Francesco Bagnaia expressed that he is determined to retain the title after he achieved maximum points from the MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix weekend.
Ducati’s Bagnaia sealed a perfect 37 points from the round in Motegi having taken the victory in both the Sprint on Saturday and the main race on Sunday.
The Italian has once again cut into championship leader Jorge Martin’s advantage in the Riders’ standings, with the gap now standing at just 10 points.
“I want to keep this championship so I have to do it and I have to try to recover points every time but without taking risks,” Bagnaia stated.
“It’s not easy but this weekend started well.
“We have to take it as an example for the next ones and try to follow what we did this weekend to work in a perfect way.
“The next one is Phillip Island which is a good track for Jorge too so let’s see.”
Bagnaia ‘had to push a bit more’ to retain lead
Despite taking a dominant victory in Motegi, Bagnaia conceded that he struggled with managing the gap between two of his rivals.
In the nascent stages of the race, the Italian was being followed by Pedro Acosta before the rookie crashed out of second and was then stalked by Martin to the line.
Bagnaia admitted he had to “push a bit more” to keep the GasGas rider behind.
“I realised [Acosta crashed] when I saw it on the dashboard,” he recalled.
“My team said that Pedro was no longer behind but it was Jorge and I understood it.
“With Pedro I had to push a bit more in the first part of the race because I think I was pushing a lot to take back this position.
“When you are behind and close to the guys in front of you, under 0.5s it’s very tough to manage the front so I think he wanted to overtake but it’s not easy.”
The Ducati rider also came under fire late on from title rival Martin, but Bagnaia admitted that he had “everything under control” in that battle.
“I just tried to manage in the best way possible the gap to Jorge, wasn’t easy because he was recovering a bit in the last laps but finally we did a very good job,” he continued.
“I was having everything under control but I was more hoping that with the lap time he did he was finishing everything because I was already in the situation that I had finished everything.
“When I was trying to accelerate a bit to improve my pace my rear tyre did not have the same idea, so I was trying to be competitive and not lose too much.
Bagnaia pushed into ‘alien’ territory with eighth 2024 win
Bagnaia’s dominance in Motegi this weekend means that he has become just the fifth rider to take eight wins in a single MotoGP season.
He has followed in the footsteps of “alien” riders Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Marquez in managing the feat.
The statistic could prove positive for the Italian’s championship chances, as the only rider to take eight victories and not take the title was Lorenzo in 2013.
The Ducati rider was also quick to note that he believes in his title chance as the last time he had taken this amount of wins was in his victorious Moto2 campaign in 2018.
“We have to believe in it and we have to never give up,” he insisted. “I will try to always do my best job.
“Eight wins in a season is something remarkable. It’s my first time, and the last time I did it was in 2018 when I won in Moto2, I won eight races so let’s keep working.”
