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Austin Lindberg, Senior Editor
MotoGP enjoyed one of its greatest title fights in the series’ 74-year history in 2023, with Ducati Lenovo’s Pecco Bagnaia emerging victorious over Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martín on the final day of the season in Valencia to win his second straight world championship. And the motorsport world took notice, with the two-wheeled equivalent to Formula One boasting record attendance over the course of the campaign.
Despite a reasonably quiet offseason, MotoGP is primed to make even more noise in 2024. One of the greatest of all time, Marc Márquez, left the only team he’s ever known in Repsol Honda for a chance to ride the all-conquering Ducati Desmosedici, intensifying this year’s title fight before a single lap has been turned in anger. Nineteen-year-old Pedro Acosta moves up to the premier class as the most heralded rookie in more than a decade — since Márquez himself came to the series and claimed the championship in his debut season.
With the new season kicking off this weekend in Qatar, more eyes will be on the sport than ever before. And while so many owners of said eyes will be close connoisseurs, last year’s title fight was so thrilling that there is likely a whole new generation of fans looking to get better clued into the personalities of MotoGP.
So before Friday’s free practices, Saturday’s Sprint and Sunday’s grand prix, why not brush up on the protagonists of 2024? ESPN presents to you one reason to root for every rider on the grid.
1. Pecco Bagnaia | Ducati Lenovo
Age: 27
Nationality: Italy
Grand prix starts: 87
Grand prix wins: 18
2023 championship position: 1st
Best championship position: 1st (2022, 2023)
Reason to root for them: He’s the two-time defending champ. He’s the standout of MotoGP icon Valentino Rossi’s famed VR46 Academy. He ended Ducati’s 15-year wait for a world championship and backed it up by becoming the only back-to-back world champion in the Italian brand’s storied history.
The Ducati Desmosedici is the class of the field, and no one is more at one with that bike than Bagnaia. His methodical nature, working with his engineers to find solutions and achieve steady progress throughout a race weekend rather than rolling out of the garage with stunning pace on Friday morning, ensures that he’s consistently at the front when it matters most: on Sunday.
Bagnaia faces the prospect of a deeper field of contenders than in both of his world-championship-winning seasons, but his ability to think his way out of setup trouble — with the help of crew chief Cristian Gabarrini — gives him every chance of keeping the No. 1 plate for a third straight season.
5. Johann Zarco | LCR Honda
Age: 33
Nationality: France
Grand prix starts: 124
Grand prix wins: 1
2023 championship position: 5th
Best championship position: 5th (2021, 2023)
Reason to root for them: He is embarking on a thankless task. Zarco spent the past four years rebuilding his career on Ducatis following a doomed 13-race spell aboard the nascent KTM RC16 in 2019, and now he’s joined a Honda project that’s at its lowest ebb.
His development work has been cited as one reason for Ducati’s rise to power in the past two seasons, and if Honda is going to return the RC213V to its former glory, then Zarco’s feedback is going to be a very useful tool for the Japanese manufacturer.
Lucio Cecchinello’s LCR squad is responsible for Honda’s most recent win, so if the bike does rebound in 2024, the two-time Moto2 world champion will have every opportunity to take advantage of a reclamation project on the upswing.
10. Luca Marini | Repsol Honda
Age: 26
Nationality: Italy
Grand prix starts: 56
Grand prix wins: 0
2023 championship position: 8th
Best championship position: 8th (2023)
Reason to root for them: He’s living out his childhood dream. After signing for Repsol Honda, Marini posted to Instagram a photo of him as a young boy aboard a minibike, decked out in leathers adorned with the factory team’s sponsors.
It’s not just any old dream, either, like playing for his favorite soccer team. There’s family history at play. Marini’s half-brother is none other than Rossi, who won a pair of world championships for Repsol Honda when Marini was aged 6 and 7.
Riding for Honda’s factory team may be a dream, but it will be a ton of hard work. The Japanese brand is undergoing a Herculean effort to turn its fortunes around, following a season in which its riders finished 14th, 18th, 19th and 22nd in the championship, but Marini’s reputation as an engineer’s delight will be vital in that quest.
12. Maverick Viñales | Aprilia
Age: 29
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 160
Grand prix wins: 9
2023 championship position: 7th
Best championship position: 3rd (2017, 2019)
Reason to root for them: Other than the “Top Gun” connection? Do you need more reason than that? Viñales even wore a Pete Mitchell replica helmet ahead of the release of “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022.
