Analysis: Worrying problems still face MotoGP title duo

And then there were two. For much of the year it’s been assumed that the championship battle will be fought between Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia. The 2024 Thai Grand Prix confirmed this, with a rematch of 2023 set up after the points situation officially eliminated all but that pair.

After Martin came to Buriram with a 20-point lead over Bagnaia, the Thai GP was seen as arguably the most important weekend of the championship. Another weekend like Australia where the balance was very much in Martin’s favour, and it would be hard to see any way back for Bagnaia.

Indeed, after the sprint, Bagnaia appeared to be in trouble. Though he put his GP24 on pole with a new lap record, he was no match for his team-mate Enea Bastianini in the 13-lap contest and couldn’t hold Martin at bay for second. The gain was only two points for the latter, but the expression on Bagnaia’s team afterwards was as if he’d already lost the title.

Sunday didn’t really start all that well for the reigning champion either. In the wet warm-up Bagnaia still didn’t feel very comfortable under braking. A sit down with his team afterwards led to a solution and provided the turnaround he needed.

“I want to dedicate this victory to my team, because after the morning we just sat down and spoke about what to do to improve the situation because I was struggling a lot on braking,” he said on Sunday. “And we did it, again. I’m so happy. It wasn’t an easy race because it was very long and stressful, but as soon as I started I saw my feeling was very good.”

Martin got the best start in the race and got close to a second clear at one stage in the early laps. Bagnaia elected to bide his time, let his medium wet rear tyre come up to temperature before attacking. The factory Ducati rider had closed the gap to Martin to 0.434s at the start of lap five before the Spaniard ran off at Turn 3 and released Bagnaia into the lead.

This was the turning point of the race. Martin admitted from the start his feeling was not great on his GP24, and the mistake clearly rattled him. He said afterwards that he “was really close to crashing” throughout the grand prix.

Once in the lead, Bagnaia still wasn’t the fastest rider. That was Marc Marquez behind him, and who piled the pressure on. Twice did Marquez try to take the lead at the last corner, on laps nine and 13, before he crashed going through Turn 8 on the next tour.

Marquez crash crucial moment in title fight

Marquez has had a lot of accusations of interference thrown at him over the past few weeks. For his part, he’s out to win more races because - as he knows all too well - the opportunity can quickly disappear.

Had Marquez stayed onboard his Gresini-run GP23 and passed Bagnaia, it would have benefitted Martin. Bagnaia’s points gain would have been four instead of five - though had Marquez been kept at bay, the swing would have been nine. Risk over reward would have likely seen Bagnaia put up nothing more than a modest defence of his lead against a rider with nothing to play for in the title battle.

His crash ultimately proved useful for Bagnaia, who scored five points more than Martin to bring his lead down to 17. On top of his Australia victory over Martin, Marquez has indirectly done quite a bit for his future team-mate’s championship aspirations.

For Martin, Marquez crashing spared him the same fate. As Marquez hit the deck at Turn 8, Martin suffered a massive front end scare. He later admitted that without the Gresini rider’s crash, he would have gone down too as Marquez’s misfortune allowed him to anticipate something similar. Had Martin gone down and scored no points, Bagnaia would have taken a five-point lead in the championship.

In the final two rounds, Marquez will clearly have a part to play in the outcome of the championship. As will Enea Bastianini, who said after crashing in Sunday’s Thai GP that he has no intentions of playing the team orders game at his Sepang stronghold this weekend.

What will trip up the title contenders?

Both Bagnaia and Martin deserve immense credit for the job they did in Thailand. All weekend Martin kept repeating that he doesn’t have to go and win races if he can’t - he just needs to ensure he comes away with as many points as possible.

His ride to second in the sprint under the threat of a track limits penalty could have gone the same way as his Emilia Romagna sprint, when distraction from a warning led to him making the mistake that lost him the win to Bagnaia. He kept his head and netted a result that had important connotations for the championship.

From now until the end of the season, Martin simply has to finish second behind Bagnaia to win the championship.

That, plus his lead, gives him the favourite status heading to Malaysia. But this is new territory for him. While he was a strong challenger last year, Bagnaia was always expected to be the rider to win the title. Martin now has that expectation on his shoulders and it’s clear that it’s weighing on him.

“I mean, I felt tension for six or seven races ago,” he said. “I try to learn from every situation. I think this weekend I learned something more and I’m really happy and I have a lot of confidence for how I raced yesterday. I think this is my riding style, this is what I want to bring to Malaysia because it’s what took me here. So, I will try to attack and try to be in front of Pecco.”

With each race Martin learns something new about himself, but he’s in arguably the worst position of the two. Bagnaia is twice a world champion in MotoGP. He knows how to handle that pressure, but he also knows how it feels to achieve that dream. Martin doesn’t and is moving in 2025 to an Aprilia bike that, at the moment, looks too far away to even fight for consistent race wins let alone sustain a title challenge.

Bagnaia’s ability to bounce back when it counts led to one of his best victories in MotoGP at Buriram and arguably his most important. While crediting his team for fixing the braking issues that thwarted him up to the grand prix, it’s a mentality thing that Bagnaia possesses in these situations.

“Because honestly I never give up,” Bagnaia said about how he is able to keep bouncing back. “I believe always in what I can do, on my team, on my work at home, on myself. So, I will never give up while I have the chance. It was always like this. I will be like this every season. I try my maximum always and it will always be like this.”

But with nine grand prix wins in a season, Bagnaia still trails in the championship. And in his previous two championship seasons, the Italian has never really had his back against the wall. Now he does, against a rider who is just as good and on equal machinery.

Bagnaia may be good at grinding out the results when they matter, but with seven DNFs hanging over him, he is in the unenviable position that just one more mistake will likely mean the end of his title defence.

Both riders came out of Thailand making convincing claims to be crowned 2024 MotoGP world champion. Both are capable of taking that final step, but both also face genuinely ruinous hurdles as the season reaches its climax in Malaysia and Valencia…