After crashing in qualifying, Pecco Bagnaia still lined up second on the grid for Saturday’s Sprint, but suffered a nightmare start, dropping to 14th before running into the gravel. He quickly pulled into the pits to end his afternoon early, losing ground to championship leader Jorge Martin. Sylvain Guintoli labelled it an “absolute disaster” as he speculated on what had happened.
Former Superbike world champion Sylvain Guintoli told TNT Sports it could have been “a bit of smoke” that put an end to Pecco Bagnaia’s horrific French Grand Prix Sprint.
The reigning world champion dropped to third in the riders’ championship despite starting on the front row at Le Mans, with bike trouble costing him dearly at the start and eventually putting an end to his race.
Bagnaia went from second to 14th off the line and his attempted recovery stalled when he ran wide into the gravel. The Italian subsequently pulled into the pits to retire, leaping off his Ducati and immediately hunting for a fire extinguisher.
As Jorge Martin’s victory extended the Spaniard’s lead at the top of the standings, Bagnaia’s difficult afternoon meant he has been jumped by Enea Bastianini as well, and now sits just six points ahead of Marc Marquez who occupies sixth place.
“It went from bad to worse, you start like that, lose a lot of time and then you have got less speed, no momentum, the exact opposite of what happened to Marc and you are on the receiving end,” Guintoli told TNT Sports.
“Into Musee, the rear locks up in a weird way before tipping it in and he goes wide, then brings the bike back in. He definitely will have had a problem there, maybe the crash in qualifying, obviously from qualifying to the race there is no chance to run the bikes so maybe something went wrong if he used the same bike.
“He went to pick up the extinguisher, and that normally means he must have seen a bit of smoke or something so you just never know. Maybe it could have been something going wrong with his ride-height device.”
After crashing in qualifying along with polesitter Martin, both riders pulled wheelies off the line at the start of the Sprint but while his rival was quick to get his bike under control en route to victory, Bagnaia took much longer to force his front wheel down and was immediately swamped.
The ride-height device is intended to lower the bike’s centre of gravity to prevent wheelies while accelerating, but Bagnaia gave no more insight into the problem as he prepared for Sunday’s race.
By contrast, Marc Marquez rescued his Saturday with a stunning start, jumping from 13th to sixth and eventually finishing as runner-up to Martin.
“Absolute disaster for Pecco, he is in trouble already when he gets to the line, and it’s just not going to happen for him,” Guintoli added.
“Nothing is working, off the line it is an absolute disaster for him, the bike just does not take off, there is no power in there, no performance there, we are going to find out what happened but definitely something goes wrong for Pecco.”
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