Aragon crash a bad MotoGP World Championship omen for Francesco Bagnaia?

The MotoGP world can be pretty strange sometimes, can't it? In 2023, Francesco Bagnaia traveled to the third MotoGP race weekend on Spanish soil with a double victory from Austria in his luggage and experienced a catastrophe in Barcelona in the main race with his terrible highsider. Exactly 364 days later, and thus almost exactly a year to the day, this scenario repeated itself again, albeit in a different place. Bagnaia returned to Spain again with two victories at the Red Bull Ring and experienced a medium-sized disaster there.

This does not refer to Bagnaia's disappointing sprint in Aragon, but to the collision with fellow brand rider Alex Marquez, in which he narrowly avoided serious injuries for the second time in a row. On the way to the gravel bed, the Ducati star was trapped under Marquez's motorcycle and ended up receiving a heavy blow to the head, neck and throat area. An examination by the MotoGP doctors in the medical check gave the all-clear; Bagnaia had escaped with a few bruises and a fright. But the crash in the Aragon Grand Prix had a deep impact and even led the reigning world champion to accuse his opponent of an intentional collision.

2023 is a cause for concern: World Cup turnaround in favour of Jorge Martin?

This shows that the otherwise so level-headed, composed and composed Turin rider was really shaken by the (unnecessary) collision with Marquez. Perhaps also because it reminds him of last year and he fears a turnaround in the title fight in favour of Jorge Martins. In Aragon, Martins was left sitting in a tricky situation with Pedro Acosta and thus scored big points by coming second. A bad omen for Bagnaia with a view to the drivers' world championship?

A look back to the autumn of last year shows that Martin was ahead following Bagnaia's Spain fiasco. The fact that he was no longer able to win the title was mainly due to the large points deficit from the first eleven race weekends of the 2023 season. After the Catalonia Grand Prix, Martin was still a lucky 50 points behind the leader Bagnaia, whose extremely comfortable World Championship lead ended in dramatic fashion when he was just able to save it over the line at the season finale.

The problem: In 2024, Bagnaia will arrive after the 12th stop of the season in Aragon without such a points buffer. In fact, he is now even in the chasing role, Martin already took the lead in the World Championship in the sprint and extended it to 23 points with second place in the Grand Prix. If you look at the points haul of the two Ducati riders in 2023 in the eight Grand Prix that are still outstanding this season, the chances of a third World Championship title in the series are not particularly good for Bagnaia. The defending champion only collected 196 points in these eight GPs, while Martin scored 205 points. If this scenario repeats itself, the Pramac rider would be crowned the new World Champion in Valencia with a 32-point lead.

But of course there are also good reasons for a different outcome in 2024. For example, Bagnaia is in favour of the fact that he only narrowly lost to Martin in the Thailand GP in 2023 and achieved a points advantage of ten points. [Bagnaia +5, Martin -5, Anm.] by just 0.253 seconds. He may be able to get revenge in 2024. In addition, the Italian started his home race in Misano in a very weak physical condition, with severe bruised legs. These will not slow him down in 2024 and Martin could even score up to 44 points with victories on one of his favorite tracks. [Bagnaia +28, Martin -16] decrease, as there will be two races there in 2024. This difference of 54 points in total would then be enough to make Bagnaia the world champion again with a lead of 31 points.

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At the same time, however, it is also true that if things had gone differently, the pendulum could swing even more clearly in Martins' favor. He lost 25 points in the Indonesia GP due to a big mistake and potentially 12 points due to the weather-related cancellation of the sprint on Philipp Island. He also had to go all-in at the season finale in Valencia. With a more cautious approach, second place in the main race and thus another 20 world championship points would definitely have been realistic. If the 'Martinator' collects even a fraction of these lost points in 2024, it will be difficult to take the world championship title away from him if he can repeat his strong performances from the remaining Grand Prix.

This is also supported by the outstanding title ratio of the MotoGP World Championship half-time leaders, who Martin joined this summer. Francesco Bagnaia could also bitterly regret his hasty attack on Alex Marquez. Find out what our Markus thinks about it here: