Pecco Bagnaia suffering as Yamaha MotoGP riders did against Valentino Rossi

Veteran MotoGP team boss Herve Poncharal believes “there’s no real reason” for Pecco Bagnaia to have struggled as he did in 2025.

Having come off the back of two title-winning seasons in 2022 and 2023, and a 2024 in which he won 11 grands prix, Pecco Bagnaia endured a shuddering fall from grace this year.

The factory Ducati rider scored just two grand prix wins in a season of wild inconsistency, with Bagnaia scoring no points on Sundays through the final five rounds.

From a perennial top-three championship contender since 2021, Bagnaia slumped to a distant fifth in the rankings, well over 200 points behind champion team-mate Marc Marquez.

The root of Bagnaia’s problems stems from a lack of confidence in the GP25’s front-end, which was largely blamed on the bike’s new ride height device.

However, Ducati was never able to find a permanent fix for Bagnaia, with his surprise Japanese Grand Prix clean sweep ultimately proving to be a one-off.

Bagnaia still had the best bike in 2025

His struggles coincided with Marquez dominating the 2025 campaign with 11 grand prix wins and 14 sprint victories.

Bagnaia repeatedly admitted Marquez is able to ride around problems, which is something the Italian simply isn’t able to do.

His problems led to various flashpoints between himself and Ducati management, with the latter losing patience with the fact that nothing the team was able to do seemed to make any tangible difference.

Former Tech3 team owner Herve Poncharal said of the matter: “What a mystery, how to explain it?

“Especially when you’ve seen that from his nightmare came an incredible victory in Japan. I’m not a know-it-all, and I don’t want to seem like one, but it’s clear that a lot is going through his head.

“Pecco certainly still knows how to ride a motorcycle.

“The Ducati, in my opinion, even if the margin of advantage is smaller, is still the best motorcycle on the track.

“And he knows his team, and his team knows him.

“So, in my opinion, there’s no reason, no real reason [for his struggles].”

Bagnaia suffering what Yamaha riders against Rossi did

Poncharal believes Marc Marquez’s form “definitely has an influence” on the struggles Bagnaia faced, and likened it to what Yamaha riders faced against Valentino Rossi in the 2000s.

“When I was with Yamaha, there were four M1s,” Poncharal says.

“Valentino was winning every race, winning every championship, and the other riders were completely lost.

“And they had the same bike, I can assure you.

“When we showed Valentino’s data to the others, they said, ‘I can’t do it’. And I think the same think happened when Marc was with Honda.

“Have a team-mate like Marc Marquez doing what he does on the bike was surely a shock.

“And no long being number one, no longer being the one who always wins, the one the factory placed all its hopes on, completely changed the game.”