Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
Who Will Have The Last Hurrah?
The last season of the 1000cc bruisers is accelerating to its climax, with more tension and more possible champions than for years, probably ever. And certainly, in the modern four-stroke MotoGP era.
The fortunes of the top riders—five, or possibly six, even at a stretch seven—are intertwined like embroidery, as one or another has a good/bad weekend, and the scores shift yet again. If one were given a cliche, one might pronounce that “nobody wants to win this championship.” Of course, the opposite is true. Everybody wants to win it.
Just to recap: with 13 of 22 races run and a potential maximum of 333 points still available, we have seven riders within a points span of just 70. Mathematically and given a run of good luck (and some bad luck for the others), any one of them could take the crown.
Shifting fortunes have buoyed up some, only to undermine them again. Early dominance (Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi) was undone with a series of cruel events, one (and arguably more than one) entirely self-imposed.
Early misfortune (Marc Marquez – Ducati) has been spectacularly reversed, with some of the best rides of his storied career. Only Marc has managed to score the maximum 37 points (Sprint and GP wins) more than once. Three times, in fact. Yet throw in a weekend like the post-summer-break British GP (ninth and seventh), and there is an anxious undertone to the triumphant trumpets.
Only one other rider has managed max points, 2024 champion Jorge Martin, and only once. The Aprilia-mounted Spaniard came away from the last GP at Aragon with his lead over Marquez trimmed to just 19 points.
Each candidate has had major ups and downs.
Leader Martin double-no-scored spectacularly in Catalonia, where he crashed a daunting six times. He crashed again in Hungary, taking down (among others) teammate Bezzecchi. Yet he remains a top favorite, for a record of racking up steady scores even when he’s not winning.
Nineteen points away, we have Marquez. About whom pretty much everything has already been said. But at 33 years of age, he’s battered and weakened after serial surgery to his right shoulder and arm. He will probably never regain full strength, a drawback on predominantly right-handed circuits. Which is all but two of the remaining nine.
Bezzecchi, winner of the first three Sunday races (and the last two of the previous year), is only five more points down. Which makes an interesting dynamic in the factory Aprilia team, which has made such technical strides this year as to outclass the long-dominant Ducati. Your teammate is always your greatest rival, so he and Martin will be taking chunks out of each other in the races to come, to the benefit of the others.
Fourth place is held by one-race winner Fabio Di Giannantonio on the next-best Ducati. He is 24 adrift of Bezzecchi and 48 from the leader. Chances are getting slimmer. Particularly given his results. He has a single win—in Catalunya—in a race where both Marquez brothers were absent, Martin crashed, and Bezzecchi was out of sorts. But it’s still possible.
If the numbers are right, then why not?
This sentiment comes from the next candidate, the surprise package, Ai Ogura. The Japanese is only behind Di Giannantonio by just three points because he missed the last race at Aragon due to a training accident that fractured his thumb.
The ex-Moto2 Champion, riding a satellite-team Aprilia, has been a revelation in his second year. He was already known for good late-race speed. Some credited a slow early lap for saving the tires. But during the season, Ogura’s solved qualifying issues and those slow early laps, and he’s still fast at the end, even pushing Marquez by a matter of tenths for the win at Brno.
It’s a tough call for a sophomore to beat the hardened hands ahead of him, but a win and three podiums are strong credentials. And wouldn’t it be amusing.
Two more within some sort of reach.
Pedro Acosta, reckoned to be the next Marc Marquez, is another 14 points away, and 67 off the lead. His talent is not in dispute. His drawback is a less-than-competitive KTM, on which he so far excels the others on the Austrian bike that it’s sometimes ridiculous, given that they include former MotoGP winners and smaller-class champions Brad Binder, Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales. But will determination be enough to surmount a tricky bike and a daunting points gap?
Finally, just about possible, Ogura’s Trackhouse Aprilia teammate Raul Fernandez, whose rather erratic form does include one GP and two Sprint wins, to put him only three points behind Acosta.
Place your bets now, folks.
For me, my heart says Marc Marquez. And so does my head. But what do I know?
After all, as old man Soichiro Honda once told me, if we knew who was going to win, it would not be necessary to have the race.CN
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