They had him on the ropes, reeling and waiting for the knockout blow, but it never came. Instead, Quartararo’s closest rivals for the 2022 title, Bagnaia and Espargaro, let him off with a light slap. If Quartararo had managed to finish any higher than eighth, there wouldn’t be any contact between hand and face at all.

Espargaro blinked first, his Aprilia’s electronics having not been set properly on the grid. The bike was left in a special fuel-saving ‘Eco’ mode, normally used solely for getting from the pits to the grid. Espargaro’s frustration was laid bare as he trundled back to the pits at no more than 100km/h to swap bikes, desperately trying to get there before the flag fell. Starting from the exit of pit lane is one thing, but to still be riding down pit lane when the lights go out is doubly galling.

This was to be no Assen-like meteoric recovery ride: 16th at the flag was all he could achieve, despite riding at the race leader’s pace. Not a single point after qualifying so well in sixth. Not only that, but the Aprilia was completely new to the Motegi track: the last time they raced there, it was the old Aprilia with the 75° V-four. The current 90° V-four is a completely different beast and two seconds a lap faster than the old bike, while other bikes had only gained one second in three years away.

Given all that, a podium was absolutely on the cards. Maybe he couldn’t have beaten Miller but a second place would have left him but five points behind Quartararo. Of such mistakes are championships lost. It wasn’t his only handicap, however:

“I changed bikes in the pits but the second bike had the soft rear tyre and I can’t ride with that tyre, the bike was pushing the front everywhere. I was also nervous and made a lot of mistakes. It was a huge mistake but we are humans, we’re a team and I will try to win in Thailand.”

It was hardly any better for Bagnaia, who qualified an uncharacteristically lacklustre twelfth. During the race, he messed around at the blunt end of the top ten, always behind Quartararo but never able to get past. Desperation seemed to be setting in, even though finishing behind Quartararo would lose him only a couple of points to the championship leader.

On the last lap, it happened: Bagnaia tucked the front when trying a late lunge up the inside of Quartararo and it was a miracle that he missed the Yamaha as he slid to the outside of the track and into retirement.

He really didn’t need to try and make the pass, but he’s a racer: what would you expect him to do? But for the whole race, he was suffering from front tyre temperature.

“My front pressure was very, very, very high, so I was struggling to stop the bike,” he said. “This was one of the first times this year I was in a big group, so we weren’t prepared for that.

“One point can make a difference, so I was trying to do it,” he explained. “I was too ambitious – finishing behind Fabio or waiting for a safer opportunity to overtake would’ve been better, but I’m trying to win the championship.”

Ironically, the front tyre temperature issue is of Ducati’s own making: after all, it was they who introduced aero technology to MotoGP, the same aero that disturbs airflow behind the bike so much that the following bike is riding in lots of heat coming off the bike in front and also affects braking performance, putting further stress on the front tyre.

Bagnaia was undone not only by the rain-truncated practice sessions, which left him too little time to set the bike up but also by the horde of hungry Ducati riders all around him on track. There are still no team orders from Ducati and this could be Bagnaia’s undoing as none of the young guns are under any obligation to leave him alone or make his life easy. When will Ducati do something about this? After it’s too late for the championship? Three consecutive manufacturer’s titles are one thing, but it’s the rider’s championship that everyone remembers.

It’s not a complete disaster for the title top three: Bagnaia’s deficit has gone from 10 points to 18 and Espargaro’s from 17 points to 25 but it could have all been so different. This was one of the tracks that were meant to suit the Ducatis and, indeed, it did, with Miller taking a dominant and untroubled victory. No one will begrudge him the victory but this was meant to be the race that cemented Bagnaia’s challenge: not delivering the knock-out blow to Quartararo but getting in another punch before the circus heads to a more Yamaha-friendly track.

As it was, Quartararo was let off the hook by both his title rivals but still didn’t capitalise as much as he could have done. Eight points should have been, perhaps, 20 for second place (no one was beating Miller) but if Bagnaia wasn’t getting past Quartararo, then Quartararo wasn’t getting past anyone, either.

It wasn’t a vintage race but, by the same token, it wasn’t unexciting, especially with Brad Binder running in a podium position for the majority of the race. Second place was a brilliant reward for a gutsy ride on a rear tyre (hard) that he hadn’t tried the whole weekend. The gamble paid off and reinforced what Aleix Espargaro said after the Aragon round last weekend: that Binder on the KTM is one of the best riders on the grid at the moment.

