Enea Bastianini pronounced himself “angry” after being unable to compete with factory Ducati team-mate Francesco Bagnaia and Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin for victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Italian inherited third place after Marc Marquez fell off his 2023-spec Gresini Ducati but finished over 10 seconds down on winner Bagnaia.
Although Marquez’s fall allowed Bastianini to close to within a single point of the Spaniard heading to the MotoGP season finale in Barcelona, the British and Emilia Romagna GP winner was disappointed that he couldn’t show such form at Sepang.
Asked if he was satisfied with the podiums he had picked up in both the Saturday sprint and the main race on Sunday, Bastianini said: “No, I’m not very satisfied. Because I’ve been fighting with the bike a lot all weekend.
“We started [well] but then we lost something. I was confident we could resolve the problem this morning but nothing changed.
“I was lucky in the [grand prix] today because Marc crashed. But otherwise nothing is positive.
“I was slow in the middle of the corners and had no speed on the entry. Today it was impossible for me to give 100% and I’m angry.”
Barcelona will represent a chance for Bastianini to atone for a difficult Catalan GP in May, when he qualified 11th and was classified 18th in the race after earning a 32-second penalty for ignoring ride-through sanctions.
The season-closing race has been moved from its traditional Valencia venue due to flooding in that region, which Bastianini says will be an advantage for Marquez, who hails from Cervera, outside Barcelona.
“For Marc, it’s an advantage to go to Barcelona, it’s his town,” said Bastianini. “We have to give 100% and I have to be much stronger compared to the Barcelona race at the start of the season because I was fast but got two or three long-lap penalties!”
Marquez, however, does not see Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as advantageous in terms of riding, listing his home track alongside Sepang as one of the two tracks with which he struggles the most.
Bastianini added that he considered simply moving the Valencia race elsewhere in Spain ethically problematic given the level of the catastrophe in the original host city.
“For me, it wasn’t correct to race in Spain,” he said. “But that's how it is, that’s [MotoGP promoter] Dorna’s choice.”
