Marc Marquez “favour?” 2015 drama is tiring | Australian MotoGP talking points

The 2024 MotoGP Australian Grand Prix delivered an exciting battle for the win between Marc Marquez and Jorge Martin.

Gresini rider Marquez’s third grand prix win of the season came in dramatic circumstance, as he came back from a terrible start caused by a discarded visor tear-off to beat Martin in the final laps.

Martin didn’t hold back in his defence of the lead despite the risks to his championship lead, but had to accept defeat to Marquez.

However, with Francesco Bagnaia struggling, Martin leaves Australia with a 20-point advantage in his back pocket heading to Thailand and with all of the momentum in the title chase right now.

Bagnaia salvaged a podium from a difficult Australia weekend that was a far cry from the perfection of his Japanese GP.

Elsewhere, Fabio Di Giannantonio put on a strong showing as his 2024 season nears an early end due to an upcoming shoulder surgery, while wildlife wreaked havoc with home favourite Jack Miller’s weekend.

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Here are the five main talking points from the 2024 Australian GP.

2015 comparisons inevitable, but tiring

Every year MotoGP returns to Phillip Island, the spectre of 2015 still looms large as a moment in time people really have a hard time of moving on from.

Indeed, with Marc Marquez fighting against the two main title protagonists last weekend, it led to a cheeky question from top Spanish journalist Mela Chercoles directed at Bagnaia asking if Marquez had done him a favour (something Marquez also kind of did to Valentino Rossi by beating Jorge Lorenzo in 2015… not that the Doctor saw it that way) Marquez took points off the factory Ducati rider, but also did so against Martin.

With Marquez winning, he also took five points away from Martin. The 20-point gap between Martin and Bagnaia is a result of Marquez’s intervention. It would have been 25 otherwise.

“You gave me a favour,” Bagnaia asks Marquez, to which the Gresini rider replies: “Today, yes, no? I took five points [from Martin].”

“I think it was more he wanted to win,” Bagnaia added. “The possibility for a win today from him was much higher because yesterday Jorge was really strong and today it’s true that he missed the start again, but his pace was much stronger and finally he won. But I don’t think he was thinking about 2015.”

Inevitably, social media lit up with the suggestion that Marquez was interfering in the title battle again. That is an ignorant statement to make given Marquez is, at this stage still, a mathematical title contender in third, albeit 79 points adrift with 111 left up for grabs.

But it also doesn’t consider the fact that any rider who starts a race is interfering in the championship battle. Enea Bastianini ‘interfered’ in the sprint by passing Bagnaia for third; someone in 17th could have ‘interfered’ if they crashed and caused a red flag while Martin was still leading the grand prix.

Ultimately, a race happens whether or not it has an effect on the championship. It’s up to those fighting for the title to make sure they are scoring the best results…

Martin passes toughest title quest test

Jorge Martin came within just a couple of laps of completing a perfect Australian GP clean sweep, having dominated in qualifying for pole and proved untouchable in the sprint. He led for much of the grand prix before ultimately losing out to Marquez.

Still, he leaves Phillip Island with 20 points to play with ahead of Francesco Bagnaia in the standings with just three rounds to go and his consistency remains unmatched.

Since the summer break, Martin has been top two on a Sunday all but once. Bagnaia in that time has suffered two non-scores and beaten Martin in a grand prix just twice, albeit both of those times (Austria and Japan) being wins.

Australia proved a pivotal moment in 2023 for Martin in his title hopes, as his gamble to go on the soft rear tyre ultimately backfired in a massive way. On Friday in the 2024 edition of the Australian GP, Martin’s weekend faced major peril.

Rain cancelled FP1 and while the afternoon session was dry, there was the ever-present threat of a downpour. This forced a busy start to the session that decided direct Q2 passage, with Martin crashing at Turn 4 early on. With his second bike set up for the wet, his Pramac team had to repair the bike he crashed. This cost precious time, while a red flag for a goose taking stroll just as he was ready to head back out again pushed up the nerves.

Martin ultimately made it safely into Q2, where he would brilliantly take a punt on a hard front tyre in the drying conditions to take pole by almost six tenths. A repeat of his dominant sprint performance would have been on the cards in the grand prix, but he didn’t quite have the same traction in the long race.

