Of course, the fact that the racing is closer than ever means that if riders and engineers don’t get absolutely everything out of their bikes and tyres on Sunday afternoon they will end up nowhere.

If the correlation between rider talent and technique, tyre allocation, track layout and grip, temperature and weather, machine character and settings are an nth of a degree out then the rider who was on the podium last weekend will struggle to get inside the top ten next time out. The tiniest difference in performance, one or two tenths of a second – less than the blink of an eye – is all it takes to destroy a rider’s race.

Grand Prix racing didn’t use to be like this. If Alex Crivillé, who won the 1997 Australian GP, had been 0.22 seconds per lap slower he still would’ve finished a very comfortable third, 22 seconds ahead of the next rider home. Two Sundays ago that drop in performance would’ve put him way out of the championship points in 19th.

Such crazy-close racing has other consequences. Riders must risk everything on every lap if they want to be in the hunt for the podium, which inevitably means more crashes. Bagnaia is the perfect case in point here – he’s crashed out of five races this year and he’s leading the championship. No one’s ever done that before and it’s another sign of the times.

“It’s just the level of it, everyone is riding on such a highly strung level,” says factory Ducati rider Jack Miller, who has finished on the podium seven times so far this year and finished outside the top ten on four occasions. “To bring the amount of speed you need into each weekend to be competitive makes it a bit more difficult to be as consistent as maybe you were in the past, when you couldn’t be in the title fight if you had more than one DNF.

“The amount of good bikes and riders that are out there – if you have a bad day now you’re struggling to get points. At Mugello and Barcelona I had shit weekends, but I wasn’t that far off and I was fighting for two or three points. Whereas in the past when you had a bad weekend you were fourth or fifth, so you’d go into the next one and the bike would be back on [so] you wouldn’t have to override yourself. Nowadays you’ve got to really override yourself and that’s causing some inconsistency. So everything’s part of it: the level of the bikes, the level of the riders, the level of the championship and the number of races.”

“Maybe the younger riders thought that when the king is away the dogs will play”

Paul Trevathan, crew chief to KTM factory rider Miguel Oliveira, agrees and has own thoughts on the situation. First about Márquez’s absence from the front of the championship since he broke an arm at the first race of 2020.

“I think Marc had such a mental gain on everyone when he was dominating that the other guys almost thought they were racing for second,” he says. “The guy could do what he wanted. Then when he got hurt there was a new young generation coming in, who hadn’t been beaten up by him as much as the boys before, so maybe they thought that when the king is away the dogs will play. So they got better in their minds and all of sudden they had chances of winning and when you win you just get more and more confidence and it’s a snowball. There was no real leader in the class, so everyone was having a crack at it.”

This has happened before. The 1999 and 2000 seasons were two of the closest in history because injury had forced Doohan to stop racing and Rossi was still getting up to speed on a 500.

“The second thing is the way we’ve developed the bikes, with the spec ECU and the single-tyre rules,” Trevathan adds. “Now we’ve all got a lot better at understanding the tyres and taking each concept as far as we can with that tyre. So you steal points. Other times we turn up at a race and things just don’t work and there’s no way that we’ve been able to turn it around. Yamaha has had those weekends, so has Ducati, so has everyone, where it’s nearly impossible.

“It’s a case of tyre allocation and a combination of everything. I think it got even more like this when the new rear casing came out [Michelin’s new rear slick, which arrived in 2020]. Now there’s a lot more grip available and the compounds got softer, which some riders could handle and others couldn’t, like Valentino. The guys like him that needed a stiff casing, a solid feeling at the rear of the bike, not this squishy, big contact-patch thing, were in handcuffs, so they were finished.

“This changed things and then we changed the bikes a lot to get the most out of this tyre and because we’re all building up our experience we are all getting a lot better at it. So I think everyone is maximising everything out of the bike now and it’s brought everyone down to a level playing field.

“Before there was a tyre drop-off during races, while now it’s just a balls-out race from start to finish, as long as your tyres are working. Sure, you’ve got to manage different things. With a soft compound you’ve got to manage some bike movement, whereas with a hard compound you’ve got to manage the grip at the start of the race. But there’s not the big crossover point we had in the old days, when somebody would set up his bike to be stronger at the end of the race, like when [Andrea] Dovizioso was good with Márquez.

“You remember the days of the ‘aliens’ [Rossi, Lorenzo, Márquez and so on]… If they had a bad day they were fourth or fifth, now you’re 15th. This is the reality. It’s also the way the boys are riding, how they’ve changed their styles and they’re all pure athletes and fully committed.

“I think the class has never been so stacked with talent. The will to win from the manufacturers and the riders has brought us into this era – it’s just a consequence of all that stuff.

