While Francesco Bagnaia’s overall position might not look too impressive, last season’s MotoGP runner-ꦍup feels he is getting stronger with every day of testing.

After languishing down in 18th for🐻 much of the afternoon, Bagnaia jumped up to tenth during the 🦄closing stages which marked his second best finish of the four test days thus far - claimed sixth on day two in Sepang.

But 🌼with that said, the primary focus for Bagnaia over these opening two days in Mandalika has been squarely on setting up his Desmosedici GP22 for race performance as opposed to one lap where he was so strong in 2021.

Bagnaia, who completed the most laps of any rider during Sa💜turday’s action, felt he was one of the strongest riders when it came to race pace, which included representative simulations on both the medium and soft tyres.&♚nbsp; 

"I think that today we were one of the strongest 𓄧with the pace, because this morning we worked with the medium, and with the medium I was doing 32.7, 32.8, 32.7, like this."

As a reference the best race run was set by Fabio Quartararo as his 15 lap stint averaged out to a time of 1m 32.3s. While that would suggest Quartararo having four tenths advantage, 🐲the tyre life of their stints was not confirmed, meaning Bagnaia could have been on older rubber.

Bagnaia continued: "This afternoon with more t🍎emperature and the soft, we managed to do 30 laps with the soft, and the last lap was two tenths slower than the fastest l﷽ap. 

"So we were working on be🦄ing as constant as possible, and we are very competitive. I think the only two riders t♎hat did the same work as me was [Marc] Marquez and Mir today, maybe also Pol Espargaro. 

"We just focused on doing laps with used tyres. I saw that other riders have d꧅one two or three time attacks today. So it was not our strategy, we prefer t🗹o work more with used tyres and other tyres. But our pace, my pace was very strong."

While Bagnaia’s pace has been unspectacular since 🎀pre-season testing began, his feeling with the new GP22 bike continues to get better.

The🌠 Italian claimed to have made another step during today’s action, although he’s still yet to extract the true potential of the bike.   

Bagnaia said: "Yeah, we are doing a great step every day. Also today we did another one. I found it well. Not at 100% of the potential of this bi💯ke, because I think the potential is higher. 

"But we found something good, and we are now🎉 at 80% of the maxi🤪mum potential of this bike, I think. So we still have work to do. 

"The worst thing is that we have just one more day of testing and 𒊎it looks like it could rain 🦄tomorrow. 

"So it will not be easy to define a good base to start the season, but with the ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤🐭ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚwork done these days, I think we found something good and it can help us in Qatar. At this moment the potential is good, but we still need something more."

On the other side of the Lenovo Ducati garage Ja🌳ck Miller only managed ꦚ20th, however, the Australian didn’t set his best time at the end when track conditions were at their best.

Like Bagnaia, it was anot💟her extensive day of testing the Bologna-based manu𒀰facturer’s high quantity of new parts. 

Miller alluded to feeling ‘relatively good’ abou💎t where the bike is headed and that it’s just the set-up that needs tweaking ahead of Qatar. 

"We got aꦡ fair few items out of the way today, so I feel relatively good," added Miller. "There are some areas that we need to work on in terms of jus🦩t my bike set-up in general. 

"We haven't really played around with the bike set-up for this test, for this track, and I'm starting to struggle. The more we get closer and closer and the times get tighter and tighter, we're going to have to start playing with some basic setup now and get the bike to wꩵhere it's comfortable. 

"Because I'm losing quite a b🌜it of time in sector 2, so I know what we need to do to try to improve that.&𒉰nbsp;

"So tomorrow is sort of like a fake sort 🌳of Friday into Sat🌞urday. We've got all the information from today and now we need to try to find a solution overnight to fix the problems that I'm having."