Bastianini ‘not pressured’ by outsider status in 2022 MotoGP title battle

The Gresini rider beat future factory Ducati team-mate Francesco Bagnaia by 0.042 seconds in a thrilling Aragon GP on Sunday.

His fourth win of the season netted Ducati its third-successive constructors’ championship, but also put the Italian into an outside title challenger position after a crash for points leader Fabio Quartararo meant Bastianini’s deficit was reduced to 48 with five races to run.

But Bastianini thinks this gap is “too much” for him to close in the remaining races, and is instead simply focused on ensuring he is fighting at the front in every grand prix now.,

“The team told me Quartararo crashed after the race. During the race I didn’t know this,” Bastianini said when asked if he considered himself a title challenger now.

“48 points for me is too much to close this gap, but I want to continue in this direction to be competitive in the last part of the championship.

“I want to take it race-by-race. I have a good set-up for my future, and I think this is positive.

“The championship is important and now I’m closer to Fabio, to Pecco, to Aleix [Espargaro].

“But this for me is not a pressure for the moment because I have to recover a lot of points and what I say is I have to see this race by race what happens.

“The most important thing for me is to start on the top like in the last three races, the first row or second row, because if you are behind it’s difficult to do a good job in the race.

“And my target for the moment is the races, not the championship.”

Enea Bastianini, Gresini Racing

Photo by: Dorna

Bastianini made his decisive move on Bagnaia for the lead of the race on the last lap at Turn 7.

Having been close to several moves in the laps building up to his overtake, Bastianini admitted he only knew his Turn 7 pass was on two corners before.

“I didn’t think about which corner to try to do this overtake,” Bastianini added.

“But when I saw Pecco really close at Turn 5, I thought ‘Ok, now it’s the time to try the overtake’. And at Turn 7 I was really strong in this race.”