Is Pecco Bagnaia cooked?
Has Marc Marquez already struck a fatal blow to the double world champion’s hopes and standing? Or are people misjudging a rider who has finished on the box in almost 50% of his MotoGP starts?
By Adam Wheeler
First of all, there are twenty Grands Prix and twenty Sprints still to come in 2025 and motorsport, for all its formbook related to contemporary technical superiority, is known for being unpredictable. So, to assume anything about the current MotoGP title chase is folly. But where’s the fun in that? Aside from individual flashes of performance, distinction through results or controversy, then a power shift in any sport is always good subject matter.
With two weekends of work with and a near-perfect record thus far, Ducati Lenovo’s Marc Marquez has shot a big arrow across the bow of the MotoGP fleet. It was a strike that many feared, and even more predicted was inevitable. The memories of that invincible 2019 season and 1st or 2nd positions in all but one of those 19 rounds have faded but are still there. It’s common sense: equip the greatest motorcycle racer ever with the latest version of the best bike on the grid and with access to the best resources and 1+1 = 2. Or maybe 9 (world championships).
Marquez is the greatest of all-time for his influence and impact on the sport, the riders he has beaten, his mentality and the competitive longevity as well as the game-changing style and the results. There are big ‘X’s in all those columns. In 2024 though he had to closely study the finest rider of the last half decade: his teammate, and Ducati’s ultimate reference in the era of Gigi Dall’Igna’s stewardship of Ducato Corse.
Pecco Bagnaia won 11 races last year and only lost a third crown-in-a-row in the face of Jorge Martin’s slightly surprising maturity and consistency. The gap was 10 points after the twentieth Grand Prix in Catalunya. He lost to the Spaniard in a duel on just two occasions and to Marquez twice when the latter was steering the bike he’d used to win the 2023 championship.
In the two rounds of 2025 to-date, the 28-year-old Italian hasn’t come close enough to lay a jab on Marquez’s Desmosedici. In fact, thanks to the ridiculous temporal nature of racing, he’s even managed to fall to third in the Ducati pecking order behind Alex Marquez who is relishing the stability of the GP24 and the spec of bike that Bagnaia has allegedly asked Ducati to return to his pitbox. While the 32-year-old Catalan on the other side of the garage has settled on the chassis and swingarm modifications Dall’Igna has made for 2025, Bagnaia still hasn’t found the right clicks for the rapier feeling he had in 2024. The step backwards to go forward worked for Pecco after the Sepang test at the beginning of 2023 and his collective crew will be now aiming for a similar effect.
Marquez has rarely smiled more in the past three weeks of MotoGP life. The return to eminence after his four-year trawl through injury, recovery, HRC dejection and reinvention might well be the overarching story of 2025. But what about Bagnaia? Will he have a say in the matter? And when? Meanwhile Marquez continues to be the reference, and fills the part of the ‘smiling villain’ by dropping affecting comments about the competitive landscape that he oversees. To overthrow the current regent, Bagnaia must firstly furrow the few tenths of a second per lap to be able to pressurise his teammate and force him into more urgency than he’s had against his younger brother. This, in itself, is quite a task. Bagnaia might then want to place a call to Jorge Lorenzo for tips about sustained scraps with his rival. Or he can take an easier route and probe some of mentor Valentino Rossi’s deep recesses for more insight. Bagnaia and Marquez went bar-to-bar at one of Pecco’s favoured hunting grounds in 2024; Mugello, where he hasn’t lost a race since 2021. But Marc brought an old Colt revolver against Pecco’s Glock and was outgunned.
#63 could enact his preference of hitting the front and weathering pressure from Marc, Alex and all but this requires an even larger uptick from his present mire and improved front end grip. Is this surge possible or likely when the heat is not around the corner but a few metres to his left every single GP weekend?
In 2024, Bagnaia proved that he is still not immune to rashness. The fall in Misano, the clashes with the ‘Marqui’ in Portugal and Aragon and the decisive slip in the Sepang Sprint were memorable examples but Crew Chief Cristian Gabarrini told me in Silverstone that his charge is a rider that is still learning, adapting and progressing; that Bagnaia still has room for extra excellence. There also seems to be a general feeling in MotoGP that Marquez has the psychological upperhand (tales from his Honda days have surfaced of marginalisation and other behavioural tactics to mark his territory) by virtue of his experience and his spats but this is where I feel Bagnaia is most underrated.
