War of words: Davide Tardozzi refuses to buy Francesco Bagnaia’s take on the Le Mans incident

Bagnaia was careful with his words when discussing the brake problem that had affected him at Jerez and again at Le Mans. He felt certain it was a technical issue with the Ducati GP26, not rider error as Tardozzi suggested.

The 31-time MotoGP Grand Prix winner went into a little more detail when the issue forced him to retire from P9 in the Spanish GP. He had lacked the speed that the other GP26 riders still running displayed, as Alex Marquez won at Jerez and Fabio Di Giannantonio secured P3.

“A little [problem],” Bagnaia told TNT Sports after the Spanish GP. “The team are working on it to understand the situation, but something that unluckily can happen.

“I started the race a bit uncomfortable, but I was able to remain quite competitive. But lap-by-lap I was getting worse and worse, and I just needed to stop… It was just very difficult to reduce the speed.”

Bagnaia led Ducati’s charge before his crash at Le Mans last Sunday, while VR46’s Di Giannantonio finished again as top Ducati in fourth place. While he didn’t mention specific issues after Le Mans, he did say it felt similar to what happened at Jerez.

“The crash was the result of a problem,” he said via GPOne. “The same one I had in Jerez.”

But once he arrived in Barcelona for this weekend’s Catalan Grand Prix, Bagnaia echoed Tardozzi’s view that his Le Mans crash wasn’t down to a technical fault with the bike. Instead, he pointed out that Ducati has since identified what really happened.

“We found it, but it wasn’t a technical problem,” Bagnaia said via AS. “Everything is fine. It was more of a feeling issue, and it won’t happen again. It wasn’t human error either, but I won’t go into details.

“When it’s the first time after a season and a half that you’re getting fast again, fighting for position and you crash – damn – I was very sad about this one.”

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