Anyone else sick and tired of Ducati being completely unable to give Francesco Bagnaia a racing bike that he can actually ride? And who is really bored of watching Bagnaia with a thunderous look on his face after yet another underwhelming performance? It’s almost enough to make you want to give him a kick up the backside and tell him to sort himself out.
Is it all Ducati’s fault? That’s a hard assumption to make when both Marc Marquez and Fabio DiGiannantonio have made the GP25 work to great effect. Yes, not every bike can suit every rider, but for Bagnaia to be so far off the pace when a sister GP25 takes second place in the Australian Main race is bordering on the ridiculous.
Do we assume that the problem lies with Bagnaia? Has he been beaten into submission by his travails to the point where he has tied himself in knots trying to cure problems that might not be there in the first place?
Surely Ducati itself must be getting really bored with his complaints; his mechanics must be tearing their hair out with his constant stream of criticism, while their colleagues on the other side of the garage enjoy champagne every weekend.
It’s completely unfathomable; I can’t recall another instance where two seemingly identical bikes in the same team have had such divergent fortunes. And it’s not as if Bagnaia is a second-string rider, as so often happens in a team with one dominant rider; he’s a double world champion, for goodness’ sake and won 11 GPs last year on the way to being narrowly pipped to the post by Jorge Martin.
Even a second-string rider would be reasonably expected to back up a team’s main championship challenger by taking points off his title rivals, but Marc Marquez has won the team’s title with little or no help from Bagnaia, which is as much a damning indictment of Pecco’s performance as it is a stark reminder of Marquez’s skill.
If we expected Marquez’s absence in the final rounds of the 2025 season to mix things up at the front, then we were not to be disappointed in Australia. For the whole season, Aprilia has been best-of-the-rest behind Ducati, and it’s not too far-fetched to imagine them challenging for the title in 2026. In Australia, it was Aprilia all the way, Marco Bezzecchi himself spoiling his chance of a double win with his antics last time out in Indonesia, earning himself a double long-lap penalty for taking out Marc Marquez. His Sprint win in Australia was perfect, and to salvage a third place after two long laps in the Main race showed that he would likely have been unstoppable in the Main race.
That it was another Aprilia rider, Trackhouse’s Raul Fernandez, who took his – and Trackhouse’s – maiden Grand Prix victory, shows the potential of the RS-GP25. No, Aprilia is the team to watch at the moment, and I wouldn’t like to bet that Bezzecchi or Martin – when fully fit – won’t be right up there both at the end of this season and next.
What Australia did show us was that, without Marc Marquez, Ducati might well have been struggling this year. True, both Alex Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer have won races and taken podiums (many, in the case of Alex), as has DiGiannantonio, but what would the picture look like without the consistent brilliance of Marc? Australia also showed us that the final races of the season will be ones to watch if you like unpredictability.
KTM endured another weekend of mixed fortunes, ultimately resulting in a disappointing outcome. Third in the Sprint for Acosta was acceptable, but in the longer Main race, the RC16 exposes its weakness, which is, according to Pol Espargaro and Brad Binder, a lack of edge grip at full lean angle, which only gets worse as the tyres wear.
Binder crashed out of the Sprint but managed eighth in the Main race, while Acosta ran in the podium positions early on but faded to fifth at the end. Pol Espargaro, KTM’s test rider and enjoying a wild card ride in Australia, showed that he really should be on the grid full-time by finishing ninth in the Sprint and tenth in the Main race. With too many riders tooling around at the back of the field, a rider of Espargaro’s talent really should be better utilised. Put it this way: Michele Pirro, Ducati’s test rider and stand-in for Marquez, was 25 seconds behind Espargaro at the end of the Sprint race!
If we are in the era of Ducati, as we must be with four titles in a row, Australia provided a couple of eye-opening statistics. The last time there was no Ducati on the front row of the grid of a Grand Prix was in 2020! Also, Australia 2025 marked the first time there has been no Ducati on the Sprint podium since the format was introduced at the beginning of the 2023 season. That is, by any measure, impressive and can rightly be described as domination.
It remains to be seen, however, if the conclusion of the 2025 season will buck the trend and be an Aprilia benefit, as without Marc Marquez, the factory Ducati team is all at sea. Luckily for Ducati, there are satellite riders who are capable of winning, but none of them seem to have the measure of Bezzecchi right now.
Three races to go – Malaysia, Portugal and Spain – and then we’ll be forced to wait until the beginning of March 2026. Let’s hope the racing gods give us something to tide us over the interminable off-season.
