2023 could not have started better for Pecco Bagnaia. The world champion won both the Sprint and the long race at the inaugural Portimao round, then headed to Argentina with full points. However, the Piedmontese also knows that the Ducati has never expressed its best on the Termas de Rio Hondo track, so that what awaits him is a weekend to be taken with a grain of salt, while trusting a lot in the potential of his Desmosedici GP.
“I’m very curious to start the weekend here, because last year it’s true that we weren’t particularly competitive, but then we improved a lot over the course of the season. It’s true that Ducati has never won here: in the past Miller was managed to be competitive, but something was always missing. So this year we will have to check if we have the potential to stay ahead,” he said during the press conference that opened the Argentine weekend.
“It will be a different weekend, because we haven’t tested here and it will probably rain tomorrow. We risk the track being completely wet for the first day of testing, and the asphalt could also be very dirty. We’ll try to do our best and see how we manage starting,” he added.
Before the start of the season, he had indicated Marc Marquez, Enea Bastianini and Fabio Quartararo as his most accredited rivals. Now the first two are absent due to injury, while the Frenchman is struggling with a Yamaha that is below expectations. According to Pecco, however, this is not enough to start singing victory.
“First of all, I want to wish all the absentees a speedy recovery. I hope to see them again very soon. But I think that at this stage in the championship we can’t think about the absentees yet: we have to think about who is there, because Vinales and Bezzecchi they are very close to me in the championship, so I have to concentrate on them without doing anything crazy, because it is very easy to lose points in a championship that is very long”.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“So it will be important to be consistent and try to always be competitive. We’ll see how the championship develops and after Austin maybe we’ll have a clearer idea of who the favorites will be. Quartararo showed he has good pace, but he had some difficulties at the start and got stuck, also considering the riding style that Yamaha requires. Clearly, Bastianini and Marquez can’t be a threat now, but at the moment we can only focus on the individual races and who is closest to us,” he continued. .
In Portimao there were many accidents and in fact the premier class arrived in Argentina with four riders less on the grid. But the penalties also caused a lot of discussion, above all that of Marquez, initially imposed for the Termas de Rio Hondo race and then carried over to the next race in which he will take part after learning of his injury. Something that was appealed to by Honda and which according to Bagnaia makes it inevitable that the keyword on these things must be clarity.
“I think we need to ask for more clarity, both on safety and on the penalty system. It’s very difficult to understand anything. For example, last year at Misano I slowed down at the end of FP1 because I thought I’d already taken the checkered flag Unfortunately I hindered someone and they gave me a penalty of three places on the grid.Last week I was fighting for pole in Q2, I was trying to improve my time and I found several bikes that had slowed down, but it was not done nothing even if they had ruined my lap. We need more clarity on the sanctions: even in Marquez’s case it’s very difficult to understand that someone could have made such a mistake. They need to be clearer, the point is this”.
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Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team, Marco Bezzecchi, VR46 Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
