MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

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.

"It looks like this season is a championship of mistakes," Pecco Bagnaia said after the sprint race at Mandalika. "My idea is that it's arrived from the performance of the tires. The rear tires did an enormous step in front, but we are braking so hard because the rear is also helping a lot in the braking, but the front has more issues. Because we are entering much, much faster in all the corners. So the performance that Michelin improved this season is incredible. All the season, all the circuits we improved a lot the pace. But when you are at this limit is easy also to have a crash."

Marc Márquez was open to that idea as well. "Mistakes, because they are super fast and then everybody is riding on the limit. I feel fast but even like this they are faster. So when you are riding on the limit, every lap from the first to the last … I remember just five years ago the races were quite different. It was like, pushing some laps. Now you are pushing all the laps. And yeah, everybody can be super fast, but easier to do mistakes."