{"id":266793,"date":"2025-11-06T15:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T15:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266793\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T15:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T15:34:07","slug":"pecco-bagnaia-never-heard-of-a-puncture-in-motogp-before-sepang-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266793\/","title":{"rendered":"Pecco Bagnaia \u2018never heard of a puncture\u2019 in MotoGP before Sepang issue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia admits he\u2019d \u201cnever heard of\u201d a puncture affecting a MotoGP tyre prior to his Malaysian Grand Prix retirement, but comes to Portugal with \u201cthe same strength\u201d as Sepang.<\/p>\n<p>The double world champion was dominant on Saturday at the Malaysian Grand Prix, as he came from Q1 to qualify on pole and then eased to victory in the sprint.<\/p>\n<p>He was on course for a podium in the main race, but had to retire late on when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1085490\/1\/michelin-confirms-cause-pecco-bagnaias-malaysian-motogp-retirement\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he suffered a puncture to his rear tyre.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>While he is wary of making predictions on what he can aim for this weekend at the Portuguese Grand Prix, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/911999\/francesco-bagnaia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pecco Bagnaia<\/a> believes he has the \u201csame strength\u201d as he showed at Sepang.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were coming off two pretty difficult weekends, especially Indonesia,\u201d he told Sky Italy.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd in Australia, there were still some big difficulties: in Sunday&#8217;s race at Phillip Island, we managed to understand something and we managed to do better, even if I still crashed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, I was coming up well, and I could aspire to get into the top seven, which was still a good result starting from the back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Malaysia, we restarted from the same point as Australia, I had a better feeling, and I was able to push.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSaturday in Sepang was a very positive day, we went through Q1, we took pole and won the sprint with an excellent pace, leaving everyone behind: a very dominant day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen, unfortunately, Sunday wasn&#8217;t such a great day for many reasons: seeing the accident in Moto3 and then starting\u2026 It wasn&#8217;t all very positive.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened afterwards certainly went unnoticed, but puncturing is something I&#8217;ve never heard of, and that happened too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt went a bit like that, but the race was going well and I was managing the gap to Alex Marquez well: I waited for the last five laps to try to get back up, even though it would have been tough anyway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the opportunity was there, and it went the way it went. However, it remains the positive of the weekend, so we arrive here with the same strength.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia has enjoyed strong form at Portimao over the years, with victories in 2023 and 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the Portuguese Grand Prix, he is five points down on Aprilia\u2019s Marco Bezzecchi <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1085791\/1\/ducati-backs-francesco-bagnaia-significant-motogp-third-battle-marc-marquez\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">in the fight for third in the standings<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia admits he\u2019d \u201cnever heard of\u201d a puncture affecting a MotoGP tyre prior to his Malaysian&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266794,"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-266793","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\/266793","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=266793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}