The battle for the top spot in the 2024 MotoGP championship has been a game of tug o war between Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia. In the Mandalika sprint race Martin crashed from the from the lead and lost out on valuable points that would’ve shut the door on any comeback by Bagnaia this weekend. Martin was however able to recover to P10. Bagnaia’s post race mood was on the opposite end of the spectrum while he celebrated the.
Bagnaia said, “I’m very happy with this win. It wasn’t an easy race, as the track temperature was the highest ever encountered so far at this track. This morning, we managed to make another step forward and in qualifying I understood how to be effective in the first two sectors. I still struggle at turns 15 and 16, but it’s a very tricky point where I almost tucked the front on a couple of occasions. This is why in the race I pushed as hard as I could in the first three sectors, as I knew I wasn’t the fastest rider in the last split. This is a strategy that could have worked only today, so we’ll keep working in the warmup in order to improve some more ahead of the race.”
Enea Bastianini’s finished P2 in the sprint ahead of Marc Maruqez and has opened up the possibility of contending for the championship title race. Martin now holds a 12 point lead over Bagnaia and a 50 point lead over Bastianini. There are enough races for the top of the table to shift in any direction come the final round of the season and the battle for 2024’s championship is heating up. Referring to the race
Bastianini said “It was a good sprint race; too bad for the start and especially for the mistake at turn one, which compromised a bit my chances of winning today. I had a good pace and I was very competitive under braking, and that allowed me to bridge the gap and to overtake a few riders. Tomorrow’s race will definitely be a tough one: Jorge crashed today, but he’ll be very competitive tomorrow. The fact that we’ll likely have to go for the medium rear tire will mix things up a bit further.” Marc Marquez rounded out the top three.
Full Sprint Race Results From Mandalika