Even still, he led for 23 of 27 laps and didn’t take Marquez’s assault lying down. While he came away as runner-up, he crucially had the measure of Bagnaia all weekend and showed how tough his resolve truly is as the title battle reaches its crunch point.

Bezzecchi/Vinales tangle highlights aero complicity

The scary crash between Marco Bezzecchi and Maverick Vinales in the sprint race unsurprisingly led to the former getting a penalty.

While it took until Sunday for a final decision to be reached due to Bezzecchi going to hospital on Saturday, it was clear that the VR46 rider had braked a fraction later than he had done previously, and so the onus was on him to avoid that incident.

What was intriguing about the stewards rather in-depth explanation (a welcome change to the stewards panel document) was that they did accept that the turbulent air from Vinales’ Aprilia did have a hand in the incident.

“The Stewards have considered the effects of turbulent air caused by the pass of #12, and accept that this disturbance may in this situation offer a degree of mitigation, whereby #72 rolled off throttle and reapplied throttle and braked later,” part of the stewards statement read.

As such, they lessened the punishment to a single long lap rather than the double it would have been under normal circumstances.

However, the fact that the stewards considered the effect of Vinales’ bike’s aerodynamics to be a mitigating factor in the incident does strengthen the argument of safety regarding aero. For 2027, aerodynamics will be stripped back in the regulations but not completely eliminated, which the Vinales/Bezzecchi incident suggests should be the case.

Wildlife wreaks havoc, but what can be done?

It’s become the norm to go to Phillip Island and see some sort of incident to do with wildlife. Everyone remembers Andrea Iannone’s famous seagull strike during the 2015 grand prix.

Friday’s practice sessions saw several stoppages due to geese walking about the circuit, while home hero Jack Miller got a bit too up close and personal on Saturday with the local wildlife. He struck a rabbit in Q1, which damaged his bike’s fairing, while a “gaping hole” was left on his front fairing after he hit a seagull on the opening lap of the sprint.

Ultimately, the rabbit strike cost him the chance to fight for a Q2 place, which would have transformed his weekend. The bird strike in the sprint sapped him of 10km/h on the straights and also led to some difficulties with braking as the seagull got wedged behind his brake lever.

“For sure, there’s a lot of wildlife here in Phillip Island,” Jorge Martin said. “They need to not give any more passes to the animals because if this happens during the race this will be a big issue and a big problem.”

Martin also pointed out that the wildlife at Phillip Island forces a change in strategy on track because a session can be red flagged at any moment if something decides to go for a wander among the bikes.

Phillip Island tries its best to keep the wildlife in check and scare it off when necessary, but it’s no easy task and one with no easy answer either. But the danger the animals pose is serious, and it’s clear that more needs to be done.

Di Giannantonio replacement debate

Fabio di Giannantonio has been considering surgery on the shoulder he dislocated at the Austrian Grand Prix for some time. Ahead of the Australian GP, it initially looked like he would carry on for the remainder of the season, only for the opposite to be announced.

The VR46 rider will race this weekend in Thailand before heading home to go under the knife. Having surgery now means he will (hopefully) have made a full recovery for the start of pre-season testing when he jumps on a GP25.

Di Giannantonio certainly hasn’t been showing signs of his injury getting him down, as he put in a spirited ride to fourth in the grand prix and was hunting down a struggling Bagnaia in the latter stages.

In the end, Di Giannantonio was just under three seconds away from the podium in what he felt was a “bittersweet” race.

Talk has now turned to who will replace him for the final two rounds. The name stealing the headlines is one-time grand prix winner Andrea Iannone, who finished a four-year doping ban prior to the start of the 2024 season.

The 35-year-old was offered a career lifeline by the GoEleven Ducati team for 2024 in World Superbikes and has done a solid job, winning at Aragon and scoring a few other podiums. According to GPOne, he is the favourite to get the VR46 seat for the last few rounds of the MotoGP campaign.

It would mark his first MotoGP races since Valencia 2019 when he was with Aprilia, and from which he was retroactively disqualified after he was found to have breached anti-doping rules.

Whether he deserves this MotoGP opportunity is a topic of debate, as is whether he should get it over impressive WSBK rookie Nicolo Bulega. The Italian finished second in the standings, having moved over to the WSBK paddock in 2022 when his grand prix career fizzled out. Formally a VR46 Academy member, Bulega getting a MotoGP shot would be a just reward for his efforts in WSBK, and at just 25 could act as a shop window moment for his career.