Francesco Bagnaia says the collision with Alex Marquez in Aragon is “weighing more” on his MotoGP title hopes after losing 10 points𒉰 to Jorge Martin at the Australian Grand Prix.

The reigning double world champion’s doubꦰle victory in Japan saw him clo🃏se Martin’s advantage in the standings to 10 points.

But after two tough races at Phillip Island in which Bagnaia was never on pace terms with Martin or Marc Marquez🍃, the Italian’s championship deficit has 𒀰grown to 20 points.

Speaki꧃ng after finishing third a distant third at the Australiaꦅn GP, Bagnaia says the crash with Alex Marquez at Aragon in September is hanging over his title challenge now as he lost a possible 16 points there.

🍃“I think it’s like it was in Indonesia,” Bagnaia sai🦩d of his championship situation.

“We are continuing recovering, losing, recovering, losing. Our performance is fairly b༺alanced.

“Unluckil🥃y the contact that made me crash with Alex Marquez is the fact that is right now weighing more o𒁏n the championship.

“But we have to be focused and move onto the next ones with a 🃏good confidence knowing that the🎐y are tracks where I am very fast.”

Having struggled to turn his Ducati in the sprint, Bagnaia wa🧜s able to find a set-up improvement for this ahead of the grand prix - but admits he was still having to “force” the front into corne♛rs.

“It was more that I had tꦇo force a lot the front ꦕto let me turn the bike,” he explained.

“I was forcing it a lot becauseꦅ my bike was going more wide and it was more imporꦆtant to stay close to the kerb like Jorge was doing, or Marc.

“I ha🤡ve to say Marc was even a step more in front, so we have to understand why 💜and in which area we were doing the difference.

“Luckily, underꦦstanding before the race was important because if not I was finishing off tಞhe podium.”

Bagnaia briefly led the grand prix when Martin made a mist🍌ake at Turn 1 on lap 12, which allowed the former to make an overtake a♔t Turn 3.

But Martin𝓰 struck back straight away and Bagnaia then dropped to third behind Marquez, with the Italian ultimately fading 9.1s awayꦐ from his championship rival.

“From this morning I feel much better, we improved the se🍬tting and I was happy,” h🍷e said.

“But then in the race as soon as I finished the fꦬront tyre, I was struggling to follo🍎w them.

“So, I had to slow down and the margin with the guys behind was huge. The margin💛 to the guys behind was huge, I opened it to 8.1s, 8.2s but then I had to slow right down because I was risking the same to crash.

“So, more than this was tough. They did a better job than us yesterday, because on Friday we were very close but then yesterday we were wrong witওh our set-up and they did a better step in front and we just missed it today.”