The 2025 MotoGP season has been a campaign to forget for Francesco Bagnaia. The two-time champion has been destroyed by his Ducati teammate Marc Marquez all year.
Coming off of winning 11 out of 20 races in 2024 on the GP24, Bagnaia has not had the same feeling on this year’s Desmosedici. The GP25 has proved to be a step back on its predecessor, with the Italian desperately struggling with braking and feeling from the front end.
Teammate Marquez has adapted seamlessly to the new bike and has dominated the championship, with a whopping 23 wins out of 28 races thus far. Meanwhile, Bagnaia has just one victory to his name.
Ducati have consistently supported Bagnaia throughout 2025 as they try to find solutions to his issues. Heavier brake discs have improved his feeling at certain points, but they have not yielded better results as he finds himself 227 points behind Marquez.
The 28-year-old has been growing increasingly frustrated at Ducati, having finished outside the top five in the last two races. Bagnaia has been calling for modifications all season, and his demands may finally have been met.
Photo by Gold & Goose Photography/Getty ImagesDucati may have finally given Francesco Bagnaia the GP25 modifications he’s been asking for all season
The Italian stated that he was ‘running out of patience’ with the Borgo Panigale outfit after he slipped from third to eighth at the Red Bull Ring. Bagnaia ‘sorted it out’ with Ducati afterwards, but his struggles continued at Balaton Park.
He failed to reach Q2 as he could only manage 13th in qualifying. Bagnaia finished a miserable P13 in the Sprint, before making minimal progress on Sunday to finish ninth, his lowest finish of 2025, while Marquez claimed his seventh win in a row.
Bagnaia has been like a ‘frightened rabbit’ in recent media debriefs, having been at a loss to explain his problems in 2025. However, he was much more relaxed in Hungary due to his ‘radical’ new setup, as Adam Wheeler noted via the Paddock Pass Podcast.
“We were in his debrief this afternoon here at the track and he actually looked quite calm,” he said. “He’s looked a little bit like a frightened rabbit in media debriefs recently, just completely lost, almost for words, as much as like an explanation of what he’s going through.
“But the radical setup that he didn’t really go into detail on, he said, I think the word centimetres rather than millimetres. So it was quite radical in terms of what they adjusted.
“[It] worked again in the race today, and even though Bagnaia’s result was pretty insignificant, it was something to give him some encouragement.”
While the Italian has not given away exactly what Ducati changed at the Hungarian Grand Prix, whatever it was, it appeared to give him the confidence that he has lacked on the GP25. The Borgo Panigale outfit may have finally given Bagnaia the changes he has asked for.
READ MORE: Everything to know about Francesco Bagnaia from net worth to race number
Photo by Gold & Goose Photography/Getty ImagesFrancesco Bagnaia made a ‘shocking’ admission at Balaton Park – will Ducati lose patience with him?
While Bagnaia felt comfortable with the changes to his GP25 at Balaton Park, there is no shying away from the fact that it was a torrid weekend for the Italian. He had even said before the race that he would be surprised if he finished in the top 10.
“It shows you where Bagnaia was this weekend that he was kind of happy with a ninth place. It had been that bad prior to the Sunday,” said journalist Neil Morrison.
“On Friday, he said I’ll be really surprised if we make it into the top 10, which is just quite a shocking thing for Pecco Bagnaia and the factory Ducati team to say after the last three or four years and what we’ve seen him do in that time.”
Neil Hodgson wonders if Ducati will lose patience with Bagnaia as he falls even further behind teammate Marquez. While he will race with the factory team in 2026, they will want to see improvements.