MotoGP | Bagnaia: “Lots of vibrations due to tire pressure”

With two World Championships in his pocket and a winter as a great protagonist, everyone indicated Pecco Bagnaia as the great favorite in the starting blocks of the 2024 MotoGP. The first weekend of the season, however, did not live up to expectations for the Ducati rider, at least for the moment.

After a complicated Friday, due to a problem suffered by his Desmosedici GP in the first session and the rain that made the evening session useless, Saturday didn't go much better in Lusail either. After the fifth time in qualifying, the Piedmontese had to settle for fourth in the Sprint, seeing the podium disappear right at the end, when Aleix Espargaro overtook it, taking advantage of the chattering that his Red was suffering from, probably generated by an increase in pressure.

“I look at this Sprint in a positive way, even if there is some work to do, because I found myself in a different situation compared to the tests, with different sensations. I compromised everything a bit in qualifying, because I wasn't able to finish the lap: I went wide at the penultimate corner and wasted some time. Starting on pole or at least on the front row would have made quite the difference”, said Bagnaia at the end of the day.

“In any case, I started well and tried to do my best to recover. As soon as I got behind Binder I started to have pressure problems, with both tyres. From there it was a bit more complicated and Above all, I started to have a lot of chatter on the rear. In the end, it's a new bike and it's the first time we've found ourselves in this situation. We have to work to improve it, but I'm quite calm, because we've analyzed the data and we know where we can improve. Tomorrow's race is another situation, which I certainly like better”, he added.

When asked how he tried to manage this situation in the final laps of the Sprint, he explained: “I didn't reduce the power, I just tried to ride differently. I had to go after the problems, because I could no longer exploit the strong point of this bike, which is the mileage, precisely because I had large vibrations which probably came from the tire pressure.”

Even the winner Jorge Martin complained about the chattering suffered by his Ducati, adding that if he doesn't find a solution it will be very difficult to repeat himself in tomorrow's long race: “I haven't seen Martin's data, so I don't know, but I think that in the race Tomorrow we won't run in a low 1'52″, so it will already change a lot.”

Judging by the way he and the Aprilia managed to manage the tyres, especially in the second part of the Sprint, Espargaro could be the big favorite for the long race of the Qatar GP, although for Pecco it is too early to draw conclusions .

“In the end, Aleix was clearly the fastest. I don't know what difficulties he had during the race, because if he had been there straight away, he probably would have won because in the end he was half a second faster. But I prefer the long race, because I can to manage everything better. It's difficult to interpret it now, but I think this vibration problem depends on the pressures that have gone up.”

According to Bagnaia, the track, very different compared to two weeks ago, is also having a hand in it: “Compared to the tests, the conditions are very different. I felt very good there, even if I never did more than 5-6 corners attached to another bike. Maybe it would have been useful, but this chattering situation was a new situation, also because we didn't have it with the GP23 last year, because it was a bike that had less mileage.”

And even the problems he had yesterday didn't help him to have a peaceful Saturday: “In my opinion, yes. Yesterday unfortunately I had a problem and then in the afternoon it rained. Even this morning I wasn't able to do all the work because I came in a bit late Let's say it was a bit of a rocky start to the weekend, but we still managed to finish fourth and I want to see this Sprint in a positive way, because we managed to manage the situation better than a year ago. Let's see tomorrow what we can Do”.