“Whoever’s best will get the spot”: Does this VR46 rider’s MotoGP logic favour another?

Celestino Vietti says “whoever’s best” between him and a couple of other Italian riders will get the second VR46 Ducati MotoGP seat in 2027, but is that likely to be him?

Vietti seems to be one of three riders in with a shot of the second VR46 Racing Team seat next year (the first is thought to have been taken by Fermin Aldeguer, although this has not yet been confirmed). The others are the seat’s current occupant, Franco Morbidelli, and current WorldSBK points leader Nicolo Bulega.

According to current third-placed Moto2 rider Vietti, the decision will be based on results.

“I’m just focused on riding as fast as possible,” Vietti told Italian publication GPOne regarding his 2027 MotoGP chances.

“Ultimately, it’s not up to me to decide. My job is to keep delivering results like we have been lately, and then we’ll see. Whoever’s the best will get the spot.”

If Vietti’s rivals for the second VR46 next season are Morbidelli and Bulega, it’s hard to see how Morbidelli’s current form could earn him the seat based on that criterion set out by Vietti.

At the same time, it’s hard to argue that Bulega is not performing the best of those three at the minute.

Sure, WorldSBK is minus Toprak Razgatlioglu this year, but Bulega has hardly been challenged through 15 races, all of which he’s won, even with eight other riders on the same machinery. 

He’s cruising to this year’s title in the production derivative series in a fashion never seen before, and has not once looked like relinquishing even a fraction of the overwhelming command he has over WorldSBK in 2026.

Vietti, on the other hand, hasn’t won a race in Moto2 this year, indeed he hasn’t won a race since the 2025 San Marino Grand Prix. Yes, he’s on the Boscoscuro, not the more favoured Kalex chassis, but Izan Guevara has amassed double Vietti’s podium tally so far this year and the Spaniard’s rostrum visits have included a win at Le Mans.

It’s not that Vietti’s having a bad season, in fact you could reasonably argue he’s having his most solid Moto2 season to date at present, but to suggest it’s a season that is clearly better than Bulega’s demolition of the WorldSBK field, and therefore more deserving of a MotoGP seat, would be verging on disrespectful to not only Bulega but also WorldSBK in general.

Obviously, Vietti himself hasn’t said he’s better than Bulega, he’s only said what he believes will be the deciding factor in VR46’s decision over its second seat for the 2027 MotoGP season. 

Vietti’s comment simply focuses the spotlight on VR46: if it chooses the top-three Moto2 rider over the supreme and unchallenged WorldSBK rider, it shows it either favours occasional middle-class grand prix podiums over non-stop WorldSBK wins, or simply that it prefers riders signed to the VR46 management company over those which left it long ago, even if relationships have since been repaired.

Choosing Vietti over Bulega would also surely demonstrate that VR46 is still independent enough to hire the riders it wants, not the ones Ducati wants to find a space for. That, it should be said, is not necessarily the positive thing it perhaps initially appears to be for an official satellite team that currently has as many factory bikes as the bottom-tier Ducati non-factory team: Gresini Racing.

Ducati, of course, would surely like to find a space for Bulega in MotoGP, because it knows that a manufacturer like BMW would be willing to pay the Italian enough to convince him to depart the Bologna factory for 2027; it might have for 2026, too, but the chance of a MotoGP seat would always be enough for Bulega to stay in red. 

Bulega himself has been open about what it would mean to him if he were to lose out on a MotoGP seat in 2027 given his current performance.

After all, if Ducati can’t find a space for him when he’s producing definitively perfect results, when will it? And so money becomes more attractive, especially when winning is so routine for Bulega that he could quite legitimately believe that winning the 2027 WorldSBK title would be possible for him on any bike.