Can a MotoGP™ bike ever be too good? Well, World Champion Francesco Bagnaia believes his Ducati Lenovo Team machine was "too stable" at the Circuit of the Americas, and that's what led to him crashing out of the lead and throwing away a valuable 25 points.
It comes just two weeks after he crashed out of second place at the Grand Prix of Argentina, but the Italian admits his costly COTA crash was much different from the one he suffered in Termas.
WATCH: BAGNAIA CRASHES AGAIN TO THROW AWAY COTA LEAD
LISTEN: BAGNAIA EXPLAINS HIS TEXAS TUMBLE
Bagnaia was perfect all weekend up to that point: pole on Saturday morning thanks to a new all-time lap record, a dominant Tissot Sprint win on Saturday afternoon and a three-bike-length advantage over Alex Rins in the Grand Prix. But then disaster struck at Turn 2. The front end folded without warning and the World Champion's race was over in a split second.
It's the sixth race he's crashed out of since the start of last year - Qatar, Le Mans, Sachsenring, Japan, Argentina and Austin - resulting in obvious questions from the media as to why such a similar incident had happened again.
"I don't know what happened," began Bagnaia. "Sincerely, I did I don't know how many laps this weekend. Maybe 80, maybe 100. Pushing, controlling, understanding. And then in the race when I was in total control, I crashed. So I'm very angry, not with myself, because I'm 100% sure that wasn't my fault today. In Argentina, I recognise that I was a bit on the limit for sure. But today? No. Today something happened, but not in terms of a cold tyre, the wind. Something we have to understand from the bike.
"It's true that our bike is the best. We have the best bike in the grid, but then if you crash and you don't know why, it's useless because we lost 45 points in two weekends. So we have to understand that we have [to] maybe prefer a more unstable bike. Maybe I prefer to go one tenth slower but understand everything better, as right now it's very difficult because I feel unbeatable. I feel I can do everything. Like today, I was going fast but without taking any risks, without doing crazy things. I was entering very calm in corner two because I was knowing that it was more slippery. And I still crashed.
"So I have to really hope that my team will help me with that because I'm sure that the potential, the performance of the GP23 is incredible. The best bike I’ve ever ridden. But, during the race, it's something we have to understand what is happening.
The 26-year-old went on to explain that changes to his GP23 will have to be made for the following rounds if he's to eradicate the errors. He believes a step backwards in terms of performance could in fact lead him to get to two steps forwards.
"Maybe it has too much of a filter, because it's so stable. You feel that you can do everything. I feel unbeatable on my bike. During the time attack, managing the tyres. All the weekend everything was perfect. Maybe we have to lose a bit of this stability to lose a bit of the filter, just to be more on the tyres because sincerely like this, it’s perfect the bike. But if you crash and lose 45 points in the last two weekends then something is not perfect.
"I'm giving a lot of confidence on my bike but it’s too stable maybe. And this is something that you can call me crazy saying that. But in this moment, I prefer to have more advice [feedback]."