Jorge Martin is on the cusp of becoming the first satellite team rider to win the MotoGP world championship.
But if the deciding Solidarity Grand Prix at Barcelona is anything like the rest of his two-season-long battle with Pecco Bagnaia, it's unlikely to be as straightforward as the points standings suggest it should be.
Here are our team's predictions for how it's going to unfold:
Martin can still make a mistake
Simon Patterson
I’m pretty sure that a return to Barcelona means Pecco Bagnaia will dominate the weekend the way that he did earlier this season - but I’m not sure at all if even two wins is going to be enough to make sure that he can retain his championship, given that Jorge Martin has a distinctive points advantage.
However, I’m also almost entirely sure that we’re not going to see both title protagonists make it through the weekend without at least one of them making a mistake.
When MotoGP last raced at Barcelona in May, it was (as it most often has been this season) Bagnaia who didn’t get to the chequered flag in the sprint. But despite Bagnaia's run of crashes this year, there’s just as much chance of it being Martin who falls in the finale.
And while the championship leader has been a whole different character this season, much more mature and less error prone than in previous years, I’m still of the opinion that he might have one more mistake in him as he goes into wholly unknown terrain, something that can’t be said for Bagnaia.
MARTIN'S GOT THIS
Valentin Khorounzhiy
Martin will get it over the line. He will finish second or third in the sprint behind Bagnaia and then he will do what he needs to do on Sunday - which will probably be a very conservative third or fourth place finish.
The GP24 is too good to really be under much threat over a full-distance race. He doesn’t need that many points - his magic number is 14. And that’s not just 14 scored by him, that’s him needing to score 14 only if Bagnaia takes an absolute maximum score from the weekend.
Sprint king takes it on Saturday
Megan White
With a 24-point lead heading into Saturday’s sprint - strength in which has proved to be Martin’s trademark this season - surely he will wrap up the championship a day early.
Last time MotoGP raced here, Bagnaia crashed out of the sprint lead on the final lap. Though he went on to win the grand prix the following day, the ghosts of sprint race past may loom heavy over a rider who has racked up eight DNFs this season.
Martin also made a mistake at Barcelona at its last event in May - crashing at the end of Q2 and consequently lining up seventh - but he’ll inevitably smash the lap record on Friday, as he has done several times so far this year, and take his eighth pole of the season.
From there, he will be unbeatable. Martin needs to either win the sprint, or finish second but ahead of Bagnaia - and as we’ve seen this season, that will not be difficult for a rider who has triumphed seven times on a Saturday.
To secure the title on a Saturday would be a fitting end to Martin’s championship charge, having proven to be the best sprint rider on the grid, but one can’t help but feel that crowning a champion on a Saturday would be somewhat anti-climatic.
Why bother with Sunday’s race if the champion has already been crowned on Saturday? It feels like the main grand prix has been devalued by having a sprint every weekend, and for the title decider to end that way would feel disappointing.
Of course, for Martin, it won’t - he will be champion after a well-fought battle. Previously, I was firmly in the “satellite riders can’t win championships” camp, but I believe I am about to be proved very wrong indeed.
SURELY ONE MORE TWIST
Matt Beer
Martin has it all to lose, is on the cusp of something no one's ever done before (with good reason, it's hard!), has form for throwing things away when in great positions, hasn't ever been the hunted in a final-round MotoGP decider before, and knows it really could be now or never for him as he's about to move to a significantly less competitive bike for 2025.
All of that adds up to a lot of pressure, and that's why I can see him crashing out of the sprint, Bagnaia winning it and the points gap instantly coming down to 12.
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But then when Martin looks at that scenario on Saturday night, he'll know that 12 is still a decent margin for Bagnaia to have to overturn in this scoring system and that he still has a comfortable enough advantage - whereas Bagnaia desperately needs a win still.
And that's why my prediction is that, after an opening-laps battle that's even more thrilling than Sepang's, it's the nothing-left-to-lose Bagnaia who ends up on the floor and Martin who seals the title with victory.
MotoGP's NASCAR moment?!
Jack Benyon
If you'll forgive the wild tangent - I promise it's relevant - in 2004 NASCAR switched from a typical championship format to an end-of-season playoff, and after that, its pre-eminent star Jeff Gordon never won a title again.
He would have won more titles under the old system, but that didn't matter because the game had changed and someone came along and worked out how to play that system better, even if they were or weren't a better driver.
The 2024 MotoGP season has really hit home how, like Gordon - although admittedly it's not a bulletproof like-for-like comparison - Bagnaia has failed to game the new sprint-race system because that's where he has lost the majority of his points.
Sure, he's crashed, but so has Martin. In fact sometimes it's felt like a battle to see who can crash most and still take the title, although that's frivolous and it's more to do with this era of bike being so hard to ride, in tandem with the tricky Michelin rubber.
Whatever happens in the finale, I think Martin will wrap up the title. He has the gap and he's proven he can race the system even if Bagnaia is mint at Barcelona.
Gordon didn't win another NASCAR title after that championship format switch. And Bagnaia's 2023 crown will be the only one he takes in the sprint era, I predict. But that's more because Marc Marquez will beat Bagnaia over a season given the same bike (and after that Pedro Acosta will be wiping the floor with everyone) rather than Bagnaia not being able to manipulate a points system to his advantage.
Gordon was the best driver ever to race in NASCAR, and Bagnaia is not that for MotoGP. But both will face similar outcomes after a change of points system.
Martin: Keep doing what you're doing
Oliver Card
Both Bagnaia and Martin have spent their respective 2024 seasons dividing their time between rewriting history books with a litany of broken lap records and throwing away easy points-scoring opportunities with unforced errors.
Going into this finale, it feels a coin toss between who the racing gods will favour on the day, making this an enjoyably challenging championship to predict.
While Bagnaia has the admirable accolade of 10 wins this season, he’s also DNF-ed more consistently than Martin, albeit in mixed situations. It may be Martin’s to lose, but the perpetual podium finisher has achieved a new level of maturity which is writ large in his 'settling for second’ results.
Bagnaia has been a worthy champion over the last few seasons with such an immaculate ride-on-rails style, but Martin still had room to grow and develop and is now a rider in peak form more ready than ever to take the title.
However, for all of his more sensible decisions, Martin doesn’t strike me as the type to ease too far off the throttle, and that’s what makes him such a dynamic and enjoyable presence on the grid. The last thing Martin wants to do is to cool off to the point of being lost in the jungle and vulnerable to other boisterous riders not invested in the title battle.
The best tactic he can employ at Barcelona is not to change his approach one iota. It’s this approach that got him here, that means he's topping the table and could lead to him bringing a #1 sticker to Aprilia in 2025.
So I don’t expect to see anything I haven’t already seen in 2024; this would indicate a Bagnaia victory at some point, but I couldn’t tell you whether this is on Saturday or Sunday. I would expect Martin to be more likely to finish both races on the podium, even if he doesn’t trouble the top step, and the good news for him is that he doesn’t need to.
