The rookie hope that can salvage an Indonesian MotoGP disaster for Ducati

The popularity of MotoGP now means the championship can get to even more fans across the globe. But that comes at the cost of a condensed calendar. With 22 rounds pencilled in for 2025 and a finite amount of weekends to actually schedule those races, double-headers are an all too common sight now.

For Ducati, it left little time to cram in the title celebrations in Japan before a bleary-eyed factory crew boarded the flight to Lombok to face the ultimate hangover cure of an 18th race weekend of the season.

Clearly, the last few days have been something a crash to reality for Ducati. Quite literally for new world champion Marc Marquez, too, as he suffered two crashes on Friday in Practice - the first time he has done so in a single session since the 2024 Indonesian Grand Prix - and fell into Q1 for the very first time in 2025.

Pecco Bagnaia’s Motegi breakthrough, now confirmed to have been the result of a GP24 test facilitated by VR46 at Misano last month, slunk into the corner as the usual struggles he has faced this year reappeared. He, too, will go through Q1, marking the first time since Valencia 2023 that the factory Ducati team pair have to navigate the opening segment of qualifying.

The revelation by VR46 of the GP24 test at Misano has given Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi some PR headaches to navigate. And Gigi Dall’Igna appears to have lost a fight with a poolside after some title celebrations went a bit wrong this week.

All told, Japan already seems like a bit of a distant memory for Ducati.

Mandalika is hardly a bad spot for the brand. It dominated the weekend last year and enjoyed victory in 2023. The use of the harder rear tyre carcass that also appears in Austria and Thailand brings the pack together a bit, but doesn’t generally send Ducati into a negative spiral.

“Strange” was how Pecco Bagnaia branded Friday at the Indonesian Grand Prix, and indeed it was.

After the opening day of running, Aprilia holds the advantage as Marco Bezzecchi was rapid over one lap and on both tyres on race pace. Honda’s strong form continued, with the stiffer rear tyre seeing it struggle less - the one positive of its long grapples with rear grip in recent years.

But Ducati is still very much in the game, with the Gresini duo through to Q2. And leading the Bologna brand’s charge was Fermin Aldeguer, with the rookie seemingly holding the key to unlocking his factory counterparts’ form as the weekend progresses.

World champion blues is at least a positive for Bagnaia

Just two circuits on the current calendar remain to be conquered for Marc Marquez: Mandalika and Portimao. Hopes of adding his stamp to the former have taken a big knock already after a bruising Friday for the newly-minted seven-time world champion.

Even before his two crashes in Practice - the second a nasty highside at Turn 5 where the new slid control very much let him down - Marquez just never looked comfortable on his GP25. It was kind of a similar story in Japan, but that was blamed on not allowing enough time to adapt his riding style before making bike changes.

But at Mandalika, his GP25 just didn’t want to pull up under braking. As such, none of his long running data was particularly useful. But based on the very limited sample we have, he’s a mile away from where he needs to be.

Realistically, he could have just about squeaked into Q2, but yellow flags on his last run and a keenness to avoid crashing for a third time meant he didn’t put up as much of a fight as he typically would have.

His - and Ducati’s issues at large - problems seem to be down to the stiffer rear tyre carcass offering less grip, and with low rear grip it’s hard to find confidence in the front end. That will improve a bit as the grip levels come up, but already Marquez sounds like he is waving the white flag on hopes of competing this weekend.

“I started this weekend optimistically, but it’s not my circuit,” he said. “I just want to pass this weekend and wait until Australia. Of course, I will try.”

Given the injury hell he has just come through on his way back to winning the world championship, it’s understandable that Marquez is approaching tougher situations with more caution now there is nothing meaningful left to fight for - especially at a circuit he hasn’t even finished a grand prix at.

As crass as it sounds, Marquez’s problems have actually been good news for his team-mate Pecco Bagnaia, who came from 13th on the grid last year at Mandalika to win the sprint and finish third in the grand prix.

The Italian was back to his old, brilliant self in Japan, sweeping the weekend as a test on the GP24 at Misano and reverting older parts from last year allowed him to ride with the confidence he has been lacking for most of 2025.

That all seemed to desert him on Friday, however, as he struggled with the same feelings he had at the San Marino Grand Prix. He says the bike is the same as it was at Motegi and he insisted on Ducati making no changes across both practice sessions on Friday.

