Bagnaia at a loss to explain "strange" problem in MotoGP sprint

Francesco Bagnaia is mystified about the exact cause of the issue that caused him to retire his factory Ducati after a nightmare in the MotoGP sprint at the Austrian Grand Prix.

After an encouraging start to the weekend and qualifying third, ahead of his nemesis and team-mate Marc Marquez, Bagnaia got nothing but wheelspin as he tried to get the power down at the start of the race.

The lurid moment at the green light effectively put him out of contention as he sank towards the back of the field. He struggled on for eight laps but retired the bike after he had dropped to last place.

But Bagnaia explained after the race that something had been wrong even before he reached the startline – and that things still weren’t right after his sorry getaway.

“I started super bad, but already on the warm-up lap I felt very strange [on the] rear wheel. Already exiting Turn 3 on the warm-up lap I understood that something was strange. The bike started to spin a lot, even when I was on the straight.

“After three laps I had completely finished the rear tyre. I had a lot of shaking on the straights. Then I arrived at Turn 1 without brakes because the shaking made the pads open.

Bagnaia (63) was already in deep trouble after the start of the sprint race

Photo by: Jure Makovec / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

“I decided to stop because I think that more than this was already too much. I’m just waiting for the engineers to explain to me what happened because honestly it’s quite strange. I need some explanation to know better what to do.”

One contributing factor to Bagnaia’s start may have been his grid slot’s position on the dirty side of the circuit. Gresini Ducati rider Fermin Aldeguer, starting behind Bagnaia on the second row, encountered similar trouble with his getaway.

As for the technical issue, Bagnaia said he had encountered similar problems in the sprint races in Qatar and Barcelona in 2023.

“It was really strange because I was expecting to have the pace to fight for the podium, but unluckily nothing worked. So let’s see if I can do something better tomorrow.”