Because the numbers are obvious, Ducati rider Enea Bastianini plans to return to the qualifying strategy from the start of the 2024 MotoGP season for the second part of the season
In terms of race results, things are going better for MotoGP rider Enea Bastianini in his second and final season with the Ducati works team than in his first. After nine of 20 race weekends in the 2024 season, all nine of which he has completed, the Italian is in fourth place in the championship standings.
Bastianini has finished on the podium four times so far this season – Portimao, Austin, Mugello and Assen – although he has yet to win. He also has two fourth and two fifth places to his name. This means that, with just one exception (Barcelona), “Bestia” has always finished in the top 5 on Sundays so far this season.
Nevertheless, he believes that more would have been possible. By comparison, team-mate Francesco Bagnaia has won six of the nine Grands Prix so far in 2024, including four in a row recently. Bastianini puts the fact that he has almost 70 fewer than Bagnaia on his account just before the halfway point of the season down to his qualifying sessions.
With two front row starts, including pole in Portimao, Bastianini also started the 2024 season strongly in qualifying. Since then, however, he has made it onto row 2 twice, but no more. Starting positions on the third or even fourth row, making the races difficult for himself, have recently been the rule rather than the exception.
“I haven’t been very consistent in qualifying this season,” Bastianini puts his finger in the wound and explains: “Whenever I followed other riders to get a bit more out of it, the result was worse in the end. “
For the second part of the season, starting with Silverstone on the first weekend in August, Bastianini wants to change his qualifying strategy by avoiding slipstreaming as much as possible: “I think it will be better in the future if I ride alone. That’s how I managed to take pole in Portimao, for example.”
The Ducati works rider knows one thing for sure in his second and final year: “If you want to be in contention for victory, you have to start from the front row, or at most from the second row. That’s simply the key at the moment.”
Bastianini will be replaced by Marc Marquez in the Ducati works team for the 2025 and 2026 MotoGP seasons. The crew chief will remain the same as before: Marco Rigamonti, who was once responsible for Johann Zarco at Pramac-Ducati and who has been working with Bastianini in the works team since 2023, will be the crew chief for Marc Marquez from 2025.
Bastianini’s own future has also been clarified. The Italian has signed with Tech3-KTM for 2025/26 and will be teammates with Maverick Vinales, who joins from Aprilia. The crew chief line-up for the second KTM team has not yet been announced