Bagnaia breaks lap record in the last of Sepang 2024 MotoGP test

Francesco Bagnaia marked his return to form after setting a massive new lap record to end the third and last day of official pre-season testing for the 2024 MotoGP World Championship at Sepang.

Ducati dominated the last day of the Sepang MotoGP test on Wednesday with Francesco Bagnaia shattering the unofficial lap record once more as the Desmosedici’s took six of the top eight spots.

The reigning double world champion has kept himself under wraps heading to the third day of the first official 2024 MotoGP pre-season test in Malaysia as the Italian has been logging miles on the new Ducati GP24 rather than chasing laptimes initially.

Wednesday marked the ascent of the reigning world champion Bagnaia after Pramac’s Jorge Martin and Bagnaia’s teammate Enea Bastianini swapped leading the standings on the first and second days of the first test of 2024 MotoGP.

The Italian set a new lap record in the morning, clocking in at an incredible 1:56.682s, almost a whole second faster than the previous mark. Additionally, it was a full half a second quicker than teammate Bastianini’s record-breaking effort on Tuesday, demonstrating the strength of Ducati’s most recent premier class contender.

There was a possibility of rain in the afternoon, therefore the riders who had the fastest lap times according to qualifying simulations completed them in the first hour.

Among the lap times, there were the first-ever laps in the 1m 56s classification at the Sepang Circuit, a record that would be matched four more times on the same day, all on Ducati bikes. Factory rider Bagnaia was the fastest of them all, clocking in an astounding 0.8 seconds faster than his 2023 Malaysian MotoGP pole.

His time of 1m 56.682 seconds was good enough to beat Martin by two tenths on the sister Prima Pramac Ducati GP24 as Bastianini seemed to validate the progress made with the GP24 as he made it a 1-2-3 lockout for the manufacturer.

Gresini duo Alex Marquez and Marc Marquez cemented Ducati’s impressive record overall by ascending the timesheets on day two finishing the test fourth and sixth respectively on the year-old GP23 machine.

Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro took over the battle against the Ducatis with a lap that was just short of getting in the top four in under 1 minute 57 seconds, and emerged as the “best of the rest” in fifth place.

KTM’s Brad Binder fell from second to seventh place marking the only highest-placed rider who failed to improve his lap time on the last day. Fabio di Giannantonio, Pedro Acosta and Joan Mir rounded out the top ten on a pretty static leaderboard that didn’t shift much after the hectic first hour.

Yamaha, on the other hand, appeared to be experiencing the same single-lap problems that have dogged the brand over the previous seasons. Fabio Quartararo finished the test at a distant eleventh with more than eight-tenths behind the lead while his new teammate Alex Rins finished fifteenth with 1.197 seconds behind the time benchmark.

At least the brand’s M1 produced decent speed trap results, with Quartararo recording a best of 335.4 km/h against the fastest guy, Binder, who achieved 338.5 km/h. The machine’s electronics were made to function better, but it appears that more work needs to be done before landing in Qatar.

VR46’s Marco Bezzecchi finished the most laps on the final day, with 56 although a late collision somberly ended his Sepang test with a lowly 17th behind LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami and Johann Zarco.

2024 MotoGP Official Pre-Season Testing Results Sepang Day 3