After his pole position, much was expected of Marc Marquez, although there were doubts about his ability to last a whole race with his compromised fitness. However, even though he dropped out of the top three right from the get-go, he ran consistently in the top five and finished an impressive fourth, after a penultimate-lap overtake on Oliveira. The smile on his face as he sat back in his pit box will be worrying for the rest of the grid: Marquez is back and I for one will not be betting against him taking a win before the season is out.

But what of Miller? What a sublime demonstration of pace: completely demoralising for everyone behind him and yet there would be not one begrudging voice in the paddock afterwards, such is the measure of affection everyone feels for him. For once the luck was with Miller and he ended his 18-month victory drought in fine style.

“Congrats to Jack, he was on another level today,” stated future team-mate Brad Binder. “When he passed me, he literally disappeared in about three or four laps. I could see he was on a roll and knowing Jack I thought he’d have the hard tyre too. By about Lap 10, I knew we weren’t gonna see him again. Hats off to Jack and it’s gonna be awesome having him on the team next year.”

My guess is that Miller will be formidable on the KTM next year. As long as he’s not too formidable and beats Binder!

If any of Ducati’s top management are alive at the end of the season, it will be a miracle. For two consecutive races, factory rider and championship hopeful Pecco Bagnaia and Gresini rider Enea Bastianini have indulged in a last lap tussle that could so easily have ended in disaster for one or both of them. The stress levels in the factory pit must have been off the scale.

Maybe if it had happened six races ago, it wouldn’t have been so nerve-wracking. At that point, Bagnaia was 90 points adrift of championship leader Fabio Quartararo and the Yamaha rider was looking supremely comfortable not only at the head of the table but at the sharp end of the races.

Then, it all turned around as Bagnaia won four races on the trot and 120 points in the last five races, compared to Quartararo’s two DNFs and only 39 points.

Had Bagnaia won in Aragon, the points difference between the two would have been five! As it is, with Bastianini’s last lap lunge, the gap is ten points between first and second in the championship. Even better, Aleix Espargaro is only a further seven points behind Bagnaia. What was looking like a piece of cake for Quartararo is now a free-for-all between three riders.

The relative positions of Espargaro and Bastianini demonstrate the importance of consistency. Bastianini has won an incredible four races so far this year but sits 48 points off the top of the table in fourth spot. Espargaro has only one win but lots of podiums while Bastianini has been up and down like a yo-yo.

Consistency has also been Quartararo’s strong point but, in recent races, he’s been looking a little desperate. That was certainly the case in Aragon as he had to throw caution to the wind in order to stay at the sharp end and have a chance to fight for a podium, if not a win. He was where he was in turn four because of his qualifying position and that was his undoing. Had he qualified on the front row, Marquez would have affected someone else’s race, not Quartararo’s.

As Keith Heuwen, former GP rider talking on the crash.net website podcast, said: “I think to be honest, this kind of first lap incident was always going to happen to Quartararo sooner or later just because of the situation he’s in with that bike, and not being able to overtake.

“If he doesn’t qualify on the front row, he has no choice but to do these kind of flat-out first laps. Quartararo can’t wait until the back straight to pick people off, because of the top speed problem, so he’s got to go for it in the corners. And the start is the best chance to do that.

“But you can’t keep doing that race in, race out, at this level without an incident happening eventually. I just think Quartararo paid the price for having to get 110% out of that Yamaha all the time.”

The main problem for Quartararo now is that the next couple of races, at Motegi and Thailand, play to the Ducati’s strengths and, even if Quartararo can get in amongst the red army, he’ll be stuck with the same problem as before: an overheating front tyre and no way of attacking.

Of course, he has, in the past, got out front somehow and simply disappeared off into the distance but the psychological effect of watching his championship lead evaporate against a seemingly impregnable and numerous foe cannot be dismissed. He knows he’s fighting for his life and there’s not much he can do about it, especially with no wingman to cover his back. Bagnaia has seven wingmen!

Not that that matters too much if that wingman is Bastianini. I’ll admit I fully expected the Gresini rider to loyally sit behind Bagnaia, especially as any move would compromise his next year’s team and teammate’s championship, let alone risk-taking Bagnaia out completely as nearly happened in Misano, but it appears that, at present, there are no Ducati team orders: it’s a free-for-all. Of course, Bastianini has a mathematical chance of winning the championship but what he can’t do is skittle Bagnaia out of a race in his efforts to overtake which, as we have seen this year, isn’t that easy.

