Enea Bastianini tried in Mandalika. Maybe even too much. And the final result is a zero in the standings which probably means goodbye to the race for the MotoGP title. With the withdrawal of the Indonesian Grand Prix, the Ducati rider fell 75 points behind the winner Jorge Martin. With five rounds to go there seems to be a lot, but there are still 185 up for grabs, so the Rimini native doesn’t want to raise the white flag yet.
“It’s not goodbye to the World Championship yet. It’s certainly a little further away. But I’m happy to have tried today, precisely because I wanted to get closer. My goal was that there from the first lap, unfortunately it wasn’t successful and I sorry,” said “Beast” when he met journalists after finishing his race in the gravel of the turn 1 run-off area of the Lombok Island Circuit.
Bastianini was convinced that he had the weapons to fight for the victory, but the start of the race was not at all easy for him, with quite great difficulties in “turning on” the rear tyre. Once he did, he found his rhythm and it looked like it might be enough to try and chase down the leading tandem of Martin and Pedro Acosta. At this stage, however, he asked too much of his Desmosedici GP and ended up with wheels in the air at Turn 1 with eight laps to go.
Enea Bastianini, Ducati Team
Photo credit: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“I arrived a little too fast compared to the previous lap, because I was pushing to try to close the gap on Acosta and I went over the limit. My goal today was to try to win, but from the first laps there was something that wasn’t it was going: I lost the rear many times and I couldn’t go fast. After about ten laps it started to go much better, because I could see that the bike was there and I was able to open the throttle more decisively wanted to try to win,” he explained.
When asked if he thought it was really possible to rejoin the top two, he added: “With Acosta I think so, especially looking at the pace he kept in the last laps, because he had raised it enough. I certainly could have caught him. , I don’t think about Martin, however. Unfortunately I lost a lot of time when I had to pass Morbidelli with 12-13 laps to go, but that’s how it went.”
Finally, he spoke about the difficulties in trying to overtake his compatriot from Prima Pramac Racing: “Franco is fast and his riding has quite different characteristics compared to mine. In certain points I was able to get ahead of me and in others I lost, so I didn’t I was able to attack him the next corner. That was a bit of a problem. But this is also a track that makes overtaking quite difficult, because in some places it’s quite narrow. I tried straight away at turn 2, but he crossed me and… we wasted time. Then when I tried again later, it worked.”
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