To finish first, first, you have to finish. One of the most hackneyed phrases in any sport but one that perfectly sums up the 2024 MotoGP season. Francesco Bagnaia won 11 Grand Prix races – 18 races overall, if you count the Sprint victories – but Jorge Martin, the champion, made consistency count; when Bagnaia failed to finish – too many times by crashing out completely (eight times) and not simply finishing down the points – Martin made the most of it and, when Bagnaia did finish ahead, Martin was right there behind him to minimise the damage. Martin also only crashed out four times and scored 16 second-place finishes. That’s consistency.
In any season finale that goes to the wire, there is always a tinge of sadness for the loser that travels alongside the euphoria for the winner. When a contest is so close, no one deserves to lose. In 2024, this was even more so due to the protagonists conducting themselves in what could possibly be the most gentlemanly and sportsmanlike manner ever witnessed in top-flight motorcycle sport, both on- and off-track. They both were almost too nice to lose out in the final reckoning!
Some observers lament the lack of antagonism between protagonists—Rossi and Gibernau, Rossi and Biaggi, Rossi and Lorenzo/Marquez, to name the obvious ones—claiming it makes the battle all the more exciting. But hasn’t this season proven that the exact opposite can be true? That witnessing clean and respectful racing can be just as tense and often brilliant?
Bagnaia did everything expected of him as reigning champion, becoming one of only five riders to have won 11 or more Grands Prix in a season, following Agostini, Doohan, Rossi and Marc Marquez. That’s exalted company. He has been an exemplary champion, preferring to do his talking on the track and not off it. No one would have begrudged him a third title.
But the sport is all the better for having a new first-time champion, one who unequivocally deserves the title. Consistency is never sexy, but it is effective, especially when the rider is as exciting to watch as Martin.
Jorge Martin’s performances this year have been matched only by his own humility and refusal to be dragged into mud-slinging in the face of Ducati’s reticence to promote him to the factory squad for the second year running. Ducati’s loss is Aprilia’s gain. Let’s just hope it’s also Martin’s gain…
What’s just as good as the rider’s title is that Martin has given the Pramac team the distinction of being the first satellite team to win the title in the modern, four-stroke MotoGP era. Just imagine if the team’s jump to Yamaha machinery in 2025 coincides with the latter getting its act together and becoming a force in MotoGP once again. The championship-winning experience Pramac has gained in 2024 is worth more than all the sponsorship dollars and the team could pull off another masterclass if Yamaha can give the team the equipment…!
Bagnaia showed his two consecutive last-gasp championships were no fluke by doing everything he had to do and dominating the final weekend of the 2024 season; pole position, Sprint victory and Main race victory, where too often this season he has fallen short in one or the other. In light of the pressure he was facing, including the mentally devastating possibility of the title slipping out of his grasp, it was his greatest race weekend of the year. He could have done no more and could only rely on Martin making the fatal mistake under pressure.
Martin didn’t make that mistake. Yes, he was helped by having a 24-point buffer leading into the final round, but he also did what was necessary this weekend and didn’t put a foot wrong, even though there was potentially more pressure on him.
Looking at it that way, and considering the achievements of both riders, to choose a loser seems unfair.
Martin is a worthy world champion; let’s make no mistake about that, for all the talk of sportsmanship. He has been devastatingly fast all year, both aggressive and fair in his race tactics. He put behind him the disappointment of last year completely and believed in his own ability. There was also an enhanced vision of what it takes to win the championship and, when he had to, this year he played the percentage game and took the points.
It’s not that he ever held back, it’s just that it never looked like he was doing that. He always looked spectacular and, watching him, you could never be certain that disaster was far away. But somehow, he got away with it more often than not. He always looked fast.
That’s the difference between Martin and Bagnaia. When Bagnaia crashed, it was a complete surprise because he was always so smooth and unruffled and never looked as if he was going that fast. He is the two-wheeled equivalent of Alain Prost; a mobile computer that doesn’t look as if he’s going very fast until you look at the time sheets or the gap he has built to his competitors. Bagnaia might not get the pulse racing on track as much as Martin, Espargaro or Binder, but there’s an argument that says he’s the most complete racer on the grid, capable of pulling out pivotal performances when he needs to. Of course, he might not have to pull off those performances if he avoided the mistakes…
The superiority of the Ducati GP24 was a huge factor in the title race. Many will criticise the championship because of the number of Ducatis on the grid but is that Ducati’s fault? If you’re given an advantage, you take it and, let’s face it, the advantage would have been nothing if the bike itself hadn’t been up to the challenge. The GP23 and GP24 have been the class of the field for two years and we’re witnessing a new era of MotoGP, just as we had the MV Agusta years, the Suzuki years, the Honda years and the Yamaha years, so let’s appreciate that. In a few years, it will be another manufacturer; it just so happens that this is Ducati’s time and we should enjoy it as such.
