Marco Bezzecchi
Francesco Bagnaia experienced the worst season of his factory Ducati career to date in 2025, and Marc Marquez’s presence at the team may have been the reason for it.
Marc Marquez was utterly dominant during his seventh title-winning campaign in MotoGP. The Spaniard began the season in perfect form and rarely put a foot wrong as the season ensued.
Francesco Bagnaia, on the other hand, was unable to replicate the results of his Borgo Panigale counterpart.
The two-time world champion in Ducati colours scored just three victories in all formats over the course of the season, a stark contrast to the 25 that Marquez claimed in the 36 races that he competed in.
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Where did it all go wrong for Francesco Bagnaia in 2025?
A comparison between Marc Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia's 2025 Grand Prix results
Francesco Bagnaia’s box became ‘very lonely’ after Ducati engineers started to prioritise Marc Marquez
MotoGP journalist Jack Appleyard made a recent appearance on the Motorsport Republica podcast and detailed the changes he had seen within Bagnaia’s side of the garage in response to a question about the Italian’s struggles in 2025.
He said, “I think Marc’s just got this aura about him that we can feel as journalists and certainly the other riders feel as well.
“Bagnaia was asked about this time and time again, and he was adamant it’s not the Marc Marquez effect. It doesn’t matter that he’s his teammate, but it has to have an impact for sure.
“He has been the golden child of Ducati. When he came into the box, after every session, there was Gigi Dall’Igna waiting to speak to him, waiting to understand what he had to say.
“Then it suddenly became very lonely, very quickly, in that Ducati box when he’d come in from a session.
“He’d sit down, and he’d have to wait a while for people to come and listen to his thoughts because they wanted to hear from Marc first. And that obviously will have an impact.”
- READ MORE: Francesco Bagnaia snubbed as the ‘best’ title rival to Marc Marquez for MotoGP fans in 2026
Francesco Bagnaia failed to score points in 18 of his 44 races in 2025.
Luigi Dall’Igna was adamant that Marc Marquez was not favoured over Pecco Bagnaia throughout 2025
Despite the obvious changes in the way that Bagnaia was treated within the Ducati garages on race weekends, Dall’Igna kept up the narrative that the Italian rider wasn’t treated any differently to Marquez.
During the height of the recently concluded season, the engineer disclosed that ‘everyone’ at Ducati was starting to lose patience with Bagnaia due to his inability to rectify the issues that he had been plagued with on their factory-spec bike.
The woeful term marked the 28-year-old’s first in the famous red overalls that he hadn’t challenged for the riders’ championship at any point during the season.
In Dall’Igna’s final verdict on Bagnaia’s season, he said that the #63 had simply ‘failed’ in 2025 due to his points tally that saw him slip down to fifth place in the MotoGP standings by the conclusion of the season.
The upcoming campaign is paramount for Bagnaia’s quest to remain as a factory Ducati rider. He is adamant that he wants to retire at Borgo Panigale, but given his recent difficulties, that is no longer a given.
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