Time has helped Francesco Bagnaia forgive.

And time is the reason MotoGP’s reigning world champion still can’t forget.

With the end of the season less than one month away with just Thailand, Malaysia and Valencia remaining after last Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, time is of the essence for Bagnaia to overcome his deficit to world championship leader Jorge Martin and put himself in the box seat to win a hat-trick of premier-class titles, an achievement that would place the 27-year-old Italian in rarefied air.

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The reason, Bagnaia feels, for that ticking clock getting louder by the day? A rival named Marquez, but not the one you’d be excused for thinking.

Countless words have been expended on the Bagnaia v Marc Marquez union at Ducati’s factory squad next year that will form the most potent super-team in a decade, but it’s Marc’s younger brother Alex Marquez who has a part to play in Bagnaia being cast in the role of hunter rather than hunted.

The controversial Bagnaia/Alex Marquez late-race crash over the final place on the podium at the Aragon Grand Prix was in early September, but the ripple effects are still being felt seven weeks later. One round after reclaiming the championship lead in Austria with a sprint/Grand Prix double from pole, Bagnaia’s Alcaniz accident – which came after a lowly ninth-place finish in the previous day’s sprint – meant he’d endured his worst weekend in two years, and lost a series lead he’s not been able to reclaim.

It might be a blow from which he’s unable to recover, and he knows it.

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“We are continuing recovering, losing, recovering, losing … our performances are very balanced,” Bagnaia said at Phillip Island of his title fight with Martin.

“Unluckily, the contact that makes me crash with Alex Marquez [in Aragon] is the fact that, right now, is weighing more in the championship.”

Given Martin and Bagnaia have combined for 11 Grand Prix wins and 12 sprint successes across 17 events this year, it’s a rare round where neither won in either format that is potentially becoming season-defining.

As Marc Marquez won the sprint and main race at Aragon for his first victories since 2021, Martin’s gain over his main rival that weekend is the biggest across a single event for either rider against the other all season.

In a title fight of minuscule margins, that contentious lap 18 Aragon clash could be what is eventually remembered in years to come as the day the season turned.

WHY ARAGON MIGHT BE THE DECIDING FACTOR

Martin winning the sprint race and finishing second to Marquez in the Grand Prix at Phillip Island last weekend – with Bagnaia fourth and third respectively in those two races – sees the Spaniard take a 20-point lead over the Italian into the final three rounds, opening up the doomsday scenario that Ducati could win the title and have its world champion leave with the number 1 plate to Aprilia, Martin’s destination for 2025.

‘Mathematical possibility’ are two of the sweetest words in the motorsport lexicon when you’re in a position of advantage like Martin is, and that 20-point advantage – with 111 still available – means the Pramac Ducati rider could be crowned as world champion after the penultimate round in Malaysia if his advantage is 38 points or more as he boards the plane from Kuala Lumpur to Valencia on November 3.

It would require Martin to outscore Bagnaia by nine points per round in the next two rounds; last weekend’s 10-point gain in Australia was the eighth time this season that Martin has gained at least nine points in a single event this season, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

Bagnaia has outscored Martin on more occasions over a single weekend than vice-versa (nine to eight), but the gravity of Bagnaia’s Aragon incident with Alex Marquez is stark when assessing the rounds where Martin has been faster, or gained more points from Bagnaia mistakes or misfortune.

2024 events: Martin’s points gains over Bagnaia

Aragon: Martin +28

Portugal: Martin +26

France: Martin +21

Emilia-Romagna: Martin +17

Great Britain: Martin +13

Australia: Martin +10

USA: Martin +7

Catalunya: Martin +1

In keeping with Bagnaia’s comments in Indonesia that the 2024 title fight is “a championship of mistakes”, there’s only been two occasions this season where Martin hasn’t had a helping hand from the reigning world champion.

Martin was plain faster than Bagnaia all weekend in Australia, while at the Circuit of the Americas in round three – where Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales won both the sprint and Grand Prix to likely deny Ducati a perfect season – neither rider finished on the podium, Martin fourth and Bagnaia fifth in Texas.

Bagnaia’s wretched one-point Aragon weekend – he was ninth in the sprint before the Alex Marquez crash the next day – is the worst of just six rounds across 37 events in 2023-24 where he’s only scored single-figure points, and losing 28 points in two days of a season where he trails Martin by 20 points overall shows its impact.

Elsewhere, Martin gained in Portugal in round two when Bagnaia and Marc Marquez came to blows over third place and Bagnaia retired, while a mechanical failure eliminated the Italian in the France sprint race, which Martin won.

Bagnaia crashed at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix while sitting third as Martin led, fell off from behind the series leader in the Silverstone sprint, and crashed out of the lead of the Catalunya sprint on the final lap, allowing Martin to leave Barcelona with more points than his title rival despite Bagnaia winning the following day’s Grand Prix. All Bagnaia errors or misfortunes, but none as numerically costly as Aragon.