That doesn’t mean he’s not going to go for it while he has a chance of winning the title. Only once it becomes mathematically impossible or, at least, unlikely, will Bastianini help Bagnaia, as long as Bagnaia is still in the hunt. He too has not been perfect this year, despite the six victories. As we have seen, all it takes is one fall and everything is turned on its head.

(As an interesting aside, it was at the Aragon race last year that Bagnaia won his first race as a factory Ducati rider. From Aragon last year to Aragon this year have been 20 races and Bagnaia has won 10 of them!)

Until that last lap, the main talking point, of course, was Marc Marquez. Not only was he returning to racing after his operation, but his first (and only) lap was…eventful, to say the least.

What sickened me most was that, almost immediately, the Marquez haters crawled out of their smelly, Britney Spears-postered bedrooms in their mom’s house and started crying foul. Morons.

The first incident, which sadly overshadowed a meteoric start by Marquez as he rocketed from 13th on the grid to sixth, took out Quartararo. Marquez simply lost the back end as he accelerated out of the fourth corner and his natural reaction was to back off the throttle. Unfortunately, Quartararo was right behind him and couldn’t avoid clattering into the back of Marquez and suffered a really nasty-looking fall, chased and run over by his own bike. To the relief of all, he was all right but his race was over before it had even started.

Then, three corners later, Marquez’ ride height device briefly locked the back wheel, again when exiting a corner. This time it was Nakagami who fell foul in a bizarre accident that saw the Japanese rider and his bike sliding down the middle of the track, to be miraculously missed by the whole of the chasing pack. Marquez made it back to the pits but his race was run.

Neither accident was the result of bad riding on the part of Marquez: they were completely circumstantial and had nothing to do with aggression but to hear the Marquez haters bleating you’d think he’d pulled out a gun and shot the two riders. Of course, it was devastating for Quartararo’s championship but that’s racing.

Heuwen was also critical of the hysteria surrounding the incidents:

“When you’ve got a non-racing tubby journo behind his keyboard trying to emulate a 5 times, 6 times 7 times or in this case 8 times world champion, it just gets right up my nose!

“…there was one person speculating whether he did it on purpose! I mean, what goes on in these people’s heads? I’ve got no clue at all.”

What the second incident did do, of course, was break up the pack and, after it had all shaken out, it was Bagnaia in the lead. What was even better for South African fans was that Brad Binder was now in third after his own fast start that ensured he was ahead of all the carnage behind him. There he stayed for a long, long time, unable to match the pace of Bagnaia and Bastianini but resisting the attentions of Espargaro. A podium looked to be on the cards for Binder before Espargaro took it away from him with two laps left to run. Heartbreaking for Binder but it was nevertheless his best race for some time and shows what he can do if only he can qualify better.

Bastianini made his move on the last lap, the first last lap overtake since….Aragon last year! If overtaking is difficult in MotoGP this year, then someone forgot to tell the riders at Aragon!

All of a sudden, the championship has gone from a Quartararo Sunday stroll to the title, to a dog fight with five races left to run. The next two races might be Ducati territory but you can’t rule out Quartararo springing a surprise. He’s very much like Jorge Lorenzo: give him a clear track and the opportunity to do his own thing and he just disappears. The problem is finding that clear track.

Talking of Yamaha, Cal Crutchlow showed what a loss to the MotoGP grid he is as he returned to replace retired Andrea Dovizioso in the RNF Yamaha team. Despite not racing for a year, Crutchlow was able to run on the outskirts of the top ten before finishing 14th and taking two championship points. Not bad for a rusty old man on a bike that no-one but Quartararo can win on.

Four races in the next five weeks means a huge workload for everyone in the paddock. As it is, there will be no Friday morning running for any of the teams in Japan as the freight won’t arrive in time. All that does is make things even juicier for us, the fans, as we contemplate the prospect of a scintillating run to the championship flag in Valencia in November.

Forget what’s happened so far: the championship starts now.

Consistency: that’s what the results tell us wins championships. Look at Joan Mir’s title in 2020; one victory, yes, but a string of second and third places that just quietly racked up the points. True, 2020 was an unusual season, truncated due to all the lockdowns, but it proves my point. As does this season. Almost. Actually, maybe not!