A better way of looking at it is to realise what Ducati’s dominance will do to spur Honda, Yamaha, KTM and Aprilia onto greater things. Imagine a grid with five manufacturers with a real chance of a win, not just through luck or a confluence of circumstances and a rider who rolls the dice (Binder, Austria, rain, anyone?).
There’s another measure to the GP24’s dominance; Martin, a rider with a very distinct style, can race toe-to-toe and beat a rider with a completely different style on the same machine. Think about it; eight riders on Ducatis this year and last, all with their own style of riding and all able to win. When did any manufacturer have that level of dominance, with two riders who were more than capable of beating each other? Rossi and Lorenzo on the Yamaha? Agostini and Hailwood on the MV Agusta? There haven’t been too many pairings and now we’re talking about one manufacturer with eight potential winners. That shows just how far Ducati has come.
Or how far the Japanese have sunk! When last was Honda barely mentioned in Grand Prix racing? Between 1968 and the early 1980s, when Honda wasn’t participating in Grand Prix racing at all, that’s when.
In 2024, Honda couldn’t buy a headline in any of the press, unless it was regarding Joan Mir not finishing a race yet again, or the fact that Luca Marini hadn’t scored a single point quite yet.
It’s not that Ducati have moved the goalposts so far beyond Honda’s reach, more that Honda has gone so wrong. In the normal scheme of things, Ducati might be the fastest, but Honda would be able to keep up and challenge to a certain extent.
Something, however, has gone terribly wrong at Honda this year (and last year, and the one before that…) Being slow is one thing, but trying to kill its rider at every opportunity is another, which is exactly what the latest RC213V has consistently tried to do. To suggest that it has taken Honda so long to rid itself and its motorcycle of the influence of Marc Marquez is ridiculous. You don’t forget how to build a racing motorcycle that quickly. Having said that, maybe the team has lacked a rider who has a domineering influence and who has driven development within the team, a role which has either been denied to Mir and Marini, or which they are incapable of assuming.
Much the same can be said of Yamaha, although Fabio Quartararo has produced some unbelievable performances in 2024, even if the final results have lacked the same sparkle. Much has been made of Pramac’s defection to Yamaha; two more bikes on the grid, double the feedback and development potential, which everyone is convinced is the golden ticket for success, given Ducati’s position at the present time.
What that ignores is that Honda, KTM and Aprilia all have four bikes on the grid and it hasn’t done them much good this year, has it?
There’s been a lot of noise about Yamaha’s move to a V4 in place of the inline four-cylinder engine. Only time will tell if the noise is more than the mere gnashing of gear teeth, with no visible improvement in performance. As with Honda, Yamaha has not forgotten how to build an effective racing motorcycle and will do so again.
And then we get to Aprilia and KTM. Unfulfilled promises might be the kindest way of describing their years. Aprilia’s Maverick Viñales scored a remarkable treble in Austin – pole, Sprint and Main victories – but, apart from that, there were only five other podiums for him and one Sprint victory and three other podiums for Aleix Espargaro. Certainly not what we were expecting after 2023.
The honest appraisal for KTM is that without Pedro Acosta and his nine podiums – three in Main races – it would have been a dire season, with Binder scoring only two podiums in the opening race and Jack Miller none at all. Dani Pedrosa scored a remarkable podium in the French Sprint race as a wild card entry but 2024 was a season to forget for the Austrian outfit. About the only positive was Acosta’s performance in his rookie year but it will depend on KTM’s ability to give him the bike he needs in 2025 if his talent is not to be squandered.
And that brings an end to the 2024 season. Whether you think the right rider won the title depends on where your loyalty lies but we should rejoice in the fact that the title race went down to the last corner of the last lap of the last race, even if we were only waiting for a mistake from the champion-elect right up to that moment.
The protagonists will likely be different in 2025; well, one at least – Marc Marquez – while it would be a fool who would rule out Bagnaia and, if Ducati loses two bikes on the grid in 2025, then that still means three up-to-date GP25s and three GP24s. That’s a formidable armoury. Of course, we’ll all wish for Honda, Yamaha, KTM and Aprilia to up their game and close the gap but we might have to wait for that until the new rules come in, in 2027.
2025 starts two days after the final Grand Prix weekend, with a test in Barcelona. Marquez on a Ducati GP25, Martin on an Aprilia, Acosta on a factory KTM. Next year is shaping up nicely already.
