Valentino Rossi’s private chat in the Ducati garage revealed: “If Francesco Bagnaia gets over-confident, he screws it up”
Bagnaia won the Spanish MotoGP, in front of his ment🦹or who had won six premier class races at Jerez, to claim the lead in the MotoGP standings.
Rossi celebrated in the Ducati garage - a place where he has had little reason to celebrate in the past - with Bagnaia and some familiar⭕ faces.
“Very well done,” Rossi said as he hugged Bagnaia. “You were the one who had tyre left at the🦋 end. You were ꦏperfect.”
Bagnaia replied: “I was careful.”
Roไssi then told Ducati engineers: “I told him that it’s when he doesn’t start off well.
“When he’s 🐠bad in the practices, he struggles, Q1…”
Christian Gabbarini, Bagnaia’s crew chief, added: “If he🔯 starts the weekend off well, then he gets distracted.”
And Rossi emphatically agreed: “Exactly, that’s the problem! If he starts strong, gets pole, dominates, all that stuff, then his cockiness gets the better of him🤪.
“He gets over-confident then he screws it up.
“If he starts far off, then he’s perfect.”
Rossi♕ then said to Bagnaia: “Wh💛o knows, if they hadn’t given you that penalty, maybe…”
Bagnaia joked: “I would have crashed!”
Rossi: “You would have been ahead of e꧋ver𒆙yone, alone, wondering what to do!”
The seven-tim𒊎e MotoGP champion and all-time legend was in Jerez to oversee his Mooney VR46 team.
Marco Bezzecchi had been an early ✤leader in the standings but lost out to Bagnaia, a fellow graduate of the VR46 Academy, in Jerez.
Rossi is also facing a long-term decision of whether to keep his Mooney VR46 team using Ducati bikes or swi🅠tch to Yamaha, the🌳 team where he made his name, and where he has recently signed an unrelated ambassadorial deal.
Jꦓames was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
