Ducati goes into this weekend's Australian Grand Prix with its new MotoGP champion Marc Marquez sidelined and back in crisis mode with his past champion team-mate Pecco Bagnaia.
But its faith in the man who may well be its next champion - Gresini rider Fermin Aldeguer - looks extremely well-placed right now.
Aldeguer's breakthrough win at Mandalika last week fulfilled the promise he'd been hinting at throughout his rookie season, but it's this weekend's Phillip Island track that the 20-year-old has been looking forward to most all year. And beyond the end of this year, current events at the Ducati works team look they're moving in Aldeguer's long-term favour - if he keeps living up to the expectations he's now creating.
What makes Aldeguer so good?
Aldeguer's crew chief Frankie Carchedi worked with Marc Marquez at Gresini last year, having previously transformed Fabio Di Giannantonio's MotoGP potential and won the 2020 title with Joan Mir at Suzuki.
He joked after the Mandalika win that while Aldeguer had his eye on Phillip Island - where he won in Moto2 last year - as the site of his rookie breakthrough, he suspected it might come one round earlier.
"The joke was right at the start of the year he went, 'Phillip Island' and I went, 'No, Mandalika'," Carchedi told The Race.
"We kept having this thing. I was saying, 'Your style, your corners…' and he was saying, 'No, Phillip Island's my track'. I always said #93 [Marquez] is not bad at Phillip Island either…"
Qualifying has been Aldeguer's weak point so far. His pivotal second on the Mandalika grid was his first front-row start all year and he's not even qualified in the top 10 at half the events.
Carchedi said that's partly because they've focused so hard on nailing race pace, with Indonesia the most attention they'd paid to single-lap speed so far.
"We have these tools where you can do average pace and from literally the third round to now - with the exception of Catalunya where we had a slight technical - if you put the last 10 laps in the average pace, he's always top three if not first," Carchedi explained.
"So it gives you an indication that if you start nearer the front and you're there or thereabouts, you know something's possible."
Carchedi has kept Aldeguer's 2025 focus on learning and developing, trying to fully exploit his own natural skills while augmenting it with a little of what he picked up from working with Marquez.
"He's very good on the throttle, hence the tyre life," said Carchedi.
"Very good at managing. When he gets into a rhythm, he's very, very fast. And he can maintain it with super concentration.
"Every rider has their fortes. His is definitely on corner entry, entry to apex.
"I'm fortuitous because when you work with the best - and I'll leave it like that, but I don't just mean last year but other years with other riders - you can pick up so much information.
"And all we've done all year is, not change Fermin - that's how he rides and he has his own qualities - but you can add something a little bit more. So that's all we've been trying to do all year."
The Mandalika form was slightly tilted by Michelin bringing its harder-carcass rear tyre, which not all riders gelled with but with which Aldeguer had previously starred with a late charge to second at the Red Bull Ring.
Carchedi acknowledged that this might have made the Indonesian weekend slightly anomalous.
"The tyres were a little bit different - they had less grip, a bit like Spielberg, and it's something he's super, super strong in," he admitted.
It could easily have been a clean sweep of the weekend but Aldeguer lost the sprint to Marco Bezzecchi on the final lap as the Aprilia charged back through the field after a poor start from pole.
Bezzecchi eliminating himself on lap one of the grand prix with the move that injured Marquez meant Aldeguer wouldn't have that problem next day, though Carchedi still felt he'd learned from the sprint defeat - showing better racecraft in particular when getting back past Luca Marini's Honda early on.
"That was a little bit hard on him, when you lead your first race for so long and you just come up short," said Carchedi of the sprint.
"He learnt a lot from it, which the rookies do. It takes a little bit of time running with the front guys to understand."
Overall, Carchedi's delighted with where Aldeguer stands at this point in a year that is all about learning and honing more than actual results.
"He's 20 years old, he's a rookie. He can just enjoy himself," he said.
"At the moment, we're enjoying the moment, enjoying the year and learning. It's all about learning.
"We'll see how the year goes on. But we're all here for the same reason. It's not to finish second."
The future
Aldeguer's contract is with Ducati itself and already contains an option for a further two years beyond 2026.
It was signed off the back of Aldeguer's startling end to 2023, when he won the last four Moto2 rounds and led all but eight race laps during them. And the laps he didn't lead were when he was charging from ninth to first at Lusail before pulling away from everyone again.
The question mark was how much that golden patch was down to Aldeguer and how much to the nearly unique Boscoscuro chassis that only he and Speed Up team-mate Alonso Lopez were using. A sketchy start to Moto2's first Pirelli-shod season in 2024 underlined that question mark - and with Aldeguer already announced as a 2025 Ducati MotoGP rider behind, the debate about whether Ducati had got too excited too soon was very public.
The rest of 2024 and the trend of his MotoGP rookie season has proved Ducati was right to bet on the high points.
The odds of Ducati picking up its 2027/28 option on Aldeguer look great right now, and it's surely unlikely he'll still be at Gresini for those years. Yes, Ducati's last rookie race winner Jorge Martin never made it on to the factory bike, but he faced roadblocks Aldeguer potentially won't.
Marquez is already 32 and now has seven MotoGP titles - it's easier to imagine him retiring or making a romantic return to a resurgent Honda than staying on at Ducati indefinitely - and Bagnaia's longer-term future is now a wide-open question.
All that, plus the exits of Martin and Bezzecchi from the Ducati fold when it picked Marquez for the works seat, and none of the rest of the wider Ducati line-up (Alex Marquez, Franco Morbidelli and Di Giannantonio) being realistic future factory team riders, mean Aldeguer has a pretty clear path to the red bike.
A lot can change between now and 2027's new rules, and riders currently committed to other manufacturers will surely be trying to get themselves into Ducati if they suspect the next-generation version of their current bikes won't be any better. For all the promise of Aldeguer's rookie season, it's also featured a lot of midfield qualifying and too much crashing into people. Both habits need to be eradicated in 2026.
But right now, he's on pole to lead Ducati's next era. He's the right age, has the contract and the form, and as a relatively inexpensive option he puts Ducati in a strong negotiating position with any more established names trying to break into its line-up. Does it need to break the bank for someone external if it has its 'next Marquez' in-house?
The rivalry MotoGP needs?
We got our first hint in Indonesia of MotoGP's next big rivalry, and it's one that bodes well for the championship's future because it's very different to recent years and has an undercurrent of past tension that might create some of the drama we've been missing.
Pedro Acosta was second to Aldeguer at Mandalika, and has been the focus of most of the 'future of MotoGP/next Marquez' hype for some time now as he blazed through Moto3 and Moto2 into KTM's MotoGP line-up so impressively. The fact Aldeguer got to the top step of the MotoGP podium first may fuel what comes next.
Perhaps the best bit of the pair's relationship, though, is that there's already a real rivalry, one that will play out both on and off the track as they step up to their true potential over the coming years.
Both from the southern Spanish province of Murcia, they're night and day different from their largely Catalan counterparts. Both are culturally far more ready to speak their minds - and with both hailing from the same small corner of the world, it's already caused some friction between two kids who've been racing against each other for a decade at this point.
Despite their parents still, by all accounts, being quite close, there's already no lack of bad blood between the duo at this point and, with two forceful characters, that should entertain us once Aldeguer in particular starts to find his confidence off the bike.
For too long, MotoGP has been full of friendly guys who quite like each other - think the VR46 Academy or the Andorra bubble centred around the Espargaro brothers. Aldeguer and Acosta bring something very different to the party, and we're lucky that we're going to get to see it playing out for another 10 years!
