There is a bitter taste left behind, though the glass remains half full. Enea Bastianini put together a genuinely strong Sprint at the Gran Premio del Giappone, running third for long stretches and eyeing even more on the final lap as Jorge Martin hit a wall of rear tyre graining. But as Motorsport.com Italia reports, a minor excursion off the circuit cost the KTM Tech3 rider his third-place finish.
Irony of ironies, it was caution that bit him. Wanting to secure a rostrum result that had eluded him since the Austin Sprint, Bastianini decided to sit right behind the Aprilia machine instead of launching an attack. Ahead of them, Martinator ran wide at curve 10 and clipped the green section. Bastianini followed suit, barely skimming it. A minor slip, but a heavy price: rookie Diogo Moreira inherited a spot, rising to second while Martin also yielded positions.
Surely in this circuit the rider manages to make a little more difference than other tracks, so I think the gap is a little smaller,
"In America I got a podium and didn't go there, here I got a podium and didn't go there (laughs)," Bastianini told media in Motegi. "Apart from the jokes, we still did a good race and a good weekend so far. The icing on the cake would have been this podium, given that we did a good Sprint, with a nice pace. I had recovered a second in a lap to Jorge, so I imagined he was having a problem. I didn't want to attack him, as if to say that for today it was fine like that, instead by attacking him I would have ensured the podium. Unfortunately it was a small mistake, which I wasn't even sure I had made."
Though he accepted the stewards' final verdict, the rider known as Bestia did not hide his frustration, calling the penalty disproportionate given that zero clear advantage was gained. "I think there are exits like this one here, where at a certain point you have white and then you have green, which are not good," he explained. "For a MotoGP, which makes very wide turns, we would need a slightly longer kerb. I don't think I gained anything in this maneuver. The rules at the moment are these. If they decided I touched the green, I touched the green. What I think is that it is not totally fair. I don't think I gained as Jorge didn't gain. I followed him to try and catch the slipstream, but he went out and I was there. At some point I also pulled the bike in, but I couldn't do it. Unfortunately these are also things that happen, you accept them and that's it."
Looking ahead to the grand prix distance, the rider from Rimini remained cautious about his RC16 machine when utilizing the medium compound tyre. "Tomorrow is to be seen," he admitted. "Honestly, I felt very good with the soft tyre and here I didn't feel very good with the medium tyre. We should try to work on this, because it will be important to be fast tomorrow, especially at the beginning of the race. Then we'll see from halfway onwards where we are. Anyway we are working well."
Even with the penalty sting, the step forward compared to recent rounds on the calendar was obvious to the team. "Surely in this circuit the rider manages to make a little more difference than other tracks, so I think the gap is a little smaller," he concluded. "Then we did some things that helped me. I tried a little thing on Friday that made me brake harder and it counts a lot in a circuit like this. As I said, it's nice to see the team bending over backwards to try and solve some of my problems."
