Arriving at the Thai Grand Prix at the Chang International Circuit, Francis Bagnaia had two main objectives: To regain confidence after his crash on the last lap of the Japanese Grand Prix and to understand why he had performed relatively poorly in the land of the rising sun, not only in the wet but also in the dry when running.
In view of the first results and the statements of the Ducati rider, it seems that he at least partially achieved his goal on the first day in Buriram which miraculously took place on a dry track.
6th in FP1, 0,223 seconds behind the leader Marc Marquez, the Turinese is one of half of the drivers who improved their best time during FP2, and thus rose to second place in the provisional ranking, only 18/1000 behind Johann zarco.
Francis Bagnaia : « I'm very happy to have been able to ride in the dry during both sessions. We worked to resolve the issues that were slowing us down at Motegi and I'm very happy to have resolved them. We were very quick on the pace and, tomorrow morning, I'm hoping for a dry session then a wet session, just to be ready given the forecast. Today we did a great job, we did 20 laps on the same tire and we have clear ideas.
It was important to understand what slowed us down in Japan. In the dry, we lost acceleration and I couldn't overtake any bike, Honda, Yamaha and Ducati. I was not able to overtake except “by lying down”. Today we analyzed everything, did extensive testing and fixed the problem. This is a problem that only occurs on tracks where tires experience heavy wear. I'm happy with what we did. »
FP1-FP2 results of the MotoGP Thailand Grand Prix in Buriram:
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
