In the Paddock Column – Cycle News

Michael Scott | December 6, 2023

Cycle News In The Paddock

COLUMN

Is MotoGP’s Interregnum Over?

It was an epic MotoGP season. Double the number of races led to more than double the excitement (and more than double the number of injuries); while the new format kept the title open until the last of a record 40 races over 20 rounds.

Mature, considered Pecco Bagnaia was better over full-length races, and had they been all that counted would have tied up the title one race earlier. But explosively fast challenger Jorge Martin was better at the all-action sprints, and the points he racked up there kept him in contention to the very end.

It can hardly escape the attention that the biggest winners were Ducati.

Factory staff pretended that they cared whether their own rider Bagnaia won out over satellite rider Martin—who they had rejected for the factory team in favor of the often-injured Bastianini. But I don’t believe they really minded. Ducati won anyway. And came third (Bezzecchi) and fifth (Zarco) as well, with only pesky South African Brad Binder on the equally pesky KTM pushing himself into fourth.

It was a Ducati year. KTM hadn’t improved quite enough; last year’s challenging Aprilias faltered somewhat. And Japan Inc, in the form of Honda and Yamaha, floundered embarrassingly.

It sets the scene for 2024. But with one massive spoiler.

Even the best of the Ducati incumbents might be having sleepless nights this winter. For next year the best rider of the past decade will also be on a Desmosedici.

Marc Marquez’s farewell to Honda at Valencia was a fittingly spectacular last dance for a legend. Not Sunday’s looping terminal crash, Marc’s unenviable and record-setting 29th this year, but Saturday’s sprint podium—his 102nd on a Honda, achieved the only way he knew how: bucking the odds.

“You know me,” he smiled dangerously after proving an uncompetitive bike on a narrow, one-line track to be no drawback. Marc barged through from ninth on the grid to third by the end of the first lap.

The “thank-you and goodbye” to Honda closed off 11 remarkable years. Six championships in the first seven, and then four years when the wheels gradually came off. It was the bike that failed him. His fateful 2020 crash came while trying, as usual, to exceed the possible. His worse mistake, in his own words, was coming back a week after his broken arm had been plated. This effectively undid the fresh repair. Only late last year, after four operations, was it finally and properly mended and all lined up straight.

Marc must shoulder some of the blame for the RC213V losing its way. Instead of being able to improve it, his genius masked its problems.

That final crash in his last race for the Repsol team drew down the curtain. Two days later, it opened again on an altogether new…