Francesco Bagnaia revealed he has “a glimmer of hope” despite crashing out of a difficult Australian MotoGP weekend.
Bagnaia struggled throughout his visit to the Phillip Island circuit, and came home 19th in the Sprint race before crashing out midway through Sunday’s Grand Prix.
For the second consecutive weekend, the two-time World Champion did not score points across the MotoGP weekend as he surrendered third place in the standings to Marco Bezzecchi.
Although the Italian crashed out of Sunday’s race, he admitted he found “something positive” ahead of the next round in Sepang.
“For the warm-up, we tried something that turned out to be a disaster: it was impossible to ride like that,” he told Sky Italia, having battled stability issues all weekend.
“For the race, we went in the opposite direction, and it was something positive: I managed to push a bit more, even though I was truly at the limit.
“Unfortunately, I can’t brake and enter corners the way I’d like, but at least I was able to push and get closer to the riders ahead of me.
“A glimmer of hope, if you will, compared to yesterday and Indonesia. I don’t know if this change will help us in Malaysia, considering that Sepang is a bit of a unique track.
“This afternoon, we tried to find a more stable bike at the expense of lightness and agility: it was very tough to ride, but at least I could enter corners without all the problems from the warm-up.”
Fabio Di Giannantonio contrasting Australian MotoGP
By contrast, Fabio Di Giannantonio was able to take a podium aboard his GP25 machinery for the VR46 team.
Di Giannantonio fought through from 10th on the grid to second, 1.468s behind eventual race winner Raul Fernandez.
The Italian admitted his VR46 team had done “a lot of analysis” in Mandalika to get his bike into podium contention.
However, Di Giannantonio also felt “bittersweet” after feeling he could have won the race with better qualifying.
“We did an amazing job last week in the preparation of the weekend, because the team did a lot of analysis and studying, and understood what the best package could be for us to race with here,” he said to MotoGP post-race.
“That was the key to making this kind of performance.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling because we know that we ruined our chances to make a possible win after qualifying.
“But it was out of our control, so it is like this. For sure, the fever didn’t help at all.
“Last night I was really sick. I had to get the job done. We did an amazing race. I’m so proud of the overtakes because it was not easy starting from P10.”
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