Francesco Bagnaia says he risked suffering a crash if he had tried to stay in touch with MotoGP title rival Jorge Martin during their battle for the lead of the British Grand Prix.
Winner of the previous four rounds, Bagnaia couldn’t put up a fight to the victorious Enea Bastianini or runner-up Pramac’s Martin, finishing more than six seconds off the lead in third at Silverstone on Sunday.
It concluded a tricky weekend for the defending champion, who crashed out of Saturday’s sprint while running in a podium position.
With Martin finishing second in both the sprint and the grand prix, the Italian lost the lead in the title fight to his Pramac rival — although only three points separate them with 10 of the 20 rounds in the 2024 season remaining.
Speaking afterwards, Bagnaia admitted he was left with no option but to drop back from the leading duo in order to bag the points for third place and limit the damage in the championship fight with Martin.
“I tried, but after the crash of yesterday, it was better to finish the race,” he said. “Also today I risked to crash. On corner 6-7, I lost the front and Enea overtook me.
“But in that moment, I was already struggling a bit, I was trying to follow Jorge and to follow Jorge I was taking too much risk.
Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing, Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“So it was better to just manage the gap from the guys behind and finish the race, third position is okay.”
Bagnaia grabbed the lead at the start from polesitter Aleix Espargaro and controlled the pace in the first half of the race, but was passed by Martin into Village corner on lap 10 of 20.
Two laps later he ran wide at Vale, allowing team-mate Bastianini through into second. Bastianini went on to overtake Martin on the penultimate tour to score his maiden grand prix win of 2024 and his second as a factory Ducati rider.
The 27-year-old said he will carefully analyse the data from his bike to understand why he couldn’t keep up with the pace of Bastianini and Martin, who were equipped with the same GP24 bike as him.
“First thing that I want to do this afternoon is to check everything on the data because I want to know what I did wrong,” he said in the post-race press conference.
“I was thinking I was managing everything well in terms of pace and tyre, but when Jorge overtook me I see that he was in a better shape than me and I lost the front [and] Enea overtook me.
“I just decided to slow down a bit and just finish the race. Honestly today that was better than try to fight for a better position. I tried to the maximum and the maximum was a third place.”
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
The big talking point before Sunday’s race at Silverstone was the tyre choice, with questions over whether the medium tyre would be good enough to last the full distance.
Eventually, the cooler conditions meant all but two riders opted for medium front, with Bagnaia also going with the majority of the field.
However, the two-time champion felt that the front tyre didn’t behave to his liking, putting extra stress on the rear tyre and leaving him heavily worn rubber.
“Every time I’m not happy with the front tyre, I finish the rear because I can’t force the bike to turn with the front,” he explained.
“It’s not the first time that it is happening. I’m not fully happy with the front tyre, today we chose the medium.
“I finished the rear more because I can’t force the front tyre to let the bike turn and I struggled a bit with the rear tyre consumption.
“I was having a lot of movement, I was locking. And when I was wide it was because as I entered it and when I touched the gas I lost it. So the tyre was having less support than what I was expecting and it was difficult for me to turn the bike.”