Bagnaia riding defensively at Misano to avoid crashing amid MotoGP slump

A defending champion describing his own riding style as "defensive" to avoid crashing is a telling admission — it points to a confidence problem, not just a setup issue. Bagnaia isn't managing a gap to the front; he's managing the risk of not finishing, which is a different kind of trouble entirely. That framing matters because it suggests the fix isn't straightforward: you can adjust a bike, but recalibrating a rider's instinct under pressure takes longer. For Ducati, whose title hopes rest heavily on Pecco, a home race at Misano producing this kind of language is a significant concern.