Close to nine months after Aprilia dominated the MotoGP Catalunya Grand Prix in 2023, Barcelona hosted the championship again this weekend. By Saturday, the Noale manufacturer seemed capable of winning again, and KTM also showed competitiveness. However, it was Ducati that had the upper hand in the races, with Francesco Bagnaia winning the main race.
The Italian said in a press conference that the tires made the difference this year: ‘For me, this year was different. I think the tires helped us a lot. But already on Friday we could see that Marc’s pace, Jorge’s pace, my pace, were competitive. I think in FP1 KTM and Aprilia were a bit stronger because the grip was very low and it was a bit dirty. But once we cleaned it up a bit, it was better‘.
In terms of bike parameters, Bagnaia ensured that he did not make any changes since Friday: ‘I didn’t change the setup since the beginning of the weekend – I was happy with it and didn’t want to [change]. So, I believe the biggest change compared to last year were the tires‘.
On the other hand, the champion of 2022 and 2023 believes that Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) may have had some kind of setback in the Sunday race: ‘I also think that in the main race Aleix had some problem, because the pace all weekend was very fast, on Saturday it was very fast, and it’s strange that on Sunday it was so slow‘.
