The championship battle took a dramatic swing in the Qatar Grand Prix as a new MotoGP winner took to the top step of the podium.
There was a lot at stake coming to the penultimate round of the championship, with Francesco Bagnaia facing his first match point having held a lead of 14 points over Jorge Martin.
Victory in the sprint for Martin with Bagnaia fifth as a result of a rear tyre issue cut the gap to seven points and ensured the championship will be decided this week in Valencia.
But 24 hours later, a similar tyre issue for Martin saw him drop to 10th and Bagnaia take a 21-point lead in second having survived a late scare at Turn 1.
Martin raged at tyre supplier Michelin, claiming it “stole” the championship from him.
None of this mattered to Fabio Di Giannantonio, however, as he put in the ride of his career to become a MotoGP grand prix winner. It comes as he doesn’t have a ride for 2024, with the Honda option slipping away to Luca Marini and VR46 eyeing Moto2 star Fermin Aldeguer.
Elsewhere, Aleix Espargaro sparked controversy when he slapped Franco Morbidelli during an on-track incident in practice, while we got the first glimpses of MotoGP’s 2027 ruleset.
After a memorable weekend, here are the 10 things we learned from the 2023 MotoGP Qatar Grand Prix.
1. Di Giannantonio’s form merits 2024 ride, but he needed to show it sooner
Fabio Di Giannantonio came to Qatar believing he could fight for the victory, telling the media as such on Thursday at Losail. The Italian has been in a decent run of form of late, scoring a maiden podium in Australia last month.
Qualifying his Gresini Ducati second on the grid, he manage to keep hold of that in the sprint for a first rostrum in the half-distance races for the season.
After initially getting beaten up in the grand prix, come lap five Di Giannantonio was back up to second and gave Francesco Bagnaia a good chase before overhauling him on the 19th tour having just been given the infamous ‘mapping 8’ signal on his dashboard.
As it happened, this was not a team order but a note to tell him that he had just five laps to go and if he wanted to win the grand prix then he should pull his finger out. When Bagnaia almost collided with him on the run into Turn 1 on lap 20 and gifted Di Giannantonio a lead of over three seconds, the job was done.
It was a performance that has put Di Giannantonio into a new standing in the pecking order, vaulting him from arguably the lowest-rated Ducati runner to someone massively more credible.
He admitted after the race that he is “speechless” to be in a situation where he is winning races but doesn’t have a ride for 2024. Where just a few weeks ago he was Honda’s favoured choice, the options have seemingly dried up. Luca Marini is now likely to join Honda, while VR46 is eyeing Fermin Aldeguer to replace him.
And it is a shame that a grand prix winner could be facing the exit having finally hit his stride. But, until Indonesia this year, he’d never seen the top six in a grand prix since making his debut in 2022. Even before Marc Marquez signed for Gresini, the team was shopping around for a replacement.
VR46 said last weekend that he wasn’t really an option, and Aldeguer’s run of three-straight Moto2 wins makes the 18-year-old an enticing prospect. Perhaps his “fuck everything and go for it” approach in Qatar may well have offered him a lifeline, but it may have come too late.
2. Tyres at risk of ruining 2023 championship battle, one way or another
It’s unavoidable that tyres are one of the most important part of a racing motorcycle. But there is now a serious risk that the outcome of the 2023 MotoGP title battle will be dictated by tyres.
Heading into the final round in Valencia, both Bagnaia and Martin had one warning apiece for breaking the minimum tyre pressure rule. Should they do so again, they will be hit with a three-second time penalty.
Weather conditions are set to be cold in Valencia and the tight nature of the Ricardo Tormo track makes overtaking difficult. Thus, trying to guess what tyre pressure you will need to start the races there will be a nightmare for technicians.
But it’s not just tyre pressures that will be a worry. In Qatar, both Bagnaia and Martin were hit with duff rear tyres: the former in the sprint, which meant he struggled to fifth while Martin won and cut the championship lead down to seven points. Then in the grand prix, Martin had a similar problem which meant he could do no more than 10th with Bagnaia second and swelling his lead to 21 points.
Martin was furious, stating: “I think you could see at the start when the rear tyre started spinning, it was like a stone. Normally this happens when the track is dirty. It wasn’t, because it was the grid, and when the tyre maybe has 30 laps [on it], and it didn’t because it was new.
“So, you can guess what happened. From that point I tried to manage a little bit but I felt I was crashing every corner on the rear. It’s a pity that a championship like this, after such a great season, working hard, I feel like they [Michelin] stole it from me because I think I could do it [win] before this race. Now it’s really difficult.”
