MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Before the introduction of sprint races, going into the final round of MotoGP the fans usually know exactly what a rider had to do to clinch the title. Sprint races have added an extra layer of complexity to those calculations, as there are points on offer on Saturday as well as Sunday. The mathematics involved is a good deal more complicated.

So Jorge Martin's lead of 24 points over Pecco Bagnaia is healthy, and gives him the chance to wrap the title up in Saturday's sprint race. That lead is healthy enough that even if he doesn't get the job done on Sunday, he is still in a very good position to clinch the title on Sunday.

But the various scenarios are quite complicated. Made even more so that in the case of a tie on points, Bagnaia becomes champion, as he has more Sunday GP wins than Martin (currently 10 to Martin's 3). So Bagnaia has to score enough points to draw level with Martin, while Martin has to outscore Bagnaia by at least 1 point to be champion.

Below is an attempt to set out the various options for both Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia to become 2024 MotoGP champion.

Jorge Martin to win the championship on Saturday

For Jorge Martin to win the 2024 MotoGP crown in Saturday's sprint race, he has to finish the day at least 26 points ahead of Pecco Bagnaia. That means he has to gain at least 2 points on Bagnaia.

The quickest way to do that is to win the sprint race. That would extend Martin's lead to 27 points, and leave Bagnaia unable to respond. If he finishes in 2nd, but ahead of Bagnaia, that would also be sufficient.

If Martin finishes between 3rd and 8th, then Bagnaia has to finish at least two places behind him, from 5th to 10th or worse respectively.

Pecco Bagnaia to win the championship on Saturday

Pecco Bagnaia cannot win the championship on Saturday. The most he could gain is 12 points if Martin had a DNF, which would leave him with a deficit of 12 points.

Jorge Martin to win the championship on Sunday

With 37 points on offer all weekend, Jorge Martin is sure of the championship regardless of what happens on Saturday, if he can score a total of 14 points. A 3rd place or better on Sunday would be enough to clinch the title, even if Bagnaia won both the sprint and GP races.

A 3rd place on Sunday would give Martin 16 points and bring his total to 501 points. The maximum total Bagnaia can reach by winning both races would be 498 points. This fact alone is what makes Jorge Martin such a strong favorite for the title.

But 14 points would be enough for the Pramac Ducati rider. Here's all the possible ways he could do that.

What this means is that what Martin needs to win the championship is, for example, to finish 2nd on Saturday and 11th or better on Sunday. Or 3rd on Saturday and 9th on Sunday. All the way down to no-scoring on Saturday and finishing 3rd on Sunday.

Pecco Bagnaia to win the championship on Sunday

Trailing by 24 points means that Pecco Bagnaia is going to need a lot of help if he is to defend his title for a third time in a row. Working out what Pecco Bagnaia needs to depends a lot on what Jorge Martin does. We will know a lot more about this after the sprint race on Saturday, and can see the final total Bagnaia has to aim for.

Bagnaia's best chance of winning is to win both the sprint race and the GP. From then he has to hope for help from outside, as he will need other riders to get in between him and Martin if he is to open the gap, or else for Martin to make a mistake.

The best way to show what Bagnaia needs to do to win the championship is to show what he needs Martin to do if he wins both races. Which is basically the same as the table above, but with 1 point subtracted.

The calculations here are the same as above. If Pecco Bagnaia wins both races, then he needs Martin to finish 12th or lower on Sunday if he finishes 2nd on Saturday. Or 10th or worse on Sunday if he's 2nd on Saturday, etc.

Unlikely, but not impossible

It is clear from the above that the odds are heavily stacked against Pecco Bagnaia. A lot of things have to go his way for him to come out on top. Can we calculate the odds of that happening? Maybe, although each MotoGP weekend is an independent event, and the correlation between them all is not as close as riders, teams, and factories would want.

First, let's look at the weekends where Pecco Bagnaia has been perfect, by which we mean winning both the sprint race on Saturday and the GP on Sunday.

Bagnaia has won both races on four occasions so far this season, at Mugello, Assen, Austria, and Motegi. Four doubles from 19 events gives him a double rate of 21.1%, or a little over a 1-in-5 chance.

So how many rounds has Jorge Martin scored 13 points or less at? The numbers here are a little more in Martin's favor, the Pramac Ducati rider having scored that low at just three rounds.

The oddity here is that the rounds where Martin had done badly always started off well on Saturday. The Pramac rider won the sprint races at Jerez, the Sachsenring, and Misano 1, but crashed out in Spain and Germany, and then gambled on a bike swap in the rain at Misano 1, only to exit the pits on wets to find that the rain had stopped. He still managed to scrape a single point, though, which could end up helping his cause.

Martin's record of failure is less positive for Bagnaia. The Pramac rider has scored 13 points or less at 15.8%, or a bit less than 1-in-6. If you were playing Russian Roulette, these are the odds of losing.

Of course, it is not what Martin or Bagnaia does that matters, but rather the difference in their scores. And here things look bleak Bagnaia. Though he outscores Martin on 10 occasions, meaning Martin beat him on 9 occasions, there isn't a single race where the Ducati Lenovo rider outscores his rival by 24 points or more.

Bagnaia's best result is at Mugello, where he scores a perfect 37 points winning on both Saturday and Sunday. Martin, on the other hand, crashed out on Saturday and finished 3rd on Sunday, racking up 16 points, giving Bagnaia a weekend advantage of 21 points. If that were to be replicated this weekend, Bagnaia would fall just 3 points short of defending his title.

The championship has changed hands on the last weekend of the season only twice since the beginning of the century. Once in 2006, and once in 2015, both times to Valentino Rossi. In 2015, after the madness of Sepang and starting from the back of the grid, Rossi arrived in Valencia 7 points ahead of Jorge Lorenzo, only to lose the title by 5.

And in 2006, he came to Valencia leading Nicky Hayden by 8 points after the American had been taken out at Estoril by his rookie Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa. Rossi crashed out, rejoined, and crossed the line in 13th, while Hayden finished 3rd, and took the title.

Nicky Hayden was the embodiment of the idea that you never give up until all hope has faded. It is fitting that he should have the last word here. For as Pecco Bagnaia heads into Barcelona aware that he has a mountain to climb, and Jorge Martin goes know that he has to keep a cool head and not make any mistakes, the title is still undecided.

As Hayden told me at Indianapolis back in 2009, when he finished on the podium after a difficult qualifying: "That's why we line up on Sunday. You never know what's going to happen."

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