How costly have sprint mistakes been in Bagnaia’s MotoGP title bid

Francesco Bagnaia’s hopes of retaining the MotoGP title are hanging by a thread. The factory Ducati rider is facing a 24-point deficit to Pramac rival Jorge Martin heading into the final round of the season in Barcelona next week.

Although the odds have been against Bagnaia for some time, it was his crash from second place in the Malaysian Grand Prix sprint that has effectively sealed the deal in Martin’s favour.

From the early part of the year, Bagnaia had identified sprint races as being the main weakness in his title bid. After the first six rounds, he had accumulated just 14 points on Saturdays while his chief rival Martin had tallied up 56. By this stage, Bagnaia had actually outscored Martin by three points in Sunday races, but was left with a mammoth 39-point gap to overcome in the overall table.

To be fair to Bagnaia, he has upped his performance in half-distance races in the ensuing period. Since the Italian Grand Prix back in June, Bagnaia has picked up six sprint wins in 13 attempts, compared to four for Martin. Over the course of the full year, Martin is still ahead in the reckoning with seven wins to six thanks to his early-season form but clearly, the defending champion has shown that he can be rapid in the new format.

However, while Bagnaia knows how to score big on any given day, he has also hemorrhaged big points to the championship leader over the course of the season.

As early as the second round in Portugal, the two-time champion gave away a sprint win by outbraking himself at Turn 1 while leading the race. He later revealed that a mistake in miscalculating the impact of decreasing fuel load on braking led to him running off track.

A DNF in the Le Mans sprint was partly down to him, as the crash in qualifying left his primary bike with too much damage. The back-up GP24 that he ended up racing was described by him as “dangerous”, forcing him to pull into the pits after just three laps.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Then there was the biggest error of all in Barcelona, where he crashed on the final lap while circulating a second clear of his nearest rival.

Even with that patchy run in the first part of the season, Bagnaia had managed to pull himself to the top of the championship, incidentally after Martin dumped his bike while leading the German Grand Prix.

But when the championship resumed at Silverstone in early August after the summer break, Bagnaia failed to capitalise on the situation, hitting the deck in the sprint while having a podium in the bag.

That weekend clearly showed the 27-year-old’s tendency to make errors at the worst time possible. The 10-point lead he had inherited after Sachsenring was turned into a three-point deficit and the focus suddenly shifted to Martin’s mental strength in overturning a psychological and sporting disadvantage.

In that context, it is easy to explain why Bagnaia fumbled under pressure in Malaysia at Turn 9 – admittedly at one of the trickiest corners on the track, a complex uphill left-hander that comes at the end of a fairly long straight.

The retirement from Sepang marked his fourth non-score in a sprint event this year (compared to two for Martin). That goes to show why he has lost a whopping 48 points to his title rival on Saturdays alone.

Points scored by Martin and Bagnaia in sprints:

Of course, Bagnaia then responded with a bang on Sunday, outduelling Martin in the early stages of the grand prix before sprinting clear to win by 3.1s.

It was his 10th win of the year from 19 grands prix, which alre