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Marc Marquez finished 12th, Fabio Quartararo P8, and Joan Mir once again crashed out at the 2023 Austrian GP. These are the lowly finishes of three of the four world champions in the last seven years.
In the championship standings, Marquez finds himself in 19th, Quartararo is in 11th, while Mir is in 25th with his last classified finish now a distant memory.
Now all of this is not to point fingers at Ducati or Pecco Bagnaia for the sensational job that they have done. It is to point out a serious crisis that could be facing MotoGP where it starts losing fans as the sport's biggest stars continue to be hamstrung by their bikes.
What has gone wrong?
MotoGP was ruled by Marc Marquez for all these years. The rider won six out of the seven titles from 2013 to 2019. Even during that time predictability was a concern because there were moments when Marc was ruthlessly dominant. One of the biggest differences in that era to the one we are in right now is that the rider cannot make the difference anymore.
At the time it was Marc Marquez pulling off miracles on a Honda that nobody could control and when he crossed the checkered flag it was the best rider winning the race. That's not the case with the new bikes anymore and that is something Marc has eluded to on multiple occasions now. The DNA of MotoGP has changed and the bikes just don't look the same.
The aero development on these bikes is a product of precise design with the aid of wind tunnels. Unfortunately, this means that the rider cannot make as much of a difference anymore. To make things worse, perennial frontrunners Honda and Yamaha, two brands that have dominated the sport in the last decade have been caught out and find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order.
The misery doesn't end there as Ducati has as many as eight bikes on the grid (one works team and three customers). What he also does is that it gives rise to the scenario where the works rider, reigning MotoGP champion Pecco Bagnaia can throw as three race wins and still lead the championship by 62 points.
This is where the bigger issue comes into the picture where MotoGP's homologation regulations cause a serious dent, unlike F1, where there is a cost cap within which the teams can develop their cars. In its two-wheeler counterpart, the teams have a very limited window in which they can bring changes to their bikes. This has hamstrung the Japanese teams in Honda and Yamaha which were clearly late in transitioning to aerodynamic as a critical part of bike designs.
The race in Austria cut a sorry figure as three former champions, as has been the case for most of the season, trundled at the back of the grid. What's worse is that the limitation of bike development means we can almost write off the 2024 MotoGP season as well at the very least for the Japanese manufacturers.
Why it is worse than F1's predictability crisis?
Unlike F1 where the dominant team only fields two cars, MotoGP has eight Ducatis right now. Just to understand the severity of the brand's dominance, six out of eight riders from the Italian marque find themselves in the top 10 of the championship standings.
To rub it in further, out of the two that are missing, Enea Bastianini has close to half of the season with a collarbone injury and has not yet found his groove.
This is precisely why we get the helpless situation of some of the best riders on the grid not even fighting for a podium. In F1, we might have Max Verstappen winning every race but a Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, or Lando Norris could find themselves on the podium.
In MotoGP, unless you're on European bikes (Ducati, KTM, and Aprilia), even a podium is a pipe dream. For Yamaha, Quartararo has one podium in the entire season and his second-best result is seventh in a race. For Honda, Alex Rins (sidelined by injury right now) won a surprise race in America but since then has not even finished a Grand Prix.
Unlike F1, where a fan could hope to see one of his favorite drivers like Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, or Charles Leclerc on the podium, he can't even dream of a Marc Marquez podium right now because the bike is just slow.
The deflated image of Marc Marquez and Joan Mir at Honda
While Yamaha might be more benign in the manner that it is just slow, Honda has been often termed this season as a 'rider-killer'. All three lead riders Joan Mir, Marc Marquez, and Alex Rins have missed multiple races because of unexpected falls from the bike. Mir, arguably the worst affected rider has not finished a Grand Prix since the first race of the season in Portugal.
The situation is so dire that Joan Mir, the 2020 MotoGP world champion admitted this weekend that he had contemplated retirement. The drastic decision at the young age of just 25 years of age is a result of the rider being pushed into a corner where he can't do one basic thing and that is push a bike to its limit without falling off.
Marc Marquez has himself admitted that he's not pushing the way he normally would because the bike is too unpredictable and he cannot afford any more crashes while fighting for a handful of points.
At the end of the day, MotoGP as a sport is struggling to attract the kind of crowds it used to when Valentino Rossi was still racing. This kind of season where the best riders are so heavily compromised is surely not going to aid an already struggling sport.
The solution (in the short term) is right in front of Dorna
Dorna, the owners of MotoGP has the solution right in front of them but the reluctance in pulling the plug has been baffling. KTM, the second fastest bike after Ducati has expressed interest in fielding a third team. There is a slot available for two extra bikes since Suzuki left the sport last season.
Dorna has been adamant about not giving that slot to a KTM customer team as it wants to reserve the slot for a works team. While that might seem like something that could work in the long term, it certainly would not in the short term. Two extra bikes open up the possibility for Marc Marquez to switch to the Austrian brand.
Having the sport's biggest star Marc Marquez ride the second-fastest bike will give him the opportunity to sprinkle some of his own magic as well. To add to this, it will interest more fans as well. This also coincides with the second proposal from Dorna itself which might be the need of the hour.
That proposal is granting concessions to Marc Marquez's team Honda as well as Yamaha from the end of the season. These concessions will give the two Japanese marques extra testing time and an opportunity to catch up to the competition. One of the major deadlocks in MotoGP right now has been between KTM and Dorna where neither has budged from the other party's demands.
Dorna seems unwilling to give KTM's new customer team a slot on the grid (a slot that would go to Marc Marquez) and in the same vein, the Austrian brand is unwilling to budge when it comes to assigning concessions to Honda and Yamaha.
"At least F1 has pit stops to liven things up," this was the tweet from famed MotoGP journalist Simon Patterson as he watched Marc Marquez and the rest of the talent trundle at the back of the grid.
MotoGP is a sport with reduced viewership and dwindling footfalls during race weekends. It cannot afford a rider of Marc Marquez's or Fabio Quartararo's talent fighting for P15 in a race. Dorna needs to act fast because the product has nosedived recently and it's going to hit the sport hard.
