Francesco Bagnaia seemed close to his second consecutive victory this Sunday at Le Mans, but ended the French MotoGP GP in third. After leading for a good part of the race, the Ducati man ultimately couldn’t hold off the winner Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati) and Marc Márquez (Gresini/Ducati) towards the end.
The champion of the last two years explained in a press conference that the last five laps were tough, after giving his all: ‘I was trying to give my best, but we can consider this weekend positively, considering the fact that Friday went perfectly. Then I had a small problem yesterday in the Sprint that didn’t allow us to finish the race. And today these two [Martín and Márquez] were simply faster. I tried to do my best, but in the last five laps I struggled to find something extra – the opposite compared to Jerez‘.
Although he liked the improvements made in Le Mans, Bagnaia emphasized that the final position is not a cause for satisfaction: ‘In any case, we improved a bit on this track, where I crashed last year and three years ago, so it was important to finish the race and we did it quickly. So, I’m happy with that, but being third I can never be truly satisfied. But in any case, we move on to Barcelona and try to improve a bit‘.
Regarding the reason for the difficulties in the last laps, the Italian believes that, above all, it was related to the superiority of the opponents even though he didn’t have the best feelings:
– J’étais très fort dans le Secteur 1 et dans le Secteur 2 – très fort dans le secteur 2, je crois, j’étais très fort dans le virage 7. Mais ensuite, je perdais en freinage pour le virage 9. J’ai aussi remarqué quand j’étais derrière Jorge qu’il a creusé l’écart en un seul freinage. Donc, c’était très étrange et je n’avais pas la sensation de freiner plus fort, d’ajouter plus de vitesse dans ce virage. Mais nous verrons pourquoi j’avais ces difficultés. Marc m’a également dépassé à cet endroit. Je pensais que je freinais fort, mais je n’arrivais pas à bien arrêter la moto. J’ai dû utiliser davantage le frein avant et il a réussi à me dépasser. Mais je pense que c’était simplement parce qu’ils étaient plus rapides.
