The Ducati dilemma with little hope of resolving exposed at the Italian MotoGP

The duality of Ducati’s 2025 MotoGP season was laid bare last weekend at the Italian Grand Prix. On the one hand, there was Marc Marquez completing his fifth double of the season and second at a track he hasn’t won at in over 10 years.

On the other hand, there was Pecco Bagnaia. Two weeks on from what appeared to be a breakthrough in bike set-up for the double world champion at Aragon to give him back the front feeling he’d been missing all year, the end result at Mugello was business as usual. His traditional sprint struggles resigned him to third, while in the grand prix he went from fighting hard for victory in the early laps to not even finishing on the podium.

Pre-weekend, Bagnaia said that something was wrong if he couldn’t be competitive at Mugello. That much is clear now. And once more, Ducati and Bagnaia are back at square one as they try to find the solution to his problems.

There is no sugarcoating things: Mugello is the nadir of Bagnaia’s season to date. At a track he won at for the past three years, his championship hopes in 2025 look like they’ve taken their last breath as he languishes 110 points behind team-mate Marc Marquez in the standings.

Nobody in MotoGP history has won a championship having been over 100 points down at any stage of a season. Bagnaia overturned a 91-point deficit in 2022, but under completely different circumstance: chiefly, Marc Marquez wasn’t riding a factory Ducati at the time.

Ducati is still throwing its support behind Bagnaia and is still taking on some of the responsibility for the hole he has found himself in.

“In this moment we haven’t found the solution. But we absolutely know and we see on the data that Pecco is still the fast rider of the year before,” Ducati team boss Davide Tardozzi said after the race. “So, we trust him and we are struggling to find something every day in Ducati and I think Gigi [Dall’Igna] will find a solution quite soon.”

The Aragon breakthrough seemed to come from a change in brake disc size, though that didn’t appear to carry forward. Over a single lap, Bagnaia was fast at Mugello - just 0.083s from polesitter Marc Marquez.

And at the start of the grand prix, he looked like his old self. He took the lead at Turn 2 and fought hard with Marc Marquez and Alex Marquez in the early laps. But when his front tyre dropped, his confidence collapsed and his pace dropped compared to the Marquez brothers. A near-crash at the last corner at the end of lap five was a good visual demonstration of Bagnaia’s issues.

Fabio Di Giannantonio kicked him when he was down on the penultimate tour, with the charging VR46 rider snatching third at Turn 7 before leaving a demoralised Bagnaia in his dust. At the chequered flag, he was 5.081s off the lead and even just under three seconds from the podium.

“I just tried my maximum,” Bagnaia said after the race. “I just gave my maximum, trying to at least fight for this win but after six, seven laps I needed to slow down because with the first drop of the front I was understeering everywhere and I just tried to control. Every time I was 0.3s, 0.4s [behind Alex Marquez] I was understeering again a lot, the front was not helping me like all the rest of the season and it’s the same situation as always. Till this moment, we are not able to understand what to do.”

Marc Marquez is getting stronger with every win

A look at the race pace for the top four helps contextualise how those understeer issues affected Pecco Bagnaia’s race at Mugello on Sunday.

In those first seven laps, Bagnaia’s pace is right on the money as he locks horns with the Marquez brothers. At the start of lap six, Alex Marquez had slung his way into the lead, with Marc Marquez then taking second from Bagnaia. This is when the pace made a noticeable drop.

On lap seven, Bagnaia lapped in the 1m47.3s, while the Marquez’s were at 1m46.8s. The pace difference between Bagnaia in third and Alex Marquez in second then closed up considerably, but the damage was done at this point and there was nothing the factory Ducati rider could do with his failing front confidence.

On the last two laps, after being passed for third, Bagnaia dropped his pace off completely in surrender. Over the course of the race, he was 0.232s on average per lap slower than his team-mate Marc Marquez - though the final two laps skew this somewhat. Those removed, he’s just 0.071s per lap on average slower, which is slightly quicker than Alex Marquez - though slower than Fabio Di Giannantonio. However, there is a caveat attached to this also.

“I saw that the gap was increasing [behind me] and then I tried to manage the situation. Then when I took those 1.5s, 2s, I just managed the race,” Marc Marquez said, suggesting there was more pace in reserve if he needed it.

Much like the Qatar Grand Prix earlier this year, Marc Marquez came to Mugello with his expectations lowered. If he was close to Alex Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia on pace, that could be considered a good weekend. But throughout the Italian Grand Prix, the 32-year-old insisted this was a round where he was looking to lose as little as he could.

