Ducati, comes the long-awaited face-off Marc Marquez – Pecco Bagnaia

The 2025 MotoGp world championship had an absolute ruler: Marc Marquez. The Spanish centaur, whom Ducati promoted to the factory team after a one-year apprenticeship with a Borgo Panigale bike in the team founded by the late Fausto Gresini, has repaid the trust in the best way. The numbers are frankly impressive. In 2024, the former Honda had been content with three ‘long’ Grand Prix wins (at Aragon, Misano and Phillip Island, Australia) and a Sprint, also at Aragon, and overall had put up 392 points, still a respectable haul.

Last year, thanks to all the good things he had shown, he had placed third in the overall standings.

Better than him had been his compatriot Jorge Martin, who had been awarded the world championship title with another Ducati, that of the Pramac Racing team, and Pecco Bagnaia, who had failed to defend his two triumphs of 2022 and 2023. The Piedmontese rider had finished with 498 points, ten less than his rival, who was able to bring an independent team back to success after more than two decades and then, with the engines now switched off, decided in turning his career upside down by accepting the court of Aprilia.

Aldo Seghedoni

Martin’s 2025 was terrible, with his number 1 on the fairing he was never competitive, also affected by a series of accidents. Marc Marquez, on the other hand, quickly made scorched earth, racking up one success after another: in the end, there were even 11 victories in the Long Grand Prix and 14 in the Sprints, for a total of 545 points, 78 more than the second-place finisher, his brother Alex (also on a Ducati of the Gresini team), and almost 200 more than the third, Marco Bezzecchi, however the author of a respectable year with Aprilia. The Marquez major’s points lead could have been many more.

In fact, no one forgets that Marc, at the Indonesia Grand Prix, suffered a fracture and therefore missed all the subsequent appointments, as many as four, also because he had to undergo surgery on his scapula: a setback that allowed the second lines to make up some ground. On Friday, at the party organized by Ducati, there will also be a chance to witness a new face-off between the world champion and Pecco Bagnaia. Who in 2026 will try to take the scepter away from him, knowing that it will be very difficult to prevent him from winning the tenth world championship of his very brilliant career.