Bezzecchi’s difficulties, Flamigni explains: “He suffered from his bike and tires”

Step back

Compared to an exciting 2023, crowned by three victories and third place in the world championship standings, 2024 was certainly much more difficult and lacking in satisfaction for Marco Bezzecchi. To try to understand the reasons for stepping back of which the rider from Rimini, promised to be married to Aprilia for next season, was a victim, we spoke with someone who knows him well: Pablo Nietoteam manager of the VR46 team, e Matthew FlamigniBez’s crew chief in the garage of the team owned by Valentino Rossi.

The Spanish manager, to explain the problems of his #72, underlined the difficulty adapting to the motorbikehighlighting as the main drawback the peculiarities of the Desmosedici GP23: “The situation is completely different because we have seen that from the 2023 to the 2024 bike the gap is much bigger than it was from the GP22 to the GP23. We have also seen that the GP23 is much more difficult.“.

Tire problems

Flamigni went into more detail, adding to the topic of the motorbike the always delicate one of the tyres: “In addition to the adaptation to the GP23, the fact that these tires that Michelin brought this year have much more grip on the edgeso the bike tends to understeer. It then turns a little less and because of this Marco has lost a bit of that peculiarity he had of being able to make the bike turn with the gasbecause now when you push the gas the bike tends to widen the curve. Everything becomes more complicated for him and unlike other riders who have managed to adapt more quickly, Marco is still working on this”.

With numbers in hand, the impression is that Bezzecchi has found even more difficulty in Sprint races compared to the ‘classic’ GPs, where his performance in the second half of the season slowly improved. Flamigni agrees and does not consider this a coincidence: “It depends on the fact that in Sprints we tend to use the soft rear tyre, which has even more grip than the average one we use on Sunday. This accentuates the problem“, he concluded.