as terrible in the main race. Made worse that his owner, Valentino Rossi, has turned up knowing this was supposedly a ‘Pecco track’ to watch him beat Marc Marquez. Awkward.
The Wiener Schnitzel Award
The Wiener Schnitzel is a glorious Austrian masterpiece where a perfectly innocent piece of baby cow gets pounded into oblivion, breaded and then fried until it’s crispier than Uccio’s most troublesome verruca. The Austrians claim it’s “culinary sophistication”, but is it? Is flattening meat to the thickness of a credit card and serving it with a side of lemon to remind you it’s supposed to taste like something actually better than a KFC?
This award goes to the team that got pounded in Austria.
Winner: Yamaha
Yamaha weren’t just bad in Austria – they were a veritable clown show on two wheels.
All four riders, led by Quartararararo, waddled over the line about an hour after the winner in a lockstep of shame hogging the last four positions. It was a slow and embarrassing funeral procession for the M1…but hopefully not Yamaha.
The Mozart Award
For some reason Austria scores very highly in the cultural class – which is even more strange when its name sounds so similar to ‘Australia’.
Take Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – the legendary Austrian composer who totally wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1776 to beat off local bad-boy Beethoven in the accordion drenched “Battle of the Schnitzels” competition.
By age five, Mozart was already ghostwriting operas for Shakespeare and later had a crack at finishing off the Sistine Chapel ceiling – including the tricky “cutting in” sections around the polystyrene coving. Despite dying because he cut his ear off aged just14 (or something) Wolfgang certainly proved Austria had class.
This award goes to the rider who delivered yet another classical performance.
Winner: Marc Marquez
Dorna have a set of “winner” images for each rider to be displayed as an overlay graphic at the end of each race for the winner. Already in 2025 they’ve run out of these images for Marc and have resorted to now recycling them.
So how am I supposed to write something new if even the images are being reused? I can’t. Same same. The depression of Italy continues and shows no signs of slowing down. Literally.
The Vienna Award
Austria’s capital city Vienna is the cultural crown jewel of Europe, where every cobblestone oozes smug sophistication and the air smells faintly of dead baby cow and self-importance.
Tourists waltzing through the streets can expect the locals, who sip overpriced coffee, to judge you on your jawline that’s lacking the Habsburg dimensions. Even the Danube flows through the city with the quiet arrogance of a river that knows it’s been name-dropped in too many songs.
This award goes to the rider who performed beautifully with a passive-aggressive charm.
Winner: Marco Bezzecchi
Aprilia’s ‘bought with the money left over after Jorge Martin’ rider Marco Bezzecchi has been flying this season ever since he started harbouring his semi-offensive mullet hairstyle. But it was clearly the lesser of two evils.
Traditionally the Red Bull track hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for Aprilia. Last year Aleix Asparagus didn’t hit a single apex all weekend so there weren’t high hopes for their number two number one rider Marco Bezzecchi or their number one number two rider Jorge Martin.
But out of nowhere Marco appeared on Saturday claiming pole position despite having to come through Q1. A fourth in the sprint race and a podium in main race was more than Aprilia could have ever hoped for. And it didn’t stop there! Jorge Martin fell off and didn’t need to go to hospital for three months.
Another great ride for Bezzecchi – a rider that we at MGPNews have always rated.
