Bagnaia isn’t wrong. This year’s average winning pace is more than half a second faster than last season’s, an unheard-of year-on-year improvement. Saturday’s Sepang sprint was nine-tenths per lap faster than last year’s! Winner Martin attributed this “100%” to Michelin’s new-for-2024 compounds, but the title duellists are the only riders that can use these tyres to the maximum.
Michelin’s latest tyres are super-sticky but they’re also super-tricky – this is quite normal when rubber technicians increase grip so dramatically. One reason Bagnaia, especially, has crashed out of so many races is because usually when you have a lot more grip the limit becomes narrower, so when you reach that limit the grip doesn’t disappear so gradually. And when lean angles are way past 60 degrees it becomes more and more difficult to save a crash. Aero downforce only exacerbates this issue.
Bagnaia has won ten GPs to Martin’s three, but he’s also crashed out of seven races to Martin’s three. That’s the championship difference, right there.
Martin leads Saturday’s sprint from Bagnaia, soon to crash right here at Turn 9
Michelin
Bagnaia’s stunning wet-weather Thai GP victory the previous weekend had put him 17 points behind Martin, with four races to go, so he was still very much in the hunt.
His Sepang sprint tumble at the dead-slow Turn 9 hairpin wasn’t the decisive moment of the championship, because it was only one of his seven tumbles, but with only three races remaining he was now 29 points down and that was almost certainly too high a mountain to climb.
The latest crash, while chasing leader Martin, was a strange one. Turn 9 has been resurfaced multiple times, most recently with a small patch of asphalt near the apex.
“At first I was a bit too aggressive at Turn 9, so the front was moving too much,” explained Bagnaia. “The lap after I said, ‘I’ll enter more calmly’, and I crashed. It’s something that can happen. I wasn’t taking risks over the limits, but I crashed.”
Of course, some might say, why didn’t Bagnaia miss the bump? But that’s a bit like Eddie Lawson’s comment after Freddie Spencer hit a straw bale on the inside of the corner (imagine that!) at Rijeka, Yugoslavia, during their duel for the 1984 MotoGP title. Spencer ripped ligaments in his leg when he clipped the bale at around 100mph. After the race the always laconic Lawson opined, “There was always the option of missing the bale”.
In Sunday’s GP Martin came very, very close to crashing at Turn 9, on lap 16 of 19. At three-quarters distance he had reduced Bagnaia’s advantage from 2.2 seconds to 1.5. And, perhaps madly, he smelt victory and started pushing harder again.
“When Marc crashed I relaxed too much – okay second is enough. Then I saw I’d closed the gap to Pecco. I saw him struggling and going wide. Then at Corner 9 I had a moment and that was enough. It was too risky for me to keep attacking.”
Martin says the biggest thing he’s learned this year is to be calmer and more focused. However, he has also admitted that relaxing can be his worst enemy.
Martin’s sprint victory – and Bagnaia’s crash — was a key moment
Pramac
“When I breathe, when I try to relax, I become more nervous and everything becomes more difficult,” he said after Saturday’s sprint. “Today I was nervous in the morning, so I said to Gino [Borsoi, Pramac Ducati team manager] that I will go for it. It’s the only way – if I am 100% focused I give my best.”
This makes perfect sense: just focus on one thing – going absolutely as fast as you can. As soon as you start thinking about other things – the points situations, what your rivals might do and so on, you are multitasking, which means you’re not concentrating on the most important thing of all – wringing the neck of your 300-horsepower, 225mph MotoGP bike.
Bagnaia’s Sepang sprint disaster was the story of his season. Four of his crashes – Jerez, Catalunya, Silverstone and Sepang – have happened in sprints. Meanwhile Martin has won seven of the short races to Bagnaia’s six.
“We have to understand what to do better in the sprints,” said Bagnaia. “Because every time I’m missing something in the sprints. I can’t attack like I do in the long races. We will try to understand and improve for next year.”
What could be the problem? Some people say Bagnaia needs Saturday’s data to do better on Sunday, but this is nonsense, because all riders use their sprint data to elevate their performance in the GP. Sprints are basically FP4 sessions with points and better data, because it’s race data, not race-simulation data.
All the manufacturers use different fuel tanks for sprints – no point putting 12 litres of fuel in a 22-litre tank. So the different tanks and different fuel loads change the motorcycle’s centre of mass, which is a vital part of the machine’s dynamics. Most likely Bagnaia and his engineers will spend a lot of time during off-season tests using sprint tanks and fuel loads, because he’s basically lost this year’s championship due to below-par sprint performances.
Acosta raced KTM’s fender aero for the first time – it reduces front locking and tucking
Oxley
His Sunday victory was his tenth GP win of 2024 and only five other racers in three quarters of a century of world-championship racing have won ten or more premier-class GPs in a season: Giacomo Agostini, Mick Doohan, Márquez, Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner. Not a bad gang of which to be a member.
Of course, Bagnaia could have played plenty of games with Martin on Sunday. He could have slowed down the pace, bringing Márquez into the battle and maybe even Bastianini. This is considered normal racecraft, but it’s not his style.
“I’m a clean guy, a true sportsman, I don’t like that kind of thing,” he said.
