MotoGP | Bezzecchi: “Frustrating but also motivating situation”

After third place in the 2023 World Championship, Marco Bezzecchi entered the starting blocks of the 2024 season indicated as one of the favorites in the race for the MotoGP title. The start, however, has been anything but encouraging, because the Desmosedici GP23 is proving to be very different from the GP22 with which it won three victories last year and the Pertamina Enduro VR46 rider is really struggling to adapt.

In a certain sense, what happened 12 months ago to Enea Bastianini is being repeated, who like his compatriot took a long time to understand how to exploit the 2023 model of the Borgo Panigale prototype. In the case of “Beast” this process was also slowed down by injuries, but “Bez”'s comments do not seem too different, because he also talks about difficulties that manifest themselves above all in the braking and cornering phases, which in Lusail caused him relegated to 11th place in the Sprint and 14th in the long race, with just 2 points in his pocket.

It is also true that the Qatari circuit has never been one of his favourites, because even last November he missed out on the top 10 in both races, but the expectations were certainly different and not even the person concerned hid this.

“Unfortunately, it was a tough Sunday for me. We had made a step in the Warm-Up and I was happy because I finally felt good enough on the bike. But then, as soon as the race started, I immediately had a lot of front lock and I'm still not managed to explain why. At that point I started to lose feeling when braking and entering corners, so I started opening the throttle earlier because I was missing something in terms of speed when entering corners”, said Bezzecchi at the end of the long race.

“This led me to run out of rear tire very early. I tried to manage the situation, but with 11 laps to go I had already moved onto map C, which is the one with less power, and there was still half the race to go. It was a “It was a very difficult weekend for me. We found some interesting things, but we also saw that it is very difficult to straighten out a weekend that starts off in the wrong way. In Portimao we hope to find a better base from Friday to do better on Saturday and Sunday too,” he said. added.

It's hard not to remember that in this situation he was a bit alone, deciding to give up that GP24 which already seems like a real bomb in order to continue to defend the colors of the Tavullia team. According to Bezzecchi, however, the problem at the moment goes beyond that, because he isn't even able to be up to par with the other riders who, like him, have the GP23.

“Obviously I look at the fastest, but the Marquez brothers and my teammate (Di Giannantonio) have the same bike as me and managed to be faster than me, both in terms of time attack and race pace. So I want to concentrate about them and study the data to understand what I'm missing and why right now I can't do what they do.”

Going into more detail about his current problems, he concluded: “I have no feeling with the front tire when braking, the bike doesn't turn and for this reason I lose speed when traveling and I open the throttle too late. Or I enter the corner too much slow, precisely because the bike doesn't turn, so I open the throttle too early and in this way I run out of tyres. I'm struggling, but I'm working a lot, so I'll get there. It's a frustrating situation, but also motivating.”