Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1063250
2018 FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON REVIEW P154 MotoGP Set against that were many high points. It was a properly great year. MOTO2 The last year of the original CBR600RR engine for Moto2 was, ironically enough, probably the very best since the class replaced 250s in 2010, and cer- tainly the closest. There were just seven points in it at the end, be- tween winner Francesco (Pecco) Bagnaia (Kalex) and runner-up Miguel Oliveira (KTM). There'd been seven different race winners on three differ- ent types of chassis, and some better-than-usual scraps, in a class where the equality of the underpowered engines makes overtaking a real challenge. In fact, in spite of the final scores, Bagnaia on the SKY VR46 Kalex was the classiest act, and tied up the title with a race to spare. He had eight wins to Oliveira's three. The Red Bull KTM rider, Portugal's first star, had more podium finishes, but Bagnaia was equally consistent in scoring every round, and when he faltered it wasn't usually through any fault of his own. The decisive moment was their hand-to-hand combat at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, where Rossi protégé Bagnaia won out in the last corner. The next-best in the champi- onship was Oliveira's teammate Brad Binder, in his second season after an injury-interrupted 2017. The ex-Moto3 champion equaled Oliveira's three wins, and at sev- eral races dutifully played second fiddle to the title candidate. Oliveira and Bagnaia are off to MotoGP next year. Binder and Bagnaia's teammate Luca Marini are staying on, and with the lat- ter's year-end form bringing him a first win in Malaysia, they look set to replicate the same battle. Alex Marquez had a dire sea- son without a single win, includ- ing the bitter blow of seeing his rookie EG-VDS Kalex teammate Joan Mir plucked from the Cin- derella class straight into MotoGP by the Suzuki factory. But Marc's younger brother had the consola- tion of winning a close battle for fourth overall, after Jerez winner Lorenzo Baldassarri, Mir and Marini all crashed out on the sec- ond corner of the final race. Fabio Quartararo (Speed Up) took two wins, justifying the early faith that brought him into GPs at 15 back in 2015—only to have one win taken away on a tire pressure technicality at Motegi. The other race winner was 33-year-old veteran Mattia Pasini (Italtrans Kalex), who sadly was not able to find a ride for next year. Joe Roberts, the only American in GPs, was classed as a rookie in spite of a handful of rides last year, and teamed with South African Steven Odendaal in the RW Racing team fielding the new Japanese-made NTS chassis. In a season concentrating on develop-