Bagnaia shock at Silverstone: "Marquez and I were the slowest"

The MotoGP World Championship restart turns into an uphill battle for Ducati and Pecco Bagnaia. The Silverstone Sprint ends in 17th place for the VR46 Academy pupil and sees triumph for Aprilia, the team he will race with next season. The gap to winner Jorge Martin is over 23 seconds; tire wear, especially on the right side, doomed the Desmosedici GPs.

Bagnaia did not hide his frustration over the lack of pace on Silverstone Saturday. Despite starting from sixteenth on the grid, his worst of 2026, Pecco ended up losing further positions in the Sprint race. "I can’t imagine anything worse in terms of performance today. There was no rhythm, no speed, and a lack of grip. The lack of grip is huge and today, after four laps, I started going backward instead of forward. And in the last two laps I couldn’t even get my right knee down, so it’s very difficult for me to be competitive."

This weekend, and in certain conditions, it will be important to reach the finish and collect valuable points without too much ambition. "The goal at the start of the weekend was to get into the top ten, but given my performance, it’s hard to imagine a better result than fifteenth," admitted the two-time MotoGP champion.

The final laps pushed the Ducatis out of the leading positions. Excessive tire consumption prevented them from finishing on the attack. Just staying upright felt like a miracle. "The factory team suffered a lot today. Marc and I were the slowest riders in the last laps, so it’s hard to imagine what to do. I expected a drop in performance today, but not to this extent."

For Sunday’s race, they’ll look at Alex Marquez’s data, as he finished fourth, about seven seconds behind ‘Martinator’. Today they’ll try to change something in terms of setup, but Pecco Bagnaia will have to adopt a different riding style. "You have to keep going and lean the bike as if it were wet. And when you touch the throttle you have to do it as smoothly as possible. Otherwise you lose rear control, as happened to Marc, who had his airbag deploy for that reason, and then it becomes very difficult."

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