The Esponsorama Avintia team celebrated its first podium of the season this Sunday and the second since sealing its alliance with Ducati last season, in which Johann Zarco managed to finish third in the Czech Republic Grand Prix .
Enea Bastianini completed her best race in her first year in the premier class, imposing a very high pace and climbing to third place on an absolutely unexpected podium.
“Well, less unexpected than people might think. Maybe we weren’t expecting a podium, but we were expecting the pace he had throughout the race,” explained the team’s sports director, former driver Rubén Xaus , to the DAZN microphones on Sunday.
“Enea had a pace of 32 medium quietly. The problem is that we lack experience. He is young, rookie , he arrives at the grand prix on Friday and the first braking is hard. This bike runs a lot, it has to adapt and we lose a lot of time. On Saturday he began to follow other riders who did not have his pace, much slower than him, but it is the custom of previous races”, he argues.
“And that’s what we focused on, we told him to follow people like Martín , Bagnaia , Quartararo , he had their rhythm. In FP4 he was plugged in, in Q1 he did a spin and in Q2 he went to the grass and deprived us of leaving the second row (he was 12th on the grid). But the pace I had on Sunday morning was hellish. We knew that if nothing unusual happened, a top 5 was very feasible”, Xaus summed up his pupil’s weekend.
(Before reading on, click on the link or on the image to see all the photos of the 2021 San Marino GP MotoGP race)
Bastianini , who entered MotoGP this year as Moto2 world champion, has gone from less to more during the year. In Motorland he already gave a first spark, going directly to Q2, and in Misano he confirmed his growth with a starry podium.
“I hope more things happen. Now we have to ask ‘the kings’, which is Ducati, to give us something else, because we are at home and we deserve it. It’s the farewell to the team and I think we’ve earned it”, he begged for improvements on Enea’s bike, which is the oldest and the worst of the Italian factory on the grid.
While the official and Pramac riders have a 2021 Desmosedici, in the Avintia team Luca Marini enjoys a 2020 version motorcycle, the one used by Johann Zarco last year, while Bastianini rides a 2019 model, the one he inherited from Tito Rabat . Now Xaus hopes for an improvement.
“Ducati, what is different from the rest of the brands is the Italian, Latin mentality, which allows them a much faster reaction capacity than the Japanese. At Ducati it is action-reaction, which is what we try to do in the team and it has allowed us to raise the level”.
A level that has made it possible to match the best historical result of the team, a third place that Zarco already achieved precisely last year.
“This podium tastes much better than last year. Keep in mind that Zarco did not want to come to race with us, then he had a much better bike than Bastianini now. That race we took pole position and it was very good, but a lot of things also happened. In this no, we have built this one: ninth in the first lap, overtaking Marc Márquez , Aleix Espargaró , Joan Mir , Alex Rins , Jack Miller , that is, a race. Zarco had already made podiums before. Now we are talking about a rookie , it is also our last year as a team in MotoGP, with the lowest budget in the entire category, and making podiums”, Xaus settles.