Right now, Francesco Bagnaia is in the driving seat, after four back-to-back victories, bringing his tally to six for the season. This has brought him to within 31 points of Fabio Quartararo when the gap had been over 90. Those four wins have netted him 50 points more than Quartararo and all the momentum is with Bagnaia, especially as the next race is Aragon, where the long straight has Quartararo worried, as well he might be.

But hang on: this is the same Bagnaia who crashed out of three out of four races earlier in the season? Had he not done that, would he now be leading the championship? After all, he crashed out while at the sharp end of the race.

Because his consistency seems to come in blocks – three crashes, four victories – you don’t tend to notice it in the overall picture until you look back and analyse. But it’s there. Even Quartararo has been consistently inconsistent, with three victories and four-second places, but also retirement and some lacklustre performances out of fourteen rounds so far.

Behind all this, Aleix Espargaro is a model of consistency, with six podiums (including one win) and lots of top ten finishes and has only just been overtaken in the championship by the hard-charging Bagnaia. But Espargaro doesn’t seem at all worried. Maybe he’s just happy to be in this position, regularly running at the front?

But he just seems so calm. He knew before the start of the season that America, Austria and Misano would be difficult races for the Aprilia. America he was right about but Austria and Misano both netted him sixth-place finishes: useful points. Especially in light of Quartararo’s scoring. After the race at Assen, where Quartararo failed to finish and Espargaro battled from last to fourth in one of the best rides of the season, Espargaro was 32 points away from Quartararo and now he is still only 33 points away. Not bad after getting your three worse tracks out of the way!

However, he needs to be doing more than merely maintaining the gap if he is to challenge for the title. The number of races left is dwindling, meaning that at each race, he has to outscore Quartararo and Bagnaia by an ever larger margin and with those two at their respective peaks, that won’t be easy.

Maybe Aprilia should simply rejoice in what has been their best season by a long way. But, of course, that won’t happen – they’ll be completely gutted if they don’t take the title: they’re racers, what would you expect?

As Espargaro said after Misano: “In the past when I finished sixth, we had a party in Aprilia.” If they don’t do that anymore, then it’s a sign of how far they have come and what their expectations are from this year forward. No longer are they the also-rans but the step from finishing second or third in the championship to actually winning it is as big as from the back to the front of the grid, if not bigger, especially when you are up against teams that are in the habit of winning championships or, at the very least, races, consistently.

Towards the end of the Misano race, we had an interesting taste of what 2023 could look like as Enea Bastianini closed relentlessly on Bagnaia. The two will be teammates, of course, in 2023 and it was interesting to see what Bastianini would do to his future teammate who is currently fighting for the championship.

Bastianini would be keen to prove his worth with a win but, by the same token, he would not want to take Bagnaia out with a risky lunge up the inside. Nor would he want to harm his future team’s chances of the title by taking a few points off Bagnaia.

The fact that Bastianini couldn’t get past Bagnaia, even though the factory rider’s rear tyre was all but shot, harming his acceleration out of corners, was another indictment of Michelin’s front tyre. If anything, the Misano MotoGP was a bit of a procession, the top three or four running close together but no one having the extra grip for a banzai braking manoeuvre. Michelin is working on new tyres but these won’t be around until 2024 at the earliest. Until then, are we to be subjected to Formula One-style racing, without the benefit of pit stops providing the ‘overtaking’ excitement?

On Tuesday and Wednesday after the race, all the teams remained at Misano for the last test of the season. Of course, the main talking point was the fact that Marc Marquez would be making an appearance, his first time on track since his operation to finally fix the right arm break which had been so poorly fixed the first (several!) times.

That he is on the mend was evidenced by the fact that he completed 61 laps on Wednesday, finishing 12th on the timesheets. While that might not be the best news for Honda, they were trying out dozens of variations on a theme, including a preliminary 2023 bike, so it was clear they were not out for outright lap glory but looking forward to the development of next year’s bike, something that Marquez will be keen to have a hand in.

Also, a subject of scrutiny was the Yamaha. Quartararo has been vocal about the lack of straight-line speed compared to the Ducati and Aprilia and it is known that one of his conditions for signing a contract extension with the team was getting more top speed out of the Yamaha for 2023.

This they seem to have achieved, Quartararo’s best top speed is only 2 km/h slower than Jorge Martin’s Ducati. Yes, this speed was achieved with the aid of a tow from another rider, but the overall fastest lap time on Wednesday will give the Frenchman hope for next season, not to mention a boost for the remainder of 2022: the Yamaha team tried a new chassis and team manager Massimo Merengalli stated that it could appear in time for the next race in Aragon.