2024 events: Bagnaia’s points gains over Martin

Italy: Bagnaia +21

Germany: Bagnaia +20

San Marino: Bagnaia +16

Spain: Bagnaia +13

Japan: Bagnaia +11

Austria: Bagnaia +8

Netherlands: Bagnaia +8

Indonesia: Bagnaia +3

Qatar: Bagnaia +3

On the nine weekends where Bagnaia has outscored Martin, the Spaniard – who has finished on the podium 26 times this season, a remarkable turnaround from his wastefulness in 2023 – has dented his own points tally five times.

His worst weekend relative to Bagnaia was Italy, where he crashed out of the sprint and was demoted from second to third on the last lap of the Grand Prix by Bagnaia’s teammate Enea Bastianini, while in Germany, he crashed from the lead of the Grand Prix with two laps left.

Martin fell from the lead halfway through the Grand Prix at Jerez in round four, and recovered – to a pointless 10th place – after crashing out of the lead of the sprint race in Indonesia three rounds ago.

In September’s San Marino GP, Martin – second behind Bagnaia – made an error of judgement to pit for a bike with a wet-weather set-up as drizzle began in the early laps, having to re-pit for his dry-weather Ducati when the shower passed and dropping all the way to 15th as Bagnaia finished second.

Bagnaia has outscored Martin in nine events at an average of 11 points per event, while Martin has outscored Bagnaia in eight at an average of 15.4. But for all of those numbers and nuance, it’s Aragon that stings Bagnaia the most, still.

Initially incensed after being pinned beneath Alex Marquez’s Ducati as the pair slid into the turn 13 gravel trap – Bagnaia’s claims that Marquez was “dangerous” sparked a social media firestorm given supporters of Bagnaia, a Valentino Rossi protégé, need little invitation to fire up at any rider named Marquez while Rossi continues to fan those decade-long flames – Bagnaia walked back his criticism at the next round at Misano with an apology that showed contrition for the words used, if not what prompted them.

“I was very angry for what happened, and looking at the telemetry [the accident] was even worse for my point of view,” he said.

“But in any case, I was a bit too strong in my words. I didn’t want to say that he made me crash on purpose.

“His defence was a bit aggressive, like it’s normal when you’re fighting for podium positions. I’m still thinking the same about the incident, but the words I said was a bit too much.”

While Alex Marquez was thankful to a point – “the fact he apologised, I like it … but also it’s true that the damage to my person [reputation] and also to my riding image has already been done” – and the furore over the incident cooled, that points loss – likely 16 for Bagnaia, given he was on course for third place – has hung over the title fight ever since.

BAGNAIA MUST STOP THE BLEEDING – NOW

While Bagnaia has moved on emotionally, there’s an irrefutable statistical element to what he said after Phillip Island last Sunday. Out of practicality, he has to park that feeling of being aggrieved and answer with actions, not words. A ticking clock is no time for lament.

Thailand this weekend – where Martin won last season – isn’t a must-win in the true sense of the term for the reigning world champion, but at the very least it’s a round where he has to outscore the Spaniard in order to give himself a chance.

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Martin managed to drag the title fight all the way to the Valencia finale in 2023 despite never leading the championship after a single round; it’s been a completely different story this season, the 26-year-old atop the standings after 14 of 17 rounds to date.

Since Aragon, Bagnaia has outscored Martin – but by just three points (128-125) over five rounds. It’s something, but it’s not enough.

While Phillip Island’s circuit layout is an outlier and sits squarely in Marc Marquez’s wheelhouse, the final three rounds are at circuits where the performance advantage of the Ducati GP24 should be able to overcome even the best of Marquez’s brilliance on a year-old bike that was always on the cards in Australia.

Bagnaia finished third and second in Thailand the past two years and was third in Malaysia last year after winning in 2022, which – allied to his experience in the past two title fights and a victory to seal his 2023 championship at Valencia last year – has him in a bullish frame of mind.

“We move on to the next ones with a good confidence, knowing they are tracks where I am very fast,” he said at Phillip Island last Sunday, all the while knowing that Martin might need to drop the ball, or it might not matter.

While this season has been one of, as Bagnaia suggests, squandered opportunities that has kept the title fight close and compelling despite Ducati’s demolition of the rest, any future retellings of 2024 will feature lap 18 at Aragon if Martin is able to deny Bagnaia a slice of MotoGP history across the final three rounds.

While one moment doesn’t make a season, it did make for the worst weekend in two years for a rider who could join Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez as the only riders to achieve a hat-trick of titles in the past 30 years.

And with Marquez set to join Bagnaia in Ducati factory red next season, it’s an incident that could leave a legacy longer than 2024, too.