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INTERVIEW I 2022 MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPION FRANCESCO BAGNAIA P110 I was very competitive," Bagnaia explained. "Like in Le Mans, I was there with a possibility to win, but I crashed. In that mo- ment, I recognized that my weak point was there, that I was a rider with a lot of ups and downs." The French and German GP crashes were of a similar kind— when settling in behind the bike ahead, thinking too much of the final laps. "In those two moments, I had said, 'I will be calmer, breathe and then come back.' But right away I crashed," he acknowl- edged at Assen. "Maybe with our bike, my feeling is that when you are not pushing on the tires maybe it's easier to crash." From then on, the only focus was the immediate job at hand. By then, it was clear the teeth- ing problems with Ducati's GP22 were a thing of the past. Most in the factory felt a run of victories wasn't beyond them. "We never gave up in the very bad moments," said Bagnaia's Crew Chief, Cristian Gabarrini, the man who guided Casey Stoner to his two world titles. "It's easy to be happy when ev- erything is fine. But the trick is to be strong when everything goes wrong. Every person in this proj- ect never lost focus, which was to win this championship. Pecco felt that and this was some ad- ditional momentum for him." The advice and support worked. Four races, which demonstrated his strongest attri- butes, namely tire management, and exceptional late-braking ability, followed. Quartararo, meanwhile, had lost all of that midseason assurance. He lost the ability to qualify on the front row, and misfortune stalked him at Aragon and Thailand. The wet encounter at the Chang Inter- national Circuit told Bagnaia the championship was his. "Thailand was a very difficult race for me, I struggled a lot in the wet. But I tried everything to be on the podium and recovered a lot of points. In that moment, I recognized we could win it." Two races later, he had 23 points in hand, a reversal of 114 in just nine outings. "That gave me the margin to control the gap (going to Valencia)." CN Enea Bastianini congratulates Bagnaia after their Malaysian boxing match. You can see Bagnaia wasn't pleased by his 2023 teammate's repeated attacks for the lead with so much on the line. Quartararo congratulates Bagnaia in Valencia pit lane moments after Bagnaia took the title.