A good Friday
Pecco Bagnaia seemed more at ease in Austin compared to the first two seasonal performances and the results on track confirmed this feeling, as he finished the Practice in eighth position, securing direct access to Saturday’s Q1.
The gap of over four tenths from teammate and day leader Marc Marquez highlights how there is still work to be done in the Italian champion’s garage to fight for the top positions.
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Bagnaia is confident
“At the beginning of Practice we had a small technical limit that we will fix. I had to abort the first two time attacks, then when I restarted I couldn’t push as much as I wanted, but it was still important to get into the top ten“, Bagnaia explained to Sky Sport on the sidelines of Practice. The Italian is however happy with his Friday: “The day was quite positive and with used tires I was able to be fast and consistent and here it is never easy to get the job done with many laps on the tires. In any case I don’t think the Sprint will be done with the Medium tire, because the temperatures will drop quite a bit and it goes out of the operating window and everyone will use the Soft. Then we’ll see for Sunday.”
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A certain confidence emerges from Pecco Bagnaia’s words, as he launches into an optimistic prediction: “The bike is working well, it was working well in Brazil too and then there were some limits. Working as we are doing, there will certainly be more chance of being able to fight at the front and in my opinion this will be the first time where we will manage to stay there”. In the two previous races Bagnaia had finished qualifying in 13° place in Thailand and 11° in Brazil.
