Francesco Bagnaia's admission: "I know why I lost"

Francesco Bagnaia says he harbours ‘no frustrations’ over missing out on the 2024 MotoGP title as he “knows why I lost”.

The double world champion was beaten by Jorge Martin at the 2024 Solidarity Grand Prix season finale last weekend at Barcelona.

Having pushed the title fight all the way to the final race and winning both contests at Barcelona, Bagnaia ultimately lost out to Martin by 10 points.

The double MotoGP world champion admitted before the weekend that overturning a 24-point deficit following eight DNFs for the season was always going to be a tall order and was gracious in his defeat to Martin.

Following Tuesday’s test day at Barcelona, in which Bagnaia was third after 58 laps, he spoke of why he is not frustrated by his loss and what he did to get over the weekend.

“No, honestly. I’m not that type of guy that has frustration about things,” he said when asked if he had felt annoyed about missing out on a third premier class crown.

“I know why I lost. And I will never make excuses for what happened.

“I already said after Malaysia, considering after Malaysia I arrived in the last GP with 24 points of gap, it was quite difficult to imagine to win.

“And Jorge was super good. It’s ok like this. Honestly, yesterday [Monday] I walked a lot in Barcelona.

“I just woke up here in the paddock and I said ‘ok, I will go to lunch in a restaurant in front of the sea’.

“Then I walked for the next hour, like 10 kilometres for the day, and it helped.”

On Sunday after the Solidarity GP, Bagnaia posted on social media a picture of him ripping up the number one sticker that ran on his Ducati for the last two years.

He explained: “I wanted to remove it by myself and not let others remove it for me.

“I put the number one on the first fairing, so I needed to remove the number one from the last fairing of the season.

“So, I think it was the correct thing.”