Marc Marquez says 'suffering' Pecco Bagnaia 'has enough talent' to bounce back after heart-to-heart with struggling Ducati team-mate
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Published 12/09/2025 at 14:37 GMT+1
Marc Marquez is closing in on yet another MotoGP Championship victory, but his Ducati team-mate Francesco Bagnaia has had a desperately disappointing season. Bagnaia admitted his struggles with confidence to Marquez after the Catalan GP, but the Spaniard believes he has "enough talent to jump from that hole." Marquez also said, "you don't want to see anyone suffering like Pecco right now."
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Marc Marquez has backed "suffering" Francesco 'Pecco' Bagnaia to bounce back after the two-time MotoGP champion was filmed telling his team-mate that he was "losing more and more confidence."
The two riders have had contrasting seasons. A yawning 250-point gap separates champion-in-waiting Marquez from Bagnaia in third ahead of the San Marino GP this weekend.
In the latest ‘Inside Ducati’ video released this week after the Catalan GP, Bagnaia tells Marquez: "It’s incredible how fast I was going last year and how slow I’m going now. Incredible! I’m losing more and more confidence."
The Italian has been comprehensively outperformed by his team-mate so far in 2025, winning just one race to Marquez’s 10, and Neil Hodgson said he found the comments "disturbing" in his TNT Sports column this week.
Bagnaia finished seventh in Catalonia, an improvement on ninth and eighth-place finishes in Hungary and Austria in his previous two races, but still far from the levels expected of the former champion.
However, Marquez believes his colleague can recover this weekend on Bagnaia’s home turf, with the Misano circuit in Rimini providing an optimal setting to regain confidence.
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"We are riders, and always you want to beat your team-mate and you want to beat everybody, even if it’s your brother," Marquez said.
"But you don’t want to see anyone that is suffering like Pecco right now.
"I think it will be important for the Ducati project that Pecco comes back step-by-step to his level because it will be better for testing, to develop the bike.
"He has his team, he has his people around him that, of course, will give very good advice but, in the end, it’s not easy for a rider when you are in a bad moment.
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"It’s not easy, but it’s even more difficult when every day you are with journalists always (asking) the same question. Difficult to forget. But he has enough talent to jump from that hole."
Bagnaia was also asked about the conversation with Marquez and didn’t hide away from the challenges he is facing.
"When you have a rider like Marc speaking with you, you need to take any little details from the conversation because it’s important," Bagnaia said.
"It’s true that it’s a very tough period and the difficulties are increasing, considering (the races) from Austria to Barcelona.
"We just need to be focused on the next ones just to be competitive."
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Hodgson: Self-confidence even more important in MotoGP
TNT Sports expert Hodgson took an in-depth look at Bagnaia’s struggles in this week’s column.
As the former superbike world champion explained, MotoGP is a particularly difficult arena in which to suffer a crisis of confidence.
"When you are racing, you’re not thinking of the danger because you feel confident and at one with your bike. But when you lose that relationship, it doesn’t feel like your bike, the bike doesn’t react how you want it to, then all of a sudden, it’s like it speeds everything up," Hodgson said.
"These riders do over 220 mph, but it doesn’t feel that fast. It actually feels slow, like 100mph. But when you lose your confidence, it feels like you’re doing 320mph.
"That’s the worst feeling, because you can have a bit of a scare on the track. You don’t say anything to your team or that you’ve been scared, but that creeps into motorcycle racing. That’s what makes our sport different to any other.
"The psychology of a champion is on a level across most sports, but with motorcycle racing, I feel like a rider’s self-confidence is even more important."
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