Surely he was one of the few people, if not the only one, on the planet who this Sunday morning, before the MotoGP race at the San Marino Grand Prix , thought he could manage to fight for the podium and get the first, in his rookie year and with a bike far behind, on a technical level, the rest of the Ducati on the grid.
“When I woke up this morning I did think that I could do the podium. I knew he was capable of making good times with ease. We have been able to find the ideal set-up for this circuit and already in the race, as the first few laps passed, I saw that I was capable of doing everything I set out to do on the bike”, explained the beast to the DAZN microphones.
Enea ‘s pace and comeback was so fast that even in the second half of the race it seemed he could catch up with the escapees Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo .
“I have seen Jack (Miller) and I have passed him. I knew that I had Pecco and Fabio in front of me and I was thinking of going for them, but at that moment I was already very close to the limit and getting the podium was already something fantastic”, he argued.
Being the second Ducati to finish, ahead of the official Miller, Zarco or Martín, is without a doubt a huge success. In the end, he did not catch up with Pecco for starting so far back on the grid, 12th from the end of the fourth row.
“What above all motivated me to fight until the end was seeing that I can do great things with my bike, and that is a great encouragement. In other circuits it will be very difficult, but here in Misano we have worked hard and very well”, explained the 23-year-old rider.
“In the end the (hard) front tire fell off a bit, because I pulled a lot on it at the beginning, so when I saw some falls I decided to settle for third place on the podium and not lose it”, he acknowledged.
After this first podium, Bastianini is now 10 points behind Jorge Martín in the fight for the title of best rookie of the year, with four races to go, one of them again on this circuit.
“We will come here again soon to run another race here and it will be a good time to see if we can do better,” settled the boy from Rimini.
(Click on the link or on the image to see all the photos of Enea Bastianini at the 2021 MotoGP San Marino GP)
