Davide Brivio: Why Sprint races “changed the game” for MotoGP title strategy
"I'm not saying it's wrong, but 12 points for a Sprint is a lot. It's changing the game"
MotoGP title rivals Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia finished just ten points apart at the end of the 2024 season.
But they got there in very different ways.
Eventual champion Martin won three GPs but limited his non-scores to four out of the 40 races. Bagnaia won eleven GPs, more than all other riders combined, but suffered eight DNFs.
Six of Bagnaia’s non-scores came in the Sprints and, while the Italian outscored Martin by 33 points over the Sunday GP season he crucially lost out to the Pramac rider by 43 points on Saturdays.
In a media debrief following the Trackhouse launch, Crash.net asked team principal Davide Brivio - who oversaw MotoGP titles under the ‘old’ rules for Yamaha and Suzuki - how Sprints have changed the strategy for winning the MotoGP crown.
Why ask Brivio?
Back in 2016, when the Italian was leading the then-new GSX-RR project, the Italian revealed on the sidelines of a Suzuki pre-season launch that he is “quite passionate about statistical and mathematical calculations”.
(Brivio had even tried to apply statistics to help identify the most promising talents in the Moto2 class, but concluded "mostly it is a feeling").
With that in mind, and Joan Mir’s feat of winning the 2020 crown with only a single victory under the pre-Sprint rules, here is Brivio’s take on how the 'half-points' Saturday races have changed the MotoGP title landscape:
“It’s quite funny, I was not involved in MotoGP when the Sprint races started in 2023 [Brivio was still in F1 that year] but I came to the first race and was asked about it.
“And I said, ‘Sprint races will change the game’.
“Because 12 points for a Sprint race is a lot of points. To have 20 or 22 times, 12 points available - they can make a difference. And this is what happened last year.
“Yes, it's a little bit weird, if you like, that Bagnaia won eleven [GP] races and Jorge only three, and he became world champion because Bagnaia made more mistakes in the Sprints.
“So I think 12 points are a lot - I'm not saying it's wrong, but they are a lot.
“And now, thinking about the championship, you have to consider both races equally important.
“But, it also depends on the level [the rider is at] because my personal opinion is that the Sprint races are important when you can fight for the top two or three positions.
“They are not important if you fight for sixth, seventh, eighth and it's only two or three points. That’s not making a difference.
"But when you can fight for the podium in the Sprint race, then the Sprint race becomes very important for the title.
“So yes, it's changing the game, it's changing the approach.
“It would have been very different if we would only have five or six Sprint races in a year [like F1] and then the rest only main [GP] races.
“But I have to say that in 2024 - which was my first year in a MotoGP with the Sprint race - I honestly enjoyed them.
“It's becoming normal, let's say, to have a race on Saturday and a race on Sunday. So from our point of view, it’s exciting. It's nice.
“But it changed the game. Now the Sprint races are very important for the World Championship.”
Trackhouse enjoyed its best result of the 2024 MotoGP season, a second place by Miguel Oliveira, in the Sachsenring Sprint race.
Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury issues.
