Two world titles, flashes of brilliance but a baffling loss of consistency. Just what is going on inside Francesco Bagnaia’s helmet?
For the second year in a row, Francesco ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia’s results have been pretty poor but very much up and down. The factory Ducati rider is often slower than expected and can appear completely lost. What the hell is going on here?
Pecco is a double MotoGP world champion, lifting the big trophy in 2022 and 2023 before finishing runner-up in 2024. The guy can ride a bike but last year his results started to drop and he finished a lowly fifth overall, while teammate Marc Marquez won the title.
According to Pecco, the GP25 was causing him all sorts of trouble with the front of the bike. Now, of course, this can happen. In fact, it soon became clear that the bike’s front end was far from confidence-inspiring. Both the other GP25 riders, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Marc, had noticed the same problem, although they somehow suffered less from it.
Ducati’s engineers reacted well, as Pecco told us after the first day of testing earlier this year: “As soon as I started with the GP26 I felt good. On braking and entry I felt that the bike was stopping and not pushing.”
Great. Roll on 2026.
However, on the eve of the Phillip Island round, the factory Ducati rider sat in an even worse ninth position in the championship, as Marquez fought for the title. This time it’s a lack of rear grip that’s preventing him from showing his true potential.
Riders cannot stay at the top forever. Yes, their experience grows with the years but so do their reaction times, while their mental flexibility can diminish. Clearly, at some point, the overall effect will inevitably make them slower. Think of Franky Morbidelli this year or, more famously, Valentino Rossi.
But what makes Pecco’s case so interesting is that, even at age 29, during these two troublesome seasons he has occasionally been blindingly fast. The way he took pole position and won both races at Motegi in 2025 was impressive. Yet at the rounds immediately before and after, he was nowhere near where Ducati expects its factory riders to be.
At the time of writing, Pecco was 188 points behind teammate Marquez. Yet he had somehow managed to qualify on the front row twice and finish on the podium twice, including a Sprint victory. On the other hand, he had also crashed out nine times and sometimes finished races completely outside the points.
You can’t say for sure that he’s lost all his speed but, boy, has he lost his consistency.
We can’t know for certain what’s going on but I have no doubt the entire Ducati factory team is thinking long and hard trying to help him. However, I have a feeling the real problem is inside Pecco’s head.
From my understanding, he’s a creature of habit. He needs time to get to know a bike and learn to trust it before he can be fast. But he’s easily upset when that balance is disturbed – for example, when the team has to change the bike to suit a different type of track or tyre.
All in all, it looks as though Pecco is chasing something that cannot always be there. He’s waiting for a certain type of feedback, wanting to eliminate some weakness in the bike, when he might be better off adapting to the changes and learning how to be fast with the bike as it is. In a way, Pecco reminds me of an actor who is temporarily so confused that he completely forgets his script.
The fact is, the current level in MotoGP is seriously high. Both the riders and bikes are very, very good. As a consequence, every detail matters, and bikes need to be fine-tuned and changed over and over again.
But there’s another factor, and I suspect this is where things are going wrong for poor Pecco. The style of riding these bikes has changed. Mostly thanks to aerodynamics, teams can now do only so much to adjust the bike to suit the rider. Today’s MotoGP bikes have become very different animals, placing greater demands on their riders. They must be more flexible, quickly understanding and learning what their bike requires at every circuit. Talent alone is no longer enough.
I’m sure Tech3 has good reasons for choosing Senna Agius to join its MotoGP team next year. They will have looked beyond raw talent and must have been impressed by Senna’s work ethic, determination and, not least, the fact that his performances have continued to improve while remaining relatively consistent. And that’s in Moto2!
But Pecco’s suffering shouldn’t last much longer. Knowing he needs a change, he has signed for Aprilia in 2027, when everyone starts from zero in the 850cc era. It might be just the change the double world champion needs to get his career back on track.
