Francesco Bagnaia says his 70 point gap to Fabio Quartararo in the MotoGP points standings is now “way too much to recover” after slumping to 14th in the British Grand Prix.
The Ducati pilot displayed strong speed at Silverstone throughout the event, ultimately qualifying second just 0.022s adrift of pole-man Pol Espargaro as he looked to try and trim series leader Fabio Quartararo’s points advantage further after making good ground on the Frenchman last time out in Austria.
This scenario would fail to materialise though as Bagnaia soon began to struggle for speed having run second in the early laps, dropping behind Quartararo to fourth on the second tour before falling all the way to 14th by the time he took the chequered flag after seemingly struggling with his soft compound front tyre, a strategy that also caused fellow title chaser Joan Mir to drop back late on.
This meant that his 47-point deficit to Quartararo heading to Silverstone ballooned to 70 after the Yamaha racer ended up securing victory, Bagnaia falling to fourth in the standings behind Mir and Pramac’s Johann Zarco as a result of only scoring two points.
A disappointed Bagnaia declared that “Fabio has already won the championship”, believing that “70 points are way too much to recover” over the final six races, and despite not being drawn on exactly what caused him to plummet through the field during the contest confirmed Ducati “need to ask Michelin what is happening.”
“Fabio (Quartararo) has already won the championship because 70 points are way too much to recover, but we won’t lose our ambition to try to win,” said the 2018 Moto2 world champion.
“It’ll be difficult but like this it is even tougher because you work really well all weekend and then in the race you suffer because you can’t go at the pace you know you can do, it’s very frustrating.
“We need to check the data, but we also need to ask Michelin what is happening.
“If everything can go nice then I think we can do a good race (at Aragon), it won’t be easy but it’s tough because you can do your best work ever but then you start the race and you can’t go fast, it’s really difficult.”
Bagnaia lamented that he could only run at the “same pace of the Moto2 victory guy” such were the extent of his grip woes, the Italian irritated that he had only run into issues during the race after his “pace and consistency was great” throughout practice.
“It’s clear that something went wrong because all weekend I was fighting every session towards the top, FP4 I was third qualifying I was second and my pace and consistency was great,” continued Bagnaia.
“Then in the race I don’t know what happened because I was struggling a lot, I’ve never had this little grip (through the weekend) so I suffered a lot and it was a very difficult race.
“I tried to not lose too many positions but in the last laps I was riding at the same pace of the Moto2 victory guy, we need to understand what is happening because this is not normal and this is the second time in three races that I’m losing points and not getting a good result through no fault of ours. “
