Francesco Bagnaia is MotoGP world champion!

An intense season full of twists and turns saw Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin battling it out for the title at Valencia. A championship that looked to be Pecco’s for the taking up unto the summer break.

Pecco is champion but what an effort

When Pecco decided to race with the #1 on the top fairing, he knew he’d have a target on his back. But without too much pressure, Bagnaia was able to win both the first ever Sprint race in MotoGP history and and the first long race of the season. Pecco amassed 11 wins in all – four Sprints and seven main race wins – as well as 17 podiums to bring home his second MotoGP world title. After his (double) success at Portimao, Bagnaia went on to win the Sprint in Austin before crashinig while leading the Texas GP. Victory at Jerez  was followed by another crash at Le Mans, but despite these ‘zeros’, Pecco maintained his championship lead, even extending it before the summer break thanks to wins at Mugello and Assen. A podium at Silverstone and a double win at the Red Bull Ring ensured Pecco was ideally placed heading into the final part of the season. Before Barcelona, the Italian held a 62-point lead over rival Jorge Martin in fact. But the balance starting to tip in Catalunya, where Pecco crashed on lap one and was hit by Brad Binder’s bike. Fortunately the world champion sustained no serious injuries.

A second championship essentially got underway at Misano, with Jorge Martin beginning to make up ground to Pecco Bagnaia, whose consistency had been key up until this point. Five podiums in six races, including a win at Mandalika, saw the Italian rebuild his advantage over the Pramac rider. But then came the incredible race in Australia, where Pecco was unable to win a race that had looked to be his for the taking. In Qatar, after a Sprint made difficult by a tyre that failed to perform as expected, he scored another important second-place finish behind Di Giannantonio. A simultaneous false move by Martin meant that Pecco headed into the Valencia round with a 21-point lead. After a challenging Friday, Bagnaia bounced back on Saturday, scoring a front row start in qualifying. He placed just fifth in the Sprint, having gone for the medium tyre, while the soft tyre chosen by the podium sitters was clearly the correct choice. A crash for Martin in the early stages of the main race, as he pushed to make up the ground lost early on, meant that the Italian secured his second MotoGP world title, his third in all.