The new MotoGP world champion Joan Mir is without a doubt the most deserving rider on the grid who could have lifted this year’s crown thanks to his stellar consistency and impressive ability to unleash speed when he needed to.
But Mir arguably wouldn’t have had as easy a time if some of his rivals hadn’t cracked under pressure.
All looked fast on their day – and in fact with many of them looking considerably faster than Mir at various points through the manic season – but he was handed a big boost by their various misdemeanours and disasters.
So where did it all go wrong for Mir’s rivals? Who cracked, who was let down by mechanical issues, and who just suffered from old-fashioned bad luck?
Alex Rins
There’s an argument to be made that while many of Mir’s rivals were struck down by bad luck and mistakes, Alex Rins has been one of the few to match his Suzuki team-mate in terms of consistency and performance this year.
Unfortunately, to win a title with consistency you have to be the most consistent, and that’s perhaps where it all went wrong.
It was by no means a flawless year for Rins. He crashed heavily in qualifying for the opening round and damaged his shoulder and then scored only six points from two races, when a poor few rounds for Mir was at least damage control for Rins.
He’s been incredibly consistent in the second half of the season, ended up on the podium at nearly every opportunity.
In fact, his only real issue has been that his team-mate has been doing the same for longer.
Mir built up an unassailable points lead by the time Rins was showing himself able to fight for the podium every weekend.
Fabio Quartararo
2020 all started so well for Fabio Quartararo, with the satellite Yamaha rider showing why he deserved his 2021 promotion to the factory team by taking dominant victories in the opening two races and setting himself up as the man to beat.
Unfortunately for him, beating Quartararo proved almost laughably easy for his title rivals at the next three races.
Able to be incredibly fast when everything is going well and when his Yamaha M1 gets the rear grip it needs from the circuit, the problem is that without that grip he’s nowhere.
Having scored 50 points from the opening two races, he then only managed to score 20 from the next four, as Brno and the Red Bull Ring proved to be weekends from hell not only for Quartararo but for all the Yamaha riders.
The moment the championship went once and for all came at Misano, when a rookie mistake in the first of two races there cost him his title lead.
Caught out by the pressure in his front tyre increasing dramatically, Quartararo’s fall allowed Mir the first chance to break away.
And it only took a week to show us how solid a points-scoring finish he threw away. He was fighting for the podium in the second leg of the Misano double, with only a last lap track limit warning cost him third. The 13 points he scored for fourth still showed what could have been.
Franco Morbidelli
Franco Morbidelli is arguably the unluckiest man on the 2020 grid, because he should well be going into next weekend’s final round of the year challenging Mir for the title – but for the actions of others rather than himself.
Problem number one hit him at the second round of the year at Jerez, when he became the second Yamaha rider in two weekends to lose an engine. With it going bang in the race while he was on course for a solid second place, Morbidelli lost 20 points through no fault of his own.
Then, two rounds later in Austria, he was again caught up in someone else’s mistake when an aggressive overtake from Johann Zarco went wrong for both of them, leaving Morbidelli tumbling through the air at insane speeds.
He was lucky to walk away almost completely unscathed, but it cost him another eight points.
Had he gone into this weekend’s Valencian Grand Prix carrying those additional 28 points, things would look very different.
Morbidelli would’ve been second in the championship and 17 points down on Mir rather than the 37 points back that Quartararo and Rins were, and that would have made for a very different Sunday at Valencia – especially given Morbidelli won.
Maverick Vinales
While everyone on a Yamaha has been plagued with mechanical problems in 2020 thanks to the team’s decision to use weaker (and illegal) valves in its engines at the opening round, no one has been left dealing with the fall-out more than Maverick Vinales.
He was the first of Yamaha’s quartet to lose an engine at Jerez and subsequently forced to crack open the seals on a third (before the valve issue was understood never mind resolved).
That meant he spent 10 races using the same two engines – an engineering masterclass from Yamaha but a disaster for its hamstrung rider.
It all came to a head for him at the European Grand Prix last weekend, when Yamaha was forced to concede defeat, open engine number six and take a pitlane start for exceeding Vinales’ allocation of five, all but ending any lingering title aspirations.
Takaaki Nakagami
The LCR Honda rider quickly adopted a similar approach to that of Mir, trading outright speed for consistency.
Going 10 races without missing out on a top 10 finish, he was doing everything right and getting faster and faster as the year went on.
Unlucky to miss out on a victory in Austria thanks to the red flags coming out and ending his charge, Nakagami’s chances of a first podium (or even win) looked higher and higher as the year went on – as did his title chances while everyone else struggled to manage the highs and lows of 2020.
Unfortunately, that all came crashing down for the Japanese racer at Aragon.
Starting the second round there from pole position, his nerves got the better of him and he didn’t even finish the opening lap, picking the absolute worst moment of the year to score no points and to end his own hopes.
Andrea Dovizioso
Arguably, Andrea Dovizioso’s hopes ended before the season had even started, with the Ducati rider completely squandering the chance to understand and adapt to Michelin’s new rear tyre in pre-season testing.
Never coming to grips with the newly-designed rubber, it’s been the bete noire of his entire year.
Dovizioso was able to be fast when conditions allowed him to ride around the issues, like in Austria or at Jerez, but conversely when he’s off the pace he hasn’t been fifth, he’s been 15th.
Gone is the insanely fast Dovi of 2017 and the ultra-consistent one of 2018, replaced by someone who has spent more of the year as an also-ran than a challenger.
And after three years of finishing runner-up and cursing that pesky Marquez, he’s got to know that his best-ever chance has been wasted.
Marc Marquez
The easiest moment of the year to identify, and the biggest what-if. It all went wrong for Marquez on lap 22 of the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez, back in July, when he made a devil-may-care decision that might well haunt him for the rest of his life.
Starting the season as reigning champion and as the obvious favourite, he started the race at Jerez the clear favourite as well thanks to his practice pace.
But as always happens in racing, it only took a tiny mistake to set off a chain reaction that ended his title hopes and his whole season.
Running wide early in the race and losing contact with the leaders, he put on one of the rides of his life to carve back through the field and into podium contention.
In hindsight, he should have settled for that – but that’s not Marquez’s style.
Pushing on to challenge Quartararo for the win, he ran out of tyres in the closing lap, lost the rear, and cartwheeled himself into the gravel at high speed. Struck by his bike, he badly broke his right humerus.
Rushing back into action only five days later only compounded the issue instead of keeping his hopes alive.
Doing even more damage in his ill-fated attempt to ride, he has spent the rest of the season watching from the sofa, not only failing to defend his crown but failing to score a single point.
