RiderTua.com – The strength, intelligence and foresight of Ducati engineers received praise for Pecco Bagnaia’s victory in the opening race of the MotoGP season in Qatar. The defending champion was only P4 in the sprint due to unexpected problems with his GP24. But overnight his bike was set-up with an alternative that allowed him to ride a longer race to mark the start of the title fight. Not using ‘remote’ as netizens are talking about..
Sylvain Guintoli (BMW test rider) said, “He was behind in the sprint. He had a setback in the short race. Much slower than Aleix Espargaro. But they processed the data and came out to fight in Sunday’s race. They have to hand it to Bagnaia, when the pressure was on, he set the start, a great first lap, very aggressive and raced in a great way. He was very impressive in the way he did it. It was difficult to stay calm and not make any mistakes.”

Ducati Successfully Collected Data Before Pecco Bagnaia Beat Jorge Martin at the Qatar GP
Meanwhile Michael Laverty said, “He has no equal. No one could touch him when the starting lights went out. There was one overtake at turn 4, but then he was able to beat it and had a good rhythm. There is a clear advantage because his tires are in optimal condition in terms of temperature and surface pressure. He made no mistakes. Very smooth. It was a very special performance.”
Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM) also managed to beat Jorge Martin (Pramac Ducati) to finish 2nd behind Pecco Bagnaia in Qatar. Regarding the duel between Binder vs Martin, Laverty explained, “They did spend 0.1 seconds on each other. They took a wide racing line and struggled in the corner.”
According to Laverty, both of them (Binder-Martin) are aggressive and want to be the people who can fight Pecco, but according to him Pecco is too perfect, it looks like Pecco deserves to be number one. He had more time left if he needed to respond. Brad is a fighter, he will never give up. Martin is also a fighter. But sometimes they need to adjust in the race to get into their rhythm, added Laverty.

Sylvain Guintoli Praises Pecco
Sylvain Guintoli also praised Francesco Bagnaia’s team. That it was amazing to see the factory Ducati team solve the problem, the puzzle, for Sunday’s race. “Again they were amazing,” he said. “He struggled this weekend. OK, in pre-season testing he was ahead of all the riders. But until Saturday night Pecco really struggled, he had no grip at all at the end of the sprint race. “Here he is, on the same tires he had managed to solve the problem and get it working over the race distance. “This is why he became world champion twice in a row,” said the test rider from Spain.
Guintoli added, “It was like an arm wrestling match. They did lose time and lost contact with Pecco because of that duel. They wanted to be behind Pecco.”
Martin won Saturday’s sprint but suffered vibration problems throughout the first series of 2024 in Qatar. According to him, Martin is very worried… “We can tell from the interview and his attitude. In the interview with Gino Borsoi on the grid, he was very pessimistic about the long race because they had vibration problems in the sprint and since the test,” he said.
“They don’t have a solution to this problem yet. He is very happy with the result after the doubts they experienced, even though Martin won the sprint race,” concluded Guintoli.