MotoGP world champion Francesco Bagnaia said he remembered a nightmare at the 2023 Mandalika MotoGP during a free practice session.
Bagnaia managed to secure a place in Q2 for Saturday (29/9) morning’s qualifying session in Indonesia, but he faces the possibility of a repeat of the events of 2023 in Indonesia.
Last year, Bagnaia failed to make it out of Q1 and let Jorge Martin take the lead in the championship shortly after the sprint, before eventually recovering from 13th place to win the grand prix.
Explaining the problem, Bagnaia felt uncomfortable using medium tires at that time. But it immediately improved when he changed to the rear tire soft to do time attack.
“I thought back to last year’s nightmare, the same feeling. But fortunately when we put the soft rear tire on, everything started working again as usual,” Bagnaia quoted as saying Crash(27/9).
“So, it’s a shame that we lost a little time in the first part of the session time attack. We tried different things, but on the right side I didn’t feel well, I had difficulty pushing. And as soon as we installed the soft rear tire, everything started working again.”
“So, I’m very happy with this. We managed to reduce a lot of lap times and be in the top five.”
“Happy for this, but we have to understand a little bit what happened because it’s strange just to change to medium tires soft we can improve lap times like this. But I think this is something we are relieved about after what happened that day.”
His Ducati teammate, Enea Bastianini, was fastest on Friday (27/9) in Indonesia, while Martin was only a few seconds behind him. Nevertheless, Bagnaia is confident for the sprint race and main race later.
“I think for tomorrow I feel good because we will go tomorrow morning with the soft and on tires sprint I think we’ll go with tires soft,” said Bagnaia.
“For a long race, I saw Enea and Martin put in a fantastic lap. Also Frankie (Morbidlli) this morning.”
“So, I think we are more like them than what happened today, so I don’t want to think too much about what happened today.” (D-3)
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