Francesco Bagnaia admits that the pressure on him is building given he has his first chance to win the MotoGP championship this weekend.
The Ducati Lenovo Team rider takes a 14-point lead over Fabio Quartararo into the Malaysian Grand Prix, with 25 on offer at Sepang and another 25 on offer a fortnight later when Valencia hosts the season finale.
With Aleix Espargaro another 13 points in arrears in third in the standings, or more than a full race away from top spot, a bad weekend for Quartararo could lead to Bagnaia sealing the title with a race to spare.
It would be Ducati’s first riders’ championship since its only other such triumph, courtesy of Casey Stoner, in 2007, and the first for an Italian at premier class level since the last of Valentino Rossi’s seven, in 2009.
Coincidentally, Bagnaia happens to be a protégé of both, and while he insists he is calm now, he is expecting the pressure to mount.
“In this moment, I’m quite calm, because finally I know that our potential can be high,” he said.
“If we continue working like we did in the second half of the season, we can do a really good job.
“The main question here is the weather because it looks like it can rain on Saturday and Sunday, but let’s see.
“It’s always very difficult to predict the weather here, but I think, if we work well, we have a great possibility.”
‘Pecco’ added, “For sure, an Italian has not won the MotoGP title since 2009, and Ducati has not won the [riders’] title since 2007.
“It would be my first title in MotoGP so, for sure, the pressure is there.
“I feel that I’ll start having the pressure, but in this moment, I’m quite happy.
“I know that we did something really good this year, but we still have to finish the job and my main focus in this moment is on that.”
Should Bagnaia indeed win the championship, it would be an unprecedented comeback.
He trailed Quartararo by 91 points when he crashed out at the Sachsenring but has pulled off a 105-point turnaround relative to the 2021 champion in the eight races since then.
While both Sepang and Mandalika hosted pre-season tests, the latter was then the venue for Round 2 of the season.
This weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix being Round 19, it offers a chance to see how manufacturers have progressed since the start of the campaign.
Ducati took some time to tame its 2022-model Desmosedici, but its potential has now been vindicated by the swarm of Bologna bullets at the head of the field, including some 2021-spec machines but predominantly the current version.
Still, Bagnaia maintains that his improvements are more so down to him personally than the motorcycle underneath him.
“I wasn’t believing that our potential was what we demonstrated in the test because we were very slow,” he said.
“I was trying to understand, I was trying to work, but it was very difficult to be constant, to be competitive.
“From that moment, sincerely, we worked very hard to achieve this level.
“The biggest improvement was in Portimao [Round 5] – when we were in Jerez, everything was already at the top level – and from that moment, we have just adjusted something.
“But, I think the biggest improvement from that moment was on me, finally on my mentality.
“In the second part of the season, it was the things I think that have given me more motivation to be here.”
Practice at Sepang starts this afternoon (AEDT).
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