At the end of the media day for the final round of the 2024 MotoGP season, there was already a slight but certainly noticeable difference between the demeanours of the two protagonists, with the chasing Pecco Bagnaia definitely projecting a much calmer persona than that of championship leader Jorge Martin.
It was notable enough that we wrote about it as part of our pre-event build-up of the race, but it’s fair to say that I didn’t really expect to see the difference between the pair widen quite as much as it did after a first day on track that very much established reigning champion Bagnaia as the one in the better position - even if his hopes of retaining the crown is still slim.
The Italian has experience of this sort of situation - he’s gone into the past two season finales in control of, but not confirmed as, the champion, after all. This year, he’s trying to claw back a 24-point advantage - a position that a notably relaxed Bagnaia seems to find quite freeing.
Even more impressively is that it came despite a bit of an up-and-down day. An odd crash early on, after a close call with Maverick Vinales during the practice start session, wasn’t enough to slow him down in the afternoon, and a relatively rare P1 in the opening day’s standings probably didn’t do much to dent his confidence.
Opening his Friday debrief with an apology to the English speakers present for his grammatical error during the previous day’s press conference (he misspelt marry as ‘marrie’ while encouraging Martin to propose to his girlfriend should he win the title!), he spent the full six and a half minutes cracking jokes and generally looking like someone without a care in the world.
He even, in fact, found the opportunity to make a self-deprecating dig at his drink driving conviction from 2022, the first time he’s even mentioned what has been for the past two years a completely taboo subject.
“I want to say that in 2022,” he explained, “this was my first title, and I arrived here in a similar situation to Jorge.
“I arrived here with 23 points of gap and without the sprint, so my goal was to finish 14th.
“I was very under pressure, I finished the race eighth, ninth, I don’t remember. It’s difficult, it’s very difficult to manage it.
“So right now I feel better, but I am jealous and I would like to be in his situation!”
Martin, on the other hand, suffered a much more tense day even if he avoided, unlike Bagnaia, any sudden impacts with the Barcelona asphalt.
Looking quite apprehensive on track and having a few very close calls that could very nearly have turned into a crash, he struggled to string together a lap at the end of the second session, eventually ending up in fifth, less than three tenths of a second behind Bagnaia but looking nowhere near as comfortable.
And that nervousness extended to off the track as well, with a bit of an angry moment with his team during the session rapidly downplayed afterwards even if the Pramac Ducati rider did admit that he was feeling things differently inside the team garage this weekend.
“There is a lot of noise in the paddock, and when you want to call someone you can only make some gestures,” he explained of his attempt to catch the attention of crew chief Daniele Romagnoli.
“I know I looked agitated, and I was a little bit, but it’s more that I wanted to speak with Daniele but I couldn’t. Normally he’s always there, but he wasn’t.
“I want everything to be the same as always, and this wasn’t, and that’s why I was a bit nervous.”
It’s hardly the first time we’ve seen something similar from title contenders on the verge of wearing the crown for the first time, mind you, as Bagnaia himself conceded - and the reality is that while he might be finding himself on edge right now, he’s still got the decisive advantage over his rival.
Able to win overall on Saturday with a victory in the sprint, the nervousness we saw on Friday perhaps makes that unlikely right now - but it’s going to take something more than what could be a rather flat weekend to deny Martin the prize.
