Five things we learned from the 2024 MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix

The title battle intensified at the 2024 MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix after a clean sweep of races for Francesco Bagnaia.

The double world champion put together his best weekend since August’s Austrian GP, qualifying second before winning the sprint and the grand prix.

With Jorge Martin suffering an uncharacteristically difficult weekend, with a crash in Q2 leaving him 11th, a fourth-place finish in the sprint and second in the grand prix, the Pramac rider’s championship lead has shrunk to 10 points.

Pedro Acosta showed he really is getting “closer and closer” to a first win in MotoGP after taking a first pole, though he couldn’t see his strong speed through to the end as he crashed in both races at Motegi.

Marc Marquez brushed off a controversial lap cancellation in Q2 that stripped him of a pole lap after the chequered flag and left him ninth on the grid to come through to podiums in both races.

Off-track, there were some major bombshells as Romano Albesiano signed for Honda as technical director, while in his place at Aprilia will come Fabiano Sterlacchini.

Here are five key things we learned at the 2024 MotoGP Japanese GP.

1 - Championship flux remains as Bagnaia bounces back

After crashing out of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and struggling in Indonesia, Bagnaia gave an edge to chief rival Martin in the standings as his lead stood at 21 coming into Japan.

Bagnaia later admitted after winning the grand prix that he expected to struggle at Motegi, but found himself more competitive from the off than he had ever been at the Japanese venue. From Friday it was clear that Bagnaia would be a major threat for the win in both races, while Martin’s Q2 slip-up opened the doors.

Pedro Acosta’s crash out of the lead of the sprint (more on that later) somewhat gifted Bagnaia the 12 points for victory, and a second tumble in the grand prix for the Tech3 rookie took the heat off the world champion.

Regardless, Bagnaia’s race pace was consistent and consistently brilliant that any threat Martin put on him in the late stages was well covered. A fourth 37-point weekend and an eighth grand prix win of the season, which puts him in esteemed company alongside the likes of Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner, the best version of Bagnaia was on show at Motegi.

But his up-and-down form in 2024 makes it hard to look at this as the start of something bigger. Martin’s consistency served him well in Japan, ensuring he left Motegi still in the lead of the championship.

Once again, on a bad weekend, Martin came away with 20 points in the grand prix and likely could have gone further than fourth in the sprint had he not been forced into a cautious approach by spots of rain.

He also chewed up his tyres a bit more than Bagnaia did having to come from 11th, while a big scare late on left him “shitting myself” and leading to a surrender of his fight for the win. If Martin does go on to win the championship, he will look back at Japan as being one of the most vital points of the season in this quest.

Australia presents a totally new challenge in two weeks’ time, but both riders now look stubborn in their ability to remain welded together in the standings despite 11 non-scores between them in 2024 so far.

2 - Acosta visits MotoGP’s school of hard knocks

The Tech3 rookie cut a glum figure in the Motegi paddock on Sunday evening as he reckoned with a double DNF in a Japanese GP weekend he could have taken his first win at.

Acosta was earmarked by Bagnaia as being a potential problem for Sunday’s main race given his strong long run pace in practice. He qualified on pole for the first time in his rookie season, though was helped along by Marc Marquez having his Q2-topping lap cancelled.

In the sprint, Acosta looked like he would make the most of the opportunity when he moved into the lead on lap three of 12. On lap nine, he began stretching away from Bagnaia behind him before crashing out at Turn 7.

Going away with Bagnaia in the first laps of the grand prix while running second, Acosta fell at the last corner. He later said he touched the gas a bit too early when he tried to exit the corner, which unloaded the front and sent him down.

It marked his third GP crash in four rounds and all while running in good positions. Comparisons have since been drawn between Acosta and Casey Stoner, who crashed a lot in his rookie season on the LCR Honda.

The KTM has clearly taken a step forward, with Acosta much happier since reverting to older settings and making a new chassis work for him. But it’s not at the level of the Ducati and he is having to take more risks to get the job done: “I'm not going to accept that the Ducati is better than the KTM, even if that leads me to fall some more,” he told Spanish media in Japan.

He absolutely needs to start seeing more chequered flags, but he also needs to be allowed to keep making mistakes. He’s doing so while fighting at the front, as a rookie in the toughest era of MotoGP.

So, he deserves to cut himself a bit of slack and keep his mind on the fact that, for yet another weekend, he was competitive and much faster than the rest of the KTM stable.

3 - Di Giannantonio’s 2024 season could be coming to a premature end

The VR46 rider entered this phase of the 2023 season staring at his time in MotoGP coming to an end. Marc Marquez had taken his Gresini seat, while it was looking unlikely anyway before this that he was going to be staying with the Italian outfit.

A year on, Di Giannantonio put in a fine performance at one of the toughest circuits to race at with an arm injury. The left shoulder he dislocated at the Austrian GP has been a bother since and surgery has been talked about.

But those surgery prospects look they have significantly increased, with Di Giannantonio revealing after the Japanese GP that he has “an important appointment” on Wednesday this week to determine what the correct next steps should be for his shoulder.

The competitiveness of the GP23 has lessened relative to the GP24 in the second half of the year, while Di Giannantonio has a big pre-season ahead of him for 2025 as he gets set to jump aboard a factory-spec Ducati.

Should the Japanese GP end up as the Italian’s last race of the season, he can hold his head high, having outqualified team-mate Marco Bezzecchi, took a strong sixth in the sprint and eighth in the grand prix.

4 - Marquez falls foul of rare officiating glitch

Eight-time world champion Marc Marquez looked on course for pole at the Japanese GP having posted a new lap record to top Q2 in the closing stages. But after the chequered flag, he was dumped to ninth after that lap was cancelled because he’d exceeded track limits.

What drew the ire of Marquez and the Gresini team was the fact that they weren’t notified immediately, leaving him with no time to set any further laps.

MotoGP race director Mike Webb later clarified that the automatic system used to register cancelled lap times developed a glitch and the stewards had to manually delete the time. This led to there being a delay in notifying the team.

This was the first time the current system has failed since it was introduced in 2021. That year, pressure sensors were added to run-off areas to more accurately judge track limits.

What was frustrating about this incident is that it wasn’t explained until after the sprint race on Saturday. It once again raised the issue of transparency from the stewards panel - especially as this incident was actually nothing to do with them.

The system glitch was identified and rectified, but it will likely lead to a rethink from riders now in ensuring they have some other lap times to fall back on in case a similar issue arrises.

5 - Honda makes big technical play

On Friday at the Japanese GP, Honda dropped a massive bombshell that it had secured Aprilia’s Romano Albesiano as its new technical director for the 2025 season. It came after months of speculation that ex-KTM technical chief Fabiano Sterlacchini was in advanced talks with Honda to take on that role next year.

Aprilia announced at the same time that it had secured Sterlacchini’s signature for 2025 to replace Albesiano. Crash.net understands that Albesiano forced Aprilia’s hand, rather than the Italian being moved aside.

The news was met with praise from Honda’s riders, as well as incoming HRC test rider Aleix Espargaro, who has been working with Albesiano at Aprilia since 2017.

Albesiano dragged the RS-GP from something of a laughingstock on the grid back in 2015 to being a multiple race-winning package, and one that could attract a big name like Jorge Martin for 2025.

Honda’s current situation is not dissimilar to the one Aprilia found itself in several years ago and represents a major shift in philosophy from the Japanese manufacturer. It is expected that current HRC technical director Ken Kawauchi is being moved over to the test team.

Sterlacchini is also a major signing for Aprilia, with his vast experience at Ducati, and then latterly KTM, offering huge potential for the next phase of development of the RS-GP.