With just two races to go we head to Malaysia with the prosecco loving Pecco Bagnaia leading the standings and with the possibility of him taking the championship. Trying to halt his progress will be the irate Frenchman Fabio Quartararararo.
So with the Italian leading Quartarararo by 14 points will Bagnaia take his first MotoGP championship this weekend?
- Note: We realise that Aleix Espargaro is also mathematically still in with a chance. But he’s not really is he? So we’ll conveniently overlook him.
Yes he will
Ducati
At the beginning of the season factory Ducati were in a bit of trouble. In testing before the season started the Bolognaise based team realised that having over 150 MotoGP riders on the grid meant their 256gb USB drive that they bought from wish.com was soon overflowing with data. It took the engineers months to wade through all the telemetry, filtering out anything Luca Marini said, before concluding that sticking more plastic bits on the bike was the solution.
By this time the season was already well underway and the factory riders were languishing down in the standings. But the plastic bits began to work. And just after the one-third point of the season the Ducati was clearly the fastest, and most ugly bike.
Now after almost 7 months of new plastic bits stuck everywhere Bagnaia’s Desmosedici is leagues faster than poor Quartarararo’s sorry heap giving him a substantial advantage.
Minions
One of the many benefits of Ducati having thousands of riders is that they’re all technically answering to one dictator. Sure they may be spread over hundreds of teams but every rider and team know if the boss says jump and you don’t – then you’re straight to the bottom of the list of stupid stick-on plastic bits. And it’s a long list.
So if the leader says ‘don’t pass Bagnaia’ and ‘try to upset Quartarararo’ then expect the minions to salute enthusiastically and do their job.
Yamaha protection
Whereas Ducati have countless average riders on brilliant bikes to protect Bagnaia Yamaha are stuck with some fairly terrible riders on a totally terrible bike. It seems almost impossible to dream up any realistic scenario where the Yamaha riders are even able to keep up with Fabio let alone defend him from the sprawling Ducati clan.
No he won’t
A World Champion Effort
You don’t end up a world champion in a premier motorsport without having some killer instinct – unless you’re Damon Hill of course. Fabio may not be able to beat Pecco this weekend but there’s always hope that, using all his killer instincts and world champion credentials, he can beat the other average Ducati riders.
Following Bagnaia home will ensure the championship stays alive for the final race around the Valencia go-kart track in a few weeks.
Balloon knot twitch
On more than one occasion Bagnaia’s nerve has let him down. Like the time he was leading his first ever MotoGP race and then fell off claiming he’d slipped on a visor tear-off and that tear-offs should be banned and that he was thinking of setting up a ‘go fund me’ page to ban them.
The Malaysian race this weekend will be the first time this season that Pecco’s actually become the ‘chased’ and not the ‘chaser’ – which interestingly is the name of a game often played with Uccio and pals at Rossi’s Neverland ranch.
Will this switch of roles play on the Italian’s mind?
Marc Marquez
If he’s on the track then you can’t rule Marc Marquez out of doing something controversial. And if there’s one thing the Spanish Anti-Christ is great at it’s upsetting the easily upset Rossi fans – who’ll all be cheering on Bagnaia.
With this in mind it wouldn’t, therefore, be too far a stretch of imagination to see Marc accidentally punt off Pecco into a nearby rubber plantation – earning himself a long lap penalty and earning Bagnaia a trip to A&E.