Pecco Bagnaia's joking claim after MotoGP's Dutch TT sprint that he's "tried everything" to get the series to shelve its sprint format is reflective of two genuine topics.
The first one is the matter of whether sprint races, which were added to every round of the calendar from the start of 2023, have brought enough to MotoGP to justify the inevitable downsides.
The second is whether Bagnaia, though a sprint era champion already, may be fundamentally limited to a greater extent than it even seemed before by the format.
Bagnaia has not had a good season, but even in that context his Saturday race underperformance has been stark.
Championship top three in sprints and grands prix
Grands prix
Marc Marquez - 165 points (73.3% of total available)
Alex Marquez - 146 points (64.9%)
Pecco Bagnaia - 119 points (52.9%)
Sprints
Marc Marquez - 117 points (97.5% of total available)
Alex Marquez - 93 points (77.5%)
Pecco Bagnaia - 46 points (38.3%)
Bagnaia repeatedly made it clear the onus on him is to improve in these short-distance races.
But when asked by The Race whether a rider push was attempted at any point to convince MotoGP to take a Formula 1-like approach to sprints and have them only at select rounds, Bagnaia laughed: "Yeah, by myself.
"I tried everything to try to remove the sprints! But many of the riders - well, many of the riders... [Jorge] Martin in the past and Marc now, they are enjoying a lot the sprints!"
Bagnaia has hardly publicly lobbied for the removal of the sprints, so was almost certainly making a self-deprecating joke - but should MotoGP's largely static set of sprint races this year, each ending in a Marquez 1-2 and most of those fairly boilerplate in how they play out, be grounds for a rethink?
Simon Patterson's view
I was never the greatest advocate for MotoGP's sprint races even before they were introduced, and season one really bore that out with a high attrition rate and a whole lot more stress put on racers and teams.
And this has been very much reinforced, to the point where I actually believe that these days they're not just hurting riders, they're actively hurting the series in the exact spot that they were designed to help.
The safety aspect is an obvious one, and one we've discussed many times. The single most dangerous part of any race is the race start and opening lap, and doubling the number of those in a weekend has increased the risk that racers are under.
Not every serious crash that we have happens in the first two minutes, of course - no one is suggesting that. But it increases the risk, and I don't think that it's a coincidence that 75% of the 50 race weekends we've had since their introduction have started without a complete complement of full-time riders.
But from an entertainment perspective as well, they've become almost tedious. Even more so than Sunday's main events in an era of significantly reduced overtaking, the sprint result is essentially locked in after three laps, with little in the way of tyre management to spice up the final laps of the race.
And, by doubling the number of races to an incredible 44 in 2025, they take away some of the sparkle of the whole weekend. There's a huge turnover of races now, more than only the most hardcore of fans can try and keep up with - and when the results deliver the exact same 1-2 every single weekend, it's hard to imagine that sprints are converting anyone new to the sport.
Dorna has been consistently happy with the effects of its sprint race introduction, so there are no signs currently anything will change - with the question being over whether new MotoGP owner Liberty has a strong feeling in this regard one way or another.
Assuming sprints are here to stay, though, they represent a fundamental limitation for Bagnaia that means he is at an automatic disadvantage in every close title race - which 2025 so far is very much not, but 2024 was.
At Assen, where Bagnaia still feels - and so do his rivals - that he could win the race on Sunday, he struggled to battle in the 13-lap precursor, overtaken by Alex Marquez, Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio Di Giannantonio and unable to counter each time.
He described it as his "classic sprint".
"There's some positives. And I want to see the positives," he insisted - the positives being that it felt like his standard sprint malaise rather than his ill-feeling with the 2025-spec Ducati being exposed again.
"For the first time I'm complaining more about the sprint and not about my feeling. This is a step in front. My feeling was more or less what I was having last year.
"The sprint races for me are always more or less the same, and I'm struggling to be aggressive in the first laps. Then the pace is good, today I was faster than the guys in front of me, but I wasn't able to close the gap, like always.
"From the season that sprint races were added to the race weekend, my issue, my problem was always the same. And it's still the same. And I know it's something that I need to improve by myself. But I really don't know what to do, to do better.
"I'm trying everything, but every time is the same - I'm starting in a normal way but then everybody is overtaking me, I'm always struggling to feel the same grip and the same performance on braking. The thing is always the same."
Bagnaia insisted again the problem is not psychological and is instead totally related to the shift in balance created by the switch from the 22-litre main race fuel tank to the 12-litre one required for the sprint.
"I cannot brake like I want and I cannot open the gas like I want. There's a technical change on the bike between the sprint and the long race.
"And after three seasons, I can clearly see and clearly say that the only difference is this one. And it makes a difference for me.
"And I know that it's my problem. I need to solve it by myself. But it's not psychological."
