MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

And then there were two. With both Marc Márquez and Enea Bastianini finishing outside the top ten Sunday's Grand Prix of Thailand at Buriram, and Pecco Bagnaia storming to a superb win ahead of Jorge Martin, the 2024 MotoGP championship became a mathematical impossibility for Márquez and Bastianini. The title will be decided between Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia.

Sunday's race was a textbook example of exactly why Martin and Bagnaia are left. In extraordinarily difficult conditions, Pecco Bagnaia rode a near-perfect race to take victory, while Jorge Martin got his excess of enthusiasm under control after a couple of tricky moments and did exactly what he needed to if he is to win this championship: finish second behind Pecco Bagnaia.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that during the months it is warm enough to race at Motegi, there is a very good chance of absolutely torrential rain (see last year, when the GP was red flagged after just 12 laps), and during the months it is dry it is too cold to race. The paradox of a racetrack on an island situated next to a vast ocean. (See also: Phillip Island.)

MotoGP has known torrential rain at Motegi back when it was run during the northern hemisphere spring, and now it is run in October. So rain is likely to fall at some point this weekend, though the forecast at this point in time is for it to fall mostly on Saturday. Whether that is just overnight, or during the sprint race we will see when the time comes.

Rain isn't the only issue at Motegi. Situated up in the hills between the coastal town of Mito and the central valley containing Utsunomiya, fog can be an issue too. When conditions are just right (or just wrong, depending on your point of view), the fog can linger over the circuit, preventing the medevac helicopters from flying, as well as the TV helicopters responsible for the overhead shots.

If there is a lesson from Sunday's MotoGP race at Mandalika, it is not to get too excited about the apparent swings in the championship. Jorge Martin entered the weekend leading Pecco Bagnaia by 24 points. The Pramac Ducati rider crashed in the sprint race, which Bagnaia won, which meant the Italian halved Martin's advantage.

On Sunday, Martin led lights to flag, his hopes of victory only ever faltering when Pedro Acosta got close, and from a brief moment of self doubt. Problems at the start and then having to wait for the rear tire to come in meant that Pecco Bagnaia had to be patient for his podium, but it came at the end.

After two days of commotion, Jorge Martin leaves with an advantage over Bagnaia of 21 points, having lost just 3 points from what seemed like major swings back and forth. And if Enea Bastianini hadn't crashed out while chasing down Pedro Acosta, Martin would have lost nothing at all.

The return to Misano has been a return to the current Natural Order in MotoGP. Despite a damp start in the morning, by the afternoon, the timesheet gave a very clear picture of the lie of the land. I will let Marc Márquez explain.

"We know that always in the Covid times, the second GP [at the same track] was always super tight. And in fact everything is very tight, everything is fast, everybody is fast," the Gresini Ducati rider told us.

But that closeness belied the fact that there are two riders who are a cut above the rest at the moment. "It's true that when it's better grip conditions, the pattern of this year is it looks like Martin and Bagnaia do a step, and in fact today, they were much faster than us."

A cut above

The timesheets bear this out. On Friday afternoon, Pecco Bagnaia did a lap of 1'30.902 on a set of medium tires which had 14 laps on them, just over half race distance. Jorge Martin did a 1'30.844 on a set with 12 laps on them.

Nobody else got close. Marc Márquez did a 1'31.3. Enea Bastianini a 1'31.4. Maverick Viñales did a pair of 1'31.6s, and Pedro Acosta matched that on a used soft rear. Bagnaia and Martin have four tenths on the rest of the field, and will be battling for victory at the head of the field. There will be a larger group behind fighting over the last place on the podium, most likely with Marc Márquez at their head.

"The feeling of the first five laps was super strange," That's how Marc Márquez characterized the transition from a track with zero grip at Aragon to Misano's high grip surface. "Coming from Aragon here everything was stiffer, the bike, the tires, and especially a narrow track with hard acceleration. But at the same time, the reaction of the bike was much more aggressive, and it was pumping more. So it looks like you have the grip, but then you have to control it."

It took the riders a little while to get their heads around the completely different conditions they had come from five days ago, but they were up to speed soon enough. And the choices made on Friday morning told you a lot about their expectations. In FP1, everyone, and I do mean everyone, spent the entire session on the soft front/medium rear tire combination. Because everyone is saving their medium fronts for qualifying and the race, and most were saving soft rears for the same purpose.

Once upon a time, pretty much every race at the Red Bull Ring ended in a thrilling last lap, last corner battle. Two or three riders would make it to the final lap and then throw everything into gaining that last bit of advantage coming onto the straight and across the line.

Pecco Bagnaia put an end to that last year, stamping his authority on the Austrian GP. The factory Ducati rider won the sprint race by over 2 seconds, the main race by over 5 seconds. Bagnaia seemed to be able to bend the Red Bull Ring to his will, and leave the rest of the field for dead. It wasn't even close.

On the face of it, the 2024 sprint race looks very much the same. Pecco Bagnaia's advantage this year was even bigger - 4.6 seconds over Jorge Martin. But that is in no way the complete story. Bagnaia is in fantastic shape, and is very hard to even stay with, let alone beat in Austria. But his margin over Martin had much more to do with the Pramac Ducati rider than with Bagnaia himself.

Forced error?