Marco Bezzecchi
Francesco Bagnaia scored his first pole position of the 2025 season at the Czech Grand Prix last weekend. But he walked away without a podium finish in either race.
Bagnaia was unlucky in the Sprint, with Ducati’s tyre pressure issues forcing him to concede a position. He may have slowed down at the wrong moment, though, because multiple riders swallowed him up.
The two-time world champion ultimately finished seventh. In the main race, he was once again passed by Marc Marquez early on, and he also fell behind the Aprilia of Marco Bezzecchi and the KTM of Pedro Acosta.
It’s the fourth time in the last seven Grands Prix that he’s missed out on the podium (or the 10th time in his last 12 starts, including Sprints). After another perfect weekend for his teammate, the gap has grown from 147 points to 168.
Francesco Bagnaia offers Ducati hope after saying his feeling ‘came back’ at end of Brno race
Bagnaia finished over 100 points ahead of his Ducati teammate Enea Bastianini last season. In fact, he hasn’t been beaten by the sister bike since 2020, when he partnered Jack Miller at Pramac.
But with 12 races out of 22 gone, Bagnaia still hasn’t found a comfortable ‘feeling’ with Ducati’s GP25. Marquez is making history on the motorcycle, but its other two riders are third and fifth.
Still, Ducati sporting director Mauro Grassilli remains hopeful. Bagnaia apparently said in the debrief that his confidence ‘came back’ at the end of the race
He was only half a second behind Acosta at the finish line. The key for Bagnaia is finding consistency over a full race distance.
“I heard him in the briefing, and he said that at the beginning it was very good, in the middle it was difficult, and that, in the end, he came back,” Grassilli explained.
“Let’s say the path is the right one. We, as a team, have to be as close to him as possible and do it so that he always has the best support from us.
“I think it’s a question of feeling. He’s already waiting to find that feeling. He always says he’s missing something to be the Pecco Bagnaia we know, but I see that his way of approaching race after race is improving, going in the right direction.
“He also proved to be a champion in Brno, because, in reality, I think that if he’d had a few more laps, he would have caught Acosta and, perhaps, overtaken him. It’s easy to talk in hindsight, but I think he’s going in the right direction.”
Marc Marquez has a new rival to be worried about as Pecco Bagnaia falls by the wayside
Bagnaia used to regard himself as the best rider on the grid when it came to braking. Now he says he’s ‘the worst’.
The 28-year-old bolted on some larger brake discs at Aragon last month and heralded it as a breakthrough. But it’s proved to be a false dawn, sapping his morale further.
Veteran MotoGP manager Carlo Pernat thinks Bezzecchi and Aprilia will be the biggest threat to Marquez after the summer break.
The in-form Bezzecchi has now moved up to fourth place in the championship. Worryingly, the 57-point gap to Bagnaia looks surmountable.
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