Michelin: “Pecco saw the warning light” after Malaysian MotoGP puncture
Dashboard warning light helped alert Francesco Bagnaia to “very rare" puncture in Malaysian MotoGP.
Michelin’s Piero Taramasso has revealed that a dashboard warning helped alert Francesco Bagnaia to a slow puncture in Sunday’s Malaysian MotoGP.
The pole qualifier and Sprint winner was holding second place behind Alex Marquez when he appears to have run over some carbon fibre debris, cutting his rear tyre.
“Pecco felt something strange in the handling of the bike and then in the [next] lap he saw the warning light on the dashboard was saying low rear pressure,” Taramasso said.
Bagnaia tried to adapt his riding style and continued for several laps, but with grip worsening, he pitted on lap 18 of 20.
“When he came into the box and we checked the pressure, it was 0.74 at the rear. So quite low.
“Straight away, we saw a big hole in the centre of the tyre. This is for sure a piece of carbon because it was quite large and a very sharp cut.
“It’s very rare, we don’t see this very often.
“It’s just bad luck and I’m sorry for Pecco because he managed the tyre well and at the end, for sure, he was able to push more compared to other riders.”
Bagnaia’s lap times began to slow after lap 11 and the factory Ducati rider said he first felt something was wrong by lap 13, when he was overtaken by Pedro Acosta.
“It was strange, because I was controlling a lot the tyres from the start, just in the race like I did in Barcelona last year, in 2024, when I let others go and arrived in the last moment of the race,” he said.
“I was just trying to do the same, but then Pedro overtook me, I started to struggle a lot more. I wasn't able to open full throttle until 5th gear, and then I needed to stop.”
Bagnaia was unique among the frontrunners in choosing the medium rather than the soft front tyre.
“Even if on the edge I was losing it a bit, I was very strong on braking,” he said of his front tyre choice. “But I don't know if I was going to arrive in the last part of the race with more potential than the soft.”
The factory Ducati star was pragmatic about the puncture, having been lucky to escape a smoking engine on the way to his previous grand prix victory at Motegi.
“I was lucky [at] Motegi,” he said.
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