Francesco Bagnaia forced to retire after GP24 “was doing crazy things"

Two-time reigning MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia nearly crashed twice before running off circuit and around the gravel trap of turn seven.

Bagnaia, who crashed out of the sprint in Jerez after being hit by Brad Binder, has now failed to finish three out of the last six races, including both sprints and grand prix’. 

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Bagnaia lost immediate ground from his P2 starting position and ended lap one in 15th.

And after losing another position on lap two, Bagnaia was forced to retire on lap three as he returned to pit lane.

Asked about the problems he was facing, Bagnaia said: “My team is already checking everything and they will try to solve everything for tomorrow.

“I’m quite sure that even if it is not easy to understand what is happening, we will do an improvement.

“Today, we just had to change the bike from qualifying to be more careful and it was not working like I expected.

“It was doing crazy things and then I had to retire. In corner six I lost the front in acceleration which is normally impossible.

“Then I locked the front in turn seven without doing anything. There was a lot of wheelie, something strange. Tomorrow we will solve it.”

Bagnaia did admit that he was hoping to complete the race and gain data for Sunday, but the problems aboard his GP24 were too much to handle.

“First of all I tried and would have liked to finish the race, absolutely,” stated the factory Ducati star. 

“Also to have some information for tomorrow with the tyre but I wasn’t allowed to. We will try to be competitive like we were this morning.

“We will take the positives into tomorrow. Today, a podium in the sprint or one or two on the podium was a possibility.

“But tomorrow we will take the positives and our performance is very high.”