Has the 2024 MotoGP title battle actually become a one-horse race?

Let’s get the miserable part of this feature over with first. This really isn’t a title battle for the ages. In a 2024 season where the leading two riders - Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia - are a cut above the rest, both have done a fine job at throwing away big points whenever one has taken a bit of momentum with them.

Coming into the Indonesian Grand Prix, Bagnaia sat on seven DNFs. He then proceeded to have a pretty weak weekend overall. Sprint win aside, from Friday there was never a suggestion he would factor in the victory battle and that proved to be the case.

But with Bagnaia off the pace and reeling from his Emilia Romagna GP DNF, Martin’s opportunity to inflict maximum damage was scuppered by an unnecessary tumble in the sprint race while leading. At the point Martin fell, he was already four tenths clear of the pack and the predictions of him running away with it seemed like they were coming to pass.

He still can’t explain the fall at Turn 16, insisting that there was something up with the asphalt where he fell. A lack of grip in that corner had been reported all weekend, so Martin’s assumptions were probably correct. He fell there in FP2, but also managed to take pole with a new lap record in qualifying without any dramas.

But Bagnaia behind him saw that he was very aggressive going into the corner, so certainly there is a strong case to say Martin simply went over the limits with a fuel load heavier than he’d had in qualifying and tyres not up to temperature. There is also the element of the grippier 2024 rear tyres pushing the front lending a hand in his spill.

Regardless, Martin came away from a sprint he should have won with no points and gifted Bagnaia a win which cut his championship lead to 12 points.

That left him with “ghosts on my mind” during a grand prix he led from pole from start to finish, particularly at Turn 16 and Turn 11, where he crashed out of a commanding lead in 2023. But there was an intelligent approach from the Pramac rider to showed genuine mental resilience as he moves closer to his ultimate goal.

“After 13 laps I had some ghosts on my mind in corner 11, and then every lap in corner 16,” he said. “I was trying to be really careful. We had a lot of wind from the side in that part. I was struggling to turn, it was like if I was riding a scooter. I know I was losing a lot in that part to Acosta, but I was thinking ‘Ok, if I lose here I push in other parts’. So, I think I was really careful understanding the situation at the start of the race and then trying to push a bit more every lap.”

The Pedro Acosta threat was very real for Martin. As late as lap 17 of 27 the Tech3 GASGAS rookie was 0.6s behind him. Average pace wise, though, Martin was doing just enough to ensure the threat never amounted to anything serious. Lapping at an average speed of 1m31.058s versus 1m31.168s for Acosta made the difference, while posting a 1m30.774s on lap 24 was a real statement of speed on used rubber.

While the end result shows Acosta 1.4s from Martin at the chequered flag, the gap was actually as large as 2.4s on lap 25 and the reduction in advantage was merely Martin backing off on the last lap to ensure a first grand prix win since the French GP.

Chief title rival Bagnaia, as predicted from Friday form when he struggled to get pace out of the medium rear race tyre option, really wasn’t in the same contest as Martin. While Bagnaia’s speed was good, a botched start - something he is calling on Ducati to fix - meant he got stuck in the fourth-place he qualified. It took about six laps for his medium rear tyre to come up to temperature, but the damage inflicted here was significant. At this phase, Bagnaia was 0.550s slower than Martin at the head of the pack.

When the tyre came up to temperature, Bagnaia found a best lap of 1m30.542s - compared to Martin’s 1m30.729s - and was in the 1m30.7s as late as lap 24 like Martin was. But those early laps made the difference, and Bagnaia has a theory as to why.

“For me, it’s because when you are in front with no one in front you can compensate with the lack of rear grip with the braking, gaining a lot there,” he explained about his sluggish early laps. “And if you are behind, you can’t brake hard, you can’t push like you want and the rear tyre is maybe not ready. Maybe it’s something with the GP24 that is more like this when you are behind. But after five, six laps I was back on my pace, I was quite strong. But I missed the first five laps.”

The gap between the pair now stands at 21 points. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a lot with five rounds to go. But Bagnaia hasn’t headed the standings since the Austrian GP, coincidentally the last time he won a grand prix. Though the gap has shrunk at points between the pair since, Bagnaia has never looked like the one in control.

Certainly, seven DNFs for the year so far compared to four non-scores for Martin backs that up a bit. When looking at the points over the last eight rounds, Martin is on 195 and Bagnaia 192. It’s close, but Martin’s overall consistency is steadying the ship and Indonesia seemed like a big step for the Pramac rider - even with his needless sprint tumble.

Could Bastianini have changed the race?

The one question mark hanging over the Indonesian GP revolves around Enea Bastianini. The Ducati rider was equal with Martin on race pace after Friday practice, and both looked like they would be the favourites for victory.

Having finished second in the sprint, Bastianini was clearly the better of the two factory team Ducati riders in the grand prix. But he too suffered the same early-race struggles that Bagnaia did. His start was much better as he went from fifth to second, before being shuffled down to fifth again come lap six.

His pace on the warming medium rear in the first six laps was better than Bagnaia’s, but Bastianini was still around 0.460s shy of Martin’s average pace at this point. Once he really got going, Bastianini’s speed was stunning.

He managed nine 1m30s laps in total (Martin did eight) between laps 9 and 14, and again from laps 18 to 20. On lap 20 he set the fastest tour of the race at 1m30.539s, while his average pace was at around 1m31.182s - though this was over a tenth down on what Martin was doing as he controlled the race from the front.

With eight laps to go, the gap to Martin was 2.5s, with Acosta 1.5s ahead of Bastianini in second. What hampered Bastianini’s charge was his battle with Pramac’s Franco Morbidelli for third a few tours earlier. The move was attempted at Turn 2 on lap 16, but failed, before it was successfully completed the next time around. But on lap 16 Bastianini lost 0.7s compared to the previous tour, while that loss was 0.440s when he did pass Morbidelli.

In clean air on lap 18 he was immediately eight tenths quicker. How much this played into him pushing harder into Turn 1 than he had done previously on lap 21 when he crashed isn’t certain, but the time loss overtaking Morbidelli was extreme enough to put him further away from the leaders than he might have been otherwise at that stage of the race.

Realistically, Bastianini’s pace was enough to get to Acosta - whose average was 1m31.168s - and probably pass the KTM rider. At the point he crashed, Bastianini was 0.433s a lap quicker than Acosta with seven to go.

But getting to and passing Acosta quick enough to then challenge Martin was a bridge just a little bit too far. Still, a podium of any kind for Bastianini would have handed three more points over to Martin over Bagnaia.

Now 75 points behind Martin, Bastianini conceded after the race that this was “one of the last chances” to get into title contention properly. At 78 points behind, Marc Marquez has joined Bastianini on the virtual sidelines of the title fight.

Marquez’s race ended on lap 12 due to an engine failure on his Gresini Ducati. A brilliant recover from 12th to third in the sprint nudged him closer to Martin. But his brace of Q2 crashes gave him too much to do in the grand prix that even without the failure he was looking at a fourth-place, with possibly third at a pinch if he could match Bagnaia’s late speed.

Of course, mathematically both Bastianini and Marquez are still in the frame. But clearly Martin and Bagnaia, as was the case last year, are the two leading protagonists now.

And, perhaps, it’s now Martin’s to lose if the consistency he has shown since the summer break can continue to be matched by the control he had over the Indonesian GP last Sunday…