Mixed feelings after Aragon 😐

Hi everyone, 

I have to admit, I have some mixed feelings after that one. Fifth after starting second … I'm not happy, but I'm not disappointed either. It's kind of a level feeling, you could say. I'm rapt for my teammate Pecco (Bagnaia) to have his first win though, and to do it after a massive battle with Marc (Marquez) – he earned that one, so that's great for him. 

For me, I would have liked to have joined him up there but I had some issues with my leg that were a bit weird with the lever as I was trying to shift gear. I kept making mistakes on the gearbox and while I could hang in there with Pecco and Marc early on, it just kept happening and I eventually ran long into the last corner and Joan (Mir) and Aleix (Espargaro) came past me, I gifted them the places really. I went out of the track at the last corner and kept going wide at Turn 1, so it was a strange one. My tyres went well and I felt good on the bike, but it just wasn't to be today. 

Back to Pecco, I'm really happy for him and the team because he's shown time after time that he has the speed, but it hadn't happened for him for one reason or another. It's been coming for a while, and he might have won at Mugello if he'd not crashed there because he had the speed. So, he has a win now this year, I have a couple, and let's see if we can add a few more victories before the season ends. 

We came here with some confidence after the result at Silverstone, not so much the fourth place itself but more how I got it. It was really nice to be strong at the end of a race and really be able to push, be able to show that I could keep the tyre alive at Silverstone which is one of the most brutal tracks on tyres. So to be able to put in a solid second half of that race was key, and I enjoyed it a lot. 

Aragon's a really fun track, but a lot of the corners lead into one another so if you don't have a good feeling, it's really hard to go fast. Last year we didn’t have that feeling but this year – a bit hotter, the bike is better, maybe the rider is doing a better job – that good feeling came back. 

Generally I've gone well here at Aragon before, I was on the podium with the Pramac boys in 2019, but last year was pretty shocking really. Two races, kind of nowhere in the first one and then got taken out by Brad (Binder) two corners into the second one. All us Ducati riders struggled here last year, to be honest. But the race – well, races – were so much later in the year last year than normal because of the changed calendar, so being here over a month earlier was always going to help. It gets pretty cold here in October, and we were doing FP1 sessions when the track was about 12 degrees, that's way too cold for these bikes to work properly. It felt like a proper Aragon Grand Prix this time. 

I had a lot of fun here in 2019, but last year was a struggle the whole time. But right from when I rolled out of the box on Friday this weekend it immediately felt like something was up, it was fantastic. I've been on a Ducati for a while now and I've never had one that turns as good as this one does through the last corner. The corners like that one have caught us out in the past but us Ducatis owned the final sector all weekend, that one was ours. We could be calm on the tyre and be fast the whole time. Even in qualifying, it was the last sector that saved me because I struggled in sector one, but was able to use that last sector to pull something out of the bag and get onto the front row next to Pecco. 

Anyway, we have Misano next weekend, and I'm sure Pecco will be incredibly fast again, he was there last year. I feel good going there and I'm excited to be heading to the home Grand Prix for Ducati, so I'll speak to you from there next week. 

Cheers, Jack