Analysis: Bagnaia vs Martin - who holds the advantage ahead of title decider?

When MotoGP was last at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the championship very much looked like it was tilting in Jorge Martin’s favour. A crash out of the sprint while leading for Francesco Bagnaia left the reigning champion 44 points behind the Pramac rider.

As the series returns for the Solidarity GP at the Catalunya venue, the championship remains alive, albeit with Martin leading Bagnaia by 24 points. In the 13 rounds run since, the points difference from that May Catalan GP has only swung by 20.

That is in no small part down to Bagnaia winning 10 grands prix across the campaign ahead of the final round, though Martin’s relentless consistency has maintained his advantage over his factory Ducati counterpart.

Both riders are in the same position in terms of fighting for the championship. But both are in very different circumstances. Martin is the favourite, and therefore the onus is on him to now seal the deal. Bagnaia knows his only real hope of rescuing a third crown from the brink is to go out and win.

On Friday afternoon at the Barcelona track, Bagnaia looked like a rider operating to that memo and was riding unencumbered by stress. He led the way with a 1m38.918s, which was only 0.080s clear of the field in what proved to be a tight session.

The cooler conditions and low grip, coupled with the range of seven tyres Michelin has brought to this event owing to the short-notice change of venue from Valencia following the devastating flooding there, led to an intriguing timesheet order.

At May’s Catalan GP, the sprint race proved to be a tight affair, but Martin is pretty convinced the grand prix will spread out again. With that comment, perhaps he is not looking at Saturday as being the realistic day he can be crowned, even if he only need to outscore Bagnaia by two points.

“I think there were so many tyres to try and we didn’t see a lot of riders with a lot of laps on the tyres,” Martin told the media, including Crash.net, on Friday at Barcelona. “So, we will see on the race. For sure, with new tyres everybody is quite fast. We will see during the races. For sure tomorrow in the sprint a lot riders can be fast, like the last sprint here. But then come Sunday the difference became super big.”

The increase of names in and around the top of the leaderboard is worse for Martin than it is for Bagnaia, though some key interferers in Enea Bastianini (10th) and Marc Marquez (eighth) are not backing themselves to be in the podium fight right now.

Bagnaia celebrated his session-topping time from Practice as if he’d gotten over the first major hurdle of the weekend. And he had reason to celebrate too, after his near-miss with Maverick Vinales at the end of FP1. Vinales caught Bagnaia unaware into Turn 1 after their practice starts, and Bagnaia grabbed two bar more of front brake pressure which tucked the front. The force with which he hit the ground could so easily have resulted in an injury that could have ended his weekend there and then.

He was frustrated, but not flustered. The same could not be said for his rival. Martin was visibly agitated in his garage in the closing stages of Practice. He said afterwards that it was because he was a bit stressed, but because he couldn’t get ahold of his crew chief, who wasn’t stood in his normal place when he came in for fresh tyres.

But that outburst of waved arms had been building. Martin looked like he was testing the limits and able to push. But on several occasions, including his last flying lap, he lost the front going through a corner.

This ultimately left him fifth on the timesheets, though safely into Q2. He said “on paper” he is good “and the pace is quite strong”. But he admitted he isn’t comfortable on his Pramac-run GP24 right now. He said he felt “strange” as he missed confidence on the front in left corners and didn’t feel like he was able to get the usual grip he has from the rear tyre.

All is not lost, but typically when Bagnaia starts a weekend off strongly on Friday it spells trouble for the rest.

The lap time analysis is harder to read due to the conditions and the number of tyres everyone had to test in the limited time available. Martin put eight laps on a soft rear tyre and came out at an average pace of 1m40.646s, while on the hard rear a five-lap stint worked out at 1m40.401s (with unrepresentative times removed).

Bagnaia did seven laps on a soft rear tyre and came out at 1m40.365s, while five laps on a medium rear saw him lapping in 1m40.510s average pace.

So, at this stage, Bagnaia has an edge on both speed and overall bike feeling. Saturday’s sprint race will be a major test for the reigning champion. He comes into it having crashed out of the previous Saturday contest in Malaysia and has to face the demons of what happened in May when a vital 12 points disappeared in a cloud of dust in the Turn 5 gravel trap.

But with nothing to lose, Bagnaia has the freedom to treat it like any other sprint. Martin can afford a mistake, but given Bagnaia’s pace in the Catalan GP in May, any serious points bleeding will only heighten the pressure the Pramac rider is under.

If Friday at the Solidarity GP taught is anything it’s that the championship battle is far from a formality despite what the permutations might say…