Was the MotoGP 2022 title won by Bagnaia or lost by Quartararo?

It’s 10 rounds into the 2022 MotoGP season, and Francesco Bagnaia has retired from a grand prix for the fourth time this year. While running second, he has slid out of the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring before chief title rival Fabio Quartararo goes on to register the third – and final – win of his campaign.

He’s crashed out of the season-opener in Qatar while racing Pramac Ducati counterpart Jorge Martin; he’s gone out while battling Gresini’s Enea Bastianini for victory in France; and he’s been wiped out by Takaaki Nakagami at the first corner of the Catalan GP. After Germany, it seems that Bagnaia’s title hopes are already gone.

After four breakthrough wins in the second half of 2021 repositioned him as a title favourite for 2022 aboard his factory team Ducati, Bagnaia went into the winter full of optimism, and the first tests of the new bike at Jerez at the end of the previous season showed his squad had made steps forward, while Yamaha had yet to find the horsepower gains Quartararo sorely needed.

The winter proved difficult for both Bagnaia and Quartararo. Ducati’s new engine for its GP22 was far too aggressive on acceleration, while Bagnaia struggled to find the feeling he’d had with the 2021 bike on the front end. At Yamaha, a more powerful engine had to be scrapped due to reliability concerns, and Quartararo was forced to campaign the 2022 season on a bike with a similar power output to the machine with which he’d won the 2021 title.

Ninth in the Qatar GP offered a glimpse at the difficulties Quartararo would face as 2022 unfolded. Ahead of that first round, Bagnaia elected to ditch the full 2022-spec engine and run a hybrid 2021-22 version for the year.

It wasn’t a quick fix. Following his retirement in Qatar, Bagnaia was 15th in a wet Indonesian GP, fifth in both legs of the Argentina/US double-header, and eighth in Portugal, where he raced from the back of the grid after a crash in qualifying almost left him with a broken collarbone.

His crash at the Sachsenring left Bagnaia trailing Quartararo, his title hopes seemingly over, before mounting his comeback

Photo by: Dorna

Quartararo’s year hadn’t been much easier following his opening-round labours, the Frenchman second in Indonesia but eighth and seventh in the Americas trek. But a victory in Portugal put him to the top of the points table along with Suzuki’s Alex Rins, who had a blinding run of back-to-back podiums in the Americas and fourth from 23rd in Portugal. Bagnaia, meanwhile, was 38 points down on the pair.

Suzuki’s year could well have been different had it not been for the bombshell announcement after May’s Spanish GP that the Japanese marque had elected to quit MotoGP at the end of 2022. Thus started a downward spiral as Rins and 2020 world champion team-mate Joan Mir each tallied up three DNFs in four starts, while Rins pulled out of Germany with a wrist injury.

Two more retirements at Silverstone and the Red Bull Ring gave way to a five-race spell on the sidelines for Mir due to injury. Victories for Rins at Phillip Island and Valencia gave the team an emotional send-off, albeit one that makes Suzuki’s decision even more baffling.

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By contrast, Bagnaia won at Jerez, to kickstart the beginning of his championship turnaround. To this point, both the Italian’s and Quartararo’s campaigns were holding similar paths. From the arrival in Europe, both made mental switches. Quartararo felt he had complained too much about the Yamaha’s lack of power, and decided instead to focus on the good points of the bike. Bagnaia reckoned he was trying too many things to find the feeling he needed, and from Spain decided to work smarter.

"I think credit goes to Pecco, who cleared his mind after Sachsenring and said, ‘Let’s do it’ with his working group race by race" Paolo Ciabatti

He won at Jerez and Mugello, but only just, as Quartararo shadowed him on both occasions. At this stage it seemed that Quartararo, despite the Yamaha’s deficiencies, was heading for a second title as his main rivals kept making errors. Following his title win at the Valencia finale earlier this month, Bagnaia admitted he only “lost faith in the championship for half an hour, one hour” in Germany.

“I think credit goes to Pecco, who cleared his mind after Sachsenring and said, ‘Let’s do it’ with his working group race by race,” says Ducati sporting director Paolo Ciabatti. “‘If you think about the championship, it’s wrong. So, let’s do what we can do, what we know what we can do from race to race, let’s work on Friday and Saturday to try to win on Sunday’, which he managed to do four times in a row.”

