Motegi, Japan

After the race weekend at Motegi, a few loose ends remain to be picked up. Though the race was hardly captivating, there were several things worth noting in Japan. So here's a quick rundown.

Champ

We have to start with the 2024 Moto3 champion. David Alonso showed the kind of speed and maturity in winning the race that brought him the title. He kept a calm head, stuck in the front group, and worked his way forward when it counted. There was never any real doubt he would win the race once he hit the front.

There is good reason to believe that Alonso is special. Winning 10 races in a season is impressive. Doing it in the space of 16 races even more so. Joan Mir and Fausto Gresini managed the same number of races in a Moto3 or 125cc season. Mir took 17 races to get to 10 wins in 2017, the year he won the Moto3 title. Gresini won 10 races in a row to win the 1987 title, though it was actually 11 in a row, counting the last race of 1986.

Read more about Motegi MotoGP Race Notes, Part 2: A New Champion, A Slower GP23, And Yamaha's Electronics
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A crash in qualifying turned Motegi into something of a headache for Jorge Martin. But he still left Japan with a lead of 10 points over Pecco Bagnaia.

Read more about Cormac Shoots Motegi: Making Magic From Motegi Monotony
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Chinese motorcycle manufacturer QJMOTOR, title sponsor for the Gresini Moto2 team, has demanded that Manu Gonzalez, winner of Sunday's shortened Moto2 race at Motegi, be immediately sacked by the team. In a statement on the Chinese section of its website, the motorcycle manufacturer objected to Gonzalez wearing a hachimaki, a traditional Japanese headband, on the grid before the start of the Moto2 race. QJMOTOR referred to the choice to wear the headband as having "hurt the national feelings of Chinese rider and the Chinese people".

Read more about Gresini's Moto2 Sponsor QJMOTOR Calls For Motegi Winner Manu Gonzalez To Be Sacked
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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.