A two-time world champion does not often speak like this. Pecco Bagnaia has admitted he is enduring “one of my lowest points on a sporting level” in MotoGP after an Aragón Grand Prix weekend that brought 11th place in the sprint and a crash out of Sunday’s race.
What Pecco Bagnaia said after Aragón
Speaking to Sky Italy, the Ducati rider was unusually blunt. “It’s hard to accept, though, because I think this is one of my lowest points on a sporting level,” he said, as reported by Crash.net. “I come here to the races and do my best, but that only allows me to finish 12th or 10th.”
The mechanism, he says, is visible in the data. “I’m not riding the bike and I’m being carried around, because when I try to do something more, I still crash, and even going slowly, I still crash.” Bagnaia has now crashed out of back-to-back grands prix.
A grip problem with no explanation
He has battled rear grip on the GP26 all season, but the deficit has deepened over the last two rounds without a clear cause — a worrying trend for a rider who reached the summer break on four successive podiums and has been off the pace since Silverstone. Of the slipperier circuits still to come, he said simply that he “can’t imagine”.
The comparison inside his own garage is unforgiving. Marc Marquez took the Aragón sprint and grand prix double on the same machinery, despite a ride-height device error at the start, and now sits second in the standings, 19 points behind leader Jorge Martin in a title fight that has tightened considerably. Bagnaia insists he has not lost what once made him a champion; on current evidence, Misano cannot come soon enough.
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