Francesco Bagnaia: “It’s incredible how fast we are”

A quietly confident Francesco Bagnaia finished Friday practice in Qatar predicting the Lusail lap record will fall in Saturday’s MotoGP qualifying.

Unlike at the three previous events, the Ducati Lenovo rider was consistently quick, eventually finishing second behind surprise leader Franco Morbidelli and ahead of team-mate Marc Marquez.

“From FP1 I was feeling great, but I was still missing something, that we found this afternoon, so very happy about it,” Bagnaia told MotoGP.com, later revealing: “We did something on the bike that was helping me more to turn more.

“I’m very happy about the pace and the feeling with both tyres.

“It's true that tomorrow the conditions will improve and it will not be easy to decide which rear tyre will be the correct one for the Sprint race.

“But right now I'm just very happy with the feeling.

“I was always in the top three during the session and this is already a great step in front. We have just to continue like this.”

Despite the absence of pre-season testing in Qatar, resulting in a visibly dusty surface, Morbidelli’s time attack was only a fraction from the official pole record.

“The tyres are working well and I think the record lap time will drop,” Bagnaia said.

The double MotoGP champion came close to setting a new record himself on Friday, narrowly missing out due to an error at turn 15 which left him just 0.145s behind Morbidelli.

“Already today, I just missed a bit corner 15, but I was close to beating the record,” he reflected.

“It's incredible how fast we are right now considering that we didn't do any tests and the condition at the start of the day wasn't the best.”

Michelin has modified the soft rear tyre to try and create an alternative to the medium compound used by almost all riders in last year’s Qatar Sprint and main races.