Insider points out when Pecco Bagnaia started struggling at Ducati - and it wasn’t this year

Pecco Bagnaia’s struggles at Ducati began when Marc Marquez was announced as his teammate for the 2025 MotoGP season, according to former engineer Juan Martinez.

It was at the start of June last year that Ducati revealed that six-time MotoGP champion Marquez will step up from Gresini to join the factory team in 2025.

This created an all-star line-up at the Borgo Panigale marque, with Marquez and Bagnaia having won eight of the 10 previous titles between them.

It was expected that the pair would be closely matched as teammates this year, but Marquez stole a march on his rivals in the first half of the season, while Bagnaia has largely struggled with the 2025-spec Desmosedici.

While a lot of the Italian’s difficulties this year are down to not being comfortable on the ‘GP25’, Martinez believes his problems started almost 14 months ago, when the broader paddock started pitting him against Marquez.

"I think Bagnaia began to feel the impact of what Marc meant when the signing was announced last year,” Martinez told DAZN.

“It already began to influence any interview, because from that moment on, people started asking him about Marc, and what will happen to Marc. From that point on, Pecco's management began."

Martinez explained that while Marquez is more versatile and can extract pace from whatever machinery is thrown at him, Bagnaia prefers a bike that is more to his liking.

“Marc is a rider who is used to constantly changing the bike: chassis, no chassis, now aerodynamics,” he said.

“In the end, he has the ability in any circumstances to get the most out of his potential, and that affects riders who are more specific or more statistical or more cerebral a little more during their weekend.

“That affects the development of the bike, because when you have a rider like Marc, who is capable of performing more or less well in any situation or circumstance, it is much more difficult to define the path of return for the bike.”

Bagnaia won the Americas GP in March after Marquez retired from the race and has been on the podium in seven of the 12 grands prix so far.

However, he has been comprehensively outperformed by Gresini’s Alex Marquez on last year’s GP24, leaving him a distant third in the championship, 48 points behind his satellite rival.

Martinez claimed that Bagnaia’s position in the championship is the only blemish in an otherwise brilliant season for Ducati in which it has won 10 grands prix and all sprint races.

“We have a very stable situation with Alex Marquez from last year with the GP 24, which we know performed in a certain way,” noted Martinez.

“He himself has said that there have been no developments, so technical stability is total, but in Bagnaia's pit right now, the only ‘but’ in Ducati's management at the moment is that Bagnaia is not second.

"That's the only 'but' for Ducati right now. They're probably winning every race ‘for fun’, but the fact that they're not second is a discredit on Ducati's part."