Jorge Martín wins the title of world champion!

First leader of the championship, Jorge Martín will also be the last. At 26 years old and while he is competing in his fourth season in the premier category, the Spaniard, native of Madrid, managed to definitively protect himself from Pecco Bagnaia in the general classification and he was crowned MotoGP world champion at the outcome of the Barcelona GP, the last round of the season.

The victory of Bagnaia, who won his 11th Grand Prix of the year, changed nothing. While the Italian was closely followed by Marc Márquez, Martín quickly moved into third place, long protected by Aleix Espargaró, even though the points from ninth position were enough for him to win the title. At the end of a tense but quickly frozen race for the leading men, it was relief for the Pramac driver: he ended the year with ten points more than Bagnaia in the general classification and, six years after his title in Moto3, MotoGP world champion.

His coronation rewards a rider who has not always had an obvious career path and who, in the MotoGP category, will ultimately have expected more than what his performances might have suggested. The one who experienced pole position and the podium in his second Grand Prix, then victory a few weeks later, had to overcome a serious injury in 2021, shortly after his arrival. The following year, he had to hold back when his Ducati suffered problems caused by an engine that the factory team had ruled out. And on several occasions, he hoped, even believed, to be able to join the official team of the brand before seeing his politeness grilled.

It is therefore as a driver of a satellite team that Martín is titled today, a feat far from trivial, which he is the first to achieve since Valentino Rossi, when the 500cc still existed. His team, Pramac Racing, is Ducati's closest partner, providing him with factory equipment and fair means to enable him to claim the highest awards. Pramac has continued to gain in stature over the years, seeing drivers pass through its ranks who were subsequently integrated into the factory team, notably Bagnaia, and last year winning the teams' title.

However, Ducati is somehow caught in its own trap by seeing today Jorge Martín beat his opponent, rider of the factory team, even as the Spaniard is preparing to leave for Aprilia (therefore depriving the red bike of the emblematic number 1) and that Pramac will join forces with Yamaha after two decades of union with Borgo Panigale.

His coronation against Bagnaia comes at the end of a year led to perfection, where Martín was able to combine impressive performances with a solidity that we did not yet know from him. He continued to prove that he had perfectly integrated the lessons of last season. He had already been pitted against the Italian for the title and ended up failing at the last Grand Prix, trapped by a few errors with serious consequences in his season but also tested by pressure that he had difficulty managing.

Helped by a mental coach, he made a point of achieving a more stable 2024 season, during which he sought not to do too much and to accept some potentially mixed results if indeed they allowed him to increase your points capital. The reward is there, while Bagnaia has made several mistakes, notably two weeks ago at Sepang where he fell in the sprint race. This weekend, Bagnaia produced a perfect copy, but that was no longer enough.

An accordion fight for the title

At the top of the general classification after the sprint race which launched the season, Martín may have been solid overall, his year was nevertheless punctuated by a few back and forths between the very first places in the classification. It started on the first Sunday, where Bagnaia stole the lead by signing the first of his 11 Grand Prix victories of the year. Martín was only going to win three, but his consistency allowed him to erase what had been his weakness last year and take advantage of his rival's errors.

Leader of the championship for only 24 hours last year, Martín this time managed to stay in first place over time. He lost the lead from the Sunday race in Qatar, therefore, but regained first place during the following Grand Prix and remained there practically until the summer break. Throughout the summer, we witnessed several exchanges of positions, Martín losing the leadership in Germany (with at that time his biggest delay on Bagnaia, namely ten points) to better regain it in Great Britain , before giving in again in Austria. The following Grand Prix, in Aragón, finally allowed him to take the lead again and, this time, he did not give up.

Although he won much less than his rival, the Spaniard was able to grab the decisive points. He had his share of mistakes, with two falls in a sprint race and two others on Sunday (with Bagnaia winning each time), to which was added what he considers to be his biggest blunder, namely the having missed his strategy when the rain arrived at the San Marino GP. But he never went lower than third place in the championship (in Qatar), and his lead over Bagnaia was maintained despite a permanent fluctuation between an error by one on Saturday and the ground lost by the other. on Sunday, or vice versa.

Whether we compare it to a yo-yo or an accordion, the championship led by Martín and Bagnaia sometimes gave the impression that the one who caught air one day could not escape the error in the next race. Bagnaia may in any case have regrets, he who described this season as “championship of errors” last month. With seven falls, three on Sunday and four in a sprint, as well as several technical or tire problems, the double reigning champion did not display the perfection made obligatory by the level of his opponent, despite pure performances very comparable.

Sprint and Grand Prix, everything counts! And it is by having shown himself to be resilient, capable of garnering points on as many occasions as possible with seven sprint victories in addition to his three Grands Prix won this year, that Jorge Martín today reached the title of world champion!

The MotoGP championship results: