Bagnaia’s COTA MotoGP race crash “100% not my fault”

Bagnaia dominated the sprint race at the Circuit of the Americas on Saturday having taken pole with a new lap record, and was leading the grand prix on Sunday when he crashed at Turn 2 on lap eight of 20.

It marked his second-successive grand prix crash, with Bagnaia throwing away 45 points in two rounds and dropping to 11 points behind Marco Bezzecchi in the standings.

Bagnaia was at a loss to explain his crash at COTA, and stated: “I don’t know what happened. I did, I don’t know how many laps this weekend, maybe 80, maybe 100, pushing, controlling, understanding any [feedback from the bike], any [time] I lost the front during the weekend.

“And then in the race when I was in total control I crashed. So, I’m very angry, but not with myself because I am 100% sure it wasn’t my fault today. In Argentina I recognised I was a bit on the limit, but today not.

"Today something happened, but not in terms of a cold tyre or the wind. We have to understand from the bike, because we have the best bike. It’s the best bike on the grid. But if you crash and you don’t know why it’s useless, because I lost 45 points in two weekends.

“So, we have to understand that, maybe we need a more unstable bike, I’d prefer to go one tenth closer but understand everything because right now it’s very difficult because I feel unbeatable, I feel I can do everything.

“Like today I was going fast but without taking any risk, without doing anything crazy, I was entering very calm in corner two because I knew it was more slippery and I still crashed.

“So, I really hope my team will help me with that because I’m sure the performance of the GP23 is incredible, the best bike I’ve ever ridden. But for the race we need to understand what happened.”

Bagnaia ruled out any atmospheric issues or tyre graining for his crash, and believes his crash is down to the fact he gets no feedback from the bike because of how stable it is.

“Maybe it has too much of a filter because it’s so stable,” he said. “Like I said, you feel that you can do everything because I feel unbeatable on my bike.

“Doing the time attack, managing the tyres, yesterday we demonstrated everything was perfect, the whole weekend was perfect. When I decided to push I was doing 2m03.0s and when I opened the gap I was constantly 2m03.4s, 2m03.5s.

“So, maybe we have to lose a bit of this stability to lose a bit of filter, to be more on the tyres because sincerely like this the bike is perfect but if you crash and lose 45 points something is not perfect.

“I’m just lucky two contenders are not in the championship right now, but this luck will end. We need to keep going working like we are doing but more focused on having a bike that gives me more advice.”

Bagnaia doesn’t believe the bike’s aerodynamics are causing this feedback “filter” issue because Ducati’s set-up is primarily for acceleration and braking.