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Francesco Bagnaia had seen this movie before, and knew how it could end.What’s more, he’d been in that movie, and as the laps ticked down at the German Grand Prix and Jorge Martin’s leading Ducati got larger in his sights, he had just one thought. Turn the screws, ramp up the pressure. You never know what might happen.Every MotoGP qualifying, practice and race LIVE and ad-break free from lights out to the chequered flag. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >With two laps left in Sunday’s 30-lap race at the Sachsenring, one Martin had largely dominated since lap seven when he reclaimed the lead, the Spaniard cracked, falling from a half-second lead into the first corner, and handing his chief title rival a gift.As Martin gestured to his broken bike in the gravel trap with a mixture of fury and disbelief, Bagnaia swept through to take his fourth Grand Prix victory in succession, the ownership of the series lead, and all of the momentum. But even in that euphoria, the Italian elicited a bit of sympathy, and tried to repress an error he’s never quite forgiven himself for. It was at the same corner at the Sachsenring in 2022 that Bagnaia reached his lowest MotoGP ebb. He’d been fast for the first half of that season, but kept throwing his Ducati at the scenery as Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo built a sizeable series lead. For the fourth time in the first 10 races, Bagnaia fell off and Quartararo won, the Italian’s deficit ballooning to what seemed an insurmountable 91 points. History showed that Bagnaia stopped squandering podiums, started banking the points his pace suggested and overhauled the Frenchman to win that year’s title, and backed it up with another in 2023. He’s well on the way to a hat-trick with Sunday’s victory, but couldn’t prevent his mind wandering back to 2022 in the aftermath. MORE MOTOGP NEWSNO.1 GOES TO NUMBER 1 Bagnaia the beneficiary after Martin’s howlerNEW TEAM, NEW HOPE? Miller’s left-field lifeline after Pramac dumps Ducati“Normally when I crash when I make mistakes, I understand why I did it,” he explained. “I’m always trying to be better. This is what I’m trying to do every time. The mistake I did two years ago here was huge, but also today was very easy to commit the same. Back then, I didn’t understand it but today, yes.”Bagnaia’s 2022 memories explained why, in Sunday’s race, he changed tack after relinquishing the early advantage he’d built over Martin and the rest. Seven laps in, Martin barged back past to take the lead, and Pramac Ducati teammate Franco Morbidelli – rarely seen at the front since finishing championship runner-up in 2020 – aggressively came through too. Bagnaia felt both riders were over the limit, and he could bide his time. “Jorge was doing a superb job and it was very difficult to close the gap to him,” Bagnaia said. “Maybe I lost a bit too much behind Franky [Morbidelli], but he was doing an incredible pace. I just decided to slow down a bit … I think they were a bit too much on the rear tyre so I slow down and was managing it. In the last 15 laps, I started to push back. I was closing it every lap, one-tenth [of a second], one-tenth … and then gaining again, three-tenths in a single lap.“I just think [Martin] tried to remain with five-tenths [of a second] of gap and maybe he brake a bit too much in corner one. As soon as I saw him crashing, I just give up and was one second slower, because I was too much on the limit already.”Bagnaia’s combination of speeds and smarts saw him reclaim the series lead for the first time in round one in Qatar in March, and Martin’s howler meant what could have been a 15-point lead in his favour became a 10-point deficit. It’s not game over yet for Martin in 2024, but if Bagnaia does join Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez as the only riders to take a hat-trick of titles in the past three decades come Valencia in November, Germany may go down as the day the worm turned. Martin, as is his custom, was an open book in his assessment of his blunder, while elsewhere at the Sachsenring, Marquez won even though his 11-race winning streak in Germany came to an end, while Jack Miller again went nowhere fast as his final season for KTM pottered along to another off-the-pace result.Bagnaia (1) kept the pressure on Martin (89), and the Spaniard squandered a sure-fire victory. (Photo by Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Source: Getty ImagesMARTIN SLEEPLESS AFTER STUMBLEMartin won both the sprint and Grand Prix