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Barcelona Solidarity MotoGP Saturday Subscriber Notes: Bearing Up Under Pressure

By David Emmett |

Saturday saw a fitting penultimate chapter to the 2024 MotoGP season. Pecco Bagnaia knew he had to win both the sprint race and the Sunday GP, and he also knew that he was comfortably the fastest at Barcelona. So he deployed a brilliant qualifying strategy, in an attempt to elicit some help. Normally, when he leaves the pits during Q2, he is irritated when he finds he has a retinue in tow. On Saturday, he was pretty much offering his rear wheel to anyone who wanted it.

Marc Márquez knew that Bagnaia had to be fast, and was looking for the Ducati Lenovo rider's tail. On his second run, he latched onto Bagnaia, with Franco Morbidelli slotting in behind him, and the three of them took the provisional front row of the grid.

But Bagnaia also ran into the limits which will almost certainly see him come up short in the title fight on Sunday. Marc Márquez' time was good enough for the front row, but he was demoted to third by Aleix Espargaro. And Jorge Martin slipped ahead of Morbidelli to qualify fourth for the sprint race.

Pecco Bagnaia's biggest problem this weekend is just how superior he and Jorge Martin have been to the rest of the field. Of the 39 sprint and GP races held so far, Jorge Martin has been on the podium 31 times, Pecco Bagnaia 25 times. Bagnaia has won 10 GPs and 7 sprint races, Martin 3 GPs and 7 sprint races. Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin are the two best riders in the world at the moment. And they are so much better than the rest, there are not enough people that can help Bagnaia by getting in their way.

And when they are fast enough - like Aleix Espargaro was in the sprint race - they manage to mess up in other ways. The factory Aprilia rider qualified second but got a terrible start, the RS-GP wheelying off the line in third and fourth gears as they headed down to Turn 1. That saw him drop down to about ninth place as the pack entered the first corner, leaving Espargaro with a lot of work to do.

"I was very frustrated," Espargaro said. "But after that, I started to push and I was a little bit even shocked to see my pace, even laps in 1'39 low. I think if you remove the first lap, I was the fastest. I had the pace to fight with Pecco for the victory, but this is racing." He wasn't quite the fastest. Aleix Espargaro was 1.808 seconds slower than Pecco Bagnaia on the first lap. He finished 1.857 seconds behind the Ducati Lenovo rider. In fourth place, behind his friend and protégé Jorge Martin.

Pecco Bagnaia rode a brilliant race, taking the lead from the start and controlling the gap to Enea Bastianini and Jorge Martin behind him. He looks relaxed and comfortable, and above all, blisteringly fast. He is a better rider than he was last year - he has already exceeded his points total from 2023, and has scored 66.2% of the points on offer, an improvement over the 64.1% of least year.

But Bagnaia has come up against a rider who is more consistent, and is on course to win the title because of it. Jorge Martin's points efficiency is 68.8%, which puts him well ahead of Marc Márquez in 2016 and 2017.

Where did it go wrong for Bagnaia? "I think we also had bad luck because four times of these eight were not my failure. So this is something that can happen, but four times is a lot," Bagnaia said after winning the sprint race. "And the other times I think Silverstone is the more clear, is the only time I crashed this season pushing much more and this is a pure mistake. The all the others were a mix of combination. If I check on the data, all the other three mistakes have been the same, entering slower, without forcing that much the tire and losing the front."

20
2024
MotoGP
Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
Ducati
Francesco Bagnaia
Jorge Martin
CormacGP
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Comments

Observatios:

  1. The pattern on Pecco's helmet looks like it was lifted from Aron Canet's neck
  2. After missing all the fly-aways after Emilia Romagna, Pecco's professional "brolly girl" (hate that term) was back on the grid
  3. Marc might knock somebody down (hopefully not Pecco or Jorge)

Predictions:

  1. Jorge Martin might crash (like he did at Valencia last year) and Franky Bags (thanks Dean Adams) wins the title
  2. Jorge Martin will be the 2024 champion
  3. I will be skipping morning warmup because it's already bad enough getting at 3:00 AM for Moto3
  4. Regardless of who wins, I'll probably cry puppy dog tears that the season is over. It seems to be a tradition?

I think Martin has the right approach. He has to push, can't ride for an 8th or 9th. There's a photo above which covers 2nd place in the race to (if repeated tomorrow) 2nd place in the championship. 

So, if I understand Pecco, of the eight DNF he played no part in four and of the remaining four only one was a real mistake. The other three were just riding the bike in a manner which causes it to drop the front. He knows that because he sees it in the data but it's not a mistake. He was not making the same mistake, often not making the same mistake, in 2022 and 2023. The new rear might make the situation worse or an old solution defunct but same same. As soon as he decided to take it 'easy' he would lose the less loaded front. 

2022 -> 5 DNF and no sprint races. 
2023 -> 6 DNF not including his DNS which was a direct result of his Barcelona sprint DNF so could call it 7.

2024 -> a totally on form 8...but only one real mistake. So no problems, just unlucky. 

Judging by his number of wins, pace wise he's the stand out rider of the year by a big margin. Yet here we are. 

“Judging by his number of wins, pace wise he's the stand out rider of the year by a big margin. Yet here we are.”

Yeah, it’s a funny ol’ game: I think most of us carry the impression that Martin has the edge in raw pace? But the stats completely belie that impression. Pecco just secured the sweet BMW M5 for top qualifier over the season, he cleaned up in GP wins and I think fastest laps, and yesterday equalled Martin for Sprint wins.

It makes my eye twitch to see such dominance not translate into a championship….but Martin will be deserving champion. (twitch…blink…twitch…)

Pecco’s crash in the last sprint just touching a white line/bump differently shows how close they are to disaster on every corner of every lap.

Morbidelli has potential to cause havoc, as do a good few others. Basta fighting for his bonus could create some interest. The need to keep load on those tyres and get some points presents Martin with options fraught with hazard. A morning for cold showers by the sounds……

Everybody hits that bump but they keep the front loaded. Pecco eased off the brake, unloaded the front some and off he goes...but...apparently not a real mistake. Post race you can hear snippets of riders saying you cannot do that there, or it's slower to try to correct running wide there and faster to just run wide. The gist being, keep the front loaded up. Not a real mistake though.

Seems Acosta wasn’t too happy with the MM93 contact. Saying he rode that corner as if it was a normal lap instead of the first one.

Seems to me from the onboard Pedro was going in a bit too tight, at least tighter than the other riders, leaving him on a trajectory going wider and wider as the continued going through the turn trying to maintain speed.

MM started the turn on a specific position compared to the inside and kept that line.

And that basically led to Acosta hitting MM as his ‘widening’ line put him on a crossing with MM’s line.

In his post race comment, he claims Marc closed the line and hit him, but the footage shows quite the opposite. A typical case of a rider unable to put blame on himself?