He is arguably the most mercurial rider on the grid, and when he shows up at a track he likes and the sun is shining and he’s woken up on the right side of the bed, few can match Viñales’s pace. It’s been a little while since that’s happened, though, with his last victory coming in the 2021 season opener.
There will be pressure to rediscover that form more regularly in 2024. He’s out of contract at the end of the season, and after an acrimonious exit from Yamaha in 2021 and a relatively underwhelming two-plus years with Aprilia, Viñales will need to channel more of his namesake if he’s to avoid the fate that befell Cougar.
20. Fabio Quartararo | Monster Energy Yamaha
Age: 24
Nationality: France
Grand prix starts: 91
Grand prix wins: 11
2023 championship position: 10th
Best championship position: 1st (2021)
Reason to root for them: No one in the MotoGP paddock has the drip that the 2021 world champion possesses.
“I’m a guy that in my outfits, I’m a little bit different from all the other racers,” Quartararo told ESPN last summer. “I have my own style and many people love it, and I think because of my personality, I don’t need to always be dressing the same [as everyone else].”
The young Frenchman is no stranger to the social channels of Dolce & Gabbana, modeling the Italian fashion house’s latest lines and appearing at its shows. That he’s become known within the sport for what he wears, almost more so than for the world championship that he won, says everything about just how stylish “El Diablo” really is.
21. Franco Morbidelli | Pramac Ducati
Age: 29
Nationality: Italy
Grand prix starts: 102
Grand prix wins: 3
2023 championship position: 13th
Best championship position: 2nd (2020)
Reason to root for them: To reach the highest levels of motorcycle racing, you have to possess a certain level of cool — being comfortable in the discomfort, finding tranquility in anxiety. Even among the 22 coolest riders on the planet, though, Morbidelli stands out.
The Roman-born, Tavullian-raised Italian-Brazilian’s unflappability, his even-keeled nature, have become the stuff of legend in MotoGP circles. And he’s needed that level-headedness in the past two years.
Morbidelli floundered aboard the Yamaha M1 as it became increasingly uncompetitive, finishing 19th and 13th in each of the past two seasons. It hasn’t gotten much better now that he’s aboard a coveted Ducati, with the trail-blazing graduate of the famed VR46 Academy missing all of preseason testing with a concussion.
23. Enea Bastianini | Ducati Lenovo
Age: 26
Nationality: Italy
Grand prix starts: 50
Grand prix wins: 5
2023 championship position: 15th
Best championship position: 3rd (2022)
Reason to root for them: The ferocity with which he took the fight to Ducati stablemate Bagnaia in 2022 perfectly illustrated how Bastianini earned the nickname “La Bestia” (“The Beast”). While Bagnaia was trying to hold off Yamaha’s Quartararo, Bastianini pushed his fellow Italian to the limit with bar-to-bar battles at Misano, Aragon and Sepang during the business end of the season.
The four victories he took that year were more than he’d achieved in five seasons in the bottom-of-the-pyramid Moto3 class or in two seasons in the Moto2 intermediate category. To do so required a ruthlessness that felt at odds with the joyful beachside town of Rimini in which he grew up.
That earned him a seat as Bagnaia’s teammate in 2023, but a broken scapula in the season opener derailed the entirety of his first campaign in factory colors. He still scored one win at the tail end of the season, but if Bastianini can’t recover the pace and tenacity that earned him his place with the Bologna factory, his time in Ducati red may be short lived.
25. Raúl Fernández | Trackhouse Aprilia
Age: 23
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 37
Grand prix wins: 0
2023 championship position: 20th
Best championship position: 20th (2023)
Reason to root for them: Fernández was a prodigy in the intermediate Moto2 class. After a somewhat middling career in the world championship’s entry-level Moto3, before rattling off two wins (his first in grand prix racing) and two further podiums in his final five races in the class, Fernández took eight wins and another four podiums in Moto2 before being promoted to MotoGP. Only two other riders in the history of the sport had made the move to the premier class after a solitary season with the middleweights.
