Pecco Bagnaia’s Aragon Agony: How a Controversial Crash with Alex Marquez is Impacting His MotoGP Title Race

Pecco Bagnaia attributes his championship shortfall to a controversial incident involving Alex Marquez. The aftermath of their collision in Aragon continues to affect Bagnaia following the Australian Grand Prix.

Francesco Bagnaia expressed that the crash involving Alex Marquez at the Aragon race has had a more significant impact on his MotoGP championship aspirations, especially after falling 10 points behind Jorge Martin following the Australian Grand Prix.

The current two-time world champion achieved back-to-back wins in Japan, narrowing the gap to just 10 points behind Martin in the rankings.

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Following two challenging races at Phillip Island, where Bagnaia struggled to match the speed of Martin and Marc Marquez, the Italian rider's gap in the championship standings has increased to 20 points.

After securing a third-place finish at the Australian Grand Prix, Bagnaia mentioned that his championship pursuit is currently overshadowed by a crash with Alex Marquez during the Aragon race in September, where he missed out on potentially gaining 16 points.

Bagnaia compared his current championship standings to the situation he experienced in Indonesia.

"We keep going through cycles of improvement and setbacks. Overall, our results are relatively stable."

"Regrettably, the collision I had with Alex Marquez is currently having a significant impact on the championship."

"However, we need to stay concentrated and approach the upcoming races with strong confidence, knowing that I perform very well on those tracks."

After facing difficulties maneuvering his Ducati during the sprint, Bagnaia managed to enhance the bike's set-up before the grand prix. However, he acknowledges that he still had to "force" the front end into the corners.

He described how he had to exert significant pressure on the front to get the bike to turn.

"I was really pushing hard since my bike tended to drift wider, while it was crucial to keep close to the curb, similar to what Jorge and Marc were doing."

"I must admit that Marc was ahead of us, so we need to figure out the reasons for this and identify the specific areas where we differed."

"Fortunately, grasping the situation ahead of the race was crucial; otherwise, I would have ended up missing the podium."

During the grand prix, Bagnaia took the lead for a short period after Martin slipped up at Turn 1 on the 12th lap, giving Bagnaia the chance to pass him at Turn 3.

However, Martin quickly retaliated and Bagnaia soon found himself in third place, trailing Marquez. The Italian rider eventually fell 9.1 seconds behind his championship competitor.

He mentioned that he felt significantly better this morning after they adjusted the setup, which made him pleased.

"However, during the race, once the front tire wore out, I had difficulty keeping up with them."

"I needed to reduce my speed because there was a significant gap between me and the competitors behind. The gap increased to 8.1 or 8.2 seconds, but I had to really ease off to avoid the risk of crashing."

"It was challenging beyond that. They outperformed us yesterday, as we were quite close on Friday. However, our setup was off yesterday, and they took a better step forward, leaving us behind today."

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