Several riders complained of rear tyre problems over the Qatar weekend, with Yamaha’s Franco Morbidelli says the feeling he had on his in the grand prix was “not normal”.
Michelin says it is investigating the offending tyre, while noting that the unit had never been used prior to the grand prix – ruling out the prospect that it was a pre-heated option, which generally offers less grip.
It must be accepted that quality control can’t be infallible. But the fact either that or the maligned tyre pressure rule could ultimately decide the championship is a sour prospect.
3. Martin will need to muster all of his maturity in Valencia
Since Bagnaia had his horrible accident at the Catalan GP, Martin has very much stepped forward, scoring 206 points to Bagnaia’s 177 in that time. And that tally should have been bigger, had he not crashed out of a comfortable lead in Indonesia.
Arguably, he’s still the out-and-out faster of the pair. And in Qatar, he showed a level of maturity that proved he has the mental mettle to be a championship challenger.
Friday proved disastrous as he spent much of second practice battling grip issues. And while he made it directly into Q2, he pretty much lost his race set-up time. How he responded in the sprint was a clear sign of his ability to surmount adversity.
On Friday, he says he was able to put the problems of the practice session behind him to secure a Q2 place “in a mature way”. Understandably, Martin was in equal parts furious and dejected after the Qatar GP.
But if he has any hope of winning the championship now, he will need to show that maturity from the off in Valencia.
4. Bagnaia’s championship will hinge on getting sprint form back
With the dramas of the Qatar GP, Bagnaia can win his second world title this Saturday in the sprint race if he outscores Martin by four points.
But to do so, Bagnaia is going to have to overturn a fairly meek sprint form relative to Martin of late.
Where in the first half of the season, the sprints were very much propping up Bagnaia’s championship lead having suffered three non-scores in the first five rounds, the Ducati rider hasn’t won a Saturday contest since Austria.
Since Barcelona, he has scored 49 points in the sprints compared to Martin’s 86 – which includes five wins on the bounce from Misano to Thailand (the Australia sprint was cancelled due to bad weather) and eight for the season so far.
In Qatar, Bagnaia’s sprint was compromised by a bad rear tyre. But in general, he hasn’t had the measure of Martin on Saturday since early September.
5. The other winner in Qatar deserving of a nod
Di Giannantonio’s win in Qatar is a special moment for the 2023 MotoGP season and the reaction from his peers on the cooldown lap said a lot about how this victory is being viewed.
And while he wouldn’t step into the spotlight himself, much credit has to go to his crew chief Frankie Carchedi. The Briton guided Joan Mir to the 2020 world title and joined Di Giannantonio’s side of the Gresini box for 2023 when Suzuki quit the championship at the end of last year.
Di Giannantonio’s consistent to 10 appearances in the first half of 2023 giving way to podium and race-winning form in the latter part is in no small part thanks to Carchedi.
“I have to say that my crew is fantastic,” Di Giannantonio said on Sunday. “Once Frankie Carchedi joined our team, we started to work really closely together and there is an amazing energy inside the box. So, race by race we started to build this performance. We planned every single lap, and everything stuck to the plan. It was just unbelievable.”
Marc Marquez is in safe hands next year.
6. Espargaro strop risks sullying his credibility as MotoGP’s voice of reason
It became the talking point of the Qatar weekend and Aleix Espargaro’s altercation with Franco Morbidelli in third practice remains a point of debate on social media.
Inside the opening 10 minutes of the weekend’s third practice (ridiculously designated as FP2 under the current format) Morbidelli overtook Espargaro at Turn 5, before the Aprilia rider botched a countermove at Turn 6.
Both riders ended up running wide and Espargaro lost his cool, before slapping Morbidelli on his crash helmet in frustration as the Yamaha rider attempted to tell him to calm down. Espargaro was hit with a six-place grid penalty and a €10,000 fine.
That may seem like a fairly light sum for a factory MotoGP rider. But that will sting a lot more for an underfunded Moto2 or Moto3 riders engaging in the same behaviour. So, hopefully it serves as a deterrent for younger riders.
Morbidelli was, unsurprisingly, unhappy with the incident. He called it a “huge disrespect” and felt the stewards “did nothing” by way of punishment. He went on to point out that “you’ve seen him overreacting many, many times in his career. He has much more episodes to be ashamed of than to be proud of,” in a scathing smackdown of Espargaro.
