‘Valentino told me to be calm and understand the situation’

Miller had five laps out front, working on a dream end to his debut season with KTM, when he fell too victim to Turn 10, losing the front and going down at speed.

Why all the crashes at 10? It’s a high-speed right-hander that follows three lefts. Riders attack it by rolling the throttle and barely touching the front brake, so the bike doesn’t pitch forward and load the front tyre. Thus front grip is sketchy, especially when the race takes place in late November and starts at 3pm, when the autumn sun is already on its way down and ambient temperature plummets, so by half-race distance front-tyre temperature was critical.

Why did the race start an hour later than usual? To avoid a Max Verstappen parade in Abu Dhabi.

Miller, like always, hid the disappointment of his crash with humour.

“I was riding around smoking cigarettes, thinking it was going to be done and dusted but, like always in MotoGP, it jumped up and showed me what’s what,” said the Aussie. “I went with Brad, who was putting in a good pace, then he had his moment and I said, ‘OK, I need to go alone now’.

“I felt good, but then I started having some moments on the right side, maybe because the front was cooling without Brad’s slipstream, so I was like, ‘OK, be careful with it’. But I had a good feeling in Turn 4 [another of Valencia’s few right-handers], so I was able to really push the bike into 4 to get some more temperature into the front.

“Then I changed direction from 10 to 11 and as soon as I rolled off – I didn’t even get to grab the brakes – she disappeared from underneath me. I had a little cry. I’d pushed so hard and we’ve been working our asses off all year and it could’ve been a real sweet way to end it.”

Now Bagnaia was out front, also without a slipstream to warm his front tyre and the track cooling by the minute, so he was walking a tightrope.

“It was quite scary, because in the last five laps I started to feel cold on the bike and I was very scared about the front tyre,” he explained.

And he had another front-tyre worry. “I was a bit scared because I know how easy it was to go under pressure and be penalised, because I’d already had a warning in Malaysia.”

Once Bagnaia was in front his lap times did slow a fraction, but then he had Martin’s team-mate Johann Zarco on him, so he had to up his pace, tiptoeing down that tightrope.

And then here came Qatar winner Fabio Di Giannantonio, showing magic speed, climbing from tenth at the end of the first lap to fly past Zarco at Turn 4 on the last-but-one lap. During the final lap he was all over Bagnaia but couldn’t quite find the room to make a lunge. His countryman is just too good at defending his line and took the chequered flag 1.7 seconds ahead.

“In the middle of the race I was struggling a lot, but then I got a good rhythm and started to smell victory,” grinned Di Giannantonio after his third podium in five races. “I was coming so fast to the front and I tried everything with Pecco but he’s world champion because he’s got some great defensive lines. To be honest, he was better than me.”

Di Giannantonio was at his best through Turns 4 and 11 and he might’ve tried a victory lunge at the final corner if it wasn’t for something that had happened earlier in the race there.

“I had a huge moment there, so I had some shit in my pants all race long,” he laughed.

Di Giannantonio stopped laughing an hour and a half later when he was told he had fallen foul of MotoGP’s dreaded new tyre rule. He had been below the 1.88 bar/27.3psi minimum for more than half the race. And because it was his second offence – he had also been under in Saturday’s sprint – he was handed a three-second penalty, which demoted him to fourth and Binder to third.

Di Giannantonio’s sanction gave him the dubious distinction of being the first rider to lose a podium due to the new rule.

Since the pressure rule (which has existed since 2014) was first enforced at August’s Austrian GP, a total of 19 riders have been under the minimum pressure. Next year this rule breach will be punished by immediate disqualification, so it doesn’t take a genius to see what effect it will have on the 2024 MotoGP championship.

Everyone knows this, but it seems like only the riders are making a noise about the situation.

“Friday’s safety commission was one topic,” said Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaró, who limped home eighth, still suffering from his Qatar sprint crash. “We pushed Carlos [Ezpeleta, Dorna’s chief sporting officer]. We said to him, ‘It’s not about Michelin, it’s about the championship’.

