The good news for Ducati is that MotoGP’s benchmark factory team has no bad options when choosing a rider to become teammate to reigning world champion Francesco Bagnaia in 2025.
That’s also the bad news.
With reports out of Europe suggesting an announcement could be made at or before the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello on the first weekend of June, Enea Bastianini, Jorge Martin and Marc Marquez won’t have too long to wait to learn their fate.
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It’s a decision that, once Ducati fills the free seat on the best bike in the business, will start a ripple effect that resets the rest of the 22-rider MotoGP grid, with only six riders – teenage Spanish Moto2 sensation Fermin Aldeguer among them – having confirmed seats for 2025.
Ducati’s plum job vacancy comes with a warning label, as Bagnaia – bidding this year to become just the fourth rider after Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi and Marquez himself to win a hat-trick of premier-class titles in the past three decades – will be a formidable force in the sister garage.
Now in his sixth MotoGP season, the 27-year-old blends a potent mix of speed, class-leading race management, tactical nous and an unruffled approach that has largely controlled the championship since the mid-point of the 2022 season.
There’s no wrong choice for Ducati, but each door opens a degree of right.
As Bagnaia’s teammate for the past two years, 26-year-old Italian Bastianini has the inside track but more questions than answers, largely owing to an injury-ruined first season in red that saw him compete in just 11 events.
Martin, riding for Ducati satellite squad Pramac Racing, had more wins (13 across sprint races and Grands Prix proper) than Bagnaia (11) last year, but Bagnaia’s unerring consistency and the 26-year-old’s Spaniard’s penchant for crashing from advantageous positions saw him finish as championship runner-up.
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And then there’s 31-year-old Marquez. The six-time MotoGP world champion, currently in his first season for Ducati’s third-string customer outfit Gresini Racing, took a massive pay cut and a one-year deal to leave Honda at the end of 2023 now his body, ravaged for the past five years from repeated shoulder surgeries, is closer to 100 per cent that at any time since his career-defining crash at Jerez in 2020.
With such an embarrassment of riches from which to choose, it’s a decision that’s weighing heavily on Ducati.
The factory’s general manager and technical guru Gigi Dall’Igna admitted as much after the Spanish Grand Prix, where Martin crashed out of the lead and set the stage for Bagnaia and Marquez to engage in a titanic fight for victory that was settled in Bagnaia’s favour.
“We are trying to give all the riders the best possible material to put them in the best possible frame of mind for the upcoming races, which are crucial for them and for our choice,” Dall’Igna said, per Autosport.
“No matter how it goes, we will have to leave some important riders out of the equation. My legs are shaking just thinking about having to make this decision.”
WHAT DOES HISTORY TELL US?
On-track speed is one thing, but off-track compatibility is another – and a consideration Ducati is painfully aware of as lessons from the recent past show what happens when a rider duo becomes more combustible than convivial.
When considering what Ducati might do, it’s instructive to consider what it has – and an evolving rider policy that, while stopping short of a clear delineation between a factory focus and a support act, has paid off in recent years across a series of two-season cycles.
Rewind back to 2015-16, and the Italian marque, years removed from Casey Stoner’s 2007 championship pomp, employed Italians Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone. Dovizioso was a MotoGP race-winner, while Iannone – to Dovizioso’s chagrin – won Ducati’s first race since the Stoner days in Austria 2016.
More memorably, the Andrea Era reached its nadir in Argentina that same year, when Iannone took out Dovizioso on the final corner of the final lap of the race, throwing away a double podium finish.
For 2017-18, Iannone was jettisoned for high-priced three-time world champion Jorge Lorenzo. It was an uneasy marriage of personalities, styles and pay packets, and when Dovizioso almost doubled Lorenzo’s points tally in 2017, a union that was set for a messy divorce.
It came early in 2018, with Lorenzo winning all three of his races in red after he’d been shown the door.
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Burned by having no clear number one rider for two signing cycles, Ducati changed tack for 2019-20 and 2021-22, Dovizioso partnered by Italian journeyman Danilo Petrucci for the first two years before stepping away from the sport, and Bagnaia being joined by Australia’s Jack Miller for the latter two years, Bagnaia’s pace and Miller’s deferential demeanour establishing a natural, clear, pecking order.
Frustrated by a series of rolling one-year contracts, Miller signed a multi-year deal with KTM for 2023-24, Ducati promoting Bastianini after the former Moto2 champion showed enormous promise in 2022, taking four wins for Gresini Racing on a 2021 hand-me-down Desmosedici.
Having two foxes in the same henhouse, then, hasn’t been Ducati’s modus operandi since the Lorenzo days, but it’s never since had the calibre of riders to choose from that it has for 2025.
So who should Ducati sign this time, and what are the arguments for and against?
THE INCUMBENT: ENEA BASTIANINI
If Bastianini had a report card for his Ducati stint to date, it would be stamped ‘inconclusive’.
‘Bestia’ (‘The Beast’) came with a reputation as being a beauty in terms of in-race tyre management, his wins at Gresini in 2022 following a similar pattern; qualify decently, slowly build to the boil, and then surge home in the closing laps, preserving his tyre life better than any of his rivals.
It’s a calling card he’s not had a clean run at since, his 2023 barely getting off the start line after he was mauled by Luca Marini in the season’s first sprint race in Portugal, breaking his right collarbone and missing the first five rounds.
Once he got back, and far from fully fit, he was the architect of his own demise in Catalunya five rounds later when an overly-ambitious dive-bomb at the first corner saw him skittle four rivals and break his left ankle and left hand, sidelining him for four more races.
