virage du raccordement

Barcelona signed the end of a MotoGP that I personally enjoyed watching and keeping track of numbers wise. Time to make the most of all the spreadsheets and look at what happened besides the coronation of Jorge Martin as a new MotoGP champion.

Note : As with previous articles, the average positions for sprints & races results do not account for DNFs (they’re only averages of races completed).

I used Barcelona 1 to talk about round 6 and Barcelona 2 to talk about round 20. Likewise, round 13 is Misano 1 and round 14 is Misano 2.

qualifying

Q1/Q2 results

Qualifying position results

3 riders have always qualified directly to Q2 : Jorge Martin, Maverick Viñales and Pecco Bagnaia. They are the only riders who have always been in Q2 as everyone else who went to Q1 at least once also stayed there at least once.

Note : last season, Jorge Martin was the only rider from the full time grid to never visit Q1. Dani Pedrosa also achieved that feat with his two wildcards in Jerez and Misano.

12 different riders have beaten the Q1 trial. The best at the exercise was Raul Fernandez with 6 successes. Brad Binder is second with 5. Three riders close the podium with 4 Q1 successes : Alex Marquez, Pedro Acosta and Franco Morbidelli.

Not accounting for penalties, 12 riders have gotten at least one front row start. Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia both have the highest number of front rows with 13 each (65% of races).

Looking at the qualifying numbers, we can identify a couple of different groups of riders.

group 1 : Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin

Our top 2 of the championship were in a world of their own qualifying wise. Never in Q1, on the front row two thirds of the time, sharing two thirds of the poles this season. Pecco Bagnaia only qualified outside of the top 5 once (a P7 in Jerez) while Jorge Martin qualified outside of the top 4 three times (a P6 in COTA, a P7 in Barcelona 1 and a P11 in Sepang).

group 2 : Marc Marquez, Enea Bastianini, Maverick Viñales, Pedro Acosta

While Maverick Viñales always directly qualified to Q2, what he did in Q2 didn’t allow him to be up there with Jorge and Pecco. He does have one pole and the higher number of front rows of non-Ducati riders (7) but he also qualified on the 4th row 8 times.

Marc Marquez gave us his beautiful remontadas by not being able to escape Q1 3 times in the first part of the season (Le Mans, Barcelona 1, Sachsenring) while Enea Bastianini missed on Q2 only once but qualified P9 or lower 7 times, bringing the two of them to a very similar average in the end.

All 4 Q1 escapes from Pedro Acosta happened before Aragon (round 12 of the season). After that he had two Q1 stays in Phillip Island and Sepang. Pedro was on the front row 4 times and he was the only rider to score his first pole in 2024.

group 3 : Franco Morbidelli, Marco Bezzecchi, Aleix Espargaro, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Alex Marquez, Brad Binder

Then, we have the rest of the Ducati riders and two factory riders (Aleix Espargaro and Brad Binder). These riders all qualified directly to Q2 between 9 and 13 times, they all stayed in Q1 at least 3 times and except for Aleix Espargaro (zero) and Marco Bezzecchi (one), they all survived Q1 at least 3 times.

Franco Morbidelli had a rough start to the season but in the second part, he always found his way to Q2. Marco Bezzecchi also followed the same ways, 4 Q1 stays in his first 8 rounds but only 2 in the following 12.

Aleix Espargaro had an opposite trajectory, only going to Q1 once in the first 12 rounds and then only qualifying for Q2 twice in the following 8 rounds.

Fabio Di Giannantonio had a complicated patch right after getting injured in the middle of the season with 3 Q1 stays in Aragon and the two rounds in Misano.

group 4 : Miguel Oliveira, Fabio Quartararo, Jack Miller, Raul Fernandez, Johann Zarco, Alex Rins

We continue with a group composed with the Trackhouse riders, the Yamaha riders, Jack Miller and Johann Zarco.

They all qualified directly to Q2 at least twice (up to six times for Fabio Quartararo and Jack Miller) and they all survived Q1 at least once (up to six times for Raul Fernandez) except for Alex Rins.

