It’s a strange day when the MotoGP winner is a rookie and the winner of the last race looks like a rookie. So what the hell is going on? Ducati finally tells us the reasons behind Bagnaia’s downfall, while Fermín Aldeguer takes an astonishing first victory
Ninety minutes before the start of Sunday’s Mandalika MotoGP race my phone pings. The message says, “Please can you come to Gigi’s office?”
Uh oh, I’m in trouble again. And I’m already nearly dying from the heat, so I’m not sure I can handle another roasting.
I knock – somewhat nervously – on the door of the factory Ducati team’s inner sanctum: a portable building behind its pitlane garage in the Mandalika paddock. Inside, all is cool and calm. It seems like I’m not in trouble – thank ye gods.
Ranks of computers hum quietly, while Ducati Corse engineers tip tap at keyboards, working to magic more performance from their motorcycles, while rider coach Manuel Poggiali pores over his videometry, working to magic more performance from Marc Márquez and Pecco Bagnaia.
Nearby sit Ducati Corse main man Gigi Dall’Igna, sporting director Mauro Graselli and other engineers who have all played their part in Ducati’s remarkable domination of MotoGP’s last half decade – six consecutive constructors’ championships and four consecutive riders’ crowns.
“I’m very stupid,” laughs Dall’Igna. I can’t agree, can I?
There is so much brain power in this room that the aircon is struggling to deal with the heat generated by all those thought processes. I feel like I’m in NASA mission control.
Dall’Igna’s face bears the scars of his most recent success: Márquez’s championship-winning ride at Motegi the previous Sunday. On Wednesday evening he had jumped into the wrong end of the swimming pool at the team’s Lombok hotel and was lucky to get away with a bloodied nose and forehead.
“I’m very stupid,” he laughs.
I can’t agree, can I?
This is a rare audience with MotoGP’s number-one mastermind and his Bologna boffins, because Ducati Corse doesn’t really do tech talks anymore. First, it doesn’t want to reveal its winning secrets. Second, today’s internet ecosystem likes to misinterpret any attempt at intelligent examination of the facts, instead debasing anything real into shock-horror clickbait headlines.
Bagnaia with crew chief Cristian Gabbarini (left), Dall’Igna (grey hair), chief vehicle/chassis dynamicist Riccardo Savin (back right) and tech director Davide Barana (front right)
Ducati Corse
The reason for the gathering? To decode the Bagnaia mystery. I’ve been asking Ducati for a while to help me understand what’s going on with the twice MotoGP king, who’s had a mostly horrible 2025.
The meeting — me, plus two other old-timer MotoGP journos — is off the record. This means we are here to get answers to our questions, rather than record direct quotes from the engineers. (In fact, pretty much all the best intel we gather in the MotoGP paddock is off the record.)
The big question is obvious: how come Márquez basically cruised to the 2025 title while Bagnaia was lost until he arrived at Motegi a few weeks ago?
At the previous Misano GP Bagnaia finished the sprint out of the points and crashed out of the main race. At Motegi he took pole position, then led every lap of the sprint and the GP.
One week later he finished the Mandalika sprint in last place, lapping two seconds slower than winner Marco Bezzecchi. Then shortly after our meeting, he crashed out of last place in the GP.
It just doesn’t add up.
Motorcycle racing is a technical sport, because the rider is nothing without the technology beneath him.
And yet more than anything motorcycle racing is a psychological sport, because big questions are asked of the psyche when you’re fighting elbow to elbow at 220mph, trying to brake one metre later than the next guy into a fourth-gear corner, where a mistake will most likely send you to hospital.
You need mountains high and rivers deep of confidence to do this. And if your motorcycle isn’t giving you that confidence, you’re not going to trust it to do what you want it to do.
This confidence is largely related to front feeling, which is arguably the most important aspect of racing a motorcycle, because if you can’t enter a corner fast you compromise the whole corner and therefore the entire lap time.
Márquez with super-low GP25 ride-height device engaged
Ducati Corse
Front feeling is a conversation between you and the motorcycle, specifically between you and the front tyre. The tyre talks to you, though it’s more of a whisper (unlike the rear tyre which is easier to hear).
Tiny movements in the rubber and in the carcass tell you what’s going on at the tyre/asphalt interface, so you need to listen very carefully to what the tyre is telling you.
Your part of the conversation is to reply with more or less front brake, more or less lean angle, more or less rear brake and so on, always trying to take the tyre as close as you dare to its traction limit.
Sometimes you can’t even hear the tyre whispering at you and that’s when you’re in trouble. And this is where Bagnaia has been this year.
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“Marc is very good at riding everything – I cannot do it, I need to have a good feeling with the front,” Bagnaia told us at Jerez, way back in April.
Nothing really changed during the subsequent months, except the lack of feel chipped away at Bagnaia’s confidence. If you can’t hear what the front tyre is telling you, the first thing you know when things go wrong as you hurtle into a corner is the front tyre locks and skates across the asphalt, or tucks as you tip into the turn.
These moments make your heart jump into your mouth like you’re jumping off the edge of a cliff. Inevitably, each scare makes you more wary and less confident, so you start stepping back from the precipice, until you go from two-tenths off the pace to a second off.
So what made Bagnaia step away from the precipice, where he had lived happily during the previous four years – champion in 2022 and 2023, runner-up in 2021 and 2024?
Since the start of season I had assumed the problem had to be Ducati’s 2025 engine, because the engine is the only part of the motorcycle that can’t be changed, according to MotoGP homologation rules. And Ducati changed pretty much everything else during pre-season testing.
