Francesco Bagnaia confessed he felt pressure coming into the closing stages of second practice for the Indonesian Grand Prix after leaving it until the final minutes to book his place into Q2 at the Mandalika Street Circuit.
Appearing to be on the back foot for much of the day, the double defending champion languished outside the top 10 in both practice sessions for much of Friday as he struggled with set-up and tyre issues.
Admitting to having flashbacks of a similar situation in Indonesia 12 months ago when he could only manage 13th on the grid, Bagnaia was relieved to discover it would only take a change of rear-soft to resolve his issues.
“I was reliving the nightmare from last year,” joked Bagnaia, who trails Jorge Martin by 24 points in the championship standings with six rounds to go.
“We were a bit under pressure but luckily on the soft everything was fantastic.
“As soon as we changed the rear tyre and put in a new soft, everything was back again and everything was fine.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“It helps me feel better and stay calm, if it wasn’t like this then it would have been a problem.”
At the end of second practice, however, Bagnaia had found his groove to complete a lap good enough for fourth on the final timesheets, less than a tenth shy of pace-setting factory Ducati team-mate Enea Bastianini.
“We lost a bit of time this morning because I decided to go with the same electronics strategy as last season but I was not accelerating out of the corners, so I was struggling a bit,” Bagnaia said.
“We changed it for the afternoon but on the right-hand corners, I don’t know why, but I was struggling a lot.
“I was losing seconds on the leaders, the two with the same tyres as me were Jorge and Enea, but I was doing 1m 31.6, and everything we tried was not working.”
