Pecco Bagnaia’s Ducati wrongly gave him tyre warning in Czech MotoGP sprint

Pecco Bagnaia says an electrical glitch with his Ducati MotoGP bike led to him wrongly being given a tyre pressure warning in the Czech Grand Prix sprint.

Both factory Ducati riders were seen during Saturday’s sprint deliberately backing off to be overtaken by riders behind in order to boost their tyre pressures following warnings of a potential penalty.

Pecco Bagnaia was the first to do this on lap five of the sprint, before eventual sprint winner Marc Marquez had to do the same while leading.

Marquez was investigated after the race over his tyre pressures, but escaped punishment as an error with race direction’s system incorrectly flagged him as potentially breaching the regulations.

Bagnaia, who qualified on pole for the first time this year, faded from second in the sprint to seventh at the chequered flag and stormed into his Ducati garage having thought he was set for a penalty.

But later data analysis showed Bagnaia’s bike had developed a fault and had wrongly told him he was under the front pressure limit, and was convinced he was be penalised as nothing he did during the sprint rectified it.

“Unluckily I received a notice from the dashboard that I was under the pressure limit,” he told motogp.com.

“I tried to let other riders go and this message wasn’t going away. I was sure to get a penalty, but I arrived to the box and saw I wasn’t under investigation.

“So, it was a strange. Then I looked at the data and from the second lap I was over the limit.

“So, it’s quite strange to have this kind of problem. But already before the start I was having some electronics problems with the dashboard.

“My team was working to set everything and maybe something wasn’t set in a normal way.

“Normally, I wouldn’t have had to let other riders go because my pressure was ok.

“But I did it because my bike was saying to me [I should]. It’s an unlucky situation but it’s true my team can explain better what happened because I don’t really know.

“But it is what it is. But to this moment from the start of the season, things are not going in a normal way. But we are working hard to at least try to find normality, consistency that works well.

“Marc I understood was below the limit, but he let Pedro [Acosta] pass, he reached the limit and overtook him again.

“So, he was doing the normal thing. In my case it wasn’t working. It’s strange but sometimes electronics and strange rules make these things more strange.”

Despite this issue robbing him of a likely sprint podium, Bagnaia was happy with the day as he was able to “understand more things” about his riding compared to Marquez’s.

“It’s strange to say, but I’m quite happy about the day all the same because for the first time I was able to fight for a pole position,” he added.

“I did it. Marc crashed when he was two tenths faster, but I managed to be on pole.

“During the race, I was following him. For the first time I was understanding more things, so that was important. But then

“I think for the first 10, 15 laps yes, but then let’s see because I saw he was managing well the tyres.

“I saw that from behind on braking in entry I was quite competitive, but then I was losing some acceleration because he can let the bike turn more.

“He’s very smooth right now. It’s true that I was trying to follow, then I lost a bit of focus when problems were arriving.

“But I think tomorrow will be different. We will need to control the rear more during the first part of the day, so let’s see.”