The Australian MotoGP has made Ducati’s 2027 Marc Marquez contract talks harder

It is difficult to remember a time when a championship victory for one manufacturer has been so greatly overshadowed: 2015, perhaps?

Up until the Sunday of the Indonesian Grand Prix, Marc Marquez’s domination of the campaign on the factory Ducati to win a milestone seventh MotoGP world title in the wake of all of his injury problems has really made 2025 a banner year for the Italian brand.

Yet, his absence through a complicated shoulder injury has pushed its triple-crown celebrations aside as the more sobering element of its campaign bears the brunt of the spotlight’s cruel gaze.

In an ideal world, Ducati’s steamrollering of 2025 should have continued without issue. Its factory line-up features a combined nine MotoGP world titles, with Pecco Bagnaia as recently as last year still considered its top talent. And yet, Bagnaia’s already underwhelming campaign has seemingly taken a nosedive since the summer break.

Since the Austrian Grand Prix, Bagnaia has scored just 61 points. On just one occasion did he achieve double digits across a race weekend, which was his clean sweep of the Japanese Grand Prix. In the last four rounds, including the Australian Grand Prix, he has failed to score. As the scrutiny mounts, the answers get even more clouded.

What is so confusing is that the bike Bagnaia raced to a double victory at Motegi, which is thought to have featured various GP24 parts - including a ride height device - hasn’t changed since.

“What happened from Austria onward? I wouldn’t know how to answer; I’d rather move on,” he offered on Sunday at Phillip Island.

Ducati’s lack of transparency on the entire situation hasn’t helped things, not least on what it actually did at the Misano test to his GP25 to make him so competitive at Motegi and so meek afterwards. Publicly, Ducati says it just doesn’t know what is going on. Behind the scenes, frustrations have found their way into the media.

At the Australian Grand Prix, stability was Bagnaia’s big issue, with his GP25 at times resembling a shopping trolley with only three wheels. Ducati turned the bike upside down across the weekend, even into Sunday morning, to try to find him some confidence.

In the sprint, Bagnaia lapped 2.5s per lap slower than race winner Marco Bezzecchi on his way to 19th and over 30s off the lead. His pace had greatly improved in the grand prix, as he came from 14th on the grid following a penalty to knock on the door of a top 10 place before crashing on lap 24 of 27. Even then, however, he was still just under 0.4s per lap slower than the leading GP25, which was Fabio Di Giannantonio in second.

“Indescribable” was the word Bagnaia used to reflect upon his challenging Phillip Island weekend, and indeed the slump he has faced since Motegi. The troubling aspect of this is that Phillip Island proved the unique conditions of Mandalika (extreme heat, harder tyre carcass) seemingly explained Marquez and Di Giannantonio’s difficulties, but not Bagnaia’s.

Di Giannantonio excelled where Bagnaia faltered at Phillip Island

Ducati got away with its troubled Mandalika weekend, as Gresini picked up the pieces with a 1-3 for Fermin Aldeguer and Alex Marquez on their GP24s. At Phillip Island, it couldn’t hide from the increasing threat posed by its rivals, nor the glaring absence of Marc Marquez.

For the first time since the 2020 European Grand Prix in Valencia, no Ducati qualified on the front row. Later that Saturday, Ducati’s run of podiums in the sprint since this era began in 2023 came to an end. Alex Marquez likely had the pace to be on the box, but made the wrong choice on front tyre, while a lacklustre 10th on the grid for Di Giannantonio thwarted his chances, given how strong his pace was all weekend.

Ducati was spared the same ignominy on Sunday, as Di Giannantonio came through to second despite battling a nasty fever. He had pace to challenge the dominant Aprilias, but paid for his starting position. At the time of his crash on lap 24 while running 12th, Bagnaia was around 11 seconds further back on the next-best GP25.

The stability issues Bagnaia battled were evident, particularly in morning warm-up on Sunday, as his GP25 violently twisted itself on the main straight. Ducati threw a radical set-up at him for the warm-up to try to cure this, as well as give him back his missing front-end confidence, though this only made the issue worse.

It will have seen Di Giannantonio’s data, who said he also had shaking, but was able to manage it: “Well, the bike in Phillip Island moves a lot. We started the weekend with the bike moving a lot, but I was going fast anyway…For sure, stability is important, but when the conditions are like this for everybody, you need to handle the situation as best as possible”.

Di Giannantonio is a strong campaigner at Phillip Island, having taken a maiden podium at the circuit in 2023. But whatever he and his VR46 team did to his GP25 (which we're led to believe is more akin to Marquez's than Bagnaia's) clearly worked, but also clearly couldn’t be replicated for Bagnaia. Ducati will have been forming its suggestions based on that data, too.

