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A race that people will certainly be talking about weeks from now, the boys are back on the mics for the San Marino GP – dissecting the various weather strategies and their impact on the 2015 championship.

You won’t want to miss this half-hour discussion by David Emmett (MotoMatters), Neil Morrison (Crash.net & RoadRacing World), and Tony Goldsmith (A&R and BikeSportNews).

On a technical note, we’ve got some proper microphones for the lads on this show. Hopefully you’ll notice an improvement in our show quality. We’re really close to having a dedicated site ready, along with an RSS feed, iTunes updates, etc. So, thanks for bearing with us on that front.

Racers are gamblers. That their helmet designs featuring dice, cards, and other gambling paraphernalia bear witness to that. They have to be gamblers, a willingness to take risks is a prerequisite to being fast on a motorcycle, running the odds through your mind and betting the house on your own ability to get the upper hand.

Sometimes the gamble pays off, and when it does, the rewards are bountiful. Other times, however, you lose, leaving you a hard, hard row to hoe. There are gambles to be taken at every MotoGP race, but Misano turned into the biggest casino the series has ever seen.

Rain that came after the start then stopped again meant gambling on the right time to come in for tires – twice, once to go from slicks to wets, once to go from wets to slicks – left some riders reaping rich rewards, while others were left with empty hands.

Come in too late for wets, and you could lose 10 seconds wobbling round on a wet track on slicks. Come in too late for slicks, and you could lose 10 seconds or more a lap trying to find grip on wet tires as they were tearing themselves apart.

Remember Brno? A scintillating qualifying left Jorge Lorenzo on pole, with Marc Márquez beside him and Valentino Rossi filling out the front row. Race pace for the three was very similar, and the fans were left with the mouthwatering prospect of a thrilling race on Sunday. They were disappointed.

Jorge Lorenzo surged to the lead off the line, shook off Marc Márquez, disappeared into the distance, and won comfortably. The battle royal promised by free practice never materialized, and we were all left with a hollow feeling of disappointment, no matter how brilliant Lorenzo’s victory was.

Hence my reluctance to play up the prospect of a good race at Misano. The ingredients are the same. The same three riders on the front row, in the same order.

The key to success in motorcycle racing is to control the variables which you can control, and adapt to the ones which you can’t.

The British round of MotoGP at Silverstone turned out to be all about those variables, the controllable and the uncontrollable, about right and wrong choices, and about adapting to the conditions.

The one variable over which those involved in motorcycle racing have any control is the weather. Especially at Silverstone, especially at the end of summer. That it should rain is utterly unsurprising. That it should rain during a MotoGP race even more so.

The outcome of the MotoGP race – and in fact, the outcome of all three races at Silverstone – was entirely predictable: the rider who was both best prepared and best able to adapt to the conditions won.

Predicting how a MotoGP race will play out is hard. Scratch that, predicting how a MotoGP race will play out is downright impossible. We scour the sector and lap times, talk to as many riders as possible, try to make sense of what they tell us, and take our best guess based on all we have learned.

And inevitably, we get it wrong. Because there was something we missed, or because some random factor intervened, or because we didn’t pay enough attention to what the riders were telling us, or perhaps paid too much attention to it. Which is why you should probably take the following with a pinch of salt.

After qualifying and practice at Brno, we confidently predicted one of the best races of the year, with Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez setting almost identical pace during free practice.

The chase lasted for five laps, before Lorenzo picked up his heels and disappeared, riding a perfect race to an unstoppable win, and killing any burgeoning excitement stone dead.

Silverstone looks like being very similar. There are two riders who are clearly a step ahead of the rest, and on the basis of practice times on Saturday, their pace is very similar indeed.

Though you wouldn’t say that just based on the headline numbers: in FP3, Jorge Lorenzo destroyed the rest of the field, beating Márquez by nearly half a second.

