Should MotoGP be concerned by 'boring' Austrian GP?

3.4sec. That was the average time gap between each of the top ten riders at the end of Sunday’s Austrian MotoGP at the Red Bull Ring.

While there was an early tussle between title rivals Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia, the Italian was credited with leading all but the opening lap on his way to a distant 3.2s victory.

Enea Bastianini completed an all-GP24 podium covered by 7.4s, holding third place from the first to last lap.

Marc Marquez and Franco Morbidelli kept fans entertained by fighting back to fourth and eighth places after their Turn 1 tangle, but the race wasn’t exactly a thrilling spectacle.

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In the latest edition of the Crash.net MotoGP Podcast, host Jordan Moreland asked:

“I've seen comments on socials about the dominance of Ducati this year, especially the GP24, with some people saying Austria was the most boring race of the season.

“You're not going to get a classic every weekend and there's other contributing factors. But is it fair that people are saying that this is a ‘boring championship’ when there's only five points between the top two?

“Surely it’s not as bad as people are making out?”

MotoGP Journalist Lewis Duncan replied: “No, I don't think so at all. You’ve got to look at the rest of the races this season. For the most part, they’ve all really been exciting. Especially that first half of the championship. Great racing. And the championship battle has been tight.

“It's a 20-round championship but a good, exciting championship battle doesn't necessarily equate to 20 exciting Grands Prix, thrill-a-minute stuff. We're not going to see hundreds and hundreds of overtakes every race. That's just not how it works.

“Obviously it would have been good to have seen that Pecco-Martin battle at the start of the Grand Prix, throughout the Grand Prix or at the end of the Grand Prix.

“I think a lot of people have been saying, ‘Since they added the chicane, it's made the Red Bull Ring rubbish’. I don't think that's the reason for the rubbish racing in Austria lately. I think the problem is just the bikes.

“It's a lot of low-gear acceleration zones. So when you've got right-height devices where the rider just has to twist the throttle and go, there's very little difference between how people can exit corners. That's not helping.

“Then the aerodynamics really doesn't help either. If you go back even to 2020, the racing was great. And before that coming to Austria was a guaranteed thriller. So I don't think the circuit is to blame. I think it's the makeup of the bikes.

“I don't believe claims that the GP24 is making it a boring championship either. We've seen lots of exciting racing between the GP24s. We've also seen other manufacturers get in the mix.

“I think fundamentally when a manufacturer or bike is being dominant, it's not their fault if it makes the racing boring. If anything, it's the rest of the grid's fault. Aprilia should be doing better. KTM should be doing better. The Japanese manufacturers should be doing better. It's not on Ducati to kind of under-develop their bike.

“It’d be like watching the top football team in the league running backwards to make a bit of a game of it.  

“What we’ve got now arguably harks back to the ‘good old days’, that a lot of people like to talk about, when we had Rossi vs Lorenzo on the Yamahas. Two guys fighting for the championship on equal machinery.

“I would like to see Pecco and Martin have a bit more on-track needle. We haven't really seen that over the past couple of years very much. But it's not a boring championship."

Moreland replied: “People seem to forget we’ve had some unbelievable races, like COTA, Marquez vs Bagnaia at Jerez, even Le Mans was great. F1 fans would be crying out for that!

“If I think back to 2003, the top five in the championship were all on Hondas and you could guarantee it would be Rossi, Biaggi and Gibernau at the front every weekend.

“We can’t have a perfect race every time, sport just doesn’t work like that. Pete, what's your take on it?”

“I think that’s it, you get 0-0 draws between the best teams in football sometimes,” replied Crash.net MotoGP editor Pete McLaren.

“Austria is the track with the most full throttle and, as Lewis said, there’s less impact a rider can make in those circumstances. At one stage in the race it was three Ducatis at the front, then two KTMs, then two Aprilias. I don’t think that was a coincidence.

“I think Bastianini was also a good illustration. We were expecting he’d be much stronger at the end of the race, but he wasn’t. He explained that was down to all the slow corners and hard acceleration where 'you spin like the others and can't do nothing'. Bastianini makes the difference by saving the rear tyre in long corners.

“MotoGP has recognised that something needs to be done [to put more control in the hands of the riders] and the rules will change to remove ride height devices and limit the aero in 2027. That’s still a few years away but I don’t think you can sum up a whole season by one race.”

“It’s almost like the races now are a bit ‘back to front’,” McLaren added. “We often get hard battles for the lead at the start and then the end of the races are quiet.

“If the early passes between Bagnaia and Martin in Austria, both races, had been near the finish we’d have said it was a great battle. But that’s part of the tactics now, to attack early and get out front to reduce the tyre pressure.

“Maybe that’s also something Martin will need to look at in future, to be stronger early on. Because speed-wise there wasn’t a lot between him and Pecco, but Pecco knows when to be fast and that's making the difference.”

“People like to kind of go on about the good old days, but there's always a very kind of rose-tinted glasses way of looking at things,” Duncan added. “People talk about Barcelona 2009, but there hadn’t been a last-corner overtake for years before that.  

“History warps your perspective because you only remember the good bits. Nobody remembers the rubbish races and in 5-10 years’ time we'll look back on this season and remember Jerez and all the good grands prix.

“That's just how your brain works. It's not really any better or worse than at any other point in history. A lot of different winners also doesn't necessarily mean exciting racing.”