Francesco Bagnaia’s Australia MotoGP sprint woes: ‘What was good got worse’
World champion says Ducati “didn’t improve anything” on the bike for the sprint
Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia says things on his bike the were good on Friday at the MotoGP Australian Grand Prix ‘got worse’ as he struggled to fourth in the sprint.
Bagnaia was only a shade slower than championship leader Jorge Martin after Friday’s practice, but struggled for pace throughout Saturday and could only qualify fifth on the grid.
In the sprint he briefly ran second, but would fade 6.879s away from race winner Martin in fourth, with his deficit in the standings now up to 16 points.
Bagnaia says Martin was “playing with us” in the sprint but has an idea of what to do for Sunday to improve his own bike.
“Honestly, not really satisfied or happy, but more than this was difficult today,” Bagnaia said to motogp.com.
“From this morning I struggled a bit in the dry conditions with the wind. What we did yesterday was improving my feeling a lot, but it was not working today.
“So, we tried different things for the race.
“We changed the set-up a bit, and what was good started to get worse and what was bad this morning was the same.
“So, we didn’t improve anything, and even it was worse. For tomorrow I’ve identified what to do and I think it’s something that could work well.
“But we have to wait and try tomorrow morning in the warm-up, hoping to have dry conditions to test it well. I think Martin in this moment is much faster.
“Today he was playing with us. But let’s see tomorrow.”
Expanding on what he needs to find to be more competitive, Bagnaia noted that the wind kept pushing him wide through fast corners because the front wheel “was like a sail”.
“[I need] to have a bike that helps me to close the lines more and feel the wind less because I was entering all the fast corners feeling like the front was like a sail,” he added.
“Entering [corners] the effect was to push me wide and lose the front.
“So, it was quite difficult to close all the lines.
“I tried to close back the gap to Jorge, but as soon as I had to push more I started to struggle more. So, I had to go back and try to finish as far in front as possible.”
