Bagnaia identifies key issue - ‘up until 3am’ watching videos to fix it

Previously able to gain an advantage on the brakes, Bagnaia explained after India that he has been struggling in that area for the past two rounds.

“The maximum objective is to find my feeling on the braking. I’m sure we will do it,” Bagnaia said at Motegi on Thursday.

Aggressive rear wheel slides have been the source of Bagnaia’s problems.

“My feeling is that I’m braking the same but I’m not stopping the bike,” he said. “So it’s quite difficult because the rear is not helping me on braking.

“Also when I crashed [in India] it was as soon as the rear came back in line with the front.

“Normally I can manage this. But my slides, last week, on the entrance to the corners were too unstable and it was difficult to control it.”

While the Ducati engineers have been combing through the data in search of a fix, the reigning world champion revealed he has been studying video footage.

“On Monday night at 3am I was watching videos of the braking points at the last three rounds. Viewing it was easy to understand what was wrong. The rear was doing something strange,” he said.

“Normally, it is a normal slide which I can control, in the last weekends the rear slide was over the limit. We understand that. We decided to go a different way this weekend, we will start with two set-ups to understand the way to follow. It is clear, for us, to improve that area.”

IN contrast to a year ago, when he was hunting down Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, Bagnaia is now ‘the prey’ with Martin 13 points adrift and Buddh winner Marco Bezzecchi 44 from the top.

“I am the prey,” he smiled. “Right now, there are 14 races still. I don’t feel in have more pressure. Last year was more intense, a title [Ducati] were missing from 15 years.

“Now I know perfectly if everything is okay we can fight for the win, in a bad moment we can [still] finish second or third. We must focus on being perfect, we can be competitive always. I’m not too worried.”