Ducati Sporting Club UK > News Items > Ducati Press Releases > The Ducati Lenovo Team score more points in Austin sprint race: Enea Bastianini is sixth, Francesco Bagnaia eighth.

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MotoGP | Round 3 - Americas GP 2024 | Saturday 13 April 2024

The Ducati Lenovo Team score more points in Austin sprint race: Enea Bastianini is sixth, Francesco Bagnaia eighth.

• Two Desmosedici GP on the podium with Marc Márquez (Gresini Racing MotoGP) second and Jorge Martín (Pramac Racing) third

The Ducati Lenovo Team has tackled today the third sprint race of the 2024 MotoGP season at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas. From fifth place on the grid, Enea Bastianini crossed the finish line in sixth place, while Francesco Bagnaia, who headed the second row, finished eighth.

Bastianini had a good start to the race as he exited turn one in fourth position. The #23 rider, despite losing touch with the leading group, stayed in fourth until halfway in the encounter. In the final stages, he then lost some ground and dropped to seventh, before having the better of Miller and wrapping up the race in sixth place.

Bagnaia did not enjoy the perfect start and found himself stuck in the middle of the group of riders entering turn one and then down to tenth after a few corners. The reigning World Champion had a challenging time in getting up to speed especially in the first part of the encounter, but he did well in recovering two positions in the final laps and was eighth at the chequered flag.

The Sunday, 20-lap Americas GP race will get underway tomorrow at 21:00 local time (GMT -5).

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 6th
“It was a difficult race. I thought I would have challenged for the podium, but I lacked rear grip: I lost ground from the front runners straight away and then lost some positions. Fortunately, the situation then stabilised, and I managed to overtake Jack (Miller) towards the end and finished sixth. This is an issue that we hadn’t previously experienced this weekend, so we’ll have to look at the data with the team in order to understand what happened. I always showed a podium-worthy pace and that is the goal for tomorrow’s race, so I am positive.”

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 10th
“Unfortunately everything I had imagined for today did not happen. Until this morning all was perfect, so much so that I set the best lap in FP2 with a tyre that was beyond the number of laps of the sprint race. In the race today I was lapping one second slower and there was no way I could push; I was lacking rear grip, and the bike was sliding when opening the throttle on corner exit. If we also take into account the spinning at the start, I’d say everything went the wrong way. Now we need to stay focused and do some more work in the warmup in order to be ready for tomorrow’s race.”