The Ducati Lenovo Team enjoyed a positive opening day at the Mandalika Circuit, the venue hosting this weekend the fifteenth Grand Prix of the season. Following the recent race success at Misano, Enea Bastianini finished today’s Practice session in first place as he also set the new outright lap record for the Indonesian track in 1’29.630. Francesco Bagnaia was fourth and only 82 thousandths of a second away from his teammate.
Bastianini showed some good speed from the start aboard his Demosedici GP machine #23 as he was eighth quickest in Free Practice. Enea then spent most of the afternoon session in the upper part of the classification, as he was competitive on the longer run as well as on the single-lap performance. With the soft rear tyre, he first moved up to second place with eleven minutes left, before taking first position three minutes later. During his last quick lap attempt, he was en route to a further improvement before being slowed down by a rider in front of him.
The first day of action in Indonesia was not as easy for Bagnaia, who struggled to find the right feeling aboard his Ducati machine #1, especially with the medium-tyre option at the rear. After a fourteenth place in the morning session, the reigning world champion was just outside the top ten up to the final minutes of Practice; thanks to an excellent final lap, he managed to bounce back to fourth place in what was an extremely competitive session, which saw the top ten covered by less than four tenths of a second.
The Ducati Lenovo Team will be back in action tomorrow morning at 10:10 local time (GMT +8) for Free Practice 2, before tackling Q2 at 11:15. The 13-lap, fifteenth sprint race of the season will get underway at 15:00.
Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 1st
“It was a positive day. The track was a bit dirty this morning, but it improved a lot throughout the day. Obviously the times dropped significantly in the afternoon, but the feeling with the bike was already good from the first session; we then made some adjustments, which worked well. We were strong in the time attack, while the medium rear tyre requires a few laps before getting into temperature. We’re all very close lap-time wise so it won’t be easy tomorrow in qualifying. In any case, I’m very happy with today’s performance.”
Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 4th
“The situation I found myself in today was very similar to last year; fortunately, though, things went back to normal as soon as we put the soft tyre on. It’s a shame that we lost some time in the final part but we were trying different solutions as I was unable to push hard in the right-hand corners. We still to understand what didn’t work in the first half of the session, as the performance ga between medium and soft tyres is really significant. In any case I’m happy with the result, it was a kind of relief for everybody. After this Practice session, I feel very confident for qualifying and sprint race, while there’s still work to do ahead of Sunday.”
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