Francesco Bagnaia says he would only expect factory Ducati team-mate Jack Miller to potentially do him a favour as he bids to win the MotoGP world championship.
Bagnaia will take a sizeable, 23-point lead to the final round of the season in Valencia next month, meaning he need only finish 14th at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo to beat 2021 champion Fabio Quartararo to this year’s title.
However, it could have been quite a different scenario facing ‘Pecco’ considering the pressure he was put under by Ducati stablemate Enea Bastianini in the Malaysian Grand Prix.
They battled for the lead for much of the Sepang race and Bagnaia would take victory by a margin of 0.270s, with Quartararo just doing enough to keep his title hopes alive by rounding out the podium.
Ducati Lenovo Team Manager Davide Tardozzi said there was “trust” in their riders, despite obvious signs of tension, and Bastianini insisted he tried to win the race.
“The words ‘team orders’ mean team orders, so these are things I can only talk about with Miller,” said Bagnaia.
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That is a move to distinguish between a team-mate and someone who is merely a fellow Ducati-contracted rider, notwithstanding that ‘La Bestia’ replaces Miller in the factory squad at the end of the season.
However, Ducati’s stated position is that all of its riders are allowed to win races for themselves, so long as they are not overly aggressive with its hope for a first riders’ championship title since Casey Stoner’s in 2007.
Bagnaia ventured that the attention he got from the Gresini entry behind him actually spurred him on and ensured that Quartararo did not catch up.
“Enea remains an opponent, a rider who wants to win and I imagined it would be like that,” he remarked.
“Maybe only Jack would have acted differently, but if he had had a chance to win, he would have tried.
“In the end, that’s right, a fight like that leads you to push hard.
“Maybe if Enea had stayed with me for the whole race at half a second, Quartararo would have caught us again.
“It is good to use pressure to push yourself further.”
Intriguingly, Quartararo now faces a literal must-win scenario at Valencia, given a win is worth 25 points and second place is only worth 20.
That was a point made by Bastianini’s outspoken manager, Carlo Pernat, in comments to Germany’s Speedweek.com when he noted that a victory for ‘La Bestia’ on the final day of the season would deliver the riders’ title to Ducati anyway.
Practice for Round 20 of the season starts on Friday, November 4.
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