Ducati “crunched data” before Francesco Bagnaia beat “worried” Jorge Martin

The power of Ducati’s engineers has been praised for Francesco Bagnaia’s victory in the season-opening Qatar MotoGP.

Reigning champion Bagnaia came out of the sprint race in P4 and bemoaning unexpected issues in his GP24.

But overnight his bike was set up in an alternate way which allowed him to cruise through the longer race to lay down an early marker for the title.

“He was on the back foot from the sprint,” Sylvain Guintoli said on TNT Sports.

“He was going backwards. Much, much slower than Aleix Espargaro.

“But they crunched the data and they came out fighting on Sunday.

“You’ve got to hand it to Bagnaia, when the pressure is on, he manages the start, a great first lap, really aggressive, and races in a great way.

“He’s very impressive in the way that he does that. It’s hard to stay composed and not make any mistakes.”

Michael Laverty said: “It was peerless. No-one could touch him from lights out.

“There was one overtake at Turn 4 but, then, he got his head down and had such good rhythm.

“There was definitely an advantage out in front because your tyres stay in the optimum window in terms of surface temperature and pressure.

“He didn’t put a foot wrong. So smooth. It was a really special performance.”

Guintoli credited Bagnaia’s team: “It’s just amazing to see the Ducati factory team solving the problems, the puzzle, for the Sunday race. Once again.

“He was struggling this weekend. Okay, in winter testing he was above everybody.

“But until Saturday night he was really struggling, he had no grip whatsoever at the end of the sprint race.

“Here he is, with the same tyres, solving problems and making it work over a race distance. This is why he’s the double world champion.”

KTM’s Brad Binder edged Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin to finish second behind Bagnaia in Qatar.

“They did cost each other a few tenths of a second,” Laverty said about Binder and Martin.

“They took a wide line, just getting it back to the apex.

“They were both aggressive and wanted to be the guy to take the fight to Pecco but I still think the perfection of Pecco… it seemed like Pecco had everyone’s number.

“He had more left if he needed to respond.

“Brad is a fighter, he’ll never give up. Martin is a fighter, likewise. But they sometimes need to settle in a race to get their rhythm.”

Guintoli added: “It was an arm wrestling match. They did lose time, and lost contact with Pecco because of that fight. They wanted to be behind Pecco.”

Martin won Saturday’s sprint but experienced chatter problems throughout the first round of 2024.

“He was really worried, you could tell by his interviews and his attitude,” Guintoli said.

“In the interview with Gino Borsoi on the grid, he was very pessimistic about a long race because they had chattering problems [in the sprint] and since the test.

“They have carried this problem without the solution. He will be really happy with the result after the doubt that he had, even though he won the sprint.”