Francesco Bagnaia spells out cause of Aragon Sprint woes | Grid “very dangerous”

Francesco Bagnaia: “It’s not something about our bike, our team or me.”

Francesco Bagnaia didn’t mention the word ‘tyre’ but the Italian ruled just about everything else out when explaining the cause of his lacklustre Aragon MotoGP Sprint race.

After a poor start on the dirty side of the track, the reigning MotoGP champion and title leader dropped to sixth place.

He then swiftly repassed Miguel Oliveira and Alex Marquez to sit behind the podium trio of Marc Marquez, Jorge Martin and Pedro Acosta by lap 2 of 11.

But instead of closing on the KTM ahead, Bagnaia began losing ground, fading to ninth place by the chequered flag.

Bagnaia made a ‘second-time’ gesture to his Michelin engineer as he returned to the Ducati garage and, picking his words carefully, confirmed to MotoGP.com:

“[It was the] same thing that happened yesterday morning. Out of our control. It’s not something about our bike, our team or me.

“It’s something that can happen. The thing is it’s happened twice in the same weekend. So I really hope that for tomorrow it will be better.”

But Bagnaia put his scary, sideways start down to the dirty condition of the grid, joining the likes of Aleix Espargaro and Alex Rins in criticising the lack of track cleaning.

“I was starting from the dirty side of the grid. In the Safety Commission yesterday, I clearly asked, ‘Please clean the track and the starting grid’ because if not it could be a problem. And it was a problem,” he said.

“I was just lucky that Alex [Marquez] had good reflexes behind me because he was able to not hit me, but it was very dangerous.”

Late on Saturday, MotoGP informed the teams that: ‘Following discussions today, it is confirmed that there will be a practice start session on the grid after the Warm Up on Sunday.’

Meanwhile, Marc Marquez went on to win his first Sprint race as a Ducati rider, having led every session he has taken part in this weekend.

“He’s doing 4-5 degrees more [lean angle] than me in some corners without losing the front, so this is incredible,” Bagnaia said. “He’s the only one able to do it, [with] his riding style.

“Just he is doing it. No other Ducati riders. But we already know what Marc can do. So for tomorrow, we will try a step.”

Bagnaia’s woes mean the MotoGP title lead has now seesawed back in favour of Jorge Martin, by three points, heading into Sunday’s full-length grand prix.

Due to high temperatures and signs of blistering on the new Aragon asphalt during the Sprint, Michelin announced on Saturday night that ‘the Soft rear tyre will not be one of the compounds available tomorrow’ for the grand prix.

The soft was used by all riders on Saturday afternoon, with everyone now expected to race the medium rear (again with a medium front) on Sunday.