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The risk, now, for Ducati, which at Le Mans placed four riders in the top four positions - Martin, Marquez, Bagnaia, Bastianini - is that Jorge will forcefully take that place in the factory team for which he yearns.
It would be a nightmare, in fact, for the Bologna Rossa and its Chinese sponsor Lenovo to see Martinator leave with the #1 on his fairing. Where? Well, at this point both KTM and Aprilia would be happy to see him fall into their arms.
After all, the next two races, Barcelona and Mugello, what more can they say than what the first five have shown?
Martin is very fast, and he definitely deserves the box next to Pecco's: Marquez is...quite simply Marquez, and in France he only confirmed that he is the one he used to be, in case anyone still had any doubts.
Bastianini, on the other hand, is very fast, but only in the second half of the Grand Prix, as if he needs to warm up before giving his all, but at the moment he looks like a crock pot between two iron pots.
The question at this point is just who Ducati will want to have as an opponent next year. Because both of these two champions, Jorge and Marc, surely deserve the official bike, which Martin already has, after all: it would only be an investiture, his, while Marquez has amply demonstrated in just five races that he deserves the treatment he has always had: that reserved for phenomena.
Because he may be four years older than the world champion - four years, eh, not 10! - but in short, for the moment, Marc does not seem to suffer much from that. Yes, his fault is that he was not born in the Ducati nursery, but if he is still capable of pulling off races like this French Grand Prix, you just have to believe in what he is capable of! The ordeal of two years of absence from the top more or less and four operations do not seem to have slowed him down.
And yet...and yet our colleague Emilio Perez de Rozas is right when in El Periodico, he puts forward Marquez's arrival in KTM in order to form a dream team alongside Pedro Acosta.
At the moment, in fact, with Ducati so dramatically winning, it surely is more necessary for the Mattighofen-based manufacturer to secure Magic Marc. If to this, then, we add that both have the historic sponsor Red Bull on their side and what's more, Marc has at his side Jimmi Martinez, currently his manager, the former Head of Motorsport Marketing of the Austrian soft drink maker, well 1+1 certainly makes two.
Then there is the salary issue: if this year Marc is going all in to prove he is still competitive, and is winning his gamble, it is difficult that in the future - and we are talking about a two-year contract - the phenomenon of Cervera will settle for pittance.
True, Marquez does not need money, but as Max Biaggi told us in the past a rider weighs the desire of a manufacturer to have you with how much it is willing to invest.
There is one last thing to say, but the eight-time world champion himself gave us the answer when the race was over: "in 2025 I don't care about the brand or the colour, I want to have the latest evolution of the bike on the track, because if you want to fight for the world championship, you have a better chance of succeeding."
And that...cuts to the chase. But don't see a double entendre there.
Photogallery ©Gigi Soldano PhotoMilagro
