It was a perfect Friday for Pecco Bagnaia in Assen. The Ducati rider was the fastest in both practice sessions of the Dutch Grand Prix and also set a new record for a track that is so special to him that he has it tattooed on his arm. But since we are not too used to seeing the world champion so brilliant right from Friday morning, we suspect that it might be very tough for the competition to try to beat him this weekend.
“I am very satisfied with the work we have carried out since the beginning of the year, which is starting to bear fruit. We have already managed to be competitive for five Fridays, but it is the first time I have been first in FP1 since 2018 and it’s incredible, even if our strategy of never doing the time attack fueled this thing. But I’m very satisfied, we worked in the right direction, finding little things that helped us , just small details, because we are already at a good point”, said Bagnaia at the end of the day.
Teammate Enea Bastianini said he considers him practically unbeatable in some parts of the Dutch track: “I can brake really hard at high speed, carrying a lot of speed through the corners, and it’s something that’s giving me a good advantage. I need to fix T1 a bit, but we already know what to work on. In the rest of the track, however, I feel like I’m already very consistent.”
From the outside, in fact, it seemed that everything came easily to him. Pecco explained why: “Assen is an extremely complicated track, from all points of view. Last year on Friday I was in difficulty, because we had problems related to the stability of the bike. This time we started with a setting in the direction we had taken to solve them and it worked straight away. Stability here helps a lot and having found it straight away helped me have the feeling to push.”
For the Sprint tomorrow we will most likely race on the soft tyre, while for the long race the discussion is still open: “Today we decided to continue with the medium because I felt good about it. The soft has more grip from all points of view, but we don’t know how it would behave in the long race. Tomorrow morning we will try to do some laps, also because it should be the hottest day, so the Sprint could help us understand which tire to go on here if the bike is unstable it’s a problem, so we’ll see.”
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Inevitably, there was also talk of the news of the day: the farewell of Prima Pramac Racing to the Ducati orbit. Paolo Campinoti’s team, in fact, succumbed to the court of Yamaha, which offered them two official bikes and a very long-term program (supposedly seven years). Bagnaia was therefore asked what changes in the balance of the brand without a team that last year was capable of winning the Team title, as well as bringing Jorge Martin to compete with him for the drivers’ title until Valencia.
“In recent years there have always been two riders, but above all Martin, with whom to share a feeling or talk about the path to take. But he will no longer be there, because Pramac will move on to another bike. I don’t yet know who the satellite team will be reference between VR46 and Gresini, although I hope VR46 will be a little different, because in any case we will be two less bikes, so a little less work for all the Ducati engineers and that will perhaps be good. But it will certainly be different.” .
In addition to losing Pramac, however, next year Ducati will no longer be able to count on Martin, Marco Bezzecchi and Enea Bastianini, the first two who emigrated to Aprilia and the last to KTM. Pecco was then asked if perhaps the price to pay for having Marc Marquez wasn’t too high for Ducati.
“It’s not me who decided, but there was certainly a reason for the decisions that were made. Of the four riders, three have left and this is a loss. There are certainly three very strong riders who are going to other teams, but I don’t know if it depends on whether Marc is there or not. Maybe it only applies to Martin,” he concluded.
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