BAGNAIA From Rossi Fan to VR46 MotoGP King

Eight-year-old Pecco Bagnaia's first motorcycle was a bright-red minimoto. Seventeen years later, he won the MotoGP title on a bright-red Ducati Desmosedici. And mentor Valentino Rossi has been with him all the way

- Mat Oxley

PECCO BAGNAIA CAN STILL remember being nine years old, sitting on the sofa at home in Turin, Italy, crying his eyes out on the afternoon of the 29th of October 2006.

That was the day Valentino Rossi went into the Valencia MotoGP world championship finale holding an apparently unassailable eight-point lead over Nicky Hayden, only to crash his Yamaha YZR-M1 and hand the title to his American Honda rival.

On the afternoon of the 6th of November 2022, Bagnaia lined up for the last race of the MotoGP season, with a 23-point lead over reigning champ Fabio Quartararo. Only a disaster could keep him from snatching the crown, which is exactly what everyone had said about Rossi 16 years earlier. But this time there was no catastrophe, so Bagnaia became MotoGP king, Ducati's first since Casey Stoner won the company's first premier-class crown in 2007.

You could hardly imagine two more different riders than the Australian and the Italian. Stoner, the spiky former dirt tracker, who rode his Desmosedici tied in knots, laying black lines here, there, and everywhere. And Bagnaia, the quietly spoken precision artist, finding all his speed with the front tyre, hitting his markers every lap, rarely a millimeter offline, just like Jorge Lorenzo.

Stoner and Bagnaia come from very different backgrounds. Stoner's dad was a racer and he pretty much came racing out of his mother's womb.

Bagnaia's father was not a racer; dad and his brothers were road and track-day people. Nevertheless, Francesco (his real name, which, as a wee lad, he mispronounced "Pecco" and the quirk stuck) fell under the spell.