Francesco Bagnaia has taken Italy back to the top of the world in the premier motorcycle racing class. In the fourth year since his arrival in MotoGP, Bagnaia managed to give Ducati the second title in its history, even succeeding where ten years ago Valentino Rossi - friend, mentor and former patron - had failed. A world championship that had been missing in Italy since as far back as 2009 and that takes on absolutely historic contours. A formidable feat that can be better sketched also thanks to a series of numbers that make us understand the extraordinariness of the path and the work that the Ducati/Bagnaia duo have managed to complete.
Who Is Francesco "Pecco" Bagnaia"?
Bagnaia made his MotoGP debut in 2013, although the motorsport community first saw him in 2009. The Italian racer made his racing debut in Moto3, a lower-level class, and a year later joined the brand-new SKY Racing Team VR46. He switched clubs several times up until 2017 when he returned to Valentino Rossi's outfit in the Moto2 team with whom he captured his first Moto2 world championship in 2018.
The young rider made his MotoGP debut in the premier division in 2019, competing for the Pramac Racing squad. His career truly took off in 2021. That is the year in fact, in which he joined the official Ducati team, allowing him and making it more difficult for riders like Fabio Quartararo - the actual 2021 MotoGP World Champion to perform confidently. Unfortunately, Bagnaia finished in the second position as a result of the Misano crash.
During the 2022 season, Pecco managed to pull off a record-breaking string of four consecutive victories, from Assen to Misano, becoming the first rider to do so on a Ducati. In MotoGP, only Marc Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo, and Valentino Rossi had achieved such a feat before him. Looking at the Italians, in addition to Rossi - who last succeeded in 2008 with a streak of five victories from Laguna Seca to Motegi - there is of course the undisputed legend Giacomo Agostini, who was able to complete an absurd sequence of 20 wins in a row.
Bagnaia is the fourth Italian rider to win a top-class world championship riding an Italian bike. The first to do so in the MotoGP era. The last tricolor rider to win on an Italian motorcycle was Giacomo Agostini in 1972 riding the MV Agusta 500. 50 years later Bagnaia and Ducati broke the taboo by managing to win and break the hegemony of the Japanese brands (Honda-Yamaha-Suzuki) that before today had won 95 percent of the championships staged since 2022 to date.
Pecco And His Desmosedici: The Stats
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Francesco Bagnaia pulled off the astonishing amount of 108 points from Fabio Quartararo in 10 races, from Sachsenring in late June to the Valencia round. An epic comeback that has no equal either in the history of MotoGP or Formula 1. From -91 at the end of the 10th GP of the season to +17 in Malaysia: an exhilarating comeback, was generated by five consecutive wins and eight podiums and the simultaneous crash crisis of his French rival, Fabio Quartararo.
Bagnaia's record-breaking recovery over Quartararo:
114 points in 9 races, from -91 to +23
RACE DISTANCE FROM QUARTARARO
- Post-Sachsenring -91
- Post-Assen -66
- Post-Silverstone -49
- Post-Spielberg -44
- Post-Misano -30
- Post-Aragon -10
- Post-Motegi -18
- Post-Buriram -2
- Post-Phillip Island +14
- Post-Sepang +23
- Post-Valencia +17
The Turin-based rider finally gave Italy its 21st world title in the premier class, a milestone that had been missing for 13 years. Italy - which already commanded this special ranking - stretches ahead of the United Kingdom (17 titles), the United States (15 titles), and Spain (11 titles, 10 of them in MotoGP). 189 laps were spent leading the race by Bagnaia in 2022, more than double the number recorded by Quartararo who stopped at 76.
This wonderful 2022 race took place in Valencia (Spain) and, by winning, Pecco becomes only the third Italian to be able to boast of having won both a title in the premier class and a world championship in a 'minor' class of motorcycling. The others to achieve this are two monuments of Italian motorcycling such as the above-mentioned Giacomo Agostini (8-time 500 class world champion and 7-time 350 class world champion) and, of course, Valentino Rossi (9 world championships and the only rider to have won a world title in four different classes: 125, 250, 500 and MotoGP). Pecco Bagnaia's 2022 victories were seven - only Casey Stoner (2007) managed to bring home more in a single season, riding a Ducati.