At the end of a brilliant first day, Pecco Bagnaia ranked in fifth position, 0.392 behind leader “El Diablo” Fabio Quartararo, and second Ducati rider, ahead of Danilo Petrucci eighth at 0.5 as well as his own teammate Jack Miller seventeenth at 0.8, without forgetting Karel Abraham twelfth at 0.6 and Tito Rabat 0.05 behind Jack Miller.
Although only 22 years old, having been born on January 14, 1997 in Turin (the city of Fiat), Bagnaia will take the start of his 112th Grand Prix this Sunday, after having competed in 69 in Moto3 (including 2 victories), 36 in Moto2 (including 8 first places and the world title last year) and 6 in the MotoGP category like the other three rookies fabio quartararo, Joan Mir and Miguel Oliveira.
Francesco currently occupies eighteenth place in the provisional ranking of the World Championship with 9 points (compared to 31 for El Diablo, 12 for Mir and 8 for Oliveira). His fans expected better, Ducati too, but it was not by finishing only two Grands Prix out of six contested that Pecco was going to break the score. After finishing fourteenth in Argentina, he achieved his best result with a ninth place in Austin. Then – and for the first time in his life – he retired from three consecutive races due to crashes (Jerez, Le Mans, Mugello).
The qualifying tests were a little more positive with an 8th place in Mugello, a 10th in Jerez and a 12th in Texas. We were still far from the 6 pole positions obtained in Moto2, plus one in Moto3. It only took him two seasons in Moto2 to capture the world title on a Sky Racing Team VR46 Kalex.
This Friday in Catalonia, the first free practice session took place honestly with fifteenth place for Pecco, in 1'41.530, 0.838 behind the leader Marc Marquez. In the afternoon, in the classification of the two sessions combined, he placed superbly fifth, which could be very positive for the future if he managed to qualify directly for Q2.
According to Pecco, “ I am satisfied with my final time, but in the first part of FP2, the sensations were not good. Then we put the soft tires front and rear, and the bike was very capable again. On Saturday we will also work on the best use of tires”.
“I don't know exactly what happened, because it's always difficult to race here for the first time in Barcelona in MotoGP. In the afternoon I used the same choice as in the morning, turning from half a second to eight tenths of the first. It was a good ride because I achieved my best time in the last of my 19 laps. Unfortunately I lacked grip at times and I need to understand the reason because I lacked consistency with the tires. When I did my quick lap, I found my normal Ducati.”
“It's a bit embarrassing because on Saturday we'll have to start this endurance ride from scratch. Too bad I couldn't do the race distance with the set of tires I was using and that we were thinking of using for the race. We will compare with the tests that Jack (Miller) did.”
Results of the first day of free practice:
Reference times:
Test record: 1'38.680 by Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati) in 2018
Lap record: 1'40.021 by Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati) in 2018
Best top speed: 348,8 km/h for Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) in FP2 in 2018
Provisional ranking of the World Championship:
1 Marc MÁRQUEZ – Honda 115 points
2 Andrea DOVIZIOSO – Ducati 103
3 Alex RINS – Suzuki 88
4 Danilo PETRUCCI – Ducati 82
5 Valentino ROSSI – Yamaha 72
6 Jack MILLER – Ducati 42
7 Cal CRUTCHLOW – Honda 42
8 Maverick VIÑALES – Yamaha 40
9 Takaaki NAKAGAMI – Honda 40
10 Pol ESPARGARÓ – KTM 38
11 Franco MORBIDELLI-Yamaha 34
12 Fabio QUARTARARO – Yamaha 31
13 Aleix ESPARGARÓ – Aprilia 27
14 Jorge LORENZO – Honda 19
15 Joan MIR – Suzuki 12
16 Johann ZARCO – KTM 10
17 Michele PIRRO – Ducati 9
18 Francesco BAGNAIA – Ducati 9
19 Miguel OLIVEIRA – KTM 8
20 Andrea IANNONE – Aprilia 7
21 Stefan BRADL – Honda 6
22 Karel ABRAHAM – Ducati 2
23 Hafizh SYAHRIN – KTM 2
24 Tito RABAT – Ducati 2
Photos © motogp.com / Dorna, teams and manufacturers
