Francesco Bagnaia conceded that fellow VR46 academy graduate Marco Bezzecchi scoring his first win was the “only positive” of a tough Argentina Grand Prix after crashing out late on.
The reigning MotoGP world champion enjoyed one of his strongest runs to date in the wet encounter at the Termas de Rio Hondo venue as he ran second with less than ten laps remaining after passing pole-man Alex Marquez in conditions he has traditional struggled to excel.
The early-season points leader then suffered disaster after losing the front of his factory Ducati machine at Turn 15 with eight laps left to run, and despite re-joining was thus limited to a non-points scoring 16th place finish by the time he took the chequered flag.
Bagnaia – who swept both the sprint race and grand prix wins in the season opening Portuguese GP event just a week ago – described his spill as “one of those crashes you can’t explain”, admitting that the “only positive of the day” was friend Bezzecchi scoring a debut MotoGP win in dominant style.
“It was one of those crashes that you can’t explain, we don’t understand it because we checked the data and I was doing the same thing but as soon as I touched the gas I lost the front, and this is something that can happen,” said Bagnaia.
“But anyway I crashed and I’m sorry to my team because it was something avoidable, so we’ll see what we can do in Austin and in the meantime try to understand our mistake.
“That was the only positive of the day (Marco Bezzecchi’s first win), I’m happy for him and I think he deserves it.
“The first win for him in Moto3 was here, I know his potential and I know he’ll be really fast all year.”
Having only managed to secure sixth in Saturday’s sprint contest, Bagnaia accepted that the Argentinean event “wasn’t my best weekend”, but was keen to take away the positive of showing strong speed in conditions he has struggled with in the past.
“I expect to be fast in the wet because I’m ambitious, but it wasn’t my best weekend because I had fever on Friday and then on Saturday I was up and down with the wet and dry conditions,” continued Bagnaia.
“We worked well and were competitive in both but just made that mistake in the race which makes me very upset in this moment because I feel we deserved the podium after a difficult weekend.
“In any case we have to see the positives in that I was competitive in difficult conditions, I was second fighting for the podium and I think we were there.”
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