How the title could be won this weekend; Aussie Miller’s KTM farewell: MotoGP Insider’s Guide

Two races. Two chances. Two points.

For all the numerical permutations that can decide the MotoGP world championship at the Grand Prix of Barcelona this weekend, two is the magic number for series leader Jorge Martin in his quest to dethrone reigning two-time champion Francesco Bagnaia.

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Riding for Pramac Ducati – his final weekend for the team before he moves to Aprilia for next season – the Spaniard has a 12-lap sprint race on Saturday and a 24-lap Grand Prix on Sunday to score two more points than Bagnaia with 37 to play for at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Do that, and a maiden premier-class crown is guaranteed.

After 19 rounds, and after Bagnaia had a costly eighth non-finish of the year when he crashed out of the sprint race in Malaysia a fortnight ago, Martin’s lead is 24 points ahead of the biggest weekend of his life.

This time last year, the points gap was 21 – but in Bagnaia’s favour. Martin had an outside chance to win it all in the final race in Valencia, but an early-race crash crushed those faint hopes. It’s a failure that has driven him for the best part of 12 months, and to fix it, the 26-year-old has once again wielded his biggest trump card, but with a twist.

Put simply, if Martin wins Saturday’s sprint in Barcelona, the title is his; likewise if he finishes second and Bagnaia is third, or worse.

Road to the title

Jorge Martin will be world champion after Saturday’s sprint race in Barcelona if he finishes …

First, no matter where Bagnaia finishes

Second, and Bagnaia doesn’t win

Third, and Bagnaia doesn’t finish better than fifth

Fourth, and Bagnaia doesn’t finish better than sixth

Fifth, and Bagnaia doesn’t finish better than seventh

Sixth, and Bagnaia doesn’t finish better than eighth

Seventh, and Bagnaia doesn’t finish better than ninth

Eighth, and Bagnaia finishes ninth or lower or fails to finish

While MotoGP would love its season to hinge on a Sunday decider, it would be somewhat fitting if Martin won the title in the short-form races that first came into play in 2023. Nobody has mastered them more, and it hasn’t been close.

Bagnaia’s spill in Sepang paved the way for Martin to win his seventh sprint of the year, and 16th in the 38 held since the new format debuted in Portugal in 2023. Bagnaia has 10 sprint wins in that same period; no other single rider has more than two.

Last year, sprint success kept Martin in the championship hunt in a season where he continually squandered big points hauls in Grands Prix. Fast-forward 12 months, and the Spaniard has cut down the Sunday mistakes while still being Saturday’s standard-bearer.

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It’s a potent mix that has him set for the biggest prize of all before leaving a Ducati factory that passed on him to re-sign Enea Bastianini for this season, and then shunned him again by choosing Marc Marquez to be Bagnaia’s teammate for 2025.

Winning, then waving goodbye, would be the ultimate middle finger to a marque that has won all but one Grand Prix this year and comes to the final round on a 16-race run of victories, but could lose the number 1 reserved for the sport’s champion if Martin wins – then walks.

While there are other subplots to watch this weekend – the final race at KTM for Australia’s Jack Miller as part of a host of riders moving on to pastures new, the one-point margin for third in the standings between Bastianini and the rider who took his 2025 ride, Marquez – it’s Martin vs. Bagnaia that will hog the headlines as MotoGP prepares to wrap 2024 in unfamiliar territory, floods in Valencia forcing the finale to be held 400 kilometres away.

MARTIN: NARROWING FOCUS PUT ME IN THE BOX SEAT

As always at a pre-event press conference with so much at stake, it was what wasn’t said by Martin and Bagnaia on Thursday in Barcelona that was as revealing as what was, Bagnaia’s cool, almost detached body language a stark contrast to Martin’s answers to questions being even shorter than usual as he attempted to maintain a ‘business as usual’ approach to the biggest moment of his racing career.

The Spaniard will be relieved to climb aboard his Ducati GP24 and begin a methodical march to the title from Friday practice, getting the wheels turning on a weekend where he feels the championship won’t be decided in Saturday’s sprint.

“If I can take it on Saturday, I mean, I will take it,” he said.

“But I think this will go to Sunday [the Grand Prix], I accept this. My target is do the same as I do always … try to be competitive from Friday until Sunday. That is my main goal.

“Then, winning or not winning will be the consequence of doing the job well or not.

“But I think that finally I can race without looking at anyone, just at myself.”

PIT TALK PODCAST: In the latest episode of ‘Pit Talk’, Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton preview this weekend’s season finale in Barcelona and look at every angle in the battle for the championship between Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia with MotoGP world feed TV main commentator, Matt Birt.

Martin has carried the lessons learned from his failed title bid in 2023 right through this season, where he’s led the standings after all but three rounds and has barely given Bagnaia a look-in after he reclaimed the championship ascendancy when Bagnaia crashed out in Aragon in September.

“Last season I was always thinking about how I can make history, just focusing on the title,” he said.

“I want to focus on what I can control, that is riding the motorbike at my 100 per cent, performing at my 100 per cent, because I didn’t at the end of last season.

“I think the key was [doing that] all the season. I heard a quote from a fighter who said, ‘I win the championship during training’. For us, I think it means every race you win the title, and in the last round you get the medal.

“For sure now something can happen, but the important thing is the work like we did all season. Now it’s time to understand what we need to take that medal home.”

