Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
A Two-Horse Race, or a One-Trick Pony?
What’s the best kind of champion? One who narrowly prevails after a tooth-and-nail battle with worthy opponents? Or the runaway winner, head and shoulders above the competition?
There’s no answer to that, of course. A champion is the one who amasses the most points available in any given scoring system. A winner is a winner.
But it does make a difference, obviously, in terms of the spectacle. A difference to the fans. And of course, the customers are always right.
The question arises in the wake of an excellent Americas GP at COTA, where for the first time in the early part of the year there was a different winner. Finally, after playing second (even third) fiddle in the first two rounds, Pecco Bagnaia won, instead of his new factory Ducati teammate Marc Marquez.
Until that moment when Marquez took a bit too much white line at turn four and lost the front, it had looked as though it was going to be business as usual. He’d won everything else so far.
You must have heard commentators saying that the only person who could beat Marc Marquez was himself. Tortured cliche (another one!), but logical. And at round three in the USA, absolutely true.
The words of the two main protagonists confirm it.
Bagnaia won, he gleefully admitted, “only because Marc crashed.”
Marc was equally cheerful after his third successive Sprint win was followed by a zero-points Sunday spill. He had sacrificed, he grinned, “an easy race.”
Both seemed utterly delighted. Pecco by the win. Marquez because he had again proved his superiority.
Now they line up for round four in Qatar, and we all wait to see if we really are in for a classic duel for the title. Or will it be a one-horse race, with Pecco condemned to waiting for Marc to fall off again?
Pecco’s fans will be encouraged by him saying that Doha is a track where “I’ve always done well.” Which is somewhat true—third in 2021, second in 2023, and first last year.
Marc, by comparison, has just one premier-class win at the Qatar track, way back in 2014, a full decade ago. But his more recent declining results were on an increasingly uncompetitive Honda. On a Ducati last year, his first race on the year-old bike, he was a reasonably threatening fourth. And after that, as he learned the bike’s ways, he went from “threatening” to “winning.”
From the evidence of the early races, it looks like the championship will be between the two factory Ducati riders. Bagnaia can be a slow burn. And he will have learned from losing to Martin last year in what he called “a championship of mistakes” that it is better to keep racking up points than risking errors.
By the same token, Marquez is addicted to risk. He can’t seem to stop himself. Even his gamble at the U.S. GP start—leaving the grid in the hope that enough riders would follow him to bring about a restart—showed this. In fact, fewer than the required nine riders did follow him (only eight), but there was in any case such chaos that a restart was called anyway, on safety grounds.
So he got away without having to serve any penalty while ensuring he had the right (slick) tires for the drying track. Then, starting from a third successive pole, the 97th in his career, he led convincingly, while Bagnaia took until the fourth of 19 laps to move past Alex Marquez into second. At that point Marc was 1.4 seconds clear. Five laps later, he had added just short of another second. An easy win was there for the taking. But he couldn’t resist more risk.
The pendulum swung, and Bagnaia closed a points gap that had grown to a dispiriting 36 to a much more manageable 11. Another weekend like this, and he could even take the lead.
And 2025 could be confirmed as a two-man title fight.
That’s okay. Two-headers have a fine history, all the way back to the dawn of the series: just one point between winner Les Graham and Italian Nello Pagani. Since then, plenty to relish, including Agostini/Hailwood, Roberts/Spencer, Lawson/Spencer and, more recently, Rainey/Schwantz. Usually, on different makes, so a double Ducati duel has an added layer.
But it leaves the others as just the supporting cast, led by Alex Marquez (current points leader, but unlikely to stay there) and probably Aprilia’s Jorge Martin.
Or is even this optimistic? Are we instead in for one of those one-man shows, impressive—but soon palling through being just too darned predictable?
They get dull for the rider, too. But, as the utterly dominant Mick Doohan once said, “What do you want me to do … slow down?”
Doubtless that’s exactly what Bagnaia would like Marc to do. CN
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