Pecco Bagnaia: Jorge Martin crashed "in the worst way possible"

Francesco Bagnaia believes Jorge Martin’s MotoGP Sepang test crash was down to bad luck, rather than taking too much risk.

Reigning MotoGP Champion Martin, in only his second day on the Aprilia RS-GP, crashed twice on the opening day of the official test, the second seeing him high-side at turn two and suffer fractures in both his left hand and left foot, leaving him out of action for days two and three.

“Honestly not,” Bagnaia said after the first day in Sepang when asked if he thinks about he danger of MotoGP after a couple of months off the bike.

“I know that always it can happen, but today was an unlucky situation because he [Martin] fell and was back in the garage, and already in the first [timed lap] he crashed again, with a huge one.

“Maybe the rear tyre wasn’t warm enough, because it was the harder specification, and the harder specification is not that good. But maybe the temperature wasn’t at the top and he crashed like Marc [Marquez] crashed in 2019, the same way.

“For me, it’s an unlucky situation, but I just hope that he will be back already in Thailand or maybe that he will be ready for the first race.

“I don’t think he risked today, he just crashed in the slowest corner, in the worst way possible, but it’s something that can happen.

“Maybe it’s something that some fans need to remember, that it’s not that easy to ride these bikes.”

“Power delivery” better, braking worse on GP25

As for Bagnaia’s own day, it was a muted performance in terms of lap times, as the three-times World Champion finished down in 17th, 1.392 seconds off the top time set by Fabio Quartararo.

But the Italian said that his running was limited due to a lack of tyres, and that also prevented him from being able to make a proper assessment of the new Desmosedici GP25 compared to its predecessor, the GP24.

“It’s difficult to say something about the bikes because we don’t have enough tyres to test properly the things, and today was more of a sacrifice day,” Bagnaia said of his opening day of the season.

“Honestly, we did that just to start to filter everything. So, we started with the biggest thing, and we saw already with the other specification that it wasn’t working very well; different thing, we understood already the direction thanks to Marc [Marquez] who did a good time attack on the GP24 in the last part of the day.

“We have more data to analyse and I think we did a very good job today because our feeling was more or less the same and we trust, we tried a different way and we [came together] in the last part of the day.

“So, we gave a lot of data to the technicians, the engineers, and tomorrow we already know where to start.”

Despite his reluctance to be too decisive on his opinion of the GP25 compared to the 2024 bike, Bagnaia still some observations of the new bike’s character.

“A good thing that I feel with the GP25 is the power delivery, it looks very smooth, very precise, a bit better compared to the GP24 that was a bit more ‘bumpy’ in the exit,” he said.

“But the best point of the GP24 was the braking and entry, and right now with the GP25 we are not at the same level. So, we have to work on it, but there is plenty of time to do it.”

Bagnaia clarified that he feels the engine is having an impact on his impression of the GP25’s braking characteristics being a step backwards from the GP24’s, but that it’s not a question of inertia.

“I think it’s more the construction of the engine, but it’s not the inertia of the engine,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the setup.”

The Italian added that he had been riding with the GP24 chassis on Wednesday in order to focus more specifically on the new engine.

“The frame of today was the GP24 frame, just with the new engine,” he said, “ because it’s more important [first[ to understand the engine, and then we will add the new frame.

“Diggia [Fabio Di Giannantonio], that was already using the new frame, was happy on the braking, so I think it will be good.”

The reason for delaying the introduction of the new chassis is because of the relatively small amount of testing time before the season, but also because of the engine development freeze for 2026.

“And also because we don’t have much time, like in the past,” Bagnaia said when asked if the incoming development freeze was the cause of the engine-first testing schedule at Ducati.

“We will finish these five days of testing, and then one week later we have to go to Thailand for the first race.

“So, the maximum important thing, the top thing, is to understand the engine because it already happened in the past that we have to come back a bit and we don’t want the same situation; because the GP24 was an incredible bike for some aspects, and we want to improve that.

“From my point of view, the engine is working very well on the exit, on the power delivery, but we have to improve the braking, and I think we already know what to do.”