Marco Bezzecchi admitted it was a ‘shame’ to lose the MotoGP points lead following a tough Spanish Grand Prix weekend, citing a tough qualifying as the crux for his struggles.
The VR46 Ducati racer travelled to Jerez eight points clear of reigning premier class world champion Francesco Bagnaia following a strong opening trio of encounters – including a first ever win in the Argentina GP – though a tricky Friday saw him forced to contest Q1 on Saturday.
He then narrowly failed to escape the session, forcing him to start down in 13th for both the sprint and GP races – Bezzecchi managing to salvage a sole point in the former despite having originally crashed prior to a red flag that forced a full restart.
He showed decent pace in Sunday’s full-length encounter though and looked good to secure ninth, until a late crash at Turn 6 left him out on the spot – his incident thus dropping him 22 points adrift of new points leader Bagnaia who won the Spanish GP as well as took second in the sprint.
Bezzecchi was left disappointed that he wasn’t able to “get the result that was possible”, the Italian laying the blame for his tricky event primarily at being unable to escape Q1 in qualifying.
“I’m OK as fortunately it wasn’t a huge crash, it was a tough weekend for me but it is what it is and I’ll try to do a better job at Le Mans,” began Bezzecchi.
“I felt quite good overall this weekend and was fast, but unfortunately I messed up a bit in qualifying by not getting into Q2, so because of this everything became much more difficult.
“Starting from the back is always tough and the temperature of the tyres go very high, so I think I had a good feeling but I didn’t get the result that was possible.
“Apart from the championship, where I never look at the standings, it’s a shame for the weekend in general but we have Le Mans and a lot more races to go, so we’ll aim to bounce back and be strong in future.”
