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Mandalika MotoGP Post-Race Subscriber Notes: Two For The Title, GP23 vs GP24, And The Long Wait For Tire Pressures

By David Emmett |

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.

Yet it does feel like Jorge Martin has taken a firmer grasp on the championship, even though there are still 185 points in play. After his mistake on Saturday, it was important for him to bring home a solid points haul. When you consider that his crash on Saturday made it two races at Mandalika in a row he had crashed out of the lead from. He had a comfortable lead here last year during the GP, before throwing it all away.

That had played through his mind at certain points during the race, to the extent that he slowed down halfway through. "When I was on lap 13, I started to have some ghosts about last season," Martin admitted in the podium press conference. "Then I went through that part of the race and everything was okay." Turn 16, where he crashed on Saturday, also held some ghosts. "Then arriving in the second-to-last corner, corner 16, I was really trying to manage it well, trying to close the line for the straight to don’t make the same mistake as yesterday."

That was the path going forward, he said. "This weekend I was maybe too confident. I felt really strong, so everything became so good that I was too confident and then I did a mistake. So I need to be more alert, let’s say. Let’s see what we can do next time."

A lead of 21 points over five rounds and a total of 185 points doesn't look like a lot. To overcome it, Pecco Bagnaia needs to outscore Jorge Martin by just over 4 points a round. That's the difference between a first on Sunday and a third on Saturday, and a third on Sunday and a first on Saturday.

To put that in perspective, however, in the last five rounds, from the Red Bull Ring to Mandalika, Jorge Martin has outscored Pecco Bagnaia by just 18 points. And surprisingly, given the general perception that Martin is king of the sprints and Bagnaia rules on Sunday, Bagnaia has outscored Martin by 7 points in the sprint races, but Martin has taken 25 points more than Bagnaia in the grand prix races on Sunday.

Number crunching

What do the results from last year say? Tallying up the scores from the same five races in 2023, Martin outscored Bagnaia at Motegi, Bagnaia bested Martin at Phillip Island, Martin had the upper hand at Buriram, Bagnaia just edged Martin at Sepang, and then destroyed him at Valencia to take his second MotoGP crown.

15
2024
MotoGP
Mandalika, Indonesia
Ducati
KTM
Enea Bastianini
Francesco Bagnaia
Franco Morbidelli
Jack Miller
Jorge Martin
Marc Marquez
Marco Bezzecchi
Pedro Acosta
CormacGP
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Comments

If Acosta's tire was below the standards, regardless of the reason, I don't frickin' understand why he wasn't penalzied. I have nothing against him, rode a great race, but once again, the apparent inconsistency of the stewards is making a bad joke of the series. 

They are allowed to replace damaged / missing parts, fluids lost etc due to incidents. They just have to show that everything going back on/in is the same as was lost so that the bike returns to the state in which it began the race. For tyre pressures there's no provision stated but it makes sense and it's up to the technical director. The technical director part of the rules is important. I'm sure if after a bike lost parts/fluids, it performed significantly better, it would get noticed.

Exactly. If they managed that they would top of the list for a design innovation award or something. However losing weight accidentally can work but they're not stupid. It would last one session and then head straight for the 'season over, collect huge fine and lose all your points' door. The technical director part is important because it covers unintended consequences. If you write a set of rules that are too specific, too explicit, you leave more and more holes needing more rules. Ride height devices a good example. Ban ride height adjustment but specify an exact method. Ooops. Technical director could have stepped in and had his final judgement maybe, not sure. Luckily, his authority works both ways. Not just taking but also giving. 

Matt Oxley and Peter Bom in their podcast seemed to think quite differently than David and I tend to agree with what they say. They both think the idea of a rim leaking by such a small tiny perfectly amount to let just the right amount of air out to be ludicrous.  They were making jokes about it being "Lord of the Rims" and "One Rim to Rule Them All" and they should put it on the shelf and use it in key races and if the company could replicate this rim, they could sell it at a very huge premium to other teams.  

To be fair they presumed it was the front which would have struggled more due to braking.The other question is when is a leak a leak ? As long as any air could be seen to come from the rim when examined, it would throw some doubt over the matter. It didn't leak by just the right amount. The pressure was not above the limit for a sufficient number of laps. I guess they looked at his rear pressure at the race start and compared it to Binder, Miller and Fernandez. It looked ok. Miller and Fernandez had no issue, Binder had a faulty sensor. Acosta had a damaged rim which could, possibly, maybe explain his being outside of the limits. We don't know how far away he was from being ok. A small doubt, a small amount outside of limits ?

How much of it just comes down to the much higher quality of riders and bikes? It's not like the old days of CRT bikes and pay riders. The odds of the guy ahead of you being a WC are lower than the odds of him not being one.

I agree that ride height devices have to go and aero needs to be toned down, but I think expectations that getting rid of them will completely fix the spectacle are overblown. Marc himself said it- in MotoGP today you are on the limit all the time, whereas back in the day you were not. That is the real driver and won't disappear with the regulation changes.

A late response to this (triple headers, man...) but I wanted to respond. I think you are absolutely right that the fact the field is closer now is a big factor in passing being more difficult. But talking to riders and teams, they say that aerodynamics and ride-height devices make a huge difference. 

The combination of the two is lethal for passing. If it was just one or the other, things might be different. But the fact the riders are all so much closer also means that anything the rule makers can do to remove the technical obstacles to passing will make a difference. 

"This weekend I was maybe too confident. I felt really strong, so everything became so good that I was too confident and then I did a mistake. So I need to be more alert, let’s say."

Very true Jorge, but also far from the first time you've had to say this! I guess it comes with the territory, you have to take the good and the bad. If this mindset is what allows someone to fight so hard for the championship, then carry on.

MotoGP need to kick this rule to the curb. MotoGP, Michelin and Dorna all need to stand up to the factory teams and just develop tires that are safe. FP1 = riding the new tire. Welcome to the show. The show must go on. Factories want fast guys testing their bikes? Hire faster testers. I doubt the rim had any leak in its structure. That is quite unlikely in such a sophisticated forging and mature design.   More likely a valvestem or TPS mount, if at all.

The real solution is to force the teams/factories to test the tire in practice. Same conditions for all teams. Data from all the riders to Michelin. That is the only solution as suggest by Oxley and others.