{"id":1912027,"date":"2026-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1912027"},"modified":"2026-05-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:00:00","slug":"whatever-happens-weve-got-a-story-motogps-gavin-emmett-on-the-2026-season-and-new-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1912027","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhatever happens, we\u2019ve got a story\u201d: MotoGP\u2019s Gavin Emmett on the 2026 season and new game"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MotoGP returned to the Goi\u00e2nia circuit in Brazil this year for the first time since 1989. As veteran broadcaster Gavin Emmett was taking a trackside walk with his TNT team on the Friday afternoon of the race weekend, a young kid walked up to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he goes, \u2018are you the guy who does the voice for the game?\u2019\u201d says Emmett. \u201cIt made me laugh, because it\u2019s like \u2013 we\u2019re in Brazil. We haven\u2019t been here [in Goi\u00e2nia] since the Eighties and we were wondering what sort of culture there was. And yet, there\u2019s this kid, asking for an autograph. Obviously I had the mickey taken out of me afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It shows you how important the Milestone MotoGP<\/em> games are to Dorna and new owner Liberty Media\u2019s grand plans to grow the sport among a truly international audience. Emmett has been involved in MotoGP since the early Noughties, and has been the voice of both the official international broadcast feed and BT Sport\/TNT Sport\u2019s weekend coverage. The fact that a young fan recognised his dulcet northern tones primarily from the games says a lot.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just important to the fans. The series is an oddity in motorsport, because unlike the simulator-heavy world of F1, riders really do use the game to learn the tracks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c\u200aGenuinely,\u201d says Emmett. \u201cWhen I was in Brazil, I was walking the track with Joe Roberts, and he goes, \u2018oh yeah, I’ve been playing it’. It happens all the time. At Balaton Park last year in Hungary I spoke to David Alonso, who basically said, \u2018without a doubt’. And you\u2019re gonna do that, aren\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of the 3D renders that they\u2019ve got is phenomenal. It\u2019s uber realistic. And we don’t have a simulator culture like Formula One. The Moto trainers, those simulators are alright, but racers aren’t using them. They’re doing what Pedro Acosta does. Going around a tiny little grubby little race track in Murcia on a beaten up old KTM 800. But you still need to learn the racetracks, and the only place that you can do that is in the MotoGP<\/em> game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MotoGP 26<\/em>, out now on PC and consoles, is the thirteenth game Emmett has lent his voice talents to: \u201cI recorded in London when we did the first ones. It took two or three days to get through all the script lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Post-Covid, more recording has taken place at home in Leeds, which Emmett tells us bears a surprisingly close resemblance to his actual commentary booth on race day.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people think that we are sat up at the top of the grandstand, looking down on the front, straight over the finish line.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut actually, we are in a windowless booth. We are in a portacabin, that\u2019s essentially what it is. We don’t have any windows. We just have a screen. And it\u2019s hot, we have blankets all around for soundproofing. So it’s not too dissimilar to being in a soundproof booth, whether it be in London or in Leeds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MotoGP 26<\/em> rings in several notable changes, which can be categorised as \u2018how and why you get thrown off the bike and launched to the moon this time out\u2019. Rider-based handling revises the physics model to put you in more immediate, direct, leather-soiling control of the prototype, while new career mode options like the chance to pick a real rider instead of a custom creation and race road bikes in your downtime give the old formula some more mileage. But arguably the best thing this year\u2019s game has going for it is the actual season it\u2019s depicting.<\/p>\n

2026 should, by rights, already be dominated by Marc Marquez by now. His first season at the factory Ducati team in 2025 represented a marriage of elite rider and elite machinery that created an utterly \u2013 tediously, even \u2013 dominant display. This year was billed to be a repeat of the same. Instead, Marquez has yet to win on a Sunday. It\u2019s the Aprilias of Marco Bezzecchi and the newly rebuilt Martinator, Jorge Martin, who look the strongest. The top Ducati? Why, Fabio Di Giannantonio, obviously.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever happens from this moment,\u201d Emmett says, \u201cwe\u2019ve got a story. If it\u2019s Martin\u2019s Lazarus-like comeback, if it\u2019s Bezzecchi, the dropped man at Ducati, turning up at Aprilia and taking the championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s Marc Marquez, coming back after yet another injury and winning the championship, that\u2019s great. Pedro Acosta being Mr Consistent on the KTM\u2026 Whatever happens, we\u2019ve got a championship on our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the MotoGP<\/em> games themselves, which delight in tiny details and whose anorak-grade enthusiasm is infectious, Emmett is passionate about his sport. You get the sense that he\u2019d have been in that recording booth for six days instead of three, if they\u2019d asked him, and he still wouldn\u2019t have run out of things to talk about.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aI know we’re lucky to be in a position to talk about it and to tell the story of the sport. I hope it comes across.\u201d Don\u2019t worry Gavin, it does. Anyway \u2013 aren\u2019t you the guy who does the voice for the game?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MotoGP returned to the Goi\u00e2nia circuit in Brazil this year for the first time since 1989. As veteran broadcaster Gavin Emmett was taking a trackside walk with his TNT team on the Friday afternoon of the race weekend, a young kid walked up to him. \u201cAnd he goes, \u2018are you the guy who does the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1912027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1912027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1912027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1912027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1912027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}