As we are heading to the Sachsenring (German Grand Prix), the 11th round of the season, Francesco Bagnaia is nowhere near Marc Marquez, his teammate. This weekend at the Sachsenring will probably show us if he can fight for the championship title or if he’ll have to fight for the championship podium only.
Francesco Bagnaia won on this exact circuit last year, can he redo it to try to fight for the championship?
Harsh beginning of the season for Bagnaia whilst Marc Marquez is dominating
Since the beginning of the season we’ve seen Marc Marquez completely dominating his teammate Francesco Bagnaia in his first season with the official Ducati team. Marquez makes it seem easy to ride the bike whilst for Bagnaia it feels like it’s close to hell. So far in this season Marc Marquez won six out of ten races on Sundays and nine out of ten sprint races, while Francesco Bagnaia only won a single race during the second round of the season in Austin after Marquez had crashed. The feeling Bagnaia has with the bike has been completely off since the beginning of the season, he admitted it himself that the bike was not the same as last year at all, and is therefore harder for him to get great performances out of it. Which explains the gap between the two riders in the championship and on the track. Which is why we can speak of a domination Marquez has over Bagnaia.
Ducati still claims they fully will continue to help Bagnaia try to find a good performance with the bike again. Even if they are fully enjoying the performance Marc is showing, and the fact he will be a strong contender for the championship, they still show a huge support to their twice world champion rider. There is though a huge disappointment within the fans and the MotoGP community regarding Francesco Bagnaia’s performances so far when Marc Marquez seems to ride the same bike so effortlessly.
The comments and the pressure is getting even harder to handle for the two times world champion, knowing that Alex Marquez in the unofficial Ducati team with a “less performant bike” is ahead of him in the championship and most races. Not only Alex Marquez gets ahead of him in most races but also many other riders as he’s mostly struggling to even get on the podium lately. When we watch him we see how completely powerless he is in front of his lack of performance. He is trying hard, it still doesn’t seem to be enough to have great races and get good performances out of the bike though. What more can he do in front of such a dominating Marc Marquez? He is getting help from his team, but are they doing enough to help the rider who gave them two world championships or are they too focused on the possibility of getting the rider championship title with Marquez?
