MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

For the third race in a row, the Sunday MotoGP grand prix race has had us saying, "this is the moment the championship changed". Pecco Bagnaia left Austria with a lead of 5 points over Jorge Martin. Then he crashed out at Aragon after a collision with Alex Márquez, and Jorge Martin finished second behind Marc Márquez, giving Martin a comfortable-looking 23 point lead.

Was that the moment the momentum in the championship changed? Well, for seven days perhaps, as Jorge Martin entered the pits when rain was falling at the first Misano race, only to exit pit lane onto a dry track with wet tires. Bagnaia came second to (you guessed it) Marc Márquez, and cut the points gap to just 7 points.

Had the momentum changed for good this time, perhaps? You might think that, right until the moment that Bagnaia folded the front at Turn 8 on lap 21. Jorge Martin finished second to Enea Bastianini this time, controversially, and leads by 24 points again.

Momentum swings

I am starting to think that there is no such thing as momentum, that each grand prix is a separate, independent event. And that Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia keep finding new ways to trip themselves up, despite being clearly the two best riders on the grid at the moment.

There are a host of factors at play here: the intense pressure that comes when a championship is being so closely fought. Martin and Bagnaia are on the same bike, fighting with the same tools, and - credit to Ducati - with pretty much the same support (though Jorge Martin will point to the fact that the factory team has an extra tire technician and extra data support). Martin and Bagnaia are pushing one another to extraordinarily high levels, trying to find the smallest advantage over the other. A grab bag of hard and fast rivals, prime among them Marc Márquez and Enea Bastianini. And above all, the fact that as riders, teams, and factories master more and more aspects of MotoGP, the importance of even the smallest detail is magnified out of proportion.

Then there's the stuff that riders just don't have within their own control. At the Emilia-Romagna round, both Martin and Bagnaia could point to outside factors as the source of their woes. Those outside factors proved a bitter pill to swallow for the two championship rivals, but helped make for a fascinating, and in the final few laps, thrilling MotoGP race.

The first topic that needs to be addressed is the way Enea Bastianini snatched victory from Jorge Martin. Martin had disposed of Bastianini's Ducati Lenovo teammate early in the race (much more about that later), and was in control of the first half of the race, though his lead over the factory Ducati rider was continually under a second.

On lap 17, Martin's pace slackened a little - only by a tenth or so, while Bastianini pushed on for his second fastest lap, taking three tenths out of the Pramac Ducati rider and closing the gap to just over four tenths of a second. From there, Bastianini slowly chipped away at Martin's lead, a few hundredths at a time, snapping at the Spaniard's heels ever more menacingly.

It was clear that Bastianini was faster than Martin in the first sector and in the last sector. Martin reigned supreme in the third sector, meaning the gap was too big entering the last sector for Bastianini to launch an attack there. "In sector 3, from the exit of Turn 10, he was the strongest," Bastianini said. "I don't know why, but at the end of the long straight, I was always 0.2, 0.3 behind." So the first sector was Bastianini's only chance. "It was the only opportunity to try to win the race."

Last chance

So Bastianini chose to attack at Turn 4. Martin braked at the limit on the entry to the corner, the rear of his Pramac Ducati fishtailing, and that gave Bastianini a glimpse of daylight. Enough to dive underneath and try to pass. Bastianini got his nose in front of the Pramac Ducati just as Martin started to turn into the corner. The two touched, Martin was forced wide, and Bastianini glanced back and ran all the way out to the edge of the track, and put his wheels outside the kerbs.

Bastianini lost six tenths in the clash, but Martin lost nearly two seconds. It was enough to secure victory or the Italian, ensuring that Ducati's 100th premier class victory went to the factory team, and saving their blushes.

To celebrate that occasion, Ducati sent Michele Pirro up to collect the team trophy. It was well-deserved recognition for the Herculean task Pirro has been charged with over the years. As Ducati's main test rider since 2013, he has helped develop the Desmosedici from a hapless backmarker to the machine that is crushing the life out of its competitors. Pirro is one of the key building blocks of Ducati's success, but his role is often overlooked.

Fair vs legal

Was Bastianini's pass fair? And was it legal? The FIM Stewards report at the end of Sunday makes no mention of even investigating it, meaning Race Direction and the Stewards will have not thought it worthy of reviewing. Unsurprisingly, Bastianini and Martin had very different views of the pass.