Does Jorge Martin's historic championship victory on a satellite bike open the floodgates for a new egalitarian era of factory teams being regularly beaten to MotoGP titles by their customers?
No.
In fact it's hard to envisage when the stars are going to align for anything like this to happen again. And there are multiple reasons for that, some obvious and some more convoluted.
THE BAND'S BREAKING UP
First, the obvious. Pramac's the only satellite team to win titles (teams' last year, riders' this year) in the MotoGP era.
It's not only losing the rider that led it to that success as Martin heads to Aprilia but it's relinquishing the bike that made it possible as Pramac ditches Ducati for Yamaha.
With due respect to VR46/Marco Bezzecchi's 2023 effort, Gresini/Enea Bastianini's 2022 exploits and Petronas SRT/Fabio Quartararo's 2020 run, Pramac is the only satellite team to go beyond 'gallant underdog long shot' title bid territory onto 'this really could happen' (and did) turf.
And it's not going to be capable of that with Miguel Oliveira, Jack Miller and some Yamahas. The 2021 champion Fabio Quartararo was the top Yamaha rider in 13th this year, while Miller and Oliveira were just behind 14th and 15th respectively.
But Pramac's change of circumstance isn't the most significant factor here.
RIDERS STILL WANT FACTORY SEATS
Taking its satellite teams seriously played an important part in Ducati's trajectory from the MotoGP midfield to domination, and now it's proved you can be champion with one - so surely riders will be more willing than ever to take satellite rides?
Actually, and ironically given the 2024 title outcome, it's the opposite.
Martin and Marco Bezzecchi are readily leaving the fold of MotoGP's dominant manufacturer because they want a factory seat above all else - even if it's potentially slower.
How long would Pedro Acosta have been content at Tech3 - regardless of his machinery spec - if KTM hadn't immediately brought him up to its main team?
There are exceptions: Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini picked Tech3 KTMs (pictured below) for 2025 when Aprilia could've given either a works seat, and Johann Zarco seems content enough leading Honda's recovery from LCR rather than the team-formerly-known-as-Repsol.
But the overwhelming trend remains that riders see too much lure in getting the full focus, development time and prestige of a factory team place, and factories still want the main and most marketable contenders to be racing in works colours.
That's held true despite the unprecedented levels of satellite team success and factory technical support for satellite teams, with all five manufacturers offering equipment parity for at least one customer rider in 2025.
Ultimately riders want the endorsement of full factory status, and factories want satellite riders and teams good enough to help their development and take points off their rivals, but for their best riders to be in their flagship team as soon as they can.
By the time a rider is capable of a title win, the chance of them not having a factory seat is slim.
Which brings us to why Martin wasn't in Ducati's flagship team in 2024...
MARTIN BEING STUCK AT PRAMAC WAS AN ANOMALY
Martin and Pramac being championship-capable in 2024 wasn't just down to having the best bike.
The champion also credited how well attuned he and Pramac were in their fourth season together, and he had a very good point.
But he was only at Pramac that long due to a run of weird circumstances.
Going into 2022, Martin's rookie season had been so strong it seemed a foregone conclusion that he'd get a factory Ducati promotion for 2023 in place of Miller.
Then amid a troubled pre-season Ducati made a last-minute call to switch back to its 2021 engine spec for Bagnaia and Miller's works bikes, but Pramac pair Martin and Zarco had to stick with the intended 2022 engine. The scale of that disadvantage has only really been admitted in the years since.
Martin's subsequent erratic and disappointing second season coincided with Bastianini's brilliant breakthrough Gresini year on an older bike, and Bastianini duly queue-jumped Martin into the 2023 works seat.
Ducati had the option to swap them back around at the end of 2023, and may well have done so on pure performance had it not been for the lingering doubt over whether Bastianini's poor season was entirely due to an early injury.
Hence Martin was stuck at Pramac again.
Had he not suffered his own serious injury at Portimao early in his rookie season and kept his momentum up beyond his brilliant debut races, it's not inconceivable that he would've been yanked out of Pramac after just one year. Instead, thanks to that injury, a quirk of engine spec and someone else's injury, he was heading into year four.
And then along came the most successful rider of the past decade - Marc Marquez - to block him off from the factory promotion once again.
That's the kind of bizarre intertwining of circumstances that keeps a rider as obviously good as Martin on a satellite bike that long. It's not going to happen often.
MARTIN HAD A BIT OF AN OPEN GOAL
This wasn't a case of Bagnaia throwing the title away more than Martin winning it. But the circumstances that had to align for Martin's brilliant consistency to pay off so well were unusual.
A more consistent second works Ducati rider, another manufacturer remotely close to Ducati a few times during the season, and a few of those Martin podiums on bad days might have been mere top-six finishes. That could've been game-changing.
Its tinkering with concession rules shows MotoGP won't accept an ongoing situation where one manufacturer is as near unbeatable as Ducati is now. Ducati's eagerness to replace Bastianini shows a team as good as Ducati won't tolerate an underperforming second rider too long.
The circumstances that prevented there being more bikes between Bagnaia and Martin more often were yet another anomaly. We may see a title favourite have as many DNFs as Bagnaia again but the chances are their team-mate or a factory rival will be best-placed to capitalise next time that happens.
Above all else, Martin is 2024 MotoGP world champion because he rode an absolutely brilliant season and achieved something unprecedented.
But it may take more than just brilliance for anyone else to win a title on a satellite bike in the foreseeable future.
