Pecco Bagnaia's emotion after a breakthrough MotoGP victory in the Japanese Grand Prix wasn't just relief but "anger" - as he saw evidence that 2025 "maybe could've been a different championship".
Two-time premier-class champion Bagnaia had been second-best to new team-mate Marc Marquez at the works Ducati team all season, and looked particularly meek in the recent run from the Red Bull Ring to Misano, scoring just 24 points in four rounds - a number he surpassed by some margin with his Motegi double alone.
Bagnaia was fastest in opening practice - something he admitted was a real rarity for him - before taking pole and leading every lap in both races, his double only threatened by a potential engine problem on Sunday.
In the aftermath of his imperious weekend, Bagnaia struggled to hide the frustration over how his 2025 had played out until now.
"I'm very happy about today, but I'm also very angry about today," he told MotoGP.com. "About this weekend. Because maybe we could've done this earlier. Maybe after one or two grands prix.
"We just struggled a bit during the season, but finally the [post-race] test in Misano gave us the chance, the possibility, to finally try things that helped me a lot."
He described title-winning team-mate Marquez as a "machine" and "super deserving" and "unbeatable" but also lamented that "it could've been fantastic to fight with him more a bit".
And he told the assembled media in the press conference afterwards that he was "happy and angry - because, honestly, if I found that solution before, maybe it could've been a different championship".
Cagey but pointed
Bagnaia was careful to skirt around the specifics of what exactly had been tried at Misano and which change he saw as the primary reason for his improvement.
He has not made it a secret that it was components changes rather than just set-up work, and while there's no stark visual difference between Bagnaia's Misano package and what he ran at Motegi, it has been rumoured that some aspects of the 2024 bike have been re-introduced to the package.
A 2024 engine - long theorised as a potential solution - could not have been part of that, however, given the engine spec is frozen for the season.
Asked by MotoGP.com about the changes, Bagnaia said: "There's Gigi [Dall'Igna, Ducati tech chief] there, he really knows.
"Honestly, I'm just a rider, I'm just here to push. Sometimes when I push I'm 20th, sometimes when I push I win. So... it's not only a matter of me."
He was careful talking about the changes in the press conference, too.
"The difference to me - I'm the rider and I just need to push on the bike - is that before I wasn't riding, and now I was riding. This weekend I rode my bike [instead of] fighting with it.
"It was much easier for me to brake hard, enter corners faster, without having that much movement, that much locking, that much understeering. So, for me it was just much better and on a track like this, if I hadn't found the way in the Misano test, it would've been another weekend like Barcelona - because Barcelona was a track without grip, and my difficulties have been a disaster, and this track could've been the same."
Asked directly whether he couldn't elaborate on those changes, he said: "I'm just the rider and I just want to push myself."
Where they go from here
Bagnaia's comments further support the idea that there has been a misalignment between him and the Ducati engineering staff on what the root cause of his 2025 dramas has been, and he'll see the Japanese GP weekend as major vindication.
He spoke of Misano feedback from Casey Stoner and Ducati rider coach Manuel Poggiali in the lead-up to the weekend - and how it was something he wanted the engineers to heed - and talked up its importance again here.
"Casey absolutely helped a lot in the Misano test, helped during the [prior] weekend. He was one - with Manu Poggiali, because most of the time we are forgetting about him - but they worked together at Misano and they were saying the same things. 'Pecco's bike is shaking like hell'.
"And it was difficult to understand why, honestly. In the test both were saying the same, that with one bike I was perfect, with the other ones I was shaking again.
"So, was quite clear and I think they both helped a lot to understand the way also from another point of view."
Bagnaia joked he could be 20th again at Mandalika, a track he has not really clicked with historically, and wouldn't go as far as to say he was 'convinced' everything is fixed now.
"For what happened during all the season, it's not conviction - it's just that I really hope it is like this. I think that my potential is this one, to fight for the victory, to fight for the podium every race weekend, not just because I think this but also because I have the best bike on the grid. The objective with Ducati is to finish on the podium every race weekend, and I think that the potential is this one, and not the one I was showing in the last GPs."
He then accentuated the importance of zeroing in on the right bike spec for 2026 during the Valencia post-season test - with the 2024 engine available for homologation again.
