MotoGP Emilia Romagna: Bagnaia crash ‘strange’ – “Something on the ground like a tear off”

Francesco Bagnaia is left searching for answers following his crash out of the Emilia Romagna race from the lead.

Francesco Bagnaia was looking like he was about to take his first-ever MotoGP class win at Misano, just a week after fellow VR46 Riders Academy rider Franco Morbidelli did the same, it would’ve been a dream come true for Bagnaia but it was not meant to be. Crashing out in a crash neither the rider nor the data can explain, the data has proven that Bagnaia did nothing different on the lap he crashed compared with previous laps, his lean angle, acceleration, gas and even fork compression was the same, yet he found himself crashing out of the race.

Bagnaia himself feels he crashed on something like a tear-off visor or some dirt, his teammate Jack Miller found himself out of the race after his air intake collected a tear-off visor from Fabio Quartararo, blocking his air filter. Speaking on the race, the Italian Pramac Ducati rider said, “I was thinking it was possible to win today, I was controlling the gap and Maverick [Vinales] was pushing a lot behind me, but I was not using up the tyre as it was important to arrive in the final laps with more tyre to see if Maverick was close. It looks like I crashed on something on the ground like a tear-off or some dirty things, I am not sure.

It was a strange crash because everything was the same as the last lap, the forks, gas, lean, acceleration so it looks like I touched something and I crashed.”

It is majorly unfortunate for Bagnaia, the rider is performing better than he could ever have expected, yet his luck is letting him down, earning himself the nickname ‘Bad Luck Bagnaia’, the rider himself cursing his bad luck, his bike broke down in Jerez whilst he was in second place, then at Brno, he broke his leg in a crash which was not too serious, “It looks like it is not my year, every race I have bad luck, my engine at Jerez, a broken leg at Brno in a stupid crash and here something on the ground caused my crash.”

As downbeat as he is about his luck and his crash today, he is happy for the results and the upward trajectory he is on, improving every single race, “I can be happy with my performance and the bike, Ducati think we have good potential and the bike is very strong, powerful and is stable in braking and it is even turning. It is a great bike this year and I feel comfortable on it.

We are very strong, today and yesterday I was close to pole but touched the green and today the victory was so close but I had bad luck. I can be happy with everything because we are very strong.”

Let’s hope we see him on the top step very soon ahead of his potential factory move in 2021.

Featured image – www.motogp.com