Success at the pinnacle of the sport has been harder to find. His best finish to date is a fifth place at the 2023 season finale in Valencia — a race in which a third of the field failed to take the checkered flag — although both his rookie campaign with Tech 3 KTM and his sophomore season with RNF Aprilia were affected by instability behind the scenes.
That shouldn’t be an issue in 2024. Trackhouse is new to MotoGP, but it’s a team that’s found plenty of success in NASCAR and boasts a financial commitment to success that was sorely lacking at RNF. This is the perfect platform for Fernández to prove that his Moto2 masterstroke was no flash in the pan.
30. Takaaki Nakagami | LCR Honda
Age: 32
Nationality: Japan
Grand prix starts: 103
Grand prix wins: 0
2023 championship position: 18th
Best championship position: 10th (2020)
Reason to root for them: Japanese manufacturers like Honda and Yamaha have been pillars of MotoGP since the 1970s. As such, the sport has a proud history of Japanese riders, headlined by the likes of Tadayuki Okada, Norifumi Abe and Shinya Nakano. Nakagami is the latest to follow those legends.
He will need to find more success in 2024 if he’s to continue in the series beyond his seventh season, though. In 103 MotoGP stars, Nakagami has zero wins and zero podiums.
With 23-year-old Tokyo-born Ai Ogura following in Nakagami’s footsteps through Moto3 and Moto2, and achieving more success along the way, it should come as little surprise that Ogura is regularly reported to be on the verge of taking Nakagami’s seat at LCR Honda.
31. Pedro Acosta | GasGas Tech 3
Age: 19
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 0
Grand prix wins: 0
2023 championship position: N/A
Best championship position: N/A
Reason to root for them: Acosta is the most hyped rookie to enter MotoGP since Márquez moved up to the premier class in 2013. The teenager is a generational talent whose abilities are continually likened to the greats of the sport like Márquez and Rossi.
Such expectations don’t faze Acosta. He’s been living with seemingly impossible comparisons since he was a kid — well, an even younger kid than he is now.
“He is fast, he is a super talent,” Márquez said to Crash.net about Acosta after last month’s tests in Sepang. “Maybe it will take more time or less time, but he will fight for a championship sooner or later.”
33. Brad Binder | Red Bull KTM
Age: 28
Nationality: South Africa
Grand prix starts: 72
Grand prix wins: 2
2023 championship position: 4th
Best championship position: 4th (2023)
Reason to root for them: There may not be a more entertaining rider to watch on the grid.
The second of his two premier-class wins came at the Red Bull Ring in 2021, when the rain fell in the closing laps, but Binder remained out on slick tires and hung on for a nail-biting, heroic victory. That masterful control of the bike was on full display in 2023, when the South African took full advantage of MotoGP’s newfound love of the rear brake, continually sliding the rear end on corner entry with breathtaking style.
Binder was the closest non-Ducati challenger in 2023, and if KTM can make a step forward in 2024, there’s no reason he can’t score his third career race win — and contest the championship.
36. Joan Mir | Repsol Honda
Age: 26
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 80
Grand prix wins: 1
2023 championship position: 22nd
Best championship position: 1st (2020)
Reason to root for them: Mir holds a record he’d surely rather not. He’s the only MotoGP world champion to have only one race win in the class.
He is talented enough to deserve more than that solitary victory. And after the luck he’s endured in the past two years — having former employer Suzuki pull out of the series after 2022, and enduring the nightmare Honda RC213V in 2023 — he’s banked enough credit to put that right.
Whether he’s able to in 2024 is another matter. Honda was perhaps the most improved manufacturer over winter testing, but it was a long way back in 2023, meaning that for as far as the Tokyo-headquartered brand has come, Mir & Co. still have a long way to go.
37. Augusto Fernández | GasGas Tech 3
Age: 26
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 20
Grand prix wins: 0
2023 championship position: 17th
Best championship position: 17th (2023)
Reason to root for them: Fernández is an underdog in this season’s field. The 2022 Moto2 world champion exceeded expectations in his first season in the premier class, with a best finish of fourth at Le Mans, but he’ll have to deliver even more in 2024.
The second half of his debut campaign was fairly forgettable, with four retirements, two non-points-paying finishes and just one top-ten in ten races. Adding to that pressure is a new teammate in Acosta, who has already set tongues wagging in the paddock.
Being compared to a generational talent is never easy. Fernández has his work cut out for him to prove he belongs, which is quite a statement to make regarding the defending Rookie of the Year.