at the Sachsenring in Marquez’s absence last season, and looked set to do it again as the ‘King of the ‘Ring’ battled injury and a poor qualifying slot (13th) to effectively take himself out of contention before disaster struck.From pole, Martin was ambushed by Bagnaia at the final corner on lap two, but looked to easily have the reigning world champion’s pace under control before reclaiming the lead on lap seven and managing the gap thereafter. The crash, he said, was something he knew was possible at the first corner because of the Sachsenring’s atypical circuit layout – of its 13 corners, 10 are left-handers, seven of them coming in succession to make left-hand side of the tyres red-hot and the other side for the right-handers – like Turn 1 – stone cold. But it surprised him all the same. “Not at all, I didn’t have a warning that I was crashing,” he said. “It’s a tricky corner on the right side [of the tyre] always, but I didn’t expect it. I was quite strong on that corner, I even overtook Pecco [Bagnaia] there, so I didn’t expect to crash there. But it is what it is. It’s no excuse, I did a big mistake.”Bagnaia’s pace when he’s been in the groove – as he was when winning the sprint and Grand Prix in Italy and the Netherlands leading into Germany – means he’s close to impossible to beat when he’s at the front and confident. But on his ‘off’ days, you have to take full advantage; Martin has now crashed out of the lead in Spain and Germany this season, frittering away points he can’t afford to waste. “We need to analyse why we crashed from the lead, it’s the second time already … if we improve this it will be very difficult for the rest to beat us,” he said.“But we need to solve it. I think today is a really important day in my career. I will learn from this, and I will get back up. “For sure, after leading 27 laps it’s difficult to accept. It’s frustrating and it will be difficult to sleep tonight. “It’s still a really long season, and I have a lot of possibilities to win this title. Now Pecco is in the lead, and it’s more pressure for him.”Martin’s crash was his second from the lead of a Grand Prix this season. (Photo by Radek Mica/AFP)Source: AFPMARQUEZ: ‘I FEEL LIKE I WON’Marquez’s 11 straight wins at the same circuit coming into the weekend – he last lost a race at the Sachsenring in the now-defunct 125cc category in 2009 – is one of the most startling of his many statistical records. And while that run is now over after finishing second to 2025 teammate Bagnaia on Sunday, the 31-year-old couldn’t have been happier to be second-best. And no wonder. On his first visit to his most successful circuit on a Ducati, Marquez’s streak looked nearly impossible to extend when he had a massive crash in Friday practice, a 190km/h highside at the fearsome downhill ‘Waterfall’ corner at Turn 11. He broke his left index finger and badly bruised his ribs in the fall, and qualified just 13th on Saturday, advancing only as far as sixth in the 15-lap sprint race. Sunday, though, was another story. After waking up feeling less stiff and downing some painkillers, Marquez gritted his teeth and ripped the throttle harder. It wasn’t a race without incident – contact with Morbidelli on lap 22 broke the screen of his Ducati – but he fought his way to fourth behind Gresini teammate and younger brother Alex Marquez with four laps left, which became a battle for second two laps later when Martin crashed out.Marc showed as much mercy with Alex as he’d shown his other rivals – none – by bullying his way by at the final corner as the pair started their final laps, and 80-odd seconds later they became the first siblings to finish on the podium in the same race since Japanese brothers Nobuatsu and Takuma Aoki in Imola in 1997. It wasn’t another Sachsenring success, but he felt it was just as satisfying. MORE MOTOGP COVERAGEDUTCH TT TALKING POINTS Bagnaia joins Aussie legends, ‘big change’ bolsters Miller, Marquez bitten by penalty‘THANKS FOR TRUSTING ME’ Gardner’s chance to atone for bitter exit“I feel like I won the race, this is the real feeling,” Marquez said. “It’s a day I will never forget because it will be difficult to repeat in the future. Honestly speaking, this season I say it will be impossible. For me it’s difficult to be in the podium, for him it’s difficult to be in the podium, so to find the same Sunday to be both on the podium was something that was a bit unreal.”Marquez said fighting the pain barrier, knowing a four-week break awaited after the chequered flag, prompted him to tell his team he was capable of “riding in Marquez mode” on Sunday. “Today the ribs were much better, so I can breathe and I can move the bike,” he said. “The finger in the end is broken, it’s moving a bit but now we will fix. But that was not a big problem and didn’t affect my performance. Yesterday the ribs affect my performance but today, not.