Enea Bastianini will miss the remainder of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend at Jerez as problems with his injured shoulder persisted throughout practice.
The Italian suffered a broken shoulder blade injury in a crash with Luca Marini a month ago in the season opening Portuguese GP sprint race, forcing him to miss the subsequent Argentina and Americas outings before electing to make a return to competition in Spain.
Bastianini struggled for pace across Friday practice at Jerez as he ended up classified 21st overall, nearly 1.3 seconds down on pace-setter Aleix Espargaro’s Aprilia, though decided to continue riding in Saturday morning’s FP3 test to see if there was any improvement.
After completing a handful of laps though he elected to pull and in skip the rest of the weekend, the Italian focussing on a return to competitiveness for the French GP at Le Mans in two weeks time.
The news of his withdrawal was confirmed by Ducati Corse Team Manager Davide Tardozzi on the official MotoGP broadcast during FP3, Tardozzi revealing that Bastianini told him it was “too hard” to wrestle his Desmosedici with the ongoing ailment.
“He said it is too painful after a couple of laps, it is too hard to ride” said Tardozzi.
“We don’t want to take too many risks, so he decided to stop.”
Francesco Bagnaia will therefore fly the factory Ducati operations flag solo, the reigning MotoGP world champion looking to try and snatch the points lead back away from VR46’s Marco Bezzecchi having conceded it off the back of two consecutive crashes in the last couple of grands prix.
