Ducati insists Pecco Bagnaia “not under pressure” amid Marc Marquez dominance
Factory Ducati team is backing Pecco Bagnaia to rebound in MotoGP 2025
Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi says Pecco Bagnaia is “not under pressure” and the marque “trusts him” to rebound after his poor start to MotoGP 2025
Having won 11 grands prix in 2024, double world champion Pecco Bagnaia hasn’t come close to scoring any victories in 2025’s opening two rounds.
He was 2.398s behind Thai Grand Prix winner Marc Marquez in third, and was 5.5s adrift in fourth as his factory Ducati team-mate once again took victory.
Now 31 points behind in the championship, Bagnaia has already spoken about reverting to the full GP24-spec Ducati from next weekend’s Americas GP to try to find his form again.
Pecco Bagnaia can't "waste" opportunity of good points despite early 2025 struggles
Tardozzi insists Ducati is “missing something” in understanding why Bagnaia is struggling, particularly on the front end of the GP25, but is confident he will get on terms with Marquez soon.
“I just spoke with Pecco,” he told TNT Sport after the Argentina GP.
“The small, small problem on the bike that didn’t give him the right feeling on the left corners.
“But in the end we trust him and we wait for him for one or two more races and I’m sure he will be back.
“Yeah, we know that COTA is kind of a dream part for Marc Marquez. But Qatar we do expect Pecco will be there fighting with him for the win.
“It’s a very difficult job to support him, but even for him to keep focused on the best positions he is doing - third place, fourth place, to collect points because it will be the time that he will gain points and he must not waste them.”
Read more: Scary truth revealed about Marc Marquez in 2025 Argentina MotoGP
Tardozzi added: “I don’t think that he’s under pressure.
“There is something that we haven’t understood yet, not even him.
“There is something that we miss on the settings, there is something that we miss helping him, there is something we have to talk about.
“And I think soon we will find it because I think Pecco is not riding like the end of last year and he has no confidence on the front at all.
“And that’s the problem that we see on the data, compared to last year.”
Tardozzi also noted that Ducati is working with Bagnaia on a new strategy for race weekends to try to get him to hit the ground running from Fridays.
“We already have some chat with Gigi [Dall’Igna] and the engineers and Pecco too, and we will do something. I’m sure that we will help him.”