Except for the rare coup d’éclat (e.g. Raul’s P3 in Barcelona and Sachsenring, Miguel’s P2 in Sachsenring, Jack’s P5 in Austria), it stayed complicated for them to reach the first two rows when they are in Q2.

group 5 : Augusto Fernandez, Joan Mir, Luca Marini, Takaaki Nakagami

And finally, Augusto Fernandez and the rest of the Honda riders. All 4 riders have never made a Q2 appearance in 2024. Both factory Honda riders came close once, Luca Marini with a P13 in Phillip Island and Joan Mir with a P13 in Barcelona 2.

Note : In 2023, every rider from the full time grid had made at least one Q2 appearance.

Round	Race	Poleman	Sprint Result	Race Result
1	Qatar	J. Martin	P1	P3
2	Portugal	E. Bastianini	P6	P2
3	USA	M. Viñales	P1	P1
4	Spain	M. Marquez	P6	P2
5	France	J. Martin	P1	P1
6	Catalunya	A. Espargaro	P1	P4
7	Italy	J. Martin	DNF	P3
8	Netherlands	P. Bagnaia	1	1
9	Germany	J. Martin	1	DNF
10	Great Britain	A. Espargaro	3	6
11	Austria	J. Martin	2	2
12	Aragon	M. Marquez	1	1
13	San Marino	P. Bagnaia	2	2
14	Emilia-Romagna	P. Bagnaia	1	DNF
15	Indonesia	J. Martin	10	1
16	Japan	P. Acosta	DNF	DNF
17	Australia	J. Martin	1	2
18	Thailand	P. Bagnaia	3	1
19	Malaysia	P. Bagnaia	DNF	1
20	Barcelona	P. Bagnaia	1	1

In 2023, 3 polemen had to go through Q1 first. None of them did in 2024.

Four polemen have managed to win both the sprint and the Sunday race following their pole : Maverick Viñales in COTA, Jorge Martin in Le Mans, Pecco Bagnaia in Assen and Barcelona 2 and Marc Marquez in Aragon.

3 riders have crashed from pole : Jorge Martin (Mugello sprint and Sachsenring race), Pecco Bagnaia (Misano 2 race, Sepang sprint) and Pedro Acosta (Motegi sprint and Motegi race).

A stat died when Pedro Acosta decided to DNF both races in Japan but if we put aside that round : in 19 rounds this season, the poleman has managed to score at least one podium.

And a random fact to finish : we had a full Spanish front row twice (COTA and Phillip Island) and full Italian one once (Misano 1).

sprints

Sprints results

Round	Race	Winner Starting Position	1st	2nd	3rd
1	Qatar	1	J. Martin	B. Binder	A. Espargaro
2	Portugal	2	M. Viñales	M. Marquez	J. Martin
3	USA	1	M. Viñales	M. Marquez	J. Martin
4	Spain	3	J. Martin	P. Acosta	D. Pedrosa
5	France	1	J. Martin	M. Marquez	M. Viñales
6	Catalunya	1	A. Espargaro	M. Marquez	P. Acosta
7	Italy	2	P. Bagnaia	M. Marquez	P. Acosta
8	Netherlands	1	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	M. Viñales
9	Germany	1	J. Martin	M. Oliveira	P. Bagnaia
10	Great Britain	2	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	A. Espargaro
11	Austria	2	E. Bastianini	J. Martin	A. Espargaro
12	Aragon	1	M. Marquez	J. Martin	P. Acosta
13	San Marino	4	J. Martin	P. Bagnaia	F. Morbidelli
14	Emilia-Romagna	1	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	E. Bastianini
15	Indonesia	4	P. Bagnaia	E. Bastianini	M. Marquez
16	Japan	2	P. Bagnaia	E. Bastianini	M. Marquez
17	Australia	1	J. Martin	M. Marquez	E. Bastianini
18	Thailand	2	E. Bastianini	J. Martin	P. Bagnaia
19	Malaysia	2	J. Martin	M. Marquez	E. Bastianini
20	Barcelona	1	P. Bagnaia	E. Bastianini	J. Martin

This season has seen 6 different sprint winners : 4 from Ducati (Jorge Martin, Pecco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini, Marc Marquez) and 2 from Aprilia (Maverick Viñales, Aleix Espargaro).

