It would be a lie to describe the upcoming flyaway stretch of MotoGP races as the most important in Pecco Bagnaia's premier-class career.
Bagnaia is a two-time champion. Over the last three years, the flyaways each time carried the context of an in-the-balance championship battle. This year, they do not - the title will likely be wrapped up by Marc Marquez at Motegi this weekend, and even if it isn't Bagnaia was already removed from mathematical contention after the Misano sprint.
But while the run of races starting from the Japanese Grand Prix doesn't carry title significance, as far as the question of whether Bagnaia and Ducati stay together longer-term it may well be the most important - because it was never in question before.
Already in the early phase of the season, though Bagnaia was at least putting up the points, his lack of a challenge against new team-mate Marquez was a big focus in the MotoGP paddock and the MotoGP world.
The deficit wasn't crazy. It wasn't something out of the norm for a champion-elect and their team-mate. In other circumstances, it would hardly be remarked upon - when Alvaro Bautista romped to two World Superbike titles for Ducati in 2022 and 2023, there was no every-race chatter of 'but why isn't team-mate Michael Ruben Rinaldi up there with him?'.
But Bagnaia's status as a two-time champion, as a rider Ducati tech guru Gigi Dall'Igna has described as the second-most important in its MotoGP history (behind Casey Stoner), meant that couldn't just be accepted.
Rinaldi, by the by, scored 44% of Bautista's points across those two title-winning seasons. Bagnaia is at just 46% of Marquez's now, following a truly, truly bad run of weekends starting from the Austrian Grand Prix last month that meant that whatever 'new normal' could've been accepted has shifted once again.
He is the only Ducati rider in this spell not to score double-digit points in any weekend. Each of his stablemates has done so at least twice.
Something isn't computing
Bagnaia has had good sessions in 2025 - his race pace in practice is more often than not good to great, but it collapses in the pack, particularly on Saturdays with the sprint fuel tank he hates so much.
Ducati senior figures have been clear that it's a puzzling situation for the whole organisation.
In the lead-up to Misano, Ducati's data and performance analysis manager David Attisano shed some more light on the predicament.
"I think that the data maybe could not tell everything, because there is something in the human factor that we cannot replicate," he said.
"At the moment we are not able to clone Pecco in a simulation. So, we cannot understand why he is feeling something that is not in the right direction [sometimes].
"There are some aspects that are difficult to explain from his side, because you have to translate feeling into communication with us. And even with his engineers there is confidence and all the things around used to talk about technical things, riding style and so on.
"I think that it’s impossible to translate in an exact way the feeling into words exchanging with engineers. On the other side, I don’t know if we are measuring all the quantities that are related to the feeling of the rider."
It's an answer that does a good job reflecting the situation - Bagnaia has been adamant that the crux of the issue has been the change of specification between the Ducati GP25 and the GP24, seemingly due to shifts in weight balance that have robbed him of his performance on corner entry.
The Ducati position has clearly been - even if it's never going to publicly put it in those terms - that whatever difference exists in the two specs is not enough to explain this kind of performance shift.
And which of the two sides is right or wrong is almost less important right now than whether one side can convince the other.
The latest reset
Bagnaia felt he was "super fast" in terms of race pace, on used tyres in particular, in the post-race test at Misano - the final in-season test of the season for him, and one in which fellow Ducati champion Stoner was on hand to give him some feedback.
"Today was important to use the day to not try different items, but just focus on what we have," he said.
"We just decided to try to move some weights on the bike, to change some set-ups, to understand a direction.
"I don't know if we can bring everything [we found] to Japan, because we need to understand better the situation and the things. But I’m quite confident that we were moving on a good direction."
He also said that he and Ducati had actually been "happy" with his crash in the San Marino GP - only his third Sunday DNF of the season (and only the second unforced, with the French Grand Prix exit a result of Enea Bastianini's mistake).
"Because at least I tried. Crashing is never a good thing - but at least we were there, close to Diggia [Fabio Di Giannantonio], that was with a good pace."
Of his outlook for Motegi, he said: "I want to remain calm about it. The team, I'm sure till Japan they will work super hard to try to help me to find what we tested today, to have there what we tested today. And if we will be there, I want to say that we are able again to fight for the podiums.
"If not, we need to continue working, slower but in a good direction like we did today."
That is the approach Ducati will want him to have, but it would be very harshly stress-tested by another weekend like any of his four latest ones.
And if there are more weekends like that coming up, there's a risk of something breaking permanently - because it's very clear everyone is tired of this, and that for Ducati it is an unwelcome companion to what should be a season of celebration.
It was telling that Marquez was again asked about Bagnaia's plight in his post-sprint debrief at Misano and, having tended to answer that question quite carefully through the year, just said: "He will come in 10 minutes, ask him."
It was telling, too, that Dall'Igna comments to Sky Italy about Bagnaia 'losing patience' - as he responded to media that he himself was losing patience, too - made big waves. Whether Dall'Igna meant them as cutting or not, it's the kind of thing that will happen when you're being asked about it every weekend because there is such a sharp contrast between your two riders every weekend.
They all surely cannot take much more of this. Motegi and beyond must be a return to normality - even if it's the slightly meek normality of early 2025.
