Pecco Bagnaia in Austin was a Saturday bordering on perfection. The Ducati rider conquered the pole position of the Grand Prix of the Americas, setting a new record on the Texan track, then he literally dominated the ten laps of the Sprint, thus achieving his second victory in the short race on Saturday and returning to just one point from the world leader Marco Bezzecchi.
If from the outside it may have seemed like a solitary ride, given that he arrived at the finish line with a margin of over 2″5, the reigning world champion however explained that in reality the conditions were rather treacherous and therefore it was very important to administer the racing at its best.
“The grip today was quite low. Under braking it wasn’t easy at all, because there was a lot of locking under braking, especially at turn 12. I saw that I was opening the gap a bit and at that point I tried to push a little more to do it, precisely because it was easy to make a mistake and I wanted to be calm. But we worked well all weekend and this morning, when I saw the pace, I was pretty sure we would be fast. But it’s the Sprint, now let’s wait for tomorrow it will be a different thing,” Bagnaia told Sky Sport MotoGP.
His race today gave the feeling of being a projection of a weekend that up until now has been practically perfect, because he was the fastest in almost all conditions. To the point that today was probably the most “boring” of the three Sprints I have ridden so far.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“It’s a question of having found a balance with the new format. FP2 is the only session in which you can work in view of the race, but you have to dedicate the last 20 minutes to the time attack. Fortunately, the basic setting here was good. so we had to do little, but in the other 40 minutes we managed to do a better job than in Argentina.The Termas Sprint was certainly better for the public, but I liked it today because we managed to be consistently the fastest and it’s something that will also help me in tomorrow’s race”.
Even though only 10 laps were run today, the riders were all pretty worn out from a physical point of view. Also according to Pecco we will have to manage more in the long race, trying to stay out of trouble in the first part.
“Tomorrow’s race will be very different, because it looks like the temperatures could go down, and I sincerely hope so. We won’t be able to go in and push from the first lap: at the start, we’ll have to spend some time in the group and it will be important not to waste the energy in that phase and stay calm. Honestly, today’s race didn’t make me particularly tired, it was just so hot. But the real race is tomorrow and we’ll see if we do everything right, because it’s the most important,” he concluded.
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Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
