The key milestone Ducati could achieve at the Austrian MotoGP

The 2024 Austrian MotoGP marks the 11th stop on this season’s calendar. Enea Bastianini arrives off the back of his first win of the year, KTM is looking for its first win in two years, and Jack Miller is trying to secure a once-unlikely 2025 MotoGP contract.

Plus, all of the title contenders are looking to establish themselves as the title contender, and there’s a significant milestone for Ducati to achieve.

KTM looking for landmark home victory

Sure, KTM has won twice at the Red Bull Ring, thanks to Miguel Oliveira in 2020’s Styrian Grand Prix and to Brad Binder in 2021’s edition of the Austrian GP, but it is without a win at all since Oliveira won the Thai Grand Prix in October 2022, and without a dry weather race win since the same rider took victory in at the Catalan Grand Prix in May 2022.

As a result, it arrives at its home Grand Prix in possession of the most exciting talent in the field — Pedro Acosta — but without a motorcycle that has proven credentials in winning Grands Prix.

Things must soon start to turn around for KTM if it is to enter 2025 with any kind of optimism regarding its potential to win a maiden MotoGP crown, and you could argue there’s no place better to do that than at the circuit which bares the name of the corporation which ensures its racing efforts are funded.

Miller’s ticket to stay

At the British Grand Prix, Jack Miller spoke of how he was trying to enjoy his last few races as a MotoGP rider in the second half of the 2024 season.

But, in the week leading up to the Austrian Grand Prix, it has emerged that the Australian in fact has a very credible option to stay in GPs at the new Pramac Yamaha team. It was a move that was rumoured a while ago, but with Pramac seemingly destined to sign Miguel Oliveira as an experienced rider to help Yamaha with developing the YZR-M1 back to competitiveness and a younger rider expected to be slotted in alongside him (current Moto2 points leader Sergio Garcia, for example), Miller’s hopes of rejoining the Italian satellite team with which he began his Ducati journey back in 2018 seemed to have been dashed.

However, a change of tack from Yamaha sees it now prioritising motorcycle development over rider talent development, and apparent encouragement from MotoGP rights holder Dorna to avoid having a 10th Spanish rider on the World Championship grid has seemingly reopened the door for Australia’s Miller.

Being an Italian team, and considering the KTM usually like to make some kind of announcement during its home Grand Prix weekend, it might be expected that any announcement about Miller — or Oliveira, for that matter — might wait until Pramac’s (next) home race, the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano on 6-8 September. On the other hand, if something has been signed before the conclusion of this weekend between Miller and Pramac, we might find out about it before the conclusion of MotoGP’s stay in Styria.

Can Bastianini repeat Silverstone tyre magic?

That Enea Bastianini can be fairly handy at hanging onto a rear Michelin was hardly a revelation at Silverstone: this was the Italian’s most potent weapon in securing the factory Ducati seat he has now lost back in 2022.

But, what Bastianini was unable to do in 2022 — when he was a satellite Ducati rider — was repeat the feat on a consistent enough basis to mount a real title challenge.

The Red Bull Ring, like Silverstone, is a circuit which requires a mastery of rear grip: the riders must exploit it, but also conserve it, in order to achieve good lap times and good race times.

However, the Austrian track, unlike Silverstone, is a circuit where the shoulder and centre of the tyre are more heavily used than the edge, which is more easily protected at the stop-start Red Bull Ring than at the more flowing Silverstone. Plus, the Red Bull Ring is one of the circuits, along with Mandalika and Thailand, where Michelin brings its special harder tyre construction to better dissipate the heat built up in the circuit’s multiple hard accelerations (a number which has increased by one since the 2a-2b chicane was added in 2022).

So, can Bastianini repeat his tyre saving excellence of Silverstone in Styria? We will see, but the answer he gives will be a pivotal one for this year’s title battle.

Ducati looks for win #97

Much has been made over the past year or so whenever a Ducati rider has had the chance to take a victory for the Italian marque that would take its overall tally to a mark equal to the value of the rider’s race number.

In Austria, Ducati will be able to take its 97th MotoGP race win. It has no riders who run #97, but the number is significant for another reason, in that it will draw Ducati level with Suzuki for premier class Grand Prix wins.

It would be a major milestone for Ducati, which raced a very limited amount in the 500cc days and whose premier class Grand Prix effort was revived only 21 years ago.

Further, were Ducati — which has won nine of the 10 Grands Prix so far this year, and the last seven in succession — able to reach such a milestone this weekend, it would of course do so at the same venue where it ended its almost-six-year winning drought in 2016 with Andrea Iannone, and therefore where it effectively took its first step on the road to its current position as MotoGP’s dominant force.

Title battle heats up… probably

If Ducati were to take its 97th Grand Prix win at Austria courtesy of Francesco Bagnaia, the Italian would match at the Red Bull Ring the feat he managed at both Mugello and Assen earlier this year: three consecutive victories at the same circuit.

It would also be Bagnaia’s seventh win, and ninth podium, from 11 races in 2024 and, barring any Silverstone-style Sprint disasters, it would put him back in the championship lead.

However, a Bagnaia victory is far from certain, despite his five-second winning margin from 2023.

Jorge Martin showed strong speed in Austria last year, but a first corner incident in the Sprint cost him essentially both races, as the incident itself put him out of contention on Saturday, and the penalty he received for it gave him more ground to make up on the leaders on Sunday. A cleaner weekend should keep the current championship leader in victory contention in 2024.

Enea Bastianini has rarely been a time attack expert, but his first pole position in MotoGP came at Austria in 2022. He didn’t finish the race because of a bike issue, but the Italian proved his speed at the Styrian circuit back then.

Then, there is Marc Marquez, who almost beat Ducati to victory three times in three years between 2017–2019 while riding a Honda that was much less suited to the conjoined drag strips of the Red Bull Ring than the Desmosedici. Now, the eight-times World Champion is on a Ducati, albeit a year-old one, and so could — arguably should — figure more centrally in the podium, and maybe even victory, fight. Such a result would surely reaffirm his title credentials.

Finally, there is the weather, which, as 2021 proved, can throw up particularly bizarre conditions in Styria. Flashing back to that dramatic 2021 race, and you see that, before the rain arrived and all the leaders bar Binder headed to the pits, Bagnaia was looking as likely as he ever had to be on course for what would have been a maiden win.

But, whoever wins this weekend, the result will neither guarantee any of the four contenders the title, nor will it eliminate any of them from contention. In Misano, the losers of Austria will have the chance to redeem themselves twice more.