MotoGP racing has concluded for this year. The 18-round championship has come to a close, the awards ceremony has been and gone, and the sole Jerez test that begins the 2022 season is already in the books. Riders are finally going on some well deserved holidays, or catching up with family and friends. It will be several months before anyone slings a leg over a MotoGP bike, and so the fanbase is forced to wait with bated breath for the next season of testing and racing.
For me, the 2021 season was a massive relief compared to last year. When the global pandemic began last year it stopped all international sports from occurring which forced MotoGP to cancel and reschedule a whole host of races. While we did eventually get a championship, it was condensed to a level of insanity, with fourteen races held over just eighteen weekends exclusively in European circuits. It wasn’t a championship so much as a battle for survival, as riders who suffered injuries or difficulties within their teams were essentially ruled out of contention for the title. It was engaging in a unique way, but it wasn’t like anything we had seen before.
2021 marked something of a return to normality. While we still didn’t get to race in any of the Asian fly-aways, and the track at Argentina remained unused, it still felt like more of a global series than the previous season. We raced across three continents rather than one, with the return of Qatar as the opening grand prix of the season and Austin playing host to the Americas round. There were still plenty of European races, but there was greater diversity to the tracks we visited, and much less reliance on double-headers at the same venue.
More than anything, it was a more relaxed season than 2020. The races were spread out to a more reasonable degree, kicking off in March and concluding in November. The riders got a winter break rather than a single week off between six races. There was time to review and relax between races, and a single injury wasn’t necessarily the end of your championship. It was easier on the viewers too, giving us more time to prepare and build up the anticipation before every race. When the racing is happening so regularly, it can be difficult to remain as excited.
If 2020 was the season of the independent rider, then this year was the year of the rookie. I can hardly remember the last time we had such breakout seasons for rookie riders across all three classes. In Moto3 we had a rookie crowned champion, and in Moto2 a rookie broke records set by Marc Marquez himself. Both Acosta and Fernandez have asserted themselves as up-and-coming Spanish talents, and both will be keenly watched in the coming seasons. MotoGP didn’t have quite the same shock to the system, but both Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini had commendable first seasons in the class, and Martin in particular could have easily done more had he not had a horror highside in Portimao earlier in the year.
With the results of these rookies, it sets a precedent for future seasons. Teams are going to be less forgiving with their young riders when they can see that such talent exists in all three classes, and the riders themselves are likely to compare themselves to these records that have been set, even if it is unintentionally so. This sort of standard has existed in a smaller way ever since Marquez stamped his authority all across the world championships, but it would appear that it’s only going to continue thanks to the extraordinary results we saw in 2021.
Speaking of Marquez, this season saw his highly anticipated return, and I actually think he lived up to it in the end. This is a man who is undoubtedly one of the greatest motorbike riders of all time, but was sidelined for many months and forced to ease up on his recovery process just to ensure he could actually continue with his career. The Marc that returned to us post injury is not the one that we saw in 2019. He is more cautious now, and the limit of a MotoGP bike is less familiar now than it has ever been for him. Despite this, he is clearly still a winner and a championship threat, and I do expect him to mount a serious challenge once again in 2022. Assuming he recovers from his latest health debacle, that is.
With Marc still relatively out of the picture, and with Suzuki essentially shooting Joan Mir in the foot with their design choices before the season began, the title was readily up for grabs this year. Given his performance last season I wouldn’t have picked Quartararo as the most likely candidate to take over the championship battle, but he has stepped up massively since then and fully deserves the credit he is receiving right now. Fabio is racing with confidence now, and as the number one rider in the Yamaha box he will be able to make the changes he needs to his bike in order to keep up in future seasons. He’s grown resilient, too; where he crumbled under pressure last year, this time he held his nerve when it mattered and brought home the points he needed. There will be no apostrophes next to his name in the list of MotoGP champions. He won his title fair and square, and no-one will be able to take that away from him.
Will he be able to repeat in future seasons? That will depend on two factors, being the condition of Marc Marquez and the ever-improving Ducati bikes. The Bologna bullets were the standout bikes of 2021, with all four ‘factory’ riders making regular trips to the front rows of the grid and often the podium. The Ducati is still the fastest bike on the grid, but it now also turns like its opponents, meaning it can properly challenge on far more circuits than it ever could previously. If the other manufacturers want to keep up in future seasons then they are going to have to start making changes sooner rather than later. With their factory and Pramac lineups unchanged for 2022, the Italian manufacturer will surely be hoping to take their first rider’s championship since Casey Stoner in 2007.
As much as Quartararo and the Ducati riders had a stronghold on most of the season, we still managed to fit 8 individual race winners in throughout the year. This trend towards many winners has been building for a few seasons now, and adds to the unpredictable nature of the championship. All six manufacturers in MotoGP are competitive, and the level of the riders has been steadily rising, so it makes sense that on any given weekend there are a multitude of potential winners on the grid. I think this trend will continue for some time, likely until we find a new Marquez or Rossi that can dominate the class, and until then it is going to be consistency that wins championships. Quartararo did an excellent job of this in 2021, and it will be interesting to see who can replicate it in the coming years.
Where do we go from here? Well, we wait for testing to resume in 2022. The grid for next season is set in stone at this point, and the first test has already wrapped up in Jerez, and there is plenty to be excited about for the coming year. A new batch of rookies step up to MotoGP from the lower classes, including a pair of Tech3 riders with a whole lot of talent between them. The Ducatis continue to push the limits of their package, with a fifth factory-spec bike on the grid and a whopping eight bikes in total. The majority of factory positions will be available in 2023, which means this coming season will be one of the fiercest we’ve seen in a long time. I for one cannot wait, so say goodbye to 2021 and hello to everything still to come.
Solomon Talks Bikes 