A change … and a curveball? Three key questions from MotoGP moving its season finale
It’s a second visit in the same season to Barcelona that nobody in MotoGP really wanted.
But – for reasons of sport, contracts and sentiment – it’s one that MotoGP had to have, and it adds another layer of intrigue to a world championship that’s yet to be decided, and throws several more curveballs into an already potent mix of uncertainty heading into the 2024 season finale at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya next weekend.
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To recap: with a maximum of 37 points available in the 20th and final round of the year, Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin holds a 24-point lead over reigning world champion and factory Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia coming into the decider.
Should the Spaniard outscore the Italian by two points in Saturday’s 12-lap sprint, he’ll become the premier-class champion for the first time.
Even if Martin didn’t score in the sprint and Bagnaia won, Martin’s advantage would still be 12 points with 25 to play for in the following day’s 24-lap Grand Prix, meaning Bagnaia would have to win and Martin finish off the podium to take a hat-trick of titles.
To call Bagnaia’s task tall would be selling it short.
Even with that mountain to climb, the race moving from Valencia to Barcelona at the 11th hour presents variables that anyone in a position of advantage – Martin, in this case – could well do without. But it’s a situation where alternatives were few.
When more than a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours in Valencia 10 days ago, floods caused mass loss of life and widespread property destruction that made visiting the city for something as trivial as a sporting event with so many bigger priorities at play ambitious at best, and inappropriate at worst.
Aerial vision posted on social media this week showed that the Circuit Ricardo Tormo was largely left intact besides being caked in dirt in mud; the surrounding areas, and the infrastructure required to make a Grand Prix happen, wasn’t as fortunate.
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With a live championship that needed to be settled and with series promoter Dorna’s contracts with broadcasters promising at least 20 races – which has been a struggle this year with rounds in Argentina, Kazakhstan and India already called off – MotoGP will head back to the venue where it held round six of its season in May under the banner of the Solidarity Grand Prix of Barcelona, with proceeds from tickets going towards relief funds to aid Valencia’s recovery 400 kilometres to the south.
The traditional post-season one-day MotoGP test – where riders who are changing teams or new to the grid for the following season that typically takes place in Valencia – will be held in Barcelona too, two days after the chequered flag falls on 2024.
Having a season wrap up anywhere besides Valencia is, in modern times, a significant change; the Valencia GP came onto the calendar in 1999, and has hosted every final round since 2002 besides the covid-compromised 2020 season, which ended in Portimao.
It’s a forced change to Barcelona that throws up some questions Valencia might not have posed, and some that could change the narrative of an unpredictable season that finally started to make some sense in Malaysia last time out, when Martin seemingly took a series lead that looked insurmountable after Bagnaia crashed out of the sprint race at Sepang.
DOES BARCELONA FAVOUR MARTIN, OR BAGNAIA?
Before the previous visit to Barcelona in May this year, the answer would have been Martin, hands down.
But Bagnaia’s form in round six – he dominated the sprint race before crashing on the final lap, and then immediately made amends by winning the Grand Prix the next day – at least makes the question worth pondering.
The Italian’s form at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya before this year had been bafflingly miserable, especially compared to what he’s achieved almost everywhere else.
The pain wasn’t just felt on the points table, either; in 2022, Bagnaia was taken out at the first corner by Takaaki Nakagami’s out-of-control Honda, while in 2023, he made it as far as turn two before a huge high-side spat him off into the path of the pursuing pack, KTM’s Brad Binder running over Bagnaia’s legs and leaving him with injuries that lingered for the balance of the season.
Despite his Barcelona breakthrough in searing heat earlier this year, Bagnaia would have likely preferred to have raced in Valencia to wrap 2024; Bagnaia secured his 2022 and 2023 titles at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in last-round showdowns with Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo and Martin respectively, and won Grands Prix there in 2021 and again last year after Martin crashed out.
PIT TALK PODCAST: In the latest episode of ‘Pit Talk’, Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton look back at a dramatic Malaysian Grand Prix and THAT battle between Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin, why Bagnaia can’t get the help he needs to defend his world title, and how Jack Miller emerged unscathed from a terrifying first-lap crash at Sepang.
For Martin, avoiding a return to the track that sealed his 2023 fate with so much on the line 12 months on can only help, at least psychologically. While he’s been rapid at both tracks, Barcelona has been a happier hunting ground in the premier class, as he’s finished second, third and second in the past three Grands Prix in Montmelo.
More anomalous – and perhaps pertinent given he can seal the deal in the Saturday sprint – is Martin’s sprint race record in Barcelona.
