Bagnaia: heart in Valencia, head in Malaysia

The world championship starts tomorrow morning (8 am in Italy) with the Malaysian GP. Which is also the penultimate stage of the 2024 season. The season will end in two weeks (but a postponement to the following weekend cannot be ruled out) on the track that will be chosen instead of Valencia. The flood drama has in fact caused the Ricardo Tormo GP to be cancelled and in the next few days Dorna will make official the location where the 2024 World Championship will actually be assigned. Qatar and Barcelona remain the preferred solutions, but the organizers are also sounding out Jerez and Portimao.

Dorna's decision came yesterday, after the World Championship organization listened to teams and riders. And above all after World Champion Bagnaia announced that he would not show up in Valencia to race, "even at the cost of giving up winning the 2024 title".

Tomorrow is the Malaysian GP, ​​then (this morning, at 8 in Italy, the start of the Sprint Race), all live on SkyMotoGp and streaming on Now, with Bagnaia busy reducing the gap to Martin's Ducati Pramac as much as possible. Pecco knows that a favorable result for his Spanish rival, on the Sepang track, would give his opponent a very heavy match point while waiting for the last weekend of the season. But Bagnaia also knows that after the first day on the track in Malaysia, yesterday, his Desmo was more performing than his opponent's. First in the morning and above all first in the pre-qualifying, Pecco has the right numbers to win in Malaysia, but... Martin doesn't give up.

And the confirmation that the Pramac rider is aiming hard to win the World Championship comes from what happened in the afternoon in Sepang with Jorge second and ready to chase Bagnaia in the timesheets. Second, despite a slip and a fall that reset the last part of the tests. "I'm happy - said Pecco -. We adopted a different strategy compared to the other riders, testing the medium tyre already in the morning, and it was positive. Obviously the goal is to get the maximum number of points this weekend and then play it all out in the final event of the season: we'll see if we can do it, but our potential is high at the moment".

On Friday in Malaysia, Bastianini (Ducati factory) also did well, third by force, and Vinales who brought Aprilia back to the podium zone (fourth). Marquez's Ducati Gresini was significantly behind, but he still 'saved' his pre-qualifying with the tenth time.

Finally, a look at the performance of Andrea Iannone, back on a MotoGP bike after years, thanks to the call from Valentino Rossi who wanted him on the Ducati of his team, Pertamina-Vr46, to replace Fabio Di Giannantonio who returned to Italy after Thailand to undergo shoulder surgery.

Iannone immediately got to know the Desmo and – in the morning – set his result at ninth place. "It's beautiful like this – he commented –. This MotoGp is ​​something else compared to mine". Have fun.