Ducati Sporting Club UK > News Items > Ducati Press Releases > Third place for Bastianini and the Ducati Lenovo Team in Buriram Practice. Bagnaia is fourth

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MotoGP | Round 18 - Thai GP 2024 | Friday 25 October 2024

Third place for Bastianini and the Ducati Lenovo Team in Buriram Practice. Bagnaia is fourth

• Four Ducatis in the top four: Márc Marquez – with the Desmosedici GP of Gresini Racing MotoGP – sets the new outright lap record of the Thai track, finishing first ahead of Jorge Martín (Pramac Racing Team)

The Ducati Lenovo Team has enjoyed a positive opening day at the Chang International Circuit, in what is the eighteenth and third-last Grand Prix of the season. Enea Bastianini finished Practice in third place, followed by his teammate Francesco Bagnaia in fourth position.

Bastianini worked hard to find the right feeling with his Ducati machine around the Thai circuit, which has very different characteristics compared to the previous one on the calendar both with regards to layout and temperatures. After a sixth place in Free Practice, Enea had a small crash in the early part of the Practice session at turn three and was able to return to action ten minutes later. In the final stages, he managed to make his way up to third, only 162 thousandths of a second shy of today’s best time.

Bagnaia showed a consistent performance throughout the day as he tried different tyre options at the front-end of his Ducati in today’s two sessions. The reigning world champion stayed near the top of the classification for the most part and eventually logged a 1:29.360secs lap-time with few minutes left to secure fourth place at the chequered flag, with a 33-millisecond gap from his teammate.

The Ducati Lenovo Team will be back in action tomorrow morning at 10:10 local time (GMT +7) for the second Free Practice session, which will be followed by Q2 at 11:15 and by the 13-lap, Thai Grand Prix sprint race, scheduled to get underway at 15:00.

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 3rd
“The Practice session went well, crash aside, and we kept improving lap after lap. This morning, my confidence was not ideal, and I was unable to push as hard as I wanted. Things went better this afternoon, and I felt comfortable, but at the moment we’re missing something pace-wise. We must improve the bike stability: I still cannot brake as hard as Martín and (Marc) Márquez, but I believe we can make another step forward tomorrow. It’s only a matter of details.”

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 4th
“As it happened last weekend in Phillip Island, we did go the wrong way set-up wise in the Practice session. Before the time attack, we went in the opposite direction and it worked; I’m happy, because we ended up being a little ahead of schedule with the set-up work and to be in a good position is surely a positive thing. The time attack was good, especially as it wasn’t the cleanest of laps. The goal was to be in the top ten, so let’s see what we can do to improve some more tomorrow morning.