Bagnaia's nickname "Pecco" dates to childhood: his older sister Carola, while learning to talk, could not pronounce Francesco, and the name stuck. He won the European MiniGP championship in 2009, competed in the Spanish 125 cc championship in 2011, and joined the VR46 Riders Academy — the talent program founded by Valentino Rossi — with whom he remains affiliated.
His CEV Moto3 campaign in 2012 yielded a third-place finish behind Álex Márquez and Luca Amato.
Bagnaia made his Grand Prix debut in 2013 with Team Italia FMI on a Honda, failing to score a point across 17 races. Switching to KTM machinery with Sky Racing Team VR46 in 2014, he showed improvement but missed races through injury. He moved to the Aspar Team on a Mahindra for 2015, taking his first podium at Le Mans in France. In 2016, now on a Mahindra with the same team, he won his first Grand Prix at Assen — also Mahindra's first ever Grand Prix victory — and added a second win at Sepang to finish fourth in the championship with 145 points.
Bagnaia returned to Sky Racing Team VR46 for Moto2, immediately showing pace with two second-place finishes in his first four races of 2017. He finished fifth in the championship in his rookie season. In 2018, he was dominant: he opened the season with a wire-to-wire victory in Qatar, won again in Austin, Le Mans, Assen, Red Bull Ring, Misano, and Motegi — eight wins in total — and was crowned Moto2 World Champion after finishing third in Malaysia. He did not retire from a single Moto2 race across his two seasons, scoring points in 34 of 36 starts.
His 2018 title made him the first VR46 Academy rider to win a world title in any class, a milestone for Rossi's development program.
Bagnaia joined Pramac Racing's Ducati satellite team for his MotoGP debut in 2019. The season was difficult — he scored 54 points and finished 15th — marked by repeated early crashes and a final-race injury at Valencia. In 2020, restricted to fewer races by the COVID-19 pandemic, he achieved his first MotoGP podium: second place at Misano behind Franco Morbidelli. A leg fracture at Brno caused him to miss three rounds.
Promoted to the Ducati Lenovo Team for 2021 alongside Jack Miller, Bagnaia began to show his true MotoGP calibre. He won his first premier-class race at Aragon — leading the entire race from pole while successfully defending seven overtakes from Marc Márquez in the closing laps — and won again at Misano the following weekend. He finished second in the championship with 252 points, 26 behind world champion Fabio Quartararo.
The 2022 season produced one of the most dramatic championship recoveries in premier-class history. Bagnaia crashed out of the opening round and suffered a mechanical failure in round two, scoring only two points from the first two races. After a crash at the German Grand Prix left him 91 points behind Quartararo at the season's halfway point, he won four consecutive Grands Prix — Assen, Silverstone, Red Bull Ring, Misano — becoming the first Ducati rider and only the fourth MotoGP-era rider to achieve that feat, joining Valentino Rossi, Marc Márquez, and Jorge Lorenzo. He clinched the title at the final round in Valencia, completing the largest points-deficit championship recovery in premier-class history. It was also Ducati's first riders' championship in 15 years and the first for an Italian rider since Rossi in 2009.
In 2023 Bagnaia engaged in a season-long battle with Jorge Martín, holding the championship lead for almost the entire year and sealing a second consecutive title when Martín crashed at the final race in Valencia. Bagnaia became the first Ducati rider to successfully defend the riders' championship and the first rider since Rossi and Márquez to win back-to-back premier-class titles.
The 2024 season saw Bagnaia win eleven feature races — more than any other rider in a single season without winning the title — but Martín's consistency over the full campaign proved decisive. The championship went to the final round at Barcelona, where despite Bagnaia taking pole, the sprint win, and the feature race, Martín finished runner-up to take the crown by ten points.
Bagnaia is the most successful Italian rider in the premier class since Valentino Rossi and the most successful Ducati-mounted championship rider in the MotoGP four-stroke era. His ability to recover from mid-season crises through sustained pole positions and race victories defines his competitive character. The 2022 points-deficit recovery and the 2023 defence represent consecutive peaks of performance against elite opposition.
His technical partnership with Ducati's Desmosedici platform, and his development through the VR46 Academy alongside Rossi's mentorship, have made him a symbol of Italian motorcycle racing's continued relevance at the sport's highest level.