{"id":203232,"date":"2025-10-10T15:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/203232\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:27:07","slug":"what-surprised-pecco-bagnaia-being-marc-marquezs-motogp-team-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/203232\/","title":{"rendered":"What \u201csurprised\u201d Pecco Bagnaia being Marc Marquez\u2019s MotoGP team-mate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Double MotoGP world champion Pecco Bagnaia says being Marc Marquez\u2019s Ducati team-mate in 2025 has \u201csurprised me\u201d for how \u201cpositive\u201d it has been for him.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1654\/marc-marquez\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Marquez<\/a> caused a stir in the rider market last year when he publicly turned down a seat with the Pramac Ducati squad for 2025, demanding either a works bike at Gresini or the factory team.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/teams\/ducati-lenovo-team\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ducati<\/a> relented and signed him to its factory squad, forcing it into a U-turn on its original decision to promote 2024 world champion Jorge Martin.<\/p>\n<p>With Marquez stepping into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/911999\/francesco-bagnaia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pecco Bagnaia<\/a>\u2019s backyard, fireworks were expected between the pair.<\/p>\n<p>However, Bagnaia has largely struggled to match Marquez in 2025, with the latter a runaway title winner while his team-mate has scored just two grands prix victories compared to the 11 he managed last year.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>As Bagnaia\u2019s struggles have gone on this season, much has been made about the psychological effect being Marquez\u2019s team-mate has had on him.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, Bagnaia set the record straight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt first, I was a little worried,\u201d he started.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe always said he put sticks in the wheels even of his team-mates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead, it has surprised me. Experiencing him as a team-mate has been very positive.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Japan, we went to a karaoke bar, drinking sake [after Marquez won his seventh world title]. It was fun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is one of the strongest riders in history; in recent years, he has been dominant. You can only learn from Marc.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Marquez will be absent from the upcoming Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix, after suffering a right shoulder injury in a lap one tangle with Marco Bezzecchi in Indonesia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1083766\/1\/ducati-names-marc-marquezs-motogp-injury-replacement-only-australia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">He will replaced by Ducati test rider Michele Pirro<\/a>, though only at present for the Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia looked to make a breakthrough with his season in Japan, when he swept the weekend on a bike featuring various GP24 parts that returned the confidence he\u2019d been missing.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>But at Mandalika, he plummeted down the order again and suffered two non-scores, with Bagnaia at a total loss to explain what went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Double MotoGP world champion Pecco Bagnaia says being Marc Marquez\u2019s Ducati team-mate in 2025 has \u201csurprised me\u201d for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17197,7607,4280,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-203232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ducati","tag-francesco-bagnaia","tag-marc-marquez","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}