Bagnaia angry, race control apologetic - Thai GP controversy explained

A 'fake' yellow flag and a crucial lap deletion left MotoGP frontrunner Pecco Bagnaia fuming after the opening day of practice in 2025.

Bagnaia missed out on going directly into the Thailand Grand Prix Q2 session tomorrow because he didn't finish in the top 10 in the afternoon practice.

This came after he got badly baulked by his fellow VR46 Academy protege Franco Morbidelli on a final push lap that would've likely guaranteed Bagnaia a top-10 spot.

Bagnaia was incensed with Morbidelli in the moment - but said he was "more angry at the race direction than what happened with Franky".

His media debrief had been rescheduled and he apologised for being late when it began by saying "sorry, I was arguing".

The crux of the matter was a 1m29.492s lap - Bagnaia's third-to-last push in the session, with a time over two tenths up on his best 'legal' lap - that was deleted in-session.

This was due to a brief appearance of yellow flags in that sector of the track, which The Race understands - and both Bagnaia and race control have now corroborated - was a mistaken deployment, unrelated to any actual track incident.

Bagnaia had his lap deleted, as did Alex Rins - the Yamaha rider running in Bagnaia's tow and also losing his best lap as a consequence.

But while Rins' lost fast lap would've still been short of a top-10 spot, Bagnaia's would've advanced him to Q2 directly at the expense of Johann Zarco.

Instead, he will have to fight for just one of two remaining Q2 spots in Q1.

"A very huge mistake"

Bagnaia was clearly deeply irritated by what had gone on, but also by the fact that race control refused to give him the lap back once the erroneous deployment became clear.

"They did today a very huge mistake… they put yellow flags from corner 8 to corner 3 by mistake - nobody had crashed there.

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"And they admitted to me ‘okay, you are right, we did a mistake - but we cannot give you the lap back because it’s like this’. For me it’s not correct. For all the other riders it’s not correct, because we were speaking about it five minutes ago in safety commission [the meeting between riders and officials].

"But sometimes it’s- it’s not the first time we don’t agree with them. But in any case this is it.”

Bagnaia said this was not an indictment on the new stewarding regime headed up by Simon Crafar - who has replaced Freddie Spencer - as he felt it was more a race control-led decision and reckoned Crafar would've given him the lap back if it was up to him.

There is a logic to keeping a laptime deleted even if the yellow flag was erroneous - because ultimately riders are supposed to adhere to the flag (or, in this case, light panel) they are shown rather than themselves try to ascertain the reason behind it.

Bagnaia claimed that race control's only explanation for refusing to re-validate his lap was because it would set a bad precedent - but a subsequent statement from race director Mike Webb, which also included an apology to Bagnaia and Ducati, aligned with the above reasoning.

Mike Webb's statement

"Race Direction determined that the yellow flag was incorrectly displayed on the lap Bagnaia has had cancelled. This was due to human error.

"We are very unhappy with this unfortunate situation and effect it has had on Pecco's weekend.

"When a rider passes a yellow flag, their lap is automatically cancelled. This affected various riders today, but unfortunately it was Bagnaia's fastest lap of the session.

"Laps are cancelled due to passing a yellow flag, not necessarily because a rider passes through a sector with a crash.

"We cannot reverse any cancellation of a lap for any rider who has seen a yellow flag. But we can - and do - apologise to Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team for the human error."

The Morbidelli situation

As for the Morbidelli incident, Bagnaia simply pointed out that several riders - not just his VR46 friend - were slow on the line.

Morbidelli has received a three-place grid penalty for the impeding incident, a sanction he shares with LCR Honda rookie Somkiat Chantra (who got in the way of Alex Marquez at another part of the track).

Morbidelli didn't feel he was fully to blame as he was caught out by two riders - seemingly Jack Miller and Joan Mir - rolling off ahead of him. This, he indicated, was due to Miller and Mir going through Turn 3 while Marco Bezzecchi's crash was still being cleaned up (albeit with yellow flags already lifted, according to Morbidelli).

But there was still a substantial amount of time between Morbidelli going through that corner and rolling off and Bagnaia arriving at speed.

“The dangerous episode happened with me," Morbidelli acknowledged.

"I was the last of the group going slow. If I was more clever - because in these occasions I need to be more clever and really learn to get out of the way when I slow down, because usually I slow down and then I take some time to get out of the way… so if I would’ve been more clever and got out of the way immediately, nothing would’ve happened to the two riders in front.”

Bagnaia v. Marquez

Though he should've been in the top 10, Bagnaia has looked on the back foot relative to team-mate Marc Marquez - which was also the case in the test.

He indicated, however, that he'd "closed a bit the gap" to his team-mate, with a difference of just 0.1-0.15s in pace.

This was corroborated by Marquez himself, who acknowledged he currently had the pace to beat and that Bagnaia now appeared to be his closest adversary.

Before that, however, the Italian needs to navigate Q1 tomorrow - something he should have the pace for but something that is an extra source of stress for Bagnaia as "we clearly know how difficult it is".