{"id":399637,"date":"2026-01-08T11:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T11:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/399637\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T11:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T11:40:07","slug":"why-braking-on-lean-angle-defined-bagnaias-motogp-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/399637\/","title":{"rendered":"Why braking on lean angle defined Bagnaia\u2019s MotoGP struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Francesco Bagnaia spent much of the 2025 MotoGP season trying to rediscover the front-end confidence he had enjoyed on previous Ducati machines, as he struggled to unlock consistent performance from the GP25.<\/p>\n<p>While there were flashes of his trademark hard-braking style &#8211; most notably during a perfect weekend at Motegi &#8211; progress proved short-lived and was further undermined by persistent shaking on corner exit.<\/p>\n<p>But where and why was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/911999\/francesco-bagnaia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bagnaia<\/a> losing time compared to earlier seasons?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStraight-line braking was very similar,\u201d the Italian explained. \u201cBut the biggest difference was when I was entering the corner, [before] I had the chance to stop the bike with lean angle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd that\u2019s something that I was missing all season, especially following others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>The corner-entry limitations became particularly damaging in race situations.<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia highlighted that with straight-line braking comprised in a slipstream behind other riders, the ability to stop the bike during the turn-in phase becomes even more important.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you&#8217;re following others, the slipstream is not helping you to stop the bike. And [then] if you&#8217;re not able to stop with lean angle, you&#8217;re f**ked, so this was my problem,\u201d he said during the 2025 season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast year I was able to brake with more lean angle. I was controlling a lot of slide and I was able to force a lot in the last part to reduce the speed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll things that this season I usually wasn&#8217;t able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Bagnaia, who won two Sprints and two grands prix, faded to fifth in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MotoGP<\/a> World Championship due to eight non-scores in the final ten races.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francesco Bagnaia spent much of the 2025 MotoGP season trying to rediscover the front-end confidence he had enjoyed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17197,8456,7607,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-399637","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-ducati-lenovo-team","12":"tag-francesco-bagnaia","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\/399637","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=399637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}