He probably wouldn’t have expected it either, but little by little Pecco Bagnaia is stealing the scepter of King of the Sprints from Jorge Martin. At Motegi he achieved his third consecutive success in a short race on Saturday, the sixth of the season, which made him the rider who has taken home the most so far in 2024. A truly remarkable progress if you consider that a year ago , these days, Sprints seemed almost like kryptonite to the reigning world champion.
Winning today, however, was also important in the race for the title, because the opportunity presented to him was particularly tempting, given that he started second, while the world leader was only 11th on the grid after a fall in qualifying. A success which, however, was not easy, because he had to compete with a stellar Pedro Acosta, who then did him a favor by lying down in the final. But also because he took the risk of using a conservative map, choosing not to use the “echo” one while he was lining up to better understand the conditions of the track.
“It was a fairly complicated race, because the conditions were not the best. I sacrificed a bit of performance in the race, using a map with less power, to try to better understand the conditions on the alignment lap, whether it was dry or wet to choose what type of bike to use”, said Bagnaia to Sky Sport MotoGP, who moved back to -15 behind Martin, but did well to limit the damage by climbing back to fourth place.
“I started well, I immediately got in front, but Acosta was going really fast and managed to push himself a little further, which is perhaps what was my limit. As soon as I thought about letting the tire cool down a little at the front and then pushing again, it was a difficult situation, because he was making an incredible pace and was starting to drip a little bit again, but he was very strong, so for tomorrow we have to expect it in the fight,” he added.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo credit: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
When he was asked why in the last lap he allowed himself to gain more than a second from his teammate Enea Bastianini, who behind him was fresh from a great duel with Marc Marquez: “On the last lap I passed the finish line where I was 1″ 3 on Enea, so I knew I could slow down the pace by a second, because it was difficult for them to come and get me. I really didn’t want to take any risks, because it was starting to drip. It wasn’t the case, because winning was fundamental.”
Returning to his change of gear in the Sprints, it was pointed out to him that he has now won six of the last ten: “I always work on the things I can improve on, but it has not been an easy process, because it is a type of race that does not It’s too much for me, because I prefer to do more management. But lately I’ve worked hard to get on the track and be immediately competitive.
Finally, if tomorrow’s long race is dry there could be an issue linked to the rear tyre, because few have data on the average: “The only one who did more laps with the average in free practice was Vinales and it went very fast. However, we only did 8 laps on it in FP1, when there were mixed conditions, so it will be essential to test it tomorrow morning in the Warm-Up, if it’s dry, to understand how it can behave in the first laps. In my opinion the performance of the soft is very good, but it also has a big breakdown, so it should be managed even better, without setting 1’43” in the first laps. We’ll have to see, because today in FP2 I did a lot of laps on the soft and it wasn’t too bad.”
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