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.
Martin’s crash in the Indonesian sprint race once again opened up the title fight with Bagnaia
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
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…
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