“Everything was fantastic” for Pecco Bagnaia after one change at the Italian MotoGP

Second on the timesheets represents a decent Friday for Francesco Bagnaia at the Italian Grand Prix, but the day was more complicated than that for the Italian.

Bagnaia arrived at Mugello for this weekend’s Italian MotoGP with a streak of three successive grand prix victories at the Tuscan circuit, but he faced “weird movements” from his Ducati Desmosedici GP25 on Friday.

“It was an up-and-down day,” Francesco Bagnaia told MotoGP.com after Practice at Mugello.

“This morning I was a bit upset because the bike was making weird things, weird movements, so I was not understanding it.

“Then, this afternoon, I started well but also there we needed to work because the rear grip was very low but in a strange way so I wasn’t understanding what was happening.

“Then, we just changed the rear tyre, we put a new soft [compound tyre], and everything changed and everything was fantastic.

“So, my feeling of Mugello was back there. It was a good relief. I’m very happy about it. It’s, in terms of feeling, a very good Friday.”

It was the complications of the morning session that prevented Bagnaia from trying the updated fairing that Ducati re-introduced at the post-race Aragon test and also brought to Mugello on Friday.

“It was more important to understand what was happening,” the Ducati Lenovo Team rider said as justification for not trying the new fairing on Friday.

“The movement of the bike was strange and it was more important to understand it.”

Although the day wasn’t consistently good, the positive end to it saw Bagnaia in a positive mood at the close of Friday.

“During the time attack, with the soft rear, everything was fine again, was similar to Aragon Sunday,” he said.

“So, I don’t want to say that I’m back with my feeling, but today I was able to push quite hard in the time attack and then, in the second attempt, I just finished the fuel when I was pushing hard and everything was super-smooth. So, happy to feel like this.”