Pecco Bagnaia makes glum admission about the rest of his 2025 MotoGP season

Pecco Bagnaia admits he has to be a “realist” and accepts that “it’s hard to think about fighting” Marc Marquez in the remainder of the 2025 MotoGP season.

The double world champion was expected to offer stiff opposition to Marc Marquez this season as the latter joined the factory Ducati squad.

But from the off, Pecco Bagnaia has proven to be no match for the eight-time world champion, with the Italian struggling to push on the front end on the GP25 like he was able to in previous years.

After the first 12 rounds of the campaign, Bagnaia has just one victory to his credit, one pole position and is 168 points behind Marquez - who has eight grand prix wins and 11 sprint successes on his scorecard.

In last weekend’s Czech Grand Prix, Bagnaia qualified on pole for the first time but faded to seventh in the sprint due to an electrical issue and could only manage fourth in the main race.

Reflecting on his weekend in an Instagram post, Bagnaia has effectively admitted he cannot go head-to-head with Marc Marquez now in 2025.

“As the race progressed, I managed rear-end traction better and felt more comfortable as soon as I lowered the traction control level,” he wrote.

“As we didn’t have a dry FP2 [on Friday], I wasn’t able to do proper work with the mapping.

“So, with less traction control this area did improve.

“The front end, however, did not allow me to hit the brakes hard.

“I’ve always been a rider who was hard to pass under braking, with the situation is opposite now. We’re working in different areas in order to improve.

“Surely, the approach to the season has changed after these many races as it’s hard to think about fighting with Marc in these conditions.

“We must be realists. We need to reset and do the best we can, keeping Alex [Marquez] as our reference point.”

Read more: Czech MotoGP showed Marc Marquez will have a hard time denying himself 2025 title

Alex Marquez currently heads Bagnaia by 48 points going into the summer break, having scored nothing in a difficult Czech Grand Prix.

Both riders have one grand prix win apiece, but Alex Marquez has typically been Marc Marquez’s nearest rival for much of this season.

Such has been Marc Marquez’s dominance this season, the Spaniard is currently average 31.75 points per round out of a maximum 37; Bagnaia, by contrast, is on pace for 17.75 per round.