Enea Bastianini was “too late” for Japan MotoGP podium battle with Marc Marquez
Ducati rider lost too much time in early laps at Motegi to fight Marc Marquez
Enea Bastianini says he was “too late” to fight with Marc Marquez for the final podium spot at the MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix.
The factory Ducati rider had a scrappy opening lap at Motegi on Sunday in the 24-lap grand prix and dropped to seventh having started fourth on the grid.
Bastianini cleared KTM’s Jack Miller on lap three but couldn’t get past his team-mate Brad Binder until the tenth tour, having tried and failed the previous lap.
Once ahead of Binder, Bastianini had a 2.5-second gap to Marquez in third to close but could do nothing to get ahead of the Gresini rider.
“Not happy,” Bastianini said of his Japanese GP.
“I’m not happy because after the overtake of Bran on the first lap, I lost many positions.
“And I arrived at Turn 11 with a lot of turbulence. It was impossible for me to brake hard and also Jack overtook me.
“After, trying to overtake other KTMs is not easy. You need some laps.
“Then, I realised this objective but was too late because the gap to Marc was too big to try to fight for the podium. In the end, I was so close to him but not to fight.”
Bastianini ultimately finished 0.536s behind Marquez at the chequered flag, but was in reality 0.036s away from ending up on the podium.
Marquez exceeded track limits on the final lap at Turn 4, but the stewards consider a closely contested battle to be a gap of 0.5s or lower.
Therefore, Marquez was deemed not to have gained an advantage by exceeding track limits and held onto his podium.
Bastianini remains third in the championship, but Marquez’s brace of podiums at Motegi means the eight-time world champion is now just two points behind the factory Ducati rider.
“Now I’m always fighting for the podiums and this is important to me,” Bastianini added.
“But sometimes you have to be lucky and on Sunday in Motegi we didn’t have it. But you have to accept it.”
Bastianini’s team-mate Francesco Bagnaia won the grand prix at Motegi on Sunday to close Jorge Martin’s championship lead down to 10 points with just four rounds remaining in 2024.
