Francesco Bagnaia was the winner of the Qatar MotoGP Grand Prix. The Ducati rider led almost the entire race yesterday at Losail, facing no serious opposition to start the year on a high note.
During a press conference, the Italian spoke about a change in approach after the Sprint race: ‘It was very important after Saturday to change the strategy a bit in the first lap. I just tried to be more aggressive and I knew that if I was already leading in the early laps, my performance potential was good enough to manage a margin. It is true that the Sprint race was a good lesson to change the approach in terms of performance with the new bike. And it worked, so I am very happy‘.
On the other hand, Bagnaia mentioned that successful changes were also made to the Desmosedici GP24: ‘I have to thank my team; from Saturday night to Sunday morning we worked hard to improve the setup for the race and it also worked. So, overall, it’s definitely the perfect start to the season‘.
After the Sprint race, the two-time champion complained of some vibration and overheating issues with the rear tire, which he managed to solve for the main race, as he stated: ‘I just rode in a different way, found the performance in a different way and it worked for the vibrations. Because in the main race I only had a bit in the last two laps in one corner. So, we worked well. Maybe in Portimão we won’t have this kind of problem because Portimão is a track where the grip is completely different, we’ll see. But I think we know perfectly where to go in case of vibrations‘.
