The Italian finished Friday’s running in 11th, slightly improving on Saturday morning to finish FP3 in seventh place before qualifying in fifth for the race.
Having struggled with tyres on the difficult track, he asked long-time mentor Rossi and Ducati world champion Stoner for advice on how they had tackled Silverstone, having won a race each there.
The Ducati rider says Rossi helped him “to understand the temperature with the tyres, he helped me a lot,” while Stoner advised him how best to get traction at the exit of corners.
He said: “This weekend I spoke a lot with Valentino, more. He told me a lot to understand better the situation, because I was a bit in trouble at the weekend.
“It’s not easy from his point of view because he’s at home looking at the screen at the TV, but he helped me to understand the tyres, to understand the temperature with the tyres, he helped me a lot.
“To Casey, I just asked if in the past he had done something different in this track that helped him to be more competitive.
“And this morning he sent me a message and I just tried to do something in the way he had done in the past and was good, but maybe not for the tyre we have now.
“But in any case, I’m very glad to have these kind of people around me at my disposal.”
Asked to elaborate on Stoner’s advice, Bagnaia added: “He was great at finding traction at the exit of the corner, and this was his suggestion for today. I tried to wait more on opening gas, it was a bit better.
“The problem was that I did maybe on the remaining five or six laps, it was without rear grip, so in this last part of the race I was just doing my riding style because I wasn’t able to use the rear tyre.
“So I just tried to push a lot in the braking to stop the bike before using just the front tyre because the rear was dragging a lot.”
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Bagnaia now sits third in the standings on 131 points – 49 behind reigning champion Fabio Quartararo and just 20 adrift of Aleix Espargaro in second.
Despite having closed the gap from 91 to 49 points in two races, Bagnaia said he would still “like to think race-by-race” and acknowledges the part Quartararo’s long-lap penalty played in his win.
He said: “Yeah for sure, I recovered a lot of points in the last two races but still I don’t want to think about the championship. We have time to think of that.
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