What is going on with Bagnaia in MotoGP?

Francesco Bagnaia may have partially redeemed himself with a solid recovery ride in the Catalan Grand Prix on Sunday, but it’s impossible to overlook the fact that he shouldn’t be starting so far down the grid.

In fact, if you exclude the 2022 Portuguese GP crash on slick tyres on a wet track, Saturday in Barcelona was Bagnaia’s worst qualifying result ever in MotoGP. Not even in his rookie season with Pramac in 2019 did he start a race lower than 18th on the grid.

The shake of the head from Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi said it all, as he watched a rider with 25 pole positions in his career qualify 21st on the grid, three spots behind Honda’s test rider Aleix Espargaro.

As was the case in Hungary last time out, Bagnaia started the weekend too far back from the competition, failing to break inside the top 20 in either session on Friday. So even after finding six tenths overnight, the best he could salvage was that spot on the seventh row.

Sprint races have long been Bagnaia’s weakest point, and 14th place was nothing to write home about, especially in a contest that witnessed just 18 finishers.

Then came the grand prix on Sunday, when the two-time champion charged to 12th place on the opening lap, before taking advantage of accidents to make his way into the top 10. Even after burning through his rear tyre, he had just about enough to engage in late battles with Ai Ogura and Luca Marini, eventually finishing the race between the pair in seventh place.

The difference between the two races was clear. On Saturday, he crossed the line 14.4 seconds behind winner Marc Marquez after just 12 laps of racing, losing more than a second per lap on average. By contrast, in Sunday’s 24-lap grand prix, he finished only 16 seconds off the lead – and that was despite losing time as he fought his way through the pack.

Ducati boss Gigi Dall’Igna later revealed that the Italian marque had fitted a new swingarm on Bagnaia’s bike in the build-up to the race, which at least partly explains his reversal in fortunes. Bagnaia also maintains that the lower-capacity fuel tank mandated for sprints continues to cost him performance, and makes him automatically quicker on Sundays.

But even after such an impressive recovery ride, one has to look at Bagnaia’s results through a critical lens. Barcelona is supposed to be a stronghold for Bagnaia, who had won the last three grands prix at the venue across 2023 and 2024. Instead, it was Alex Marquez who took the top spot, while Bagnaia’s team-mate Marc Marquez also came away happy with a second-place finish on his bogey track.

In fact, statistics paint a clear picture of Bagnaia’s performances getting progressively worse as the season goes on.

*inflated  by Marc Marquez’s crash in Austin

** including no-scores in rain-hit French GP and British GP

By contrast, Marquez made a genuine step forward in the Aragon test, and with crashes now minimised, he is an almost unstoppable force in MotoGP.

Bagnaia, in Dall’Igna’s words, is the most important rider in the history of Ducati after Casey Stoner. It was Bagnaia who kicked off Ducati’s current dominance in MotoGP and, even though he lost the 2024 title to Jorge Martin, he found a silver lining in winning 11 out of the 20 grands prix. This year, however, there are no real positives to take.

“It’s more about the confidence you have in the bike, which is completely different,” Tardozzi told Sky Italy.

“Marc has been doing very well since the beginning of the year, and so his confidence is growing race after race.

“The other two [Bagnaia and Fabio di Giannantonio] had some difficulties, especially at the start of the world championship, and they still need to find the confidence.

“This makes them struggle a bit more, especially in the early sessions.”

This followed previous comments from Tardozzi, where he stated that Bagnaia needs to do more to ride around the problems he is facing on the GP25.

“As much as we can help him, he must also help us to help him,” he had said. “We need him to focus more on overcoming the difficulties, which are there, so we need him to think more about the rider he is and how good he is.”

The Turin rider and the GP25 simply haven’t gelled all season

Dall’Igna was more diplomatic in his assessment, simply stating that Bagnaia doesn’t have the same feeling he enjoyed last year while riding the GP24.

“It’s difficult to have an explanation because the riders don’t perform like you expect,” he said on Saturday.

“For sure the feeling that Pecco has at this time is not the same that he had last year. So I think this is the main reason for the lack of performance.

“We are working on it. We trust him and he trusts us. So this is the only thing that I can tell. I can promise you that we try our best in order to improve Pecco’s performance, to give him exactly the same feeling that he had last year, and if possible better.

“We are human. All of us sometimes don’t perform like you expect or like the others want. “

It was telling that Bagnaia didn’t want to compare the GP25 with the bike with which he won more than half the races last year when quizzed by the media last weekend. ‘Pecco’ would have likely preferred to stay on the GP24 this year, but even he knows that the potential of the new bike is higher, as attested by Marquez’s dominant run.