As usual, the post-Misano test asked more questions than it answered. For those answers, all we can do is wait for the remaining six races to run their course. What we all want, of course, is a championship that is in doubt right up to the last corner of the last race. On the current evidence of the form of Bagnaia, Quartararo and Espargaro, that’s not such an outrageous hope.

It has been suggested that a great sporting rivalry needs both protagonists to enter into a bitter loathing of each other, while still maintaining often well-hidden respect for their talents.

It is true that there has been the case in a large number of some of the great rivalries in racing – Prost/Senna, Fogarty/Slight, Schwantz/Rainey, Rossi/Gibernau, Rossi/Stoner, Rossi/Lorenzo, Rossi/Marquez. There have been just as many that have not been rancorous – Hailwood/Agostini, Marquez/Dovizioso for example. But it is the angry ones that we largely remember because the off-track animosity just adds more spice to the on-track war.

The telling point, however, is that, after their retirement, the once mortal enemies are often pleased to see each other in the pits when all the dust has settled on their rivalries. The scales of competitive enmity fall away and, even if they are never going to be bosom buddies, they can at least see someone who is just like themselves, one of the few who could ever do what they themselves did to an equal measure: there is a bond of ability.

They might even be able to look behind all the competitive bluster necessary to succeed and like the rival for who they are as a person.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that, while they were racing, they hated each other with all the passion they could muster and we, as fans, only want to remember them as wanting to kill each other on the track, however much the post-retirement bromances in pit lane might warm our hearts…!

So, how do we cope with the scenes at the end of the Austrian MotoGP race when the top three finishers – Bagnaia, Quartararo and Miller – and sixth-placed Aleix Espargaro all stopped together on the slowing-down lap and proceeded to have a chat about the race with an obvious passion for what they had all achieved, respect for each other and genuine pleasure for the guys who beat them. These are the guys who are leading the championship, for crying out loud: first, second, third and fifth in the overall standings and all with a strong chance – if a little mathematical in Miller’s case – of being crowned world champion.

Some will obviously bang on about how the fire has gone out of the sport and wish a rider would start a fight in the gravel trap after another rider took them out of the lead or make some barbed comment in the pits after the race.

But, in a world which is seemingly ever more bitter and angry, it is important for everyone to see just a bit of honest empathy and friendship in a sport which involves the competitors choosing to put their lives on the line and fight tooth and nail to beat the others and afterwards doing the equivalent of sitting down for a pint and having a good laugh about it. Ego has to come into the equation of their talent but I’d wager there’s a lot less in a motorcycle racer than in many other sports. Or, if there is a lot, it’s kept very much at bay.

Does the off-track friendship take away from the on-track action? Definitely not, because as soon as the lights go out, they’ll forget everything and want to kill each other anyway.

For sheer excitement, it would be hard to beat the Austrian MotoGP race of 2021, which ended with a nail-biting final lap as Brad Binder skated to victory wearing slicks on a wet track with wet-tyred rivals catching him hand over fist.

If 2022’s race was never going to match 2021 – and, indeed, it didn’t – that’s not to say it wasn’t a good race. Perhaps not the most overtaking or close fighting but enough to keep things interesting for 28 laps, including one of the most audacious overtakes of the season when Fabio Quartararo got past Jack Miller’s Ducati at the new chicane on the curving uphill section after turn one.

A Yamaha challenging a Ducati for second place in Spielberg was something no one could have predicted; a rider overtaking another between the two corners that comprise the chicane, as opposed to under braking for the first corner of the chicane was something else altogether. It was simply astonishing, all the more so when you consider that the next Yamaha was languishing down in 13th position (Morbidelli, whose dreadful season continued when he crashed out at the same chicane where Quartararo showed his genius.)

It was such a topsy turvy race. If a Ducati victory was almost guaranteed and Bagnaia subsequently made it look easy, that hid an awful lot of ups and downs, crashes, run-offs and retirements, all of which affected the final result more than overtaking.

For too long now, overtaking has been increasingly difficult as riders are on the ragged edge of front tyre performance. Michelin has come under constant criticism for the performance of the front tyre for a long time now but it would be unfair to lay all the blame at their door.

