Pecco Bagnaia knows he will need a chaotic MotoGP finale to steal the 2024 title from Jorge Martin - but says he isn't willing to use every trick in the book.
A crash in the Saturday sprint at Sepang had put Bagnaia in a desperate position points-wise relative to Martin, with even winning all the remaining races nowhere near enough by itself.
And Bagnaia was very open in his expectations ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday that, if he does win, Martin will follow him home in second and minimise the points loss.
Indeed, that turned out to be the exact outcome on Sunday - but it came after a three-lap dogfight following the race being restarted, during which the lead changed hands a double digit amount of times.
Bagnaia had hoped beyond hope that either Marc Marquez or Enea Bastianini - the only two riders who ever looked anywhere near challenging the two title contenders at Sepang - could get involved and attack Martin, but Marquez crashed from third and Bastianini simply didn't have the pace to get near the championship rivals.
"We know that right now in the championship we are making the difference, and it's giving us the potential to open the gap," said Bagnaia of Martin and himself.
"Even if Jorge slowed down a bit, he still finished seven seconds ahead of third."
DID BAGNAIA BACK MARTIN UP?
In that context, Bagnaia's early-race fight with Martin looked reminiscent of the tried-and-true championship battle tactic of backing up your opponent into the pack when trying to overturn a large championship gap.
Jorge Lorenzo famously attempted this in the 2013 Valencia finale when fighting a rookie Marc Marquez, though he soon threw in the towel and just settled for dominating the race.
And this year Maria Herrera tried exactly this against main rival Ana Carrasco in the final race of the women's world championship WorldWCR - and came up just one corner short of making it work.
Bagnaia, however, insisted this wasn't his approach, and that he was simply running his own pace while trying to ensure he retained clean air and kept his front tyre from overheating.
His second and third laps were a 1m49.3s and a 1m59.5s, before a pair of 1m59s efforts established the gap to Martin and allowed Bagnaia to manage the race from there.
Bagnaia insisted he never even considered deliberately slowing Martin to try to get him to lose more points.
"I'm a clean guy and a true sportsman. I don't like these kinds of things," he said. He also said he wants to win "in a fair way" - which this would not be.
CAN ANYONE HELP BAGNAIA?
Bagnaia has thus accepted that he is fairly powerless to make Martin more vulnerable to losing points at Barcelona, indicating that his hopes laid with the tricky track there catching his rival out.
"We still have a chance," Bagnaia told MotoGP.com. "We really need some help from others.
"In case of a win he'll finish second, because we are on another level.
"I will try to help everybody during the weekend - to lend my slipstream, that someone will follow."
But the list of riders who can "follow" in a conventional race at Barcelona could well be at zero names.
It is one of the worst tracks for both Marquez and Bastianini.
And while Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro did win the sprint there this year, Bagnaia doesn't expect a helping hand, given the close friendship between Espargaro and Martin.
"I know that in Barcelona also Aleix Espargaro will be strong and will help Jorge all the weekend. But I just need someone that will go in between me and him [Martin]."
Why Martin engaged in battle
The early-laps lead battle looked particularly precarious for Martin, given it was one he could afford not to have and one that carried the obvious risk of a non-score.
Equally though, a win would've made Martin's task for Barcelona much easier still - and he believed he had the pace to give it a good go.
"I'm really happy that I was able to attack Pecco," said Martin.
"It's really difficult to overtake somebody like him, who brakes so, so hard and can stop the bike really well. But I was able to do it.
“I think if I could keep first position for one complete lap, everything would've changed a bit - but at the end he had an amazing pace, and for me it was too risky to keep attacking."
THE LATE SCARE
Martin then "relaxed a bit too much" once Marquez crashed out behind him - effectively settling for second, although briefly going back on the attack (and putting his 20 points at risk) when he caught a sniff of Bagnaia coming back towards him in the final laps.
"In Turn 9 I went a bit wide and I almost crashed. I said 'that's enough, second is perfect'."
Was that small pace let-off - culminating in a 2m00.7s lap from Bagnaia that allowed Martin to take over half a second out of him - a strategy, too, in Bagnaia trying to invite Martin to chase after him and perhaps crash while doing so?
"I thought about it! Like 'he wants me to try!’", said Martin.
And Bagnaia joked "you will never know" when asked about it, only to then immediately offer an explanation: "I changed the power delivery map, but it was too conservative. And I just switched back and I was able to be a bit faster."
