Ducati Sporting Club UK > News Items > Ducati Press Releases > Francesco Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team at the top in Misano Practice. Fifth place for Enea Bastianini

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MotoGP | Round 13 - San Marino GP | Friday 6 September 2024

Francesco Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team at the top in Misano Practice. Fifth place for Enea Bastianini

• Five Ducati machines in the top 5, with Marc Márquez (Gresini Racing MotoGP) second and Pramac Racing Team’s Jorge Martín and Franco Morbidelli third and fourth, respectively.

The Ducati Lenovo Team started on the right foot the San Marino and Rimini Riviera Grand Prix at Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ on the right foot, with Francesco Bagnaia topping the timesheet in Practice and Enea Bastianini fifth at the chequered flag.

Still dealing with pain after last Sunday’s crash at MotorLand Aragón, Bagnaia had a good feeling straight away with his Ducati #1 machine in free practice – as he finished the session in eight place. The reigning world champion showed a good pace in the first half of the afternoon session, with a series of quick laps in his second run. Pecco then make the difference in the time attack as he first broke the 1’31secs barrier with three minutes left before further improving in his final attempt by lapping in 1’30.685secs.

Bastianini had a bit more of a difficult time, compared to his teammate, in getting up to speed in this opening day of action. After the thirteenth place in free practice, Enea spent most of the afternoon session outside the top ten, but then climbed the classification in the final stages courtesy of a 1’31.067secs lap-time, which resulted in a fifth-place finish and allowed him to also earn the direct seed to tomorrow’s Qualifying 2 session, which will get underway at 11:15 local time (GMT +2).

The thirteenth sprint race of the season will begin at 15:00 and will be contested over a 13-lap distance.

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 1st
“This morning it was hard without painkillers, while this afternoon things got better and I managed to be fast. The main problem is at the start of the session and whenever I get back on track as it’s hard to even tuck in due to the pain in both shoulders. Once we get a few laps in, things improve. We still managed to find a solution that allows me to focus on my riding and not on the pain. Today we mainly worked on the set-up with the medium rear tyre, even though as we saw with Jorge (Martín) the soft option can easily hold well for the whole sprint race distance. The choice for tomorrow won’t be an easy one. At the moment, Martín and (Marc) Márquez are our main rivals: they are both competitive despite the fact that they interpret the track very differently, even compared to me, but this is a very complete track and each of us have an edge in different areas of the track.”

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 5th
“It’s always great to race at your home track! The day was quite a complicated one, especially at the beginning, as I wasn’t very comfortable with the medium rear tyre. I was losing a lot of ground mid-corner as the rear was always sliding. This problem wasn’t there with the soft tyre, but we still must address this issue with the medium tyre because we may have to use it on Sunday. Despite this detail, the general feeling is good and definitely better at the front-end compared to Aragón; let’s see if we can find the right solution tomorrow.”