Pecco Bagnaia had to ‘remove traction control’ to be faster in Czech MotoGP
Bagnaia was fourth after starting on pole at Brno
Ducati’s Pecco Bagnaia says he had to ‘remove traction control’ from his bike in order to find some late speed in the MotoGP Czech Grand Prix having faded from pole to fourth.
The double world champion celebrated his first pole of the 2025 season on Saturday, but couldn’t convert that to a podium in either of the two races run at Brno over the weekend.
He was seventh in the sprint after an electrical glitch on his Ducati wrongly told him he was at risk of a tyre pressure penalty, while in the 21-lap grand prix he went from leading into the first corner to finishing fourth.
Inside of three laps, Pecco Bagnaia found himself overtaken by Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi, eventual race winner Marc Marquez, and KTM’s Pedro Acosta.
At one stage two seconds off of Acosta in third, a late rally allowed him to challenge for the final step on the podium - albeit to no avail.
Bagnaia says his persistent braking troubles hindered him, though he found a novel solution to help give him some more speed in the latter stages.
“I started well, but then in the first part of the race I was struggling quite a lot with my feeling on braking on entry,” he told motogp.com.
“And it was tough, like more or less always.
“But then I tried to understand in which way I could push more and I understood that removing traction control on my bike was a bit better.
“So, I started to reduce a step, then another one and in the last part [of the race] I was quite competitive.
“So, happy about my last part of the race but still we need to understand many things.”
Bagnaia is now 168 points off of the championship lead having ended the grand prix just under four seconds from Ducati team-mate Marc Marquez.
As MotoGP heads for its summer break, no solution has been found as of yet to his braking woes - though he remains confident this will come in the second half of the season.
“It’s difficult to understand something that is the same from the first race, and without doing any step in front,” he added.
“But we are trying to understand it and I think, and I’m sure, we will do it. But my best point still last year was the braking point.
“In the braking zone, every rider trying to overtake me was going wide but this season everyone is better than me on braking.
“So, we just need to study it and see what we can do.”
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