Francesco Bagnaia once again failed to secure direct qualification for the second phase of qualifying. This Friday, he struggled with his bike and could only manage an 11th place in practice, which left the Ducati rider 0.186s behind and relegated him to Q1.
The championship leader explained he hadn’t the ideal strategy to the time attack: ‘As soon as I put the soft rear for the time attack, I started having problems, so maybe the best strategy was to start like all the other riders – more or less – with the soft, analyse before what was the reaction of the soft. But we decided that, the strategy maybe was the best in terms of the race’.
Beyond the strategy, Bagnaia admitted he is feeling some troubles with the bike: ‘I’m struggling a lot on the acceleration, on the entry of the fast corners my bike is too aggressive, very nervous. For example, from the last corner to the finish line I’m losing two tenths for [Jorge] Martín and this is unbelieavable considering that I’m missing traction in all the track. This was more or less the issue, but like in Mandalika the feeling with the bike is not that bad. So, this is strange’.
It has been a recurring pattern in 2023 for the Italian to start a Grand Prix weekend less strongly on a Friday and progress until Sunday. And, although it doesn’t seem like an exception now in Australia, Bagnaia believes he did a good job on this first day:
– The thing is: it’s strange that we move from one circuit to another circuit, more or less with the same setting, and for me is not working, every time. In Mandalika wasn’t the first time; it was more or less all the season that we arrived Friday, we struggle a lot; Saturday it’s better; and then on Sunday we are the fastest. In this case we have a day less for being the fastest, but it’s also true that in this track is more difficult to have a clear advantage. Looking to the pace we had this morning, looking to the pace I had this afternoon, we were one of the most competitives in terms of lap times, in terms of consistency with the tyres. We used the medium, more or less all the others used the soft. So for me our work was better than the others today. We have just to improve on starting already with a better feeling.