Francesco Bagnaia: “Zero warning” before Le Mans Sprint crash - “slower, less lean angle…”

Francesco Bagnaia’s hopes of building momentum in the 2025 MotoGP title race suffered a further blow during Saturday’s Sprint at Le Mans.

Unable to challenge new team-mate Marc Marquez for raw pace so far this year, Bagnaia had at least avoided the race crashes that blighted last year’s doomed title defence against Jorge Martin.

Until Saturday’s Le Mans Sprint, that is.

The Italian, who arrived in France resigned to the fact that he won’t be able to resurrect last year’s GP24 feeling on the revised GP25, made his first major race mistake of the season when he lost the front into the Dunlop chicane on lap 2.

Bagnaia, fourth at the time, walked away with his head in his hands while Gigi Dall’Igna expressed similar disappointment in the Ducati pit box.

The fall also ended Bagnaia's perfect run of points in the previous ten races and left him 29 points behind Alex Marquez and 31 from Marc Marquez.

While Bagnaia continues to struggle with front feeling in the Sprint, rejecting a new fuel tank, Marc's Saturday domination continued with a perfect sixth win of the season.

“This morning, FP2 was super good. I was feeling great and ready for the qualifying. Then qualifying I did a mess,” Bagnaia told MotoGP.com. “Unluckily I'm not fast with the soft front tyre, I'm struggling to push like I want and I know that other riders are stronger than me with the soft front. But sixth place is not that bad in this track.”

“My feeling with the front is not there”

While there was ‘zero’ warning, the type of fall would not have come as a surprise for Bagnaia, who has been struggling for front feeling on the GP25 since pre-season testing.

“No, zero [warning]. I was a bit slower, with less lean angle, but I still lost the front,” he explained. “When you don't feel the front, you can crash like this without being able to predict what the front is doing.”

“Unluckily, from the start of the season, my feeling with the front is not there,” Bagnaia continued. “And crashes like this can happen. So we just need to solve the problem and try to look forward to understand the situation.”

Bagnaia - who has usually felt better with the standard fuel tank on Sundays – now hopes to deliver on his top two potential in the grand prix.

“I think that if I can survive the first two laps, Corner 3, I can have a possibility!” he said. “I feel good with the bike, apart from the front, but I think that we can fight for the top two.

“Today the pace was there. Tomorrow the pace will be there, even with the double the distance I can be stronger. So I will try to close the gap and try to do another step, because I really need to fix something from the front.”

VR46's Fabio di Giannantonio has also struggled for front-end feeling from his factory-spec GP25 at Le Mans, but salvaged seventh from just 17th on the grid in the Sprint.

The last time Bagnaia crashed in a Sprint race was during the penultimate 2024 round at Sepang, a moment that handed Martin a crucial advantage in the title battle.