Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter Episode 127, the slightly behind the curve episode, with Martin Fitz-Gibbons and Simon Hargreaves waffling along as usual – supported and enhanced by Bennetts, the bike insurance specialists, and www.bikesocial.co.uk, the home of all things two-wheeled and powered by an engine, internally combustible or electric or, indeed, propelled by little more than an inappropriate fragrant emission.

And on the show this week we have:

• a new MotoGP World Champeen, and a slightly subdued Portimao ending to the craziest, least predictable and – let's be honest – luckiest MotoGP season in modern history • the best Joan Mir stat you will ever hear
• new bikes for 2021, including:

– BMW's S1000R, the bike with the wrong half of the fairing removed

– Ducati's Multistrada V4 which Simon hadn't ridden, much, when the podcast came out, but which it subsequently turns out he had. It's very confusing

– Ducati's underrated SuperSport, now called a 950 – ...and the Panigale V4 SP, whatever that is

– Triumph 850 Sport, and how it replaces the world's shortest-lived model, the Triumph Tiger 900 – Yamaha MT-09 Tracer and GT

– Yamaha's track-only R6, and the death of the supersports 600

• PLUS! A brief dip into the FECsack and topics such as do track days matter when you're over 50, is a Z900 RS Café better than a Z H2, tyre scrubbers, how come more people don't commute on bikes, and much – a bit – more...

Many thanks to Bennetts and Bike Social for their continued patronage, and many thanks to you, dear listener, for lending us your ears... and please keep sending your thoughts, musings and life stories to us here:

[email protected]

You can get us on the Socials:

@SimonHbikes

@Mufga

Cheers ma dears.