Francesco Bagnaia has been crowned MotoGP World Champion for 2022 but is he worthy of that honour or did Fabio Quartararo deserve it more?
That is the question we pose to you in this week’s Pirtek Poll, after a topsy-turvy 20-round season at the pinnacle of motorcycle racing.
Bagnaia looked finished as a title contender when he crashed out of the 10th race of the year, the German Grand Prix, leaving the Sachsenring fifth in the standings with 81 points compared to Quartararo’s 172.
Just eight races later, the Ducati rider left Phillip Island with a 14-point lead over the 2021 champion, who crashed twice that Sunday afternoon at the Australian Grand Prix.
In overturning that 91-point deficit, he had completed the biggest premier class comeback in the history of the current points system, which took effect way back in 1993.
Halfway through that period, Casey Stoner won the riders’ championship for Ducati, and Bagnaia has just delivered just its second such triumph.
That is not to say that the Bologna manufacturer has been found wanting for titles lately, having already sealed a third straight constructors’ championship and second straight teams’ championship this year.
However, since 2007, the one it had really craved had been missing until now, and that raises questions about its riders.
Needless to say, motorsport is not a purely athletic pursuit, and the history books will show that the man born in Torino in 1997 is a MotoGP champion forever more.
It is also true that he beat Quartararo to the 2018 Moto2 title, by a full nine positions, before the Frenchman was a surprise choice to join Yamaha satellite team SRT for the following season.
After just one season in the top tier, ‘El Diablo’ was picked as Valentino Rossi’s replacement, and is now the Iwata manufacturer’s undisputed leader.
It was curious, then, to see the press release which Yamaha Factory Racing/Monster Energy Yamaha issued in the hours after the Valencia Grand Prix, on top of the team’s standard post-race wrap-up.
Titled “Yamaha Sincerely Thank Fabio Quartararo for His Incredible 2022 MotoGP Efforts”, it looked, at least to this reporter, as something of an apology to #20 for his failure to go back-to-back.
“Right from the first GP in Qatar, it was clear that it would not be an easy season for the Factory Yamaha Team,” it read, in part.
“But despite the challenge, Quartararo was already on the podium at the second round.”
A later paragraph began, “Heading into the Valencia GP 23 points in arrears meant the odds were against the Frenchman to secure his second World Title in a row.
“Nevertheless, he once again showed nothing but 100% dedication and made all Yamaha staff and Yamaha fans worldwide proud as he fought until the very end.”
The release concluded with a lengthy comment from Yamaha Motor Racing Managing Director Lin Jarvis, which included the declaration that, “Fabio did an amazing job – always extracting the maximum potential from our machine,” and promised, “Yamaha is totally committed to developing our bike and technology to allow us to challenge for the title again next season.”
Quartararo has arguably been fighting with one hand tied behind his back for the last two years, riding a machine which was significantly under-powered and, depending on which of its pilots one listened to and when, perhaps sorely lacking in rear grip too.
FQ20 himself quipped during pre-season that “maybe the zone of Yamaha has no more horses”, and would then warn that his future was “wide open” due to continued disappointment with the YZR-M1.
A new contract would be confirmed in June, around the same time it came to light that it had also secured the services of former Toyota Formula 1 engine man Luca Marmorini.
In the meantime, Quartararo has had to rely on qualifying very well in order to snare precious track position so that he had a chance of winning.
He has habitually over-ridden on Saturday afternoons, and often on Sundays as well, which is arguably a mitigating factor in his double blunder at Phillip Island when Bagnaia usurped him on the points table.
That was the last of Quartararo’s four ‘zeroes’ of the season, only two of which (at Assen and Phillip Island) can be attributed to his own mistakes, and another to his team making an error with tyre pressures (at Buriram), while the Marquez shunt at Aragon was simply unfortunate.
Bagnaia crashed out of three races and struggled to 15th, last of the points-paying positions, at a wet Mandalika, but was taken out by Ducati stablemate Jorge Martin at Lusail and Takaaki Nakagami at Catalunya.
Worth noting, though, is that two of those three single-rider spills came while trying to keep up with the leader and, in the latter case, that front-runner was Quartararo, who got there with some aggressive moves on the #63 Ducati at the Sachsenring.
Bagnaia won seven times this year and Quartararo thrice, yet they were separated by 17 points, the equivalent of 0.68 races, at season’s end.
In the constructors’ championship, which is the sum of the score of the manufacturer’s highest-finishing bike in each race, Ducati scooped 448 points, of which Bagnaia contributed 191.
Yamaha finished second on 256 points, a figure which included all 248 which Quartararo scored over the course of 2022.
In fairness, ‘Pecco’ had his difficulties with machinery to overcome as well, with the 2022-model Ducati evidently not as good as its predecessor in the early rounds, although it would soon become the best bike on the grid.
Furthermore, no one else racked up a four-race winning streak, and it would have been five straight if not for Enea Bastianini, on one of those GP21-spec Desmosedicis, passing him on the final lap at Aragon.
FB63 certainly outperformed the other four GP22-mounted full-timers, although team-mate Jack Miller is the only truly direct point of reference given the divergence on engines.
Ultimately, in an endeavour with so many variables, Bagnaia did what he had to do.
So, is he a worthy champion, or did Quartararo deserve it more? Cast your vote below in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
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