Morbidelli isn’t wrong. In India last month, Espargaro screamed at one of his mechanics for sending him out when pitlane was still closed, having not seen the fairly sudden change in schedule. He later apologised for his reaction, though then took aim at Morbidelli for having “no respect” for rivals, highlighting times when he has gotten in riders’ ways.
We want to see emotion from riders and the adrenaline of racing is such that fiery responses to incidents are understandable. But his outburst in a session which had literally no bearing on the rest of the weekend – and over an incident that was largely his fault – was wholly unnecessary.
And as one of the grid’s voices of reasons when it comes to matters of safety in particular, Espargaro risks undermining his credibility in this regard if doesn’t start to control his emotions better.
7. Stewards must align its penalty messaging for 2024
The stewards took a dim view of Espargaro’s transgression, but they once again exposed the inconsistency of its own rules.
Espargaro’s grid penalty was issued only for the Qatar GP, rather than for the next race he is fit to compete in – as has generally been the case since the chaos the FIM caused with its handling of Marc Marquez’s punishment for his Miguel Oliveira tangle in Portugal.
Suffering a small fibula fracture after getting collected by Oliveira in a lap-one crash in the sprint, Espargaro was not a guarantee as a grand prix starter at Losail. Thus, had he been ruled out, he would not have to have served his grid penalty.
This is because the rule about a penalty carrying over only applies to incidents in which the perpetrator is also injured in the offending incident.
As the Espargaro case proves, a rider can commit a punishable error and still be injured in an unrelated incident. That somehow excuses them from serving their penalty.
Why that’s the case, only the FIM stewards panel knows – and they don’t ever speak to the media to explain their decisions.
8. 2023 will never see a race started by the full grid
It may be MotoGP’s longest season ever, but it will also end next week in Valencia without the entire full-time grid having competed with each other in any races this year.
While it was already touch and go whether this would be the case, with LCR Honda’s Alex Rins still uncertain for the Valencia finale following another operation last month on the leg he broke, a crash for Miguel Oliveira in the Qatar sprint has certified it.
Oliveira collided with Aleix Espargaro on the opening lap of the sprint at Turn 6 and suffered a fracture to his shoulder – a similar injury to that which ruled Enea Bastianini out of the first five GPs of the year.
The RNF rider will therefore miss the Valencia GP and faces a race against time to be fit enough to start the pre-season testing phase for 2024 at the beginning of February.
In series as chaotic and as long as MotoGP, maintaining full rosters is going to become much harder in the coming years if something isn’t done to better manage this.
9. First 2024 penalty already issued
An unfortunate consequence of Oliveira’s accident is that it copped him a long lap penalty from the FIM MotoGP stewards.
It capped off what Oliveira had already described as a “miserable” season, in which he has been forced to miss races on three occasions with injury.
But, just to receive one final kick in the ribs, Oliveira will return to Qatar in early March carrying the first penalty of the 2024 season.
As he was injured in the incident he was deemed responsible for, the wording of the penalty noted that he would serve it at the next race he was fit to contest. That was initially put down as Qatar, having not officially withdrawn at the time of the penalty notice.
But with Valencia off the table for him, that punishment will carry forward into next season.
10. 2027 engine regulations glimpsed
Ahead of the Qatar GP weekend, Autosport revealed that MotoGP is looking at an 850cc engine as part of its 2027 regulations framework.
It will mark the first significant engine regulation change since 2012, when the class adopted the current 1000cc four-stroke formula. Prior to that, MotoGP ran 800cc engines between 2007 and 2011, which took over from the 990cc formula that replaced the long-standing two-stroke 500cc regulations in 2002.
The idea behind switching to 850cc engines is to reduce speeds in a bid to improve safety.
As mentioned above in entry #8, 2023 has been brutal in terms of injuries – though the outright speed of the bikes can’t be fully blamed for this.
The 850cc engine idea has been met with approval from Yamaha, Honda, Ducati and KTM, while Aprilia believes the current engines could be modified rather than reduced in size to achieve safer speeds. The change of engine regulations will coincide with the introduction of 100% non-fossil origin fuel in 2027.
Dorna Sports hopes the 2027 regulations will once again entice a sixth manufacturer to join the grid.
Other areas, such as aerodynamics and ride height devices, are likely to be touched on in the 2027 rules package. Arguably, a reduction here would be far more beneficial to the overall safety of MotoGP – as well as having a positive impact on the racing – than a change in engine size.
