You didn’t need to be an expert in body language to figure out how much victory at the weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix meant to Francesco Bagnaia and his Ducati team.
Bagnaia took the flag and gestured to the crowd, to his fellow riders, to the pit lane in jubilation, having made a 13th-to-first recovery, the biggest in MotoGP in almost two decades.
His garage exploded into the sort of celebration that might have had you believing he’d just won the championship.
Maybe he just had.
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Victory over crashed-out title rival Jorge Martin reversed what had become a seven-point deficit on Saturday night into an 18-point lead.
Obviously that margin alone isn’t nearly enough to break out the trophy engraver with five rounds still to go and with 185 points still up for grabs.
But after more than a month haemorrhaging points to Martin — having watched Martin flip the championship by 73 points after his injury-causing crash in Barcelona — Bagnaia finally stemmed the bleeding.
He did so with a statement ride.
What had begun as a thoroughly ropey weekend ended with a championship-calibre performance.
Early in the season Bagnaia talked about struggling when the Ducati bike was at the absolute limit of its performance. This weekend again he lamented that on the soft tyre in time-attack mode he lacked the confidence to get the best from his machine.
He was dumped out of Q1 in 13th, and his problems knocked on to the sprint, where eighth was the most he could muster.
But history wasn’t destined to repeat 24 hours later. A determined and aggressive ride, surgically picking off rivals one by one, had him perfectly placed to capitalise when Jorge Martin — who was riding at the limit, having stretched open a three-second gap — made an unforced error and crashed out of the race.
The result was effectively a 30-point turnaround on a single afternoon — from Martin growing his points gap by five points to costing himself the full 25 to the triumphant Bagnaia.
Cue those wild celebrations.
Tough Phillip Island conditions expected | 00:45
TONIC FOR AN AILING TITLE CHALLENGE
“It’s a great moment for us,” Bagnaia said. “It’s been absolutely very, very important.
“This victory means many things. It means we were so competitive again — and I was missing it a bit, because every time [since the Barcelona crash] I was a bit struggling.
“To have this performance again was very, very important. To win is always very important.
“In a moment when Jorge was out, the main thing was to take most points available, and we did it.
“After the crash in Barcelona was not an easy period. Winning today is giving us a lot of motivation.”
It’s an interesting insight into Bagnaia’s mindset in the last month. While he missed only the Sunday race in Barcelona, on the first lap of which he crashed and badly hurt his leg, his subsequent performances felt more like battles for survival, to break through the pain barrier and score points rather than resume regular programming.
But his earlier field-beating performances didn’t return once the bruising had cleared. Martin was on a tear, and Bagnaia was struggling to catch up. He talked a lot about braking issues, but the speed was absent even after he said they’d been fixed.
He needed a result like this to prove, to himself as much as anyone, he hadn’t lost it — to prove that he could still go all the way.
“It’s a similar feeling to Malaysia last year,” he said, recalling the ninth-to-first victory in Sepang that put him at an almost unassailable advantage over title rival Fabio Quartararo. “I did the maximum in both cases, so I’m very, very, very happy.
“I know perfectly that Jorge is very fast, but we were deserving this victory. We were needing this victory to have this kind of feeling after Barcelona crash.
“It was not an easy period, but finally to win again for sure is giving to us a lot of motivation.”
‘Wasn’t easy!’: Bagnaia talks big win | 02:59
BUT MARTIN IS UNPERTURBED
All that said, there’s no getting around the fact Bagnaia inherited this victory. His Sunday ride was flawless, but he got lucky to walk away from Indonesia with his championship lead not just intact but enhanced.
Martin lost the title lead as much — perhaps more than — Bagnaia claimed it back.
The Spaniard has been in sizzling form since Bagnaia had his Barcelona crash. Since he finished third that Sunday, he’s collected four sprint wins, two grand prix victories and another two podiums to go with a pair of poles, inflicting almost maximum damage on his rival.
Indonesia was on track to be more of the same. Though he qualified sixth, he was unstoppable on his way to sprint victory, and an absurdly strong start on Sunday had him in the lead at the end of the first lap, from where he built a three-second buffer — before it all suddenly unravelled.
“It was a great race to that point for sure,” he said. “I was a bit wide to turn 10 and I thought it was a bit dirty. I was right, and the next corner I crashed.
“It was a pity because it was the only mistake in the 12 or 13 laps I did.”