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From the Dutch TT in June through to September’s San Marino GP, Bagnaia roared back into contention. The Assen success was a crucial turning point. An uncharacteristic collision with Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro – a surprise title contender after a breakthrough victory for rider and team in Argentina, followed by four other podiums – netted Quartararo a long-lap penalty for the British GP.

Quartararo had a comfortable advantage heading to Assen, where his clash with Espargaro also resulted in a penalty at Silverstone

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Quartararo was eighth after serving his penalty at Silverstone, the lack of power from the Yamaha meaning he couldn’t overtake. And this would become a common theme, Quartararo forced to override the M1. Second in Austria was a crucial result for Quartararo, but a fifth at Misano and a DNF after a collision with Marc Marquez in Aragon left him just 10 points ahead of Bagnaia going to the final five rounds.

“He [Quartararo] is very similar to Marc Marquez, he’s riding around the problem,” explained Yamaha test rider Cal Crutchlow, who made a six-race cameo replacing the retired Andrea Dovizioso following the San Marino GP. “He understands the problem, he gets the problem. But he’s making the time in a different way. But there’s only so long that can last.”

That astute observation rang true in the late overseas races. Eighth in Japan while Bagnaia crashed again offered Quartararo hope, but a tyre-pressure error in a wet Thailand left him 17th while Bagnaia was third. The points gap was now down to two.

A crash trying to recover from an early mistake as Bagnaia tallied up third meant the Ducati rider was 14 points ahead after the Australian GP, with two rounds to go. Victory in Malaysia for Bagnaia only denied him clinching the championship early by two points as Quartararo valiantly fought to third.

Needing to win in Valencia, Quartararo couldn’t advance on his fourth place qualifying position to keep his hopes alive. Bagnaia, enduring “a nightmare” after early contact with his rival, was ninth, but it was enough. Fifteen years had passed between Ducati’s first title with Casey Stoner in 2007 and Bagnaia’s success. Never has a rider overturned a 91-point deficit to win a championship, or claimed the title with five DNFs in a single season.

The question at the end of 2022 is: did Bagnaia win the championship, or did Quartararo lose a title that was his to win?

Quartararo’s season was incredible when you analyse his performance on the machinery he had. As far as Crutchlow is concerned, because of that fact, “Fabio is the best rider on the grid at the minute”. Had Quartararo not crashed out of third at Assen and netted himself a penalty for Silverstone, perhaps the outcome would have been different. In doing so, he left himself exposed to the massive damage Bagnaia would go on to inflict upon him in the second half of 2022.

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After the German GP, Bagnaia “realised my weak point was I was a rider with a lot of ups and downs, with good speed but not the consistency. And to accept that was not easy. So, from that moment I recognised I had a problem and I tried to improve myself.” As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky says: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” And after Germany, Bagnaia took his shots and made them count.

A run of four wins across Assen, Silverstone, Red Bull Ring (pictured) and Misano put Bagnaia back into the hunt

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

So, while Quartararo was hampered by the problems of the Yamaha, several key errors from the rider and the team contributed to his dethroning as Bagnaia and Ducati hit a stride that few would be able to counter.

On the Monday after the season-closing race in Valencia, Ciabatti said that the Valentino Rossi 2011-12 nadir of the Ducati team “left a lot of wounds”. Because of everything that happened then, Ducati is now champion again a decade later – ironically with a product of Rossi’s VR46 Academy. The circle is complete.

Across 2022, it won 12 races, 16 poles and 32 podiums with six of its eight riders, with two of its runners occupying two of the top-three championship spots

Back in 2007, when Stoner was champion, the Ducati was a handful. The bike Bagnaia won the title on is far more useable, arguably the best motorcycle on the current grid. Across 2022, it won 12 races, 16 poles and 32 podiums with six of its eight riders, with two of its runners – Bagnaia and Bastianini, who won four times on a year-old bike to earn a promotion to the factory squad next season – occupying two of the top-three championship spots.

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Yamaha and Aprilia clearly have work to do to sustain a title challenge. Honda, after a second winless campaign in three years, must make two steps during the coming winter – according to Marquez – to get on a par with its rivals, while KTM arguably needs to do the same despite two wins.

Those are numbers that will be hard to overturn for all in 2023 as Ducati now looks genuinely capable of total domination in MotoGP.

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Can Quartararo and get back on terms with Ducati in 2023?

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images