The Michelin front tyre was designed for a certain set of load parameters but developments in downforce aero technology have overloaded the front tyre. That means that when a rider gets close to the bike in front in order to attempt an overtaking manoeuvre, the front tyre overheats and loses grip as the pressure rises inside the tyre and the rider simply has nothing left with which to make a pass. Look at what happened to Jorge Martin when he tried to out-brake Jack Miller into turn one after following him closely for a lap or two: he just lost the front end and slid off the track, luckily not taking Miller with him.

“When you have a control-tyre championship, then the manufacturers have to design their motorcycles around the tyres,” Piero Taramasso, Michelin Motor Sport Manager said. “But by adding all the aero and the devices, then they aren’t designing their motorcycles around the tyres.”

So, for riders to complain that the tyre doesn’t match the motorcycle is a little unfair as the motorcycle has been developed out of all recognition to the motorcycle the tyre was designed for.

One temporary solution is to try and make a tyre that can run at lower pressures. Michelin is working to reduce the minimum tyre pressure than can be run on the current front tyre.

“I’d like to say that next year you can go to 1.8 or 1.7 bar with the tyre we use at the moment,” revealed Taramasso. “But we cannot go lower than this. When we started using this tyre five years ago the minimum pressure was 2.1 bar, then we went to 2.0 and then to 1.9…

“The goal (for the brand new tyre that might appear in 2024) is 1.7 bar and to make the tyre less sensitive to temperature and pressure changes,” said Taramasso. “The tyre will be very different, with a new profile and it will be made with different materials.”

It’s not going to be an instant fix but at least the problem is being addressed.

Another bombshell was dropped by Dorna in Austria. From 2023, MotoGP will follow other motorsport categories – Formula One, World Superbike, Touring Cars – in including Saturday sprint races over the MotoGP weekend. These would take the form of roughly half race-distance races, offering half points to the top nine finishers: 12 points for first, nine for second, seven for third, six for fourth, five for fifth, four for sixth, three for seventh, two for eighth and one for ninth.

Where will the sprint race fit into the overall schedule and how will both riders and machinery be able to stand the extra strain and pressure?

The two Friday practice sessions will now decide who has to qualify in Q1 and who will go straight through to Q2. Saturday’s early morning Q3 session now becomes like the current free practice 4, which is the race-pace session directly before qualifying where the rider can further fine-tune the race set-up rather than the out-and-out qualifying speed set-up.

Q1 and Q2 will take place earlier on Saturday, with the sprint race starting at 3 pm on Saturday. Overall track time will remain the same as in current race meetings so no extra strain will be put on engines or affect tyre allocations.

What might the concerns be? Well, it could be argued that having a practice session, two qualifying sessions and a race on the same day is a bit much but the great god television likes the idea of more coverage to keep people watching and looking at the advertising hoardings, let alone getting more people through the gates at the track on the Saturday.

Also, while the race start is one of the most exciting moments of any race, it is also one of the more dangerous moments and no one wants to be ruled out of the main race (or, worse, for a few races) because of another rider’s mistake in the sprint race.

Naturally, there are dissenting voices in the paddock, with some riders hating the idea and others loving it.

Aleix Espargaro: “I want to believe that the management of the championship thinks that this is the best thing for the sport, for the show, for the popularity of the championship. I don’t share this idea, but it’s just my opinion.

“I think it’s not the solution because I think the risk is going to be too high. I think that 42 starts (assuming a sprint race at every round in the championship, currently 21 races) in a season is too many. Dorna says that we will have the same track time, so nothing changes, but this is bullshit because there’s a big difference (in risk) between FP4 and a race, where they give points for the championship.

“But they choose what they want and we have to adapt. Let’s try, maybe it’s a good solution…”

Jack Miller was one of the voices that were unequivocally up for the idea:

“I’m a massive fan – it’s another chance of a bonus! Why not try it? I’ll enjoy it – it’ll be all or nothing. As a rider, it’ll make you want to risk more, but you won’t have to worry about tyres, fuel, or physical condition because in a lot of races you can’t push yourself to the absolute maximum the whole time, but for half-race distance, you should be able to. For sure it will increase the risk but at the end of the day we race motorcycles, we don’t do ballet. Why not (try sprint races)? Give it a crack and reassess at the end of the year.”

While the likes of Formula One currently has sprint races at selected races in a season, it looks as if Dorna is intending their system to be a permanent part of every race weekend. If that is the case, then the only thing to do is try it and reassess at the end of the season, as Miller suggests.

