Francesco Bagnaia explains COTA Sprint misery
“We will change just the rear tyre and I think everything will be okay.”
Reigning MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia followed up his ‘best Friday of the season’ with second place in Saturday practice at COTA, then fourth in qualifying.
But there was drama even before the start of the afternoon Sprint when crew chief Cristian Gabarrini was seen sprinting to the grid with a new front fender, which was duly installed and seems not to have been an issue.
Nonetheless, Bagnaia’s race began to unravel as soon as the red lights went out with the front wheel of the Italian’s Desmosedici lurching into the air, and rear spinning, as he slipped back to tenth place after the opening turns.
Bagnaia struggled to make an impression thereafter, only passing Franco Morbidelli on lap 7of 10 and then Raul Fernandez for eighth place on the last lap. Bagnaia set the 13th fastest lap and took a long look at his rear tyre after stepping off the factory GP24 in pit lane.
Like all his rivals, Bagnaia chose the medium front and soft rear tyre combination for the Sprint.
However, Bagnaia had been unable to get anywhere near the pace he had managed with those tyres in practice. Team-mate Enea Bastianini, who finished sixth, spoke of similar rear grip issues.
“At the start the rear started to spin, then I had a wheelie, so I had to retake the clutch and was in seventh position. Then in corner 2 I had to brake a lot because Jack had some movements, so another three riders overtook me,” Bagnaia explained.
“Then my feeling wasn’t the same as the morning. The rear grip was much less. We have to check on the data to understand why.”
But he then spelt out that a new tyre should solve his woes.
“Tomorrow we will not change anything on the setting because my feeling was too worse to say the problem was the setting. So we will change just the rear tyre and I think everything will be okay.
“The target and pace before the race was to fight for the podium. The target tomorrow will be the same.”
Bagnaia’s Sprint misery mean he has slipped 39 points behind title leader Jorge Martin, who started the race two places behind him on the grid but was able to join Maverick Vinales and Marc Marquez on the podium.
