Francesco Bagnaia finally managed to show some promising pace on his Ducati bike at the Grand Prix of Aragon after struggling for the majority of the 2025 season.
He may not have beaten Marc Marquez to victory, but he did at least contend for second place on Sunday, and was able to remain consistent and comfortable on the GP25.
Bagnaia now sits 93 points behind his teammate at the top of the MotoGP standings, with 14 of the 22 events still to go.
Ducati had been trending in a negative direction for a while, so it’s reassuring to see progress towards the sharp end of the grid at the Grand Prix of Aragon, after noticeable struggles at Silverstone.
Davide Tardozzi has told Bagnaia what to do if he wants to remain in the title picture, but he’s running out of time to take action and needs to beat his teammate regularly soon if he wants any chance of earning a third crown.
The Aragon weekend started in the usual fashion as Bagnaia looked ‘sarcastic’ in the Ducati garage and seemed resigned to further struggles. That was until Sunday’s warm-up, where one change seemed to help things click all of a sudden.
Francesco Bagnaia admits Ducati ‘significantly’ changed one thing at the Grand Prix of Aragon
Rumours that Yamaha want to sign Bagnaia are ‘absurd’ according to Carlo Pernat, who has plenty of experience in dealing with MotoGP rider contracts as an agent.
It would be a big gamble for him to leave the best bike on the grid to join one that still hasn’t won a race for nearly three years, regardless of how much progress they have made lately.
In the search for improvements, Bagnaia mentioned that his team had made modifications to his brakes ahead of the race at Aragon.
“One thing we changed was the braking system,” he said, according to SPEEDWEEK. “The technicians modified the brake discs so that we could significantly reduce lockup under full deceleration, which increased confidence when cornering.”
His risk paid off handsomely, as he finished within a few seconds of victory and stepped onto the podium at a Grand Prix for the first time since Spain at the start of May.
How much longer is Francesco Bagnaia contractually tied to Ducati for?
According to the 2025 MotoGP rider contracts, Bagnaia is tied to Ducati until the end of the 2026 season, just before the start of the new bike regulations.
It’s going to be a very hard time to predict who will be strong heading into the sport’s new era, but Ducati should continue to be strong.
The MotoGP rider market should end up being crazier than it ever has been, with the majority of seats up for grabs.
It all depends on whether he continues to struggle alongside Marquez, which, if it continues, will do damage to his reputation and career.
He’s still one of the greatest on the grid, his confidence has just taken a dent and Aragon may have been the exact boost he was searching for.
