Marco Bezzecchi
Francesco Bagnaia has suffered one of the most perplexing drop-offs in recent MotoGP history this season. But it seems Ducati have at last worked out the root cause.
While Bagnaia didn’t win the title in 2024, he did score 11 Grand Prix victories and 16 podiums. This season, his podium tally has halved, and he’s only won twice.
New teammate Marc Marquez, one of MotoGP’s all-time greats, has almost monopolised the top step. But that doesn’t explain why Bagnaia has qualified outside the top 10 five times and had three scoreless weekends, with the Indonesian Grand Prix the latest.
VR46 claim that Bagnaia tested Franco Morbidelli’s GP24 at Misano last month. He has longed for last year’s motorcycle all season, but Ducati are forbidden from reverting back to it under the new regulations.
Ducati’s 2025 ride-height device is the root of Francesco Bagnaia’s problems
Mat Oxley of Motor Sport Magazine met with senior Ducati figures at Mandalika, and he can confirm that Bagnaia’s problems aren’t down to the change of engine. While the Borgo Panigale made some tweaks over the winter, ‘none’ of these affect ‘machine dynamics’.
Instead, Bagnaia’s ‘curse’ is the 2025 ride-height device. He’s found that it changes ‘overall bike balance at a critical moment’, costing him feeling at the front on corner entry.
Ducati say the bike Bagnaia rode after the race at Misano was actually a GP25 with a year-old ride-height device. He used this formula at Motegi, where he was back to his ‘fast and smooth’ best and delivered a perfect weekend.
While Bagnaia endured a miserable trip to Indonesia, finishing last in the Sprint and crashing out of the Grand Prix, Ducati blamed Michelin’s rear-tyre casing, a special measure for the extremely hot Lombok circuit.
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The final four rounds of the season feel crucial for Bagnaia. He must confirm that the changes made before Japan will yield a lasting breakthrough and that Indonesia was an outlier.
With Marquez out for the next two races at least, Bagnaia will be expected to fight for victory. This is an opportunity to change the narrative heading into 2026.
Fail, and the noise about his future will grow even louder. Veteran MotoGP Carlo Pernat has even suggested that Ducati should swap Bagnaia for Jorge Martin, who won the title on a Desmosedici last year.
Encouragingly, Ducati’s 2026 bike is expected to be an evolution of the GP24, rather than a GP25 concept that only Marquez has been able to maximise.
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