It is well known that MotoGP is not a team sport, and every single victory belongs to the driver who crosses the finish line first and the respective team that follows him out of the pits. This year, if you add up the participants in the three categories of the world championship, there were even 22 Italian drivers on the track. During the different phases of the calendar there are no points for nations to win, however The data, coming from an analysis of last season’s victories, suggest that the Italian flag was deployed on the top step of the podium “only” 12 times in 2021.
That number might be insignificant if it weren’t for a lower total from five years ago, in 2016, when the milestone was 10 wins and the number of registered riders was always 22. In the four years from 2017 to 2020, the average number of GPs won by Italian drivers is 19. Below is a simple graph showing the analyzed data and the trend of the same over the past six years.
Italian victories in the last 6 years in the three classes of the World Championship
An explanation for the trend of these results is of course not possible, since it is also not possible to predict the trend of the graph in the next few seasons. It can be observed that 2021 and 2016 are the only two seasons in the last six years in which an Italian driver has not won a world championship in any of the three categories.
In 2017 Franco Morbidelli won the Moto2 World Championship with 8 GP wins this season, out of 20 won by Italy. In 2018, Francesco Bagnaia became Moto2 world champion and like Franco he climbed the top step of the podium 8 times. The 2019 season made Lorenzo Dalla Porta Moto3 champion with the highest number of wins among all Italians this year: 4. In 2020, Enea Bastianini finally triumphed in Moto2. Only this last year was an exception as Enea and Luca Marini, the runner-up, took three wins each, which contributed to an equal number of GPs won by the Italian drivers.
That year the total ended at 12, with Francesco Bagnaias four wins in the premier class (at the GPs of Aragon, San Marino, Algarve and Valencia); two wins in Moto2: one by Fabio Di Giannantonio (at the Portuguese GP) and one by Marco Bezzecchi (in the GP Styria); and six wins in Moto3: one of Romano Fenati (in the Silverstone GP) and five by Dennis Foggia (in the Italian, Dutch, Aragon, San Marino and Emilia-Romagna GPs). The Leopard team rider fought for the title against the new world champion Pedro Acosta until the penultimate run of the calendar. Obviously, the five victories were not enough to conquer the World Cup or to contribute significantly to it.
The following graph crosses the results of MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3. If we focus on the 2016 and 2021 seasons, we can see that in both seasons Especially in Moto2 there is a lack of sufficient victories to keep the average at the level of other years. In 2016 the only victory of Lorenzo Baldassarri was recorded (at the San Marino GP) and in 2021 the above two from Di Giannantonio and Bezzecchi.
As we can see, the average in MotoGP in the premier class alone is around 5 wins per season. In 2020 there were five: one of Dovizioso (at the Austrian GP), one from Petrucci (in Le Mans) and three by Morbidelli (San Marino, Teruel and Valencia). In 2019 the number fell to three: with two triumphs for Dovizioso (at the GPs of Qatar and Austria) and one for Petrucci (in Mugello). The 2018 season was dominated by the Italians Doviziosos 4 wins (at the GPs of Qatar, the Czech Republic, San Marino and Valencia). In 2017 there were 7 first places, the highest number in MotoGP in the six years considered: one, and most recently in his career, by Valentino Rossi (in the Netherlands) and six by Dovizioso (in Italy, Catalonia, Austria, Great Britain, Japan and Malaysia). To arrive in 2016 with the two GPs from Rossi. won (in Spain and Catalonia) and the two from Ducati: one of Iannone (in Austria) and one of Dovizioso (in Malaysia).