Battered and tired, Petrucci grinds toward a MotoAmerica showdown with Gagne this weekend

Six years ago, a foreign rider with a MotoGP pedigree came to MotoAmerica and won the first three races while the defending champion, a Californian on a Yamaha, struggled with two DNFs and fell 62 points behind.

This year, former MotoGP racer Danilo Petrucci came to MotoAmerica and won the first three races while defending champion Jake Gagne, a California native riding a Yamaha, suffered two DNFs and fell 59 points behind.

Is history repeating? Will it keep repeating as the championship is decided this weekend?

The MotoAmerica Medallia Superbike season concludes this weekend with the final two races at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. Gagne enters the final round with a four-point advantage. And while this season may feel like an echo from the past, it has been an unusual season of motorcycle racing — a seesaw points battle in which the two protagonists have hardly seen each other on the track. And now it comes down to the last weekend, where the deciding factor could well be the weather or allies on the track, including a one-off wildcard entry.

The foreign incursion, 2022 version

Petrucci is not the first European racer with world championship success to come to MotoAmerica. It was Toni Elias who pushed Cameron Beaubier back in 2016, Loris Baz joined the series last year before returning to World Superbike, Héctor Barberá from MotoGP is in his second year in MotoAmerica, and that's just a partial list. But while Petrucci isn't the first, he's made the biggest splash. He came to the United States straight off his surprising success in his first-ever appearance in the Dakar Rally, proving his versatility as a racer.

But it has been a bruising, tiring, difficult year for Petrucci. He came in nursing lingering injuries from Dakar and suffered more injuries when he crashed at VIRginia International Raceway shortly after crossing the finish line in a side-by-side battle for second place. While there's plenty of data about setting up the Ducati Panigale V4 in World Superbike, the Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati NYC team was starting from scratch in MotoAmerica, with different rules, different tires, and Petrucci racing on tracks he'd mostly never seen. The team has fought technical issues (example: engine braking settings working one session and then not the next) and suffered a frustrating mechanical DNF at Road Atlanta when the Ducati overheated when the start of the race was delayed. Petrucci complained about the bumps on the track at the first race at the Circuit of the Americas and Baz, with a year of his own hard experience, said something along the lines of wait until he finds out that's the best track in the United States.

So anyone who might have thought that a MotoGP race winner would come in and easily beat the locals can see by looking at Petrucci's face that reality is very different. He's a man clawing his way toward the finish line. A man in serious need of a long Italian vacation.

"For sure it has been a tough year for me," Petrucci said. "I am so tired. I feel like Austin was two years ago and I raced the Dakar four years ago and 10 years ago I was racing in MotoGP. I spent two months in the desert and four or five months here in the U.S.A. and I want to go back home."

The season has been more normal for Gagne, though it has had far more ups and downs than last year, when a mechanical problem led to a DNF in the first race and then he ran off 16 wins in a row. This year, Gagne has clearly had the most speed, taking seven out of nine pole positions. He could have already clinched the title if he hadn't crashed out of two races while leading, including a spectacular shunt at Brainerd International Raceway that was so violent it ripped the fork and front wheel off his R1 (shown in the Instragram post below).

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Gagne, famously unflappable, was happy to gain three more points on Petrucci at the last round at New Jersey Motorsports Park and, most importantly, survive Sunday's wet race on a track known for poor grip when wet.

"We brought it home on a tough day," Gagne said. "We're bringing this championship down close to the end, so I'm excited about that. Two more races to go. I'm ready for it."

Perhaps the strangest part of this season is that the two championship protagonists, now just four points apart with two races remaining, have never raced each other head-to-head for a win. It was an oddity I noted when I wrote about the series four months ago, after the first three rounds and six races, and amazingly it's still true after nine rounds and 18 races. Like last year, Gagne often starts from pole and sets a blistering pace on the first lap, disappearing from the field. Meanwhile, Petrucci's five wins have come from taking advantage of Gagne's mistakes or a few mechanical issues, plus that masterful win in the rain at NJMP nine days ago.

"This year, I don't think we have a fight together, me and Jake racing together," Petrucci said after winning the wet Sunday race at NJMP by more than six seconds. "Today I did the Jake. The other 13 races, I just seen his back for a pair of laps and then there was not any battle."

A wild card and the weather

So who will win the showdown in 'Bama? External factors could come into play.

One advantage Gagne has had this year is two other fast Yamaha riders regularly taking points away from Petrucci: his Fresh N Lean Progressive Yamaha teammate Cameron Petersen, third in points, and Westby Racing's Mathew Scholtz, fourth in points. With everyone but Gagne and Petrucci mathematically eliminated, Petersen has already noted that his job is to take points from Petrucci.

"Obviously, I want to be winning races and all that, but there's a bigger picture to all of this," Petersen said. "The best thing I can do is just help the team out and help my boy out and go get the championship for the team."

Meanwhile, Petrucci has no help. His is the lone Ducati in the field. There's no one to compare setup notes with and no one to try to take points away from Gagne.

That could change this weekend, however. Having just wrapped up the MotoAmerica Supersport championship on his Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati NYC Panigale V2, Josh Herrin is signed up to race in the Superbike class at Barber. Will he do double duty? If Petrucci can stay ahead of Gagne and if Herrin, who has no race experience on the V4, can also get in front of Gagne, Herrin could help decide the title. Those are two massive "ifs."

But not if it rains. And that's the real unknown here. In his MotoGP days, Petrucci was known as an expert in the rain. With a dominant win in the final race at NJMP, pulling out to nearly a 10-second advantage, he proved that he's still a magician when the track is wet. (See the highlights below.) And he noted that the issues the team has struggled with all season are non-existent in the rain. Last year, the races at Barber took place in a downpour, but at this point the forecast calls for sunshine and hot temperatures.

If the track is dry, it's hard to imagine Gagne not winning. He's been fastest all year. If it's wet, it's hard to bet against Petrucci.

But there's a lot more that could happen, from another DNF to other riders getting into the mix. And remember that 2016 season when at first it looked like Elias couldn't lose a race and by the end of the season it looked like Beaubier couldn't lose the championship? In the final race of the year, Beaubier's previously reliable R1's engine went kaput in a puff of smoke. He still won the title by six points, but not the way anyone predicted.

You never know when history is going to repeat and when it's going to be made.