Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini 2023 teammates - Ducati say: “We don’t need them to be friends”

Bagnaia wrapped up the 2022 championship in Valencia and will enter next year as the reigning champion with a new teammate, Bastianini, in the Ducati Lenovo ꦓTeam.
They have already fought wheel-to-wheel this season and one of the biggest challenges of Bagnaia’s first title defence might be coping with Bastianini, having shared a friendly relationship this year with 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Jack Miller.
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“We know that your teammate is always the guy you want to beat because he has the 𝔉same 🌠material,” sporting director Ciabatti told BT. “It has always been like this.
“Ja𓆉ck and Pecco? Jack is a great human being, a nice guy. They had a special relationship.
“We have had 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Andrea Dovizioso and 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Jorge Lorenzo - different characters - working together and we s🌜h🗹are the data.”
Reminded that Bagnaia and Bastianin❀i are not particularly friendly, Ciabatti said: “I kno🎐w, I know. We don’t need the teammates to be friends.
“We need them to respect each other.
“Pecco won seven grands prix th꧟is year, Enea won ♐four. They are No1 and No2 so will be the strongest team.
“Managing two Italians in the team might be a chall𝓰enge.
“There might be some spice for the championship!”

Bastianini earned the nod over the outgoing Miller and168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Jorge Martin to step up into Ducati’s factory team in the 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:2023 MotoGP rider line-up - the stakes have since risen ♒with future teammate Bagnaia becom🐷ing world champion.
“Starting from Tue𒁏sday we will tes🐬t the 2023 bike,” Ciabatti said. “Hopefully it will be a step forwards for the competitiveness of the bike. We want to start next season in a better way [than the start of 2022].”
He said about the moment Ducati knew Bagnaia could overhaul Fabio Quartararo and win the 2022 title: “The fourth consecutive win that Pecco had put us in 💛a position to say: ‘Yes, we can do it’. It gave us a boost.
“It’s been 15 years since Casey Stoner [Ducati’s last champion] and the championship has changed. We always had a co🎐mpetitive bike but⛦ could never put it all together.
“From 91 points behind꧅ to win the ꦇtitle is incredible.
“If you look at Pe﷽cco’s results; when he was not crashing, he was winning, winning, winning.
“We tried not to make any more mistakes. We knew that we had the pace 💯to be on the podium ℱin every race.
“Mathematically we knew that we could do it.

James was a sports 🔯journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.