Francesco Bagnaia endured a nightmare weekend at the British Grand Prix, failing to score points for the first time this season.
Returning to MotoGP action just weeks after surgery on his right forearm, Bagnaia never looked comfortable on his Ducati GP26 at Silverstone, but remained optimistic about a turnaround.
Instead, however, his weekend only got worse with each session. In practice, he struggled with braking and crashed late on in the session, failing to secure a direct entry into Q2.
On Saturday morning, he recorded an even slower time in qualifying, ending up seven tenths off the pace of Franco Morbidelli on the GP25.
Sprint nightmare
Then, Bagnaia lost significant time due to tyre graining in the sprint, much like his team-mate Marc Marquez, with his pace dropping in the 2m02s range. Having also failed to make any headway at the start of the race from 16th on the grid, he crossed the line in 17th place, only ahead of Maverick Vinales’ stand-in Pol Espargaro and the Yamahas of Augusto Fernandez and Toprak Razgatlioglu.
“I cannot imagine something more with my performance today,” Bagnaia lamented after the sprint.
“[I had] no performance, no speed. The lack of grip…. Their grip is huge, and today after four laps, I started to go behind, not in front, and the last two laps, I raced without touching the knee on the right side, so it was very difficult for me to be competitive.
“The target to start the weekend was to be in the top 10, but looking at my performance it's difficult to imagine something better than 15.
“The factory team today struggled a lot, me and Marc were the slowest riders in the last laps, so it's difficult to imagine what to do, because today I was expecting the drop, but not that much.”
It was a strange crash for @peccobagnaia 👀#BritishGP 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/89FyshfJF3
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) August 9, 2026
Inexplicable crash
Sunday’s race offered no respite. In just three laps, he had slipped back to 18th place, with just 21 riders remaining on track at that point. As several more riders crashed in quick succession, he gradually made his way into points-scoring positions, but his weekend came to a premature end when he tucked the front at Luffield on lap 8. This was coincidentally the same corner where he crashed at last year’s British GP.
However, the Italian was baffled as to why he went down after the apex, describing the crash as “strange.”
“I never lost the front exiting from a corner, so, very strange,” he said. “Looking at the data, it's very difficult to see something. The only thing is that the front steering completely closed the...
“I completely lost the front in a matter of milliseconds. So, very strange. But it's what happened.
“It is also difficult to accept, because it was already one of the hardest weekends of the season. I struggled to be close to the top ten on the weekend. And today there was a little possibility of finishing in the top 10.
“We need to rise from this situation, because I don't want to do another weekend like this one.”
A lack of rear grip has been a persistent issue for Bagnaia in 2026, with the Italian identifying it as the biggest factor holding him back this season.
While Gresini has been able to find a solution for this problem on Alex Marquez’s bike, Bagnaia continues to deal with it on the factory Ducati, despite his team doing its best to fix it.
“I changed everything. The set-up, electronic side, but the problem is not that," he added.
“From the first race of the season, I don't have any grip. Completely zero. And we don't know what to do, because there are riders in Ducati that have a lot. So, it's very difficult to understand.”