“Tomorrow the grip will increase, maybe the change [you make today] will be useless, and maybe the feeling will be better. So, we will not change anything. We will just try to understand the data tonight.”

“Normally during the season I was the only one [struggling],” he added. “But I’m not happy about the situation clearly. Being in Q1 is never a good thing and tomorrow many riders are in Q1. It will not be easy to move to Q2. It will be important in the morning to work in FP2 to try to do a step because in FP1 I was taking a second in terms of pace.”

Franco Morbidelli, who will also face Q1, predicts the opening segment of qualifying on Saturday will be “sparky”. And at this stage, there is a real danger of neither Bagnaia nor Marquez making it through.

Fermin Aldeguer could hold the key to a Ducati breakthrough

Writing Ducati’s factory stable off yet, though, is always folly, as Pedro Acosta - third overall - pointed out: “Give them time. Everything is a matter of time. They suffered also last year, because if you check last year Pecco didn’t go to the Q2 and somehow he won the sprint on Saturday. We know Ducati is fast.”

Alex Marquez just about scraped into Q2 after crashing late on in Practice. But it was team-mate Fermin Aldeguer, the rookie, who was easily Ducati’s most consistent performer. Generally floating around at the top of the timesheets in the afternoon, he was second at the end of the time attack phase but also showing some pretty strong pace on soft rubber that will make him a sprint threat if he can qualify well.

The fact that the only Ducatis in Q2 currently are GP24s says two things: the first is that the GP24 has mountains of data it can call on to effectively plug-in-and-play, which is especially helpful when the tyre is different. And the second is that the GP25 riders will be able to gain massively from the older machines.

Bagnaia certainly thinks Aldeguer can be of huge help to him: “I’ve already seen the lap from Aldeguer and it’s impressive how much traction he was having. So, we just try to understand it and work for tomorrow to have some ideas in case it will be the same situation.”

Aldeguer says he needs to make some gains in sector two and four, while also noting some electronics tweaks need to be made to his Ducati. As well as potentially holding the answers for Ducati to get its factory riders up the order, he has proven podium pedigree this year and is more than capable of carrying manufacturer responsibility on his shoulders.

“We have to be happy, also because maybe today the track for the conditions for Ducati bikes wasn’t the best,” Aldeguer said. “But with our tools we did a good job. I think Ducati, for sure, tomorrow the other riders will arrive.”

Marco Bezzecchi continues to be Aprilia’s best acquisition in 2025

The flyaway portion of the season has in recent times tended to cause all kinds of dramas for Aprilia, who for a long time had a bike so bad at heat dispensation that it cooked its riders.

But the overall strong form Aprilia has continued to show since early summer continues into Indonesia, with Marco Bezzecchi untouchable in Friday afternoon’s Practice session. He was over four tenths clear of the field on his RS-GP, while his race pace was strong.

And all of that despite still suffering the aftereffects of his tangle with team-mate Jorge Martin at the Motegi sprint. That is an incident which has ruled Martin out until at least the Malaysian Grand Prix now due to a displaced shoulder fracture. Aprilia is at 50% strength at Mandalika with Ai Ogura also withdrawing because of injury.

Given the armada of Ducatis around and the strong Honda showing across its three bikes, Aprilia faces a tougher battle to keep ahead of the game as the weekend progresses.

But when the stiffer rear tyre has been brought to Austria and Thailand this year, the RS-GP was strong. Bezzecchi led the Austrian Grand Prix and was one the podium, while Ogura was a fine fifth on his debut appearance in Thailand.

That is an advantage that will continue into Saturday, even if Bezzecchi is wary of Aprilia’s rivals closing in.

“As always, tomorrow all the others will improve and they will be closer and closer,” he said. “So, we must keep ourselves focused and we must improve more and more for tomorrow for Sunday.

“What I feel on the bike is that we are missing in some areas and we are working on these areas since the beginning. So, we already made many steps forward and we improved a lot.”

With that said, everything looks in place for Bezzecchi to be on for something big if he can qualify well. Ninth in Japan when he had strong pace meant he could do no more than fourth. When he was on pole at Misano, he fought for the win and narrowly missed out in second. Since Assen, when he has been on the front two rows, Bezzecchi has been able to score a podium in at least one of the races.

On the above table, Pedro Acosta and Luca Marini work out with the better pace. But there is a clear tyre difference, with the medium almost likely to be the grand prix option. Soft pace is good for Bezzecchi, though, and the tyre preservation of the KTM remains a big question mark.