Bagnaia: Marc Marquez’s Aragon MotoGP pole margin “unbelievable”

Reigning MotoGP champion and title leader Francesco Bagnaia admits he heads into this afternoon’s Aragon Sprint race “still missing something” compared to Marc Marquez.

The factory Ducati star qualified on the front row in third, losing out to Pedro Acosta by just 0.002s.

But both were over 0.8s behind Marquez’s pole time on the 2023 Ducati, with the Gresini rider topping every session so far this weekend.

“It was a very tough morning. Honestly, the [track] conditions weren't the best and we did the maximum we could, but we are still missing something compared to Marc,” Bagnaia said.

“Marc is doing different lines, different things. Because taking eight-tenths in a qualifying is something unbelievable. So we will check, understand and if it will be possible to do a step, we will do it.”

Bagnaia starts this afternoon’s Sprint five points clear of Jorge Martin who salvaged fourth on the grid after a fall in qualifying.

Marquez meanwhile will be chasing his first ever MotoGP Sprint victory and first ‘MotoGP win’ of any kind since Misano 2021.

“It's true that eight tenths looks a lot, but we cannot forget that in other race tracks I was eight tenths behind the pole,” Marquez warned.

“So yeah, I feel super good and now we need to manage our confidence and keep especially the same mentality, because the track is quite slippery and it's easy to do a mistake.”

Although a distant 83 points behind Bagnaia, Marquez looks to have a good chance of gaining ground on Enea Bastianini for third in the standings this weekend.

The Italian, currently 22 points ahead of Marquez, starts the pair of Aragon races from just 14th on the grid.