85% of sprints have been won either from pole (10 times) or P2 (7 times). The Jerez sprint was won from P3 while Misano 1 and Mandalika were both won from P4.

11 different riders have scored a sprint podium.

The repartition of the riders who have achieved a podium among factories is as follows :

• 5 riders from Ducati : Jorge Martin, Marc Marquez, Pecco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini and Franco Morbidelli;
• 3 riders from KTM : Brad Binder, Pedro Acosta and Dani Pedrosa (wildcard);
• 3 riders from Aprilia : Aleix Espargaro, Maverick Viñales and Miguel Oliveira.

3 riders haven’t scored a sprint point : Alex Rins, Luca Marini and Takaaki Nakagami.

We had an average of 3.45 DNFs per sprint and two of them had everyone crossing the finish line : Sachsenring and Misano 2.

The highest number of DNFs in one sprint was Jerez (9 even though we had even more crashes as some riders rejoined after falling victims to the wet patches). The second one is Phillip Island (7).

Over the season, we had 6 teams with double DNFs :

• Ducati and Aprilia in Jerez,
• Trackhouse in Barcelona 1,
• LCR in COTA,
• VR46 in Misano 1,
• KTM in Phillip Island.

races

Races results

Round	Race	Winner Starting Position	1st	2nd	3rd
1	Qatar	5	P. Bagnaia	B. Binder	J. Martin
2	Portugal	3	J. Martin	E. Bastianini	P. Acosta
3	USA	1	M. Viñales	P. Acosta	E. Bastianini
4	Spain	7	P. Bagnaia	M. Marquez	M. Bezzecchi
5	France	1	J. Martin	M. Marquez	P. Bagnaia
6	Catalunya	1	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	M. Marquez
7	Italy	5	P. Bagnaia	E. Bastianini	J. Martin
8	Netherlands	1	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	E. Bastianini
9	Germany	4	P. Bagnaia	M. Marquez	A. Marquez
10	Great Britain	3	E. Bastianini	J. Martin	P. Bagnaia
11	Austria	2	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	E. Bastianini
12	Aragon	1	M. Marquez	J. Martin	P. Acosta
13	San Marino	9	M. Marquez	P. Bagnaia	E. Bastianini
14	Emilia-Romagna	3	E. Bastianini	J. Martin	M. Marquez
15	Indonesia	1	J. Martin	P. Acosta	P. Bagnaia
16	Japan	2	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	M. Marquez
17	Australia	2	M. Marquez	J. Martin	P. Bagnaia
18	Thailand	1	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	P. Acosta
19	Malaysia	1	P. Bagnaia	J. Martin	E. Bastianini
20	Barcelona	1	P. Bagnaia	M. Marquez	J. Martin

The 2024 season has seen 5 different race winners : 4 from Ducati (Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin, Enea Bastianini and Marc Marquez) and 1 from Aprilia (Maverick Viñales).

The Sunday race has been won from pole 9 times (including 5 by Pecco, 2 by Jorge, one by Marc and one by Maverick). The lowest place a race has been won from is P9, Marc’s win in Misano 1. The second lowest was Pecco’s P7 in Jerez.

9 different riders have scored a Sunday race podium, and just like with the sprints, all from European factories. The repartition is as follows :

• 6 riders from Ducati : Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin, Enea Bastianini, Marc Marquez, Marco Bezzecchi and Alex Marquez,
• 2 riders from KTM : Brad Binder and Pedro Acosta,
• 1 rider from Aprilia : Maverick Viñales.

Pedro Acosta stepping on the podium in Aragon stopped a streak of 8 rounds with only Ducati bikes on the podium. That podium also happened to be the only one of the season with no factory riders (or, technically, the second one with the Aragon sprint which also had a Marc Marquez P1, Jorge Martin P2 and Pedro Acosta P3 result).

Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini are the two riders who only missed on points twice on Sunday. Jorge with two DNFs (Jerez and Sachsenring) and Enea with one DNF (Mandalika) and the penalty in Barcelona 1.

Everyone on the grid has scored points at least six times. Luca Marini struggled in the beginning of the season, only scoring his first point in Sachsenring thanks to tyre pressure penalties for other riders but he scored points on 5 occasions in the last 7 rounds of the season. Joan Mir had an opposite trajectory, scoring points in 4 of the first 6 rounds but having 5 DNFs in the last 6.

We observed an average of 4.05 DNFs per race, which is quite close to the sprint average (3.45) despite the Sunday races being twice as long.

The highest number of DNFs was in Mandalika (9), followed by Jerez (8). We never had a full grid finish on Sunday.

In terms of double DNFs :

• Pramac in Jerez,
• LCR in COTA,
• Trackhouse in Silverstone,
• Gresini and Honda in Mandalika,
• GasGas in Motegi,
• KTM in Sepang.

Overall, considering sprints and races, Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins are the only teammates that always managed to not DNF on the same day.

teammates battles

Every rider has beaten their teammate at least once (including races where one rider DNFed and his teammate finished the race).

Qualifying wise, the only rider who always did better than his teammate was Pedro Acosta for GasGas.

You can find the detailed results in the gallery right under (grey means one rider from the team wasn’t qualifying/competing, red means both DNFed) but I will be writing a dedicated article soon, also looking at what happened within factories.

on attending and finishing races

numbers

attending

5 riders have sustained an injury that caused them to miss races :

• Aleix Espargaro (Assen sprint and both races in Sachsenring),
• Alex Rins (both races in Sachsenring and both races in Silverstone),
• Fabio Di Giannantonio (both races in Spielberg and then both races in Sepang and Barcelona 2 after his surgery),
• Miguel Oliveira (both races in Mandalika, Motegi, Phillip Island, Buriram and Sepang),
• Pedro Acosta (race in Phillip Island after his highside in the sprint).

Joan Mir (both races) and Luca Marini (Sunday race) both missed some racing in the first Misano weekend due to illness.

Only 4 replacements riders were used throughout the season : Remy Gardner replaced Alex Rins for Yamaha in Sachsenring and Silverstone, Lorenzo Savadori replaced Miguel Oliveira from Motegi to Sepang, Andrea Iannone took Fabio Di Giannantonio’s seat in Sepang while Michele Pirro did in Barcelona 2.

At most, two riders from the grid were missing for a race. The first 7 rounds of the season were spent with the full time grid starting all races. It happened again in the Aragon round.

finishing

None of the rider have finished all the sprints or all of the races, everyone getting at least one DNF on Saturday and Sunday at some point in the season.

Rider	Sprints DNFs	Races DNFs	DNFs Total
Joan Mir	5	10	15
Augusto Fernández	3	7	10
Johann Zarco	6	2	8
Marco Bezzecchi	5	3	8
Pecco Bagnaia	5	3	8
Pedro Acosta	4	4	8
Aleix Espargaró	4	3	7
Brad Binder	5	2	7
Franco Morbidelli	2	5	7
Álex Marquez	2	4	6
Álex Rins	3	3	6
Fabio Di Giannantonio	4	2	6
Jack Miller	1	5	6
Raúl Fernández	1	5	6
Marc Marquez	3	2	5
Maverick Viñales	2	3	5
Miguel Oliveira	2	3	5
Takaaki Nakagami	2	3	5
Luca Marini	2	2	4
Enea Bastianini	2	1	3
Fabio Quartararo	1	2	3
Jorge Martin	1	2	3

In second place, Augusto Fernandez didn’t cross the finish line on 10 occasions. The third place of the podium (8 DNFs) is split between 4 riders : Johann Zarco, Marco Bezzecchi, Pecco Bagnaia and Pedro Acosta.

In 2023, Franco Morbidelli was the only rider on the grid to finish all races. In 2024, he DNFed 7 times (2 sprints and 5 races).

