Ducati: Davide Tardozzi Lays into Pecco Bagnaia—Harsh Criticism
Marc Marquez wins the Aragon Grand Prix and closes in on the top of the MotoGP world championship standings, while Pecco Bagnaia sinks into obscurity, eventually crashing during Sunday’s race: once again, the Ducati factory team’s pit is split down the middle.
Team manager Davide Tardozzi this time openly criticized the Piedmontese rider, who is now a distant shadow of the two-time MotoGP world champion. “It’s a shame he crashed; he was battling in seventh place. I don’t know what the problem was, but he showed he can stay right there with the top four or five. We expect Bagnaia to be in the top 5, but he lacks confidence, he isn’t pushing, and we can’t seem to find a way to overcome this problem.”
“I think it’s a psychological issue; his approach is holding back his performance. We have no doubt that he’s fast, but he needs to get past this rough patch, build his confidence, and give it his all. Now we need to rebuild something for him—I mean, his confidence for Misano—because it’s his home track, and the ‘Pecco of Misano’ needs to be in the top five.” Bagnaia will leave Ducati at the end of the year to join Aprilia: “We know he’s going through a very difficult time in his career, but I think he told the press that his relationship with Ducati is perfect and that we’re working hard for him.”
Ducati Corse General Manager Gigi Dall’Igna was equally blunt on Saturday when commenting on the Piedmontese rider’s situation: “We need to talk and figure out what happened. It’s a difficult time; we know it, and he knows it too. Today he wasn’t able to finish in the points, and we can’t be satisfied with that. But we have to stick together, because that’s the only way out of this: the team, the rider—all of us together.” It’s a crisis that Bagnaia himself openly admitted to Sky Sport: “I think I’m going through one of the lowest points of my sporting career. I’m giving it my all on the track, but that only gets me a tenth- or twelfth-place finish at best. Things that I used to do with ease a few years ago now seem impossible.”
