until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
Although it’s held the season finale slot 18 times, Valencia has only hosted four MotoGP championship deciders.
But all have been memorable – and one was an unforgettable epic.
This weekend looks very, very likely to be number five, as Joan Mir stands on the brink of settling a season that looked certain to go down to the very last lap of the calendar in Portugal next week until he took the title fight by the throat in recent weeks.
Here’s a reminder of how the other four Valencia title-clinchers unfolded:
2006: Hayden’s remarkable triumph
After five years of runaway Valentino Rossi titles across Honda and Yamaha, few expected 2006 to be any different. Even fewer expected Nicky Hayden to be the man who’d depose Rossi.
But in MotoGP’s wildest and most unpredictable season until the current one, it was the American on the compromised Honda with just one previous race win to his name that halted Rossi’s run.
As Rossi and Yamaha endured a uncharacteristically messy start to the season amid a chatter issue and poor reliability, Hayden managed to build a shock championship lead – despite being convinced Honda was favouring his rookie team-mate Dani Pedrosa.
That intra-team tension became intra-team fury when Pedrosa took Hayden out of the penultimate round at Estoril, in a clash that meant Hayden’s long-shrinking 12-point championship lead over Rossi became an eight-point deficit with just Valencia to go.
The only consolation for Hayden was that in a gloriously hard-fought final lap in Portugal Rossi had been pipped to victory by just 0.002s by Gresini Honda rider Toni Elias. That at least denied Rossi five points.
Still with Rossi on pole at Valencia and faster for most of the year on raw pace and Hayden only fifth on the grid, the outcome looked obvious.
But a poor Rossi start and a great Hayden one flipped their circumstances and put Rossi under pressure.
And then on lap five, one of the most shocking moments in MotoGP history: a solo low-side crash for Rossi with the title in his grasp.
As Rossi limped home 13th on a mangled bike, third place for Hayden – behind a surprise Ducati 1-2 led by stand-in rider Troy Bayliss in his first MotoGP start in over a year – clinched one of the most unexpected and emotional championship victories ever seen in motorsport.
The late Hayden never won another MotoGP race after that, but his 2006 achievement went down in motorcycle racing legend.
2013: Canny Lorenzo can’t stop Marquez
Even when Marc Marquez took victory at Austin in only his second MotoGP race, the idea of Honda’s eagerly-awaited rookie becoming champion at the first attempt still seemed remote – despite how extraordinary he had been in 125cc and Moto2.
Everything changed across a brutal fortnight for championship combatants Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo mid-season. Lorenzo broke his collarbone in Assen practice – which didn’t stop him returning from hospital to finish an extraordinary fifth in the race two days later.
But then another crash at the Sachsenring two weeks later bent the titanium plate inserted to fix the initial injury, ruling him out of the German round and compromising his fitness for the following months.
Pedrosa was in a similar position after a horrendous Sachsenring practice crash of his own in the wet.
“I have no regrets, we had to try and see what happened” :: Jorge Lorenzo
In their absence, Marquez began a four-race winning streak in Germany that put him 26 points clear of Pedrosa and 44 in front of Lorenzo.
A dogged comeback by Lorenzo – helped by Marquez being disqualified for ignoring a Phillip Island pit window mandated by tyre concerns – meant the title fight went down to the wire, with Marquez leading Lorenzo by 13 points still.
Though Marquez took pole for the finale, it was Lorenzo who burst through from second to lead ahead of Pedrosa and Marquez.
Lorenzo then ‘parked the bus’ at the front, hoping to make Marquez as vulnerable as possible by keeping the pace as slow as he could. But despite an eight-bike train forming, Marquez stayed safe in third.
“When we came to this weekend my strategy in my mind was to try to go away in the lead,” said Lorenzo.
“But this morning after the warm-up we had a meeting and decided to change strategy and slow the race down in the first laps.
“I have no regrets, we had to try and see what happened. I was taking so many risks – especially with Dani.”
