HARD TYRE THE WRONG CHOICE FOR DUCATI DUO

Both Francesco Bagnaia and his Ducati teammate Aussie Jack Miller believe that their hard tyre gamble resulted in them crashing out of the race at Turn 15.

Bagnaia almost had victory in the bag, he led 22 of the 25 laps and had begun to pull away from his race long challenger Marc Marquez when his crash occurred.

Miller fell early, as he was trying to protect his championship contending teammate from the Marquez onslaught.

Bagnaia and Miller both made the same last-minute call to run with a hard-front tyre.

The Ducati duo felt it was the tyre to be on in with warmer track temperatures, however just moments before the start of the race, clouds came in covering up the sun and caused track temperatures to plummet.

The factory Ducati riders were the only riders to commit to the hard tyre and both fell at Turn 15.

“It was one of those things, the hard tyre looked like a clear choice for me at about 1 o’clock and then the clouds sort of started rolling,” Miller recalled.

“As Moto2 was about to go out I went to check the track temperature, it looked mint, like 24-25 degrees, I thought it was fantastic but the air temperature was quite cold and as soon as those clouds sort of rolled in and got a little bit chillier.

“The locking was an issue with the medium front, so I wanted to try the hard.

“As you can see by myself and Pecco (Bagnaia) it worked fantastic everywhere around the track apart from Turn 15.

“I was being pretty careful there but anyway I couldn’t manage to keep it up, so devastated for myself, devastated for the team, devastated for the fans at home.”

When asked if he would make the same decision with hindsight Miller said that it would be a difficult call, explaining that the speed was actually very good.

“That’s a difficult one,” he said. “Prior to the race I was kind of fixed on the hard, even though we hadn’t rode it all weekend.

“I knew from the test and even seeing Jorge’s (Martin) crash, the medium locks quite a lot in a straight line, so I didn’t really want to have that feeling.

“If we could just have that maybe one or two degrees track temp more, would have been sweet, but dropped away there at the end and we weren’t able to stay on, hindsight is a great thing, but no point looking at it, we’ll learn from this and move forward.”

Bagnaia’s crash not only threw away a race victory, but it also handed Yamaha rider, Fabio Quartararo, his maiden MotoGP title, a championship fight which should have continued on to Portimao in a fortnight’s time.

“I’m a bit frustrated but not angry,” said Bagnaia. “We tried to do all (we could), maybe we chose the hard front that was better for me, but maybe not for the conditions.

“But it was the only tyre that gave me this feeling with the bike so I tried, I pushed it a lot.

“The pace today was incredible and then I crashed. I’m just happy with the work done this year.

“I was on the limit, today I was winning or gravel, so I tried and I take the gravel.

“I was a bit frustrated because it was another win. But, when you try like this and if the only possibility was to win, we were demonstrating that we were at the top again, so we have to be happy.”

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