Pecco Bagnaia attitude is “blaming something else instead of accountability”

The third round of the 2025 MotoGP season takes place this weekend at the Americas Grand Prix, with Marc Marquez on a hot streak after two events so far.

The eight-time world champion has a 100% record so far in 2025, having qualified on pole at both events and won both sprints and grands prix to lead the championship by 16 points for the factory Ducati team.

But while Marquez has stolen the spotlight with his results, team-mate Pecco Bagnaia has faced increasing scrutiny for his lacklustre start to the campaign.

DOWNLOAD CRASH MOTOGP PODCAST

Already 31 points behind Marquez in the championship and not yet able to at least be best of the rest, Bagnaia has suggested that for this weekend’s Americas GP he may revert to the GP24.

While Ducati is confident Bagnaia will get back on top, this weekend’s Austin round could well provide a true reflection as to just where he sits in the pecking order currently.

“It’s a sign of frustration a little bit when you’re saying comments like that,” Crash MotoGP Editor Peter McLaren says in the latest Crash MotoGP Podcast.

“I think it’s frustration at seeing your team-mate ahead of you and another guy on the ’24 bike.

“I think this weekend will be interesting because we can make a direct comparison to last year.

“The two rounds so far, Termas wasn’t on the calendar last year and Thailand was in a completely different place on the calendar last year and it was a wet grand prix.

“This will be same track, similar time of year, and what is the performance like. How is he comparing to what he did last year on the standard GP24.

“So, I think there will be some more answers this weekend that we maybe haven’t had so far.

“It is a surprise. Everyone thought he was going to face a really tough battle against Marc.

“People didn’t expect he’d also have Alex ahead of him in pretty much every session.

“Pecco hasn’t really been able to establish himself as best of the rest behind Marc yet and I think that’s the first thing he’s got to do this weekend, break up that Marquez brothers dominance, try and build some confidence there.

“Because when other people are going faster than you on the same bike, it’s very difficult because if you’re a team or a manufacturer you’re saying ‘this other guy can do this with this package. You can do this, you’re a talented guy’. And I think there’s pressure on Pecco to deliver that.”

Pecco Bagnaia can only blame bike for so long

On reverting to the GP24, Crash Social Media Manager and podcast host Jordan Moreland says: “I don’t think it would be a good move because you want to be on the same spec as your team-mate, you want to be having the latest parts that he gets. You want to have that parity.”

While acknowledging that something isn’t quite right yet with the GP25 to allow Bagnaia to be faster, Crash Senior Journalist Lewis Duncan also believes the Italian often has a tendency to avoid accountability in times of difficulty.

“It’s almost Pecco admitting defeat there that he can’t ride this 2025 bike, which in theory isn’t very different to the 2024 bike.

“I think we’ve seen this before with Pecco, when things don’t go his way he gets a bit lost in his head.

“Think back to COTA a couple of years ago when he crashed out of the lead and he blamed it initially on the bike having too much stability on the front end, so he couldn’t feel the limit.

“He walked back those comments, so we’ve had that a few times - think back to the invisible visor tear-off at Misano in 2020 when he crashed out of the lead.

“I think Pecco’s attitude has almost tended to default towards blaming something else instead of holding a bit of accountability for himself.

“Clearly something in the set-up of the bike isn’t quite working for him yet, and I think Ducati have said as such and they aren’t throwing him to the wolves yet.

“But they are also saying that ‘we don’t really know what it is. We think there’s something wrong but we can’t say for certain’.

“I think that’s the telling thing, especially when you look at the dominance of Marc Marquez on the bike and even Alex Marquez is faster than Bagnaia.

“Yeah, on paper, the results aren’t terrible, but he was 5.5s back from his team-mate in Argentina.

“There is a problem there and we’re gonna start getting to the point where we see that it’s the rider.

“We’ve seen Pecco before when thing aren’t right, he comes through. But we haven’t seen that and you do have to start looking at it in the context of the other Ducatis and none of them are having the same problems.

“There’s only so much you can blame the bike for and I think already it’s too much.

“Alex Marquez isn’t riding the way he is just because he’s on the GP24. Pecco Bagnaia is a double world champion, so whatever problems he is having he needs to be riding around them. That’s what the best riders do, no bike is every perfect.”