Ducati domination: unprecedented in 77 years of MotoGP

Ducati’s domination of MotoGP is so complete that over the last 43 races — from September 2023 to August 2025 — the Italian manufacturer has been defeated only four times. That’s a ratio of better than ten victories to one defeat.

At April’s Jerez Grand Prix, Ducati equalled Honda’s record of 22 consecutive MotoGP victories and was expected to take the record at Le Mans, until the rain came down and Johann Zarco scored a famous Honda success. (I wonder where the Ducati T-shirts celebrating 23 consecutive victories went.)

Ducati has won the last three riders’ world championships – with Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin – and the last five constructors’ titles.

So far this year the Bologna brand has taken maximum constructors’ points – for sprint and grand prix victories – at ten of 12 races and locked out GP podiums at more than half the rounds.

All thanks, of course, to Gigi Dall’Igna’s decision to take an entirely new road in MotoGP development, using technologies never used before in motorcycle racing.

But these are not Ducati’s most impressive numbers.

The winning Ducati took 25 points in Argentina. The top non-Ducati was sixth, for ten points

Ducati currently leads the 2025 constructors’ prize on 430 points. Second is Aprilia on 187 points. Last year Ducati won the championship on 722 points, with KTM second on 327.

In other words, Ducati is more than doubling the score of its nearest rival.

This has only happened once before in eight decades of MotoGP racing. Not with Honda, which has won more constructors’ titles than any other manufacturer. Not even with MV Agusta, the aristocratic Italian stable that raced its multi-cylinder 500s against grids of single-cylinder Nortons to win 16 constructors’ titles over 18 seasons between 1956 and 1973.

The only company to have done what Ducati is doing is Gilera, way back in 1957. That year Gilera scored 46 points to MV’s 20, with Gilera rider Libero Liberati taking the riders’ title ahead of team-mate Bob McIntyre and MV’s John Surtees.

There is, however, a crucial difference between Gilera’s 1957 dominance and Ducati’s current rule.

Gilera doubled MV’s score because MV’s 500 had engine reliability issues, not because its 500 was so much faster.

“That year we suffered reliability problems with valves, gears and pistons, and the centre cylinders overheated when we used the bike with full fairing,” said Surtees.

MV had joined the title race in 1950, essentially copying Gilera’s inline-four (the great, great grandaddy of Yamaha’s YZR-M1) by stealing Gilera’s chief engineer Piero Remor. Thus MV was still developing its 500 four. Its Band Aid solution to the overheating issue was to run an upper fairing instead of a full fairing. Simpler times.