Francesco Bagnaia, leader of the MotoGP world championship with a 14-point lead over Jorge Martín, ended the first day at the Losail circuit in 8th position with direct access to Q2.
In a debrief, the Ducati Lenovo Team rider spoke about today and the sensations he felt on the bike on the new Losail asphalt.
– ‘ I would have been close to the top three if the lap hadn’t been canceled and the feeling on the bike was good. For the first time we didn’t change the bike which is very good, my feeling with the tires was very good and so far the only tire we can use on the front is the hard one and that’s a problem because of the temperature and because it’s very hard. The grip still needs to increase a lot, so we’ll wait for tomorrow’s session to see if there’s more grip for the Sprint race.
Asked why he felt so comfortable on the bike today, Pecco replied: ‘After Barcelona we started to rebuild my feeling on the bike and find out where I was fastest with the bike and in Malaysia I was able to get a good feeling on the bike again and we took a big step forward. Today the bike was working as I hoped it would. Of course I prefer to ride at the front and give everything I have, when I have the bike the way I want it I can do that, for sure’.
The Italian rider also spoke about Aprilia’s competitiveness today, revealing that he wasn’t surprised and already expected the Italian manufacturer’s competition to be strong.
– “When I spoke to my team yesterday I told them that Aprilia would be very strong, because the grip level is low and when it’s low they have a good advantage. They’re very good in the first part of the corner but they wear out their tires faster than us. There was a time when I was behind Raúl and I could see that he had a good pace, he was driving very well and at the moment he’s the fastest, tomorrow it’s going to be difficult to understand how the tires are going to work, but we’ll see how it goes.’