MotoGP fiction: when race coverage turns into pure make-believe

The last barrier has fallen on YouTube: with Artificial Intelligence, anyone can now publish a video that, by exploiting real MotoGP figures, builds completely fabricated cases about technical details that don’t exist.

A reader sent me the link to a video from a YouTube channel that claimed Bagnaia had discovered a forbidden part on Marquez’s Ducati: the “Ducati scandal.” The plot is straight out of a mystery film: Pecco, still a Ducati employee with a 7-million annual salary, supposedly identified an out-of-regulation detail on his teammate Marc Marquez’s D16. And that would be the reason why the Spaniard is back on top of the Championship, while Pecco is adrift amid a string of crashes and fits of anger.

The unseen guest of our times really thought of everything: it built the plot, the cover image, and the narrating voice, which speaks perfect Italian with an actor-studio-grade diction. Detail: the technical linchpin of the “scandal,” namely the mysterious “delayed” fork-stem release system that would be exclusive to MM93, does not exist. And, on closer inspection, no one ever said otherwise. The label “AI-generated” is prominently displayed, and in the video description it clearly states that it is “fictional,” that is, made up. Yet to some it seemed real: the video has been viewed thousands of times and about a hundred unsuspecting viewers even took the time to comment on how evil Ducati is, the Spanish conspiracy, and the bullying of Bagnaia.

“The only difference between the two factory Ducatis is the aerodynamic appendage on the swingarm that Bagnaia has and Marquez doesn’t—these are riders’ choices,” a source familiar with the matter told us. Reality is banal, which is why AI goes further and spins its own fiction around it. Thus MotoGP stops being a sport and becomes pure entertainment: it uses a few real elements to construct a completely fictionalized narrative. There’s nothing left to be shocked about: even heads of state use AI to tell truths that don’t exist. We’d just need to learn to distinguish truth from falsehood by reading the disclaimers carefully—at least when they’re there—and rely on opinions and narratives from real people, ideally those who know the facts and have the field experience to interpret them.

On closer look, the fiction is less harmful than a certain “official” line of storytelling made up of cameras and microphones scattered everywhere. Riders risk their lives on track, but off it things are getting worse. From the moment they get out of bed, they’re constantly under MotoGP’s Big Brother eye. Pecco Bagnaia is understandably pissed off about the audio stolen by TV (details here) during his conversation with Fabio Di Giannantonio. Riders at odds with their team have always existed. Troy Bayliss, back in the day, more than once walked into the garage and slammed his helmet—and whatever else was at hand—onto the unlucky Ducati crew members, and who knows what came out of his mouth. Then the anger would pass, and things would sort themselves out. That same rider is now an ambassador for the Red and remains in the hearts of everyone he worked with, even those who sometimes took a helmet to the face. Imagine if that happened today. Then we complain that MotoGP riders are all stiff and always say bland things. Of course—they’re terrified of the consequences every time they open their mouths.

MotoGP is seeking new ways to tell its story, but I strongly doubt that showing and hearing everything is the best choice. We now have hardcore motorcycling right before our eyes, and I feel this unvarnished exposure greatly reduces the mystique that once hovered around it. Kenny Roberts and Freddie Spencer seemed to have stepped off an alien spaceship—indeed, for the press of the time, King Kenny was “the Martian.” People saw him pass by and it felt like a dream, a revelation. It always works like this: if you see everything, and there’s nothing left to imagine, what’s left?

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