Now I really think I’m living in some kind of fantasy land. I can do no better than quote from a story in crash.net, regarding how close Marc Marquez was to losing third place in Sunday’s Main race to Enea Bastiannini on the last lap; Marc Marquez finished third in the Main race but, post-race, it was revealed that he was just 0.036 seconds away from losing that podium to Enea Bastianini.
The story in crash.net says this “The Gresini rider Marc Marquez fended off Ducati’s Bastianini in the second half of the race and kept him just out of striking distance to the chequered flag. The gap between the pair at the finish was 0.536s, but Marquez was actually just 0.036s away from having to give the position to Bastianini.
“Marquez just exceeded track limits at Turn 4 on the final lap while heading Bastianini in their battle for third. On final laps, if a rider exceeds track limits by running onto green-painted areas they are ordered to drop a position if they have not been able to show a clear disadvantage for going off track. This applies when a place is being closely contested. But the guidelines for this also stipulate that the drop of a position will only happen if the rider who has exceeded track limits is 0.5s or under ahead of the competitor behind them.”
This is an excerpt and you can read the whole article here: www.crash.net
But my point is this; what the actual ****? It’s almost like, ‘It’s a rule until it’s not a rule.’ But what are the rules and how is even the most ardent and knowledgeable student of MotoGP ever going to understand all the labyrinthine rules, if they only appear when an incident dictates? As far as we knew, Marquez ran wide which means a penalty, right? Apparently not.
It feels as if they’re making the rules up as they go along. Of course, they’re not; they’ve all been written before the event, and every eventuality is taken into account when drafting them, but the way they handle these situations gives lie to that assumption. In any case, who can conceivably foresee every possible permutation? But it’s this lack of clarity that’s making a mockery of MotoGP at the moment.
Then there’s the lack of consistency. When Jack Miller skittled out three other riders when he crashed a week ago in Indonesia, it was deemed a racing incident. When Alex Marquez did the same to Joan Mir this weekend, he was given a long-lap penalty for Australia. What was the difference between the two incidents, yet one has no consequence and the other gains a penalty?
Neither the Sprint nor the Main races were vintage MotoGP, with even Marc Marquez calling Sunday’s race “boring”, albeit a tactical race, as he fought hard to keep Bastiannini behind him and retain the final podium position, just as Bagnaia and Martin were clearly playing a tyre-preservation game at the front. If we were hoping for a proper, tooth-and-nail fight for the lead, we were to be disappointed, Martin only getting to within a few tenths of a second – and frequently a lot more – of Bagnaia. Exciting it was not.
The main talking point of the weekend was, of course, Pedro Acosta’s pole position and then his crashes in both races, which took him out of first and second places in the Sprint and Main races respectively. Detractors will like to point to his rookie status for the mistakes but that’s nonsense. He’s a double world champion, in Moto3 and Moto2, used to leading and winning races (and championships), and he’s shown this year that he can handle a MotoGP bike with the best of them. And, let’s face it, he’s not the only one to crash out of the lead of a race in 2024. No, it was simply miscalculation and mistakes on his part that caused the crashes, not lack of experience.
It’s easy to forget that Acosta is a rookie, such was his brilliant introduction to the MotoGP class at the beginning of this season; podiums in his second and third races speak for themselves. More importantly, there have also been 22 crashes, the most of any rider on the grid, and these will inevitably have dented his confidence, but this is natural as he finds the limits and the overall trend has been up, in terms of speed. While his two crashes while running at the sharp end of the Motegi race will have been devastating, at least he knows why he crashed and that is half the battle. At least he escaped injury-free and lives to fight another day.
Let’s not forget that there was another shooting-star rider in the 2000s who crashed a lot in his rookie season, overriding his satellite Honda trying to keep up with the dominant Yamahas and factory Hondas, before going on to win the championship on the Ducati. His name? Casey Stoner.
Acosta’s crashes took the pressure off Bagnaia, who was able to win both races, although Martin was able to limit the damage by at least finishing both races, in fourth and second. That means he keeps his lead in the championship, with four races to go.
You have to feel for Brad Binder, who really seems to be getting the thin end of KTM reliability at the moment. In Indonesia, it was a problem with the rear brake that prevented him from setting a good qualifying time, effectively ruining his race before it started.
In Japan, it was electronic gremlins that caused him to retire from the Sprint race after a few laps, which must have been galling after qualifying fifth and running third. In the Main race, he also ran third for a while, before eventually finishing sixth, a good 18 seconds behind the final podium position. That the current GP16 can run at the front was shown by Acosta and, indeed, Binder’s practice performance in Japan, but neither Binder nor Miller seem to be able to run consistently at the front of races and I don’t think it’s simply because the Ducatis are too strong although, of course, they are just that.
Now KTM has brought Aki Ajo into the team manager role, replacing Francesco Guidotti which could either destabilise the team or re-energise it. Only time will tell which one it will be. Of course, Acosta will be Binder’s teammate in 2025 and, if he starts showing Binder the way, beating him consistently and perhaps winning races on the same bike that neither Binder nor Miller have been able to win on, then Binder will have questions to answer. Of course, it could be that Acosta pushes the bike’s development in the right direction and Binder might well benefit from that.
One team that has completely dropped off the radar is Aprilia. Yes, Maverick Viñales qualified an impressive third but dropped to 11th in the Sprint and 10th in the Main race at the start and never featured from the point on, while Aleix Espargaro was completely anonymous in both races. What has happened to Aprilia? The performance has dropped off a cliff and, while both current Aprilia riders won’t really care, as they will both leave the team at the end of the season, Jorge Martin must be casting nervous glances in that direction, for that is where he is headed in 2025.
Yamaha continues to shoot themselves in the foot. Fabio Quartararo had a miserable race with a rear tyre that felt like it was a used tyre right from the beginning, so little grip he had. What was even worse, however, was that for the second time in three races, he ran out of fuel at the last corner and had to coast over the line, losing positions in the process. If we didn’t know better, it would be tempting to think that the team was being run by complete rookies.
The most worrying thing for MotoGP in general, however, is that the racing is largely pretty boring and has been for a good few races this season, with riders unable to follow closely due to aerodynamic wash from the bikes in front, and ride-height devices giving all the top runners no advantage on acceleration out of corners. Braking distances have already been slashed with carbon brakes and now the aero is playing havoc with that as well.
Michelin has a new front tyre coming but it won’t be ready until 2026. The new aero and ride-height rules – and the new engine-size rules – come in for 2027. Does that mean we’re going to have to put up with sub-par racing for at least another season?
In the meantime, it’s Philip Island, Australia, next and the circuit has been re-surfaced so it’s a bit of an unknown quantity as far as tyre performance and wear is concerned. But it’s such a spectacular circuit that it really deserves to be a good race. Whether we get that is another matter.
