Francesco Bagnaia was one of the fastest riders this Friday in Barcelona, securing the fourth-best time in the practice session of the Catalan GP of MotoGP. He was just 0.133s behind the leader, Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia), but feels that there is room for improvement for tomorrow.
The Italian explained that he expected better performance with the medium tire and had some difficulties warming up the rear tire, although he assures that solutions are already in place:
– I was expecting more with the medium tyre, because last year was the race tyre and my feeling was quite good. Also because the 2024 has a little bit less grip it’s more complicated to be consistent and fast. And this morning and this afternoon I needed six laps to warm-up the rear – it wasn’t working until after six or seven laps. So this is something we have to improve for tomorrow, but we already know where to go with the set-up. The soft tyre is working very well, but we don’t know if it’s good for the long race. The balance is positive, we are happy, but we need something more.
Comparing the performance of the 2024 Desmosedici GP with the 2023 version, Bagnaia stated: ‘For me, the braking entry. The 2024 is helping a lot in the braking entry, and a bit more in the corner, but has a little bit less grip. Last year’s bike was working very well here for the grip, because it was helping. Here the grip level is by far the worst one, so it’s quite difficult to put some traction and last year’s bike was helping a lot on that, but was turning less. The balance is quite similar for me, but today the fact is just that Marc [Márquez] and Álex [Márquez] didn’t have the chance to do a very good lap time – because Marc’s pace is very good. So maybe he didn’t have the chance to be in the top ten’.