After finishing second at the Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez on Sunday, Bagnaia now leads the championship two points ahead of Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, who slipped to 13th place in the race due to an arm pump problem.
Bagnaia’s score to date of 66 in 2021 is 19 more than the 47 he scored last season with Pramac, the 24-year-old driver who finished on the podium in three races this year.
Despite his upswing from the factory Ducati, Bagnaia admits that he still has to go through race after race and not get too bogged down in the championship.
“I am happy to be the championship leader,” said Bagnaia.
“I have to recognize it and not think about it, because we have 16 races ahead of us and we have to keep going.
“I think if I start thinking about the championship after four races, I’ll slow down so I have to think race by race and see what happens.
“We were lucky enough to see Fabio fighting because when he wasn’t fighting he won the race because his pace was incredible and he was dominant all weekend.
“But to win a championship, you definitely have to be lucky.
“I’m happy, but we have to think race by race and now we arrive at tracks that we like.”
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Bagnaia put some pressure on his victorious team-mate Jack Miller in the final stages of Sunday’s race but said he was on the verge of a crash with two laps to go and felt it would be better to calm down at this point.
“I think this result is better than Portimao [where he also finished second]because we arrived in Portimao on the same bike as Qatar and everything worked fine, ”he added.
“This time we had to work a lot on the bike and the feeling I got was incredible. I felt great about everything.
“I just had a bit of a problem at the start because I thought it would be difficult to push the rear tire to finish the race.
“But I saw that Jack, Fabio, all the other drivers were putting a lot of pressure on at the start. Then I saw that my pace was good, I was trying to make up positions, I was trying to close the gap with Jack.
“But I risked a bit with the front, I lost it at Turn 7 with two laps to go and it was better to stay calm and finish the race. Today was Jack’s day, he deserves this race.
“Finishing 1-2 on a route like this one definitely motivates us to arrive at routes where our bike works better.”