Victories in both races is a hell of a damage limitation exercise. He noted after the grand prix that he was worried a little about what happened at Jerez when he found himself in a similar early battle with Alex Marquez and Bagnaia and crashed. And he was also aware of the strategy that Bagnaia was going to deploy in those first laps.

“I think for him it was the best strategy, and I expected from him a very aggressive, Pecco, because I checked a bit his last victories here and always he pushed from the beginning to the end,” Marquez explained. “So, he feels very good when he’s in front, so I knew he will try. But today maybe he just missed a bit that speed, but he did very good first laps and it was the correct strategy. It’s racing. But when Alex overtook us, he was faster than everybody on that part of the race.”

Marc Marquez took the lead from his brother on lap nine on the run to the first corner; the GP25’s apparent straightline advantage with its rear ride height device helping him munch the GP24 in the slipstream. He led across the line to start lap 10 0.293s clear. On lap 11, that advantage was up to 0.587s. And by lap 14, it had grown over a second.

Predictably, the used tyre pace that has been a key weapon in his arsenal this season so far came to the fore.

“I was trying to manage the tyres because in that first laps, everybody knows inside of Ducati that the soft rear tyre you will struggle at the end if you push it a lot in the beginning,” he explained. 

“And in fact, on that fight we pushed a lot the tyres. When Pecco overtook me, I saw that he was pushing a lot and then I tried to manage the way to be super close on the last lap to lead the race because at the same time it was important to be in front for the front tyre, because if not it would overheat and be super difficult to manage. But when Alex overtook us, I saw the race pace increase, the race pace was another one, and then I tried to find the best way to follow him and attack him, and just lead the race.”

Chalking up his 93rd career win 15 years on from his first at the same venue, it took on a slightly more significant meaning for Marquez. Once the enemy of Ducati, he’s now the one carrying on its winning streak at Mugello. Not all of the crowd may be on his side, but his Jorge Lorenzo-esque celebrations at Turn 12 proved that there is still a lot of respect for Marquez.

Ticking off another weak track with arguably two of his better rides of the year - including a sprint win that saw him effectively miss the start due to a launch control issue - Marquez appears to be getting even closer to having everything he wants out of the GP25.

“It’s true that the team is trying to help me to try to understand those first laps in the sprint race and the main race with the new tyres,” he said. “But in the end, the rider is the one who can make the biggest difference. So, it’s there where I tried to adapt my riding style, try to be more focused, try to be more precise on that corner-entry on the very last part which is where I crash normally with the new tyres.

“And we made a step there. But still when the tyres are used I feel better. But with the new tyres right now, the most important thing is I’m on a very close level to Alex and Pecco, who are the strongest riders in Ducati.”

Can Ducati really do anything more for Pecco Bagnaia?

Marquez’s win at Mugello has put Ducati in a tight spot.

At present, the only threat being posed is by himself, as his falls at COTA, Jerez and Silverstone proved. But two weekends on the bounce have passed where Marquez has qualified on pole, won the sprint and taken the victory in the grand prix - the latest at a track he doesn’t consider his best.

Bagnaia has come through the first of a back-to-back most have been looking at since Aragon as being the point of the season where the double world champion finally comes back to life with little to show.

The fix at Aragon didn’t transfer to Mugello and his run of wins at the Italian Grand Prix was ended in a bruising way. The points situation is one thing, but Bagnaia continues into next weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix with his confidence shot totally to ribbons.

“We need to do something, but I think it will be tough because Assen is another track where front feeling needs to be at the top and with the problems I’m having right now and the movement [I’m having on the front], I think Assen could be a nightmare,” he said.

Ducati won’t stop helping Bagnaia, but there is only so much it can do. It has already used up its one aero homologation for the season and there won’t be any radical changes to the bike coming over the next year and a half as development freezes come into force from 2026.

Any development will likely be spearheaded by Marquez at this stage and that won’t necessarily benefit Bagnaia. But Ducati can’t risk doing anything to the overall package it has now that would negatively impact Marquez. In many ways, it has found itself in the same scenario Honda did.

Ducati owes Bagnaia a lot for everything he has done over the years. But Mugello demonstrated the clearest changing of the guard yet at the brand. Ultimately, that’s the direction that will most likely yield it the world title in 2025. And so, that’s where its focus must lie now…