Reigning MotoGP world champion Pecco Bagnaia has accepted the blame for his crash out of Saturday's sprint race at the British Grand Prix, holding his hands up after the fall that reduces his championship margin over Jorge Martin to a single point.
Making a bad start from his strong starting position on the front row and failing to properly capitalise on title rival Martin’s slightly more difficult second row launch, Bagnaia found himself in fourth behind not just Martin, but also his team-mate Enea Bastianini and the Aprilia of Aleix Espargaro after a chaotic few opening corners.
Looking like he was settling himself in for a long game strategy after contact between the KTMs of Brad Binder and Pedro Acosta behind him gave the Italian some breathing room, it was an unfortunately characteristic front wheel tuck that instead left him sitting in the gravel - thanks, he admitted afterwards, to nothing but his own error.
“I did a mistake, honestly,” he said. “It's all the weekend that in corner four I'm very fast, I enter very fast, and in this lap I just exaggerated a bit the line, I was more close to the apex before, I anticipated the entry and I lost the front.
“Then I struggled a bit with the rear grip in the first lap and a half, more or less.
“Then everything went perfect again, I closed the gap, I was super fast, but as soon as corner four arrived, crash. My mistake, I already said sorry to all my team, because they like always are doing a perfect job, honestly I just did a mistake.”
BAGNAIA BLUNDERS 🤯@PeccoBagnaia has crashed out just as he was beginning to close in! 💥#BritishGP 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/VXDWhyPmms
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) August 3, 2024
However, there’s one factor that may well take at least a little bit of the blame out of the hands of Bagnaia: the fact that he’s become only the latest victim of a stuck ride height device that meant that his race was at least a little bit compromised from before they even arrive at the first corner.
“Honestly, I did a very good start,” he explained, “but the rear ride height device didn't [disengage] so I did corner one and two with the bike in a lower position, and I lost positions, so I was fourth.”
And while that doesn’t necessarily account for the crash two laps later, it means that crucially Bagnaia wasn’t able to have the sort of race that he best prospers in, the sort where the metronomic double world champion is able to get to the front early on and then both control the pace and make himself very difficult to overtake.
Despite the damage to his championship lead, though, he goes into Sunday’s second outing at Silverstone still confident that he can walk away from the UK round as the championship leader - and says that both his crash and Martin’s out of the lead at the Sachsenring at the last round are indicative of the level of MotoGP right now.
“If we see,” he explained, “first of all, the new rear tyres are fantastic, but are making us crash more, because the rear is pushing a lot the front. Today the first three guys finished the race with eight seconds to fourth. So in this moment the speed that some guys are having is incredible. I think we never saw something like, it's super impressive, I love it, but the risk of a crash is always there.”
