Finally, hope for Honda? Five talking points from Emilia Romagna MotoGP

Enea Bastianini’s second win of the season came under controversial circumstances at the 2024 MotoGP Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The Ducati rider kept himself in title contention with his first victory since the British GP, securing it was an aggressive overtake on long-time Emilia Romagna GP leader Jorge Martin on the final lap.

Opinion has been split on the matter, with the stewards electing to take no action at all.

Bastianini is now 59 points off the championship lead, as Martin extended his to 24 over Francesco Bagnaia after the poleman crashed out of a bizarre grand prix for him.

It gifted Marc Marquez a podium, which keeps him in the sphere of the title battle, while there were some standout rides from the likes of Fabio Quartararo and the factory Honda duo.

Ducati also celebrated its 100th grand prix win courtesy of Bastianini, while it also wrapped up the constructors’ championship for 2024.

Here are five things we learned from the 2024 Emilia Romagna GP. We will not be talking about the last lap incident in detail in this piece. For that, you can read our analysis here:

Bastianini title bid still a question mark

Whatever you think of Bastianini’s overtake on Martin, what can’t be denied is how daring it was with so much on the line if it didn’t work out.

A crash there and then may well have been the end of Bastianini’s title hopes, while it would have thrown away rapidly decreasing opportunities to add more grand prix wins to his career tally as the season enters its final phase.

Instead, it worked out and Bastianini keeps himself in the hunt at a still reasonably large deficit of 59 points to Martin.

All weekend Bastianini looked like playing second best to Bagnaia and Martin, as they held a clear advantage in pace. But hard work overnight, with Bastianini noting that he was in his garage at 10pm on Saturday poring over data, transformed his weekend and from the off in the grand prix he was a factory in the victory battle.

Since the summer break, Bastianini has scored more points than everyone bar Martin. So the Italian has had that consistency. Emilia Romagna proved that he is capable again of getting in amongst MotoGP’s top two right now.

But his Silverstone win didn’t instantly lead to subsequent wins. And consistently breaching the top step of the podium has been something of a weakness for Bastianini in MotoGP. Therefore, ruling him as a genuine title threat remains difficult at this stage.

Bagnaia mistakes becoming more costly

With five rounds left, Francesco Bagnaia is up to to seven DNFs for the season after suffering a crash late on in the Emilia Romagna GP.

Bagnaia’s race on Sunday got of to a terrible start as problems with his Michelin rubber saw him drop well off the lead battle. Having been fastest in practice, taken pole with a new lap record and then capitalised on an error for Martin in the sprint to win, the championship gap was down to just four points ahead of the Emilia Romagna GP.

That gap was going to grow again no matter what in Sunday’s race, even when Bagnaia’s pace came back to him from mid distance. But the damage done to his points situation is far worse than it could have been, with his deficit now 24 points.

Martin has finished second in four of the last five grands prix. It’s offset the damage he did to himself with his strategic error in the San Marino GP. And it’s the kind of the approach Bagnaia must adopt.

Even more frustratingly is the fact that, had Bagnaia eased off his charge towards the front, he may well have still found himself in second with Martin being shoved off track by Bastianini’s last lap move.

The pair would have then been equal on points heading to Indonesia…

Marquez bluffing over title dream

The Emilia Romagna GP was something of a bump back down to Earth for Marc Marquez as he couldn’t get into contention for a third grand prix victory in a row.

Another Q2 crash didn’t help his cause as it left him seventh on the grid, but he admitted his target with the pace he had on his Gresini-run GP23 was fourth and no amount of pushing would have changed this.

Bagnaia’s crash was a “present” in that it promoted him to third and means he is still 60 points behind Martin in he championship battle.

He says he expects the coming flyaway races to continue showing the gap between the GP23 and GP24, and he needs a little extra to be a genuine title contender. But a comment about accepting fourth suggests he isn’t ruling out the possibility of title number nine in 2024.

“I knew that taking a lot of risk would be fourth place, maybe four seconds behind the leader.,” he said. “Taking less risk would be fourth place, eight seconds behind the leader. So, in the end, it’s the same and it’s what we did.”

The coming flyaway races offer a number of opportunities for Marquez to challenge for wins again, with lower grip conditions, unpredictable weather and layouts of certain tracks playing into his hands.

Finally, hope for Honda and Yamaha

Fabio Quartararo showed his class as a world champion again at the Emilia Romagna GP, as he put his Yamaha into Q2 and came away with seventh in the sprint.

He was on course to get a first top six of the season before his bike ran out of fuel on the last lap and he ended up seventh instead.

It was a kick in the teeth for the 2021 world champion, but Yamaha’s continued evolution is genuinely bearing fruit. He raced again with the new chassis introduced at the San Marino GP and had a new engine to use, though the bike still lacked grip in qualifying and had no power to overtake.

Further down the order, Honda celebrated its best result of the season. After both Joan Mir and Luca Marini were forced to miss the San Marino GP due to illness, the bounced back to finish 11th and 12th in the grand prix.

Eleventh was Mir’s and Honda’s best result of the year, while 12th was Marini’s.

While there is still a long way to go for both marques, it’s a welcome boost heading to the flyaways. And based on what we saw at several of the overseas races last year, circumstances could well play into Honda and Yamaha’s hands as they look to build on the momentum of Misano.

Big changes coming at KTM?

The Emilia Romagna GP was a bit of a mixed bag for the KTM stable. Both Pedro Acosta and Brad Binder qualified inside the top five, and finished in the top six in the sprint.

And while both had good speed in the grand prix, with another brace of top five results possible, they both suffered separate crashes. Meanwhile, vibration issues thwarted Jack Miller and Augusto Fernandez in the grand prix, with both 16th and 18th at the chequered flag.

Clearly the test at Misano a few weeks ago following the San Marino GP offered a boost for KTM, with its new aero kit debuting on a race weekend for the first time at the Emilia Romagna GP.

But it was off-track where the most intrigue was. A report from GPOne said that Francesco Guidotti would be stepping down from his role as KTM’s team manager next year, with 31-time grand prix winner Dani Pedrosa taking his place.

When Crash.net reached out to KTM for comment, the Austrian manufacturer denied the rumours.

But the reports follow on from KTM confirming earlier this year that it had parted way with engineer Fabiano Sterlacchini, whom it poached from Ducati midway through 2021, and who is now set to join Honda.

With KTM having not taken the steps forward it had hoped in recent years and it going without a dry grand prix win since Barcelona 2021 and a Sunday victory of any kind since 2022, clearly it feels an internal restructure is needed to advance the project.