By his own admission, Pecco Bagnaia at Balaton Park hit rock bottom. He says it himself and so do the numbers: 15th in qualifying, 13th in the Sprint and 9th in the race, the worst results of the season in a race weekend. The only consolation is that when you are this low, you can only rise up again. That is what Ducati's Italian rider is hoping for.
2025 is definitely his worst year since he has been with the factory team. In 14 Grands Prix, he has scraped together just one win, one pole position and 7 podiums, to which he can add another 5 podiums in the Sprints. Very little for someone who was aiming to fight for the title, instead now his teammate Marc Marquez in the standings has practically double his points tally (455 vs. 228).
Bagnaia, in Hungary, revealed that he made an error of judgment in winter testing, not understanding the real potential of the GP25 compared to that of the GP24. In truth, it all seemed rosy in Malaysia: "I never tried an engine born so well," he declared. The only doubt was the braking: "we have to sort it." He and Marquez were aligned. Too bad that then all the innovations were rejected.
In the table below you can see Bagnaia's results in qualifying, Sprint and race, with the gap to the first in each session.
That something was not working perfectly was clear from the very beginning. Bagnaia was not only finishing behind Marc, but also Alex, with the 2024 bike. The only satisfaction came in Austin, with the victory thanks to the crash of his teammate. Buriram, Termas and Cota were never too much in the Piedmont rider's heart, there was some justification, but the worst was yet to come.
In Qatar Pecco crashed in qualifying, had a colorless Sprint, but in the race he seemed to have squared the circle. Nothing could have been more wrong, Jerez - a friendly track - proved that he was still one step behind the two Marquez brothers. The crisis became glaring at Le Mans and Silverstone where, crashes aside, he was never in the hunt.
The alarm bells, however, rang even louder at Mugello and Assen, two circuits where Bagnaia had always dominated. In qualifying he defended himself well, but in the races he was unable to go beyond his now usual placings.
Sachsenring was another disaster, sweetened only by the Sunday podium, the last one so far. Not even the pole position at Brno was enough to turn things around. At the Red Bull Ring, the crisis was overt: the 12 abundant seconds at the finish line were proof of that. The biggest gap of the year, on a track favorable on paper for both him and Ducati.
It looked as if it could not go any lower, but instead there was Balaton Park immediately after. For the first time, Pecco failed to get into Q2. At that point, there was only one thing left to do: a revolution, in search of the braking confidence that had always been his strong point and which had become the weak one. The positions at the finish line describe a failure (13th on Saturday almost 15 seconds behind Marc, 9th on Sunday almost 13th), but Pecco's words say otherwise.
On Sunday night, he claimed that the experiment had succeeded. What could have been a move of desperation, might just be the breakthrough sought for months. It is not a matter of results, but of riding sensations, and for those, you have to trust what the rider says.
To find out, however, if the light at the end of the tunnel is closer, we still have to wait. Until Barcelona, where the GP will be raced in a week. Last year at Montmeló he won twice (in the Catalan GP and the Solidarity GP as a substitute for Valencia), so it is an important and decisive test. By now, 2025 is over in terms of any world championship title dreams, but there is 2026 to build. It cannot be done on rubble, but on a solid foundation. There are still 8 weekends left for Bagnaia to prove that he is not only capable of learning from his mistakes, but also of overcoming them.