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"Everything went wrong today": is Bagnaia's disconsolate summary of his Sprint. If last year he had won on Saturday in Austin, today he could not even stay close to the podium and his only consolation was the 2 points of 8th place. Pecco was in obvious trouble, from the start to the finish he was never in the game and the premises were well otherwise.
"Unfortunately everything I would have imagined for today was not present in the race - he said - The thing that makes me most angry is that until this morning everything was perfect, in practice I had done my best time at the last with a tire that had 13 laps, while in the race I was running a second slower with a new tire. There was no way to push, I also had a lot of vibration. It's strange."
The start was also disastrous, unlike usual.
"At the same moment I started, the front got up and the rear started to slide - Pecco recounted - I lost 4 positions, then Miller must have had a problem in the second corner, I braked not to catch him and 3 others passed me. From there it was complicated, because I couldn't do what I wanted to do because I had no grip, I was losing rear end everywhere. I lacked thrust out of the corners, I was staying still under acceleration, and even if I braked hard, I was always coming late to try to attack."
The situation seems critical, but Bagnaia does not flinch. Although he doesn't say it directly, it's clear he thinks the tire had some problems.
"Today I had such bad feelings that I'm sure that tomorrow, without touching anything on the bike and changing tires, everything will be fine," he said, " What happened cannot be due to something related to the setting, however we will have time to analyze everything and talk to Michelin. Maybe it was due to the track conditions or because of the temperature, but I saw Maverick's pace and it was great. I thought I could keep the same pace as him, we have to understand what happened."
Bastianini: "I expected to fight for the podium, I don't know what happened."
His teammate Bastianini also suffered similar problems and, after a good start, quickly lost positions and crossed the finish line in 6th position. A cold shower for him.
"It was a surprise, because in all the rounds I had never suffered lack of grip, it was never our problem and instead had it in the Sprint - he explained - We don't know why. The only good thing is that it remained constant and in the end I was able to recover a position on Miller. I expected to fight for the podium, but instead that's what happened."
Another positive is that Enea overtook Binder in the standings, putting him in 2nd position. "I'd like to be a contender for the title, but I'm still missing something and we have to find it, we will have to continue working as we have done until now," he commented.
And also think about the long race tomorrow, because the choice of the soft tire is no longer as obvious as it seemed.
"The soft has worn out quite a bit, we'll have to evaluate the medium as well, " he noted, " Usually I'm good at saving tires, but with this MotoGP it's a characteristic that's gone a little bit, because you push from start to finish. I think I can manage to have a good race, though."
