More than one Sprint Racea remake of “Aren’t Horses Killed That Way Too?”: that of Jerez was a short race full of adrenaline, twists and turns and the grotesquewith well 11 pilots killed (many of them in the same section of the track). Among them too Francesco Bagnaia, who ended up sprawling during the intense fight at the start of the Sprint.
The accident that ousted Bagnaia from the Sprint Race
The dynamic involved three pilots: Marco Bezzecchi he tried to put Pecco inside, with Brad Binder previously engaged against the poleman Marc Marquez for the top positions behind them. The KTM rider, however, wanted to take advantage of some light between the two Italian rivals, with an attempt to slip inside the curve next to Bagnaia, which ended up in the middle between the two opponents. The world champion then crashed, not finishing his Sprint and taking home zero points with Jorge Martin, winner of the fast race, increasingly further away in the standings (he is currently +42 behind the official Ducati rider).
Tardozzi controversial with Binder, but Guidotti: “There was no intentionality”
The Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi, while the race was in progress, he commented to Sky Sport: “It seems to me that Binder exaggerated a little. Did he really have to go in there?“. For the record, the Race Commissioners did not detect any irregularities, declassifying the fact as a normal racing accident. And although the KTM team manager Francesco Guidotti stated that “in the event of an accident there is always a responsibility“, he also added: “I don’t think there was any intention or anything else. Right decision.”
In any case, Bagnaia, compared to the rest of the team, did not pay for the asphalt made treacherous by the morning rains which transformed several sections into a trap of damp and risky patches (as also underlined by Max Biaggi on Sky Sport: conditions over which Maverick Vinales argued post-Sprint), but because of the brawl in the race. Pecco paid for standing in the way of Binder’s ambitions, but in his opinion in the Sprints the drivers let themselves go more than they should.
Bagnaia: “Binder’s vein has closed”
Speaking in the in-depth feature of Sky Sport MotoGP, the Ducati rider explained, with a controversial tone: “It happened that Binder’s vein closed when Marquez overtook him in turn 9, throwing it out a little. Then in the last corner he launched himself a little hard on the inside, with the risk of knocking us both to the ground. I don’t pay, in turn 1 he went over the curb to overtake two of them, and I ended up in the middle of it”.
Then he continued: “Up until then I wasn’t satisfied anyway, because it’s as if the Sprint Race drives the drivers to be crazy. They change direction in a senseless way, sometimes you find yourself taking advantage of the situation by overtaking, but sometimes you instead find yourself in the middle of sandwiches and trouble. By using the same long race strategy in the Sprint you can do just as well.”
“The feeling with the bike was good thanks to a change we made”
In other words, there is no point in taking risks in the fast race when you can use the same approach as in the Sunday one. Bagnaia then added: “What Binder did made no sense.” Then, regarding tomorrow, he concluded: “My pace behind the others was a bit slow, but tomorrow there should be different conditions, with sunshine and no spots on the asphalt. In any case the feeling with the bike was good and I was managing to do what I wanted to do, because we made a fairly big change with one detail of the bike, which was making a difference.”
MotoGP, Spanish GP: timetable, info, where to watch qualifying and the Jerez Sprint on TV and streaming
