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Tuesday, September 06 2022
Basically s**t my pants': Title fight steps up a gear in changing of the guard ? San Marino talking points

Race finishes don’t come much closer than that.

Francesco Bagnaia has claimed yet another crucial victory, but boy did he have to work for it. He duelled incoming teammate Enea Bastianini all the way to the finish and in the end clung on by the barest of margins, just 0.035 seconds.

It swung a little more momentum towards him and his Ducati team as the season rapidly heads towards its conclusion.

Just six rounds remain, including the four-race flyaway swing through Asia, and the Italian has resumed second in the standings with a deficit of only 30 points to Fabio Quartararo.

The impossible suddenly feels very achievable for Bagnaia.

And that’s frustrating for Quartararo, whose stronghold on the sport has quickly and dramatically slackened. It might be great for the show, but the Frenchman is finding himself cornered once again on a bike that seems like it’s not longer up for the fight.

The 2022 championship fight is wide open again, and what happens next is anyone’s guess.

NO TEAM ORDERS AT DUCATI AS BAGNAIA MAKES HISTORY

Francesco Bagnaia is the first Ducati rider to score four victories in a row. If nothing else, it cements his status as the figurehead of the factory team.

But far more important in the context of the 2022 season is what it does for the championship battle.

Only four rounds ago Bagnaia’s title campaign was on life support, with the Italian 91 — yes, 91 — points behind title leader Fabio Quartararo.

But those four successive victories have slashed the margin to 30 points, down 61.

It’s a remarkable turn of events.

And Bagnaia is the form man of the series. His last six finishes have been victories. He could’ve had a seventh had he not been wiped out of the Catalan Grand Prix on the first lap.

But there’s a certain irony in that part of his rapid recovery in the standings is also potentially his biggest weakness: Ducati’s highly competitive rider stable.

Ducati fields eight bikes, all of which could on any day slot themselves between Pecco and Quartararo. But those riders are also out there vying for victory in their own right, and as the Italian marque has been keen to stress, there are no team orders requiring any of them to defer to Bagnaia on Sundays.

We got a pretty clear look at that in San Marina.

Enea Bastianini, freshly buoyed by the news he’ll replace Jack Miller as Bagnaia’s teammate at Bologna next season, was in fine form at the weekend, qualifying and finishing second.

Though saying he finished second rather undersells it — he finished just 0.034 seconds behind the leader after a thrilling late duel for victory in which the championship contender rather than the former championship leader prevailed by the barest of margins.

Bastianini had a very good crack at Bagnaia in those dying laps, but he may well come to appreciate that his long-term Ducati future was done a service by him not getting past — and certainly by not crashing. With no title on the line for him, he’d be much better off starting his teammate relationship with Bagnaia on good terms rather than as the rider who potentially derailed his recovery, though their relationship sharing a garage seems almost guaranteed to be fiery.

The shape of that recovery is increasingly healthy. With a 30-point gap and six rounds to go, Bagnaia’s championship hopes are back in his own hands — Quartararo can no longer grid out the title by finishing second to the Italian.

It’s a small psychological victory as much as it is a literal triumph, and there’s no telling how important that’ll be on the charge to November.

QUARTARARO REACHES THE YAMAHA CEILING

While there was much relief for Bagnaia, there was only frustration for Quartararo, who’s feeling all his championship momentum slip away.

That run of two wins in Spain and Germany to cement his title lead feel a long way away now, and while he’s been of a generally calm demeanour while Aleix Espargaró has been his chief title rival, he’s become notably more tense now that Bagnaia is on a charge riding a bike with bucketloads of pace.

After qualifying eighth — the danger zone for his Yamaha, with its difficulties following and overtaking — the Frenchman admitted to feeling the heat as the title comes down to a crunch.

“I’m disappointed, but it’s always the same problem,” he said, per Autosport, lamenting the lack of power that slotted him behind six Ducati bikes and an Aprilia. “I’m starting to have much less fun than before, so we have to find a solution to qualify faster.”

And he made virtually no progress in the race, finishing fifth after three riders ahead of him retired, his consolation prize being that he put another point on Espargaró.

“That was the limit,” Quartararo said, per Crash. “More than angry, I was really frustrated, because I gave my 100 per cent and could not fight for more.

“Any more than that and I think I would be on the floor. We arrived really on the limit of our bike today.

“There was no problem, that‘s the thing. If you check the pace, I had the same pace as practice. I felt quite good on the bike.

“I made a really good race today, but it‘s only P5 and five seconds from the top. So we are not in a great position.”

“I saw that Aleix was struggling also on the grip, and I could overtake him. But with the others, I could not even try. So that‘s something that I’m quite frustrated about, because I cannot try anything and I’m not enjoying as normal.”

