A positive Friday for the Ducati Lenovo Team at Silverstone: Francesco Bagnaia is third, followed by Enea Bastianini in fourth place

 

• Jorge Martín sets the quickest time of the day aboard Pramac Racing Team’s Desmosedici GP machine

The Ducati Lenovo Team started the Monster Energy British Grand Prix on the right foot as Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini were third and fourth, respectively, in today’s Practice session at the Siverstone Circuit in England. 

After finishing eighth in free practice, Bagnaia showed great form as the afternoon session got underway as he took the lead in the early stages of Practice. Despite the many exchanges in position at the sharp end of the timesheets and the great level of competitiveness displayed by many riders at this track, the reigning world champion always managed to bounce back towards the front as he ended up third quickest courtesy of a 1:58.030 set with two minutes left – which was only 119 thousandths of a second shy of today’s fastest time.

Bastianini, who was sixth in Free Practice, did well in not losing his focus following a small technical problem experienced in the early minutes of the Practice session. Once he made his way back to the track, Enea catapulted himself to first place and, in the final quick-lap attempt before the chequered flag, he bounced back from eighth to fourth position, as he also secured the direct seed to tomorrow’s qualifying two, scheduled at 11:15 local time (GMT +1).

The ten-lap, tenth sprint race of the season will get underway later the same day at 15:00.

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 3rd
“I think we can be satisfied with how things went today. This is one of the tracks I love the most but I have always struggled on opening day, so I can say this was the best Friday we’ve had here so far. We’re still missing something: the bike is a little nervous, so we need to do some more work in this regard. We still managed to make a step forward this afternoon and I’m quite happy with the time attack. I made few little mistakes and I wasn’t using the hard front tyre – with which I feel more comfortable – but apparently tomorrow it’s going to be a bit cooler so it was important to try the medium option. Right now Jorge (Martín) has something extra and we need to understand why, even though we know it’s about the third sector.”

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 4th
“It was a positive day, as I felt comfortable straight away with the base set-up. This afternoon we had an issue with the first bike which cost us a bit of time, but I was able to get up to speed as soon as I jumped on the second one, and I was quick. It was important to try the harder option at the front but in the end we chose not to, despite the temperatures were in line with that choice. In hindsight, we should have done it. I’m still happy because we did a good job: we’re in Q2 and tomorrow we’ll need another small step forward in order to battle for a spot on the front row.”