Ironically, given he has not crashed very much at all this season, Pecco Bagnaia's 2025 MotoGP campaign has been a lot like watching a high-side in slow motion.
The outcome was predetermined in the pre-season - that's where he was 'launched' off his proverbial bike. From there on, it's only been a question of how high he'll go in the air, how hard he'll land, how long before he comes to a halt.
But have we hit the ground yet - or are we still in the air? Bagnaia will hope it's the former, that Balaton Park is as bad as it's going to get this year, and not just because upcoming tracks will be more favourable than the brutally compact, braking mistake-coaxing Hungarian venue.
Bagnaia looked rough out of the blocks last weekend, missed out on a Q2 ticket on Friday and Saturday, laboured to a nothing finish in the sprint, then ended up ninth in what once used to be his strongest session of the weekend - the grand prix. He went off twice en route to ninth - once to end up with a long lap for shortcutting, another to cede a position he'd just gained over KTM test rider Pol Espargaro.
He stared into the abyss - and chose to see a brighter tomorrow.
"I'm quite happy. Not for the result but for the feeling," Bagnaia insisted.
"I was able to ride my bike, not be ridden by the bike. It was a good race in terms of feeling.
"I just did two mistakes, I was wide twice, because I was feeling that good that I was trying to force more, for the first time. I over-braked and this is a good sign. So, I'm happy."
We'll get back to the idea of race-altering mistakes being a sign of progress a little later. As to the nature of the change to the bike - which was actually implemented on Saturday ahead of the sprint - Bagnaia didn't go into details but described it as "huge" and "a change by centimetres" rather than millimetres.
"This one wasn't a little step. In terms of set-up, it was a big change on the set-up. Luckily in a good direction. As soon as we tried, I was feeling that it had a good potential.
"Today lap by lap I was feeling better and better and better.
"In the last laps I was riding my bike in a good way. Then I just missed another mistake in the last lap, in Turn 5. If I didn't do this mistake, I would've done my fastest lap in the last lap because I was doing every lap better. So, happy.
"I have to say that today I was recognising myself more."
The lap in question - the lap that contained the mistake that let Espargaro back past - was a 1m39.683s, but replacing the botched sector with Bagnaia's best of the race would make it a 1m38.312s.
Ducati team-mate Marc Marquez's final lap, a push lap executed effectively out of boredom on the same tyres as Bagnaia, was a 1m37.838s, nearly half a second quicker than this theoretical lap.
Bagnaia can hardly be begrudged choosing to see the positives here, and even in his diminished 2025 state he is potentially among the more closely-matched team-mates Marquez has had in his career of merciless team-mate destruction.
But the suggestion of a race in which he went off twice being a breakthrough is difficult to accept - even more so because it's not the first time we've heard something like this from the season's highest-profile struggler.
Here is a selection of previous quotes: "getting closer to my best feeling"; "best sessions absolutely from the start of the season"; "every time we are a bit closer in terms of pace"; "maybe for the first time this season I have better pace compared to others"; "I think that the work we are doing is giving the fruit"; "we are moving forward and in a good direction."
What rounds are those from? Well, frankly, who cares? And there are more that could go in here, but it would feel disrespectful.
At Termas, COTA, Qatar, Aragon, Assen, Sachsenring - sometimes on Friday but sometimes on Saturday or Sunday - Bagnaia claimed a breakthrough of some sort, whether in general feeling on the bike or in specifics of corner entry, or in the comparison between him and Marquez. In most of the other rounds he pointed to at least a small step in feeling and understanding.
And fair enough - it's normal to get better with more mileage. But the gap to the guy on the other side of the garage has never backed it up on race day, as the below analysis of the races both riders finished (without crashing) shows.
Marquez vs Bagnaia, gap per lap, grands prix
Smallest to biggest
Aragon - 0.088s
Buriram - 0.092s
Assen - 0.103s
Brno - 0.185s
Lusail - 0.206s
Mugello - 0.221s
Termas - 0.221s
Sachsenring - 0.236s
Red Bull Ring - 0.446s
Balaton - 0.571s
Marquez vs Bagnaia, pace gap per lap, sprints
Smallest to biggest
Assen - 0.207s
Mugello - 0.233s
Jerez - 0.256s
Buriram - 0.263s
Termas - 0.322s
Silverstone - 0.355s
Brno - 0.365s
Lusail - 0.939s
Balaton - 1.145s
Aragon - 1.274s
Sachsenring - 1.356s
If there is any pattern here... well, in both cases there's a mildly positive rank correlation between the size of the gap and the number of the round, meaning that the further we've gone into the season, the bigger the gap has been.
That's insufficient statistical evidence that Bagnaia is on an overall downward trend - but certainly an upward trend is nowhere to be found. If anything, it just looks like he's vaguely in range on his best tracks, save for the recent debacle in Austria, and getting absolutely shellacked at Marquez's best tracks.
The upcoming Catalan Grand Prix will at least be a good opportunity not to be shellacked - it's one of Bagnaia's best tracks and one of Marquez's worst. I wouldn't take anything that happens there as evidence of the ship being righted, and the same goes for Misano right after, but it is true that seeing off Marquez on merit in any of the four opportunities across the two tracks would be a season first.
If that's what Bagnaia hopes his latest breakthrough can bring, that feels at least attainable, if still difficult to believe at this point in time.
In any case, on evidence of the year so far, anything more sustained than giving Marquez some grief for a race or two is beyond what a set-up tweak can achieve - or, perhaps, beyond anything anyone can do for Bagnaia.
