2024 MotoGP Losail Report

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Francesco Bagnaia starts off his 2024 MotoGP season on the right foot with a win after making changes in the morning warmup. (MotoGP/)

Francesco Bagnaia on a 2024 factory Ducati did what most of us expected; he started well, took the lead on the first lap, and then easily controlled the gap to second-place Brad Binder on KTM. Binder, throughout the 21 laps (the race was shortened a lap after a start delay) played pass/re-pass with pole-sitter and Saturday sprint winner Jorge Martín (Pramac Ducati). In fourth was (you guessed it) Marc Márquez, having his first race on a Ducati.

Bagnaia’s margin over Binder was 1.33 seconds at the end, with Martín another 0.6 second behind him. In Saturday’s Tissot sprint, it was Martín first, Binder second, with Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) third, and Bagnaia fourth.

First Win for Pecco Bagnaia

Last year, Bagnaia learned the value of leading: It keeps your front tire from being baked by the heat of bikes ahead.

Ducati team manager Gianluigi Dall’Igna said of two-time and reigning champion Bagnaia, “The way he managed the race was impeccable.

“His race craft was simply perfect. There’s nothing he could have done better.”

There are fans who don’t like racing as it is, and wish that every weekend could bring a new winner, a fresh passion, an underdog vindicated. That is how movies are made—from scripts. Reality has no discoverable script. Kenny Roberts actually did win three 500 world titles in a row, and then in the ‘90s Mick Doohan committed the unpardonable by winning five in a row. Those men knew how to win races, so that’s what they did.

A switch in his riding style allowed Bagnaia to stay ahead of the pack the entire 21-lap race on Sunday. (MotoGP/)

Remember that the present solid success is new to Ducati. After Casey Stoner’s 2007 championship on its 20,000-rpm 800cc bike, Ducati went backward, winning almost nothing during its “time in the wilderness.” Each constructor suffers periods like this. Honda and Yamaha are stumbling in the wilderness now (highest finish by a Japanese bike this time was Fabio Quartararo on Yamaha—in 11th).

Between Bagnaia’s cautious statements and pit reporter Simon Crafar’s intelligent analysis, here’s the picture that emerges. Bagnaia said, “…here the grip level was so high that it was difficult to have a tire drop after 20 laps.”

This goes far to explain why there was chatter at Losail. Chatter occurs most under conditions of high grip and high temperature. Ducati technicians, poring over their printouts (having eight bikes on the grid brings a lot of data) saw a trend. Chatter was occurring above a particular temperature (front and rear tire pressures are on the rider’s display, and reflect tire temperature).

But, but, doesn’t Ducati have a chatter-preventing tuned mass damper in that weirdly shaped seat back? Maybe. A lot of people say so. But the amount of chatter energy such a thing can absorb is limited—look at the immense concrete moving masses used to damp the oscillations of tall buildings.

The thing about chatter is that in general, you can’t “ride through it” because the harder you push, the more disturbing the chatter. As Colin Edwards said 20 years ago, chatter sets an upper limit on push.

Bagnaia had encountered it in the sprint and it had to go. The medicine? To make the lap time in a different way—one that heated the rear tire less. That meant harder braking rather than higher apex speed: less dependence on tire-heating corner speed and more on braking and acceleration.

As the story goes, Bagnaia had the 10 minutes of Sunday warmup in which to explore this switch of styles. Seems to have worked.

In the race, “I tried to brake hard and waited an extra moment in order not to use the rear tire too much.”

But wait, now. Didn’t Jorge Lorenzo take 18 months to functionally switch from his own pure corner-speed style to the Ducati’s point-and-shoot design? How could Bagnaia do this in 10 minutes?”

Good question. Part of an answer might be Ducati’s laying on of much younger riders. Another part is the evolution of the bike itself, as it has been made to display not only strong braking and acceleration, but also growing capability in apex speed. This means those younger riders were having to adapt to constant change, not just sitting back as the bike was tailored to suit them. When Freddie Spencer was very young, he rode every WERA class every race weekend. Did he possibly learn something of value from that? Younger people learn languages and math fast, making young-and-adaptable into a strategy.

Second Place Brad Binder

Brad Binder is delighted to be closer to the top, but knows he and his improving KTM lack the reserve that Bagnaia has. Binder said, “It was like a carrot dangling and you just want to go for it. But I knew that if I attempted to push, I might catch up a bit but I would lose a couple of seconds in the last few laps.

