Pecco Bagnaia’s paradox: either he wins or he falls

Pecco Bagnaia is increasingly an all-or-nothing man. Either he wins or he falls. Even now that he is world champion he has not learned to be satisfied. After eight almost perfect laps, followed by an impeccable qualifying and a winning sprint race, he made one of those mistakes that make his garage kneel in despair. Pecco is the one who, after setting the table, spills the bottle of wine on the white tablecloth or worse still takes the tablecloth inside and drags all the dishes to the floor. If a crash in the rain in Argentina is something that can happen, the crash while driving to success in the Texas Grand Prix risks becoming one of those woodworms that are difficult to get out of your head. Two mistakes in three races for the man who travels with the number 1 on the bodywork are objectively too many, also because he arrived riding the best bike around, as ultimately confirmed by the fact that Bezzecchi is leading the championship with a Ducati official. Aleix Espargarò, Mir, Miller, Martin and Binder also ended up in the gravel in Texas, but Pecco’s crash is the one that makes the most noise because it cost him a victory and 25 points in the standings which could become heavy at the end of the season. It’s not always possible to slip in magical threads like last year when he staged the best comeback in the history of world motorcycle racing, something that, as Gigi dall’Igna says, has already written his name in the history books of this sport.

His explanation after the fall is a bit perplexing. “I am very angry, but not with myself. I’m 100% sure it wasn’t my fault, in Argentina I recognized I was a bit on the edge, but in Austin it wasn’t”. The fact is that to keep Rins behind with a resurrected Honda, he wasn’t exactly traveling as a tourist. “I don’t know what happened – he added – I must have done more or less 80 or 100 laps throughout this weekend. I pushed, I checked, I understood every sign the front gave me over the weekend. Then in the race, when I was in full control, I crashed. Something happened, but not because of the cold rubber or the wind. We have to understand if it’s a problem with the bike, because we have the best bike, it’s the one that the whole grid wants.” Flying away when you think you have everything under control is a strange thing. Either you have the belief that you have everything under control, while thanks to a fantastic bike, you are traveling beyond the limits, or there really has been a betrayal of the bike which, however, so far no one in the team feels like endorsing. “If you crash and you don’t know why it’s useless, because in two weekends we lost 45 points. We have to understand this. Maybe we need a more unstable bike, maybe it’s better to go one or two tenths slower but understand everything”.

Unfortunately there is no proof. Because with Bastianini still recovering after the blow of the first weekend, there is no internal comparison, the one that would have allowed us to understand something more and know for sure whether the limits are those of the man or the bike. The second place of Luca Marini, Valentino’s brother, on the first podium of his career, with a Ducati of Team Vr46 tells us that the bike is not that complicated to manage even if objectively the pace was different from that held by Bagnaia in leak. Pecco went so far as to say that he would prefer to ride one or two tenths slower and understand the bike perfectly. Something that in the end he could also do without always traveling to the limit. Now he has nothing more to prove. He is world champion. He has to learn to handle himself better and to better manage his red missile. If Verstappen has succeeded, who is no longer wrong, he can do it too. But he will have to work on it. With everyone’s help. Ultimately, Ducati’s true strength has always been the team.