Di Giannantonio has had his inconsistencies this season. But, often, when Bagnaia has struggled immensely, Di Giannantonio has been able to score some decent points. As Bagnaia came away from Misano with no points, Di Giannantonio was third and fifth. He was eighth and ninth at Mandalika, and fifth and second at Phillip Island.

Ducati has been open about the fact that the GP25 isn’t the step forward it had hoped for compared to the GP24. However, it’s also hard to argue that this is a bad bike considering Marc Marquez’s form on it. And when Di Giannantonio is outstripping you at Phillip Island on the same bike, serious questions need to be asked about what the true issue is.

Bagnaia admitted after the sprint that, “If Marc was here, he’d probably be on the podium, but I can’t get the bike to stop moving”. With that, as well as Di Giannantonio’s strong form, there is a strong argument to be made that nothing Ducati does to that GP25 now will be of any use because Bagnaia’s confidence has been battered beyond repair for this season.

The Valencia test on Tuesday 18 November can’t come soon enough for the Italian.

Ducati now faces tougher contract talks with Marquez for 2027

Ducati took a lot of flak last year when it elbowed out Jorge Martin in favour of Marc Marquez for its factory team. That decision has been vindicated beyond measure now. But it has also spawned another question: what would have happened if Marquez and Martin were team-mates?

Bagnaia’s slump was unfathomable to consider last year. In fact, it’s still difficult to reckon with the fact that a rider of his calibre has fallen so far from grace.

All of this puts 2027 into a different context. Bagnaia said in an interview prior to the Australian Grand Prix that he considered himself a Ducati lifer. That much now depends on how long he can personally tolerate this slump if things don’t improve next year, and indeed how long Ducati can put up with it.

With every factory deal expiring at the end of 2026, next year’s rider market is set to be a frenzy. Marquez will be central to that. Now back to his absolute best, he has full control over his destiny. Ducati would, naturally, be keen to keep him.

Ducati has moved away from big money contracts since the COVID pandemic, but to keep Marquez on its books will require a sizeable paycheque. And after what his absence has shown about how vital he has been for Ducati on the GP25, Marquez holds all the cards in those negotiations.

While it won’t quite be a blank cheque scenario, it’s hard to see how Ducati will be able to dictate any terms…

A doubted rider with Marquez-level promise finally fulfilled his potential

The Australian Grand Prix was always poised to be wide open with Marc Marquez sidelined. Aprilia stepped in to fill the void, but the rider who should have won on Sunday had already scuppered his chances at the Indonesian Grand Prix.

Marco Bezzecchi’s collision with Marquez on the opening lap of the Mandalika race netted him a double long lap penalty for the Australian Grand Prix.

The factory Aprilia rider won the sprint dominantly once he broke clear of Raul Fernandez. His rapid start in the grand prix to try to mitigate the damage of his penalties hinted at pace enough to lead from start to finish.

To Bezzecchi’s credit, he lost about 1.7s to Fernandez after the first long lap and about two seconds on the second. Rejoining in sixth from the latter, he climbed his way back up to third with pace somewhat limited by the fact he used a lot of tyre to minimise his penalties.

But that takes nothing away from the job that Fernandez did. The Trackhouse rider was quick from the off at Phillip Island, and was clever enough to do his race running work on the medium rear in practice.

Bezzecchi’s penalty offered him an opportunity that there was some doubt about whether or not he could seize. After all, this is a rider whose best in four seasons was a brace of fifth-place finishes in grands prix.

But this is also a rider who broke Marc Marquez’s rookie Moto2 win record in 2021, with Fernandez spending just one year in the intermediate class before a disastrous move to MotoGP with KTM in 2022.

In some ways, he was fortunate to earn a contract extension with Trackhouse for this season. But the team, particularly Davide Brivio, always felt like there was more to Fernandez than his average form actually showed.

How he would have stacked up in the race against Bezzecchi in a fair fight remains to be seen. The latter’s average pace was only 0.053s slower than Fernandez’s. However, for much of the 27 laps, Fernandez was able to run toe-to-toe with that pace, as he swelled his lead to over three seconds at one stage before easing off.

What is encouraging about Fernandez’s form is that it came off the back of a strong run in completely different conditions at Mandalika. While Phillip Island is a bit of a unique venue in its own right, that consistency will only build confidence in a rider who has lacked it at times.

It’s a victory that also moved Aprilia onto a milestone 300 grand prix wins across all classes. That offers an intriguing prospect looking to 2026 if Aprilia can keep this form up over the final three rounds…