The 2024 MotoGP world championship resumes after its summer break with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone this weekend and Pecco Bagnaia leading Jorge Martin by just 10 points with 407 still up for grabs between now and the Valencia finale in November.
And yet it’s only three rounds ago that Martin was an ample 39 points clear.
So has the title fight swung irrevocably towards Bagnaia or is this still wide open?
The latest episode of The Race MotoGP Podcast was all about our bold predictions for the rest of the 2024 season, and regulars Simon Patterson and Valentin Khorounzhiy plus wildcard guest Lewis Duncan all went straight in with different opinions on how the title fight will run from here:
THIS WILL STILL GO DOWN TO THE WIRE
Valentin Khorounzhiy
Martin and Pramac will take the championship battle to the wire. I had the impression that all Bagnaia’s best tracks were coming up and he could be 60 points clear in no time - he’d get 37 at Silverstone, 37 each at the two Misano rounds.
But I forgot how good Martin is at the flyaways. And though last year that coincided with Bagnaia not being fully fit after having his leg nearly snapped in half by Brad Binder’s KTM at Barcelona, there is still historic precedent for Martin being stunningly good at some of those tracks.
Val's pick for who's stronger at each track
Silverstone: Bagnaia
Red Bull Ring: Bagnaia
Aragon: Bagnaia
Misano: Bagnaia
Mandalika: Martin
Motegi: Martin
Phillip Island: Martin
Buriram: Martin
Sepang: Martin
Valencia: Total toss-up
If Martin just hangs on through this final bit of the European phase - and I appreciate that’s a big ‘if’ - there is still a title race here in my book. I don’t necessarily believe he can win it, but I do believe he can take it to the final race.
You look at their relative strengths and think that at a track where you need to hammer the brakes, Bagnaia will be on top and at a more flowing track it will be Martin. But it doesn’t follow that pattern at all. There maybe isn’t a single track coming up that’s in that Mugello/Assen territory where Bagnaia is so good I go into it thinking Martin’s got no chance.
BAGNAIA CAN CRUISE IT FROM HERE
Simon Patterson
Pecco Bagnaia will lead the championship until Valencia and he’ll have won it with a round or two to go.
There will be moments where we see Martin deliver really good performances again but there are also going to be days where he just falls off.
And with Bagnaia’s momentum, with what we’ve seen he can be like when you kind of wind up the metronome and let it go, I think he’s going to just spin out consistency from here to the end of the season.
There might still be an approximation of a title battle, but I don’t think it’s going to be like last year where we go into Valencia with legitimate chances for both of them. Martin will put on a brave effort but it won’t be anything close to what he did last year.
He’s always had a chip on his shoulder and I think his form post-Aprilia-announcement is reflective of that because it’s him riding with his head not really in the game.
MARTIN WILL STRUGGLE TO EVEN BE SECOND
Lewis Duncan
Jorge Martin’s title challenge is going to go right down the toilet. For a couple of reasons.
One of them being that Bagnaia’s just been in such fine form. And the other is Martin’s impending Aprilia departure; we’re now going to see the effects of Ducati removing its full support from Martin and that Pramac team. Ducati can’t allow Martin to take the #1 plate to Aprilia, especially considering it shunned him for Marc Marquez. There’s a lot of face-saving that’s going to have to go on.
I can also see there being a bit more support from Ducati in the Gresini garage with Marquez in the second part of the season. I think Ducati will make a concerted effort to ensure its two riders for next year are first and second in the championship to really hammer home the point that the decision to go with Marquez over Martin was correct.
Martin’s been almost resigning himself to the fact he’s coming into the second half of the season with Ducati unlikely to offer him anything to bring him forward. But there’s his own performance element too - he had a strong start to the season, but recently he’s gone off the boil and it’s coincided with Bagnaia figuring out sprints again.
Bagnaia’s got everything to click again and as good a rider as Martin is, he’s not going to get anywhere near a Bagnaia on full form on a factory Ducati - especially if he keeps making these crucial mistakes that he has again recently. That was supposed to be ironed out.
Martin’s always been able to portray himself as the underdog. I don’t know if he’s got the same kind of fighting spirit in this situation as Bagnaia’s shown in the last couple of years when he’s come under pressure.
MARTIN CAN STILL BE CHAMPION
Matt Beer
On the podcast I had the judge role rather than making my own predictions, but I sided with Val’s ‘it’ll go to the wire’ as the most likely scenario.
Now I’ve got chance to make my own pitch in this article, I’m going a step further: Martin will be world champion.
I write that more in hope than expectation because it would be such a good story and confound so much MotoGP logic if a satellite team and rider both splitting with their manufacturer could pull that off against a combination as strong as Bagnaia + factory Ducati.
But I don’t see it as impossible, for multiple reasons. Val made the point elsewhere in the episode that Bagnaia and Martin’s error rates across their MotoGP careers aren’t actually that different, it’s just Bagnaia is two years further along his curve. This is not as straightforward a scenario as ‘Martin makes all the mistakes, Bagnaia is consistent’. If it was, Bagnaia wouldn’t have only just edged ahead in the points by a small margin despite winning six grands prix so far this year to Martin’s two. Martin is more than capable of racking up solid points on bad days. Bagnaia is more than capable of throwing his bike into the gravel out of the blue too.
And the case for Martin being simply the fastest person on the grid in raw speed terms is still strong. No one else produces explosive sheer speed so reliably. That has to count for something.
This time last year, Martin was 41 points behind Bagnaia. This year the gap is 10 and Martin has been a much more impressive performer so far in 2024 than at this point in 2023. This isn’t over.
