Bagnaia explains the absurd fall alone in free practice in Barcelona: “I was scared”

The weekend in which the fight for the world title is decided began in a completely unusual way for the reigning champion Pecco Bagnaia. In the first session of free practice for the Barcelona GPfinal round of the MotoGP 2024in fact Piedmontese was the protagonist of a strange fall that aroused a lot of curiosity (and even a pinch of hilarity).

The Ducati rider it proceeded slowly on the long straight after having done a starting test, right at that moment however, as you approached Turn 1yes Behind came Maverick Vinales at high speed who, following the trajectory, went to the outside to set up the right curve. After the Spaniard from Aprilia passed by him (without touching him in the slightest) Bagnaia suddenly squeezed the entire brake lever, thus seeing the front end close, end up on the ground and slide on the gravel. Something very strange if you take into account the fact that it was proceeding very slowly.

A fall which had no consequences for the Italian rider but which made him very angry so much so that both while he was sliding and when he got up after ending up in the gravel he constantly railed against Maverick Vinales who, at least from what we saw from the outside, does not seem to have any fault in the fall of the reigning world champion. Once his anger had cooled off, Bagnaia returned to the track for pre-qualifying where he finished with the best time of the session with the current world championship leader Jorge Martin who instead finished in fifth position, three tenths behind the Piedmontese (however also hitting the main objective which was to finish in the top-10 and thus gain a direct pass to Q2 of Saturday’s qualifying).

At the end of the round, in the post-pre-qualifying media session, the Ducati rider also returned to the strange accident he had experienced in the morning, explaining the dynamics of the singular fall and also the reason why he got very angry with Vinales at that moment: “I think it’s a mistake for both of us, because I think it’s a free practice starting session and honestly my mistake was going slow in turn 1. When I started it wasn’t that I made a mistake, but the tire was very worn and it slipped. I didn’t want to go to the limiter with the gears, because with the engines we are a bit at the limit. I heard that Maverick was coming from behind, but I didn’t expect him to come out with the bike like that and I got scared and lost the bike in front” Pecco Bagnaia explained, revealing the cause of the strange fall in FP1 in Barcelona.