But far from the moody man Martin can sometimes be in such situations, he was almost buoyed by the performance despite the non-score.
“I’m happy that I am the fastest,” he said. “Today nobody was even close to my pace.
“I’m happy we have the speed, and hopefully we can demonstrate that at Phillip Island.”
He suggested statistically his podium form was always likely to end at some point rather than propel him to the end of the season.
“It’s racing, it can happen,” he said. “We still have 10 races [with sprints], so it’s still a long way to go.
“If it was the second-last race, maybe I would think it’s a disaster, but there’s still a long way.”
‘This will sting!’: Martin crashes out | 01:24
MOTOGP GETS ITS TITLE SHOWDOWN
Bagnaia is back, but Martin won’t be coaxed back into his bottle. With five rounds to go, MotoGP’s status quo is a neck-and-neck fight between Ducati stablemates for the title.
So much of the story in recent races, including the weekend just gone in Mandalika, is that Bagnaia must be the man to respond. He’s the factory Ducati rider and reigning champion. Back with the title lead, it should be his to lose.
“The pressure is on Pecco,” Martin said after winning the sprint, something he’s insisted several times as he narrowed the points gap. “I will keep the same mentality.”
It’s a position backed up by six-time champion Marc Márquez.
“If I need to bet on somebody, I will bet on Jorge,” he said, per Autosport. “He doesn’t have any pressure. He is on a factory bike but not in the factory team. He’s not defending the title.
“If he wins the championship, it’s amazing. If he finishes second, it will be okay because the normal thing is that Pecco would win.
“Now Pecco is suffering what [it] is [like] defending a title, in that sometimes it’s more difficult to defend a title than to win.”
Bagnaia’s post-race celebration — cupping his ear as if to listen out for those who doubted him — was widely interpreted as being directed at his paddock detractors, Martin and Márquez in particular, who were writing him off as having wilted under the pressure.
“It’s just because many times people speak too much,” he said. “It’s better to wait, see the result and then speak.
“It was not to someone but to people who are always speaking too much before. It’s better to wait until we finish the season before starting to speak. It was for those people.”
Three-time champion Jorge Lorenzo, however, thinks Bagnaia’s return serve risks biting him back.
“These gestures are not good,” he told DAZN. “Don’t anger the beast.
“This isn’t over. Keep your enemy calm, don’t piss him off.”
Marquez crashes out first lap of Sprint! | 00:29
AUSTRALIA WILL SET THE SCENE
MotoGP might be decamping from tropical Lombok to chilly Victoria, but the temperature in the paddock will only rise for the rest of the season.
Five rounds remain. With only a one-week break between Thailand and Malaysia, there will be no running from the pressure of the championship battle.
The new status quo sets up Australia as the first weekend of a shootout contested over five grands prix.
The result at Phillip Island will set the tone.
Martin has been cool and collected since his crash. He will undoubtedly be frustrated, but a dominant weekend — or at least domination over Bagnaia — will do much to bend the title fight back around him. Win races, and the points take care of themselves.
Bagnaia, on the other hand, feels like he finally has some momentum. A double victory Down Under wouldn’t be quite enough to put one hand on the trophy, but it would leave him one more win away from being able to count down the points. A little bit of authority exercised by the reigning champion could go a long way.
But both will be acutely aware that big mistakes will count for as much as big results.
Bagnaia has scored more highly on average for each finish this season compared to Martin, but he’s had more non-finishes too. Four times he’s crashed out of grands prix, plus there was his oddly off-pace performance in the wet sprint at Silverstone.
Martin had two Sunday non-scores in the first three rounds but enjoyed a flawless finishing record until his crash in Indonesia.
That’s worth keeping in mind this weekend given Phillip Island hasn’t been a particularly happy locale for Ducati. It’s been 13 years since a Desmosedici topped the podium — in the hands of Casey Stoner in 2010 — with the fast sweeps tending to bring more bikes into play.
Of course Ducati has taken a big step forward this year and no longer has any real relative weaknesses, but the strengths of other machinery could have Bagnaia and Martin battling more than just each other or their Bologna stablemates this weekend, adding further jeopardy to a crucial race.
That’d be just fine for Bagnaia, who doesn’t need to be battling for maximum points so long as he can keep his rival on a short leash. Martin, however, has little time to waste making inroads on his deficit.
It’s so delicately poised for the run to the finale in Valencia for what could be a title fight for the ages.
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