‘Four slaps in the face’: Why Italian rising force has MotoGP’s kingpins worried

Remember when MotoGP was – derisively, yet with justification – called the ‘Ducati Cup’?

Davide Tardozzi did, which is why the crack Ducati factory team’s boss and an open microphone in the aftermath of the season-opening Thailand Grand Prix made for compelling listening.

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Tardozzi – whose jubilant celebrations when Ducati win makes him a social media sensation and instantly meme-worthy – wears his heart on his sleeve at any time. On the rare occasions when Ducati gets humbled, as it did in Buriram, even more so.

“[We took] four slaps in the face … that’s the truth,” Tardozzi told Sky Italia after Ducati’s run of 88 Grands Prix with at least one rider on the podium which dated to the 2021 British Grand Prix was snapped, and Ducati endured its worst start to a season since 2013.

“We need to put the riders in a position to fight for the podium again. We’re getting to the tracks that will reveal the true [order]: Austin, Qatar and Jerez.”

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Tardozzi wasn’t to know at the time that Qatar – scheduled for round four in mid-April – was set to be postponed until November because of the ongoing war in the Middle East that has affected the global motorsport calendar short-term.

But his point was well made.

One year on from where Ducati riders took the first four places in the Thailand season-opener, Ducati had just one rider – Fabio Di Giannantonio – inside the top six after reigning world champion Marc Marquez was forced to retire with a punctured rear tyre.

Last year’s revelation and championship runner-up Alex Marquez crashed out. Marquez’s Gresini Ducati teammate Fermin Aldeguer, winner of last year’s Indonesian Grand Prix as a rookie, was back in Europe nursing a broken left femur from a pre-season training crash. Two-time world champion Francesco Bagnaia missed Q2 for the top 12 in qualifying, and came home a distant ninth.

Ducati’s cup runneth dry.

Filling the void? MotoGP’s ‘other’ Italian manufacturer in Aprilia, which took last year’s strong end to the season and laid the smackdown on the rest in Buriram.

Marco Bezzecchi won his third straight Grand Prix from pole. Trackhouse Aprilia’s Raul Fernandez, Bezzecchi’s factory teammate Jorge Martin and Fernandez’s teammate Ai Ogura finished third, fourth and fifth respectively, denied a top-four lockout only by KTM’s championship leader Pedro Acosta, who came home in second.

It was a display of dominance that left many to wonder if the tide had turned, and if Ducati’s stranglehold over MotoGP that has lasted for over three years was finally beginning to loosen.

Bezzecchi, while entertaining the question, wasn’t buying it.

Yet.

“Aprilia made a good job this winter, they have been working super hard through all the break to try to bring us some important items to try,” the Italian said with the celebrations in full swing in the Buriram pit lane.

“This was important, but I have to say that it’s early to say [Aprilia has an advantage]. It’s only one race in the championship which is very long. So let’s try to keep ourselves calm, super hungry to make the best every weekend that we can.”

THE GRAND PRIX THAT FLIPPED THE SCRIPT

The best? That’s what Aprilia has been for enough of a sample size now to make Tardozzi’s face – and anyone else associated with Ducati’s MotoGP project – sting.

It’s a run that started last October in Indonesia, the round before MotoGP made its annual trip to Phillip Island for the Australian Grand Prix, and a pair of related inflection points that have changed the narrative of what has followed.

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At Mandalika, Bezzecchi – from pole – won the sprint race and looked odds-on to do the double in the Grand Prix before a first-lap accident with Marc Marquez – who had been crowned 2025 champion the round before in Japan – saw both riders barrel-roll through the gravel trap, Marquez fracturing his right shoulder.

With the coveted seventh MotoGP title he’d craved since 2019 safely in his keeping, Marquez had surgery and sat out the final four rounds, where a new pattern began to emerge.

With Marquez – a four-time Australian Grand Prix winner – absent, Bezzecchi bossed the Phillip Island sprint for Aprilia, but a penalty for the Marquez/Indonesia incident thwarted his chances of repeating that on Grand Prix Sunday, Aprilia stablemate Fernandez making the most of the opportunity on his 76th MotoGP start to win for the first time.

While Aprilia didn’t kick on at the next race in Malaysia, Bezzecchi put the finishing touches on his best season yet with back-to-back wins from pole to finish 2025 in Portugal and Valencia.

He then continued his searing pre-season testing pace in Thailand to easily win the Grand Prix three weeks ago, banking 25 points on a weekend where his pace suggested he should have annexed the full 37, the Italian crashing out of the sprint from the lead.

Never before had Bezzecchi won three straight races, while the hat-trick was an all-time first for Aprilia, too.

Aprilia Racing CEO Massimo Rivola saw the result – with all four RS-GP machines inside the top five – more as a sign of what Aprilia was doing than what Ducati wasn’t.

