Francesco Bagnaia says his Ducati behaves “very, very differently” to the other bikes in the marque’s line-up, with no clear explanation for the contrast.
The two-time MotoGP champion made that comment following a bruising weekend at Misano where he struggled for performance in both qualifying and race trim.
Although the first half of the season had shown some encouraging signs of recovery, even if some issues from 2025 persisted, his form has taken a nosedive after the summer break. In the three weekends since the championship resumed at Silverstone, Bagnaia has failed to score a point, with all three Sunday races ending with him on the ground.
The Italian felt “humiliated” again in front of his home crowd at the San Marino Grand Prix, unable to understand why he wasn’t able to get the bike to work to his liking.
“When I moved to qualifying and we put on a new soft rear, I was having the same grip as the used soft. So, it was really strange,” he said after Saturday’s sprint.
“It’s extremely easy to see the difference between what my bike is doing compared to all the other Ducatis. Big, big difference, but difficult to understand why. Also, the team is without any answers.
“I’m braking much harder than the rest, but the bike is not decelerating. I’m paying a lot of attention to acceleration with the throttle, but I’m the one that is accelerating less. I feel really frustrated, but also humiliated about my feeling about what is happening. But it’s what it is. So I will just try to give my maximum and try to give to the people and to Ducati the maximum.”
Bagnaia has a strong track record at Misano, with three victories across all classes. However, his qualifying lap was half a second slower than last year, while he also struggled in both races. He finished a distant 17th in the sprint, while he was running ninth on Sunday when he went down on lap 5.
Bagnaia said he no longer has control over the Ducati in the past, with persistent rear grip issues preventing him from extracting the maximum out of the bike.
“Right now, things are happening that I can’t control,” he said. “Dorna put a video of me entering corner 14 on a slow lap and completely losing the rear without doing anything. This is something that I can’t control completely.
“In 2022, 2023, 2024, 2021, 2019, the bike was always doing one thing. In 2025, just in Japan, it was doing all the same things, so I was expecting what the bike was doing. And all of last year, apart from Japan, and this year, the bike is doing strange things – mostly in the last three GPs.”
Asked if he had run out of options, Bagnaia added: “Absolutely.
“I’m doing the maximum. The team is doing the maximum with what we have, but something is missing. It’s difficult for everybody to understand what to do. And we are trying just to do something better, but it’s difficult.”
The Italian said he has to accept his new reality in MotoGP to tackle the problem, saying ninth or a tenth is the best he can hope for in races.
“It’s extremely difficult, because we’re working so hard and my team is doing everything possible to make sure I feel comfortable,” he explained after the race on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, we can’t figure out why certain things just aren’t coming together for me anymore, especially when braking, entering the corner, and through the corner. We have to accept reality and try to improve.
“For now, we have to accept that my current level is probably good enough for a ninth or tenth-place finish, and we have to start over from there.”
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