“Before the race I take one [painkilling] cocktail, tonight I will take another type of cocktail …”.Marc (left) and Alex Marquez (right) became the first brothers to finish together on the podium for 27 years. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty ImagesMILLER EXASPERATED AFTER LATEST LOWJack Miller’s post-race debriefs in 2024 have a familiar ring to them. So dire has the Australian’s first half of the season been – he has one top-five result in nine Grands Prix and has scored just 35 points – that his press meetings are either hastily arranged so he can leave the track as soon as possible, or skipped altogether. Sunday at the Sachsenring was the former, after the KTM rider finished 13th and 25.425secs behind race-winner Bagnaia to score three points, over 10secs behind the leading rider on the same RC16 bike, GasGas rookie Pedro Acosta (seventh). As has often been the case this season, Miller’s description of his malaise was direct in parts and evasive in others, brutal in its honesty and baffling for its absence of answers. “The right-hand side of the tyre, I couldn’t get it to come alive,” he explained.“I was losing a lot of time coming out of Turn 3 and down the hill, I was leaving myself pretty vulnerable. I was having to take some serious risk on the brakes down the bottom of the hill, spinning a lot, unable to find grip. “Down the hill was the biggest issue, searching for grip there, then when you hit the kerb there the thing was hooking right up and shaking like a s**ting duck. Many times I went down the bottom of the hill with no brakes, so not ideal …”. With KTM – last year’s primary challenger to Ducati – having fallen behind Aprilia this season, Miller feels he knows why as his time for the Austrian manufacturer has another 11 race weekends to run, and with the options to extend his career into an 11th season in 2025 remaining unclear.“We need to develop more, simple as that,” he said. “We’re on the same package, in terms of base stuff, as Misano [in September] last year. We need more grip, more turning. Speed we’re alright, the engine is strong and the aero package is strong. [But] we need to develop more, we need to work more.”After nine rounds of last year’s championship, Miller had 90 points (55 more than 2024), and was eighth in the standings compared to 16th after Sunday’s Sachsenring race.Miller has managed just 35 points in the opening nine rounds of the season. (Gold and Goose/Red Bull Content Pool)Source: Getty ImagesRIDER MARKET PUZZLE FIXES ANOTHER PIECEWith MotoGP set for its annual four-week summer break before reconvening at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix in early August, another piece of the rider market puzzle looks set to be announced as soon as this week, with the Italian press reporting Fabio Di Giannantonio is set to stay with the VR46 Ducati squad for another two seasons. The 25-year-old has been one of the under-the-radar stars of the 2024 season, comprehensively beating teammate and three-time 2023 race-winner Marco Bezzecchi to sit eighth in the standings after nine rounds. Di Giannantonio was almost lost to MotoGP at the end of last season after he was released from Gresini Ducati to make way for Marc Marquez, but took a maiden premier-class podium at Phillip Island when he finished third, then won the penultimate race of the season in Qatar to seal a deal to ride a 2023-spec Ducati for the Valentino Rossi-owned team this season.Di Giannantonio looks set for a two-year extension to his VR46 Ducati contract. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty ImagesDi Giannantonio had been in the frame to ride for the new collaboration between Pramac and Yamaha for next season, which will see the Japanese brand expand from two bikes to four for 2025, Pramac ending a 20-year partnership with Ducati and reducing Ducati’s stable to six machines next season. The Pramac/Yamaha alliance are thought to be keen to pair an experienced rider with a younger rider, perhaps a graduate from the Moto2 feeder series, with the likes of Miller and Aprilia rider Miguel Oliveira, who finished a season-best sixth in Germany on Sunday after qualifying second, among the available likely candidates.
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