Francesco Bagnaia: Pedro Acosta “wanted to overtake, but…”

Francesco Bagnaia has explained how he pushed hard in the opening laps of the Japanese MotoGP to fight off an attack from Pedro Acosta.

Bagnaia took a lights-to-flag victory on Sunday at Motegi to register his fourth sprint/grand prix double of 2024 and eighth main race win of the season.

Tech3 rookie Acosta started on pole position but soon crashed out.

“I realised it when I saw it on the dashboard,” he said of when he knew Acosta had crashed.

“When my team said it was not Pedro behind, but was Jorge. So, I understood it.

“With Pedro, I had to push a bit more in the first part of the race because I think he was pushing a lot to take back this position, because when you are close to the guys in front of you - under 0.5s - it’s very tough to manage the front.

“So I think he wanted to overtake, but it’s not easy.

“Then I just tried to manage in the best way possible the gap to Jorge. Wasn’t easy because he was recovering a bit in the last laps, but finally we did a very great job.”

While Bagnaia’s lead was almost two seconds at one stage, Jorge Martin did put some pressure on his Ducati counterpart in the closing laps - before a scare at Turn 3 forced him to give up the charge.

Bagnaia said he had things under control, but was “hoping” Martin would encounter the same difficulties he was having with his tyres.

“I was having everything under control, but I was more hoping with that lap time he did [late on] he was more finishing everything because I was already in the situation that had finished everything,” Bagnaia said.

“When I was trying to accelerate a bit to improve my pace, my rear tyre was not with the same idea. I was trying to be competitive and not lose too much.”

Bagnaia was fast from the off at the Japanese round in a total reverse from his Indonesian GP the week before and wants this to act as a “example” for the rest of the season.

“I was expecting to have more difficulties,” he added.

“But we managed to work perfectly from the start of the weekend and I would like to keep this weekend as an example in my mind to try to repeat for the next ones, because I think we did everything in a perfect way and today in the race we were so smooth and good.

“So, I’m happy. I want to say thanks to my team, who did a fantastic job. Let’s move onto the next ones.”

Now just 10 points behind Martin in the championship with four rounds to go, Bagnaia says “we have to never give up” in his fight for a third title and notes 2024 is the first time since he was Moto2 champion in 2018 that he won eight grands prix in a season.

“We have to believe in it,” he said.

“We have to never give up. I will always try to do my best job.

“Eight wins in a season is something remarkable. It’s my first time and the last time I did it was in 2018 in Moto2 when I won eight races. So, let’s keep working.”