Bagnaia Wins Valencia GP and MotoGP Championship

[Hugh Janus]

Francesco Bagnaia did what he needed to lock up the championship, leaving the pressure on Jorge Martín. (MotoGP/)

The complexities of a long season came down to strong odds favoring Ducati factory rider Francesco Bagnaia, yet offering a slight chance for second-in-points Jorge Martín, who had in the last third of the season made a brilliant run on Bagnaia’s 61-point advantage. Martín could be champion if he won and Bagnaia finished worse than fifth.

Bagnaia has shown two opposed tendencies. First, and greatly to his credit, he has confidence that he and his crew can and will find solutions to setbacks that occur Fridays and Saturdays. And so it has often turned out. Yes, he has made important mistakes, such as choosing to run a medium rear tire in this Saturday’s sprint, because it had worked well in the morning. But it’s cooler at the end of the day, making Martín’s choice of the soft rear correct. Martín won the sprint and Bagnaia was uncompetitive. Bagnaia’s response was correct: “For tomorrow I will have no doubts. I will make the same choice as Jorge.”

On the other hand, Bagnaia can seem just a bit too cheerful and unengaged, as though his racing was happening to someone else, possibly in a galaxy far from here. People who thought Valentino Rossi in his years of greatness was a somewhat goofy “nice guy” found out differently if they had the skill to get close to him. There are not many happy-go-lucky great champions.

Martín had shown one-lap brilliance, then sprint brilliance, but in the last third of 2023 he was able to move that to Sunday as his great talent became broader. This makes me remember Marc Márquez’s description of his first MotoGP season, in which he became champion for the first time: “Every lap was like qualifying.”

I emphasize that this is not the same as “just goin’ fer it.” We know this because although Márquez often crashed in practice, he seldom crashed in races. This indicates that he was always intent upon finishing. Denis Jenkinson, in his little book about motor racing, describes a few racers who tend to speed up until they crash. I am remembering a wet race in which Rossi held to his own estimate of how much reliable grip there was, letting a rival pass him and pull away. Rossi had the discipline to wait for the leader to crash, and he did, leaving Rossi on the center box because he knew when to exercise restraint.

Martín had to go for broke in Valencia and did. (MotoGP/)

In Valencia Martín’s race was spoiled by an error that may have turned him into “a young man in a hurry”: On lap 3 he came too close to Bagnaia and was pushed into his draft, then ran wide, falling back to P8. Three laps later, in turn 4, he ran under Marc Márquez, they touched, and Marc high-sided while Martín was on the ground.

Martín actually made contact with Bagnaia on lap 3 before running wide, setting the stage for his second, bigger mistake. (MotoGP/)

Each time chance seems to turn against us, there is a temptation to double our bets. Or perhaps this was just a second ordinary mistake by Martín?

The rest of the race consisted of the semi-drama of first Brad Binder (Red Bull factory KTM), then his teammate Jack Miller leading only to tip over—Binder wide at turn 11 on lap 14, dropping to sixth, then Miller leading laps 14 to 18, crashing out on lap 19. This left Bagnaia leading ahead of Johann Zarco (Prima Pramac Duc) with Binder and the recently-risen-to-excellence Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini Duc).

Despite flashes of strength from others, the two principals of this season were Bagnaia and Martín. The others, in terms of the championship, were for the last third of the season just annoyances, buzzing flies bothering someone trying to mow the lawn. Yes, this one or that one might have, could have, should have, but the fact is that the others lacked the consistency and level temper necessary to amass the points to win. Or they were riding motorcycles lacking in consistency, or whose state-of-setup gives them strength only on certain circuits but not on others. I think of Eddie Lawson—a person who watched the odds. If in the first few laps he decided his bike and state of setup excluded finishing first, he did not then try to stretch himself beyond sense to make up the difference.

Brad Binder ran wide on turn 11, falling back to sixth place. At the end, however, he finished on the podium in third. (MotoGP/)

Spectators love the Big Gamble but championship winners generally control events better than that.

Really interesting will be the postrace test on Tuesday, when we’ll see the prototype 2024 bikes at their present level of development. More about that later.

Returning to the front tire pressure problem, I’ve done more reading about Central Tire Inflation Systems. Seems that in 1942 the amphibious DUKW used by US forces in World War II was given a CTIS. For the slog up sandy or soft beaches, tire pressure was reduced to increase footprint. Then once on firm ground or even on pavement, tire pressure could be dialed higher to save the tires from the flex-generated heat of higher speeds. Specialized military trucks continue with such systems today and many highway trucks use them as well. You can identify them by the air lines looping across the outer face of the tire to the hub.

Bagnaia now has three world championships: two in MotoGP and one in Moto2 (2018). (MotoGP/)

Dunlop and no doubt other tire makers have variable pressure systems to enable rapid data gathering on indoor drum testing. This caused one Dunlop engineer to propose there could be value in separate front and rear CTIS on racebikes, providing the enlarged footprint riders want and need in corners, then for straights, pressure rising to reduce heat generation by excessive tire flex. Michelin is well familiar with heavy truck CTIS.

Do I hear objections that it would be difficult to engineer sending air pressure to wheels that present no rotating end (as trucks do)? Google “very small air pumps” and see the wide variety of electric pumps which might even fit inside wheel hubs.

Tires already contain battery-powered inflation pressure reporting units, so adding a controllable bleed valve to prevent tires from (as Marc Márquez once put it) “…getting hot and bouncy” wouldn’t be too tall an order.

Sorry, folks—just thinking out loud.

We look forward eagerly to Tuesday’s revelations, and after that will come the official Sepang, Malaysia, test on February 6 through 8. And the final preseason test at Qatar on February 19 and 20. It all begins again.

Source

[Six30]

Looking forward to Marquez on a Ducati, 

[XTreme]

11 minutes ago, Six30 said:

Looking forward to Marquez on a Ducati, 

He's not the rider he was!

But Pedro Acosta is on the way!