The final six races once he returned were mostly anonymous, with one exception: a brilliant win from nowhere in Malaysia in the antepenultimate round of the season.
Four rounds into 2024, Bastianini has already taken two podiums (second in Portugal, when he had Bagnaia’s measure, and third in the Americas) to sit third in the championship standings. At worst, he’s a capable rear-gunner for Ducati’s proven title-winner.
Bastianini is yet to get an uninterrupted run at proving his suitability for a top-line team, and in any other rider market, he’d be afforded that chance. But with the other options on Ducati’s board? It’s a hard argument to win, and might lead to a hard decision having to be made.
THE RESTLESS WANTAWAY: JORGE MARTIN
Martin talks as he rides, with urgency, impulsiveness and no filter. When deployed on a track, it’s a devastating combination that produces, especially in the short-form sprint races that debuted at every round in 2023. In 23 sprints to date, Martin has won 11 of them; no other rider has won more than four.
Speed, then, isn’t Martin’s problem; staying power has been, as last year’s championship showed. The moment the 2023 title chase flipped into Bagnaia’s favour? Indonesia, where Martin crashed from a comfortable lead and handed Bagnaia, who had qualified back in 13th, a gift in the form of 25 points. Bagnaia never trailed in the title chase again.
Martin has mostly shown an ability to learn this season – his crash from the lead in Spain las time out squandered points but only eroded his championship lead to 17 points ahead of this weekend’s French Grand Prix – but it’s next season he’s had his eye on for some time.
The Spaniard wants a full-factory ride – and the payday that comes with it – rather than sign on for a satellite team again, and knows he might have to leave Ducati to get it.
Had he won last year’s title, Martin might have already been in situ as Bagnaia’s teammate; rumoured clauses in his deal had him guaranteed of a promotion to Ducati’s A-team for 2024 if he was taking the number 1 plate reserved for the world champion with him.
While that didn’t eventuate, his ambitions have been crystal clear. “I see myself as an official [factory] rider in 2025,” he told Europa Press in January, adding: “If not at Ducati, I will look for other options.”
Those options could come at Yamaha, which only has 2021 world champion Fabio Quartararo signed for next season, or Honda, where 2020 champion Joan Mir comes off contract in December. But with both Japanese factories languishing at the back of the grid again this season, arguments other than financial to turn his back on Ducati are flimsy.
Asked at the Spanish GP whether he was talking to other manufacturers, Martin issued a trademark economically-worded response. “No, that’s what my manager thinks about,” he said. “I’m completely focused on the track. I hope to continue with Ducati, but if it’s not possible I will race for another official team.”
With that ultimatum, there’s no ambiguity. It’s up to Ducati to use him, or lose him.
THE NUCLEAR OPTION: MARC MARQUEZ
That Marquez is even on this list owes itself to a confluence of circumstances that many believed would never see the light of day. After persevering with ever-worse Hondas as he dragged his broken body to the track between surgeries from 2021-23, it seemed improbable to imagine Marquez could walk away from a company that stuck by him and paid his salary even when he was unable to ride, and impossible to countenance that he would ride anything other than a Honda after 11 MotoGP seasons, 59 victories and six world titles.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, though. Marquez’s announcement in Indonesia last October – tellingly and respectfully after the Japanese Grand Prix at Honda-owned Motegi – that he and the only manufacturer he’d ever known had come to an agreement to rip up his contract so he could sign for Gresini to ride a year-old privately-entered Ducati was seismic, and a public acknowledgment that Marquez’s arm and ambition were aligned.
Marquez has wasted little time getting adjusted to the GP23 – his bare-knuckle brawl for victory against Bagnaia at Jerez came on a weekend where he declared his adjustment period to the Italian bike was over – and it’s mouth-watering to imagine Marquez with full factory support on a red bike. The commercial appeal, the mainstream media cut-through, the sporting performance … they’re all ticks to inking Marquez’s signature.
Audi, Ducati’s parent company, has publicly stated its intention to scale back the money paid to its eight riders in the series. Bagnaia, already re-signed until the end of 2026 on a deal reportedly worth six million Euros per season, doesn’t come cheap.
Given what Marquez has already earned and won, that may not matter. Sponsors will flock to whatever team he’s riding for, and the Spaniard knows he has the ball in his court. At the post-race Spanish GP test, Marquez made it clear that a factory Ducati isn’t his only option for 2025, dialling up the pressure.
“I’ve always said it: the faster you go on track, the more options [you have],” he said.
“When there are results, the factories are contacting me and there have already been conversations.
“Mentally, I’m pretty clear about what I want. The important thing is that I have it clear and I don’t just have one option.”
SO, WHO TO CHOOSE?
With the reigning world champion locked in for the next two years after consecutive titles and myriad options available to partner him, Ducati is in a can’t-lose position. But which decision wins biggest?
Bastianini would the safest – and perhaps fairest – choice, while Martin, alongside Bagnaia, could be combustible but could equally drive the project forward. But Marquez, if Ducati can make it happen, surely must be the first choice.
A motivated former champion chasing past glories who hasn’t been the rider he – and we – knew him as for the best part of five years will be a different animal to a rider who won titles for fun for much of the 2010s.
Perhaps more importantly, retaining Marquez in red denies anyone else the chance to snap him up and propel their projects into being potential Ducati-beaters.
Signing Marquez so as to deny your rivals access to one of the rare riders in MotoGP history who can tip the scales of a championship by himself isn’t the sole reason to put pen to paper.
But as a tie-breaker in a three-horse race? It’s a compelling one.