Personally, I think we are just going to have to wait and see if it is a good thing. The current system of one race on Sunday has been in place since the championship started way back in 1949. Change is inevitable but we have to be careful it is not solely driven by commercial pressures and that it is good for the sport as a whole.

It is no good being a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist as much good has come in the past from shaking up the status quo and it’s not as if Dorna is suggesting a change to the race-day protocol.

Perhaps more racing to enjoy is what many fans want. As long as the teams and riders can cope and it doesn’t dilute the Sunday action, then why not give it a go?

How do you even begin to report on the incredible day’s racing at Silverstone? Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP all produced some of the best racing we’ve seen all year, and it’s not been a bad year of racing so far.

It was just one of those days that left you with a smile on your face, all the wider for being five long weeks since the last one. If we had to wait, then it was worth it and it wasn’t even as if we had to make excuses for finding it so exciting: it genuinely was.

If the championship is still Quartararo’s to lose, then at least Bagnaia’s victory closed things up a little and Aleix Espargaro minimised the damage to his points score by finishing right behind Quartararo in ninth, a heroic ride considering the pain he must have been in with what was later diagnosed as a fractured heel after a nasty high-side in practice.

For a few laps, it looked as if Johann Zarco might finally win his first race, after converting pole position into the lead. Quartararo slotted into second and Miller third, Bagnaia fourth and Rins, something of a Silverstone specialist, fifth.

It was going to be one of those races where the order was never the same on consecutive laps. Rins started to look quick and got by Bagnaia, while Quartararo took his long-lap penalty and slotted back in fifth.

Then Zarco yet again threw away his best chance of victory in many races as he slid out leaving Miller leading, with Rins in second, which he would convert to first place on the same lap. Meanwhile, Jorge Martin passed Quartararo for fourth, who in turn, had Viñales breathing down his neck.

No one was managing to get away from the rider behind and one second covered the top five runners. Bagnaia disposed of Miller and then got past Rins who would continue to sink down the order as the race went on with tyre troubles. Then Viñales started to make his move as he passed Martin for fourth, which would become third soon after as Rins slowed, followed by second when he passed Miller.

The result was in doubt right up to the last lap. Maverick Viñales showed that he too is starting to gel with the Aprilia as he hounded Bagnaia in the closing stages and was even ahead for a brief moment on the penultimate lap before settling for second – his second podium in a row. It was, by any standards, a brilliant race by a clearly rejuvenated Viñales.

Much had been made of the brevity of the long-lap penalty that Quartararo had to take, his many practice efforts showing that he lost around 0.8 seconds off his lap time. In the race, however, it was enough to drop him to fifth, from where he simply could not make up any ground to those ahead of him. We all assumed that it was a return of the front tyre temperature issue the Yamaha suffers from when following other riders but, in actual fact, it was his rear tyre that was giving him the problems, running far too hot.

Bagnaia’s victory was all the more unexpected as he had given no warning of his potential during practice and qualifying, as he had done in Assen. Even at the beginning of the race, he was overshadowed by Zarco and Miller’s Ducatis but, as the race went on, he just got stronger and stronger and was able to repulse Viñales’ attack.

Bastianini had a great race to fourth, including passing his rival for the second factory Ducati seat, Martin, in the closing stages, Martin, for his part, had a high-profile race, including holding the fastest lap for a while. Oliveira on the KTM also shone, while his teammate Brad Binder was left to rue the wrong choice of the rear tyre.

It didn’t matter where you looked, there was some great racing going on. Was this really the race track that had to cancel all the races in 2018 on race day as the track simply wouldn’t drain away the torrential rain properly after being re-surfaced? Having said that, this is Silverstone that saw the epic battle between Rins and Marquez in 2019, Rins taking the victory by mere centimetres at the line.

It’s a brilliant track, at once fast and flowing but with some technical bits: if your bike works well at Silverstone, it should work well anywhere and that has to be a worry for Quartararo, as the Ducati has now shone at two tracks that are supposedly not great Ducati tracks: Assen and Silverstone. If Miller and Bagnaia – and Martin and Bastianini – can continue this form into the next few races, the championship certainly isn’t over by a long shot. Add into the equation Quartararo’s new-found calm approach to relentlessly rack up the points even when a win isn’t on the cards and we are in for a hum-dinger of a race to the championship and what a way Silverstone was to kick-start that race.