‘We only gained five points, but it’s super important’ – Francesco Bagnaia

Francesco Bagnaia clinched another victory in the MotoGP Thai GP, beating his title rival Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati) with a dominant, error-free performance.

 

In the press conference, the Ducati rider highlighted the improvements made after the warm-up: ‘I’m very proud and happy, and I want to dedicate it to my team. After the warm-up, we sat down and tried to understand what was wrong – or what was missing – because I was losing time in terms of braking and I was not happy with the feeling in corner entry. I just tried to explain my feeling in the best way possible, and they had a good intuition. So, I’m very happy’.

This victory is crucial for Bagnaia not only for the championship standings but also for his mental outlook: ‘Winning today is important for the championship, absolutely, because now we are 17 points behind. But it’s more for the mental side and for the confidence. I’m just very happy; now we move on to Malaysia, which is another good track for us, and we’ll try to do a better Sprint race, because we know what we did wrong yesterday, and we’ll try to improve also on Sunday’.

The 2022 and 2023 world champion woke up to heavy rain and hoping it would clear for the race, only to discover he felt good in wet conditions: ‘I’ve been waken up by the rain, because it was like the alarm, because I felt like it was raining inside my room. It was really heavy, but I said: «Okay, maybe it will stop». And I crossed my fingers until the race start. But then, I decided to accept it, and as soon as I started the race, I was confident that it could be a positive race. The warm-up was useful to understand the situation, and then the step forward we made for the race was super useful because as soon as I started, I understood that my feeling was better’.

With a slim margin for error in his pursuit of the championship, Bagnaia expressed his satisfaction with both the victory and the points gained on Martín: ‘At this stage of the championship, fighting while being more than 20 points behind in the championship, and you know that you have to not mess up, and just try to do the best you can, it’s not easy. And on wet is even worse. So, I just tried to do the maximum, I tried to be fully focused, trying to avoid any mistakes – today I didn’t risk anything, but it was impossible not to lose the front today. I’m super pround and happy with the victory; we only gained five points, but it’s super important right now’.

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