MotoGP | Bastianini: “We are all close, a small mistake can compromise everything”

Triplets are exhausting from a physical and mental point of view, but if you take positive inertia they can become your great ally. Enea Bastianini is the perfect example of this: fresh from the beautiful victory at Misano, the Ducati rider also started the weekend of the Indonesian MotoGP Grand Prix on the right foot, shattering the record of the Mandalika track.

But it is not so much this that should worry the competition, but rather the fact that “Beast” in recent years has accustomed us to being almost a diesel, which only shows its true potential in the final part of the race. For this reason, seeing him so competitive since Friday is something that must ring some alarm bells for everyone else, even if the person concerned has been very cautious for now.

“I’m happy with this day, because this afternoon I was fast from the start. It’s not easy, because the medium rear tire needs two or three laps to be ready and before reaching this point you have to take a bit of time risks to be fast,” Bastianini said when he met journalists at the end of the day.

“Apart from that, I was ready for the time attack and the bike worked very well. It was very important to be able to set a good time with the first tire and I did my best. So not a bad day”, he added.

Among other things, he could also have improved his 1’29″630 if in the last attempt he hadn’t been hindered in a rather evident way by Augusto Fernandez, who however got away without penalty: “He wasn’t shooting, because he was 1″8 slower than his best lap, so it bothered me a lot. However, it’s the same, because fortunately I had already done the best lap.”

The objective for tomorrow is to try to reconfirm ourselves, even if it won’t be easy, because on the track on the island of Lombok they all seem to be really close to each other: “Now we have to take a look at the data, because in T2 I always lose a tenth , a tenth and a half, so I want to try to fix that stretch of track. For the rest, it will be important to try to do the perfect lap tomorrow, because here we are all close, with the top ten within four tenths compromise everything.”

Here too, in fact, the starting position can already say a lot about what the ambitions could be for the rest of the weekend: “What I know is that I’m in a moment where I’m going strong, but the level of MotoGP is very high, so being first or fourth can depend on the start, it’s important to stay in front, especially if you’re in front, everything is more complicated.”

After the controversy over the overtaking on the last lap at Misano, the projections on the race pace would suggest another duel between him and the world championship leader Jorge Martin for the values ​​seen today: “Maybe we were the ones with the best pace, but at At the beginning we were divided between those who had the soft and those who had the medium, so we need to see what the others do with the medium. Certainly, my pace and Martin’s were very similar, so we’ll see.”

Looking at the races, the choice on the front tire seems very open between the soft and the hard. However, Enea seems to be one of those with the clearest ideas: “Today I only used the hard, so I don’t have a comparison with the soft, but I felt good. But it was also the tire I used in the race last year, so I think it’s the one that’s a little more suited to my riding style.”