Francesco Bagnaia was fifth today in the Sprint race at Valencia and admitted that he had made a crucial mistake when choosing his rear tyre. It didn’t give him the grip he needed, causing him to lose a lot of time right from the start, but even so, it didn’t shake his confidence in achieving a good result tomorrow and securing the world title.
Analysing his race, Bagnaia admitted to having made a bad decision by running the medium tyre on the rear of the Desmosedici: ‘We missed the choice of rear tyre. This time it wasn’t a problem [with the tyre] but a choice that wasn’t the best, and I think the soft one would have been better today. We decided to go with the medium because this morning with the medium I felt very good and so I expected more, and in every race with the medium I’ve said the same. The soft was a bit better and we made a mistake’.
As for his choice for sunday’s decisive race, Bagnaia played defence: ‘I have no idea about tomorrow. I’ll do what we do, the race is tomorrow. We’ll see, but considering what happened today the medium tyre wasn’t good: I lost a lot of time in the first part of the acceleration and in no time I was overtaken by Jorge [Martín]. I lost a lot of time, I tried to do a better job entering [corners], braking, but when the rear doesn’t give you maximum grip you start to demand too much from the front and everything gets worse’.
Even so, he said he was confident of a good result and of winning the title: ‘It is what it is and tomorrow we have to take it easy because tomorrow, with today’s result, I’ll be champion. Jorge has to win and we know perfectly well how strong we are in the races on Sunday and that means for me that I can be competitive and fight for the podium’.