Ducati's secrecy over the spec of MotoGP bike Pecco Bagnaia is running right now is beginning to backfire - with the two-time champion irked and speculation rampant, following confirmation he did test Franco Morbidelli's 2024-spec machine at Misano.
It was finally revealed from inside Ducati’s MotoGP structure that Bagnaia took Morbidelli's 2024-spec bike (which Bagnaia himself ran last year) for a spin at last month’s Misano post-race test - a test that was credited as being crucial for restoring Bagnaia to the kind of form that allowed him to dominate the subsequent Japanese Grand Prix weekend at Motegi.
That suggestion had, until this weekend’s round at Mandalika, been rather tepidly sidestepped by Bagnaia and Ducati, with the Italian refusing to confirm in Thursday’s pre-event press conference when asked directly by the media if he had ridden the year-old machine.
“The thing is that in the Misano test, we decided to try different things,” he explained. “Things that in the past gave me more confidence and more performance. I won’t confirm what you’re saying, but I’ll confirm that the feeling arrived from some items we used in the past.”
However, on Friday morning VR46 team boss Uccio Salucci confirmed on MotoGP’s world feed coverage that Bagnaia had in fact ‘borrowed’ Morbidelli's old bike.
“Pecco tried our bike on Monday at Misano,” he admitted, “Morbidelli’s bike. But after Monday the bike came back in our box. After that, I don’t know.
“Ducati asked something to our team and as we are a family - a Ducati family, a VR46 family - we tried to help him a little bit on Monday at Misano. But afterwards during the race, nothing. We have our bike in our box.”
Salucci's admission is known not to have gone down well with the factory Ducati team - with team manager Davide Tardozzi unimpressed when asked about it by Spanish broadcaster DAZN.
But it also creates further intrigue and uncertainty given MotoGP's rules - and it's uncertainty Ducati doesn't appear to keen to clear up.
Bagnaia will have been prevented from running a 2024-spec engine in his bike at the Motegi race weekend, due to homologation rules. Under the regulations, he would have only been able to run some components of the old machine in race trim - components that the team was already believed to be testing prior to that.
It had been thought that the most substantial factor in Bagnaia's 2025 struggles was not anything related to the chassis or swingarm - but rather to stem from a revised engine that thanks to a different crankshaft (according to The Race’s paddock sources) has different inertia and feels different enough to Bagnaia on corner entry to upset his style. Bagnaia cannot ditch that engine until re-homologation for 2026.
When asked by The Race to clear up how the spec of bike in the Misano test compared to what he has been running at Motegi and now at Mandalika - where Bagnaia has struggled so far, along with most other Ducati riders - he said: "Honestly, all the season that I'm speaking about things, trying to be more clear as possible, but I'm the rider, I want to be focussed on riding.
"[On the] technical side Gigi [Dall'Igna, Ducati tech chief] is the one to ask things, I don't want to answer anymore in the technical side, I'm just saying what people are telling me to say. I don't want to enter again in this game."
Asked by The Race whether it was frustrating that Ducati didn't seem to want him to be transparent about it, he said: "I'm the rider and you have to speak about it with Artur [Vilalta, Ducati head of comms]."
He then said that the idea he rode his past spec, his current spec and a full GP24 at Misano was "not totally correct", before quickly adding: "But, like I said, better ask Gigi. Sorry."
The Race says
The consensus of pretty much everyone in the MotoGP paddock tonight when Bagnaia is mentioned (and he is quick to come up in most conversations) is: what on earth is Ducati playing at with how it's handling the rider that only a few weeks ago Gigi Dall'igna described as second in importance only to its first ever world champion Casey Stoner in Ducati's MotoGP history.
The relationship between Bagnaia and Dall'igna's Ducati Corse (where he serves as general manager as well as chief engineer) has clearly reached a new impasse, as evidenced by Bagnaia's words to the media on Friday night at Mandalika - and what makes the situation even more confusing is that all of this is largely unnecessary.
There's no real PR loss for Ducati in conceding that the GP25 isn't working for Bagnaia, given that (in the hands of Marquez) the same bike is absolutely dominating the current MotoGP season.
So the insistence on maintaining the mystery around what was able to make Bagnaia so quick at Motegi, a decision that is seemingly making Ducati's double world champion more and more irate, serves no point whatsoever right now.
Just tell the truth and at least let Bagnaia be happier talking to the media, safe in the knowledge that whatever he says or does won't affect the way in which Ducati has absolutely stamped its dominance all over 2025.
