Success or failure?
Two World Championships won or two World Championships lost? The balance sheet and analysis of the four-year period in the official Ducati team of Francesco Bagnaia from 2021 to 2024 can have two different interpretations. Bagnaia will always remain the rider who brought Ducati back to the top of MotoGP by winning a title that had been missing since 2007, a feat that others including Andrea Dovizioso and Jorge Lorenzo failed to achieve, not to mention other high-caliber riders who rode the Desmosedici such as Andrea Iannone.
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On the other hand, however, it can also be argued that Bagnaia won with a year’s delay and that, above all, he lost to Jorge Martin in a 2024 confrontation that cries out for revenge. The outcome of that season could, however, have been further influenced by Ducati’s choice, particularly Luigi Dall’Igna’s, who decided to bet on Marc Marquez for the 2025-2026 biennium, having so far obtained one World Championship with one and the second still absolutely within reach of the Catalan phenomenon despite everything that has happened.
Pernat is sure: Bagnaia has a problem, Marquez
Carlo Pernat is convinced that Francesco Bagnaia suffered from Ducati’s decision and that since then he has had a bug in his head that will probably only go away next year when Pecco changes teams by moving to Aprilia: “When Ducati decided to sign Marquez, from the very next day his mind started to take the wrong path. I believe that, from a psychological point of view, Bagnaia has a problem”, Pernat said when reached by the publication speedweek.com.
“You can’t compete in two seasons like he did, not even with Marquez as a teammate – Pernat added – it’s true that Marquez has always beaten his teammates. That is understandable. But not like this. The team is the same with which he won his two titles, his team manager is the same, the engineers are the same, the circuits are the same. The only thing that has changed is Bagnaia’s mind“.
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