Pecco Bagnaia, from joy to a sudden retirement: what happened to the new dad at Assen

A two-sided Sunday for the Ducati rider: on the one hand the joy of becoming a parent, on the other the bitterness of a sudden retirement.

Pre-race at Assen was very emotional for Francesco Bagnaia, who was lining up to race as a father for the first time. He had received the wonderful news of the birth of his son, with his wife Domizia Castagnini. He certainly would have liked to be present at the birth, but his role as a MotoGP rider forced him to contest the Dutch Grand Prix. He aimed to give himself and his family a great result and was almost succeeding, only to then swallow a disappointment.

It was the fifteenth lap and he was running in fourth place, the best possible given the superiority of the Aprilia trio Ogura-Fernandez-Martin, when he clearly slowed and then returned to the box. A problem with his Ducati Desmosedici GP26 prevented him from continuing the race (HERE the final report) and from trying to secure a top 5, which wouldn’t have been bad at all on a weekend like this.

Pecco is obviously disappointed at not having been able to finish the GP at Assen and see the checkered flag: “I certainly didn’t expect to end with a retirement. After the Sprint I had very positive feelings for the long race, we could have been competitive. I didn’t start badly, I tried to stay in touch with the leaders right away and to make up some positions in the final stages while battling in the group. But I wasn’t riding the way I wanted, I was struggling to get the bike to decelerate and to stop it. From just past halfway, unfortunately, the situation became difficult to manage to even think about continuing. I’m sorry to have ended the weekend this way right here at Assen.”

Decelerating and stopping his Desmosedici became so problematic that it pushed him to do what a rider never wants to do: give up and retire. Ducati will need to thoroughly analyze the data and understand exactly what happened. Having ended the race early, Bagnaia left the TT Circuit without giving the various media interviews and caught the first flight back to Italy to be with his wife Domizia and their son.