A historic mistake
The 2024 World Championship remains to this day a unique event in the now 25-year history of contemporary MotoGP. Indeed, it is still the only season in which the world title of the premier class was won by a rider competing for an independent and non-official team. Jorge Martin, riding the Ducati of the Prima Pramac team, won that championship with a 10-point lead over Francesco Bagnaia, at the time the reigning two-time world champion and the absolute reference of the Ducati factory team. The Piedmontese won 11 GPs out of 20, against only 3 by Martin, but due to too many crashes he lost the title.
Guest on the YouTube channel of Misterhelmet (HERE you can find the full episode) the red team manager Davide Tardozzi recalled that very special year, not hiding a certain bitterness for a particular episode that, in his opinion, more than others influenced that championship. “To lose the World Championship winning 11 races out of 20 it’s clear that something went wrong – Tardozzi noted during the interview – unfortunately that year we made a few too many mistakes. I hold a grudge against one particular situation: mistakes by the rider and the team always happen, but I cannot tolerate Francesco’s crash in the middle of the last lap in Barcelona with 2.7 seconds lead over second place… that I cannot tolerate“.
Missed hat-trick
Bagnaia had dominated that short race and slipped while firmly in the lead, with Martin instead in fifth position. In hindsight, without that single mistake Bagnaia would have won his third consecutive World Championship with three points ahead of Martin.
“I say this with a smile because that is now the past and I am used to looking forward – Tardozzi added about that episode – but I feel sorry for Pecco because he could have won his third consecutive World Championship. I feel sorry more for him than for us, because we as Ducati have still won in some way: one of our riders won, our satellite team won, the bike identical to ours won. So we have won in some way. It is clear that winning with the official team is something different”.
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