The start of the 2024 season was not at all easy for Pecco Bagnaia. The world champion only smiled on Sunday in Qatar, when he took a beautiful victory, dominating from start to finish, but otherwise he had to deal with some disappointing days.
And among these we cannot fail to include Saturday in Austin, which began with the third qualifying in a row in which he remained outside the front row. Fourth place on the grid, however, was not to be thrown away, also because the Ducati rider had shown an enviable race pace in this morning's free practice. A pace that however he was unable to reproduce in a Sprint that started uphill, due to a bad start, and continued with a rear that slipped too much which prevented him from doing better than eighth place.
“Much more difficult than this morning in FP2, when with a tire with three laps more than the Sprint I did 2'02″4 on the last lap. Today, however, doing 2'02″8 or 2'02″9 was impossible. So we need to check the data and understand what went wrong to avoid it happening again tomorrow,” Bagnaia said at the end of the day.
When he was then asked what the main problems were, he added: “First of all the start, I did a wheelie and practically everything had already gone to hell. Then it was very difficult to push, because every time I tried, the rear It slipped a lot. I lost my rear end everywhere and I couldn't do what I wanted.”
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Among other things, his partner Enea Bastianini, who preceded him in sixth position, also seems to have suffered very similar problems: “Maybe the same one. I saw that we were both in difficulty. It's something that can happen sometimes , because it has already happened to us in the past. But the thing that makes me angry the most is that this morning I was very fast. My pace was one of the best, but this afternoon it was impossible to repeat it.”
Without saying so openly, Pecco suggests that the problem may have been the rear tyre: “This morning I had a tire with 14 laps and in the afternoon I had a new one, but I was six tenths slower. I didn't speak to Michelin, but we will have time to do it, to check the data.”
“Maybe it was the temperature, maybe it was the conditions, but I saw Vinales' times and they seem extraordinary to me. My ambition and my feeling was to be able to keep the same pace as Maverick. For sure today everything was negative, to the point that we won't change anything, because maybe we'll change the rear tire and we'll be OK again”, he concluded.
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