The Jerez weekend had started very badly for Pecco Bagnaia, who yesterday found himself without feeling with his Ducati and forced to go through from Q1. However, the world champion managed to make up for it on Saturday: after struggling a little in Q1, he still managed to pass the gap and take fifth place on the grid.
Then in the Sprint he recovered further, climbing up to second place behind Brad Binder’s KTM, thus managing to reduce the gap from the world leader Marco Bezzecchi to just 3 points. For this, however, the Piedmontese gave great credit to his team, which managed to give him the bike he needed.
“My team did a really good job. They perfectly understood what I was asking yesterday. This morning I struggled a bit to adapt to the bike, because it was quite different from yesterday’s, but already in the second run of Q1 I was managed to find a good feeling again. I’m still missing something in T3, which is where we made the difference last year, but I think we’ll get there because I saw interesting things during the Sprint that I’ll need tomorrow,” Bagnaia told the microphones of Sky Sports MotoGP.
“I tried to wait for the right moments to overtake, also because I knew the pressure in the front tire would go up and it actually did, so it was quite complicated for everyone. I wasn’t able to overtake Binder, but that’s okay for today. I’m very happy,” he added.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
The conditions were quite critical, because the temperature was really high, so it was a pretty borderline race with the front: “Today there were a lot of lockups, more than other days, but it was also hotter. Above all, this is a very stressful track for the front. Considering the conditions and the fact that we had the soft behind, I think we made a good pace. At turns 1, 6 and 13 the front was very much at the limit, it didn’t take much to close it. So I think we managed everything in the best way.”
Tomorrow we could envisage another duel with the KTMs, which seemed particularly at ease today on the Andalusian track. According to Pecco, however, management will be a key aspect in the long race, especially if the heat is still as hellish as this afternoon.
“Today I saw that the KTMs were able to exploit the grip a lot, while I was faster on entry. This crossed us a lot, but the long race is always a different thing and we certainly won’t use the soft tyre, because today wasn’t over yet. much more. We’ll need to do things right, because last year’s pace is possible, but we need to pay more attention to the front, because in this heat it’s easier to lose it. So tomorrow will be a race more about management than explosiveness And I think that’s fine for us.”
This weekend his master Valentino Rossi is present at Jerez, who joked that after Austin he had told the Ducati rider that he should have gone slower in Texas. A joke to which Bagnaia replied as follows: “Actually the speech was a little longer than this. The concept is that if I had done those 3-4 laps a little slower, I wouldn’t have laid down. It was more of a joke , but the potential, if there is, must always be used”.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
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