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