Enea Bastianini’s manager Carlo Pernat admits his rider has been facing pressure from the Ducati MotoGP organisation – but says this is being balanced against financial considerations.
Bastianini, who will have a factory Ducati ride in 2023, has emerged as a surprisingly frequent thorn in Ducati title hopeful Pecco Bagnaia’s side over the 2022 title run-in.
He pressured him in a battle for the win on the final lap at Misano, actually denied him the win at Aragon, and again hounded him over most of the race distance in the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.
Ducati has publicly maintained that Bastianini, like all of the other Desmosedici riders, is allowed to duel Bagnaia for victory as long as he’s careful – and, while there has been scepticism over how reflective that is of Ducati’s approach in private, Bastianini insisted after Sepang that this was exactly how he went about business in Malaysia.
He overtook Bagnaia for the lead shortly after the halfway point, but was passed three laps later, pressuring him for the rest of the race but ultimately coming up short, which leaves Bagnaia needing just two points in Valencia to win the title.
Several interesting factors came together in whether Bastianini would feel it sensible to attack Bagnaia. On the one hand, it would be logical to assume he would be loath to burn any bridges ahead of his factory team arrival in 2023, and that he would follow Ducati’s preference given he’s already on a works contract, if not a works bike, this year.
On the other hand, Bastianini himself was still in outside title contention heading into Sepang.
And there’s also a financial factor. As reported by The Race earlier this year and now seemingly corroborated by Pernat, Ducati’s traditional bonus-heavy payment structure has been a driver for Bastianini. The Bologna marque has a reputation for issuing relatively smaller base salaries and compensating that with hefty bonuses for things like wins, finishing as the top independent-team rider and, crucially, a top three in the championship.
Bastianini is now guaranteed to finish the year as MotoGP’s leading independent rider, but he is right in the thick of the top-three battle, now trailing third-placed Aleix Espargaro by just one point.
“Sure, it’s not easy to manage a situation like this,” said Pernat after Sepang. “Because you have something more, for one rider to stay on the back, the mind, it’s not so easy.
“Mainly you gamble the third place. Because it’s one point. If you win, was four points more.
“It’s money. You are a professional. For sure we arrive to smile but we are professionals.”
Current factory rider Jack Miller had also cited the third-place chase as a meaningful factor in the lead-up to Sepang, acknowledging it was a substantial payout relative to “f*** all for fourth”.
“It’s important to arrive in third place,” Pernat continued. “It’s an important objective. Because the goal was to arrive in top five.
“I think it’s possible to try to have this result, and next year I think the [factory] team will be a good team, with two good riders [in Bastianini and Bagnaia]. For the sport, it’s beautiful.”
When asked by The Race whether there had been pressure from Ducati to rein Bastianini in, Pernat – himself formerly a boss at Cagiva and Aprilia – said: “It’s impossible to speak [say] no. It’s impossible to speak no.
“But… I managed many time the factory, but I never made pressure like this. But for sure, [first riders’ title] win from 15 years, an Italian rider, many things to pressure. Ducati understands.
“But for one rider it is not easy.
“It is normal. The rider wants to win, the same as the rider in 15th, he wants to win. You can imagine [how much he wants to win] when he’s second.
“And from a mathematic point of view, now he’s out [of the title race]. Before was in.”
HOW HARD DID BASTIANINI TRY?
A lap after Bastianini passed Bagnaia, it was picked up by the TV feed that his the pit board being shown to him, in addition to position and laps remaining, simply featured the name ‘BAGNAIA’ in capital letters, without any sort of corresponding information.
It is not clear whether ‘BAGNAIA’ was also present on in other laps, and there was no mention of Bastianini receiving any sort of dashboard communication, ala the infamous ‘Mapping 8’ Ducati used in late 2017 to get Jorge Lorenzo to let title contender Andrea Dovizioso through.
Asked about the pit board message, Bastianini said: “I saw the board every time. All the lap. If I didn’t crash. And I tried to do the maximum.
“And when I saw this, I knew I had to be careful, because – I repeat again – for Ducati it’s important, the title.
“But I tried to win today.”
Asked whether that particular message conditioned what happened next, with Bastianini being re-passed by Bagnaia two laps later, Bastianini insisted: “No.”
He said he lacked traction in the last part of the race, and told MotoGP.com’s After the Flag that it was “impossible” to pass Bagnaia in the end despite him having “tried really hard” – though he then acknowledged that it would’ve been “a little bit dangerous” to fully commit to trying a move.
The decisive moment on the last lap, it seemed, was Turn 9 – where it looked like Bastianini had a glimpse of the opportunity to dive down the inside of Bagnaia but instead tried to work his way around the outside, to no avail.
“I tried to go inside, but was too difficult, I prefered to go outside. I lost some time, and with the winglets it’s always complicated to do one overtake, every time… and I lost time.”
