Francesco Bagnaia couldn’t avoid a crash in the MotoGP Sprint race at the British Grand Prix. Six laps from the end, the Ducati rider lost the front of his bike at turn four while chasing the podium places, and had to retire.
The Italian admitted that he failed: ‘I did a mistake honestly. I’ve been very fast at turn 4 every weekend, I’m entering very fast, and on that lap I just exaggerated a bit the line: I was closer to the apex than before, I was anticipating the entering and I lost the front’.
Regarding his race up to the crash, Bagnaia commented: ‘I did a very good start, but the rear height device didn’t disengaged, so I did the turns 1 and 2 with the bike in a lower position and I lost places, so I was fourth. And then I struggled a bit with the rear grip in the first lap and a half more or less. Then everything went perfectly again, I closed the gap, I was super fast, but I crashed. So it was my mistake, I already said sorry to my team because they have done a perfect job like always. Honestly I just did a mistake’.
The 2022 and 2023 champion also noted that, in his view, the correct tyres weren’t available: ‘I have to say that in this moment we don’t have the correct front tyres because the temperature is not allowing us to ride with the hard, but the medium is strange and the soft is finished after two laps. I think the medium was the correct choice, but in that moment I was exiting too fast from the turn 3 and when I entered the turn 4 I was like 3km/h faster – that’s nothing, but closer to the apex I lost it’.