Bagnaia: Assen win “not easy, but everything under control when you can be precise”

Francesco Bagnaia was untouchable in Assen as he led every lap of the sprint race and Dutch MotoGP, reducing Jorge Martin’s championship lead to just 10 points as a result.

But while his double win was impressive from a results point of view, Bagnaia’s precision was mightily impressive.

It’s something Bagnaia has mastered over the years and he admitted that working on the ‘feeling’ he gets from his bike is an area of maximum focus.

Bagnaia said: “I work a lot on the feeling. I work a lot on being more explosive in terms of entering the track and being competitive quickly.

“But precision is something that comes after being competitive. When everything is under control you can be precise. Controlling the lines, the pace and the tyres.

“It’s difficult to work on precision when you are not going fast.”

Going into the race Bagnaia was the clear favourite after topping every session except the warm-up.

But that didn’t mean it was an easy win for the two-time MotoGP champion, who said: “Easy, no! But when you have this kind of feeling everything comes to you in a better way.

“Every time I tried to push the lap times were coming. But to do it you have to be on a good point with the bike and with the team we chose a very good set-up which helped me a lot to be precise in the fast corner which in this track is tough.

“In this kind of change of direction, the faster you enter the harder it is to turn. But we did a very good job.”

It’s become clear in recent rounds that Ducati have stolen a march on their rivals, however, the GP24 bikes have also been more dominant over the riders aboard GP23 machines.

That trend continued in Assen, and despite some early season struggles with chatter, Bagnaia believes Ducati found the problem sooner than anyone else.

Bagnaia added: “At the beginning of the season we struggled because I remember the sprint race in Qatar, the vibration was impressive. It was almost making you crash.

“Every time we improved but we arrived at another track and it was worse, so maybe we understood it before the others.

“The fact we are eight [bikes] on track with the same bike; it’s true that the GP24 is different but it’s not a revolution compared to the 23, so it’s easy to understand some dynamics and understand the way to improve the feeling.”