Francesco Bagnaia finally returned to victory at the MotoGP Indonesian GP. He surpassed Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) in today’s race in Mandalika, benefiting from Jorge Martín’s (Prima Pramac/Ducati) retirement to reclaim the top spot in the championship.
The Italian rider explained during a press conference that this morning he was already feeling better with the bike after yesterday’s struggles: ‘It’s a great moment for sure. Yesterday I was quite upset after the qualifying and then the sprint race. I was struggling a lot to set a fast lap with new tyres. And also in the sprint I was struggling a lot to overtake riders, so I was blocked behind. The pace was not bad, but I didn’t had any chance to overtake my teammate [Enea Bastianini]. But then I tried to work a lot for today with my team yesterday’s night and we’ve improved a lot. This morning in the warm-up I was already feeling better. I tried to overtake a rider and I succeed, so it was already good’.
Regarding his race and his approach to it, Bagnaia stated: ‘In the race I just tried to do the maximum in the start. When I was behind I was just trying to be inside of everyone. I have to say that the hard front tyre helped me, to brake very hard. And then when I saw that I was in third position I was just trying to push, push and push to catch back Maverick because I was seeing that Martín was going away. But I was also thinking that Jorge’s pace was very, very fast, and I was starting to feel a bit of drop from the rear, so it was better to take care about the tyres. And when I saw his crash I just tried to be two/three laps to try to push again ten laps to go and it was my race’.
The championship leader also said: ‘I’m very happy. I really enjoyed everything in the last lap. I know these two guys here have closed the gap, but I was just trying to finish the race. That was important’.