Why Francesco Bagnaia isn't sure if Malaysian GP sprint win breakthrough is genuine

Francesco Bagnaia says his latest resurgence in a period of dramatic peaks and troughs in MotoGP carries more weight than his dominant weekend in Japan last month.

While he saw Japan as an outlier result, Saturday’s pole and sprint win in Malaysia was at least consistent with incremental progress made over the difficult two race weekends since that success at Motegi.

“This result is more concrete,” said the Italian after the lights-to-flag win at Sepang. “Japan, honestly, was where I had the best feeling on my bike [all season]. More similar to my feeling from last year. But Japan just confused us more.”

Bagnaia said he did not have the same ‘Motegi’ feeling on his way to victory in Malaysia, but said the result makes more sense in the context of steps made while battling through the last two weekends in Indonesia and Australia, and then over the Sepang weekend.

“Today was more because we worked on the feeling. From Indonesia, we just did little things. [And] Sunday night at Phillip Island helped quite a lot. Because I started the race at the back and my pace was quite good.

“Here we started the day yesterday in quite a good way, but I was out of Q2.”

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

But Bagnaia responded to what was primarily an operational error well on Saturday morning, making his way through Q1 and then delivering pole position.

“For today we did something on the bike that helped. For the qualifying another step was better. [In] the race another one was better.

“So we are building more performance, more speed. And maybe we are figuring out what is happening.”

In the same breath, however, the significance of Bagnaia’s ‘maybe’ became apparent: “But it’s not so clear right now to the team, [or] to me.”

The double world champion responded with more certainty to the suggestion that the Sepang pace might be down to a riding adaptation rather than a bike improvement.

“Honestly, I’m not a good adapter to what I don’t like,” he said candidly. “This is my weak point. Even if I’m working [on it], it’s difficult to improve on it.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Qian Jun / MB Media via Getty Images

“So I’m just trying to always give the best and most detailed feeling on the bike to the team. And I think we are working well. But I think it’s more because I felt better today than because I’m adapting to the bike.”

Clear that responsibility for both good and bad performances lies with Ducati, Bagnaia was quick to acknowledge the factory team’s role in this win. Speculation that the relationship has broken down was ramping up ahead of the Sepang weekend.

“The team [deserves this victory the most]. For the hard work they are doing,” he said.

“Honestly, I’m here just to push. When I’m feeling good, I’m doing races like this. And when I’m not performing well, I’m just screaming in the garage. So they are the ones that are doing the harder job.”