It was worth the wait, after all.
Over six minutes, 45 corners and three laps of the Malaysian Grand Prix, Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin showed why, for the best part of two years, MotoGP has been a battle between the champion Italian and challenging Spaniard, the rest of the riders cast as supporting actors in a 330km/h high-speed drama.
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Head-to-head fights on track, though, have been few. Martin’s unerring consistency in the face of Bagnaia’s class-leading pace – and the reigning champ’s head-scratching propensity to squander it with crashes – meant Martin went into Sunday’s Grand Prix at Sepang with a 29-point championship lead and no need to push his luck with just 62 points available for the remainder of the season.
An 88,000-strong crowd trackside and a worldwide TV audience were glad he did.
For three barely believable laps after Martin had followed pole-sitter Bagnaia into the first corner, the Pramac Ducati rider threw everything at his factory Ducati counterpart.
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On lap one, the lead changed hands four times. The next lap, Bagnaia saw Martin dive by three times, and immediately reclaimed the lead. On lap three – after the pair came within millimetres of touching on the start-finish straight, throttles ripped wide open, Bagnaia answered on another three occasions when Martin barged his way past.
Given what was at stake – a ninth non-finish for the year for Bagnaia would have ended his title hopes given he’d crashed out of the 10-lap sprint race a day earlier – it was utterly breathtaking. Once Bagnaia broke Martin’s resistance on lap four, set the fastest lap of the race on lap five and eventually scampered away to a three-second win, the pair came across one another on the cool-down lap back to the pits.
Martin offered a hand of congratulations to his conqueror, followed by a gesture that indicated how on the limit their fight was.
Afterwards, when Bagnaia contemplated his 10th Grand Prix win in 19 starts this year and Martin’s disappointment was assuaged by having a 24-point series lead in his pocket with one round left, the duo tried to put their fight into words.
It wasn’t easy.
“It was a great race, I enjoyed it,” Martin beamed.
“Thanks to Pecco [Bagnaia], because even if we were so aggressive, both of us, there’s always this respect. We don’t want to race to destroy the other’s race … we want to win, both of us. So it’s a nice show for the fans.”
Bagnaia agreed.
“I think we give to the people at home and also here [in Malaysia] a good show,” he said.
“Jorge was super aggressive but we had a very clean battle, we never touch, and I was just waiting for the moment to attack on the pace and knowing my pace was good enough to open the gap.
“The performance we are showing is something incredible … we are doing something speechless.”
On a weekend where Bagnaia and Martin smashed the Sepang circuit lap record in qualifying and were nine-tenths of a second faster than the best of the rest before Sunday’s showstopper, incredible was right.
But for Bagnaia, a new level – he won the 2022 and 2023 titles with eight Grand Prix wins, and could make it 11 before 2024 is out – may not be enough because of a profligacy in sprint races that has hampered him all year, and may have hurt him for good in Malaysia. Take sprints out of the equation, and Bagnaia’s series lead would be 24 points … the same 24 points he trails Martin by after this season’s penultimate round where the early stages of the main race will stay long in the memory.
‘WE ARE IN ANOTHER LEVEL’: BAGNAIA LAMENTS LACK OF RIVALS
Much of the TV coverage and post-race chatter after Sepang focused on the two title contenders, as it should.
Enea Bastianini, Bagnaia’s factory Ducati teammate, was over 10 seconds adrift at the chequered flag, and finished third. The rider who’ll replace Bastianini as Bagnaia’s teammate next season, Marc Marquez, finished 12th after tumbling from third place on lap seven and remounting, and sits 116 points – more than three entire weekend’s worth – in third behind Martin and Bagnaia in the standings.
It’s that absence of a rider fast enough to get between Bagnaia and Martin on the days where Bagnaia has the ascendancy, like Sunday, that was one of Bagnaia’s few laments afterwards.
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“As soon as I did it [take the lead for good], I was just hoping and dreaming to see Enea or Marc gaining on Jorge and overtaking him to take [away] some points, but again today we are showing why we are doing a different job,” he said, before expanding on his early-race brawl with Martin.
“He was very strong in corner five, but I was very strong in all the entrances to the corners so to overtake me and attack me, he needed to go over the limit.
“I saw twice he was losing the front [tyre] and [the fight] was very on the limit, but I was always very good on braking and the last corner I was attacking at the maximum.”
Afterwards, Bagnaia was asked if he’d considered slowing the pace at the front to allow other riders to come into play and upset Martin’s rhythm, but he gave the line of questioning short-shrift.
“I’m not this type of guy,” he said.
“I wanted just to enjoy the race [and] I enjoyed it. In any case, if I was [to slow the pace] I would not be happy because it’s something that is out of my mind. I think it’s not fair, we have to win it in a fair way.”
Given Martin’s remarkable consistency – Sunday’s second place was the Spaniard’s 16th second this season among 30 podiums from 38 starts – Bagnaia knows that he has a chance with one round to go, but feels his quest to win a hat-trick of titles is a long shot.
“We still have a chance, we really need some help by others because in case of a win, [Martin] will finish second because we are in another level,” he said.
“We have to understand what to do better because we are missing something every time on the sprint race, I can’t attack like I’m doing in the long race so we will try to understand it and improve it for next year.”
LATE SCARE SAW MARTIN SETTLE
With Bagnaia facing a must-win race on Sunday, Martin played a significant strategy card by being just one of three of the 22 riders to opt for the more durable Michelin medium front tyre in the searing Sepang heat, track temperatures soaring over 50 degrees for the 3pm local start time.
