Perfect sprint
After a difficult Friday and a less than perfect qualifying, the first of the two races of the weekend in Mandalika could not have gone better for Pecco Bagnaia. The reigning world champion not only has won the Indonesia Sprintbut it also has halved the gap from Jorge Martin in the standings: from -24 to -12, thanks to the sensational crash of the Spaniard at the start of the race. The Italian has now won 12 Sprint and GP races this season, compared to Martin’s ‘only’ 7. However, the championship seems to be decided more by the errors of the high notes.
“When you get seven zeros in the standings you might be behind Jorge – Bagnaia commented honestly to the microphones of Sky Sports MotoGP – he was better. He also had less bad luck in terms of contacts that caused him to lose races, but in any case he was better. Today he made a mistake, but we’re still 7-4, so he still has some margin. In any case we are -12: tomorrow recovering so many will be almost impossible because I don’t think he will make the same mistake twice, but the scoring system has been the same for years. Certainly with the introduction of the Sprint everything has changed, perhaps for the Sprint we can think of assigning points differently, but for me it’s right like this”.
Extreme conditions
Analyzing his Saturday, between qualifying and Sprint, Bagnaia highlighted the very particular climatic and track conditions: “In this period I want to stay at the front and avoid any kind of problem, but Enea has been really strong all weekend. He goes like me in the first three sectors but stronger in the last, where I struggle. When I saw Jorge crash at number 16 I stopped pushing, because with the front you are really at the limit. It must be said that the conditions today were truly extreme: 63° of asphalt is something that in my opinion we have never experienced this season or in the last few, and we reach a point where the rear tire is strangely performing while the front one is more to the limit because we put so much effort into it. Today was difficult, but I knew about this handicap and pushed very hard in the first three sectors, while in the fourth I kept a bit of margin to manage a little.“.
In terms of tyres, in view of tomorrow’s race, Bagnaia wouldn’t bet on the soft tyre: “We know that Jorge is very strong, like Enea, but we managed to improve a lot and tomorrow we will take another step in the direction we went today. The conditions are extreme and in my opinion the soft will not make the long race. I also have to think about marking my main opponent and in my opinion tomorrow we will race with the average, also because at the end of the race [di gomma soft] there wasn’t much left. Yesterday in practice we couldn’t work well because I couldn’t get anything to work. This morning, however, we made a good step forward. I managed to remove 6 tenths with the same tires and I felt much better. I knew I had taken a step and was ready: then in qualifying a mess happened because we couldn’t do two laps in a row. The departure? I hadn’t been able to get a good start for a while, I knew that if I had Acosta in front Martin would leave immediately, so I did the best I could at Turn 1“, concluded Bagnaia.
#Bagnaia #Martin #error #zeros
