Bagnaia made history in 2021 when he overturned a 91-point deficit to end a 15-year wait for Ducati’s second world title in MotoGP.
Dominant in the first half of 2023, Bagnaia led the championship by 66 points after the sprint in Barcelona only to crash out of that grand prix and suffer injury in a horrible collision with Brad Binder.
Pramac’s Jorge Martin was able to capitalise on this as he came into a purple patch, briefly overhauling Bagnaia in the standings by seven points after the sprint in Indonesia before losing it again in the grand prix.
The pair came into the finale split by 14 points, but Bagnaia won the Valencia GP after Martin crashed with Marc Marquez.
Bagnaia’s advantage over Martin at the end of the season stood at 39 points as he became the first rider since Marc Marquez in 2019 to successfully defend their crown.
Here are the key moments of Bagnaia’s 2023 season.
Portuguese GP – Round 1
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Bagnaia set the tone for his year with a strong start to his title defence at Portimao
After the problems of the pre-season the year before, which ultimately led to Bagnaia ditching the full 2022-spec Ducati engine in favour of a hybrid version more akin to the 2021 unit, 2023 couldn’t have been more different.
A strong testing period on the GP23 gave way to an emphatic start to Bagnaia’s title defence in Portugal at the start of the campaign, winning the first ever MotoGP sprint race and fending off Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales to scoop the grand prix.
A perfect 37 points signalled intent from Bagnaia that 2023 would be vastly different to the year before, where he was forced to overturn a hefty mid-season deficit to eventually take the crown.
Spanish GP – Round 4
Photo by: Dorna
Recovering from two crashes, Bagnaia reclaimed the points lead in Jerez
Bagnaia remained quick throughout the Argentina and Americas weekends. But in the former, he struggled to sixth in the sprint before crashing while running a comfortable second in the grand prix.
And in America, he started on pole and won the sprint, only to crash while leading at the Circuit of the Americas in the grand prix. Blaming his Ducati for being too perfect, and thus too stable for him to be able to feel where the limit of the front-end was, Bagnaia rolled back on this at Jerez.
As old habits were clearly dying hard, a big weekend in Spain was a must. Coming through Q1 to qualify fifth,…
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