Thai GP: Bagnaia upbeat after P7 on the opening day of free practice at Buriram, Bastianini P19

  Francesco Bagnaia ended the opening day of free practice for the Thailand GP, round 17 of the MotoGP World Championship, in seventh place after setting his quickest time with a few minutes remaining.

The MotoGP points leader spent much of Friday trying to find an optimal set-up on his Desmosedici GP23 machine, especially under braking and was able to record some excellent lap times in the final part of the afternoon session. With the top 16 riders covered by a very tight half-a-second, Pecco's time put him comfortably inside the top-10, thus guaranteeing him a slot in tomorrow's Q2.

There was little luck for his Ducati Lenovo teammate Enea Bastianini, who continues to find it difficult to establish a good feeling with his GP23 and was unable to go any higher than 19th overall at the end of the opening day.

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 7th (1:30.069)
"I'm happy because we are in Q2 directly, and this is a great result. Honestly, we worked hard this morning, and the feeling was already great. I was doing a good pace, one of the strongest and I was happy with this morning. This afternoon I started with a target, but I was struggling to find some grip. We started to change something on the bike, and as soon as we changed the rear everything went perfect again. With the yellow flag of Martin, I didn't do the second time-attack lap but all in all, I'm very happy with today. Now I feel so much better under braking, finally, I can push hard, so I'm very positive for the rest of the weekend."

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 19th (1:30.915)
"I must admit that I struggled more than I thought I would, already this morning I didn't have a good feeling, this afternoon it was even worse. I put the medium on the rear immediately and it went better, I lapped with more reasonable times so let's say that the first soft I put on didn't work. Afterwards, I did a few laps with the medium and in the time-attack, the second one was fine, except that I took the yellow flag for Martin. I could have been further up, but probably not enough for Q2. I can't say I'm happy but we will work hard to improve further tomorrow."

The Ducati Lenovo Team will be out on track again at the Chang International Circuit on Saturday morning for the second free practice session at 10.10 local time (05.10 CEST), while Q1 and Q2 follow shortly after at 10.50 (05.50). The 13-lap Sprint race is scheduled for a 15.00 start (10.00 CEST).