MotoGP: Francesco Bagnaia has claimed his third successive MotoGP Italian Grand Prix victory after charging to victory in Tuscany.
It’s a September 2023 night out at dinner in Barcelona , site of the upcoming Catalan Motorcycle Grand Prix, and Daniel Ricciardo just wasn’t himself. The Australian F1 ace had undergone surgery on a broken left metacarpal in the Spanish city days earlier after shattering his hand in a crash at the Dutch Grand Prix, and the two long-time friends got together, as they often do, to break bread and one another’s balls, not necessarily in that order.
“Afterwards he told me he’d once pulled a screw out of his skin from some operation he’d had, just ripped it out of the tip of his finger … seriously, the bikes guys are just different. His mentality, his battle scars … they’re a different breed to us.”“It’s true that with motorcycles, we are more used to breaking fingers or some other things,” he shrugs.
Back then, Quartararo had just turned 20 and looked to be belatedly capitalising on his potential. A junior prodigy on the Spanish domestic scene after moving from France when he was eight years old, Quartararo – as a 14-year-old – was being spoken of as the next Marc Marquez.
As it turns out, the pair had actually met three years earlier. At Monaco in 2016, when Quartararo was a teenage Moto3 rider in his sophomore season, the Frenchman waited for Ricciardo to leave the F1 paddock on a weekend where he took pole position for Red Bull Racing, a catastrophic pit-stop blunder by the team denying him a maiden win in The Principality.
“He’s an animal with his training and loves his fitness, so we had that in common and could relate on quite a few things,” Ricciardo says. A MotoGP race-winner in 2020, he surged to the world championship the following season and looked set to double up by the mid-point of 2022, leading likely title rival Francesco Bagnaia by 91 points halfway through the 20-race season after winning in Germany.
“Between now and the end of the season, we will make some really good steps forward. By 2025 the bike will hopefully be there to be a really competitive bike, that for me is the number one goal. How working right now … I’ve never seen them that motivated and that much into it.”
Austin North America Career Arc Monaco Western Asia Title Defence World Championship Seasons Gp/Getty Images Youngest-Ever Pole-Sitter Maiden Win Argentina Fabio Quartararo Pedro Acosta Barcelona Europe Age Gap Sophomore Season Western Europe Northern America High-Profile Motorsport Careers Texas Leadership Role Southern Europe Escalating Laughter Exclusive Interview Germany Wide-Eyed Facial Expression World Championship Podium Dreams Province Of Barcelona United States Of America Final Round Battle Scars Motorsport Stars Qatar America Stunning Pole Position Season Finale Domestic Scene Province Of Valencia Yamaha France Getty Images Inc. Charles Leclerc Matt Clayton Bikes Guys Bike Breaks Title Rival Life Experience Relative Offers Perspective Spain Marc Marquez Asia Team Denying Valencia Pole Position
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