“Attritional unseriousness.”
Good morning and welcome to a quieter weekend to drop another edition of Dre’s Race Review. With F1 having a surprisingly long Autumn break, it was time for MotoGP to take centre stage with its first major flyaway round of the Championship run-in; the Indonesian Grand Prix at Mandalika. And with it, Jorge Martin finally gets back into the winner’s circle after four months on the shelf, and well… this race was a messy mother trucker. Let’s get into it.
A Race Of Frustration
Maybe it’s the fact my privileged British ass had to get up at 8am to watch it and I’m starting to write this in the immediate aftermath of it, earlier than I usually do, but I’d be lying to you if I said I enjoyed this one. This race felt like a microcosm of all the little niggles I have with MotoGP as a sport and the state of the 2024 Championship.
It started on Saturday. Hours after destroying the field in qualifying with a lap half a second faster than the field, Jorge Martin tucked the front at the penultimate corner on the opening lap of the Sprint Race. Call forth understandable comments about the championship leader’s temperament. Going into this one, I called it a banker round for Martin due to his dominance there last year, until he crashed. I thought history was repeating itself. The championship gap was reduced to 12, with more egg on the face of the sport’s fastest rider as Pecco Bagnaia took advantage of another Martin mistake.
The race starts up this morning and Pecco Bagnaia has yet another awful start to drop him down to seventh place. In the Italian’s defence, I suspect his rear ride-height device wasn’t working, hence the bike lifting on launch, but it took a potentially huge fight for the win away almost immediately, and a good part of that was down to the nature of the Grand Prix itself.
Mandalika is a slower, more technical track. It flows beautifully, with multiple long sweeping corners that look like they’d be wonderful to play on MotoGP 24, but given the current state of these bikes, it’s exactly the sort of conditions I wouldn’t want to try something within this risk-averse era of the sport. Add in the elements of a track that isn’t raced on very often over a calendar year, and severe heat – a track that topped out at 62 degrees Celsius at points, it led to a greasy, slippery track where you’d be going offline at your peril.
Your best shot for passing on this track was Turn 16, a heavy trail-braking zone where you’re leaning into the corner early on and putting an immense amount of pressure on the front tyre. It’s exactly why Martin crashed yesterday. Turn 10 was another example that led to Marc Marquez’s qualifying demise and caught a lot of riders out with overdoing it under braking.
And the worst part? No one was here to see it. I’ve already seen accusations of lying by some of the mainstream media over claims that 15,000 were in on Friday, and to be honest – given how barren the grandstands looked beyond the big one on the home straight, there’s probably some merit to it. I’ve heard rumblings the ticket prices since the sport decided to come here have been wacky, and googling up tickets north of $100 just for the Sunday is dangerously high for bike racing. When Mugello was doing that last year, it showed in the immediate post-Rossi market and attendance cratered. You can get away with that for Formula 1, but not for MotoGP, and it showed.
By the time we got through the race, the lay of the land was bleak. Jorge Martin led this race lights to flag and never really looked like he was in trouble. It was a flawless performance and one he badly needed – His first Grand Prix win since Le Mans back in May. It’s exactly what he does best, take the front, rip the everloving shit out of the GP24’s raw speed and overwhelm the field into submission. The man who tried to follow him all day was Pedro Acosta, who was stunning on his KTM, a team that’s taken a pasting for recent poor form on and off the track… but as I write this is currently under investigation for tyre pressures. I fear he wasn’t expecting to spend so much time on his own and likely went over the limit.
It honestly infuriates me that the concept of having a quieter race and NOT fighting people has led to scenarios that being passive leads to time penalties. The sport has had opportunities to fix this problem via a new potential front tyre that Michelin brought to the Misano test that the riders loved, but was scrapped for 2025 because of a “lack of testing”. One of the biggest issues the sport has won’t be addressed for another 18 months and it’s fixable right now. It’s shit.
Pecco Bagnaia felt like Luigi in a viral Mario Party video, finishing third while doing next to nothing. He was pegged back by that bad start but did well to come back against the faster-than-usual Franco Morbidelli and Marco Bezzecchi, but both struggled in the latter stages, Morbidelli struggling to turn his GP24, and both VR46 bikes gambling on soft tyres that Michelin didn’t recommend using.
His other two title challengers made a horlicks of it. Marc Marquez was already struggling in seventh when his bike caught fire and he had to park it. It was another erratic weekend for the Antman, with two crashes in qualifying forcing him to start 12th again (Marc has only qualified front row 4 out of 14 times this season), and coming back to finish third. And with his bike detonating halfway through, it meant Marc Marquez still hasn’t finished a race in Indonesia.
Enea Bastianini did his best Misano Pecco impression. Finding himself early on when it comes to pace, using that rear-tyre management to whether the storm and start coming back late, carving through that second pack I mentioned earlier, only this time he crashed out at Turn 1 with a handful of laps left. Like with Marquez, his Championship is likely now over and it was frustrating to see a man going half a second quicker than the field late on get nothing for it.
So, the Championship as it stands?
Leader – Jorge Martin: Man with questionable temperament and mistake-making
2nd – Pecco Bagnaia (-21): Has conceded a huge amount of points in Sprints and isn’t above lapses in judgement
3rd – Enea Bastianini (-75): The best MotoGP rider in the world but only in the final 33% of races, also struggles in qualifying
4th – Marc Marquez (-78): Also can’t help but ride his Ducati like a Honda when its over a lap, has crashed multiple times in races
5th – Pedro Acosta (-185): Super rookie but not ready for the big time just yet
I’m going to repeat that term of frustrating because in theory, this should be a thrilling title battle and right now it feels more like you’re waiting for someone to make a mistake. When was the last time we had a genuine Bagnaia vs Martin scrap for a Grand Prix win? Catalunya? We’ve had skirmishes via early races and the Sprints but it’s felt like a tease for months of what could happen, but instead we have to keep waiting for a flashpoint that isn’t a crash.
And as I write this, one more kick to the junk – Acosta gets to keep his second place (Leaking wheel rim caused the pressure drop, not an infraction), but we have to wait another four days to see if Binder and Nakagami have a penalty “due to the nature of the post-race checks”. What does that even mean? One thing’s for sure though – it means Indonesia’s result is only provisional until then. The vague language used and the lack of clarity in communication is only going to frustrate fans who are now in the dark.
…Do you see why I wrote this feeling cranky?
Dre’s Race Rating: 5/10 (Meh) – It wasn’t a terrible race, there was some good, brave passing here given the circumstances which I do commend, but I don’t think Indonesia is a good fit for what these MotoGP bikes are at the moment. Jorge Martin was ultimately a class above and after Jack Miller took up lawn bowls, only 12 riders finished. Hard to get much out of that one. See you in Japan.
