This MotoGP Sunday will certainly remain etched in the memory of Francesco Bagnaia in particular, as he renewed his world title in the category, but today he did so with the fulfilment of a dream, winning the race that earned him the final victory.
In a press conference, the Italian Ducati rider spoke about his feelings and how he was able to fulfil his dream of celebrating the title in conjunction with a victory:
– It’s incredible. I feel that my maximum level of happiness has never been like this, because… the thing is that I’m also very happy because I won the race, and today in today’s circumstances it was pointless to win, but it was a dream, a goal that I always wanted to fulfil, to win the title with a victory, but it was quite scary because in the last five laps I started to feel cold on the bike and that was very dangerous because of the sensations with the front tyre, it was the hard tyre. I’m very happy and I can finally breathe, it wasn’t an easy day because I was under pressure.
Asked if he felt that defending the title was more complicated than winning it, the #1 responded as follows: ‘It was difficult because last year I got here and I was under even more pressure, honestly. This year I managed the situation very well because I was always thinking only about the races. Yesterday I was unconscious and made a bad choice of [rear] tyre but I was better prepared for today because with the medium one I already knew more or less what the wear was and that was useful for me’.
Bagnaia then spoke about how he had some problems at a certain point in the season, and how since then he hasn’t performed as well as he would have liked, especially on saturdays, and he didn’t hide the need to improve: ‘The round in Barcelona was a stop for us, and from that moment on we started to struggle more. Not in Misano because it was a week later and my big problem was being able to ride the bike because I had a lot of pain in my leg. After that I started to have more difficulties with my speed in terms of qualifying, the Sprint races, and in this second part of the season I’ve always struggled in the Sprint races: I was never as fast as I’d hoped or as fast as I was in the first part of the season, so next year I’ll certainly have to improve. In the last few races I took a big step forward, I just had some bad luck, but I’m very happy with my team and everything […]’.