Marco Bezzecchi
During a 2024 interview with Neil Hodgson, Davide Tardozzi gave a surprising verdict on Francesco Bagnaia that still rings true today.
Francesco Bagnaia had been the flag-bearer of the factory Ducati outfit since his step up to factory machinery ahead of the 2021 season, relinquishing it to Marc Marquez last year.
Having spent the first four seasons of his tenure at Borgo Panigale as a championship candidate, the Italian rider was plagued by issues with his GP25 that hindered his progress as the campaign ensued.
Ducati chief Davide Tardozzi was a staunch ally of Bagnaia during his struggles, but his constructive criticism of the 28-year-old ahead of the recently concluded campaign still has a lot of relevance today.
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Davide Tardozzi explained why Francesco Bagnaia needed to grow up in a 2024 interview with Neil Hodgson
In an August 2024 appearance on the Ducati Diaries podcast with former MotoGP rider Neil Hodgson, Tardozzi outlined why Bagnaia is yet to show his final form as a premier class rider.
Hodgson began by highlighting the fact that the Italian rider never seems to look satisfied, before asking the Ducati chief what it’s like to work with him inside the box.
Tardozzi replied, “I think that is one of the main issues of Pecco, that he never stopped to learn. He’s still growing.
“I think that we are yet to see the best Pecco because it’s not now, because I’m sure that he will grow up in the future. So he’s learning, he’s learning a lot from his mistakes.
“Sometimes he repeats his mistakes. Slowly, he brought this on board, and he became a better rider. I think that there are many, many people like you who still think that Pecco is not a champion.
“But if you take a look at his performance, okay, he was very fast with the Mahindra, he won races with Mahindra that honestly was not a fantastic bike, but anyway, if you take a look at his career from when he started to be in the factory team in 2021, he won his first race at Aragon.
“From that time, in Aragon, he took part in 55 races, and he won 24. Which other rider has won almost half of the races that they’ve done in the last three years? I think he’s a champion.”
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Davide Tardozzi’s assessment of Francesco Bagnaia still rings true today
The words from Ducati’s team principal about Bagnaia were evident during the height of the Italian’s struggles with the GP25 last term.
As the race weekends passed, Bagnaia was seemingly dumbfounded in terms of the reason why he wasn’t able to match the pace of his high-flying teammate in Marc Marquez, and Ducati engineers were none the wiser.
Bagnaia had found his sub-par results hard to accept and enlisted the help of multiple outsiders, including Ducati legend Casey Stoner, to try and help him out of the rut that he had been experiencing.
Still, a turnaround was nowhere in sight. He had a brief return to form at the Japanese Grand Prix, but the highs of that weekend quickly fell apart again as he languished in the following race weekend in Mandalika.
It remains to be seen whether we will see Bagnaia back at his best in 2026. If he fails to do so, his days at Borgo Panigale may be limited.
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