Pecco Bagnaia blames contentious Alex Marquez crash for his title deficit

Francesco Bagnaia says the collision with Alex Marquez in Aragon is “weighing more” on his MotoGP title hopes after losing 10 points to Jorge Martin at the Australian Grand Prix.

The reigning double world champion’s double victory in Japan saw him close Martin’s advantage in the standings to 10 points.

But after two tough races at Phillip Island in which Bagnaia was never on pace terms with Martin or Marc Marquez, the Italian’s championship deficit has grown to 20 points.

Speaking after finishing third a distant third at the Australian GP, Bagnaia says the crash with Alex Marquez at Aragon in September is hanging over his title challenge now as he lost a possible 16 points there.

“I think it’s like it was in Indonesia,” Bagnaia said of his championship situation.

“We are continuing recovering, losing, recovering, losing. Our performance is fairly balanced.

“Unluckily the contact that made me crash with Alex Marquez is the fact that is right now weighing more on the championship.

“But we have to be focused and move onto the next ones with a good confidence knowing that they are tracks where I am very fast.”

Having struggled to turn his Ducati in the sprint, Bagnaia was able to find a set-up improvement for this ahead of the grand prix - but admits he was still having to “force” the front into corners.

“It was more that I had to force a lot the front to let me turn the bike,” he explained.

“I was forcing it a lot because my bike was going more wide and it was more important to stay close to the kerb like Jorge was doing, or Marc.

“I have to say Marc was even a step more in front, so we have to understand why and in which area we were doing the difference.

“Luckily, understanding before the race was important because if not I was finishing off the podium.”

Bagnaia briefly led the grand prix when Martin made a mistake at Turn 1 on lap 12, which allowed the former to make an overtake at Turn 3.

But Martin struck back straight away and Bagnaia then dropped to third behind Marquez, with the Italian ultimately fading 9.1s away from his championship rival.

“From this morning I feel much better, we improved the setting and I was happy,” he said.

“But then in the race as soon as I finished the front tyre, I was struggling to follow them.

“So, I had to slow down and the margin with the guys behind was huge. The margin to the guys behind was huge, I opened it to 8.1s, 8.2s but then I had to slow right down because I was risking the same to crash.

“So, more than this was tough. They did a better job than us yesterday, because on Friday we were very close but then yesterday we were wrong with our set-up and they did a better step in front and we just missed it today.”