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Bagnaia: Aragon-Marquez Clash "Now Weighing Heavily" on Title Hopes

Pecco Bagnaia reflects on his Australian GP and the 20-point gap to Jorge Martin in the MotoGP championship, citing a crucial crash and set-up challenges.

Francesco Bagnaia will have a lot of work to do over the upcoming four weeks if he wants a chance at the title // Photo by Lukasz Swiderek

After the Australian Grand Prix, Pecco Bagnaia gave a quick insight on both his race performance and the evolving championship fight. The Italian now trails Jorge Martin by 20 points in the standings.

“My and Jorge’s performance is fairly balanced this year. We are continuing recovering, losing, recovering, losing,” Bagnaia said. 

A critical moment, according to the Italian, was his clash with Alex Marquez in Aragon – a crash that is “right now weighing more on the championship.”

The incident saw the World Champion lose crucial points and give Martin the chance to build a gap in the championship that the Spaniard has capitalized on since.

“We have to be focused now,” Bagnaia continued knowing that the upcoming circuits are tracks where he has historically performed well.

“We have to move onto the next ones with a good confidence knowing that they are tracks where I am very fast.”

Turning his attention to the Australian GP itself, Bagnaia gave a detailed breakdown of where he struggled, particularly with his Ducati’s handling.

“I had to force a lot the front to let me turn the bike,” he admitted. “I was forcing it a lot because my bike was going more wide.”

He acknowledged Marc Marquez’s superior line through key sections, noting that the race winner simply was “a step more in front.”

Understanding the difference before the race helped Bagnaia salvage a podium, but his efforts were hindered by a front tyre issue. The pace of the frontrunners became unsustainable once his tyre degraded, forcing him to ease off in the closing stages.

“From this morning I feel much better, we improved the setting and I was happy. But then in the race as soon as I finished the front tyre, I was struggling to follow them,” he revealed.

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Despite his challenges, Bagnaia managed to open up a comfortable margin on the riders behind, stretching it to over eight seconds.

However, the race ended on a more cautious note as he had to slow down to avoid crashing, a decision he admitted was tough but necessary:

“They did a better job than us yesterday. On Friday we were very close but then yesterday we were wrong with our set-up and they did a better step in front and we just missed it today.”

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