For the best part of the last two years, I’ve regularly insisted on The Race MotoGP Podcast that I didn’t believe satellite teams could win MotoGP titles, even in an era where these squads receive the latest-spec machinery and more support (technical, material and financial) than ever before.
In fact, I’ve insisted that satellite riders can't win championship so much that it’s become something of a catchphrase - enough that it even ended up on a T-shirt in The Race’s shop ahead of this weekend’s season finale at Barcelona!
The reason for it is simple: in an era where the championship is arguably closer than it ever has been before, it becomes a game of marginal gains. Pole positions are taken by thousandths of a second, the perfect race start can win a race, and an extra degree of lean can cause disaster.
And in that sort of competition, the benefits of being in a factory team have always shone through.
The bike is built for you and exclusively for you. The team - not just your own five mechanics, but the 50 or 100 technicians on site and back at home base - are all working to develop the perfect setting for you.
Even on a race weekend, it can make a difference. Factory mechanics fresh off business class flights and checking into nicer hotels arrive better prepared to work to find every tenth of a second than those that have had a harder time getting there because they're part of a lower-budget team.
But, just like Ducati first broke the mould when it turned Pramac into a heavily factory-backed team rather than just another satellite squad leasing year-old machinery (a model that every other manufacturer in the series has now copied), it's now done the same thing again in 2024 by not just giving Martin the tools to do the job but everything he needed to defeat reigning champion Pecco Bagnaia and his factory Ducati.
In fact, so strong has Ducati’s support been for Martin this season even after rejecting him for the factory team in favour of Marc Marquez and sending him (and his new number one plate) running into the arms of Aprilia for 2025, that it was Ducati and not Pramac that Martin praised when I ate humble pie and admitted that he had proven me wrong in the post-race press conference at Barcelona.
“I’m so grateful to first of all my team, because they are a big family,” he started off when I asked him what it was about Pramac that let him become the first satellite rider in the sport’s modern history to win a title.
“It’s been four years with them and I’ve always been three years in each team - Aspar then Gresini and KTM, then four in Pramac. So for sure a nice family, I will always remember them.
“But the key was Ducati. Even if they didn’t want me for next year, they let me fight with all the tools. I think [Ducati Corse boss] Gigi Dall’Igna believed a lot in me since the first moments, since I signed in Moto2, he always believed in me.
“Circumstances in life can change and maybe I wasn’t in my best moment in the moment that I had to be, so that’s why I never arrived to that team. But this is life, so the key was that they let me [fight for the title].
“I’m so grateful to [Ducati CEO] Claudio Domenicali, because nobody in this room I think thought that they would let me, and finally they let me fight, so I’m so grateful to them.”
