MotoGP | Bastianini: “Last year I was in hospital, today on the podium”

The circle has definitively closed. Yesterday's pole position had already been a signal, but the fact that the first podium of 2024 for Enea Bastianini arrived in Portimao is certainly significant. 12 months ago, her 2023 began with an accident in the Sprint and with a fractured shoulder blade which had complicated, quite a bit, her first year as an official Ducati rider. Today he finished second, behind Jorge Martin, and also took third place in the World Championship.

He too, therefore, underlined the symbolic value of this result when he spoke to journalists immediately after the press conference that followed the podium: “Last year I was in hospital and instead this year I'm on the podium. It's nice getting on the podium in Portimao too, because I've never been on there before and it's a great feeling.”

Martin took the lead from him as soon as the lights went out, but on the first lap Enea went wide at turn 5, allowing Maverick Vinales to overtake him. At that point he remained in the Spaniard's wake until the latter was betrayed by the change with one lap to go. However, the Rimini native thinks that he would have had the opportunity to overtake him in the final round.

“It's very difficult to overtake and, above all, the bike in front of me was different from mine. Then Maverick and I have two completely different styles. In some points I got close and could try to overtake, in others I was further away. He was really fast in T4 and for the rest of the lap I was trying to catch him, but it was difficult. On the last lap it would have been a good fight and I think I could have passed him at turn 5, but I don't know what happened to him.”

After yesterday's mistake, today we wanted to make sure we had activated the front lowerer properly before starting. But he honestly recognized that even with a better start it would have been very complicated to beat Martin: “I admit that I rechecked the lowering device several times, then when I saw that it had engaged I was much calmer. But at the start of the race I was a bit “I was nervous and I made a few mistakes, so we could have done a little better. I thought I could recover, but Jorge always had something more. He always kept that tenth in his pocket and took it back as soon as Maverick and I got close again.”

Despite this good start to the season, his approach will not change for the next round in Austin, where he had achieved a good victory in 2022: “The mentality will always be the same, because I believe that this year we started on the right foot. We have worked well all winter, I knew it would be a slightly more difficult start, in the sense that I suffered a little more in Qatar. But we know what aspects we need to work on, so we are quite comfortable, I won't say but confident.”

Finally, he had his say on the burning event of the day, the contact with three laps to go between Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez, who ousted both when they were fighting for fifth position: “An accident a bit during the race: Pecco yes he was thrown back in and couldn't see where Marc was. Unfortunately these things happen, especially in the current MotoGP, where overtaking is really very difficult.”