No matter what Francesco Bagnaia does, he cannot seem to find a solution for his woes at Ducati in 2025.
The two-time MotoGP champion has been made to look like a rookie in his own team against Marc Marquez.
No one could have predicted that Bagnaia’s drop-off would be so dramatic, and pressure is now starting to mount on him.
There is only so much Ducati can do to support him, and dropping out of the top three in the championship seems like a real possibility.
Bagnaia’s Ducati struggles may continue into 2026 if his experimentation over the last eight rounds of the season fails to yield any gain.
Worryingly, Bagnaia is set to receive a ‘big hit’ at Ducati if he does fail to finish in the top three this year, and Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi is now breathing down his neck.
Francesco Bagnaia must ‘trust’ his brakes more if he wants to end Marc Marquez dominance
Bagnaia slammed the ‘inappropriate’ response to his struggles before the Hungarian Grand Prix, but it didn’t fire him up enough to find any improvements.
Following his worst sprint result of the year, Bagnaia’s ‘main issue’ was just exposed, and he is continuing to struggle under braking.
Peter Bom has just explained the root cause of Bagnaia’s ‘trust’ issues with his bike, and it may also be one of the key areas for his teammate’s dominance.
“I hope it makes the problem more clear for our listeners what Pecco has. Everybody can brake really, really hard in a straight line, unless your bike is very short and very high,” he said.
“Then you’ll immediately fall over to the front. It’s a mechanical thing, the guys c— the brake and go down with the gearbox, and depending on the strategy from the engine braking, the rear does something. Basically, the whole bike on the right-hand finger, or maybe one or two fingers, that’s it.
“You can’t do anything more, but after that, during the braking phase, you open, open, open, open the brake. Then you start to lean with a lot of brake pressure,” Bom continued.
“Look at how deep the forks are when they still have a lot of brake pressure. That’s the phase, braking into the corner, going to a lot of lean angle, still with a serious lot of brake pressure, that’s what Pecco really doesn’t trust.”
Francesco Bagnaia wanted to ‘crush’ one Ducati rumour at the Hungarian Grand Prix
The most confusing aspect of Bagnaia’s form in 2025 has been that he’s less than 12 months removed from a season where he won more than 50% of the Grands Prix on offer.
He fell agonisingly short of a third consecutive title, and all of a sudden, he’s on the longest run without a win since he joined Ducati’s factory team.
Bagnaia wanted to ‘crush’ one Ducati rumour at the Hungarian Grand Prix, and insisted that he would have picked the GP24 bike over the GP25 if he knew about the issues he would face down the line.
There’s a chance that he returns to the older machine for next year, if he continues to struggle with his current machine. Even further developments aren’t improving the situation.
If he fails to pick up the pace, Ducati will ‘run out of patience’ and he could be left searching for a new team heading into the 2027 regulations. It would be an unsettling time to require a new ride.
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