Quartararo’s title defence suddenly feels like much more of a grind. Whereas once he had points to burn, the San Marino Grand Prix very much confirmed that he’s now on a defensive footing.

There are a couple of circuits in the final six that should be more favourable for Yamaha, in particular Thailand and Phillip Island, but whether or not that’ll be enough to overcome Bagnaia and his head of steam — and perhaps even Alexi Espargaró, though the Aprilia rider’s challenge feels like it’s fading — is far less certain than it seemed even a race or two ago.

MILLER LOSES GOLDEN CHANCE FOR FINAL DUCATI VICTORY

Jack Miller has been enjoying a strong and consistent run of results since the middle of the year, perhaps in part thanks to the certainty of his KTM switch but also thanks to the 2022 factory Ducati bike also having its final kinks ironed out.

The Aussie has five podiums to his name for the year, but he’d dearly love to build on that tally before he leaves for pastures new — and of course he’d love to sign off from Bologna with the high of a victory.

He mightn’t get as golden a chance as San Marino, the last of the Italian marque’s home races for the year.

It felt like a round built for him — up to a point. Not only was he rapid through the weekend, but conditions in qualifying — slippery, greasy and spotted with rain — played to his renowned strengths in mixed conditions, and he duly took pole.

He led off the line too, but only for a few laps — two, to be precise — before he came off in the gravel.

But Miller, who’s taking a glass-half-full outlook into the rest of the season, refused to call it a dropped chance.

“Whether or not it was a missed opportunity, it‘s better not to even think about it,” he said, per Crash. “Just take the positives of the steps we made on the bike this weekend, the way that I‘m feeling on the bike at the moment, and that’s it.

“I’ll try to learn from it. I was pushing there at the beginning, trying to get away a little bit or at least break the group up and that can happen.”

And reflecting on the way the rest of the race unfolded, with Bagnaia and Bastianini motoring away from the rest of the field at pace, Miller reckons victory would’ve been far from assured anyway.

“I don‘t want to say I was going to win today or anything like that, [because] those two guys at the front — I came in and saw their lap times on the last lap and basically shit my pants, to be honest,” he said.

“I mean, that was impressive. A 31.8 and 31.9 with 27 laps on the tyres — it‘s the same as my pole lap.

“So those guys were pushing. I only saw some short [clips] of the race, but it looked like the pace was extremely fast at the front there and those guys were riding extremely well.”

The title has certainly stepped up a notch, and while Miller knows he has the pace to race for victories this year, that frontrunning fight is no longer his to impact.

THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA?

The San Marino Grand Prix was Andrea Dovizioso’s 248th and final MotoGP start, with the stories Italian calling it quits at his home race.

And it was a happy enough race for Dovi, ending with points for 12th place, just his sixth points-scoring finish of the year.

Pleasingly he was able to reflect positively on his final race, and in a rare achievement for any longstanding athlete, he was able to say he felt he was leaving at the right time.

“I’m really happy, I couldn’t be any better. My decision to stop here was right,” he said.

His retirement lowers the average age of the grid substantially given he’s three years older than the next most senior rider, Aleix Espargaró.

But in a generational sense San Marino was interesting for more than just Dovi’s departure. Dovizioso was also in some ways representative of an older era dominated by the so-called aliens: Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, with Marc Márquez later joining that group.

With the exception of Márquez — whose absence has been felt in the star power of the series in recent years as he battles injury — the alien generation has retired.

“It is the beginning of a new era,” Luca Marini, who finished fourth, said, per GPOne “However, the process takes time.”

That’s of course not to say the sport is lacking for ability. Indeed, if anything, it’s enjoying an embarrassment of youthful riches. In the tight battle at the front on Sunday the top five riders — all in victory contention until late — were sitting at an average age of 24.8 years old and all with bright racing futures ahead of them.

“The level of the category is rising,” Marini said. “Maybe today‘s race may have been boring for the show but impressive for the pace.

“The show on the track is there; we simply need time because we are almost all young riders

“I repeat that MotoGP remains a great show. Probably in the past they considered it more exciting as the usual three to four riders always fought for the victory, but today all or almost all of them can. And this can lead to a division in the sporting orientation of the fans.

“Seeing six or seven riders chasing after the win at the same time is incredible.”

What’s most interesting about this prospect is where Márquez fits into it. The Spanish champion is targeting a racing comeback this year pending the outcome of some testing in San Marino this week. He’ll be a formidable force if he gets back to his crushing best, but it’s also true to say the sport — not to mention his Honda bike — have changed since his dominant era.

It’s a fascinating open question to consider. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for an answer.

Posted by: AT 12:14 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
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