Marco Bezzecchi
Francesco Bagnaia thinks battling with Marco Bezzecchi in Le Mans and Barcelona has shown the cause of his lack of pace on the Ducati GP26 has now completely changed.
Two-time MotoGP champion Bagnaia has found a fresh lease of life in race conditions across the past two rounds in France and Catalunya. He had initially struggled to adapt to the GP26 more than any other Ducati rider, but the Jerez test has largely proven to be a turning point.
While Bagnaia crashed out of P2 at Le Mans, he had threatened to secure his first podium of the season in the French Grand Prix before he lost the front at Turn 3. And while Bagnaia did not get out of Q1 in Barcelona, he rose up from P13 on the grid to end the Sprint Race in P6.
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Francesco Bagnaia thinks his biggest Ducati GP26 issues are now ‘acceleration and traction’
Bagnaia had to pass Aprilia ace Bezzecchi for P6 amid his charge in the Sprint at the Catalan Grand Prix this Saturday. The Ducati racer made his move on Lap 8 of 12, as the Aprilia rider started to fall. Bezzecchi ultimately finished P9 after a late duel with Tech3’s Enea Bastianini.
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It marked the second week in a row where Bagnaia battled with Bezzecchi on the track, after they briefly duelled for the lead of the French GP at Le Mans last Sunday. Bagnaia now feels those battles have proven that his issues on the GP26 are no longer related to corner entry.
Instead, Bagnaia now believes he and Ducati need to improve how the Italian maximises the GP26’s acceleration and traction. Gresini star Alex Marquez won the Catalan Sprint aboard a Desmosedici GP26 by utilising his superior acceleration to hold KTM rival Pedro Acosta off.
“This is the second week [that] I’ve been battling with Bezzecchi, and I see that I can even gain time on corner entry,” Bagnaia said, via quotes by Mundo Deportivo. “But I’m losing in acceleration and traction.
“The start of the season wasn’t like this, but now it is. We’ve made a big step forward in this area, and we just need to take one more small step. Above all, we’re lacking in terms of traction, and our bike could start to really challenge them.”
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Bagnaia found an improved feeling for the GP26 in the Jerez test, having initially not found a strong feeling for the front end of the latest version of the Ducati Desmosedici through the first four rounds. His breakthrough came after testing Ducati’s upgraded front aero at Jerez.
But the Turin native knows he still has more work to do before he can regularly start to fight at the front of the field again. He also concedes that delivering quick laps on new tyres is an issue that must be addressed, having often been “quite fast” with used rubber in Barcelona.
“Obviously, we’ve been progressing,” Bagnaia told Sky Sports Italy. “But with used tyres, I’m able to be quite fast. I’m not losing as much as the others, because I’m really lacking initial grip. Even today in the race, you see the leaders’ times doing 1:39.2s on the first laps.
“It’s not that I don’t want to do them, it’s just that I can’t because when I get into traction, I lack that initial push and I can’t perform as well as I’d like.
“There are three corners where I lose all the gap, which are [Turns] 5, 9 and 14, and we’re working hard to be able to gain or do them like the other Ducati riders. We’ve already improved [in Turns] 3 and 4, so we’re on the right track and we need to continue like this.”
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