Marco Bezzecchi
Francesco Bagnaia has tried everything he can so far on Ducati’s MotoGP bike to return to the level of performance that he delivered in 2024.
However, for some reason, it just isn’t happening for him, and he trails Ducati teammate Marc Marquez by a whopping 126 points, less than halfway through the season.
His hopes of achieving a third MotoGP title in 2025 at least are over. It’s too far to come back from against one of the sport’s all-time greats.
But Bagnaia needs to turn the tide if he ever wants to beat Marquez on the same bike, so he has plenty of work left ahead of him to make sure he gives himself the best chance of winning again one day.
There has been a change, and even his father has noticed it. Bagnaia is ‘missing’ his old habits at Ducati, and rediscovering them without his confidence will be tricky.
Bagnaia changed his behaviour at Ducati and seems to be willing to do whatever is required to get back to his very best. He may need some help from his team, though.
READ MORE: Luigi Dall’Igna will ‘never quit believing’ in Francesco Bagnaia after he saw one masterful moment
Francesco Bagnaia apologised to Ducati engineers because he wants to ‘change’ in 2025
Ducati needed to remind Bagnaia of his duties after he stormed out of a post-race press conference at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Even though he finished third, he knew that he had race-winning pace and the potential to challenge his teammate, but he lost too much ground early on, and it ended up costing him.
Marquez is ‘making the difference’ over Bagnaia by knowing exactly when to take risks. It’s like he has been at the team forever, even though it’s his first season.
Now Bagnaia knows that he needs to change, he has admitted that he apologised to them because he wants to change one thing about his approach in 2025.
“I had a brief meeting with my team, with the engineers, and I just apologised because I want to change,” he told DAZN.
“I want to go more in the direction of the team because so far, few things have solved the problems.”
What can Ducati change on the GP25 to help Francesco Bagnaia?
Ducati’s best option to help Bagnaia is to build him a new bike, but the only problem is the timeframe of that operation.
With the level of cost involved, it wouldn’t make sense to do that this season. Instead, he’s likely to have to wait until 2026.
Even then, if it’s something inherent with the philosophy of the front forks of the GP25 bike, then it won’t just disappear.
There’s a reason for Bagnaia’s lack of confidence and ability to push the front of his bike, and it’s not going to be easy to fix.
At least the team has plenty of time to rule out every setup possibility between now and then before getting to work on the machinery.
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