{"id":215714,"date":"2025-10-15T17:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/215714\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T17:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:08:07","slug":"francesco-bagnaia-working-hard-to-understand-exactly-what-happened-before-australian-motogp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/215714\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesco Bagnaia \u201cworking hard to understand exactly what happened\u201d before Australian MotoGP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Which Francesco Bagnaia will MotoGP see at Phillip Island: The Motegi version who stormed to a dominant double from pole, or the Misano-Mandalika version who struggled badly either side of that perfect weekend?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the key question heading into the Australian Grand Prix, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/911999\/francesco-bagnaia\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bagnaia<\/a> will line up as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/teams\/ducati-lenovo-team\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ducati Lenovo\u2019s<\/a> lone full-time rider following team-mate and newly crowned world champion Marc Marquez\u2019s shoulder injury.<\/p>\n<p>Struggling for front-end confidence on corner entry all season, Bagnaia\u2019s fortunes were suddenly transformed by a switch back to older GP24 parts at the Misano test and then Motegi.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the same issues reappeared, on the revised bike, just a week later at Mandalika, where he suffered his worst event of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MotoGP<\/a> season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;re coming into this race after a complicated weekend; we&#8217;re working hard to understand exactly what happened at Mandalika,\u201d Bagnaia said.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe goal is to get back to the same feeling we had on the track at Motegi\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>If the Italian can rediscover that form &#8211; and with former Phillip Island winners Marc Marquez, Jorge Martin and Maverick Vinales all sidelined through injury &#8211; he will be among the favourites to take a long-awaited first Australian Grand Prix victory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhillip Island is a spectacular circuit, breathtaking, especially on a high-performance bike like a MotoGP bike. It&#8217;s truly beautiful!\u201d Bagnaia said of the fast and flowing seaside circuit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn recent years, I&#8217;ve always been fast and consistent here, even though without victory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia starts the final four rounds having slipped 88 points behind Alex Marquez in the fight for title runner-up and is now only 20 points clear of Bezzecchi.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Which Francesco Bagnaia will MotoGP see at Phillip Island: The Motegi version who stormed to a dominant double&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17197,8456,7607,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-215714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ducati","11":"tag-ducati-lenovo-team","12":"tag-francesco-bagnaia","13":"tag-motor","14":"tag-motor-sports","15":"tag-motosport","16":"tag-motosports","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}