Bagnaia and Bastianini? Ducati: “We don’t need them to be friends”

Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini “might be a challenge” for Ducati to manage in 2023 because they don’t share the close relationship of previous duos, admits Paolo Ciabatti.

James Dielhenn

07 Nov 2022

Francesco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini, MotoGP, Aragon MotoGP, 17 September

Bagnaia wrapped up the 2022 MotoGP championship in Valencia and will enter next year as the reigning champion with a new teammate, Bastianini, in the Ducati Lenovo Team.

They have already fought wheel-to-wheel this season and one of the biggest challenges of Bagnaia’s first title defence might be coping with Bastianini, having shared a friendly relationship this year with Jack Miller.

“We know that your teammate is always the guy you want to beat because he has the same material,” sporting director Ciabatti told BT. “It has always been like this.

“Jack and Pecco? Jack is a great human being, a nice guy. They had a special relationship.

“We have had Andrea Dovizioso and Jorge Lorenzo - different characters - working together and we share the data.”

Reminded that Bagnaia and Bastianini are not particularly friendly, Ciabatti said: “I know, I know. We don’t need the teammates to be friends.

“We need them to respect each other.

“Pecco won seven grands prix this year, Enea won four. They are No1 and No2 so will be the strongest team.

“Managing two Italians in the team might be a challenge.

“There might be some spice for the championship!”

Francesco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini , MotoGP race, Malaysian MotoGP, 23 October — Francesco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini , MotoGP race, Malaysian MotoGP, 23…

Bastianini earned the nod over the outgoing Miller and Jorge Martin to step up into Ducati’s factory team in the 2023 MotoGP rider line-up - the stakes have since risen with future teammate Bagnaia becoming world champion.

“Starting from Tuesday we will test the 2023 bike,” Ciabatti said. “Hopefully it will be a step forwards for the competitiveness of the bike. We want to start next season in a better way [than the start of 2022].”

He said about the moment Ducati knew Bagnaia could overhaul Fabio Quartararo and win the 2022 title: “The fourth consecutive win that Pecco had put us in a position to say: ‘Yes, we can do it’. It gave us a boost.

“It’s been 15 years since Casey Stoner [Ducati’s last champion] and the championship has changed. We always had a competitive bike but could never put it all together.

“From 91 points behind to win the title is incredible.

“If you look at Pecco’s results; when he was not crashing, he was winning, winning, winning.

“We tried not to make any more mistakes. We knew that we had the pace to be on the podium in every race.

“Mathematically we knew that we could do it.