Francesco Bagnaia “working hard to understand exactly what happened” before Australian MotoGP

Which Francesco Bagnaia will MotoGP see at Phillip Island: The Motegi version who stormed to a dominant double from pole, or the Misano-Mandalika version who struggled badly either side of that perfect weekend?

That’s the key question heading into the Australian Grand Prix, where Bagnaia will line up as Ducati Lenovo’s lone full-time rider following team-mate and newly crowned world champion Marc Marquez’s shoulder injury.

Struggling for front-end confidence on corner entry all season, Bagnaia’s fortunes were suddenly transformed by a switch back to older GP24 parts at the Misano test and then Motegi.

Yet the same issues reappeared, on the revised bike, just a week later at Mandalika, where he suffered his worst event of the MotoGP season.

“We're coming into this race after a complicated weekend; we're working hard to understand exactly what happened at Mandalika,” Bagnaia said.

“The goal is to get back to the same feeling we had on the track at Motegi”.

If the Italian can rediscover that form - and with former Phillip Island winners Marc Marquez, Jorge Martin and Maverick Vinales all sidelined through injury - he will be among the favourites to take a long-awaited first Australian Grand Prix victory.

“Phillip Island is a spectacular circuit, breathtaking, especially on a high-performance bike like a MotoGP bike. It's truly beautiful!” Bagnaia said of the fast and flowing seaside circuit.

“In recent years, I've always been fast and consistent here, even though without victory.”

Bagnaia starts the final four rounds having slipped 88 points behind Alex Marquez in the fight for title runner-up and is now only 20 points clear of Bezzecchi.