Martin felt a different tyre strategy to Bagnaia was worth it given he had the numerical high ground, and trimmed the gap to the Italian back to 1.4secs with five laps to go before a scary moment at turn nine – the same corner where Bagnaia crashed out of the sprint 24 hours earlier – saw him call off the fight.
“Maybe I had to be a bit more calm, but I felt like I was able to fight with him so I tried it,” Martin said.
“But at some point I thought ‘OK, it’s too many risks, so wait behind’. The problem was that as soon as I went behind him, everything starts to work quite bad and I have Marc [Marquez] behind, so I had to push. When Marc crashed it was a big relief for me … I was trying to continue to focus with a good pace and at some point I tried to recover to Pecco, but I did a mistake in corner nine and I say ‘Jorge, that’s enough’.”
Martin – who never led the title chase after a single round last year despite his battle with Bagnaia going all the way to the season finale in Valencia – has topped the standings after 16 of 19 events this year, and feels his rival has helped him raise his game.
“Thanks to Pecco … because of his level, I am improving my level every day, every day we are stronger and stronger,” he said.
“We never had this kind of battle in our careers, for sure we were always close but 11 overtakings in three laps … I felt I was strong to do that.
“In terms of riding style, I think we were so, so close. It was no difference at all, it was more on the mental side and I think he had everything to win.”
MILLER’S MIRACULOUS ESCAPE
The gloves-off Bagnaia versus Martin brawl came after the original 20-lap race was red-flagged after one lap following a scary accident for Australia’s Jack Miller, who miraculously escaped unscathed after being hit by Fabio Quartararo in the second corner and falling headfirst into the rear tyre of the Frenchman’s Yamaha.
Miller, KTM teammate Brad Binder and Quartararo ended up on the ground as the field scattered to avoid the three stricken riders and their crashed bikes, the accident kicking off when Alex Marquez was nudged slightly wide by Bastianini at the first corner.
Marquez clipped Binder’s bike, which shed some bodywork, and as the South African checked up he hit Quartararo, who in turn hit Miller and forced the Australian onto the kerb where he fell, his helmet clattering into Quartararo’s bike.
While Binder and Quartararo were able to hobble away, Miller lay on the track surrounded by medical staff and was taken to the circuit’s medical centre by ambulance; remarkably, before the field took to the grid for the restart 20 minutes later, Miller was able to walk back to the KTM pit box accompanied by wife Ruby without serious injury.
Walking with a limp, Quartararo was able to return to the pits to take his second bike for the restart – “I was flying, and after that I don’t really remember what happened,” he said of the crash after finishing a superb sixth – while Binder attempted to race but pulled out after the warm-up lap with shoulder pain.
Neither rider was in any shape to debrief their brief races afterwards, leaving KTM team manager Francesco Guidotti to speak to the press.
“Luckily no-one injured, everything is fine,” Guidotti said.
“Jack went to the medical centre for checks but he is fine, no pain anywhere. It was very bad to see, but luckily no injury. Brad tried to start for the second start, but the pain in the left shoulder didn’t allow him to go, it wasn’t safe for himself and for the others.
“From the images we have, it’s not really clear. It looks like Brad was inside [of turn one] and he touched someone in front, and then he had to pick up the bike and hit Fabio, and Fabio hit Jack. It was like a domino [effect]. I think it’s a race incident, nothing to be penalised. We have to be happy that both of them are fine.”
Miller’s first-lap DNF was a dampener on a weekend where he qualified seventh – his second-best performance of the season and as the fastest of the four KTM entries – and take two world championship points for finishing eighth in Saturday’s sprint.
BARCELONA TO HOST FINALE
The Martin/Bagnaia title decider will take place in Barcelona from November 15-17, with confirmation that the series will visit the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for a second time this season set to come in the next 48 hours after the cancellation of the Valencia Grand Prix on Friday.
Valencia was hit with flooding on Wednesday last week after more than a year’s worth of rain – 400mm – fell in just eight hours, with more than 200 people losing their lives and untold property damage as a result of the once-in-a-century deluge.
While the Circuit Ricardo Tormo – MotoGP’s traditional end-of-season venue – escaped damage, the infrastructure around the circuit was badly affected, while the ethical dilemma of attempting to race in a region devastated by a natural disaster left many riders uncomfortable, Bagnaia saying on Friday that he would not be willing to race in Valencia if the Grand Prix went ahead.
Jerez in Spain, Portimao in Portugal and Lusail in Qatar were mooted as potential replacements before the chief sporting officer of MotoGP’s promoter Dorna, Carlos Ezpeleta, confirmed that Barcelona will host the final event of the year on Sunday in Malaysia.
“We thought it was important to tell the riders before they went out on track yesterday [for the sprint race], especially those in contention for positions, to confirm that there would be another event on the calendar,” he said.
“It’s very challenging to organise an event in two weeks, but during the last 48 hours we’ve looked at all possible alternatives and we think that Barcelona is the best possible place given the proximity to Valencia, given that a lot of people were already travelling through to get to the finale, and especially for fans – we think it’s the best possible place for them. We also know we will be able to help the Community of Valencia from that location as well.
“We’ve requested the Government of Catalunya to be able to hold the event there. They want to communicate and align themselves with both the Government of Spain and that of Valencia before confirming the event, and we hope that confirmation comes in the next 48 hours.”
Barcelona hosted round six of the season in May this year, with Bagnaia winning the full-distance Grand Prix after crashing from the lead of the sprint race on the final lap, the half-distance race won by Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro.
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