MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Normally on Friday I like to examine the pace the riders have set during the day and try to draw some conclusions (erroneous or not) about who might be in contention for the podium on Saturday and Sunday. That seems like a fool's errand at Barcelona, however.

Jorge Martin was asked if he was worried that there seemed to be quite a lot of riders with similar pace to Pecco Bagnaia and him, unlike at the last race in Sepang. "I think there were so many tires to try, and we didn't see any riders with a lot of laps on the tires, so we will see in the race," the Pramac Ducati rider pointed out.

Pace is difficult to figure out when riders are constantly swapping tires, trying to figure out what will be the best choice for the race. Of the ten riders that made it through to Q2 on Friday afternoon, only half of them put 12 laps (sprint race distance or half GP distance) on a rear tire, where normally it would be all ten. Marco Bezzecchi, Aleix Espargaro, Johann Zarco, Maverick Viñales and Alex Márquez stuck with the same tire to do sprint race distance, the rest didn't.

The tension which has been building up around the possibility of racing at Valencia after the devastating storms there defused after the MotoGP Safety Commission, the body in which the riders talk to Dorna and the FIM about everything of concern, from track safety to sporting regulations and more. Any journalist with a rider's phone number was messaging them the instant they emerged from meeting.

Which is how we found out that Dorna and the local authorities in the Valencia region had decided to cancel the 2024 Valencia round of MotoGP, set to take place from 15th-17th of November. Half an hour or so later, Dorna issued a formal announcement, stating that the round had been canceled and they were seeking an alternative location for the final event of the season. To the palpable relief of everyone concerned.

Will Phillip Island prove to be the decisive round in the 2024 MotoGP title? That's probably a bit premature, but the momentum definitely swung back again in the Sprint race on Saturday. Helped in no small part by the weather, a wet FP2 making it impossible for the riders to test the soft and medium tires or work on setup. They headed into qualifying and the sprint race pretty much blind.

Phillip Island dries quickly, though. Especially when the wind is as brisk as it was on Saturday, and despite the cold. By the end of FP2, a dry line was starting to appear and some riders switched from soft to medium wet tires. Ten minutes later, at the start of Q1, the majority went out on medium wets for their first run, before joining the four who started out on slicks.

Q1 was fascinating. The lap that took Raul Fernandez to the top of the timesheets was 5 seconds faster than Johann Zarco's best lap at the start of the session. Timing was everything. Being out at the end on a set of slicks you had gotten up to temperature was a ticket to Q2. Raul Fernandez and Enea Bastianini got it right, while Luca Marini just missed, finishing just too early.

At the height of his domination of the 500 grand prix era, when the only question in everyone's minds was who would finish second behind him, Mick Doohan was asked by a journalist if he was worried his stranglehold on the sport was making motorcycle racing boring. "What do you want me to do, slow down?" Doohan retorted.

Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi would have been immeasurably improved if Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin had slowed down. Apart from the first seven or eight minutes, as the grid assumed its natural order, the race was utterly processional. Watching Bagnaia, Martin, Marc Márquez behind them, was like watching Doohan at his peak.

These are riders controlling a MotoGP machine at the highest level imaginable, putting a 300+ horsepower motorcycle in almost exactly the same place for lap after lap. Of the 24 laps of Motegi which Pecco Bagnaia completed, 10 were within one tenth of a second of the lap before, and another 7 were between one and two tenths difference to the previous lap. That is astonishing, metronomic consistency, and a sign of a truly great rider operating almost as close to perfection as is humanly possible.

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.