Moto GP: Francesco Bagnaia has held off Martin to claim his eighth win of the Moto GP season in Japan.
While the 2024 MotoGP season has been a Ducati benefit – wins in all but one Grand Prix, victories in 13 of 16 sprint race s – the return of the world championship to Australia this weekend comes with, paradoxically, plenty of unpredictability.
Just when it looked like Bagnaia was in the lead to stay – he reclaimed the series lead from Martin when he won the sprint and Grand Prix in Austria in August while making the rest look second-rate – ain the next round saw Martin reclaim the advantage by 23 points. The gap across the five rounds since has shrunk to as low as seven points, but Martin has never lost his grip.
Neither Martin nor Bagnaia have been slow at the Island; equally, neither has sealed the deal, which raises some doubts despite them being the two standout riders for a second straight year. Fourth in 2019, third in 2022 and second to Zarco last year, there’s a numerical pattern to the Italian’s results, but Phillip Island is one of just three tracks on the schedule where he’s never won in any category.
His 2015 and 2017 wins in races included in any discussion of the best in the world championship’s history stand out, and his prolific record on anticlockwise tracks – 30 wins from 51 starts on left-handed tracks compared to a 33 per cent success rate overall – makes him even more dangerous this weekend at a track where other frontrunners have shown that they could succeed here, but haven’t proved it.
Aprilia has fallen away from the front the longer 2024 has gone, but the Island’s slew of sweeping corners will suit the sweet-handling RS-GP machine, while neutering the hard-braking calling card of Binder’s KTM. Miller has a Phillip Island podium in his pocket as he returns to the scene of his most memorable Moto3 victory 10 years ago, but the KTM rider has laboured through a rough 2024 season where he’s managed just one top-five Grand Prix result, which came in Portugal in round two when he finished fifth.after his career was given a lifeline by Pramac Racing and its new association with Yamaha for 2025.
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