In the afternoon, during FP4, Márquez returned the favor, laying down a withering pace to put over eight tenths on everyone else, and posting a string of ten laps, the slowest of which was faster than fastest lap set by any other rider on the field.

The difference between Lorenzo’s FP3 lap and Márquez’ FP4 lap? Just 0.062 seconds, in Lorenzo’s favor.

Tires are what made the difference. Lorenzo put a brand new tire on for the last two laps of FP3, and obliterated the rest of the field. Márquez put a brand new medium tire in FP4, and blew the field away, then slapped in a new hard tire, and was fast with that too.

In FP3, Márquez was working on getting the best out of old tires, in FP4, Lorenzo was doing the same, as well as trying out a setup change that simply did not work.

Two riders, similar pace on new tires, both much faster than the rest. Who will come out on top? At this point in time, it is impossible to say. What it will come down to is who manages tires the best.

Silverstone was Silverstone on Friday. It pulled its many underhand tricks out of its sleeve, and threw everything it had at the riders, with the exception of rain. Cool in the morning, warm and sunny in the afternoon, with occasional cloud cover to drop the track temperature.

High winds, gusting in a few corners where it was trying to lift the bikes and throw them off line. And bumps galore, short ones, long ones, moved around the circuit since the last time the MotoGP riders were here, forcing them to recalibrate their memories, and pick new lines through the corners they thought they knew.

The ever eloquent Bradley Smith explained: “I’m not too worried about bumps coming from my motocross background it is not something I worry about, it might be something some of the other guys are more scared about, but it doesn’t really effect me.”

“It does seem to be quite bad going into the first corner Copse it is quite bad still and there is a nasty one into Stowe at the end of Hanger Straight. Still the braking point at Vale chicane is still like rollers into there. And for Abbey that one is really, really bad there is one in the middle of the corner which always makes the front tuck.”

The wind was not much better. “It is certainly bad. In a few places you have to make sure you get your body in the right place and get a little bit on the rear brake to keep the front wheel down.”

“I see a lot of guys drilling holes in the fairing but for some reason, especially me with my style and the way it is working at the moment I don’t feel it is causing any problems I can still turn into the wind. It is picking up the front a little bit in the exit but I can commit into the corner okay.”

MotoGP fans should recognize the name Mark Neale, as he has produced some of the sport’s most popular movies, such as Faster, The Doctor, The Tornado and The Kentucky Kid, the sequel Fastest, and now Hitting the Apex.

Continuing the timeline of Neale’s films, Hitting the Apex chronicles six riders: Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa, Casey Stoner, Marco Simoncelli, and Marc Marquez.

The movie picks-up just as Valentino Rossi is making his way from Yamaha to Ducati, carries us into the start of the 2015 season, and touches on the major events of those seasons. Neale as always provides a good balance between making MotoGP appealing to non-enthusiasts, while keeping plenty on the table for avid fans.

We’ll do a full review closer to the movie’s debut, but we think that fans and soon-to-be-fans will enjoy the two-hour film. We certainly did.

After the jump is the trailer for Hitting the Apex, and you will note it is narrated by Brad Pitt, who Neale tells us was instrumental behind-the-scenes in getting the movie released.

The summer break was too long, but the boys at the Paddock Pass Podcast (Twitter & Facebook) are back in action on the track, and on the microphones.

This week we are changing things up a bit, not only do we have David (MotoMatters) and Neil (Road Racing World and Crash.net) on this episode of the podcast, but we are also doing a wrap-up, rather than preview, of the Czech GP.

Let us know what you think about doing round-ups to the race rounds, rather than previews (or in addition to previews?). Apologies in advance for the bike’s on the track and the press room chatter…at least you know the Triple-P is authentic, right?

As a postscript, I know many of you have been asking for this to be on iTunes and with an RSS feed. We’re working on it, but first we want to nail down our audio so it sounds professional. Thanks in advance for being a part of this “public beta” of sorts.

Comments, feedback, rants, and raves are welcomed in the comments section.