Malaysian MotoGP showed the best and worst of Pecco Bagnaia

When the curtain comes down on the 2024 MotoGP season, wherever that may be, the Malaysian Grand Prix will certainly be looked back upon as the round that most typified Francesco Bagnaia’s year.

The reigning double world champion came to Sepang with his title hopes still within grasp, but his grip loosening, as Jorge Martin held a 17-point lead heading to his first match point of 2024. As the Pramac rider noted after the Malaysian GP, “everything was on” Bagnaia to go out an win - not him.

After Friday practice, Bagnaia came out the other side having got a foothold on the weekend: he’d beaten Martin in practice and watched his title rival have a crash while on his final flying lap. That momentum carried on into a thrilling qualifying session, where the pair traded fastest laps but Bagnaia snatched pole with a new lap record by 0.261s.

So out of reach were the top two, as they have been for much of this year, that third place was a whole 0.722s from the pole time and Bagnaia and Martin were the only riders inside the 1m56s bracket. It was punch, counterpunch, but Bagnaia was the one still inflicting the damage.

Then came the sprint.

“We know perfectly that the only negatives that I have is on the sprint races, because all the mistakes I did, all the lost points, are on Saturdays,” Bagnaia - not wholly accurately - said after crashing out of the Sepang sprint. “This is a shame from my point of view, but Jorge was just better on the Saturdays this season and we have to say that he did a very good job there.”

Bagnaia, just as he has done at other points this year to his detriment, didn’t get off the line as well as Martin did and lost the lead into Turn 1 in the 10-lap sprint. Confident he had better tyre management of Martin, he elected to bide his time. Then he crashed at Turn 9, touching a bumpy bit of asphalt and tallied up his eighth DNF of the season.

Martin didn’t waste the opportunity to inflict maximum damage. He swelled his championship lead to 29 points and put one hand of the crown, needing to outscore a mistake-prone Bagnaia with his back well and truly against the wall by just nine points in the grand prix. It wasn’t a given, but Bagnaia would need a big response.

Bagnaia’s not wrong when he says sprints have been his weakness this year. Over 2024, Jorge Martin has scored 164 points on Saturdays and seven sprint wins; Bagnaia has only scored 116, which is only four fewer than Ducati rookie Marc Marquez, and six wins. It’s a trend that has followed Bagnaia throughout this new sprint era.

Sprint results propped up his championship charge in the first half of 2023, but Martin became the Saturday specialist in the second have. Bagnaia actually went without a sprint win between Austria last year and Mugello this June.

“Honestly, long races I feel that I can fight, I feel I can be aggressive,” he explained. “If you look at my first laps in the long races, I’m always gaining positions, I’m always attacking. And in all the sprint races I never had the possibility, the chance, the feeling to attack back. I’m never closer than three, four tenths [back]. I’m always remaining there and I don’t have the power, the force, to fight back. This is something that we have to understand.”

Bagnaia among Marquez and Stoner

In the grand prix, that attacking spirit returned in full force. Across the first three laps, Bagnaia and Martin traded the lead 13 times. It was 2024’s top two putting all on the line, both knowing that a mistake from the other would be pivotal in their championship hopes.

Bagnaia’s killing blow came on lap three at the last corner when he took the lead from Martin for the final time. At the end of lap five he was 0.8s clear and the next time around it was over a second.

Martin would put a little pressure onto Bagnaia on lap 15 when he brought the gap down from two seconds to 1.5s. But a mistake on lap 16 at Turn 9 - the place where Bagnaia crashed in the sprint - forced Martin to call of his siege and accept second. Bagnaia, however, says the situation was always under control.

“I changed the power delivery map, but it was too conservative and I switched back and was able to be a bit faster,” he said, having beaten Martin by over three seconds in the end. “But sometimes during the races it slows you down a bit.”

Bagnaia’s Malaysian GP win was his 10th of the season, keeping his name among seriously impressive company like Marc Marquez and Casey Stoner. But neither of them won so much and didn’t lead the championship. Ducati’s Davide Tardozzi recently said Bagnaia’s win rate over Martin - who has still only taken three Sunday victories in 2024 - is an “open wound” for the Italian marque.

Ironically, without the sprints, Bagnaia would be 24 points in the lead of the championship instead of behind and in need of just one point to secure a third successive title.

But this is the era of sprints and being on top of them is as important as grand prix victories, especially against an opponent as consistent as Martin, whose points per round average is above a grand prix win for the season.

Through the season, five of Bagnaia’s eight non-scores have come in sprint races. But the critical error in the Emilia Romagna GP, in which 16 points went walking when he crashed out of third, arguably looms just as large over him than lost Saturday results recently.

The gap now would be just eight points in Martin’s favour, and that would be going to - if plans go ahead - a stronghold for Bagnaia in Barcelona, where this year he was on course for sprint victory when he crashed (12 points that would have put him at the top of the standings coming to the final round, it’s worth pointing out) on the final lap but beat Martin in the grand prix.

Nothing is out of the question in MotoGP, but Bagnaia’s too frequent mistakes have blighted the otherwise genuine brilliance he has repeatedly demonstrated on Sundays.