A Silverstone double sealed by two late-race masterclasses was exactly the kind of thing Ducati was banking on from Enea Bastianini when it first made the contentious decision to promote him over Jorge Martin into the works team a year ago.
A bad injury, and recurring struggles with the new format and the new Ducatis, mean Bastianini is now on his way out (while Ducati hasn't held on to Martin either).
But the rider it had once bet on is still in there, and his Silverstone success - coupled with a below-par weekend for team-mate Pecco Bagnaia - means he comes out of the British Grand Prix with his strongest claim in months to being a potential title challenger.
Bastianini himself insists he isn't one yet. And it clearly remains a massive long shot - but here are three reasons to believe he could do what fellow Ducati rider Marc Marquez and his ever-fading Ducati GP23 haven't quite pulled off, i.e. make a two-horse race for the title a three-rider battle instead.
Less error-prone
Martin and Bagnaia have been obviously class of the field in MotoGP 2024, which means they have been consistently in line for the biggest points. And that, in turn, has meant big points losses for one or the other as they traded errors.
Martin had spotted Bagnaia a significant haul by crashing out late in the German Grand Prix. Bagnaia returned the favour by exiting the Silverstone sprint. Both have made high-profile mistakes, mistakes to a certain degree unforced - or at least individual - and this has largely continued the theme of their title fight from the year before.
It is, Bagnaia has argued, a natural byproduct of how quickly they have been going and the specific dynamics created by the new and improved Michelin rear pushing the front.
Bastianini has been slower than both, by and large, but he has also been tidier. He has had two retirements - a crash in the Jerez sprint where conditions were freaky enough for 14 other riders to crash, too, and contract with Martin at Mugello.
Otherwise, he has stayed on quite well. It's kept him scoring points in the weekends where his pace wasn't quite up to par, and he proved his mettle at Silverstone, running at brutal late-race pace to clinch the grand prix win without any real threat of crashing out.
Considering this is a rider who also finished all but one race of his title-clinching Moto2 campaign - albeit his one non-score was a proper bad crash in Austria, one of the worst the intermediate class has seen in recent years - there's a past blueprint for him to follow, while Bagnaia/Martin can't simply bank points because they have one another to worry about.
A good run of tracks
There's no huge surprise in Bastianini having a good run at Silverstone, with everyone's rubber taking a beating and him unquestionably the grid's specialist in keeping it alive.
But he's well-equipped to score big at the upcoming venues, too.
Austria? There's some track record there of success, primarily based off a good showing in his sole Gresini season. Aragon? He snatched a win from Bagnaia there that same year. Two grands prix at Misano? He's good there.
The rest of the calendar is not as uniformly kind, but does include Sepang, where he's been mega.
He has to be pitch-perfect at each of the aforementioned tracks to stand a change in the points table, and there will definitely be a track or two where Bastainini is less comfortable and thus exposed by a slow start to his weekend - which will translate to a third- or fourth-row qualifying and neuter his prospects in the race - but the ingredients are there for a strong run-in overall.
The ace up his sleeve
The curious thing about Bastianini as a rider is that qualifying on the front row and winning the sprint made him a much bigger favourite for the main race than either of those things would've done for anyone else on the grid.
"If he has a clean run to Turn 1, surely he'll minimise the damage from a typically tentative approach to the early laps."
"If he's in the mix at lap 10, surely he'll have the race won by lap 20."
Both of those things did indeed pan out - if anything, Martin held out longer than you may have expected given Bastianini's reputation.
On Saturday, Bastianini argued: "I think I was not really lucky in the first part of the championship. I caught a lot of yellow flags [in qualifyings], a lot of crashes. And it hasn't been simple for me to close the gaps in the races.
"Like this it's much easier. I've suffered a lot less compared to usual."
"I think these two wins will give him a lot of motivation to bounce back," said Bagnaia of his team-mate on Sunday.
"And it's normal that he will be fighting for the championship until the last races. He's very fast. He's very good on used tyres. We always have to think about him."
"Not a title contender"
For all that, a 49-point gap remains a huge one to close, one that can't be eradicated even with a perfect weekend.
And Bastianini himself actually made the most persuasive case for why he shouldn't be seen as in the mix yet.
"For the moment I think I'm not a title contender, because Pecco and Jorge have demonstrated more consistency than me in every race. And these two riders are always on top.
"Me, if I want to be a title contender, I have to improve in that direction. It's a good starting point, this one.
"If at the end of the championship I have this opportunity, let's see what happens."
His actions in 2024 so far have indicated so far that he's speaking the truth here - would a rider who believes he's in the championship picture throw a bunch of points in the trash the way he did in Barcelona?
But the picture has changed. And, all the while, there is no indication of team tactics being deployed here - Ducati would surely favour a Bagnaia title against Martin, but rejected the opportunity to use Bastianini to help Bagnaia in a Fabio Quartararo title tussle in 2022, so is highly unlikely to suddenly enact team orders here. Especially as Bastianini, Tech3 KTM-bound next year, has little incentive to help out.
Bastianini, therefore, can focus on his own campaign. The obstacles in front of him remain massive - from here on out, he needs to always qualify there or thereabout, keep his nose clean in the sprints and hope for straightforward full-distance grands prix that allow him to maximise the main skill he has over Bagnaia and Martin.
He'll need to maintain this level of performance, but also for Bagnaia and Martin to help him out by continuing to leave points on the table.
"He's really smooth, he reminds me of Dani [Pedrosa] on the best days. Flowing, accelerating really smooth, taking care of the rear tyre," said Aprilia veteran Aleix Espargaro of Bastianini.
"He needs to understand what is different on these type of days and if he is able to understand this, he will be clearly the man to beat, he will be one of the favourites for the title.
"Because in this weekend, the feeling from outside is that it was very easy for him."
With 37 points on offer per weekend, Bastianini getting in amongst the battle and getting himself in range at Valencia is now far from unthinkable. He could crash this party yet.
