Francesco Bagnaia seemed close to his second consecutive victory this Sunday in Le Mans, but ended the French MotoGP GP in third place. After leading for much of the race, the Ducati rider ultimately couldn’t hold off the winner Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati) and Marc Márquez (Gresini/Ducati) near the end.
The champion of the last two years explained at the press conference that the last five laps were tough, after giving his maximum effort: ‘I was trying to do the maximum, but we can consider the weekend in a positive way, considering that Friday went perfectly. Then I had a little issue yesterday in the Sprint that didn’t allow us to finish the race. And today these two [Martín and Márquez] were just faster. I tried to do the maximum, but in the last five laps I struggled to have something more – the opposite compared to Jerez’.
Although he liked the improvements made in Le Mans, Bagnaia emphasized that the final position is not a cause for satisfaction: ‘In any case we improved a bit in this track, where I crashed last year and three years ago, so it was important to finish the race and we did that in a fast way. So I’m happy about it, but being third I never can be really satisfied. But in any case let’s move to Barcelona and try to improve a bit’.
Regarding the reason for the difficulties in the last laps, the Italian believes that, above all, it was related to the superiority of his opponents, although he didn’t have the best sensations:
– I was really strong in Sector 1 and Sector 2 – a lot in Sector 2, I think, I was quite strong in turn 7. But then I was losing in the braking for turn 9, a lot. I was seeing also when I was behind Jorge that he opened the gap in just one brake. So it was really strange and I didn’t had the feeling to brake harder, to put some more speed in this corner. But we will see why I was struggling like this. Also Marc overtook me there. I was thinking I was braking hard, but I wasn’t able to stop well the bike. I needed to use more the front brake and he was able to overtake me. But I think it was just the fact they were faster.