The summer holiday of Pecco Bagnaia did not include a vacation and a break in the world of MotoGP, instead, he also spent it studying video frame-by-frame records of his best performances. The current champion was not looking backwards in some sense of nostalgia, he was performing dissections, comparisons and challenges with winceful truths. What he found when re-watching his best races in the last couple of years was also shocking: this year, he says he feels like a different rider, albeit not in a good sense.

Bagnaia acknowledged the fact that the GP25 has changed his riding style. During former seasons, his riding style of precision, aggressiveness under braking and boldness in the corner entrance matched the nature of the Ducati motorbike. Instead, however, this year he has had to swim against the machine. The comparison of those two old races allowed him then to perceive the arresting nature of the difference between his old system of attacking the track, and of the coy style he has been compelled of late into adopting. To a rider of his caliber that distance is disturbing.

Analysis of technique was not the sum total of the exercise. It was also related to re-institution of a mindset. You think that bagnaia picked his best races by design to see what technical stuff worked, and to remind himself what he is when he was at the top of his game. It was both memory and motivation a manner of saying to himself, This is what I can do, this is where I must go back to. His point was that now is not the time to be hunting trophies but the original emotion of speed and control. To begin twenty I have to get along well with the bike have to get into harmony with it do not want to be at war with it. Them the results come.”

Early test of that philosophy was at Red Bull Ring. During Free Practice 1, Bagnaia placed himself second on the timesheets, three tenths of a second behind the session leader, Marc M and one ahead of Pedro Acosta, who, with a ninth of a second ahead, had completed another comparatively surprising outing. The two riders shared identical tyre compounds but Marquez had a new front. Still, it is clear that the session revealed the minor variance in the approaches: Marquez seemed fully in harmony with his motorcycle, whereas Bagnaia was still in the process of his reconstruction.

MotoGP will never stop being as much psychology as mechanics. Riders also depend on trust that is, the perception that the bike will merely perform in accordance to their expectations on the periphery of the performance. When that bond is broken, then one becomes less confident and each and every lap seems to be a battle. That Bagnaia was keen to delve through his previous races indicates an obsession to regain that lost trust even at the expense of relearning parts of his own riding style.

What he discovered eventually is what each of the highest-ranking riders eventually encounters: performance is neither completely a matter of brute ability or technology, but of symbiosis. When the rider enjoys the sensation that the bike is an extension, then results happen. When it does not, all the talent in the world will never cover the disconnect. Bagnaia, on the other hand, has the race back to his dominant self starting with getting back the mindset and the flow in riding which made him unstoppable.

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