Bagnaia resists
It wasn’t easy for ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia keep their nerve after the comeback and overtaking in the standings suffered by Jorge Martin at the end of the Indonesian Sprint, when he found himself 7 points behind his Spanish rival. Since that race the Italian champion has focused on himself, trying to maximize his results, without being intimidated by the speed shown by Martin.
And so Bagnaia took full advantage of the Pramac team rider’s crash in the Sunday race, while he was leading by gap, going on to win; and equally at Phillip Island he was able to capitalize on the better tire choice, which gave him second place against his rival’s fifth place. The Piedmontese champion he thus dug a 27-point deep gap between himself and his opponent, four weekends before the end of the world championship. The next stop is Thailand, where Bagnaia won in 2018 in Moto2 and came third in the premier class a year ago.
Bagnaia’s words during the press conference
“I’m happy to be here in Buriram, it’s one of the circuits where I’ve always managed to be strong. We come from a series of races in which I wasn’t able to be very strong in qualifying, but I really like this track. Concerns? They are tracks that are also good for the other Ducatis, Jorge was competitive here and in Malaysia. We have to wait and see how I go, making predictions is difficult. The first thing will be not to pass through Q1. The ranking? I have to push, every weekend there are 37 points and you can’t stop thinking about the championship. It’s not the time to calm down for the championship, we’ll only think about it after Qatar. Fight until the last race? We can get to play it in Valencia, I lost a lot of points by making mistakes and in the last two weekends I did a good job in the race, but 27 points ahead of Martin doesn’t leave me at peace.
I definitely felt strong, stronger than last year. We are in a better condition, in 2022 I was trying to recover points from time to time and here we recovered 16 points on Fabio, it was an incredible race. I feel great with the bike and the team and in the last 2 races we have recovered a lot of confidence and I feel in a better overall condition. Ducati in front? It’s difficult to say, we’ve never won here, but I think the track is good for the bike. The tires will be different, they are a little harder and in Malaysia the standard ones will return and we will be able to make a greater difference. In Qatar there will be a group race and it will be tough. On Friday we found ourselves in more difficulty in several races, but in Australia we had tried the mediums in preparation for the race and it went well for the strategy. Here I think we can be strong from the start of the season. Differences between Sprint and GP? When in Australia I understood that we had to do the long race first, I didn’t expect this on a mental level. I had to think about it a lot and think differently about tire management, the race needs to be set up differently.
The relationship with Martin? For me it is always extremely important to distinguish the human relationship and the one on the track. On the track we must respect each other, but we must not think of fighting with a friend, when we have to overcome, we overcome. Maintaining a normal relationship is important and we are mature enough to understand this.”
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