MotoGP has officially confirmed the Barcelona circuit as the replacement venue for the traditional Valencia finale, which could not take place in 2024 due to devastating floods in the area.
The replacement race will take place under the name of Motul Solidarity Grand Prix of Barcelona, and the weekend will play host to "various initiatives to support relief for Valencia".
Jazzing up a long-shot title battle was of course never a primary or even a secondary consideration in picking a replacement venue, but Barcelona's unique characteristics mean the choice of the track does impact the championship picture.
Jorge Martin leads Pecco Bagnaia by 24 points with 37 available, but would lose any tiebreak - meaning he needs 14 points (either gained all by himself or in combination with any points lost by Bagnaia) to guarantee himself the title.
So does the choice of Barcelona make that task any less straightforward and a shocking final-round upset any more likely?
Track profile
Speaking about the state of the title fight at the conclusion of the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang, Bagnaia repeatedly emphasised the "tricky" nature of the Barcelona track.
"In Barcelona everything can happen. I crashed in the sprint race when I was leading with [a gap of] one second, trying to avoid any mistakes, and I crashed the same.
"Two corners in Barcelona are quite tricky, Turn 2 and Turn 5."
For much of the MotoGP grid, this is the archetypical low-grip track - resurfaced in 2018 but incredibly slippery all the same.
"It's my favourite place in the world - but I think the grip is too low," acknowledged home hero Aleix Espargaro earlier this year.
"It's too low. It's true that I prefer low grip than a bumpy track, that's for sure. But I think the [lack of] grip is dramatic, yeah."
That obviously makes mistakes - the kind of mistakes that could overwrite a 24-point title lead - more likely, albeit the DNF rate hasn't been outrageously high.
And, in something that plays in Martin's favour instead, a low-grip surface that chews through the tyres means much bigger gaps between competitors, particularly in the Sunday race, which will further mitigate risk for him.
May's evidence
Barcelona is one of the three tracks this season where Ducati suffered a race defeat - with Espargaro picking up a sprint win for Aprilia.
But, as Bagnaia alluded to before, that sprint win was only made possible by him falling off on the final lap, albeit with the caveat that before he did so the likes of Trackhouse Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez and KTM rider Brad Binder had crashed out of the lead, too.
Over the full 24-lap race on Sunday, Bagnaia and Martin were 1.7 seconds apart at the chequered flag - but nobody else got even within double-digit seconds of Bagnaia.
Bagnaia's overall record in Barcelona isn't amazing, but he is clearly fast there - and should be in with a very strong chance at the full 37 points, especially as beating him on track will not be a priority for Martin.
But Martin will gladly sign up for the same pecking order as earlier in the year, and there is reason to believe his bike - and Bagnaia's bike - may be more dominant still given how much stronger it has been lately compared to the start of the season.
And okay, KTM has been consistently potent in low-grip conditions and can probably give Martin something to worry about, but Aprilia has declined as the season went on.
Bagnaia suggested at Sepang whether Martin's good friend Espargaro would not do anything to compromise Martin's title chance, but it might well not even come to that given that the RS-GP has not been particularly competitive as of late.
Inside Ducati
Bagnaia has consistently emphasised that to win this title he will need help - "help" as in being fast, as opposed to "help" in the team order sense - from two riders in particular.
Those riders are Marc Marquez and Enea Bastianini, who are in the middle of their own fight for third in the championship and have been the only riders to even semi-consistently challenge Martin and Bagnaia.
But in that sense, the choice of Barcelona is bad, bad news for Bagnaia.
As he explained his somewhat below-par pace at Sepang, Marquez said that since his career-changing injury in 2020, for one reason or another, he has been more limited than before at his less-favoured tracks.
"There are two circuits in the calendar that I'm struggling a lot historically," he said. "Here and Montmelo [Barcelona]."
And though you'd expect Bastianini to be potent given the tyre-saving demands of Barcelona, his MotoGP record here is actually horrible. He has not been comfortable on the front tyre there, struggling with the hard braking zones.
Bastianini's Valencia record is also generally unimpressive, so that's maybe much of a muchness for Bagnaia - but Marquez would have been a much bigger threat to Martin at Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
Almost winter
But all the knowledge we have about how MotoGP riders and bikes go in Barcelona come with the caveat of May running.
This will be mid-November - initial weather forecasts suggest MotoGP will go racing in an air temperature of around 8-10°C lower than what it had for the race in May.
"The conditions will be more tough compared to June because it'll be cold," said Bagnaia - but it will be interesting to see whether, given the loads and wear generated by the Barcelona circuit, colder tyres will actually be that much of an issue.
Mission impossible?
Martin has scored fewer than the required 14 points in only three of the 19 rounds so far this season.
Bagnaia needs to outscore him by 24 points or more, and that kind of points swing between the two has happened twice this season - but in both cases it was Martin outscoring Bagnaia (by 26 at Portimao and 28 at Aragon), not the other way around.
Bagnaia's likeliest path to a title is two Martin errors, or defeating Martin on Saturday and getting an error from him on Sunday. That's still eminently mathematically possible - it was possible at Valencia and it will be possible in Barcelona.
But as for the specifics of the circuit, given the two title contenders' Sunday dominance earlier in the season and the struggles of Marquez and Bastianini, a Valencia-to-Barcelona swap actually probably makes a Martin title even likelier than before.
