Bagnaia, what a disaster at Silverstone
The Silverstone Grand Prix ended in the worst way for Francesco Bagnaia. The Ducati rider was forced to retire after a crash at Luffield, thus completing a very complicated and agonizing weekend. After 17th place in the Sprint, “Pecco” was unable to reverse the trend in the long race, ending up in the gravel on the eighth lap.
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The only bright spot for Bagnaia is having put behind one of the worst weekends of his career. The two-time world champion did not arrive at Silverstone in the best shape (he still feels pain in his right arm after surgery for compartment syndrome and carpal tunnel) and Ducati certainly did not help, with problems entering corners, precarious grip, and excessive rear tire wear especially in the Sprint. This is “Pecco’s” comment on his black weekend.
Bagnaia’s words
“This crash is just a comma compared to the weekend. I struggled a lot, I never had speed, I always lost in particular points, where with the same throttle I couldn’t get grip. That’s our problem. I can’t stop it, I can’t slow it down and when I open the throttle it slips away. I never have grip, it was a very difficult weekend,” these were his words to Sky Sport MotoGP. “Today I tried to carry out a somewhat more conservative strategy at the start. I was improving my times a lot to fight up to ninth-tenth place, no better.”
“The crash is very strange. We looked at the data, but we can’t understand how it’s possible that the front closes like that on corner exit. We have to do better next weekend, because I never felt comfortable and it’s not possible to go on like this,” he added. “The performance this weekend is very strange, I never had grip. It’s true that my weakness is grip, but this is too much. I’m extremely disappointed, we all know very well that we can do better. That the official team struggles so much on a circuit like this is a very big warning sign, we need to work to do better because in this case not only I was in great difficulty.”
For Bagnaia, therefore, the Silverstone balance is inevitably negative. The zero points collected in the long race weigh on the weekend’s result and close a trip in which the Italian rider never found the necessary feeling with the GP26. The next goal will be to quickly turn the page and understand the reasons for a performance crisis that, on the British track, clearly involved the entire Ducati package.
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