Francesco Bagnaia finished the first day of practice at Valencia in 15th place overall. The Italian Ducati Lenovo Team rider will have to go through Q1, where he will face strong competition to make it through to Q2.
The reigning MotoGP world champion had a day where he suffered mind games from Jorge Martín. In his debrief, Pecco spoke about the first day of practice at the Ricardo Tormo circuit and the feelings he had during each session.
– ‘ I struggled today, it wasn’t an easy day. My feeling today going into each corner wasn’t the best and the front tire was always trying to lock up. But honestly I looked at the data at the end and I lost 3 thousandths in three corners, so we need to improve tomorrow and tomorrow morning’s session will be very important for us. I was a bit slow to be in Q2, I was hoping we’d have the pace to be there, but unfortunately I didn’t. I’m used to having 5, 6 or 7 drivers behind me and that’s certainly not a problem. The important thing was to realize that we were losing time in three corners.
Asked about Jorge Martín’s pressure and mind games during today’s session, Pecco replied: “I’m used to this kind of situation, I’m not worried. In the last few races it’s always like this and having drivers behind me has been happening since the start of the year. As for Jorge, he’d better concentrate more on his work, because he said he was going to win both races and right now he’s not the fastest. I was expecting him to do something like this, but in Mandalika I started 13th and won the race, so we’ll see. Right now we can see where we’re going wrong and if we improve in these three corners it will be ideal, it was fantastic to see where we were struggling’.