Ducati Sporting Club UK > News Items > Ducati Press Releases > Francesco Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team in the lead on opening day at Misano. Enea fourth quickest in Practice

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MotoGP | Round 14 - Emilia Romagna GP 2024 | Friday 20 September 2024

Francesco Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team in the lead on opening day at Misano. Enea fourth quickest in Practice

• Four Ducati machines in the top four: Jorge Martín is second with the Desmosedici GP of Pramac Racing Team, followed by Marc Márquez (Gresini Racing MotoGP)

The Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix started off in a positive way for the Ducati Lenovo Team, with Francesco Bagnaia who set the fastest time in Practice aboard his Ducati machine #1, while Enea Bastianini climbed up the timesheets to fourth in the afternoon session, slightly more than three tenths of a second from his teammate.

In what is the second racing weekend of the season at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’, the reigning world champion finished FP1 – held under mixed conditions due to the previous days’ torrential rain – in fourth place. Courtesy also to a much-improved fitness condition, Bagnaia dictated the pace from the beginning of the afternoon’s Practice session as he consistently stayed in the top positions. With nine minutes left, Pecco topped the timesheets with a 1:30.286secs lap-time and improved by 18 milliseconds the outright best lap he had already rewritten two weeks prior.

After the morning’s twelfth place finish, Bastianini put together a solid performance in Practice as he kept himself within the top ten while working on his feeling with the medium rear tyre. In the final stages of the afternoon session, Enea got closer to the top position by setting a 1’30.607secs lap-time – despite a mistake in the fourth sector of the track – and therefore earning the direct seed to Q2, taking place tomorrow from 11:15 local time (GMT +2).

The 13-lap, fourteenth sprint race of the season will get underway at 15:00.

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 1st
“We started the day with the same set up, as in the previous event the limit was imposed by my fitness condition. After all the rain that came down, the feeling with the track was quite strange but that’s quite normal. This is why I must add that the lap-times set today, especially by me and Martín, were incredible, especially with regards to the race pace. The conditions tomorrow will be different: there’ll be a lot more rubber down but it should also be cooler, so I believe the medium option will be the tyre choice and if that’s so, we’ll need to pay attention in the left-hand corners.”

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 4th
“Overall the day went well, and we improved lap after lap. I still struggle a little with the medium rear tyre, as it happened last time out, as I can’t get it into temperature on the left side in the early laps. We still need to work on the fourth sector as I keep losing ground there, but the time attack went well, despite a small mistake right there in the T4. Despite that, I’m confident ahead of tomorrow.”