Ducati MotoGP rider Francesco Bagnaia says the second Misano race of the season was “winning or gravel” for him, after his late crash allowed main rival Fabio Quartararo to wrap up the 2021 title early.
Bagnaia had just broken the resistance of Marc Marquez in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix when he fell from the lead while tipping in for the left-hand penultimate corner, in an instant making Quartararo the champion.
Had Bagnaia stayed on, even if Marquez – who admitted he had “given up” in the fight for victory the very lap Bagnaia crashed – got ahead, the championship race would’ve continued to Portimao in a fortnight.
GAME OVER!!! ❌@PeccoBagnaia CRASHES OUT OF THE LEAD! 😱#MatchPoint | #EmiliaRomagnaGP 🏁 pic.twitter.com/cJn2vVwkec
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) October 24, 2021
Asked about his crash in the aftermath, Bagnaia said: “For sure it was not because I lost concentration. I was pushing – today was winning or gravel, and I tried all to achieve this win.
“I’m happy about my performance of today, for sure I’m a bit frustrated about the result because I think we were deserving more, but we just try to be always more competitive, and for next year we are for sure in a good way.”
Bagnaia, who congratulated Quartararo in the pitlane after the race, said the Yamaha rider was the deserving champion in 2021.
The Italian stressed that having Marquez behind him made little difference to how he’d gone about the race, as he was trying to run at the maximum pace.
Both he and team-mate Jack Miller had gambled on the hard front tyre for the race and Miller, like Bagnaia, went down at Turn 15.
“I think it was more to do with tyre choice, we went a little bit leftfield and tried the hard front,” said Miller of the crashes.
“It seemed like a masterstroke, the feeling was good. Around 1 o’clock it looked fantastic, like it was going to be a great idea.
“But then as we were on the grids the clouds started coming in, the track temperature was sort of borderline, I’d done it in the test… wasn’t quite warm enough, I guess you could say.”
Miller suggested that a contributing factor may have been that he wasn’t pushing hard enough through Turn 8, the last left-hander in the layout before Turn 15, to keep the front tyre warm.
And Bagnaia made a similar guess as to the cause of his crash, saying he “maybe braked a little early” there, which would’ve meant his right tyre cooled down too much through on the left side through the subsequent six right-handers.
But Bagnaia had no regrets about the tyre choice itself.
“The tyre choice was I think good, it was the only one that was helping me on the braking,” he said.
“Medium for me was worse than soft, soft was already on the limit yesterday and this morning, so the hard was the correct choice.
“The only thing is with the hard you just need to push every single lap like hell, to let the tyre be hot.
“What I just want to say is we worked a lot, it was difficult this weekend, the pace was stronger than five weeks ago [when Bagnaia won], so we have to be happy about this.
“For sure we are frustrated in this moment, but it’s something that we have to be happy, because we demonstrated that we were on top again.”