“It can be really frustrating – you have a good race and you think, ‘What did we do different?’. Everyone is trying to drag everything out of the bike, but it’s milliseconds that make the difference now.

“Also, if the bike doesn’t work in FP1 you’re already on the back foot, because in FP2 you’ve got to throw in a soft tyre, so you’re qualifying already. Then FP3 is qualifying, then it’s Q1 and/or Q2, so you really need a package that is going to be in the ballpark when you turn up at a track. This helps a lot.

“It’s the same in races. Your rider runs wide and he drops five places and maybe he gets back a couple. But you can’t really catch up because there’s no slouches out there anymore.”

So, to sum up: any fans complaining about MotoGP riders being a bit useless because they can’t bring home big points hauls, week in, week out, don’t know what they’re talking about

 

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MotoGP championship winners and leaders, by % points, 1949-2022

The 100 percenters

Year	% of available points scored	Rider	Manufacturer
1959	100	John Surtees	MV
1968	100	Giacomo Agostini	MV

 

The 90 percenters

1994	90.57	Mick Doohan	Honda
1997	90.67	Mick Doohan	Honda

 

The 80 percenters

2003	89.25	Valentino Rossi	Honda
2019	88.42	Marc Márquez	Honda
1963	87.50	Mike Hailwood	MV
2005	86.35	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha
1958	85.71	John Surtees	MV
2010	85.11	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha
1990	85.00	Wayne Rainey	Yamaha
1972	84.62	Giacomo Agostini	MV
1986	84.24	Eddie Lawson	Yamaha
1988	84.00	Eddie Lawson	Yamaha
1969	83.33	Giacomo Agostini	MV
2008	82.89	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha
1996	82.40	Mick Doohan	Honda
2011	82.35	Casey Stoner	Honda
1960	82.14	John Surtees	MV
2007	81.56	Casey Stoner	Ducati
2001	81.25	Valentino Rossi	Honda
2014	80.44	Marc Márquez	Honda
1965	80.00	Mike Hailwood	MV
1983	80.00	Freddie Spencer	Honda
1991	80.00	Wayne Rainey	Yamaha

 

The 70 percenters

1957	79.17	Libero Liberati	MV
1987	79.11	Wayne Gardner	Honda
1984	78.89	Eddie Lawson	Yamaha
1985	78.33	Freddie Spencer	Honda
2012	77.78	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha
1964	77.77	Mike Hailwood	MV
1995	76.31	Mick Doohan	Honda
1989	76.00	Eddie Lawson	Honda
1966	75.00	Giacomo Agostini	MV
2013	74.22	Marc Márquez	Honda
2015	73.33	Jorge Lorenzo	Yamaha
1970	72.73	Giacomo Agostini	MV
1971	72.73	Giacomo Agostini	MV
1967	72.50	Giacomo Agostini	MV
1980	72.50	Kenny Roberts	Yamaha
2009	72.00	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha
1954	71.87	Geoff Duke	Gilera
2004	71.53	Valentino Rossi	Yamaha
2018	71.33	Marc Márquez	Honda
1993	70.86	Wayne Rainey	Yamaha
1961	70.00	Gary Hocking	MV

 

The 60 percenters

1998	69.33	Mick Doohan	Honda
2002	66.75	Valentino Rossi	Honda
1999	66.75	Alex Crivillé	Honda
1978	66.67	Kenny Roberts	Yamaha
2016	66.22	Marc Márquez	Honda
2017	66.22	Marc Márquez	Honda
1973	65.45	Phil Read	MV
1977	64.85	Barry Sheene	Suzuki
2000	64.50	Kenny Roberts Jr	Suzuki
1981	63.64	Marco Lucchinelli	Suzuki
1979	62.78	Kenny Roberts	Yamaha
1962	62.50	Mike Hailwood	MV
2021	61.77	Fabio Quartararo	Yamaha
1974	61.33	Phil Read	MV
1950	60.42	Umberto Masetti	Gilera

 

The 50 percenters

1953	59.37	Geoff Duke	Gilera
2006	59.29	Nicky Hayden	Honda
1976	58.00	Barry Sheene	Suzuki
1951	57.81	Geoff Duke	Norton
1982	57.22	Franco Uncini	Suzuki
1955	56.25	Geoff Duke	Gilera
1975	56.00	Giacomo Agostini	Yamaha
2022	54.31	Pecco Bagnaia	Ducati (after 19 of 20 races)
1992	53.85	Wayne Rainey	Yamaha
1949	51.66	Les Graham	AJS
1956	50.00	John Surtees	MV

 

The 40 percenters

2020	48.85	Joan Mir	Suzuki
1952	43.75	Umberto Masetti	Gilera