MotoGP lives up to its tightest finish since 2017

Since 2017 the MotoGP World Championship has not been resolved in the last race, as is customary at the Counitat Valenciana circuit Ricardo Tormo de Cheste, and now in 2022 history is about to repeat itself. The three most regular riders on the grid, within their own irregularity, come into this weekend’s Motegi race separated by 17 points when the final four remain for the conclusion.

Fabio Quartararo, uninterrupted leader since the fifth Grand Prix in Portugal, saw how his cushion, which reached 34 points after the Sachsenring, was dramatically reduced this weekend to 10 points over Pecco Bagnaia and 17 over Aleix Espargaró, who in turn carries an additional slab of 9 points lost due to his mistake in Montmeló, otherwise 8 would separate him from the Frenchman.

In 2017 with four races remaining, which were not held in a short space of five weeks, leader Marc Márquez had 16 points on Dovizioso and 28 on Maverick Viñales. At the end of the campaign, the order was maintained with Márquez winning the title by 37 points over ‘Dovi’ and 68 over ‘Mack’.

Quartararo signed two zeros for two sets of races, in Assen on the fifth lap, a rain in which he led Aleix Espargaró, whom he threw on the track, and in Aragón due to the adrenaline of the first race curves that were not He let it. he calculated all possible variants in the face of fears and ended up crashing into the driver ahead of him, Marc Márquez.

“Falling in the third corner is not the best thing. We had some difficult last races, but I am motivated to do more in the next races”, the still leading Fabio Quartararo accepted the difficult day .

It wasn’t a perfect weekend either for Pecco Bagnaia who was close to his fifth straight win when the Italian Enea Bastianini decided to avenge his loss at Misano and this time he passed him on the last lap. He probably weighed the title race to fight a little more than ‘The Beast’ for the victory. But in the last five Grands Prix he has cut the Frenchman a whopping 81 points.

“The important thing this time is not to make mistakes, because Fabio’s accident gave us the chance to recover many points. year. We are close,” said Bagnaia.

“I will think about the title but not too much. I know that in Japan it will not be easy, because we have less time to prepare the bike,” he said, and that is that the Japanese GP will have one less free practice session on Friday and there will only be an evening session to allow time for all material to reach Motegi from Aragon as a stop on Friday morning in case of delays.

And the belief in the title continues to drive the irrepressible Aleix Espargaró who in Misano lost second place in the World Cup at the hands of Bagnaia, but in a GO he saw how he reduced the 33 points he lost with the Frenchman at 17.

“I’ve been saying for a long time, that you have to be patient, that this is MotoGP and anything can happen. It’s days like today that I remember your fifths, your sixths, your fourths… You have to be patient, increase, be regular and I think that’s the reward”, said the man from Granollers.

“All the points are very important. In fact, when I saw ‘Quartararo out’ on the dash, instead of saying ‘you have to relax’, quite the opposite. What’s the point of finishing fifth or sixth? nothing. So I’ve risked a bit more. Besides, it’s good for my confidence, before I flew to the tour, a podium was very important and we’re back in the game,” he explains.

And he was unreadable when asked which of the two he sees as more of a rival: “I don’t want to be an opportunist, but I always believe. To be honest, when I saw Pecco starting to win a little. races ago, he told me: ‘ Perfect, let him come, better, more pressure, more show’. And it’s having an effect. We’re all very close, Pecco is doing very well, but he has almost my points, I’m almost close to the first one, so I’ve always believed. It’s true that Fabio made very few mistakes and to have zero with him here I didn’t expect, but the championship was the bomb. The three of us reached the end tight and it was great.”