Ducati Sporting Club UK > News Items > Ducati Press Releases > Sixth place for Francesco Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team in MotorLand Aragón’s practice. Enea Bastianini is fifteenth

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MotoGP | Round 12 - Aragon GP 2024 | Friday 30 August 2024

Sixth place for Francesco Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team in MotorLand Aragón’s practice. Enea Bastianini is fifteenth

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The Ducati Lenovo Team has completed the opening day of action at the MotorLand Aragón circuit in Alcañiz, Spain, the venue hosting the twelfth Grand Prix of the 2024 season. Francesco Bagnaia finished today’s Practice session in sixth place, while his teammate Enea Bastianini ended up fifteenth after a yellow flag situation led to the cancellation of his last flying lap.

Bagnaia and his crew had plenty of work to do at the end of a difficult free practice, which saw him struggling due to a lack of feeling with the front tyre. The current championship leader showed signs of improvement in the second half of the practice session, before making the difference in the final minutes with the soft rear tyre; Pecco made his way back to sixth position, earning the direct seed to tomorrow’s Qualifying 2, scheduled at 11:15 local time (GMT +2).

Bastianini experienced similar issues aboard his Ducati machine #23, after setting the ninth quickest time in the morning. After setting three encouraging splits in his final quick-lap attempt, his lap-time was cancelled due to a yellow flag situation due to Miller crashing out at the last corner moments before the arrival of the Italian rider. He will therefore partake in the first qualifying session at 10:50.

The 11-lap twelfth sprint race of the season will get underway at 15:00.

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 6th
“Unfortunately, after basically losing the morning session, we struggled to find the right direction. The one we took turned out to be the wrong one, then we went the opposite way. We managed to make a big step forward in the last run with the used medium tyre – as I improved by 0.7secs. When we put the soft tyre on the grip was a lot higher, maybe more than I expected. I lost some time in the last sector of the final lap due to a yellow flag, but still we managed to finish sixth; after all, in hindsight, it was a positive day.”

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 15th
“Today things turned out to be more difficult than expected, as we struggled to find the right direction. Because of that, we were late in everything: we put the time attack tyre on late compared to the other riders and I ended up with only one opportunity for a quick lap, which in the end got cancelled. It’s a shame because, had it not been cancelled, I would have been in the top ten, but now we’re kind of back to square one. The good news is that the direction we’ve taken appears to be the right one, but we lapped almost exclusively with the medium tyre, and it looks like that, right now, we’re not at the same level as our main rivals, so we’ll need to make another step. Surely, there’s still plenty of margin to improve.”