{"id":295148,"date":"2025-11-19T16:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295148\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T16:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:08:07","slug":"pecco-bagnaia-slower-than-nicolo-bulega-but-i-dont-care-he-was-working-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295148\/","title":{"rendered":"Pecco Bagnaia slower than Nicolo Bulega but \u201cI don\u2019t care, he was working well\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Francesco Bagnaia says he doesn\u2019t \u201ccare what people say\u201d after he was beaten by Nicolo Bulega in the headline times at the Valencia MotoGP test.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Bagnaia and Bulega have shared the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/teams\/ducati-lenovo-team\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ducati Lenovo Team<\/a> box since the penultimate round of the 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MotoGP<\/a> season in Portimao, as Bulega, following the conclusion of the WorldSBK season, was made available to replace the injured <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1654\/marc-marquez\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Marquez<\/a> who won\u2019t be back on a Desmosedici until next February in Sepang.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Bagnaia ended his Valencia test pleased with the work he managed to complete and reported that he had been able to build some feeling with the front end of the bike, something that had been missing all season in 2025.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But the Italian also suffered a crash when he pushed for a time attack, and ended up two places behind Bulega in 10th, Bagnaia ending the test on a 1:29.731 compared to Bulega\u2019s 1:29.661.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Bagnaia, though, was complimentary about his temporary teammate\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI don\u2019t care what people say,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/911999\/francesco-bagnaia\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Francesco Bagnaia<\/a> said when it was put to him that people might view his test negatively because he was slower than Bulega.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cHonestly, I think Nicolo [Bulega] did a very good day, was working well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe lap time he did in this run was very good.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cBut, honestly, I was focused on myself and knowing that maybe the time attack could help. [&#8230;] I didn\u2019t get the chance because I crashed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bulega: \u201cI did some laps with no stress\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For Bulega, the Valencia test was a first chance to ride the Desmosedici without pressure, since his first day on the bike was limited to 30 laps on a damp track in Jerez, and since then he has been riding on race weekends.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It was thanks to this that he was able to improve his performance at the end of the day, even with the lack of running in the morning due to the damp track surface after overnight rain.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cHonestly, in the test it\u2019s better for me now because I needed some laps with no pressure and with time to improve,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/wsbk\/racer\/1043899\/nicolo-bulega\" data-entity-type=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nicolo Bulega<\/a> said.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIt was very important for me today because [&#8230;] it\u2019s difficult to improve in a race weekend because you don\u2019t have a lot of time, you feel a lot of pressure, you have to be fast always \u2013 in any condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cSo, for me, today was a very great test because we made a programme; unfortunately [it] didn\u2019t help this morning for the weather, but in the afternoon I did some laps with no stress, talk with my team, make some improvement, and then at the end of the day I was much faster, much more confident with the bike, and also the lap time was quite good.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI did a mistake in my fastest lap, could be even two-tenths better. But, anyway, I\u2019m happy for the test because now I start to feel a bit more the MotoGP.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For the Italian it was important to make a step forward in the test to prove that he could progress on the MotoGP bike after two weekends where it was difficult to find improvements.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe dream of every rider is going to MotoGP, also mine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cSo, I will work a lot for this. I think today [Tuesday] I go home a bit with a bigger smile because, okay, during the race weekend it\u2019s always difficult because you don\u2019t have time; but today, doing the things like everybody, with more calm, we showed that we can improve a lot so I\u2019m happy for this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francesco Bagnaia says he doesn\u2019t \u201ccare what people say\u201d after he was beaten by Nicolo Bulega in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,8456,7607,806,805,803,804,6909,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-295148","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-lenovo-team","11":"tag-francesco-bagnaia","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-nicolo-bulega","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295148","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=295148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}