Bagnaia’s slump “all in his head” amid Marquez pressure, says veteran team boss

Outgoing Tech3 team boss Herve Poncharal believes Francesco Bagnaia’s 2025 MotoGP struggles were rooted largely in psychological factors, saying a “lot was playing in his head” during the year.

Two-time MotoGP champion Bagnaia was expected to mount a fierce challenge against Marc Marquez as the pair teamed up at the factory Ducati squad this year.

But while Marquez romped to his seventh premier class title with 11 victories in the first 18 grands prix, the Italian endured a miserable year and slumped to fifth in the championship after failing to score in the final grands prix of the year.

Throughout the year Bagnaia maintained that his lack of results was down to a mismatch between his riding style and the DNA of the GP25, with an isolated dominant victory at the Japanese Grand Prix only deepening the mystery behind his slump.

Poncharal, who oversaw the early careers of numerous MotoGP stars during his long tenure at Tech3, believes Bagnaia was fighting an internal battle throughout 2025 as he tried to make sense of his struggles.

“What a mystery, how to explain it,” he said on MotoGP’s official broadcast. “Especially when you saw that out of his nightmare, that was an incredible victory in Japan.

“I’m not Mr I-know-everything and I don’t want to sound like Mr I-know-everything, but clearly there is a lot which is played in the head – a lot, a lot, a lot. 

“For sure, Pecco still knows how to ride a bike. The Ducati, for me, is still – even though the margin is less – the best bike on track. And he knows his team, his team knows him. So, for me, there is no reason, no real reason.”

Poncharal suspects Marquez’s incredible speed on equal machinery played a role in Bagnaia’s dramatic loss of form, recalling how other riders struggled to hold a candle to Valentino Rossi when his Tech3 team ran Yamaha’s satellite bikes.

“[Marquez] has an impact,” he said. “When you’re having difficulties, when there is sometimes a question mark in your head, and you see the guy next door who is winning, [scoring] pole positions [and being] fastest [in] every session, and what you say is not so well listened to…

“When I was with Yamaha, there were four Yamahas. Valentino was winning every race, he was winning every championship, and the other three [riders] were completely lost. And they were on the same machinery, I can tell you.

“When we were showing the data of Valentino to the other guy, they said, ‘I just can’t do that’. And I think the same thing was happening when Marc was with Honda.

“To have a team-mate like Marc Marquez doing what he was doing with the bike, it’s a shock. And to not be the number one anymore, not be the one winning all the time, the one who has all the hope of the factory on you, that changed the whole game.”

Bagnaia’s results comparison:

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– The Autosport.com Team