When Pedrosa managed to pounce for the lead, Lorenzo was taking no chances and muscled back past the Honda in a move that took both wide and let Marquez get ahead of them.
Lorenzo was swiftly back in front as his title rival played it safe, but the incident had broken the train up so Lorenzo abandoned Plan A.
“When I looked behind and saw the others were too far behind, I decided to win this race and get away,” he said.
The Yamaha scorched away for an eighth win of the year, but third place for six-time winner Marquez was enough to clinch an unimaginable title for the 20-year-old in his first year in the premier class.
2015: After the Sepang clash
It’s hard to describe just how much of a pressure cooker atmosphere there was when MotoGP headed to the final round of the 2015 season.
Only two weeks before, the Malaysian Grand Prix had ended in turmoil, with Rossi and Marquez involved in an enormously contentious collision, and the preceding two weeks had been spent not preparing for the final race of the year but in a series of court battles.
Lorenzo had done what he does best and become embroiled in someone else’s row
Rossi had gone into the Sepang race leading the championship from Yamaha team-mate Lorenzo by a comfortable 11 points, and knew that all he needed to do at the next two rounds was to be there or thereabouts – something that shouldn’t have been impossible given his pace.
However, already engaging in a war of words with Marquez before they even took to track, Rossi and Marquez then became locked in an on-track dice for third as Pedrosa and Lorenzo rode clear of them.
The heated actions went nuclear when contact between the two left Marquez on the ground and Rossi facing a back-of-the-grid penalty for the next and final race.
An appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport wasn’t enough to get that penalty overturned, and despite Rossi’s best hopes he lined up at the back of the Valencia grid.
He knew that he needed to be as close as possible to Lorenzo to protect what remained of his lead – now shortened to a mere seven points.
With Sepang entering the chronicles of MotoGP lore as one of the most dramatic races of all time, tensions had got higher and higher going to Valencia.
Rossi had continued his war of words in the media, Marquez had been doorstepped by Italian journalists, Lorenzo had done what he does best and become embroiled in someone else’s row.
But when the lights went out on Sunday afternoon, Lorenzo did the other thing he does best: quickly converting his pole position into the lead and eventually a race victory and the title.
Perhaps still enraged by Rossi’s actions, Marquez (who wasn’t in the title hunt anymore) never even attempted a pass on Lorenzo, choosing instead to act as unofficial team-mate to the Yamaha rider and come home in second place, only a quarter of a second down.
Rossi finished a valiant fourth, never able to match his team-mate’s pace at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo even without the grid penalty, and MotoGP’s most controversial season concluded as its most bitter recent rivalry got going.
2017: Ducati’s hopes dashed
Going into the 2017 season, the mood was high within the Ducati camp. It had just signed five-time world champion Lorenzo as its number one rider, with the tantalising prospect of seeing the three-time MotoGP title-winner repeat his feat of 2015 and dethrone Marquez for only the second time in his MotoGP career.
So imagine Ducati’s surprise when it turned out to be not Lorenzo but his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso who took the fight to the final round, after a breathtaking season in which only 10 points covered the top four at the halfway point.
As it came down to the wire, there were two left standing: Dovizioso and Marquez.
The title battle slid first one way and then the other over a series of thrilling races coming into the Valencia finale, but despite a Dovizioso victory in the penultimate round at Sepang, the odds had decidedly tipped in the balance of Marquez.
Coming home in fourth in the wet in Malaysia he went to Valencia 21 points ahead, ensuring that nothing but a Dovi victory and a Marquez DNF would steal his crown – and surely that would never happen, right?
Well, it very nearly did at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo’s Turn 1, when Marquez, locked in battle for the win with Tech3 Yamaha’s Johann Zarco, made a mistake and had a huge rear tyre slide, ending up deep in the gravel trap and dropping from second to fifth.
Was he cracking? Did Dovi smell blood in the water? Was now his time to strike?
Well, in a word – no. Mere seconds later, Dovizioso made a mistake of his own, ran deep into the gravel, and tipped off at slow speed, bringing a dramatic year to a somewhat ignominious end.
