{"id":225134,"date":"2025-10-19T12:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/225134\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T12:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:50:09","slug":"pecco-bagnaia-slams-indescribable-slump-since-motegi-motogp-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/225134\/","title":{"rendered":"Pecco Bagnaia slams \u201cindescribable\u201d slump since Motegi MotoGP win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia says his form slump since winning both races in Japan has been \u201cindescribable\u201d, following a crash out of 12th at the MotoGP Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>The double <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MotoGP<\/a> world champion has endured a largely difficult 2025 season, but it has taken several turns for the worse since the summer break.<\/p>\n<p>In the last four rounds, he has had three without scoring any points.<\/p>\n<p>After making an apparent breakthrough at the Misano test, which led to a clean sweep at the Japanese Grand Prix, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/911999\/francesco-bagnaia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pecco Bagnaia<\/a>\u2019s Indonesian and Australian Grand Prix weekends have been disasters.<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia was over 30s off the lead in second-to-last on Saturday at Phillip Island in the sprint, while a radical set-up shift for warm-up on Sunday didn\u2019t give him any improvements.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Going in \u201cthe opposite direction\u201d in set-up for the grand prix, Bagnaia felt like he was able to push more, but this also led to him crashing out of 12th on lap 24 of 27.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the warm-up, we tried something that turned out to be a disaster: it was impossible to ride like that,\u201d he told Sky Italy, having battled stability issues all weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the race, we went in the opposite direction, and it was something positive: I managed to push a bit more, even though I was truly at the limit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately, I can\u2019t brake and enter corners the way I\u2019d like, but at least I was able to push and get closer to the riders ahead of me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA glimmer of hope, if you will, compared to yesterday and Indonesia. I don\u2019t know if this change will help us in Malaysia, considering that Sepang is a bit of a unique track.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis afternoon, we tried to find a more stable bike at the expense of lightness and agility: it was very tough to ride, but at least I could enter corners without all the problems from the warm-up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both Bagnaia and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/teams\/ducati-lenovo-team\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ducati<\/a> insist that the bike he is riding now is the same one he was victorious on at the Japanese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMotegi, where we arrived after the good Misano test, showed that if I\u2019m in the right condition, I can do well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened afterwards, from my point of view, is something unacceptable, almost indescribable, because you start with a bike that theoretically won the previous race, but you can\u2019t push.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou struggle a lot, you\u2019re always at the limit. Same thing this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia also added that his \u201c100%\u201d was enough to win in Japan but would only have earned him a top 10 at Phillip Island.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened from Austria onward? I wouldn\u2019t know how to answer; I\u2019d rather move on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know it\u2019s a tough year, and something isn\u2019t adding up with the results we\u2019ve achieved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA challenging situation. What I can do is always give 100%: in Japan, it was enough to win. Here, it would have at best gotten us into the top 10.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Compounding Bagnaia\u2019s woes was the fact Fabio Di Giannantonio, also on a GP25 Ducati, finished second in Sunday\u2019s Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia has now also lost third in the standings to Aprilia&#8217;s Marco Bezzecchi.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia says his form slump since winning both races in Japan has been \u201cindescribable\u201d, following a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17197,7607,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-225134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ducati","11":"tag-francesco-bagnaia","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225134","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=225134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}