“This rule is going to ruin the championship and the rules are made by the championship, not by the brands, so we asked Carlos to protect us because with this rule the 2024 standings will be based on the penalties, 100%. If one penalty decides the championship it will be worse than what I did to [Franco] Morbidelli in Qatar!” (Espargaró was referring to the incident in which he whacked the Italian during Qatar GP practice).

Bagnaia’s successful defence of his crown gives the 26-year-old Italian membership of an illustrious club. In three quarters of a century of world-championship racing he’s the 13th rider to win back-to-back premier-class titles, following Geoff Duke, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini, Phil Read, Barry Sheene, ‘King’ Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi and Marc Márquez.

No doubt, he is now in the pantheon.

Bagnaia doesn’t make a lot of noise. He doesn’t smash and grab victories. He goes about his business quietly, even stealthily and with super-focus: steadily building his speed throughout the weekend, so he often seems out of the game on Friday but by Sunday afternoon he’s spraying bubbly.

He is the opposite of so many motorcycle racers: quiet, a bit shy, polite and gentlemanly.

Sunday’s victory – which completed a year that brought Ducati its second successive MotoGP riders’ championship and a fourth consecutive constructors’ title – made Ducati Corse engineering wizard Gigi Dall’Igna so happy he even wore a fuzzy red ‘Ducati’ wig in celebration.

And make no mistake about it, 2023 was the toughest-ever championship in premier-class history – more races than ever with 40 in total – and more injuries than ever. Indeed the number of Sunday races missed through injury was THREE times more than in 2022, so just getting through the season in one piece was an achievement.

Even the cool, calm and collected Bagnaia very nearly didn’t make it. When he fell at the start of September’s Catalan GP and got run over by another motorcycle it seemed like his championship might be over.

“After Barcelona I struggled a lot – my big problem was being able to ride the bike because I had a lot of pain,” he said.

And his title defence hadn’t started well either.

“This year I made a big step in being calmer in some situations, trying to continue learning from my [2022] mistakes, but in the second and third races I made the same mistakes by crashing. Every year is a process to improve.”

Bagnaia’s only mistake at Valencia was choosing the wrong tyre for Saturday’s sprint race, which he finished fifth. He raced with the medium, despite mentor Valentino Rossi’s advice to use the soft.

“Valentino asked me many times yesterday why I chose the medium and I was asking myself the same! Today he just told me to be calm and understand the situation.”

In the end it was OK, Bagnaia ended his fifth season in MotoGP with seven GP wins and three sprint wins, to Martin’s four GPs and eight sprints.

“It feels incredible – I feel at the top level of my happiness right now,” he added.

Last year Bagnaia fought Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo for the title, coming back from a 91-point deficit, thanks in part to the superiority of his Ducati.

This year he battled with a super-aggressive rival on identical machinery, with both riders able to examine each other’s data to improve their speed. Neither Bagnaia nor Martin like the other spying on them like this, but that’s how Ducati works, so they must deal with it.

Two other Ducati riders who will share data next year will hate it even more. Marc Márquez and Marco Bezzecchi clashed on Sunday’s first lap, when Márquez made a heavy move, taking out Bezzecchi, who was more than furious.

“He hit me in my back and made me crash,” said Bezzecchi, who finished the year third overall. “It was very, very dirty, but he’s Márquez, so nobody does anything against him. When you make another rider crash, at least a f**king penalty!”

Inevitably, Marquez saw things from the other side.

“I won’t lose a lot of time with this rider because during this season he’s already pushed me out many, many times,” he said. “It’s normal – I was inside, he tried to keep his line, but if you are outside you will lose if the rider on the inside keeps his speed.”

The six-time MotoGP king had a rollercoaster of a weekend, 11 years after he started his career with Repsol Honda at the 2012 post-Valencia tests. He didn’t finish the main race, but he finished an impressive third in the sprint, his second sprint podium of 2023.