MotoGP championship leader Francesco Bagnaia has defended his decision to run old tyres at the end of Free Practice 1 in Malaysia despite now sitting outside the Qualifying 2 positions.

The Ducati Lenovo Team rider, who has a 14-point advantage over Fabio Quartararo and hence could clinch the title this weekend, now faces the prospect of dropping into Qualifying 1 thanks to Sepang’s fickle weather.

He missed the top 10 in FP1 by just 0.003 seconds and lost his chance to get back in when Free Practice 2 was mostly wet.

MotoGP experienced nothing like the downpour which caused a long red flag period in Moto2 FP2, and Bagnaia was among those to switch to slicks at the end of the afternoon, but took second place for the session with a lap time of 2:06.610s whereas his best in FP1 was 2:00.770s.

Now, the Italian is relying on Free Practice 3 being dry if he is to earn the right to go straight to Q2 rather than risk getting stuck beyond Row 4 of the grid.

However, having revealed that the decision to stay on used rubber at the end of FP1 was his, he defended on the basis of the data he acquired on the medium compound rear.

“[It] Was my decision because I wasn’t expecting the rain; this is the main thing,” said Bagnaia.

“Also, it was very important to do laps with the medium tyre and I wasn’t expecting this rain.

“But in any case, it was very important to understand whether the medium tyre can be a good tyre [for the race] and sincerely, I’m quite happy with what we did with the medium because in the last lap I was the only one who improved the lap time on the last exit with the used medium.

“But considering how fast the riders with the soft have gone, I think the soft tyre is quite bad for the race.”

That comment is curious considering Bagnaia is not only fourth of those who finished on used tyres, but that only four of the seven ahead of him to did their time attacks on new Michelins had the soft fitted to the rear, and Ducati stablemate Jorge Martin even had the hard tyre on.

Bagnaia dismissed that as genuine, saying, “Yeah he did [ride a good lap], he did a 59.9 but I think this was really a ‘push’ lap on this hard.

“I’ve already seen that on the data that in the second lap time, but [mainly] the third lap that the spin was quite high.

“It’s difficult now because the grip level this morning was very low. [Saturday] will be better for sure.

“The rain has also cleaned the track a lot and also then, when I did two laps on the slick tyre this afternoon the grip was quite good. But it was difficult to improve the position.”

Of his key rivals, Monster Energy Yamaha’s Quartararo is currently seventh and Aprilia Racing’s Aleix Espargaro 20th after a shocking FP1.