Double MotoGP world champion Pecco Bagnaia's hopes of finishing his bizarrely up and (mostly) down season with a decent Valencian Grand Prix were essentially over before the races began as he lined up a distant 16th on the grid.
But his disastrous Saturday at Valencia wasn't exactly what he seemed, as it was a mistake from his crew rather than another reoccurrence of his lack of feeling with the Ducati that left him starting so far back.
It's hardly a surprise in 2025 to see Bagnaia failing to make Q2, and his Friday performance wasn't exactly inspiring despite hints that, like at a few recents rounds, it might have been more a case of his propensity to start a weekend than the deeper issues that have plagued him in the latter part of the year.
That was somewhat vindicated in Saturday morning's FP2 session, too, where a much-improved Bagnaia looked like he'd turned it around - second fastest and also showing decent long-run pace.
Starting Q1 looking like one of the favourites to progress to Q2 and a decent starting position for the weekend's two races, he was sitting second on the timescreens and had just completed a fastest overall first sector when his session came to a premature halt thanks to a mistake by his Ducati team that left him out of fuel.
"It was a miscalculation," Bagnaia explained at the end of the day. "It's something that happens. Everyone makes mistakes. It's normal, it's part of the job. In this moment, it looks worse because already this season the situation was quite tough, but it is what it is.
"Last year I crashed in Barcelona while I was winning and I made the team lose the championship. Everybody can make mistakes, and mine was worse."
A spectator for the rest of Q1 as others set faster times and unable to respond, Bagnaia eventually ended up a long way from Q2 in 16th and knowing the nature of the Valencia circuit meant his hopes of any kind of result were most likely already done and dusted.
"Qualifying was missing," he admitted when asked after his 14th finish in the sprint race what had gone wrong for him. "Fuel was missing!
"But honestly, we improved. I was faster, I was able to improve my performance, and lap by lap I was getting more feeling.
"Then in qualifying I started not in a super fantastic way, but I was improving - and then on the second attempt I ran out of fuel.
"Starting from 16th in a track like this is difficult, where if you want to overtake you crash or you have contact, it's very difficult.
"You need to be a lot stronger and faster than the riders in front, and if you look to the pace [in FP2] I was the same as Fabio [Quartararo] who arrived seventh.
"It's difficult to imagine something different if you're not that much faster than the guys in front of you."
