Francesco Bagnaia closed the MotoGP testing day in Jerez in the top five. The rider set the fourth fastest time, 0.184s behind leader Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini/Ducati), and did not have any new solutions to try out on the Ducati.
The 2022 and 2023 champion spoke about the Monday testing in southern Spain: ‘
I have to say that most of the things we had to test today, we tested on Friday. So today was just a day to analyze and test everything again. Everything we tried was working well, so I am happy with that. Then we focused on a different setup that might help us on a track with less grip. We used all the latest sets of tires just to test this type of setup that might give us an advantage on a track like Barcelona or where we have less grip‘.
The good grip levels of the Jerez asphalt ended up not being very useful, Bagnaia noted: ‘
It was very difficult to test something today because of the grip level. It was very impressive; this morning I went out on track and the feeling was fantastic, much better than yesterday. And it was very easy to do 1m36s laps. It was an incredible feeling, but also not very useful‘.
Questioned about whether there were new items on the bike, the current second-place rider in the championship denied: ‘No, not today, because on Friday we did more things. Typically on a competition weekend. Friday is a day where you only get the feeling and try to improve your riding on a bike and adapt, not to change too much. And on Friday we changed several things just to improve my feeling, just to improve the vibration situation – which we didn’t have any this weekend, so maybe we solved this small problem. But we want to wait. I think Barcelona could be one of the tracks where we might have some problems with vibrations. But we haven’t tested any new items’.
As for the vibrations, according to Bagnaia, they seem to be related to the level of grip: ‘It seems that the less grip we have, the more vibrations we have, so today was not the case’.