Mat Oxley: MotoGP stars taking a beating as crashes rise 50%

Each winter, MotoGP publishes its annual falls report, a bulging document that includes each and every crash suffered by riders across all three classes – MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 – over the season’s 20 grands prix.

The championship started recording this data in 1997 with the idea of improving safety, both primary (circuit design) and secondary (riding gear). Huge improvements have been made, with unintended consequences.

In 1997 there were 493 crashes over 15 GPs and three categories (then 500cc, 250cc and 125cc), an average of 33 per event. During the last three seasons the yearly average was 993 tumbles, an average of 50 per event. That’s an increase of 50%.

How is that even possible? Well, there are several factors at play…

Circuits are safer and riding gear is better, so riders are happier to push the limit, knowing that if they do go flying, they’ll hopefully walk away with nothing worse than a few bruises and muscle strains.

And they do need to push the limit more, because MotoGP’s technical regulations have been rewritten numerous times in recent years to make the racing closer, with the aim of attracting more fans and, therefore, increasing championship income. This is, of course, great for MotoGP’s financial health, but less so for the riders, who must take ever more risks to make the difference.

This is especially true in pre-qualifying and qualifying, when the first three rows of the grid – nine riders – can be covered by less than half a second. Last season there were 144 MotoGP-class crashes in these sessions, against 80 crashes in actual MotoGP races.

“Qualifying is about going over the limit,” says Paul Trevathan, crew chief to KTM’s rising star Pedro Acosta. “Many riders tell you that a qualifying lap is like losing one of their lives. It’s a little bit, you know… But the guys have to hang it out there, because the advantage of starting on the first two rows is ridiculous.”

“Pretty much every rider on a GP grid is in pain from new or old injuries”

Rookie Acosta was MotoGP’s biggest crasher of 2024, hitting the ground 29 times, including a 160mph get-off at Austria’s Red Bull Ring, from which he walked away. Hopefully the young Spaniard corresponds with the old racing adage that says you can make a fast rider stop crashing but you can’t make a slow rider fast.

There were various reasons why Acosta fell so many times, mostly because he was a rookie and because his KTM RC16 wasn’t as good as the dominant Ducatis, so he took lots of risks to stay with them. Sometimes it worked – the 20-year-old scored five podiums during his apprenticeship season, four more than KTM’s other three riders put together.

Second and third in the MotoGP falls league were the Márquez brothers – Marc and Álex – on 24 and 21 crashes. Both rode Ducati’s year-old Desmosedici GP23, which wasn’t as quick as the GP24 ridden by title fighters Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia, who crashed 15 and nine times each.

It’s no surprise that riders doing the most winning crash less; not only because they wouldn’t be winning if they were crashing, but also because if you’re fast you’re usually comfortable with the bike, so you’re not so much on the ragged edge.

But it’s not the number of crashes that’s so important – unless you’re paying for machinery damage. What really matters is injuries, and worse.

In the 1960s and ’70s there were often three or four deaths per season. Four-times world champion Jim Redman used to say that it wasn’t the crash that killed you, it was the sudden stop, against the walls and buildings that surrounded the street circuits of the time.

MotoGP’s last fatality was Jason Dupasquier, who lost his life following a crash during qualifying for the 2021 Italian Moto3 round. The Swiss teenager’s death completed a bad decade, following the loss of Luis Salom (2016, Moto2), Marco Simoncelli (2011, MotoGP) and Shoya Tomizawa (2010, Moto2). Three of this four died in the same way – they were hit by machines that were following, a high price to pay for crowd-pleasing close racing.

Last season there were no life-threatening accidents in any of the classes. The nastiest fall was Jake Dixon’s highside during practice for the Qatar Moto2 race, which put him in hospital for several days with a bruised lung. Otherwise it was the usual list of minor (ish) broken bones: four hands, two arms, two wrists, two feet, two ankles, a shoulder, a finger, a rib and various minor concussions. (MotoGP’s concussion protocol is notoriously lax.)

What these numbers don’t record is the beatings that riders take whenever they fall, even when they don’t break any bones. Thus pretty much every rider on a GP grid is in some kind of pain, from new or old injuries.

There are two ways to crash a race bike: the low-side (when you simply run out of grip and slide off) and the high-side (when your machine loses, then regains grip, firing the rider into the air). Most low-sides are relatively painless, so long as you hit nothing and nothing hits you. However, high-sides hurt A LOT. How to describe a high-side? Imagine climbing onto the roof of a car and jumping off at 80mph. That should give you an idea.