Just when you thought the season couldn’t throw up any more surprises, the circus landed in Motegi, Japan, where absolutely everything was turned on its head, even without the long-predicted outcome of the championship title by race’s end.
First, there was Francesco Bagnaia, who has, as you may be aware, been in the depths of a disastrous slump in fortune this season. Then, all of a sudden, he turned it around to take a Japanese pole position, Sprint win, and Main race win, leading every lap. Where did that come from?
Then you have Joan Mir on the Honda, after another disastrous season, albeit a season that has shown slow but definite improvement of the RC213V, taking second on the grid, with a fourth in the Sprint and a fine third in the Main race, at Honda’s home track. Again, where did that come from?
There was Pedro Acosta, who qualified fourth, when his teammate could qualify no better than 18th, the other KTMs further down than that. He then finished a brilliant third in the Sprint, but sank to the back of the field before recovering to 17th in the Main race, after a braking problem sent him through the gravel trap while running strongly at the front in the opening laps. It happened once and not again, which must be difficult to live with.
And let’s spare a thought for poor Jorge Martin, who royally c*cked up the first corner in the Sprint and took his team mate with him into the gravel. Martin broke his collarbone in the process, likely putting him out for the remainder of the season. Ironically, he capped a dismal season with a crash at the race where his title was finally taken away from him.
Whatever was going on throughout the race, it has to be said that, barring the attention that Bagnaia’s incredible turnaround received, all eyes were on Marc Marquez. 2,184 days since he last lifted the championship trophy; multiple operations; battling his own demons as he faced the end of his career; dozens of crashes after he returned to the fray, first on the recalcitrant Honda and then on the Ducati; the first Ducati victories in 2024 and, finally, total domination of the championship in 2025. I’ve written about the status of his comeback in relation to other sporting comebacks previously, so no need to go into it again here, but it does bear repeating that we’ve just witnessed history.
Marquez now has the longest championship-winning history of any rider, ever; 13 years between his first MotoGP title and this year. No other rider has won a championship after five years without a title. This all adds to the debate about who is the greatest of all time, or GOAT. I suspect that few Rossi fans will ever admit in public that Marquez is a challenger for that title, but Marquez’s credentials are impossible to ignore. Once again, Mat Oxley, writing in Motor Sport magazine, puts the argument in favour of Marquez much more convincingly than I ever could. You can read his article here.
What Japan also gave us was a glimpse into 2026. With the rules changing in 2027, it is unlikely that many manufacturers will be spending much on developing a completely new bike for 2026 – indeed, development of the engines has been frozen. So, should the breakthrough Bagnaia made in Japan not be a flash in the pan, we’ll have two riders at the top of their game fighting for victory at every race next year, on a well-developed, championship-winning bike that both factory riders are familiar with and have won on. Now, that’s a prospect to savour.
Bagnaia’s Oil Leak
Inevitably, Bagnaia’s sudden reversal of fortune has got the conspiracy theorists getting their knickers in a twist. Had Ducati been holding their two-time world champion back in favour of Marc Marquez? Were there nefarious deeds happening in the background, behind closed doors at the Borgo Panigale in Bologna? On the surface, despite the outlandish nature of the theories – anything is possible, after all – is it really likely that a team would deliberately do such a thing? I can’t allow myself to believe it would. Marquez’s domination has been excellent for Ducati, but how much better would both factory riders battling it out for the title have been?
Even though by running second in Japan, Marquez had the title sewn up, was the smoke coming out of Bagnaia’s GP25 in the closing laps a result of sabotage, in order to allow Marquez to win the title from the top step of the podium? If it was, then it didn’t work: Bagnaia’s Ducati refused to stop running, and neither was it trailing a line of spilt fluid, which would certainly have resulted in a black flag. One can only imagine Bagnaia’s reaction had his Ducati failed or he had been ordered to stop, after such dominance. Could he have stood another cup being dashed from his lips?
True, Marquez’s title challenge and success has gained millions of column inches in the media, a lot more than a third title for Bagnaia would have done, but a factory is not driven by public or media reaction, and a tight title battle between arguably the top two riders in MotoGP at the moment would have been a dream story, no matter the outcome. Therefore, it was in Ducati’s interest to give Bagnaia a motorcycle that worked for him.
No, for whatever reason, Bagnaia couldn’t get the GP25 to work, and Marquez could. It’s as simple as that, and there is no conspiracy theory.
If there is one good thing about the title being sewn up with five races still to run, it is that we can now witness everyone riding with nothing to lose for the rest of the season, at some brilliant tracks – Philip Island and Portimao, in particular. Who knows, we might see five on the trot for Bagnaia, if his “fix” is proven to be permanent. We might see more victories for Aprilia, more podiums for Honda, perhaps a race win for Acosta, maybe Quartararo making hay one last time on an inline-engined Yamaha swansong. Marc Marquez might now be so relaxed that he’ll simply have fun and wipe the floor with everyone else, just to rub his dominance in.
It has been an incredible season, but it’s not over yet!
