On a tough weekend for Ducati in Austria, one of the few positives was a mild return to form for factory rider Francesco Bagnaia.
The Italian has struggled in MotoGP since the summer break, awakening memories of his dramatic difficulties throughout most of 2025. Heading into Austria, he had failed to score a point since the mid-season interval. He had also missed direct Q2 qualification for four successive weekends, stretching back to the German Grand Prix.
The Spielberg weekend did not start well for Bagnaia, as he once again missed the top 10 on Friday. But Saturday brought a return to respectability as he cleared the Q1 hurdle on his way to qualifying seventh. He finished the races sixth and seventh respectively.
Bagnaia credited a broadcast comment by MotoGP race winner and current KTM test rider Dani Pedrosa for some of his improvement.
“I used what Dani Pedrosa said on DAZN last week,” said Bagnaia after the Saturday race. “That maybe I needed to do more laps, understand the bike better to be able to control the results. And it was a good suggestion.”
With that advice in mind, the Turin man treated the Saturday sprint as a test, using the medium tyre that would come into play on Sunday rather than the faster soft tyre.
“We decided to go with the medium because tomorrow the race will be very long and I needed to understand things more.”
He also said that a step had been made on technical front on Saturday morning, despite the kind of slightly damp surface that might usually have put Bagnaia off his stride.
“This morning we tried something different on the set-up and it was luckily the correct direction. From the first laps, with wet patches, I was feeling a bit better. So I was able to stop the bike more, use the rear more to turn and the grip wasn’t that bad.”
Bagnaia was vague about the nature of the change, calling it, “something that we already did, but in a different way.”
The 29-year-old was less positive on Sunday, saying things felt worse than they had on Saturday as the Ducatis battled brake difficulties. Despite that, factory team-mate Marc Marquez was the only man to beat him in the grand prix.
The double world champion’s next MotoGP challenge is at Motegi, the track where he suddenly rediscovered winning form a year ago – before losing it in equally inexplicable fashion immediately thereafter.
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