“I don’t think Ducati was struggling, I think that Aprilia did something special at this track,” he said.

“The reason for that we will see in the next races. If it’s [because we have] the complete package, it would be good news for us, obviously.

“Maybe with some tyre degradation, we were just a bit better. But if we see the lap times, the only one that since day one [of testing at Buriram] was on top of everybody was ‘Bez’.”

Bagnaia – whose continuation of his underwhelming 2025 campaign in the ’26 season-opener was likely assuaged by what paddock speculation suggests is a two-year deal to join Aprilia for the first season of MotoGP’s 850cc regulatory reset in 2027 – said what his good friend Bezzecchi wouldn’t, squashing suggestions that Michelin’s extra-hard rear tyre used to combat Thailand’s searing heat in round one tipped the scales away from Ducati at a track where they’d dominated a year earlier.

“It’s a very good track and also tyre for us, but for some reason this time was more difficult,” Bagnaia said.

“Others have made an improvement, we made a step back. We need to understand why. For me, [it’s in] controlling the tyre. Our bike is turning a bit less, and it was very difficult to manage the tyre with the rear throttle.

“Right now we are not anymore the fastest … our bike is a bit more difficult to stop compared to the test. Marc [Marquez], for me, did as always a fantastic job … I’m taking a bit more time always to adapt to things.”

MARQUEZ HOLDS THE CARDS

‘Fantastic’ and ‘Marc Marquez’ in the same sentence isn’t anything new.

Bagnaia, even as he was being thrashed by his new-for-2025 Spanish teammate last year, was never backwards in praising the 33-year-old Spaniard even as he struggled to find the front-end feel in Ducati’s GP25 machine that he enjoyed on the 2024 model, with which he won 11 Grands Prix and nearly took a hat-trick of titles before being beaten by Martin in the Barcelona season finale.

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The GP24 – which was used by Bagnaia, Martin and Bagnaia’s then-teammate Enea Bastianini to win 16 of that season’s 20 Grands Prix – was Ducati’s finest hour.

Alex Marquez – riding a hand-me-down ’24 model for Gresini last season and finishing runner-up in the title chase after never having been higher than eighth overall in five previous seasons – proved it. Aldeguer won a race on the 2024 model, while riders not named Marc Marquez on the GP25 – Bagnaia and compatriot Di Gianantonio – largely floundered.

Ducati’s 2026 machine contains much of the DNA of that ’24 bike, which Marc Marquez never rode, his sole season at Gresini in 2024 before he moved to Ducati’s factory team for last year spent on the even more ancient 2023 bike, which he still managed to squeeze three wins from.

And while Aprilia has undoubtedly improved, there’s no telling the ceiling of the GP26 in response just yet, as Ducati’s difference-maker hasn’t been in position to maximise its potential.

Mindful of the ramifications of coming back too fast from right shoulder injuries – Marquez changed the course of his career after rushing back from surgery after a crash in the 2020 season-opener – the Spaniard, now the grid’s second-oldest rider behind Honda’s 35-year-old French veteran Johann Zarco – has taken a cautious approach to his return.

Sitting out the end of last year with the job done was smart, while playing himself in slowly in the pre-season was an approach of a rider who knows that one more big injury could wave the chequered flag on his career.

Even when he was undercooked physically and suffering from illness in testing a week before the Thai GP, Marquez fought ferociously with Acosta for the win in the Buriram sprint – Acosta won after Marquez was controversially penalised for “irresponsible riding” on the penultimate lap – and looked in position to keep Ducati’s five-year podium streak alive in the 26-lap Grand Prix before his puncture with six laps to go saw him stop while lurking in fourth place.

Marquez’s early bath meant Ducati left Buriram without a single bike in the top five for the first time in 102 Grands Prix; when you consider that Ducati had won 60 of the previous 72 races prior to Thailand between 10 riders since the mid-point of 2022, Bagnaia’s first championship season, it was quite the rude shock.

A slap – or four – in the face kind of rude? MotoGP’s resumption in Brazil this weekend – the first time the series has visited the South American nation since 2004 – will provide at least some answers.

Marquez will have three more weeks of physio and recovery into his right shoulder, while the short (3.83km) circuit last used for the world championship in 1989 will be unfamiliar for the entire championship, 2026 rookie and Brazilian native Diogo Moreira notwithstanding.

Given Marquez has won four times when MotoGP has visited new circuits for the first time, the Spaniard and Ducati could be right back in play as soon as this Sunday in Goiania. But there’s no doubt that the dominant force of at least the past three seasons doesn’t pack as much punch as it did.

“Aprilia did a great job, and Marco Bezzecchi is in fantastic form” Tardozzi concluded in Thailand.

“We need to work hard and bring out everything we have. All our riders suffered from the [grip] changes from last Sunday’s [pre-season] test to this weekend – their performances have dropped.

“That’s not an excuse. But we need to evaluate the reasons.”