Pedro Acosta, Marc Marquez head 2024 MotoGP falls list

Reflecting on his rookie MotoGP season, Pedro Acosta couldn’t help but ponder the points lost during 13 non-scores.

The GASGAS Tech3 rookie topped the KTM challenge in terms of GP podiums (5), Sprint podiums (4), Pole positions (1) and laps in the race lead (13).

Yet he was still beaten by future team-mate Brad Binder for fifth place in the world championship, by just two points.

“Look how many points I lost in the races that I crashed. A lot!” Acosta said during the closing stages of the year. “If you put a 5th place in every track that I crashed, it’s many points at the end of the season.

“I need to put this in my head also! Maybe when you ride without pressure, you can go flat out, but sometimes we need to slow down a bit.”

Official MotoGP stats for the 2024 season confirm that Acosta fell more than any other rider, with 28 accidents across the 20 rounds (although he didn’t start the Australian GP due to injury).

“There were many mistakes, many difficult moments,” Acosta said of his debut premier-class campaign. “On the other side, many good moments, fighting for victories, improving a lot, understanding how MotoGP is. 

"And for this, I'm more happy than sad.”

The next rider on the crash list was competing in his twelfth MotoGP season: Marc Marquez, switching from Honda to Ducati, hit the ground 24 times this year.

Marquez topped last year’s list with a new high of 29 accidents in his final Repsol Honda season (and first year of Sprint races) despite missing three rounds and two further Sunday races.

Many expected Marquez not to have to push the Desmosedici to such an extreme limit compared to the struggling RCV, so why so many falls?

“In the first part of the season I crashed a lot, but it was not always my mistake,” Marquez said during the season.

“But it's true that then I had a couple of crashes that I didn't understand and this also gave me a little bit less confidence. So we needed to retry again to find the limit in the correct way.”

Nonetheless, Marquez ‘only’ fell in 5 of the 40 races, one of which was a tangle with Francesco Bagnaia in Portimao.

“The most positive thing is that I'm crashing in the practice,” Marquez said. “Normally in the main race always I try to stay on the bike and this is the most important point.

“I would like to crash less, but at the moment it's a number that I don't care a lot about.”

At the other end of the practice/race accident ratio was future team-mate and reigning double champion Bagnaia.

The Italian only fell 9 times during the whole season, putting him 17th on the list, but suffered eight non-finishes in races (one of which was due to a technical issue at Le Mans), thwarting his title challenge.

Third on the 2024 falls list was Marc’s Gresini Ducati team-mate and younger brother Alex, with 21 accidents, one of which involved a clash with Bagnaia at Aragon.

Red Bull KTM’s Jack Miller was ranked fourth (20). Team-mate Brad Binder, Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro and Acosta’s team-mate Augusto Fernandez were tied on 19 falls.

The fact all four KTMs were in the top seven underlines the difficult nature of the RC16 this year.

New world champion Jorge Martin fell 15 times from his Pramac Ducati, but only in 4 races.

At the other end of the scale, new Repsol Honda rider Luca Marini fell only 4 times during the whole season, the lowest number of any full-time rider.

Top Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo only fell nine times.

Zonta VD Goorbergh topped the Moto2 fallers list and David Almansa/Filippo Farioli the Moto3 list, all with 18 accidents during the first year of Pirelli tyres.

The official MotoGP stats only include accidents during race weekends, and not in testing...