Pecco Bagnaia, his crisis explained by Aldeguer: "He thought too much about 2024"

Aldeguer shared his view on Bagnaia’s strange 2025: here’s what didn’t work according to the rookie of the year.

After two titles won and a third one narrowly missed, no one imagined that Francesco Bagnaia would experience such an unusual MotoGP season. Right from the start there was a clear supremacy from his new teammate Marc Marquez and even greater competitiveness from Alex Marquez, yet the Italian rider was still a constant presence in the top 3-4 positions at least until the Czech Republic Grand Prix. It wasn’t the scenario he had dreamed of, but he was still managing to secure results that cannot be considered disastrous.

From the Austrian GP onward, the situation changed and Pecco entered a crisis that’s hard to understand. Only at Motegi (double win) and Sepang (Sprint win) did we see him back at a top level, without those front-end feeling issues he complained about all year. It will be interesting to see if, after such a complex 2025, he can return to being consistently competitive in 2026. The final test in Valencia was promising, with some updates that gave him confidence, but that day only counts for so much. We’ll see, when it’s time to get “serious,” whether there will have been a real turning point.

Bagnaia’s situation was a topic of discussion practically every weekend, and fellow riders were also asked about it. In his latest interview with Marca, Fermin Aldeguer offered his point of view: "The break will do him good. Until he lost his cool a bit or things got out of hand, he was having an excellent season. In the early races he fought to be among the top three. Marc was consistently in front and he couldn’t reach that level. Obviously, Marc’s presence didn’t help him, but I think the work he did on himself had a significant impact."

The BK8 Gresini Racing rider believes something didn’t work inside the garage, particularly in the work carried out from a certain point in the season onwards: "To me, he didn’t work in the best way with the team, with the bike, with his mentality, in building a base for 2025. I think he was firing shots into the air. Yes, Japan went well for him, but that’s it. In the end, he didn’t have the weapons to fight and those of us who are there can see it. We’re not talking about ‘I started the year badly, I didn’t adapt to the bike.’ No, you started at a great level. The fact is you kept getting worse and couldn’t maintain the potential you had."

Aldeguer believes Bagnaia thought too much about how fast he was in 2024 and thus wasted energy he should have channeled into adapting to a Ducati Desmosedici GP25 that for some reason didn’t give him the same feeling as the GP24: "For me, he focused too much on ‘last year I could, last year I did...’ Last year is last year and this year is this year, you have to adapt to the situation at hand, the bike won’t always be the same."

The rookie of the year has very clear ideas about what might have happened to Pecco during 2025. Obviously, he can’t be certain, but he’s not the only one to have formed similar thoughts. In any case, it’s crucial that the two-time MotoGP world champion does a reset and starts again with the right approach in 2026, a year in which he’ll have to earn a renewal with Ducati. Like so many other riders, his contract will be expiring and he won’t have a guaranteed spot in the red garage: results are needed. And Aldeguer himself is aiming for the Ducati factory team.