Ok but how is Mig Babol, Andrea Migno’s podcast on MotoGP? After the debut with Franco Morbidelli only one thing is missing [VIDEO] – MOW

Mig Babol is the bubble of Mig, by Andrea Migno. The claim: Racing Podcast. In Jerez de la Frontera, after interviewing Marco Bezzecchi, we stopped to have a chat with Andrea, who was there cutting his nails in a VR46 bin. Toned, fit. He shows a Casio G-Shock: “I got it in Rome last year because I came from Valencia without luggage and I loved it, ninety euros”. His friend, Marco, has just finished telling us that he partly financed the podcast, adding that he did it first and without knowing anything. Andrea Migno talks about the podcast as an enormous effort: find the set, the equipment, who takes care of your image on social media: “That’s a big mess too, because if you want to do it well you have to work like crazy and if you do it badly you might as well just leave it alone. And then you know what? I thought it would take us less.” He’s right, it’s just that no one knows these things, no one talks about them.

CHowever, he seems satisfied, both with the resulting product and with the format: “We don’t want to do something like Jorge Lorenzo, where you struggle to find the episodes because the covers all look alike. Here maybe you want to play a phrase by Franco (Morbidelli, ed.) to a friend of yours and you’ll find it immediately”. A couple of days pass, people return home from the Spanish GPa and the first episode of the podcast is released: “TIME OUT with Franco Morbidelli”, which you can find at the beginning. The reference is to the helmet that Franco wore at Misano in 2021. Interviewing Morbidelli together with Migno is the co-host, Filippo Carloni, great friend of both.

The point of this stuff is that it’s all homemade, except that it works because it is the home of racing: ask a friend for a corner, but that friend is Mattia Pasini and so you go to record at Misano among the Res-Tech simulators. Then ask for help buying some equipment, Marco Bezzecchi gives it to you. You have a friend who is good at drawing, why do you need a logo? There is Aldo Drudi. And then, when you ask another of your people to tell you something to make some content, you have Franco Morbidelli at your disposal. Specifically, Franco talks about when he went to Kevin Schwantz’s house, about the fact that Kevin is the motorcyclist after Valentino Rossi. He says he is “An internet point kid”, because his mother took him with her to make phone calls to Brazil. The atmosphere is relaxed, the times work. We need to understand a little better how the mixer works.

THEMeanwhile Morbidelli talks about the Iputinga favela outside Recife, where that part of his family lives: “I haven’t seen my friends from when I was 10 years old, because those who remained alive… either went somewhere on holiday or maybe they went to the countryside. One I remembered very well that I expected to see – and he remained alive – unfortunately was in the countryside. But I made some new friends, a friendship of an intensity that I carry within me.”

The conversation is pleasant because no one gives you the impression of having to perform, it’s all very spontaneous, immediate. Migno: “In Yamaha… It’s not like you played FIFA with Real Madrid.” And then again, when they ask him about the first 125 that he drove: “My father – says Franco – was crazy enough to have had the idea, which maybe is normal now, of putting me on a 125 GP at 11 years old. Where was it possible? In Sardinia, in Mores. A very beautiful track, but small. Guido Mancini was with me, he kept me safe and taught me the discipline of motorcycling”.

As the minutes pass we realize that Mig Babol is a series of paddock stories, authentic stuff, told with the density you would expect from an excellent retired journalist. The difference is that these are not even 30 years oldi and everything is more relaxed, nothing to prove, no one needs to let people know because it is there.

Tand you notice it above all when Morbidelli talks about how he became part of VR46, in fact his second family: “The turning point was when my father Livio asked Graziano Rossi to go and show me around the quarry. From there Graziano never took me under his wing, giving me a hand to do everything. Then they asked Carlo if I could train with him and with Vale, Sic was also there. It was 2008, 2009. Then the thing that happened with Livio happened. From there Vale, Graziano, Carlo, Albi and the whole VR46 took me under their wing even more, they embraced me in what was certainly a difficult moment. They tried in every way not to make me feel the difficulty of this moment and I didn’t feel it.”

There’s too much to tell: the celebration for the world championship in 2017 (“First at the Cueva in Montelabbate, then at the Twenties in Urbino”), the image of Ayrton Senna (“my bed must have his poster on it”) and the Misano helmet dedicated to a Spyke Lee movie in which Franco transforms into Samuel L. Jackson. And the chapters into which the interview is divided, beautiful to read and listen to, which reach their peak with “Franco Passion for Two Weeks”. Here Migno talks about his friend, rather than the pilot: “There is Vegan Franco, Pokemon Franco, Surfista Franco in Portoverde”. To which he responds with a laugh: “I must say that I’m quite focused on my basic passion, motorbikes. But I’m watching the Divine Comedy explained by Benigni.”

The closing question for effect: what would you say to a boy like you who is chasing a dream?

Franco Morbidelli’s response: “The most obvious thing, but also the most true and important: don’t give up. Giving up or slowing down is the castration of a dream. And it’s a bad thing to do to yourself and in general. If someone has a dream, it’s true and he truly believes in it, he follows it as far as this dream takes him.”

Mig Babol works well, it seems to be there with them. It will be interesting to see what comes out when, instead of lifelong friends, they find themselves interviewing strangers, or at least someone who is not their usual friend. But the idea is already there: “When Kevin Schwantz comes”, says Andrea Migno at a certain point, “we’ll make him talk about Franco Morbidelli”.