Enea Bastianini, the champion of the French Grand Prix, believes Francesco Bagnaia would not choose him as his Ducati MotoGP teammate in 2023 since “it could be a trouble for him.”
Bastianini clinched the French Grand Prix at Le Mans on Sunday after a short battle with Bagnaia, who made an error while dominating on circuit 21 of 27 and crashed out a few circuits later.
Bastianini won his 3rd race of the season atop his Gresini-run 2021-spec Ducati, putting him just eight points behind the title leader.
It also comes at a key time for his MotoGP career, since he is one of the possibilities to replace Jack Miller at the factory Ducati team upcoming season, alongside Jorge Martin, who wrecked at Le Mans.
“I don’t know. I’m not the Ducati boss,” Bastianini remarked when questioned by Motorsport.com on Sunday at Le Mans if he believed he was forcing Ducati to move him to its factory team.
“But I think my situation is better in respect to the other Ducati riders.
“Pecco yesterday said he’d prefer to stay with Jack [as a teammate]. And I think his decision, I don’t know if Ducati wants to listen to him.
“But, also in the case of staying at Gresini or other [teams] with a factory package I can be fast.”
I think he prefers Miller because he is the leader of Ducati and he knows the potential of me, and also I think of Martin. It can be a problem for him,” Bastianini said when questioned why he thinks Bagnaia would probably want to keep Miller as his teammate.
When challenged about this, Bagnaia rejected it, saying that he thinks Bastianini deserves the call-up if it comes, and that if he had an option, he would pick Miller since they have been together since 2019.
“Jack is my teammate form 2019 and I know him very well,” Bagnaia said.
“So, it’s normal that if you had to choose a mate to share your box with, it’s the man you have more conversations with, spend more time with.
“So, Jack is my first choice because he is a friend, he is a good teammate, I like to work with him.
“But it’s something that the team has to choose. If it will be Enea, if it will be Martin for me it will be the same story. I’ve always had a good relationship with all my teammates. Enea I think deserves the place because, in Austin he was so competitive and today he won the race.”
Bagnaia believes his accident in Sunday’s French GP was “weird” because he wasn’t pushing hard enough and that he is “mad” as a consequence.
“When Bastianini overtook me, I did just the same strategy as in Aragon [last year] when I fought with Marc [Marquez],” he said.
“So, I tried to be in front of him as soon as possible. But then I did a mistake in Turn 8. I just tried to brake a bit harder, but the front locking was heavy, so I just went straight.
“I braked maybe too hard. When I was off and I was back on track, I just thought ‘no pressure, I will retake him’.
“My idea was not to recover to him as fast as I can because I knew it was easy to make a mistake.
“But arriving into the second-last corner I arrived a bit slower and I crashed. So, it was a bit strange. I was remaining on my pace, so everything was ok.
“The only thing changed was that I raced with the medium. But I don’t think that was the problem of the crash.
“I don’t know why, I did Turn 11 slower to breathe a bit. And then when I arrived to the second last corner I crashed. It’s very difficult to understand and I’m a bit angry now.”
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