Why it’s time to embrace MotoGP’s friendly 2022 title battle

Not since the 2017 season has a MotoGP title battle gone down to the wire. In a thrilling year, Andrea Dovizioso pluckily kept his and Ducati’s outside hopes alive against Marc Marquez through to the final round in Valencia. Ultimately Marquez prevailed, and through 2018 and 2019 the Honda rider dominated.

The COVID-delayed 2020 season remained close for much of its shortened 14-round calendar. But repeated errors from Fabio Quartararo and consistency from Suzuki’s Joan Mir meant the latter won with a round to spare. And last year, Quartararo wrapped up his maiden championship with two races left to run.

Now we have three riders – Quartararo, Francesco Bagnaia and Aleix Espargaro – split by just 17 points ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix. With just five races to go, there’s been no suggestions yet that this won’t be kept alive through to the curtain-closer in Valencia on 6 November.

World championship motorcycle racing is enjoying a strong year in 2022. Three completely different challengers on three difference motorcycles are duking it out for supremacy in both MotoGP and World Superbikes.

While arguably Superbikes has enjoyed the more explosive on-track battling, and thus its title chase has become much more heated (right now Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista believes Kawasaki’s six-time world champion Jonathan Rea deserved to be disqualified for intentionally crashing into him at Magny-Cours), MotoGP has been the furthest thing from boring – no matter what some people like to believe.

But what’s going on in WSBK has led to talks about how the sporting drama in that title battle is detracting from the MotoGP championship race.

Maybe. Much of MotoGP’s popularity over the last two decades was built around its intense rivalries – largely centring on who Valentino Rossi didn’t like, or vice versa. Rossi vs Lorenzo vs Stoner vs Pedrosa vs Marquez was a golden era that produced some absolutely sensational battles.

And there is an argument to be made that two people who dislike each other and are driven by an ego-motivated desire to prove they are the better rider leads to great racing on track. But it also leaves the door open for hostility.

MotoGP’s epic 2015 season was soiled by the fallout for the Sepang clash between Marc Marquez and Rossi. The back-of-the-grid penalty this…