Who can forget Bastianini slicing past Bagnaia on the last lap to win at Aragon last month? Ducati’s management certainly couldn’t and here began some intense pitlane action that rivalled the on-track action.
Ducati Corse’s three wise men – general manager Gigi Dall’Igna, sporting director Paolo Ciabatti and factory team manager Davide Tardozzi – huddled together on the pit wall, discussing what they should do. Should they demand a Bagnaia win and ask the next door Gresini team to signal its rider to slow down?
No doubt, their hearts would’ve had an easier time if Bagnaia had been battling for the win with, say, Marc Márquez and Álex Rins. At least they could’ve played no part in the race – from lights out to chequered flag they’d have been innocent bystanders, not fully-involved big players.
I half expected a puff of red smoke to appear from atop the factory team’s pitwall Wendy house as they announced their selection of the winner.
Finally the three wise men decided there would be no factory orders – they’d just have to sweat it out and leave it up to the riders, hoping that the worst wouldn’t happen: a tangle of Desmosedicis.
Bagnaia was once again in Jorge Lorenzo mode – glass-smooth and unrattled – even though Bastianini wasn’t for giving up. After all, he’s already fighting to make himself the main man in the factory garage in 2023.
Bastianini was doing everything right. Swerving out of Bagnaia’s draft whenever he could, especially on the brakes, to get out of the lead Ducati’s oven-hot wake and give himself more air-braking.
But for once, the master of tyre life ran out of rear grip. “My traction wasn’t good, especially exiting slow corners and I lost some confidence,” Bastianini added. “I pushed really hard to overtake and I tried on the last lap but it was a little bit dangerous…”
With six corners to go they were side by side, centimetres apart, a bit like the last lap at Misano, where the Gresini rider nearly T-boned Bagnaia in his efforts to win the race.
“The difference between third and fourth in the championship is a considerable amount of money”
That Turn 9 attempt lost him vital metres, so he had no chance for a last-gasp lunge at the final hairpin, allowing Bagnaia to take the chequered flag by a quarter of a second.
Should Bastianini have given the championship leader an easier ride to those extra championship points? No, because he’s a professional motorcycle racer and huge amounts of money rested not only on that race but on the championship outcome.
We don’t know for sure what a win would earn Bastianini from Ducati, Red Bull, Alpinestars, KYT helmets and his personal sponsors, but it’s got to be something like half a million Euros. And a top-three championship finish would at least double that. Bastianini currently lies fourth overall, one point off third, so, like Bagnaia, he needs every point he can get.
“The difference between third and fourth in the championship is quite a considerable amount of money,” said Bagnaia’s team-mate Jack Miller, who came through from 21st to sixth on Sunday and stands fifth on points. “It goes from being zero to something good. Trust me, I got fourth last year and you get f**k all for it.”
If all this sounds a bit cash-obsessed, you need to know that pro racers don’t only race for kicks. They race to buy swanky mansions and rent private jets and also to hire surgeons and osteopaths to tend their buckled and broken bodies into their dotage. And Bastianini also needs to keep his irrepressible manager Carlo Pernat in fun tokens.
“The bonus is a lot of money, eh!” said Pernat. “If Enea had won the race he would be third in the championship, with four points more than Aleix [Espargaró], now he has one point less. If he loses third place, it’s a lot of money.”
Bagnaia goes into the Valencia finale next week surely on the cusp of ending Ducati’s decade and a half of hurt, since Casey Stoner won the 2007 riders title. He holds a 23-point advantage over Quartararo and Aprilia’s Espargaró, who on Sunday had his fourth grim result in a row, finishing tenth.