Marco Bezzecchi puzzled after P20: ‘We had some…

Marco Bezzecchi says Aprilia is still trying to understand the “issues” that left him facing Q1 on MotoGP’s return to Brazil this weekend.

The Italian endured a difficult start to the Goiania weekend in Friday practice, ending up more than two seconds off the pace in 20th position. Only Trackhouse’s Raul Fernandez and Tech3 rider Enea Bastianini were classified behind him in the rain-hit session.

It was a major setback for the Thailand Grand Prix winner, who will now have to go through the first part of qualifying on Saturday to secure a spot on the first four rows of the grid.

Bezzecchi indicated that his lack of pace was linked to a technical problem, but admitted the exact cause remains unclear.

“It was not bad in the morning, to be honest. I felt good and I was quite fast,” he said.

“Then in the afternoon, especially in the first run, which was the most decent one with the weather, we clearly had some issues. We still have to understand what was wrong, but the engineers are working on that.”

When asked how the issue was affecting his performance, the 27-year-old remained vague, saying: “It's difficult. I think you can imagine that.”

Marco Bezzecch, Aprilia Racing (Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images)

When the delayed one-hour session began on Friday afternoon, the entire field ventured out on track immediately due to the fear of incoming rain. But while the majority of the frontrunners were able to bank a competitive lap early, Bezzecchi failed to break the 1m23s barrier on his factory Aprilia.

That meant that when the rain arrived with about 35 minutes left on the clock, he had no chance to improve his previous benchmark and secure a direct passage into Q2.

Aprilia race manager Paolo Bonora suggested Bezzecchi’s practice struggles may have stemmed from a lack of confidence in mixed conditions, which made it difficult for him to generate enough temperature in his Michelin tyres.

"We are trying to understand why he is not finding the confidence to push,” Bonora said during the official MotoGP feed. “There was only the first 10 minutes with quite a dry session, but it was not because there were still drops of rain in his helmet.

“The track is necessary to understand it, so it's necessary to have the correct feeling. If you don't push, you don't create the temperature on the tyre, and if you don't create the temperature on the tyre, the feeling doesn't come.

“So it is something that you have to create and this is not the correct situation to understand a new track, but we are confident.

“Despite the bad ranking now, we are confident that during this night we [will] understand something for Saturday."

Additional reporting by Gerald Dirnbeck