MARTIN’S PRESSURE TO CONVERT IS REAL, SAYS BAGNAIA

With two previous experiences of final-round title showdowns in 2022 and 2023 – admittedly from positions of advantage in both against Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo two years ago and Martin last November – Bagnaia says the pressure on Martin is real this weekend, and that being the hunter rather than the hunted can help him ride with the freedom Martin can’t.

“I feel much more free right now because I have to go full send,” Bagnaia said.

“Two years ago, honestly I was really scared during the race and I finished eighth, and that was a result that was completely out of my potential so it was strange.

“Last season, I just tried to keep calm, but when I was racing I was a bit more nervous, absolutely. You can’t escape from pressure, and also it’s difficult to live with it.

“My mission will be to win both races, take it to Sunday and then what will happen will happen.

“My mission will be to win – I know Jorge can still finish, I think, sixth in both races to win the title – so it will be difficult. But let’s see, pressure can play a role also.”

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While Bagnaia could play a tactical card by getting to the front and slowing the race pace down on Saturday to bring more rivals into the mix – a tactic memorably executed by Jorge Lorenzo in the 2013 title decider against Marquez in Valencia – the Italian feels the performance gap the title protagonists have over the best of the rest means a more strategic approach may not pay off, even if he’s able to execute it.

When MotoGP raced in Barcelona in May, Bagnaia won the Grand Prix from Martin by 1.7secs, Marquez 10secs adrift in third. When he repelled Martin after a ferocious early fight in Malaysia two weeks ago to defeat the Spaniard by 3.1secs for his 10th Grand Prix win of the year, Ducati’s Enea Bastianini, in third, was 10secs further back and unable to put any pressure on Martin.

“The only thing I will do is if [Martin] will start behind me, I will not push,” Bagnaia said when asked if he would follow Martin in practice to unsettle him, a tactic Martin tried on Bagnaia in last year’s season finale.

“From my side, mind games are not working so I never did it. I think Jorge understood from the experience last year that he just lost time by doing that, so I think it’s better to do your job and prepare perfectly, and then decide it in the race.

“The reality is that if I win the title on Sunday, it’s because I did a very good job but also because he did a mistake on the weekend.”

Bagnaia, who referred to the 2024 title fight as “a championship of mistakes” after Indonesia in September, feels as equally deserving of the title as Martin, but knows his own errors rather than a lack of speed have been his downfall.

“In terms of race results it’s clear that we did a better job, because I won 10 races on Sunday, six races on Saturday,” he said, Martin winning three Grands Prix and seven sprints by comparison.

“So in terms of pure results, we did a very good job … I think both of us are deserving the title. [But] absolutely in terms of mistakes, I did a lot and if you want to be a champion, you have to be more precise, more consistent. Jorge was more consistent than me.”

‘LIKE A MASSIVE HANGOVER’: MILLER REFLECTS ON MALAYSIA MAYHEM

Jack Miller said he was relieved to escape injury-free after his accident on the first lap in Malaysia a fortnight ago, where the Australian was skittled in a frightening pile-up at the second corner at Sepang.

Miller was clipped by Frenchman Fabio Quartararo and fell from his KTM, his head striking the rear tyre of Quartararo’s Yamaha before he came to rest on the inside of the corner into the path of Honda rider Joan Mir, who ran over both of his legs.

The 29-year-old was discharged from the circuit’s medical centre before the red-flagged race was restarted at Sepang, and said in Barcelona on Thursday that he was “counting my lucky stars” that he was able to avoid injury.

“It’s nice to be ready to go racing fit and not nursing any injuries after such a heavy incident,” he said.

“Even a few hours after the crash, the only thing I could compare it to was like waking up on a Monday morning with a massive hangover.

“[I was] really lucky. I’ve seen the images afterwards, my hand in the rear tyre of Fabio’s bike, getting my legs run over … all of the above. But I got out of it pretty good.

“I was out on my bicycle on Tuesday, I went back home to Australia and I was back to being in regular form.

“It was just an unfortunate racing accident … when there’s 22 bikes going in there hell for leather with the championship the way it is and the racing the way it is, a good start can make or break the race for you. It was just one of those racing incidents.”

Miller’s final race weekend of 2024 doubles as his last outing for KTM, drawing a line under a two-year stint with the Austrian manufacturer which started strongly with podiums in Spain early last season but has largely fizzled out this year, a pair of fifth places in Portugal (in March) and Thailand (October) his strongest Grand Prix results in the past 19 rounds.

“A nice podium to go out with KTM would be lovely, but we’ll wait and see,” he said.

“I felt really strong over the weekend in Malaysia, so we’ll go into this race with the same optimism and we’ll try to make a strong weekend. The goal is to try to finish out strong and put some points on the board before signing off here.”

Miller is moving back to Pramac Racing as part of its new association with Yamaha next season – the Australian rode a Ducati for Pramac from 2018-20 – while he was teammates to Bagnaia at the factory Ducati team for 2021-22 before his move to KTM, meaning he’d be happy with either Martin or Bagnaia winning the title, for different reasons.

“Obviously myself moving to Pramac next year, I’d love to see those guys bring it home, and Jorge has been solid as a rock this year,” he said.

“But then also being a massive Pecco [Bagnaia] fan, I’d love to see him do the three-peat, but it’s a stretch for him.

“I’m a bit torn and it’s a shame I’ve got to race in it, because I’d love to watch it.”