Francesco Bagnaia calls 2024 MotoGP season “a championship of mistakes”
Ducati rider reflects on crucial sprint win
Francesco Bagnaia says the 2024 MotoGP season is “a championship of mistakes” after winning the Indonesian Grand Prix sprint following points leader Jorge Martin’s crash.
The reigning double world champion has registered seven DNFs in 2024, with the latest coming last weekend in the Emilia Romagna GP.
It left him trailing Martin by 24 points ahead of the Mandalika sprint, though a crash for the Pramac rider out of the lead on lap one allowed Bagnaia to win the race and cut his deficit down to just 12.
Despite his sprint win, Bagnaia doesn’t want to dwell on its significance because of how quickly the championship picture keeps changing in 2024 - and offered a theory as to why this is.
“Until tomorrow afternoon I don’t want to say anything because it looks like this season is a championship of mistakes,” Bagnaia told the media, including Crash.net.
“I have an idea, which has arrived from the performance of the tyres.
“The rear tyres have taken an enormous step in front, but we are braking so hard because the rear is also helping a lot in the braking.
“But the front has more issues because we are entering much faster in all of the corners.
“So, the performance that Michelin has improved this season is incredible.
“All the season, all the circuits we improved the pace a lot. But when you are at this limit it is easy to have a crash. So, it’s super important for the championship but we have to be focused.”
Martin refuted this theory when he spoke to the media, and instead believes his crash had something to do with the asphalt at Turn 16.
Bagnaia’s sprint win comes after a difficult Friday at Mandalika, in which he struggled to match the pace of Martin and Enea Bastianini.
However, he feels he has been able to take a step forward in improving his bike on Saturday and says he could have qualified better than fourth had it not been for yellow flags at the end of Q2.
“We know it wasn’t the best weekend till the race, but we improved every session,” he said.
“But this morning we did a step, in the qualifying I understood something that I didn’t finalise because of the yellow flags.
“But I was knowing that my performance could have been good enough to fight for the win.
“And when I saw Jorge entering that corner, I said ‘if he closes that line, I will take four seconds’, because he was entering much, much, much faster and with a lot of lean angle.
“But today the conditions were very hot, 63 degrees on the asphalt, so I think for me it’s the worst every track we tried - the most strange, difficult conditions we ever tried during a weekend this season.
“So, it wasn’t easy to perform there and when I saw the crash I started to be faster in the other three sectors but there I was very slow.
“So, I was controlling a bit, saying I have to push in the first three to control in the last. And it worked. For tomorrow it will not work, but I’m happy for today.”
