Difficult Sprint race for Francesco Bagnaia in the MotoGP Americas GP. After losing many positions at the start, the Ducati rider was almost always in tenth, recovering up to eighth in the last laps.
The two-time world champion did not hide that he had a performance well below expectations: ‘I am very surprised. It was much more difficult compared to this morning. In FP2 we did three more laps than in a Sprint race and I was doing 2m02.4s on the last lap. And in the Sprint race, doing 2m02.8s or 2m02.9s was impossible. So, we are trying to understand, tomorrow we have another race and we will check the data‘.
Regarding the difficulties he faced, Bagnaia explained: ‘First of all, the start. I had a slide at the beginning and everything was already compromised. And then it was very difficult to attack. Every time I tried to attack, the rear was sliding a lot, I was losing the rear everywhere and it was very difficult to perform as I wanted‘.
Enea Bastianini also had some complaints about the rear tire, and for #1, it is something that can happen… also revealing what made him angrier: ‘I saw that we both had problems. It is something that can happen sometimes, it has happened several times in the past and it happened again. What makes me more angry is that this morning I was quite fast; my pace was one of the strongest and it was impossible to do it this afternoon‘.
The new tires did not allow Bagnaia to do better than the used tires in FP2, a situation that will now be analyzed after failing miserably to achieve what he expected to do in this Sprint race:
– This morning I had a tire with 14 laps and this afternoon a new tire, and I was six tenths slower than in the morning. We didn’t talk to Michelin, but we have time to check the data, to talk to them, understand the situation – maybe the temperature, maybe the conditions. But I saw Maverick’s lap times [Viñales] and it looks incredible. My goal and what I thought I was capable of doing was the same pace as Maverick, so we need to understand’.
