RiderTua.com – Marco Bezzecchi was only able to finish in 11th position in the sprint race and 14th in the main race of the Qatar GP. This means that the adaptation from GP22 to GP23 is still experiencing problems. A bad start to the 2024 season is truly worrying.
“Unfortunately, it was a tough Sunday for me. We had made progress in the warm-up session and I was happy because finally I felt quite good on the bike. But then as soon as the race started, the front of my bike immediately locked up and I still can’t explain why.” Bez explained.
What Happened to Marco Bezzecchi at the Qatar GP?
Marco Bezzecchi added, “At that time I started to lose sensation when braking and when entering corners, so I started opening the throttle earlier because something was missing in terms of speed. This caused my rear tire to wear out earlier. I tried to manage the situation, But with 11 laps remaining I had moved to mapping C, which has less power, and there was still half the race left.”
Bezzecchi felt this was a very difficult weekend for him. Bez and the team found some interesting things, but they also found it very difficult to straighten out a weekend that started off the wrong way. In Portimao they hope to find a better base from Friday to do better on Saturday and also Sunday, added the Pertamina Enduro VR46 rider.
Last season Bezzecchi won 3 races with the Ducati GP22. This year he chose to stay with mentor Valentino Rossi’s VR46 team on a 1 year old bike rather than accept a promotion to the Pramac team where he will ride the newly developed Desmosedici GP24.
BTW, Marc Marquez is one of the riders who has made much better progress than Bezzecchi on the same bike. “Obviously I looked the fastest, but Marc and Alex Marquez and my team-mates had the same bike as me and managed to be faster than me, both in terms of time attack and race pace. So I wanted to concentrate and study the data to understand what I was missing and why now I can’t do what they do,” said Vito Bezzecchi’s son.
What happened? Bezzecchi answered, “I don’t feel the front tire when braking, the bike doesn’t turn and for this reason I lose speed when going and I open the throttle too late. Or I enter the corner too slowly, precisely because the bike doesn’t turn, so I open the throttle too early and that way I ran out of tires,” he said. Bez is having a hard time, but he’s working a lot, so he’ll get there. It was a frustrating situation, but also motivating at the same time.
