Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia has hit back at repeated claims his MotoGP struggles are because Marc Marquez is his team-mate, pointing out that \u201cI\u2019m having trouble now that Marc is home\u201d.<\/p>\n
The double world champion has struggled all year on the factory GP25, but since the summer break has seen his form turn down even further.<\/p>\n
Despite winning at the Japanese Grand Prix, Pecco Bagnaia<\/a> has gone pointless in three of the last four rounds, with his Motegi breakthrough not able to be replicated.<\/p>\n Bagnaia is facing even more pressure to carry Ducati<\/a>‘s hopes, now that reigning champion team-mate Marc Marquez has been ruled out for the rest of the year<\/a> with injury.<\/p>\n For most of this season, the mental challenge of being team-mates with Marquez has been cited as a key reason for Bagnaia\u2019s struggles.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Bagnaia\u2019s mentor Valentino Rossi even suggested this was the case.<\/p>\n But Bagnaia hit back at this on Friday at the Malaysian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n \u201cI can say what I want, but people can believe it or not,\u201d he told Sky Italy.<\/p>\n \u201cI was having trouble before when he was on the track; I\u2019m having trouble now that Marc is home.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, the problems are different.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Q2 miss hides better feeling for Bagnaia on Friday at Sepang<\/p>\n Pecco Bagnaia\u2019s Malaysian Grand Prix weekend hasn\u2019t gotten off to the ideal start, as he failed to secure a direct place in Q2.<\/p>\n However, he feels he has made a step and that his failure to get into Q2 was down to \u201ca bit of chaos at the end of the session\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, there was a bit of chaos at the end of the session and we didn\u2019t make it to Q2,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cBut after the last two weekends, it was still difficult to think about getting back in.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve made a small step forward; in fact, we were quite far ahead in both sessions, even though what happened then happened.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to stay calm, and tomorrow will be a pretty important and difficult Q1. We definitely hope to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n Stability issues plagued Bagnaia at the Australian Grand Prix last weekend, which seemed to persist on Friday at Sepang, albeit to a lesser extent.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the last sector, for some reason, I can\u2019t get the throttle open, either in Turns 14 or 15,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I get on the gas, I can\u2019t get any traction, but it all starts from the entrance [to the corner] because I\u2019m struggling to get the bike to turn.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not able to take advantage of the braking on those corners.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cGenerally, the movements are something we\u2019ve been carrying around since the beginning of the year; sometimes there\u2019s more, sometimes less.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, they\u2019ve been hindering us a lot lately. They started to get worse from the Austrian sprint, and from then on we\u2019ve struggled a bit to identify the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia has hit back at repeated claims his MotoGP struggles are because Marc Marquez is his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238578,"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":{"0":"post-238577","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-marc-marquez","13":"tag-motor","14":"tag-motor-sports","15":"tag-motosport","16":"tag-motosports","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238577","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=238577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}