But what happened to Pecco Bagnaia at Le Mans? While he started from second position following a well-conducted qualifying session, the Italian completely missed the start of the Sprint, as if a technical problem prevented him from moving forward once the lights went out. Recovered from this bad start, he was unable to get out of 14th position, before avoiding a fall at the Musée corner. Later, he was forced to abandon. Something definitely didn't seem right on his Desmosedici GP24.
He's the big loser of the day. While his exceptional victory at Jerez put him back in the footsteps of Jorge Martin in the championship, Pecco Bagnaia loses 12 net points on his rival this Saturday at Le Mans. Everything has to be redone, or almost. However, the incident seems much more mysterious than it seems. « From the warm-up lap, something was not working. The bike behaved very strangely, but I can't go into details. The mechanics and engineers only saw the data, and they couldn't understand, also because the bike didn't suffer any damage » he said to the microphones of Sky Sports.
It just keeps getting worse for @PeccoBagnaia ????
After dropping out of the points he runs off and enters the pits to retire ❌#FrenchGP ???????? pic.twitter.com/AyQIiPBGYF
- MotoGP @ 🏁 (@MotoGP) May 11, 2024
But that wasn't all! We clearly noticed that he had difficulty getting back on his head after the start. Again, no explanations. “I was losing the front coming out of the turns” added the main person concerned. Perhaps it had something to do with his crash earlier in the day, at the very end of qualifying. In fact, he was forced to use the second bike for the Sprint. “Normally, to run, we use the bike we toured the most with during the weekend. I normally do well on both.” he asserted.
Photo: Michelin Motorsport
The most important thing remains tomorrow's race. He, the Sunday specialist, without a bad pun, can easily win the Grand Prix given the pace shown since the start of this French round. « Tomorrow the other bike will be ready. We will be able to fight, also because we have one of the best rhythms currently » he concluded. Davide Tardozzi, his employer, was “sorry for not being able to provide Pecco with the equipment he deserved”.
Do you think Pecco Bagnaia capable of competing for victory with Jorge Martin, Maverick Vinales, Marc Marquez and the others? Tell us in the comments!
Sprint result at the 2024 MotoGP French Grand Prix:
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
Cover photo: Michelin Motorsport