“The steps forward we have made in braking and [corner] entry are huge.

“…we need to hook up better when I touch the throttle.

“It’s always really good for the first three laps of the race, then…it has a little bit of a slump…”

KTM is coming, but has yet to arrive. If and when it does, that will be exciting.

“We are super close, but we haven’t shown that we can do it.”

Jorge Martín’s Solid Weekend

Martín, third, said, “I can’t complain about this weekend. I set the track record, the pole position, I won the sprint, and I got on the podium today.”

Brad Binder and Jorge Martín rounded out the podium in second and third, respectively. Martín won Saturday’s sprint race and set the track record. (MotoGP/)

But regarding the chatter, he said, “As soon as we solve that problem I can be much faster.”

Speaking of Bagnaia, Martín said, “As soon as he went to the front he was pushing, not like hell, because we couldn’t due to the tire, but he was pushing a lot.

“I tried to be fast but good on the tires, but then I had the battle with Brad, which wasn’t helping at all.”

Marc Márquez and Pedro Acosta

When two riders cut-and-thrust, it slows them down a bit, and Márquez and new sensation Pedro Acosta (GasGas/KTM) were just behind.

Márquez said after the race, “I tried to push until the front tire gave out, at which point I gave up.

“Most of the riders manage the rear, but I managed the front. My riding style, I push the front a lot. Still we need to find the correct balance to save the front.”

Other faves? Enea Bastianini, fifth: “I couldn’t get the bike stopped the way I wanted, and that prevented me from pushing hard.”

How about the super-promising Aprilia of Espargaró (eighth on Sunday)? Third in the sprint, but fading on lap one Sunday from second to ninth, he said, “Already on the warmup lap to the grid I felt that I had no grip at all.”

Pedro Acosta and Marc Márquez both put in impressive rides on their new machines. (MotoGP/)

Something wrong in every case. For the moment, Ducati has consistency (should there be a rule against it?), but we all know no one is immune to chance. A bad tire, a mistaken setup, too high a front tire pressure and you’re done. When those things happen, “Jist goin’ fer it” puts you in the gravel.

2027 Technical Changes

Much anticipated was the Losail regulations meeting to discuss technical changes for 2027 and subsequent. I read, “The philosophy behind the new rules…is simplification. This will especially affect the aerodynamics.

“The idea is to return to the DNA of the sport, with the focus on corner speed with a more flowing riding style, rather than on braking and acceleration as it is nowadays.

“The idea is to simplify the machine so that the rider can return to being the protagonist.”

The DNA remark is an opinion and not a statement of fact. Kenny Roberts brought the dirt-track-originated point-and-shoot style (“braking and acceleration”) to Europe 46 years ago and it wowed ‘em. The English and European press was full of comment, and as American riders continued to excel in Europe, their success was attributed to their dirt-track backgrounds. Dirt riding has now become an important part of rider training, and great champions such as Stoner and Márquez very much “have their feet in the dirt.”

On the other hand, the pure “inscribed arc of maximum radius” style described in Piero Taruffi’s 1959 book The Technique of Motor Racing was revived once the Americans went home. Valentino Rossi and Lorenzo became great champions by riding “the great circle route.”

This is as close as anyone got to Bagnaia on Sunday with his wire-to-wire win. (MotoGP/)

Is one of these styles “correct” and the other “wrong”? Definitely not. Each is appropriate under particular circumstances. The European style originated from the need of low-powered bikes to avoid having to accelerate—50s, 125s, and 250s, plus the large number of British 350 and 500 singles that filled most GP grids up until 1967. The “American” style becomes a necessity when grip becomes inconsistent and/or inadequate for the power available. As pointed out to me by Roberts in the 1980s, the corner-speed style exposes the rider to high risk of grip loss all the way through the corner, whereas point-and-shoot reduces that exposure to just the zone of most rapid turning—the point of what Cal Crutchlow called “Honda’s V-shaped line.” At all other times, the point-and-shoot rider can modulate the grip with throttle or brake. This is why point-and-shoot remains the dominant big-bike riding style at present.

Bear in mind also that in future, riders will learn to ride on production bikes equipped with whatever technologies the free market chooses.

We’ll just have to let 2027 come. Racing begins as defined by a sanctioning body, then becomes the expression of riders’ and teams’ need to win. No success means no funding, and that requires trying to win (not upholding some unnamed person’s idea of purity).

Portugal is next, in eight days.

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