41. Aleix Espargaró | Aprilia
Age: 34
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 237
Grand prix wins: 3
2023 championship position: 6th
Best championship position: 4th (2022)
Reason to root for them: Espargaró may just be the most relatable rider on the grid. The 34-year-old wears his heart on his sleeve like no one else in the sport, his wife and kids have become as big of celebrities in the paddock as he is, and his collection of race bikes and exotic cars are the envy of any gearhead.
And we haven’t even gotten to his on-track exploits yet. Espargaró has spent 20 years in the world championship split between the junior, intermediate and premier categories, and for the first 18 of those years, he’d never tasted victory. In 2022 he won twice, and added another in 2023, finishing fourth and sixth in the championship, respectively.
Going into his eighth season leading Aprilia, Espargaró looks well placed to build on those totals. And if his race pace in preseason testing is any indicator, he has an outside chance at challenging the Ducati’s for this year’s title.
42. Álex Rins | Monster Energy Yamaha
Age: 28
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 106
Grand prix wins: 6
2023 championship position: 19th
Best championship position: 3rd (2020)
Reason to root for them: Rins has to be considered among the most talented riders in the field. He was the only rider to win on a Honda last season, and he’s the only rider not named Márquez to win on a Honda going back to 2018.
Despite his win in Austin last April, he is coming off a frustrating 2023. His Honda RC213V was woefully off the pace, his feedback to help improve the bike was largely ignored by the Tokyo factory, and he suffered a horrific leg break that limited to just seven race starts from 20 grands prix.
His move to the factory Yamaha team for 2024 may not be much easier, with the Japanese manufacturer only slightly ahead of Honda last season. But in the factory colors, he will at least have the influence to help shape the future of the once-mighty M1.
43. Jack Miller | Red Bull KTM
Age: 29
Nationality: Australia
Grand prix starts: 157
Grand prix wins: 4
2023 championship position: 11th
Best championship position: 4th (2021)
Reason to root for them: Regularly playing to the crowd with massive wheelies and enormous stoppies, Miller does what any fan would do if they ever got a chance on a MotoGP bike — and possessed the natural talent he has. His no-nonsense attitude is a refreshing change of pace in modern motorsport, where polished marketing speak rule.
Miller is the rare prodigy to bypass the middleweight Moto2 class and make the jump from Moto3 directly into MotoGP, but success at the highest level wasn’t instantaneous. He won a rain-soaked Dutch GP in his second season but didn’t taste victory again for another five years, when he was victorious at Jerez and Le Mans in 2021.
He finished third at Jerez last season, but that was the only podium he scored all year after leaving the all-conquering Ducati Lenovo squad for Red Bull KTM. With 20 race weekends of experience with the Austrian manufacturer now under his belt, the affable Australian is primed for a return to winning ways in 2024.
49. Fabio Di Giannantonio | VR46 Ducati
Age: 25
Nationality: Italy
Grand prix starts: 40
Grand prix wins: 1
2023 championship position: 12th
Best championship position: 12th (2023)
Reason to root for them: Di Giannantonio is the author of last season’s most captivating rags-to-riches story. By October of his second season in MotoGP, the Roman’s best finish was eighth, he had just two more points finishes than non-points finishes, and was staring down the almost-certain fate of losing his ride for 2024.
And then came a career-best finish of fourth. And then a third. And then a win. In the final six races of the season, only championship contenders Bagnaia and Martín outscored Di Giannantonio.
It was enough to save his MotoGP career. Now at VR46 Ducati, Di Giananntonio is poised to pick up where he left off in 2023.
72. Marco Bezzecchi | VR46 Ducati
Age: 25
Nationality: Italy
Grand prix starts: 40
Grand prix wins: 3
2023 championship position: 3rd
Best championship position: 3rd (2023)
Reason to root for them: If you look at the VR46 Academy and see Bagnaia as its star graduate, Morbidelli as the trail blazer and Marini as the legacy, that leaves Bezzecchi as the protege. Is he the most talented of the bunch? Maybe, maybe not, but there can be no doubt that Bezzecchi is dripping with the same personality, the same charisma, that made Rossi into a global icon.
