MotoGP championship leader Pecco Bagnaia’s plan for the Valencian Grand Prix will have to involve “taking some risks”, despite the fact that a crash is by far the likeliest way in which he could lose the 2022 title.
Bagnaia needs to finish 14th or better to become Ducati’s first MotoGP riders’ champion since Casey Stoner in 2007, and will go into battle from eighth on the grid – four places behind rival Fabio Quartararo – at a track where he’d led a Ducati 1-2-3 the year prior.
But the eighth-place grid slot reflects what has been a relatively uncomfortable weekend for the Italian, who reiterated on Saturday that he was “not expecting to suffer like this” at Valencia with the GP22 relative to the GP21, and that while he was “riding as smooth as I can” he was being limited by “the feeling of the front – it’s blocking, I’m having a lot of movement, it’s a bit difficult”.
“This year you feel [the front tyre] less but you can brake harder,” he explained. “It’s something strange. But in this kind of track it’s something that is not helping me so much.”
However, Bagnaia has stressed that he has been at his least competitive in soft-tyre time attacks, which is now a non-factor as he heads into the race – and he reckoned his FP4 laps on used tyres, in the session traditionally used for race simulations, were as good as anything the presumptive frontrunners had managed.
“But my thing [on Sunday] is not to win,” Bagnaia said. “Just to be calm, to understand.
“It’s difficult to do a strategy because we already know, everybody, that in MotoGP it’s impossible to predict what will happen.
“Maybe the first two-three laps I have to take some risks, to have a bit of gap compared to the riders behind.”
Bagnaia’s plan to establish an early buffer is driven not just by a desire to optimise his race but to “stay away from trouble” – to mitigate the chances of getting caught up in mid-pack battles that have a reputation for being wild.
That reputation was again emphasised on Saturday by Bagnaia’s team-mate Jack Miller, who said regarding the prospect of having Quartararo starting right behind him and the Frenchman having vowed to be aggressive: “In my case it can’t be worse than last week [at Sepang]. I battled with Darryn [Binder] and Cal [Crutchlow] and all those guys back there, Remy [Gardner].
“It’s chaos back there.”
Bagnaia, whose starts were rough in early 2022 but got a lot better, culminating in the lightning getaway from ninth on the grid that made his Sepang win possible, expressed a hope he could do similar at Valencia.
“For sure it will not be the best thing [to start eighth],” he admitted to British broadcaster BT Sport.
“I will try to do my best start possible like in Malaysia, try to be in the front and then manage. I know Fabio is one of the fastest, but also [Marc] Marquez, Miller and [Jorge] Martin have really good pace.
“I will try to follow them, to not destroy the tyres to be competitive till the finish.”
In terms of the information he will want to see on his pit board, Bagnaia said it will be “the same as always” but that he’ll want to know “if Fabio is close to me or just behind me”.
He also joked that, with anything but a Quartararo win guaranteeing him the title, “everyone can be my team-mate this race!” – and, when asked by MotoGP.com whether he had a message to his fellow riders in terms of how they should race him given his championship aspirations, said: “Just arrive [finish] in front of Fabio, and it’s OK.”
