A double win at Silverstone thanks to two late-race sprints was exactly the kind of thing Ducati was counting on from Enea Bastianini when it first made the controversial decision to promote him to the factory team in place of Jorge Martin a year ago.
A bad injury, and repeated struggles with the new format and Ducati’s new bikes, means Bastianini is now on his way out (while Ducati hasn’t stuck with Martin either).
But the rider the team once bet on is still in contention, and his success at Silverstone – coupled with a below-par weekend for team-mate Becco Bagnaia – means he will emerge from the British Grand Prix with his strongest claim in months to become a potential title contender.
Bastianini himself insists he’s not there yet. Obviously, that’s still a very remote possibility – but here are three reasons why we think he can do what his Ducati teammate Marc Marquez and his Ducati GP23 couldn’t: turn a two-horse race for the title into a three-man battle instead.
less prone to error
Martin and Bagnaia were clearly two of the best riders in MotoGP 2024, which meant they were always in line to score the most points. This in turn meant losing big points for one or the other as they traded mistakes.
Martin had spotted a big opportunity for Bagnaia after he crashed out late in the German Grand Prix. Bagnaia returned the favour by crashing out at Silverstone. Both made notable mistakes, more or less unforced – or at least individual – and this largely continued the theme of their title fight from the previous year.
Bagnaia sees this as a natural consequence of the speed at which the car was travelling and the specific dynamics created by the new and improved rear of the car pushing it forward.
Bastianini was the slower of the two, overall, but he was also the more organised. He retired twice – a crash at Jerez where the conditions were bizarre enough for 14 other riders to also crash, and he signed a contract with Martin at Mugello.
Otherwise, he has kept the track very well. This has helped him score points on weekends where his pace has been lacking, and he proved his worth at Silverstone, where he ran a brutal final lap to secure the Grand Prix without any real threat of a crash.
Given that this is a rider who has also finished all but one of his Moto2 title races – although his lack of points was due to a bad crash in Austria, one of the worst in the intermediate class in recent years – there is a blueprint to follow, while Bagnaia/Martin simply can’t score points because they have to worry about each other.
Good series of tracks
There’s nothing surprising about Bastianini’s good performance at Silverstone, where everyone’s tyres were beaten, and he’s undoubtedly the grid-keeping specialist.
But he is well equipped to make big plays in upcoming events as well.
Austria? There’s some track record there, largely based on a good performance in his only season with Gresini. Aragon? Snatched a win from Bagnaia there the same year. Two GPs at Misano? He’s good there.
The rest of the calendar isn’t quite as nice, but it does include Sepang, which was great.
He will need to be perfect at each of the above tracks to be able to withstand any change in the points table, and there are certainly one or two tracks where Bastaini will not feel comfortable and therefore be vulnerable to a slow start to the weekend – which would translate into a third or fourth row qualifying and neutralise his race chances – but the ingredients are there for a strong race overall.
Ace up his sleeve
The odd thing about Bastianini as a rider is that qualifying on the front row and winning the sprint race made him a more likely favourite to win the main race than either of those two things for anyone else on the grid.
“If he can get a clean result in the first corner, he will certainly minimise the damage caused by his usual hesitant approach in the early laps.”
“If he was in contention on lap 10, he would have won the race by lap 20.”
Both things actually happened – and Martin actually held out longer than you’d expect given Bastianini’s reputation.
“I think I was really unlucky in the first part of the championship. I got a lot of yellow flags,” Bastianini said on Saturday. [in qualifyings]I had a lot of accidents. It wasn’t easy for me to close the gaps in the races.
“This way it was much easier. I suffered a lot less than I usually do.”
“I think these two wins will give him a lot of motivation to come back,” Bagnaia said of his teammate on Sunday.
“It is normal that he will fight for the championship until the last races. He is very fast. very “He’s good with used tires. We always have to think about him.”
“Not a title contender”
Despite all that, the 49-point gap remains too large, and one that cannot be bridged even with a perfect weekend.
In fact, it was Bastianini himself who had the most convincing argument as to why he should not be considered part of the competition yet.
“At the moment, I don’t think I’m a title contender, because Pico and Jorge have shown more consistency than me in every race. These two riders are always at the top.
“If I want to be a title contender, I have to improve in this direction. It’s a good starting point.
“If I get that opportunity at the end of the tournament, let’s see what happens.”
His actions so far in 2024 have suggested he’s telling the truth here – would a rider who believes he’s in the championship picture throw a bunch of points in the bin the way he did in Barcelona?
But the picture has changed. At the same time, there is no indication that team tactics will be used here – Ducati certainly favours Bagnaia’s title against Martin, but it rejected the opportunity to use Bastianini to help Bagnaia in his title fight with Fabio Quartararo in 2022, so it is unlikely that he will suddenly issue team orders here. Especially since Bastianini, who will race for Tech3 KTM next year, has little incentive to help.
So Bastianini can focus on his own campaign. The obstacles ahead of him remain enormous – from here on out, he must always qualify there or near there, keep his nose clean in the sprints and hope to win the outright Grands Prix that will allow him to maximise his key skills against Bagnaia and Martin.
He will have to maintain this level of performance, but also Bagnaia and Martin will have to help him by continuing to leave points on the table.
“It’s really smooth, reminds me of Danny.” [Pedrosa] “My experience was great on the better days,” said Aprilia veteran Aleix Espargaro of Bastianini. “It was flowing smoothly, accelerating really smoothly, taking care of the rear tyre.”
“He needs to understand what is different on these kind of days and if he is able to understand that, he will clearly be the man to beat, and he will be one of the favourites to win the title.
“Because at the end of this week, the outside feeling was that it was too easy for him.”
With 37 points on offer at the weekend, Bastianini is now in the heart of the battle and puts himself in Valencia’s sights. far It’s unbelievable. He might ruin this party.