In writing ‘Motorcycle Grand Prix: Insider stories from world championship racing’ I’ve had to listen intently to his words and dissect a lot of Bagnaia’s moves. I was afforded a long interview slot at the VR46 offices early in 2024. It was the third 1-1 we’d done in his career. During that visit he explained parts of his approach to racing and was, unsurprisingly, very self-analytical. I would end up writing: ‘his mental compartmentalisation to the task for a chrono, a day, a meeting or a season is a forte. “One of my strongest points is this one,” he affirms “and [keeping] my confidence. When I realise I can do something well then I know perfectly what I am capable of.”
“This [realisation] is automatic for me but I still try to improve it,” he said. “I know at a Grand Prix some others might be faster at the start of the weekend but our way to work will bring us to the top and we can be quicker.”
“I’m very precise in understanding every situation and the potential of every rider.”’
That last comment underlines Bagnaia’s smarts. At some stage in 2025 he could surmise that Marquez’s speed is too great a hurdle in which case he’ll be the cat after the mouse. But it also indicates that he’ll be studying #93 intently and might go on to be Marc’s toughest opponent from an already impressive gallery of Rossi, Stoner, Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Dovizoso and Quartararo.
I also spoke to Moto2 Grand Prix winner Lorenzo Baldassarri, Bagnaia’s former housemate and buddy, about Pecco’s personality. “In this sport talent is not enough. Just working hard is not enough: you have to be mentally good and strong,” he said by way of vindication. “You have to have good people around you that help a lot and support.”
Marquez might have his brother, girlfriend, assistant Jose Luis, and manager in his corner but Bagnaia has the VR46 hoards and a whole structure of training, coaching and advice located close to his home in Pesaro. If he needs any extra ‘muscle’ then he has the weight of Rossi and could even depend on the gravitas that the Italian’s words would carry in the media if he had to speak-up. Two racers with two strong camps: it’s hard to see much frailty there. And Ducati, outwardly and publicly, do their best to show impartiality. It’s a characteristic they had to begin moulding even back to the days of the ‘Andreas’ [Dovizioso and Iannone] battling internally and then tried to keep the odd poker face when Desmosedicis were tussling for P1 in different teams thanks to Bagnaia and Martin. Keen MotoGP fans have already been trying to spot telltale signs of body language and gestures from Ducati management in Thailand and Argentina as Marquez has laid waste but as much as Dall’Igna might be enamoured with his fresh bearer of data, he is too intelligent to downgrade Bagnaia’s worth and value in the development programme.
“The Ducati is a bike that gives you a lot of feedback but then there is a point when it doesn’t, as well,” Jack Miller told me in 2024 and in another section of the book. “He [Pecco] has a great finesse with it and understanding of what he feels: it’s like a Spidey Sense. It means he can use the maximum of each corner and in each braking zone.”
Bagnaia has had little answer to the Marquez family in 2025 but after two rounds there is no reason or evidence for panic. After all, from his seven seasons in the MotoGP class Pecco hasn’t always been the strongest starter: suffering at least one DNF from the first three races for five years of those seven! OK, he won opening Grands Prix in Portugal and Qatar in 2023 and 2024 but then flopped both times in the following fixture.
On the track he can handle the squash. Don’t forget that he took seven races in 2022 on his way back from a 91-point deficit in the standings and the biggest win margin from all those victories was just 0.6 of a second. Mistakes? Yes, but Marquez also. The current championship leader has headed the MotoGP crash stats in the past and his limit-pushing ‘MO’ finally caught him in 2020. Who’s to say he won’t get injured again?
Racing from the bench is gloriously pointless. But when MotoGP has this ‘dream team’ scenario then it’s a drip-feed of drama. Pecco Bagnaia is probably waiting to open the valve to the sluice right now.
Photos by Ducati Corse Media.
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