Sunday’s podium: Pedro Acosta (left) fought like a lion to beat Alex Márquez (right) to second
Dorna/MotoGP
Perhaps Ducati had changed the engine mounts or crankcase stiffness to adjust geometry, balance or overall machine stiffness? Or maybe it had changed engine inertia to make the bike better in corner entry and exit? And somehow this interrupted Bagnaia’s conversation with the front tyre?
But no word from Ducati, so there was a vacuum of information and when there’s a vacuum of information it fills with bullshit, which is what’s been sloshing around the internet in recent months.
Internet conspiracy theories have suggested that Ducati had somehow made its GP25 to emasculate Bagnaia, thereby ensuring Márquez an easy ride to the title. Beyond ridiculous.
Let’s suppose the factory team costs Ducati £50 million per season, so that’s £25 million per rider. So it specifically designed the GP25 to burn a £25 million investment? Yeah right.
What Ducati wanted this year was something it had never had before: a factory one-two in the championship.
Finally, as the clock ticked down to Sunday’s race start, I got the answers I’d come looking for.
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The 2025 crankcases are the same as the previous year’s, the engine mounts are the same and the engine inertia is the same. The only differences from the 2024 engine are detail internal upgrades to improve performance and durability, none of which effect machine dynamics.
So what was Bagnaia’s curse?
It’s the 2025 ride-height device, basically a hydraulic computer of mind-boggling complexity that adjusts the attitude of the motorcycle (and sometimes the attitude of the rider) and can have a fundamental effect on machine behaviour.
The idea of a ride-height device is to drop the bike’s rear end to lower overall centre of mass, which reduces wheelies, thereby allowing riders to use more throttle.
Bagnaia hoping for a better day at Mandalika
Ducati Corse
The GP25’s rear device drops the rear lower as riders accelerate, but this isn’t Bagnaia’s problem.
Ride-height devices are also useful during braking, because they can keep the rear tyre on the road, allowing riders to use the rear tyre as well as the front to shorten braking distances. This is where Bagnaia has the problem, because the device changes overall bike balance at a critical moment, so he can no longer hear the front tyre as he attacks corners,
That’s why Ducati rolled out a modified GP25, with 2024 ride-height device, during the Misano tests. Immediately Bagnaia was back to his 2024 best, so when he got to Motegi he was fast and smooth, instead of slow and snappy.
If the story had ended there, with the Italian’s awesome double Motegi victory, everything would make sense.
So what happened at Mandalika?
The stiffer heat-resistant tyre (also used at Buriram) changes everything, which is why it was such an upside-down and entertaining weekend and why the factory Ducatis struggled.
“I’m just saying what people are telling me to say,” replied Bagnaia
Perhaps the fact that Bagnaia is the only rider that prefers Öhlins’ shorter forks – his technique doesn’t suit the longer-stroke version – doesn’t help.
Maybe both these factors combined to rob him of his Motegi magic? Maybe, but crashing out is one thing, crashing out of last place is something altogether different, so they surely can’t explain the worst performance of his career.
There can only be one explanation for his disastrous weekend. Whatever gave him the feeling at Motegi wasn’t there at Mandalika and his already battered confidence was finally shot to pieces, so he basically waved the white flag. His fastest race lap before he fell was 1.7 seconds slower than winner Fermín Aldeguer’s and only a tenth faster than Moto2 pole position.
This is technical issues leading to psychological issues, which have led to frictions within the team.
On Friday we asked Bagnaia what was wrong.
“I’m just saying what people are telling me to say,” he replied.
This was not a good sign.
Aldeguer greeted by his crew in parc ferme on Sunday
Gresini
What next for Bagnaia? It’s impossible to say, because the human psyche is even more complicated than a MotoGP bike. And if you can go from zero to hero and back to zero in three weekends, anything can happen when MotoGP goes to Phillip Island, Sepang, Portimao and Valencia.
Although Bagnaia is having a nightmare with the GP25, he’s not the only one struggling with the bike.
VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio stands seventh overall, four places behind Bagnaia and six behind the champ. And he also highlights the bike’s fickle nature.
“When the bike is good it’s f***ing good,” Di Giannantonio said at Mandalika. “All I want is a consistent feeling with the bike.”
And that’s what Márquez can manage without, because he’s got a supernatural feeling for the front tyre, so he hears the tyre talking and reacts, while others can’t and don’t.
While all this was happening, Ducati anointed its latest MotoGP winner, 20-year-old Aldeguer, now the second youngest premier-class winner, between Márquez and 1980s superstar Freddie Spencer.
Aldeguer’s debut MotoGP victory has been coming for months. Since the season started he’s frequently had flashes of brilliance that suggested a bright future.
“It’s like a jigsaw,” said his crew chief Frankie Carchedi on Friday. “And we hope we’ve found the missing piece.”
The missing piece was time attacks, because if you’re not towards the front of the grid, you’re screwed. At Motegi his practice pace was massively faster than his race pace, but he was stuck in the pack, so he couldn’t move forward.
Aldeguer’s big strength is corner speed – more than any other Ducati rider – which is normal for riders who’ve just graduated from Moto2, where corner speed is everything.
Márquez highlighted this skill after Aldeguer’s charging ride to second at Red Bull Ring in August. And again at Mandalika.
“We don’t have our usual advantages here because we can’t brake late and hard and we can’t use our drive with this special tyre,” said Márquez on Saturday. “So you need to flow a lot at this track, with corner speed, which is our weak point. This is also a strong point of Aldeguer.”
If this is Aldeguer as a rookie, only the gods know what he might do over the next few years.
