Ducati “not happy” after Pecco Bagnaia Hungarian MotoGP Q1 exit

Francesco Bagnaia has left Ducati “not happy” after qualifying 15th at the Hungarian MotoGP.

Bagnaia started third in Austria last week (15–17 August) but slumped to eighth by the finish, a result which generated enough frustration within the Italian to make comments about a lack of patience with Ducati that he has walked back this weekend (22-24 August) in Hungary.

However, while Bagnaia’s comments changed before the weekend, his fortunes on the track have deteriorated further at Balaton Park, with the Italian missing Q2 for the first time this season and qualifying only 15th on Saturday morning at the Hungarian venue which is making its debut on the MotoGP calendar this weekend.

Bagnaia’s struggles are contrasted by the dominance of his Ducati Lenovo teammate Marc Marquez, and and team boss Davide Tardozzi has suggested that things are not certain to get better in the races for the two-time MotoGP World Champion.

“It’s obvious that we are not happy about this result, Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia] is the first,” Ducati Lenovo Team Manager Tardozzi told TNT Sports after Q1 in Hungary.

“We have now to consider something for tomorrow morning.

“It will be a very difficult race, psychological side and because it’s very hard to overtake in this race track.

“So, starting from 15th is something very difficult. But, in the end, we never give up.

“Sometimes you have to touch the bottom to grow up again. We trust Pecco and we need to do something to let him perform better from the next races.”

Asked about how Ducati can help Bagnaia mentally, Tardozzi said that Ducati’s focus is on technical solutions.

“That’s something that we don’t see as a problem, but now we have to find out the technical way to help him,” he said.

“We’ll see. We will talk a lot after this session [qualifying] and we’ll see what we can do on the technical side for the race today.”