Pecco Bagnaia isn't the type of character to demand your attention, but he deserves it. He certainly deserves a bit more respect from the MotoGP paddock that he has come to dominate over the past three-plus seasons.
The 27-year-old Italian is the two-time defending world champion. He has claimed 22 wins since the start of the 2021 season -- more than the next three most successful riders in the class combined.
That's a victory every three grands prix. His win percentage throughout the course of his five-plus-season career is 23%. Of the five multitime world champions of the MotoGP modern era, that ranks third, ahead of arguably the greatest of all time in Valentino Rossi -- who just so happens to be Bagnaia's mentor -- and trailing only Casey Stoner and Marc Márquez.
And yet, tune into a race, dial up a podcast or strike up a conversation with a fan, and it's not Bagnaia you'll hear about. It's Márquez. Or Jorge Martín.
Márquez is a six-time champion of MotoGP, emerging from a hellish four seasons in which his career was nearly ended by an arm injury and Honda's once-great RC213V became the slowest bike of the field. Now that he's aboard a Ducati Desmosedici -- the very bike Bagnaia has principally developed -- he has returned to competitiveness in 2024. It was Martín's title challenge that pushed Bagnaia all the way to the season finale in 2023, and it's Martín who currently leads the world championship standings.
Márquez and Martín are competitors who are willing to risk everything for the glory of victory, but Bagnaia is seen as having a more measured approach. It has created a perception that Márquez and Martín are peerless talents -- in Márquez's case, a generational talent, in the conversation about the greatest of all time -- while Bagnaia is something less than that.
"In my opinion, we have to define what talent means," Bagnaia's crew chief, Cristian Gabarrini, told ESPN earlier this season. "If talent is entering every corner as if you want to die, this is the definition of talent that I don't agree with.
"Talent is a mixture of many, many things altogether. One is to be a little bit brave, because if you are not, you cannot be competitive in this sport. But talent is also being able to manage a tire, being able to understand when is the time to attack and when is the time to defend, talent is understanding bike behavior and bike feedback. And if we think about this, Pecco is a super talent, a huge talent."
There is an aloofness to Bagnaia. He is polite, even friendly, but he is not particularly engaging. Talking to the media is part of his job, and he does that part of the job with the same joy that most of us put into itemizing expense reports.
Beyond that, though, there is also a sense that he's just not that interested in gossip. He has his circle of confidants, he has his passions, but what exists outside of those realms is largely just noise.
"I don't care too much, honestly, of what people are saying," Bagnaia said to ESPN. "I know my potential; I know what I can do.
"It is a combination of talent and understanding the situation and working a lot. I think without work, the talent is nothing. ... I think everyone [in MotoGP] is so talented, because without talent, it is impossible to have this kind of speed. I think the difference between a talented rider and a worker is that you work with the talent to improve yourself."
Work is what Bagnaia has become known for.
He is not a rider to turn up to the track on Friday morning and blitz the field. This year's wins at Qatar, Jerez, Barcelona and Mugello began with Free Practice 1 finishes of 10th, 12th, 7th and 8th, respectively.
He works, methodically, with his team to find marginal gains in setup throughout the weekend. Gabarrini said once Bagnaia and the team have found a good compromise on base setup, they go to work on optimizing that setup for the softer tire option likely to be used in the Saturday sprint race, before turning attentions to the harder-option tire they expect to select in the Sunday grand prix.
As such, the reputation that Bagnaia has cultivated, rather than being a fearless gladiator with talent pouring out of his ears, is that of another engineer working in the pit box -- one who just happens to also ride the bike.
"I think it's something that is so valid, to have that reputation, I love to understand things. I love to learn many things, and it's super useful for me to understand for other situations what to do or if I want to improve myself. So it's not sad, I think," he said, closing with a trademark wry smile.
"Being smart is very useful."
It's not only useful to him, but to Ducati, too.
The famed marque based in the Borgo Panigale district of Bologna in Italy's Emilia-Romagna region produces the finest motorcycles in MotoGP. Ducati has won 42 races since Bagnaia joined the factory team ahead of the 2021 season. The next most successful manufacturer has tasted victory just nine times in that span.
As his influence in the factory has grown, so have Ducati's win totals: seven in 2021, twelve in 2022, seventeen in 2023, and now six of seven in 2024. While it may be easy to ask where Bagnaia would be if he were riding something other than the dominant Ducati, a more compelling question is asking where Ducati would be if not for the feedback, guidance and development provided by Bagnaia.
"I think one of his main characteristics is that he is super, super sensitive on the bike. He can feel every small detail of the bike's behavior," Gabarrini said. "This is a big, big aid for us because sometimes we are not able to clearly see something by data recording, but we trust him. If we speak about a different tire or a different setting, I never faced a mistake from him. Usually if he says something because he feels something from the bike, it's true.
"This is a big advantage for him and for us to work with him, because he immediately understands if one modification is better or not. And he's very, very strong to decide if he likes it or not. He is almost never in the middle -- 'I don't know, maybe' -- it's 'yes' or 'no'. And so it's easy for us to follow him."
Following him is what everyone in MotoGP has been doing for the past two seasons. And if Bagnaia continues the form he has shown in recent months, winning three of the past four grands prix, everyone will be behind him in the championship standings again when the curtain falls on the 2024 season in November.