Ducati's secrecy over Pecco Bagnaia's MotoGP bike is only harming him

Espionage and secrecy has always been common in the MotoGP paddock. The defection by Ernst Degner from communist-controlled East Germany in the 1960s orchestrated so he could bring MZ secrets to help Suzuki’s early grand prix two-stroke effort (brought to life brilliantly by Mat Oxley’s Stealing Speed) is maybe the most famous instance, and certainly the most extreme.

While no riders since have been bungled across borders in the boots of cars holding onto laptops filled with data for dear life, there’s been plenty of cloak and dagger tactics: tyres going missing during the tyre war days, parts stuck on bikes to draw attention away from the more interesting bits, riders hiding under table for secret contract meetings, etc.

You name it, it’s almost certainly happened.

The biggest paddock secret right now revolves around Ducati and whether it did or did not get the VR46 team to lend it a GP24 for Pecco Bagnaia to test at Misano following the San Marino Grand Prix.

Pretty much since that test, those rumours began to surface. Certainly, something was afoot, because the double world champion turned up to the following Japanese Grand Prix and swept the competition away in a display that he has not even hinted at being able to show across the previous 16 rounds.

Keen eyes spotted 2024 forks, swingarm and ride height device on his bike. Bagnaia called the changes made at Misano “unconventional”, but refused to detail what was actually different on his bike, other than that they were parts tested before.

The cat finally clawed its way out of the bag when VR46 team boss Uccio Salucci gave the game away on Friday at the Indonesian Grand Prix. The day before, Bagnaia brushed aside speculation about him having tested one of Franco Morbidelli’s GP24s. Salucci ultimately confirmed this was, in fact, true on the Dorna world feed.

Morbidelli then added later that day: “Was ok, we were asked to do that by Ducati and we gave our everything: our means and our support to the factory in the best way we could.It was no big deal.”

In a lot of ways, yeah, it was ‘no big deal’. Really, it was the logical thing for Ducati to do. Bagnaia hasn’t at any point been comfortable on the GP25, has openly admitted not being able to adapt his riding style in the same way runaway world champion Marc Marquez can (a problem in itself) and the results for the Italian were only getting worse.

Clearly, the change to effectively a GP24 with a GP25 engine - or so we are led to believe, because Ducati won’t say a word about it - worked. Bagnaia got his confidence back, Ducati got its double world champion back. Who cares that it has to concede at least a little that the GP25 may not be all it’s cracked up to be, even if Bagnaia has underachieved big style relative to his talent on it?

Ducati continues to dig its heels in on the GP24 matter - to its detriment

When probed about it on Saturday morning at the Indonesian Grand Prix, Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi chose to effectively ignore what VR46 had already confirmed and offered a PR line as flimsy as a chocolate tea pot.

“Confirmation? I don’t know which confirmation [you mention],” he claimed. “We confirm that in Misano he had a good day of test, that we tested parts that we already tested in the past, but that’s it.

“I already said that our factory riders - Marc, Pecco and DiGia - have the possibility to try several parts, while the other guys on the old bike have only this bike. And we tested old parts too. That’s it.

“I don’t hear what they said, so I don’t know what the meaning of the discussion was. So, you must here what it was before and after this discussion.

“It’s true that we tested old parts, together with new parts, and finally we had the time to fix those parts - old and new - and finally we found a solution. Honestly, it seems that here it doesn’t work properly but it seems that all the Ducatis are struggling.”

What the end game of this is somewhat baffling to understand, because Ducati now looks like a leaky ship that is butting heads with a factory partner and making the rider it is trying to help look… well, helpless.

The fact that this is all happening while the GP25 is having its worst weekend of the year and Bagnaia is at a total loss to explain why he was almost 30s off the lead in a 13-lap sprint on Saturday makes Ducati’s strategy look even more puzzling.

He is refusing to talk technical matters now. More accurately, he has probably been told not to say anything. As a result, however, he is being forced to face the wolves alone. He isn’t allowed to say why he was able to be so brilliant in Japan and now can’t explain why he is back to his pre-Motegi form in Indonesia, despite his bike “theoretically” being the same.

All of this makes Motegi, rather than this weekend, look more like the outlier, and that will do nothing for the confidence of a rider that has taken one too many knocks this season. Bagnaia must go into Sunday’s grand prix trying to figure out why his average pace was almost two seconds per lap slower than that of sprint winner Marco Bezzecchi’s, while also trying to understand why his GP25 is shaking so much.

Team-mate Marc Marquez has one theory on the latter, looking at what Fermin Aldeguer was able to do in fight for the sprint win and qualify second on the GP24.

“The reason? I know my problems, I know what I need to improve the lap time,” he said of the GP25 struggles at Mandalika. “But it’s true that we cannot brake late and hard, which is normally our strong point. Plus, we can’t use the drive because it’s more slippery.

“But it’s the same for everybody. You need to flow a lot and you need to keep a lot the corner speed here in this circuit, which is the weak point of our bike but the strong point of Aldeguer. So, we need to find a way in riding style to compensate a bit better that corner speed.”

Bagnaia went through a similar thing in Austria when Michelin’s stuffer rear carcass was last used, and he noted on Saturday that the feeling was “exactly” the same. That’s a crumb of comfort, knowing that the tyre is clearly a factor in his struggles.

But if he is still on the bike he rode at Motegi - which we are led to believe is a GP24 with a GP25 engine on it - then the fact he can’t adapt his style to be more flowing like Aldeguer is something Bagnaia himself needs to reckon with.

That said, his Motegi form has given him a little bit of grace to at least prove that he hasn’t fully been the problem this season. For his sake, the world deserves to know what the key was to that…