BAGNAIA SAYS DATA SHOWS A MAJOR SPEED GAP AFTER MOTEGI EIGHTH

Francesco Bagnaia’s return to Motegi, where he claimed his last MotoGP victory, brought little relief: he finished eighth in the Japanese Grand Prix and remains without a win for more than a year. It is his longest victory drought since his early premier-class days with Pramac.

The Ducati rider started 13th after being eliminated in Q1 for the fifth time this season. He gained places as rivals crashed or received long-lap penalties, but could not keep Fermín Aldeguer behind him to the finish. Marc Márquez, his teammate and race winner, crossed the line more than 20 seconds ahead. Márquez now has 331 championship points to Bagnaia’s 164, despite missing two rounds through injury.

Speaking to Sky Sports Italy, Bagnaia described a difficult race and said he had tried different approaches to find a solution. “I tried to be as consistent as possible, knowing there was nothing more to it than that,” he said. He also pointed to a substantial gap in the data, not only to Márquez but to Alex Márquez, who had been quicker throughout the weekend.

Bagnaia rejected physical or mental fatigue as the explanation for his struggles. Instead, he described a braking problem that left him unable to position the bike properly for corners. “When I brake, the bike doesn’t decelerate,” he said. He explained that braking harder could slow the bike, but made it more nervous and was not something he could sustain every lap over a race distance.

He credited his team with doing good work on the electronics and setup at Motegi, but said the changes had not overcome what he called a “general lack of speed” in the telemetry. Ducati have tried various measures to improve his form without finding a mechanical fix, and Bagnaia acknowledged that the deficit is limiting what he can achieve.

With six races left before he leaves Ducati for Aprilia, the Motegi result offered little indication that the team has yet found a way to reverse his decline. For Bagnaia, the immediate challenge remains understanding why he is losing so much time to the faster riders—and finding a way to brake and corner effectively without making the bike harder to control.