Francesco Bagnaia on the criticism he received this season

• Sports

Moto GP champion Francesco Bagnaia spoke about the criticism he received this season. Criticism can sometimes be exhausting for a driver, but Bagnaia handled it well. "I think everyone can have his point of view and everyone can say what they think.

So, I accepted some guys don’t want to cheer for me because they prefer another rider. I can understand. I can also say they were saying the truth, because when you start the season with the pressure of winning you have to demonstrate that you have this possibility to be world champion and I was losing a lot of races because I was crashing and making a lot of mistakes.

For sure, the start of the year this was not [an easy] situation because our bike was not working so well and it takes a lot of time to improve. But already in Portimao I did a big mistake in Q1, I almost broke my collarbone and it was a difficult race.

Then in Jerez we did an incredible race, it was the key to be competitive again and then in Le Mans I crashed again in a stupid way."- Francesco Bagnaia said, as quoted by motorsport.com.

Francesco Bagnaia

Bagnaia believes that mistakes are an integral part of every driver's career.

However, he learned a lot from those mistakes. "We had bad luck in Barcelona, but [not in] the race in Sachsenring because I was there and I tried to follow Fabio. I didn’t need to approach the race in that way, because I was sure in the second half of the race the hard tyre would have been better.

After all those mistakes it’s normal to receive some criticism, so I accept that. I accept also when I had my mistakes during the summer in Ibiza, I accepted everything. I try to improve myself every time and mistakes can happen, unfortunately. But without mistakes you can’t grow”.