The 25-year-old from the beautiful Italian beachside town of Rimini has shown steady progress throughout his grand prix career, amassing three victories in both Moto3 and Moto2 before moving up a class. Bezzecchi won three races (plus one Sprint) last season, meaning if that trend continues, he’s in for a breathtaking 2024.
There was an adaptation process to the new-to-Bezzecchi Ducati GP23 in the early days of preseason testing, but steady progress throughout suggests it won’t be long before he’s back up at the front fighting for wins.
73. Álex Márquez | Gresini Ducati
Age: 27
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 69
Grand prix wins: 0
2023 championship position: 9th
Best championship position: 9th (2023)
Reason to root for them: Márquez is, objectively speaking, an outrageously talented, accomplished rider. He has won world championships in Moto3 and Moto2, he has stood on the MotoGP podium four times in his four seasons in the class and he’s won two Sprint races. He will always be compared to older brother Marc, winner of eight titles, though.
When that is the reality, how can resentment not build? And yet, it doesn’t. They’re best friends, training together, at times living together, and for the second time in four seasons, they will share a garage as teammates.
Last year was the younger Márquez’s first on a Ducati, a learning year in which he stood on the podium twice and claimed those Sprint victories. With that season under his belt, the 2024 campaign marks his best opportunity yet to make his mark on the MotoGP world championship.
88. Miguel Oliveira | Trackhouse Aprilia
Age: 29
Nationality: Portugal
Grand prix starts: 84
Grand prix wins: 5
2023 championship position: 16th
Best championship position: 9th (2020)
Reason to root for them: If Oliveira didn’t have bad luck in 2023, he’d have no luck at all. His season ended early, at the penultimate round in Qatar, when he fractured his shoulder blade. It was a campaign that saw him miss races through injury after being taken out by Quartararo and Marc Márquez.
In total, he finished just eight of twenty races, and he was too badly injured to even start three of them. It marked the first season that Oliveira didn’t win a race in the premier class since his rookie year in 2019.
Things are looking up, though. Trackhouse, having largely absorbed much of the now-defunct RNF Aprilia team that Oliveira rode for last season, is a financially committed organization that knows what it takes to win. It enters MotoGP with a partnership with Aprilia, ensuring that the Portuguese will have at his disposal a full-factory-spec 2024 machine to take the fight to Ducati and former employer KTM.
89. Jorge Martín | Pramac Ducati
Age: 26
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 54
Grand prix wins: 5
2023 championship position: 2nd
Best championship position: 2nd (2023)
Reason to root for them: Of last year’s title protagonists, Bagnaia was billed as the meticulous student of the bike, determined to think his way into faster lap times. Martín, on the other hand, is brash, unadulterated bravado.
The 2018 Moto3 world champion has five MotoGP wins to his name. He won nine of last year’s twenty Sprints, the half-distance, ultra-concentrated shots of adrenaline that require less tactical strategy and more guts and pace — often in equal measure.
There continues to be a chip on Martín’s shoulder: he was passed over for the factory Ducati Lenovo ride ahead of the 2023 season and he remains in the factory-supported Pramac Ducati team for a fourth year in 2024. He is out of contract after this season, though, and nicking the No. 1 plate off the Italian manufacturer’s golden boy could be a satisfying way for Martín to bring the curtain down on his time with Ducati.
93. Marc Márquez | Gresini Ducati
Age: 31
Nationality: Spain
Grand prix starts: 169
Grand prix wins: 59
2023 championship position: 14th
Best championship position: 1st (2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)
Reason to root for them: He might just be the GOAT. Márquez’s six MotoGP world championships are two shy of Giacomo Agostini’s eight and one short of Rossi’s seven, but as is always the case with these kinds of discussions, the context of eras and injuries always proves important but impossible to quantify.
In a period of MotoGP when the bike has become more important than the rider — long one of the big differentiators between the sport and Formula One — Márquez has spent the past three seasons toiling on a clearly uncompetitive Honda. Never mind the fact that he nearly retired in 2022 because of a complex arm injury that kept him out of the sport for large parts of three seasons.
His 11-year Honda careers is now over, though, and Márquez will contest the 2024 world championship with the series’ weapon of choice: a Ducati Desmosedici. There will be an adaptation period, but for someone as doggedly determined and wildly talented as Márquez, his 864-day winless streak is likely to end sooner rather than later.
Source: www.espn.com