The deeper meaning of a Pecco Bagnaia comment has ramifications for Marc Marquez

Francesco Bagnaia has partnered two riders in the factory Ducati team, and has generally got the better of both of them

Titles in both 2022 and 2023 were achieved, to some extent, by Bagnaia’s ability to mould the Ducati Lenovo Team around him, creating a positive environment which allowed him to be relaxed and undistracted.

His victory in last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix was an example of how that teamwork and environment works, as Bagnaia explained.

“The atmosphere at the moment is incredible,” Bagnaia said when asked about the mood inside the Ducati Lenovo Team after his victory in Austria.

“Honestly, at the moment we are in one of the best moments, the team is fantastic. It’s not two teams, it’s one team and we are working together.

“I am asking Enea many things every day, and the work we are doing is fantastic. When I have to try something and I don’t have time, he tries it, and for both it is the same.

“The front tyre he tried [in Austria] and I asked him during the session.

“So, I think it’s so important, so helpful for us to have this relationship.

“Then, in the race, you have to do your things, you have to fight and try to win.

“But outside and during the sessions it’s better to keep the worlds together and try to improve together.”

Bagnaia was dropping hint to Ducati

Of course, Bagnaia’s lengthy tribute to the teamwork exhibited by the engineering staff on both sides of the factory Ducati garage, as well as his teammate, Enea Bastianini, on the other side of the box is fundamentally rooted in truth; his example of asking Bastianini mid-session about how he felt with the hard-compound front tyre on Friday in Austria had also been brought up by Bagnaia on Friday at the Austrian Grand Prix, just a few hours after that interaction occurred.

“[Practice was] the only moment possible for me to try the hard [front],” Bagnaia told MotoGP.com.

“So I asked him what was his feeling. He said it was quite good, but on the left he had to be more patient. Honestly, I didn’t see so much confidence in his eyes, so I just decided to continue with the medium.”

Clearly, Bagnaia benefited from this small interaction with his teammate on Friday — the hard-compound front tyre was not a good choice in Austria, and it was the cause of a number of crashes on Friday.

And, evidently, the current working environment in Ducati is yielding extremely positive results. Bagnaia is leading the riders’ standings by five points over Pramac Ducati’s Jorge Martin, and Bastianini is third.

Ducati is clear at the top of the manufacturers’ standings, and the factory effort is leading the teams’ points, too. It’s not an environment that makes sporting sense to disrupt.

And, yet, it makes absolute sense, because the disruptive agent in this case is Marc Marquez, arguably the most talented rider of all-time and the rider who prevented Ducati from beginning its era of dominance at least two or three years earlier than it eventually did.

Marquez is already an eight-times World Champion and is clearly still a rider who could win a title with the right equipment. A ninth title would equal him with Valentino Rossi, and a 10th would see him stand alone atop the all-time list for premier class titles.

A two-year contract could see him achieve that 10th title with Ducati, something somebody like Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali can presumably see a fair amount of marketing power in.

And, being an engineer at heart, Domenicali is a man who can probably understand what somebody like Ducati Corse General Manager Gigi Dall’Igna is telling him about Marquez’s data and riding ability, or what someone like Marquez’s Gresini crew chief Frankie Carchedi might tell him about how Marquez works.

Also, with the memory of Marquez’s Desmosedici-crushing dominance still relatively fresh in the memory, the thought of letting him go to KTM or Aprilia might have, fairly understandably, set off the alarm bells in Domenicali’s mind. Keep him, and he at least can’t take titles away from you, right?

Almost certainly, but what might be the cost? This is the question Bagnaia is asking.

The three-times World Champion’s concern is understandable, since a brief look at the recent history of Repsol Honda, HRC, and the Honda RC213V shows a team, manufacturer, and motorcycle increasingly built to maximise the potential of one individual, arguably to the increasing detriment of others.

Since Marquez’s arrival in Repsol Honda in 2013, Dani Pedrosa went from being a title contender pretty much every year since 2010 to essentially being a solidified number two rider by the middle of 2014.

After Pedrosa retired at the end of 2018, Jorge Lorenzo tried and failed to be competitive on the RC213V and then retired after one season; Pol Espargaro faired better than Lorenzo, but after two seasons he returned to KTM’s satellite Tech3 team in 2023; then Joan Mir arrived, and in the one-and-a-half seasons he’s been at Repsol Honda he’s achieved one top six result (India 2023) and rumours of his retirement have circled on numerous occasions.

Luca Marini arrived to replace Marquez this year after the #93 had finally had enough, and has so far scored one point in 11 races

It would be unfair to blame all of HRC’s current MotoGP problems on Marquez, of course — especially since he’s merely a rider, not an engineer — but the development direction chosen by Honda was clearly the one most favoured by Marquez, generally speaking.

It seems clear that development of the RC213V gradually made it more difficult to ride for Marquez’ Honda stablemates.

The Ducati Desmosedici has found success for being rideable by a large number of riders. Compared to the RC213V that, since 2013, has found victory with four riders (Marquez, Pedrosa, Cal Crutchlow, Jack Miller), since 2022 the Desmosedici has won in the hands of seven riders (Bagnaia, Jack Miller, Enea Bastianini, Jorge Martin, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Marco Bezzecchi), or eight if you want to include the two Sprint wins of Alex Marquez last year.

It’s an approachable motorcycle with a wide working range that can seemingly be ridden by almost any MotoGP rider to victory, in the right circumstances.

Bagnaia concern over Marquez disruption

Part of the reason for this is the atmosphere to which Bagnaia spoke during the press conference, and the maintenance of this atmosphere after Marquez has replaced Bastianini is the key thing Bagnaia was trying to address.

The destructive force of Marquez’s arrival has already been felt by Ducati. Pramac has left for Yamaha, and both Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi have signed for Aprilia. There will be one less factory-spec Ducati on the grid next year, too, as VR46 gets only one 2025 Desmosedici compared to the current pair of GP24s that Pramac fields.

Already, Ducati looks weaker in 2025. Its rider line-up is both smaller and of lower quality thanks to the departures of Bezzecchi and Martin, and so is the actual grid presence of its motorcycles.

What Bagnaia wants is for Marquez to arrive and for the disruption to stop, for him to mesh with the team and understand his role within it in the same way as Bastianini has. He wants the teamwork that has brought Ducati to dominate MotoGP to persist, because he knows that winning titles is always easier if you have the best bike.

That’s really what Bagnaia’s praise of Enea Bastianini and Ducati was about in the Austrian post-race press conference: delivering a message to Ducati that Marc Marquez must not be allowed to walk into the factory garage next year and dismantle the environment that the Bologna factory has created to allow him — Bagnaia — to work at his best and win titles. And the same message, effectively, to Marquez: this is Bagnaia’s team, and to be successful in it you must work as it demands, not as you want.

Whether Bagnaia’s message is accepted by his incoming teammate will only be clear in time, but the key difference between Marquez and Bastianini, or even Jack Miller before him, is that, while Marquez has six MotoGP titles to his name, neither Bastianini nor Miller has one. Marquez understands what he needs to win a premier class crown, and a Francesco Bagnaia operating at his peak is unlikely to be a part of that.