Francesco Bagnaia<\/a> told the pre-event press conference ahead of the Valencia MotoGP when asked if the concessions system had made it harder for Ducati to develop the Desmosedici in 2025.<\/p>\n\u201cI think I struggled this season, it\u2019s true, but in the last seasons I was always super-competitive and I won doing many mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis season, Marc [Marquez] was there, with less mistakes, he won with five races to go, and I think our bike is still much stronger than all the other bikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s true that having the test, having some concessions more could be an opportunity to improve faster \u2013 in my case, maybe having more days of test could have been better, but the rules are there to make the championship more equalised.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Aprilia, Yamaha, Honda, KTM have used well their advantage with testing and wildcards to improve their situations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Ducati is still the best one and I think we used well what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI struggled to accept the reality\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the strength of Ducati that Bagnaia still believes is superior to the rest, Bagnaia\u2019s season has clearly been a disaster compared to previous years.<\/p>\n
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Three victories (including Sprints) this year come along with seven DNFs between Sprints and grands prix for the rider who won 11 main races in 2024, and yet the Italian isn\u2019t even sure that he\u2019s learnt anything from the experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s quite clear that I had more bad than good this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the last four seasons, where a bad result was a third place, I struggled to accept the reality of this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI did all the season the best job I could with the team, trying to understand, trying to adapt to the 2025 bike, but unluckily I didn\u2019t. So, I was struggling a lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bike has a really good potential because, looking at Marc \u2013 he showed it. But, for the rest, I was just struggling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cSo, I don\u2019t know if I honestly will learn something from this season; what I think is good to have clear in my mind is that I always tried to adapt to it and always tried to be competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, this is something that will help me in the future, but hoping that on Tuesday when I will try the [2026] bike I will feel again with my feeling and try to fight next year for the top positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bagnaia\u2019s toughest season in MotoGP has come in the championship\u2019s longest-ever season, with this weekend\u2019s Valencia race being the 22nd of the year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something the Ducati Lenovo Team<\/a> rider feels is even tougher with his current difficulties, although it\u2019s not something he\u2019d necessarily change.<\/p>\n\u201cWe are prepared for everything and I think it\u2019s fair to have a calendar like this,\u201d Bagnaia said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are enjoying riding and honestly doing more races out of Europe is nice and we have good times there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my situation, honestly, it\u2019s more tough, but it\u2019s what it is. It\u2019s great that it\u2019s like this.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year I was needing one more race and this season maybe five less, but it\u2019s what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francesco Bagnaia believes the Ducati Desmosedici GP is still the best bike in MotoGP despite the success of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,8456,7607,4280,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-282209","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-lenovo-team","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\/282209","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=282209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}