Pecco guns for title No3
Can you improve on near perfection? That’s Bagnaia’s plan for the year
From the position of world champions for two years running, surely the only way is down. But if Ducati’s 2024 factory team presentation in Madonna di Campiglio in northern Italy was anything to go by, they’re gunning for more glory first.
Soon after factory riders Pecco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini showed off their largely unchanged colours for the upcoming 22-round campaign, the now double MotoGP World Champion identified several areas he is working on in a bid to hold onto his crown.
“My plan is to be at the top for 44 races, so I will try,” he said, referencing the mammoth season ahead. “Last year was the best in my life for preparation, but we had three weeks off in May and five weeks in July and this season we will have just three weeks in July. We’ll be prepared for everything.”
Slow starts to the weekend became commonplace in the autumn of 2023, with Bagnaia often saving his best for Sunday afternoon. That strategy produced a number of uncomfortable situations however, most memorably in the Sprint races in Thailand, Qatar and Valencia, where he was outperformed by Jorge Martin.
Explosive speed
Bagnaia acknowledged he lost some of his “explosive” speed after the horrendous first-lap smash in Barcelona, and one aim is to recover this in the months ahead. And while the GP23 finished first and second in last year’s championship, winning 26 of last year’s 39 races along the way, the 27-year old believes the bike wasn’t always as easy to manage as people think.
“Last year’s bike was almost perfect. But in some areas, it was very difficult to ride,” he said. “I struggled a lot during some Fridays last year, so the biggest improvement we’re looking for was on some areas both riders were asking for because our riding styles match quite well.
“I would like to improve the level that I had at the start of last season, which was my explosivity. At the start I was always competitive but after Barcelona I lost it a bit. In the last three or four races I found it again, but I think it’s still something that I have to improve.”
Consistency is king
Bagnaia only crashed seven times in all of 2023, but all of them bar two came at crucial times, in a Sunday race. “The crashes are something we all know needs to improve. I was with Franco Morbidelli and Maverick Viñales as the ones with fewer crashes in the season – seven. But the problem for me was that five of these were in a race.”
Bagnaia also gave the impression that a sense of injustice was partly fuelling motivation as well. In a bid to reel in Ducati’s dominance, a new concession system has been introduced for 2024, denying the factory testing compared to some
‘My plan is to be at the top for 44 races’
rivals, and denying them wildcard opportunities. The reigning No1 isn’t overly impressed
“Honda and Yamaha start again in Malaysia with three more days at the Shakedown test,” he said, referencing the Japanese factories being given near unlimited testing. “They can do tests somewhere, everywhere. It will big step.
“It’s true they need it, but from my point of view the concessions for Ducati didn’t have to change. It should have been the same situation for Ducati rather than reducing the number of test tyres or the wildcards. I didn’t understand the decision, because the concession for others are huge, if we consider Honda and Yamaha.”