MotoGP World Championship leader Francesco Bagnaia is aiming to bounce back in Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone after struggling to 14th place in the Sprint race.
The Lenovo Ducati rider was outside the points as fellow Italian Marco Bezzecchi, who finished as the runner-up behind Alex Marquez, cut the deficit at the top of the standings to 27 points.
Bagnaia had qualified in fourth place to head up the second row, but he rapidly dropped back, with the reigning champion realising something wasn’t quite right with the factory Desmosedici.
“My team is already working and trying to understand from the data what happened,” said Bagnaia, who revealed the bike he used was the same one that he crashed in FP2 on Saturday morning.
“This morning, in the wet, I was second in FP2 and in qualifying I was fighting for pole position.
“Then in the race, already from the warm-up lap I understood that it was not working well; it was quite difficult to do everything.
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“Riders were overtaking me from the inside, the outside and I was a bit on the limit going slow like this. It was very difficult, but we know our level and that (P14) is not our position.
“I’m quite sure that this [issues] didn’t come from my set-up. We have time to understand the problem for tomorrow.”
Bagnaia, who won the British Grand Prix in 2022, will be confident of a big improvement in Sunday’s race, which is forecast to be dry. The Italian showed his pace in dry practice on Friday, when he ended the opening day in sixth position.
“Yesterday [Friday] afternoon I was feeling great with used tyres; new and used tyres I was quite competitive,” said Bagnaia.
“In this track it is quite difficult to make the difference because you have to consider the tyre consumption more.
“It is important not to push too much and in the wrong moments. We have the package to be in the front and to fight.”
Bagania finished the race behind his team-mate Enea Bastianini, who was 13th.
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