Valentino Rossi MotoGP ally says Pecco Bagnaia ‘riding with lost motivation’

VR46 MotoGP team boss Uccio Salucci says Pecco Bagnaia’s 2025 Ducati data makes it look like “he has lost a little bit of motivation”.

The double world champion is enduring his worst season on the factory Ducati, with the Italian winning just once in 2025 having taken 11 grands prix victories last year.

The Hungarian Grand Prix proved to be a new low point for Pecco Bagnaia, who fell out of Q1 for the first time in 2025, didn’t score points in the sprint and was only ninth in the main race.

He is now 227 points behind team-mate Marc Marquez at the top of the standings, after he took his seventh successive 37-point weekend at Balaton Park.

Bagnaia did, at least, end the Hungary weekend feeling like Ducati had actually solved his season-long front end problems.

Uccio Salucci, speaking to TNT Sports ahead of Sunday’s grand prix, said of Bagnaia’s situation: “It’s difficult to say what happens, I don’t stay in his box.

“But anyway, I spoke also yesterday [after the sprint] with him and I said ‘please Pecco, Forza’, because now sometimes I check the data: he doesn’t brake, he’s not riding in the right way now.

“It’s like he has lost a little bit the motivation, also the confidence with the bike.

“And the first thing is to re-ride like Pecco Bagnaia, enjoy it a little bit.

“I know it’s not easy, but please Pecco try, try, because he’s a two-time MotoGP champion and for sure he is a fantastic rider. It’s not good seeing Pecco like this. I don’t like it.”

Theory offered as to why Marquez has excelled over Bagnaia on GP25

Salucci says he can understand Bagnaia’s struggles on the GP25, as VR46 team rider Fabio Di Giannantonio battled the same things early in the season.

He also believes Bagnaia is struggling more because Marquez is used to a Ducati that isn’t strong on the front end, having jumped from the GP23 last season to the GP25.

“For sure when Marquez arrived, the 2025 bike was not his bike, especially at the beginning of the season because the front part of the bike didn’t give a lot of feeling to Pecco, to Di Giannantonio,” he added.

“But anyway, our team started to work, Fabio stayed calm and we found the right way.

“Marquez arrived where he rode last year the 2023 and passed to the 2025.

“The 2023 bike was a very difficult bike. We had it last year, I know this bike very well.

“But Marquez also went fast with the 2023. He arrives to the 2025, it’s much better, and he goes faster and faster because he has a good feeling.

“Pecco, maybe, arrived from the 2024 bike and the 2025 bike has some problems. Marquez goes [up] and it’s easy to lose the feeling with problems like this.”