Talk about unusual race results. Heading into the weekend, the form men of the championship were Pecco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini, and it looked as though it would be a question of who could take the fight to them in the Japanese grand prix. Both Fabio Quartararo and Aleix Espargaro were in desperate need of an opportunity to score some points against the Ducati men, and Marc Marquez was looking to just have a lower impact appearance – literally, in this particular instance – than he did in Aragon one week prior.
Now, the race is over and the championship has swung in a way none of us could have possibly predicted. There were no points on offer for either Bagnaia or Aleix on Sunday, Quartararo somehow extended his championship lead, and the race was won by Jack Miller in one of the most dominant performances we’ve seen all season. Plus, Brad Binder made a return to the podium, and Marc was somehow able to make overtakes in the closing stages despite his ongoing injury battle.
How the hell did we get here? The setting of the scene is somewhat important in understanding the final result. Friday’s practice was crammed into a single session for each class thanks to the unholy task of shipping the entire grid from Spain to Japan in four days. The MotoGP class got an hour-long afternoon stint to both learn the track conditions in the dry and get in a fast lap to set themselves up for qualifying. Why? Because Saturday had a forecast of pretty consistent rainfall, meaning they wouldn’t be able to improve their times.
As a result, qualifying on Saturday was a mess. Riders had to battle some of the worst conditions they’d faced in months as the rain continually poured down both morning and afternoon – it got so bad at one point that Moto2’s qualifying was delayed by almost two hours, leading to MotoGP’s FP3 getting cancelled to make room in the schedule. The three championship contenders found themselves on the second, third and fourth rows respectively, while Bastianini was mired back in fifteenth place. And somehow, Marc Marquez stole the show to take pole position.
To make matters worse, Sunday went back to full dry conditions. In fact, it was the hottest and driest conditions the grid faced all weekend, similar to the temperature issues faced in Misano a couple of weeks back. Both the Moto3 and Moto2 races were crash-fests, with riders up and down the grid getting caught out by the tricky conditions and lack of experience in dry setups. By the time MotoGP was set to go, it was anyone’s guess who would be able to make the most of things.
In reality, we should have known few to none of the championship heavyweights mired down the order would have a say in the fight for victory. MotoGP simply isn’t a great place for overtakes right now, as has been pointed out on this blog multiple times, and there was no way all of them could have fought through the pack to the front. For Quartararo, this has been par for the course of late, and I have a hunch both Bagnaia and Bastianini simply weren’t familiar enough with battling in the mid-pack thanks to their recent forms.
The one rider who was expected to jump forwards and into the fray was Aleix Espargaro, but his race was cruelly cut short before it even began. A technical issue on the grid meant that the Aprilia rider was forced to duck into pit lane and swap bikes before the start of the race, marooning him at the back of the pack and denying him the chance to fight for a podium or better. Instead, the Spaniard came across the line in sixteenth, taking zero points away from what could have been a very promising race weekend for him.
With the big dogs all removed from the equation, the top riders of this particular race ended up being Jorge Martin, Brad Binder and Jack Miller. Both Brad and Miller have been knocking on the door of a result like this for quite some time, so the setting was perfect for them both to deliver on their previous form. Martin was more of an outlier, having been unimpactful for a month or so since the news of his snub for the 2023 factory Ducati seat. He was fastest in the morning warm-up session, however, so the writing may have been on the wall there as well.
Compared to the others, however, Miller’s race was simply on another level. Starting the race off strong, the Aussie muscled his way up the order quite quickly and started gapping the field at the front. So strong was his pace that the second half of the race saw him carrying a lead of over 4 seconds with shocking consistency. The Ducati man was in a league of his own all race, bagging arguably the best win of his MotoGP career to date.
The other rider that I think deserves a call-out is Marc Marquez. In only his second race back from rehabilitation, the 8-times champion had absolutely no right fighting towards the front of the race, yet he finished fourth across the line. Not only that, he was able to make overtakes on Miguel Oliveira in the latter stages of the race when he should have theoretically been struggling with fatigue in his injured arm. It’s too early to say for sure if the Marc of old is back, but his speed certainly hasn’t left him since he stepped away from the sport earlier this year.
On the flip side of things, this was a poor race result for Pecco Bagnaia. Mired in the mid-pack for the entire race, he finally looked set to make a move on championship rival Quartararo for eighth on the final lap, only to crash out in the process and leave him pointless for the weekend. Given that he was clearly faster than the Frenchman, he simply didn’t have to risk things the way he did, and losing eight precious points to Quartararo is going to sting over the next week. Bagnaia is going to need to put in some real work all over again to reduce the points gap to the top of the standings once more.
And that was Motegi! Strange weather, stranger qualifying and a totally unpredictable race result. This is what we’ve been missing without the Asian flyaway races in recent years, so here’s hoping Thailand delivers in similar fashion in a week’s time.
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