He might have been superb in qualifying, when he took pole position. But in the race, despite the game of overtaking and counter-overtaking, the two men in front had more and Bezzecchi had to settle for third place in the Portimao Sprint.
In spite of that, after watching Alex Marquez's Ducati and Pedro Acosta's KTM from behind, the #72 realized that his Aprilia is not lacking anything in particular, but there is a little bit of margin everywhere, something missing in pure performance that still needs to be shaved off. That will be the goal tomorrow, because even though a podium is always a nice result, he would like to be in the middle of the battle for victory as well and not repeat the result. Bezzecchi said he is not really interested about "enjoying the battle" from behind, because third place in the championship has to be defended, most of all when faced with Acosta's fierce braking.
"Today was a great day: great qualifying and a great Sprint, because a podium is always a good result. Obviously when you start from pole you hope to do a bit better than third, you hope to win and that's what I hoped for today. There wasn't anything in particular that I was missing, maybe a little bit of traction, but I was losing a little bit all over the track, I could see them slowly going away from me. Especially when Alex passed me, I saw that he had more than everyone. In the final laps in fact I got back under Pedro, but passing him would have been difficult because I didn't have that much extra speed to be able to bring him an attack done right."
Could a less than perfect set-up have been affected by that half-hour of free practice that was missed this morning because of the wet weather?
"But they didn't do that either," says Bezzecchi referring to Marquez and Acosta, making no excuses, "Yesterday we could see that Alex was fast and Pedro had a very good pace. Maybe I was the one who was slightly worse off of the three. Today I got closer, because even though I was right behind I managed to stay with them, but it wasn't enough to battle with them. Then when they started overtaking each other I hoped like hell that they would have more of a battle so I could get thrown into the middle of them as well."
When Acosta passed you in the early laps, though, you seemed to be right there to respond to the overtaking.
"Yes, when Pedro passed me my intention was to pass him again as soon as possible. But I hit a big bump in braking in Turn 1 and Alex passed me as well. From that moment on it was a bit too difficult for me. In any case, I'm happy."
You enjoyed the battle from behind. Observing them, did you realize anything that might come in handy for tomorrow?
"Enjoyed the battle? No, I didn't care that much. It was more the urge to throw myself into it myself than the enjoyment of watching it. But otherwise, yes, I realized a lot of interesting things for tomorrow," said the #72 without going into details.
Does it feel a bit limited having to settle for this third place?
"Definitely there was a moment when I realized I had less than the other two and I thought it would be better to settle for third. Then in the last two laps I saw that I was catching Acosta and there I forgot what I had thought before (laughs)."
How do you see the tyre wear for tomorrow? Today at the end of the race you all seemed to be struggling a bit up front.
"I've been working a lot with the soft and for us it can be an option, it's not necessarily running with the soft. You have to weigh the pros and cons of both tyres well. However certainly the long race will be tougher for tyre management."