Ducati rider Bagnaia stands on the precipice of an historic first world championship coming into this the final round of the season on 4-6 November, as he aims to become the first rider to have overturned a 91-point deficit and brush aside five DNFs to win the title.
Bagnaia has won seven times so far this season, six of those coming after he crashed out of June’s German GP – the incident which left him trailing Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo by 91 points.
Winning last weekend's Malaysian GP, Bagnaia now leads reigning world champion Quartararo by 23 points after the Frenchman managed to keep his title hopes alive by finishing third.
How can the 2022 MotoGP title be won at the Valencia GP?
- If Bagnaia finishes ahead of Quartararo, Bagnaia will be world champion
- Quartararo must win the race and hope Bagnaia is no higher than 15th to win the world championship
- Quartararo cannot win the championship if he finishes lower than first, regardless of where Bagnaia is
When was the last time a Ducati rider won the MotoGP title?
A Ducati rider last won the MotoGP world championship in 2007, when Casey Stoner won the first of his two series titles.
It remains to this date Ducati’s only title in MotoGP since it joined as a manufacturer in 2003.
When was the last time an Italian rider won the MotoGP title?
An Italian rider has not won the MotoGP world championship since Valentino Rossi tallied up his seventh premier class success in 2009 with Yamaha.
Since then, the championship has gone to three riders from Spain, one from Australia and one from France.
As Bagnaia is a product of Valentino Rossi’s VR46 Academy, the title for him in 2022 would be a significant milestone for the nine-time grand prix motorcycle world champion’s talent development project.
When was the last time a French rider won the MotoGP title?
Quartararo remains the only French rider in history to have won the premier class title following his 2021 success.
When was the last time the MotoGP title went down to the final round?
The MotoGP title battle has only ever gone down to the final round four times prior to 2022 in the modern era beginning in 2022.
The last time was in 2017, when Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso kept his slim hopes against Marc Marquez alive down to the finale in Valencia. Marquez won the title.
Two years prior to that, Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo engaged in a venomous finale to a hugely controversial 2015 championship season in Valencia. Lorenzo won the race and the championship, as Rossi finished fourth having had to start last for a collision with Marquez in Malaysia at the previous round.
Valencia played host to the 2013 title decided between Lorenzo and Marquez, with the latter claiming the spoils to become MotoGP’s first rookie champion since 1983.
In 2006, Rossi and Nicky Hayden took their title battle to the wire in Valencia. A crash for Rossi allowed the late Hayden to win a highly emotional championship.
