It was Francesco Bagnaia who’d be the one to rather succinctly sum up the general mood towards the 2024 MotoGP world championship title race as he settled in for his media session on Saturday afternoon. “This season it is looking like a championship of mistakes!”
It’s a comment that was delivered jokingly, yet at the same time articulated exactly what many were thinking after Jorge Martin took his turn in allowing precious points to slip through his grasp with his fall from the lead of the Indonesian Grand Prix sprint race on Saturday.
To his credit, far from allowing himself to feel a touch smug as the one to profit from Martin’s misfortune by taking a fourth win sprint win of the season, Bagnaia no doubt feels a touch of empathy too given only days earlier he had been the one brushing gravel out of his locks after crashing at Misano.
They are incidents that have come to rather typify the thread of a 2024 MotoGP title fight that even now, with just five rounds remaining, at times still feels as though it is yet to fully get going.
It gives the suggestion that this is a 2024 MotoGP title battle that won’t be ‘won’ per se, more than the other rider lost it. But is it fair to critique this as simply a rider dropping the ball, or is it a measure of the limits they are now skirting in order to reach the top?
Whatever happens from this point on, it is almost certain the rider on the losing end of this year’s title fight will - as ever - spend the winter retrospectively going over those moments where the title was won and lost.
For Martin and especially Bagnaia, the pivotal flashpoints have been abundantly clear in 2024. Indeed, this isn’t a forensic analysis of ifs, buts and maybes, where the difference between sweet title glory and a salty defeat is as nuanced as an incorrect tyre choice here or an erroneous set-up tweak there.
Instead, what is striking about this year’s battle is how it has evolved into a personal battle of holding nerve, rather than a battle in the more literal sense of on-track jousting.
This can in part be explained by MotoGP’s evolution towards a more aero-dependent, technically advanced blueprint that while mind-bending in its impressiveness, has undoubtedly shifted the balance of priority away from the input of a rider and more towards the output of the bike.
"When you are at this limit, you are closer to a crash. So it is super important for the championship that we have to remain focused"
Francesco Bagnaia
Not that man and machine is always a symbiotic relationship, as Martin suggested on Saturday after confessing he had no indication as to why his Ducati folded underneath him.
“I don’t feel I was on the limit,” he asserted. “It’s difficult to understand why I crashed. I have looked into it and everything looks normal, so if there is something I need to change then I will look into it more deeply and understand to ensure I don’t make the same mistake.”
Bagnaia offered up his own theory, pointing out that only innovations and engineering are the reason why tenths are being slashed off lap records on a regular basis, and that means the margin for error has become increasingly slim.
“I have an idea that it has arrived from the performance of the tyres - they are an enormous step forward,” he offered. “We are braking so hard because the rear is up a lot, so in the front, we have more issues because we enter corners much faster.
“The performance Michelin has improved this season is incredible, at all the circuits we have improved the pace a lot. But when you are at this limit, you are closer to a crash. So it is super important for the championship that we have to remain focused.”
While it would end up fairly honours even between Martin and Bagnaia in Mandalika - 25 points for the former, 28 for the latter - they’d barely crossed swords all weekend. It has been a similar story at other venues too, the pair engaging in a rivalry that has so far avoided the grazed elbows and swapped paint of on-track combat and has been defined by which rider inflicts fewer defeats on himself.
Indeed, as indicated by Bagnaia’s appraisal, the 2024 MotoGP title fight might well hinge on which rider ends up proving less fallible rather than which rider is faster. Indonesia was a case in point. Martin showed superior pace throughout the weekend - including during his charge through the field upon remounting in the sprint race - but paid the higher price with his sprint slip up.
For the most part, Martin’s quest for greater consistency requires only fine-tuning. A rider whose unquestionable turn of speed on a MotoGP bike was for a long time counteracted by a tendency to go bust after going boom, the Spaniard has worked hard to prove he can race with a mature head too.
After seeing his 2023 title hopes undone by costly slips - Indonesia, Australia and Valencia - during high-stake critical junctures, Martin has limited his glaring faux pas to a late crash in Germany and that tactical blunder in Misano.
That said, the Spaniard is still prone to race day foibles - Silverstone, Mugello, Catalunya - that help explain how he has been able to sustain a lead in the overall standings over Bagnaia despite going nine events and four months between bagging 25 points for a Sunday win.
Over then to Bagnaia, whose scatter graph scoresheet sees him boast big numbers, albeit for both the right reasons and the wrong ones. Eleven wins - seven main, four sprint - tell their own story, but then so do the six occasions he failed to score at all.
It has left the Italian yo-yoing with his greater number of wins. An ability to keep rebounding back into the mix suggesting the onus is Bagnaia - and not Martin - to shape the future by either stringing more of those strong results together, or allowing his rival to maintain a psychological edge.
If we were no closer to finding out who will reign supreme between Martin and Bagnaia, the Indonesian round did at least help all but confirm this is now a two-horse race between the duo for a second successive year.
The fact it would take two remarkably rare events - a crash for the normally robust Enea Bastianini and the untimely expiration of Marc Marquez’s trusty Gresini Ducati - to bring this about, perhaps we - as well as Martin and Bagnaia - should still be giving greater credit to cold hard fate in matters of racing.
It might just make all the difference.
