Bagnaia “almost ready for the race” after lap record Austrian MotoGP Practice pace

A Friday is historically not the best day of a race weekend for Francesco Bagnaia, but at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix the Italian was fastest of all on day one.

Bagnaia set a new outright lap record in Practice on Friday afternoon, closing out a day in which he did almost everything right.

“I’m happy because I think we did the correct things all day, apart from one thing that was trying the hard front [tyre],” Bagnaia told MotoGP.com at the close of Friday. “I decide to not go with the hard front because I saw many riders crashing with that tyre,” he said, referring to crashes for riders including Brad Binder, Pedro Acosta, and Aleix Espargaro.

“Jorge [Martin] was quite fast with it,” Bagnaia said, “not as fast as with the medium [front tyre] but he was quite consistent.”

The reigning champion also sought the advice of Enea Bastianini on the other side of the factory Ducati box on Friday afternoon.

“I asked him what was his feeling [with the hard-compound front tyre]. He said it was quite good, but on the left he had to be more patient. Honestly, I didn’t see so much confidence in his eyes, so I just decided to continue with the medium.”

Bagnaia said that, although he stuck with the medium-compound front tyre, he wasn’t completely comfortable with it. “But with the medium [front tyre] I’m not so happy, not so confident on the left side, [but] I just decided to go with the medium,” he said.

All in all, though, it was a positive day for Bagnaia, who feels nearly ready to race.

“Honestly, everything is going well, I’m happy with the bike, happy with the feeling, the time attack went well, and we have something to improve for tomorrow, but the bike is almost ready for the race.”

Looking ahead to the race, Bagnaia’s major concern is seemingly the weather. Asked if the hard-compound front tyre could be an option for the Grand Prix, Bagnaia said: “If it could drop a bit, the temperature, it could be better for the medium.

“But honestly it depends also in terms of rain, because it looks like on Sunday it could rain for the race, or we can have also a flag-to-flag race. But let’s see, it’s very difficult to know here, every day is changing a lot the weather. It was saying already that today was raining, tomorrow is raining, so let’s see. But, in any case, step-by-step, today we are happy and we have to be confident for tomorrow.”