MotoGP Argentina: Lessons learnt for Bagnaia, return to normal in US

Ducati Lenovo’s Pecco Bagnaia turned his frustrating weekend around on Sunday with a fifth place finish in the Argentina GP.

Having missed out on a place in Q2, and narrowly avoided the sanctions of the stewards during a difficult final free practice session on Saturday afternoon, the Italian was forced to line up 13th on the grid for the 25-lap race. His Ducati teammate Jack Miller was demoted alongside as the battle prepared after his own on-track moment impeded Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo in qualifying.

While Saturday proved frustrating, Sunday brought renewed pace, optimism and a fight through the pack to the top five. Bagnaia, having apologised to his team for his anxious behaviour in the shortened schedule’s opening day, looked calm, collected and back to his former self as the chequered flag flew.

“This race will help me and will help us a lot for the future,” Bagnaia said on Sunday. “I take a great lesson yesterday, so I would like to don’t repeat anymore what happened yesterday. I was too angry, too nervous and when you’re nervous, you can’t do things. So have to be a good lesson to me. I speak with my team, I said sorry to my team. I apologise for what happened. They are working a lot and then I put everything in the basket just because I was angry. So it’s something that have to don’t happen again. My mindset now is like I just started the season now.

“Today’s race was great. The only thing was to start too far behind but the pace was quite good. We have worked well also this morning in warm up, that was very useful forty minutes for me and we found that my feeling again. I’m happy, for sure is a race to restart this season and trying to improve every time, every session in the future.”

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