MotoGP: Bagnaia gets Ducati Desmosedici experience

Moto3 race winner Francesco Bagnaia has been given the opportunity to take to today’s Valencia MotoGP test on a premiere class machine, joining the regular field for a chance to complete a few laps on one of the Aspar team’s GP14.2 bikes.

Coming about as part of a win incentive by team boss Gino Borsoi, who caught the Italian out having a cheeky check for size on Eugene Laverty’s machine earlier this year, he was promised that if he won two races on the Aspar Mahindra in 2016 the chance would come to him.

And, having never ridden anything more powerful than a Yamaha R6 before as part of Valentino Rossi’s VR46 Academy, he says that the experience was an incredible one for him.

“It was an incredible experience – I expected the bike to be fast, but not like this! It’s something special, something incredible, because when you open the gas on the straight you can’t see anything else but the end of the straight coming closer to you!

“You have to brake, you have to turn, you have to get on the gas – but it all happens at once and you have no time to think or to make the decisions properly!”

But while Jack Miller has become the first racer to make the jump directly from Moto3 to MotoGP, Bagnaia admitted afterwards that he’s happy to be instead taking the more traditional route of Moto2 first, as he steps up to the middleweight class next year with Rossi’s Team Sky squad.

“I prefer to make two years in Moto2 first, to make a good base on a bike with more power is more important. That’s important for making the pace in the race, because that’s what wins a race in Moto2 unlike in Moto3 – and MotoGP is more similar to Moto2.”

Bagnaia has impressed in the MotoGP paddock as well, lapping only six seconds off mentor and fastest man so far Valentino Rossi despite completing only nine laps.