Constructor	Races Started	DNFs	% of Races DNFed
Aprilia	147	23	15.6%
Ducati	314	46	14.6%
Honda	157	32	20.4%
KTM	159	31	19.5%
Yamaha	74	9	12.2%

The previous table only accounts for the full time grid numbers, not the wildcards and replacement riders.

Similarly to what we could observe in 2023, Yamaha remains the safest bike (or, alternatively, Fabio Quartararo remains a rider that doesn’t crash a lot, he’s only responsible of a third of those DNFs for Yamaha).

Honda is again the bike that finished the least amount of races but the results are in the extremes when we look at the riders : Joan Mir is number 1 in terms of DNFs and Johann Zarco is 3rd ex-eaquo meanwhile Takaaki Nakagami and Luca Marini are both on the lower end of the DNFs ranking.

KTM‘s numbers are very close to Honda’s (one less DNF and two more races started) and that’s not a surprise considering their riders’ results. Pedro Acosta only had 2 DNFs in the first half the season (and then one in Misano 2) but he DNFed 5 times in the last 5 rounds of the season (racing 9 races after his forfeit for the Sunday in Australia).

If I can find the time during the break, I’ll try to look into details to separate the mechanical retirements from the crashes alone and the collisions where riders weren’t at fault.

wildcards

This season, the number of wildcards available to MotoGP factories was dictated by the concession rank they were assigned depending on their previous results.

In rank A, Ducati wasn’t allowed any wildcard in 2024. With rank C, KTM and Aprilia were allowed 3 wildcards before the summer test ban and 3 after. Same thing for Honda and Yamaha at rank D.

Rider	Factory	Number of wildcards in 2024
Lorenzo Savadori	Aprilia	4
Dani Pedrosa	KTM	1
Pol Espargaro	KTM	3
Stefan Bradl	Honda	6
Remy Gardner	Yamaha	1

Honda made the most of their allocations by using Stefan Bradl to ride all the wildcard spots they were allowed to take.

KTM did twice as much wildcards as they did in 2023. Dani Pedrosa appeared again in Jerez and Pol Espargaro served 3 race weekends on his own for his first year as a test rider.

Finally, Yamaha, just like in 2023, despite their 6 wildcard spots allocation, only used one with Remy Gardner stepping in in Japan. Did Cal Crutchlow getting injured impact Yamaha’s plans for 2024’s wildcards? Potentially considering they announced Cal for 3 wildcards back in April (Mugello, Silverstone, Misano).

I will note that Remy Gardner was supposed to do a wildcard in Silverstone but he was switched to be Alex Rins’ replacement after Alex tried to ride in FP1 but was in too much pain to continue the weekend.

On a Sunday, the best result also came from a KTM, it was Pol Espargaro’s P10 in Misano 1.

Qualifying wise, Pol Espargaro is the only wildcard who managed to appear in Q2 when he qualified P10 in Austria.

others

11 riders received a tyre pressure penalty at some point in the season (10 from the full time grid + Stefan Bradl). Three riders had more than one : Fabio Di Giannantonio (4), Raul Fernandez and Jack Miller (2).

Talking holeshots, nearly half of them (47.5% to be exact with 19 in total) were achieved from pole. 35% (14) were reached from P2. Then, we had 3 from P3, 3 from P4 and one from P5 (Enea Bastianini in the sprint in Barcelona 2).

The championship only ever had two different leaders but 8 riders got to be in the top 3 of the standings at some point (Aleix Espargaro, Brad Binder, Enea Bastianini, Jorge Martin, Marc Marquez, Maverick Viñales, Pecco Bagnaia and Pedro Acosta).

Enea Bastianini and Pecco Bagnaia are the teammates that shared the most podiums (11). The only other teams with a double podium were Gresini with Marc Marquez’s P2 and Alex Marquez’s P3 in Sachsenring (race) and Pramac with Jorge Martin’s P1 and Franco Morbidelli’s P3 in Misano 1 (sprint).

Also, Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin shared 20 podiums (50% of all podiums available) in 2024.

At least one Ducati was present on every single podium of the season. We had 2 sprint podiums with 3 different factories (Losail and Barcelona 1) and one race (COTA) but no podium with 3 factory riders.