The Spaniard was fourth in this year’s sprint – one of just four of the 19 sprints so far where he’s not finished on the podium – and fifth in the first year of MotoGP’s short-form races a year ago.
Considering Martin has become MotoGP’s sprint king – he has 29 podiums in 38 sprints, by far the best record of any rider on the grid – failing to have a medal placed around his neck in Catalunya is one of the few Saturday boxes he’s left unchecked in the past two seasons.
WHAT OTHER RIDERS COULD BE IN THE MIX?
Martin and Bagnaia have, for a second straight year, turned the title fight into a one-on-one duel; fellow Ducati riders Marc Marquez and Enea Bastianini are separated by just one point in the standings in their battle for third place, but Marquez is 116 points behind Martin’s tally of 485 – more than three events’ worth.
Despite that gap, and because both Marquez and Bastianini are on the dominant class-leading Ducati, they’re likely to play a part in the races at the front in Barcelona, right? Not so fast.
Marquez commented in Malaysia last weekend that Sepang – and Barcelona – are tracks where he’s tended to, relatively speaking, struggle, while Bastianini’s sole points-scoring finish in MotoGP in Catalunya came when he was a rookie in 2020, when he finished 10th.
If not Marquez or Bastianini, who else could impact the title fight? Aprilia and particularly Aleix Espargaro can’t be discounted, particularly as the Spanish veteran will race for the final time in MotoGP before his retirement from full-time racing to become a Honda test rider.
Espargaro – who grew up with younger brother and former MotoGP racer Pol in nearby Granollers, within hearing distance of the track – has typically been superb at his home circuit, and won the sprint race in May after Bagnaia crashed out; a Ducati rider, for context, has won the 13 sprints held since.
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Back in May, Espargaro – who qualified on pole position – and teammate Maverick Vinales combined to take 51 points from the Catalunya weekend, Aprilia’s second-best haul of the season. In 2023, Espargaro headed an Aprilia 1-2 with Vinales riding shotgun; while Aprilia’s competitiveness has tapered off the longer 2024 has gone, a one-off return to the track where Espargaro has had his best career moments for his MotoGP swan song means it’ll be no surprise if he’s in the mix.
Another reason that might be significant: should Martin need any help to secure the crown, Espargaro won’t even need to be asked.
The 35-year-old is like an older brother to the 26-year-old Martin – Espargaro helped Martin as he rose through the ranks – and was instrumental in paving the way for Martin to join Aprilia next season after Ducati elected to sign Marquez, not Martin, in place of the out-of-contract Bastianini for 2025.
Bagnaia and Espargaro got into an on-track spat that flared up off it after the Sunday warm-up session for the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island last month; in his final race and with his trademark emotional state ratcheted up higher than usual, Espargaro might well be a wildcard with the finale shifting to a circuit that’s, quite literally, in his backyard.
WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL SIX MONTHS MAKE?
This is perhaps the biggest unknown of the entire weekend, and one where racing in this part of Spain with winter looming large could be problematic.
Ever since it first hosted the world championship in the mid-1990s, Catalunya has typically been held in late May or early June, the earliest days of a Spanish summer.
Even Valencia, much further south, can throw up temperatures that can be sketchily cold for MotoGP machinery in November; earliest indications suggest that Barcelona’s air temperatures could be 8-10 degrees lower than the event held back in May, which – combined with the circuit’s clockwise nature that sees bikes at high speed on the right-hand side of the tyres for long periods – could make several parts of the track perilous, particularly given its low-grip nature even in ideal conditions.
Turns 2 and 5, particularly the latter – where Bagnaia crashed out of the sprint this year – could be accident hotspots as left-handers in cold temperatures and with cool tyres.
The other factor to consider in any final round, and particularly this year’s, is the rider market madness that came rapidly to the boil in June, and has simmered since.
The final round of any season always serves as a goodbye to riders retiring, like Espargaro and Nakagami, riders who’ve been squeezed off the grid for the following year, or riders finishing up with their current employers before turning up two days later for the end-of-season test at the same circuit in a different garage.
Last year’s finale and post-season test at Valencia was relatively stable – six riders moved up, sideways or out – but this year, 12 riders on the 22-strong grid will be elsewhere come Tuesday and that last test of 2024, Australia’s Jack Miller among them.
Win or lose, it’s Martin’s final race weekend for Ducati, while three other riders in the top five in the standings (Marquez, Bastianini and Pedro Acosta) will be in new leathers, on new bikes or both just two days after the celebratory champagne has dried in Catalunya.
On a weekend where Bagnaia likely needs some chaos to change the championship picture, they’re variables that can only help the world champion retain his crown. It’s a long shot, but it’s better than no shot at all.
