Ducati: Pecco Bagnaia “has no choice but to cry”

A Sprint race to forget in Japan for Pecco Bagnaia: after qualifying just 13th on the starting grid, the Piedmontese rider was forced to retire in the final stages of the short race—while running in 11th place—due to serious problems with his rear tire.

Not even the Japanese track, where he was a standout last year, could lift him out of the slump he’s currently experiencing: “All we can do is cry. In any case, the situation is difficult. Unfortunately, there’s new asphalt, and we didn’t know what to expect from the rear tire,” he told Sky.

“Unfortunately, with the lack of grip, you tend to heat up the tire more, and things like this can happen. Overall, we need to work on it, try to take another step forward tomorrow in terms of grip, and maybe we’ll manage to do a little better tomorrow.”

“Around the sixth lap, I started experiencing a lot of vibration going into the corners, and this caused the tires to heat up even more. To try to stop it from vibrating, I tried to use the rear brake more and more, and that affected my lap times,” explained the two-time MotoGP world champion.

While Bagnaia struggled, Marc Marquez made his presence felt for Ducati, winning the Motegi Sprint Race by overtaking Jorge Martin right from the start. The Catalan rider thus closed the gap by five points on the Aprilia world champion, bringing his total to 306 points compared to the 313 held by the Spaniard from Noale, in an increasingly tight world championship battle.