English
Italiano
Now that we are at the final act and only the Barcelona Grand Prix is missing to conclude this 2024 world championship, we imagine that Pecco Bagnaia could win it and end the year with 11 victories to his name.
A record in the negative should the last success coincide with his friend and rival Jorge Martin winning the title .
But let's not stand there sharpening the pencils by pointing out that the Prima Pramac rider won by racing for a Satellite team: that of Paolo Campinoti is only on paper, since from a technical point of view it has the identical material as the Ducati in red.
After all, this is not the first time that a second team, let's call it that because it is more correct, has won the title. Valentino Rossi did it in 2001, racing for the colors of Nastro Azzurro. And it is totally irrelevant that his team was Jeremy Burgess' group, orphaned by Mick Doohan because the factory team, Repsol Honda, consisted of Alex Criville and Tohru Ukawa.
If we want to go back even further in time, in 1989 Eddie Lawson won the world championship with a Rothmans-Honda, but the factory team consisted of Wayne Gardner and Mick Doohan. Lawson's, albeit with the same sponsorship, was registered as the Honda-Kanemoto team, the legendary Japanese-American motorcycle engine tuner.
Bagnaia, then, was not beaten by what Americans call an underdog, but by a rider with the same material and identical chances. So how is it possible that a rider with so many wins, more than three times those of his direct rival, came to fight for the title?
The answer, of course, is obvious: MotoGP, with the introduction of the Sprint race is now a different sport. Before, albeit with difficulty given the scores anchored in the past that reward the top 15, winning was still a categorical imperative. Today, with as many as 37 points per Grand Prix (12+25) it is much more important to make few mistakes. Something Pecco cannot brag about this year.
The math tells us that Martin has scored many more points in the Sprints, and with these he has compensated for the fewer victories, but in reality Bagnaia can recriminate some avoidable mistakes.
Let's not talk about the first European race, at Portimao, with the collision with Marc Marquez, but the one at Aragon with his brother Alex certainly weighed heavily as Pecco came in at +5 on Jorge and came out at -23.
Never mind the dynamics and the blame, or the contributory fault: the situation was such that that overtaking, with an abysmal difference in performance and with many laps still to go, was surely an avoidable gamble. And it is no coincidence that in the Barcelona Sprint itself Pedro Acosta complained that Marc Marquez's maneuver toward him was like Bagnaia's with Alex.
Of course, from the sofa commenting is easy, but as we said the format of this world championship now no longer rewards the fastest rider, and we must always remember that. Avoid unnecessary risks since the current schedule involves many more risks than the previous one, and not only because of the doubling of the number of races.
This is why the current format needs to be revised if you want to actually reward the fastest rider.
Forget about the discard option, because it would make the understanding of the ranking worse, but certainly the scoring needs to be revised.
Another thing that needs to be revised today is the assignment of the pole, which, since it applies to both Sprint and Grand Prix has too much importance over the economy of the weekend.
Much better is the system used in Superbike, where the pole counts for Race 1 and the Superpole Race, but then the Race 2 grid is obtained with the top 9 from Superpole and the others following. This rebalances any mistakes and allows the fastest riders to still start at the front.
Will these adjustments be made? At the moment it is impossible to say. In the end, motorcycling is becoming more and more spectacle and less and less sport, and there is no doubt that even like this, the spectacle was there this year.
Ph. @Pierluca Brunetti
