The relationship between Ducati and Pecco Bagnaia is living its last moments. At least that is what all the rumors point to, where it is taken for granted that the Italian, twice MotoGP World Champion with Ducati and once more in Moto2, will leave the factory with which he debuted in the premier class and the only one with which he has competed in MotoGP.
That will happen, logically, at the end of this season. According to what Bagnaia acknowledged during the Buriram tests last weekend, he has already closed his future for 2027 and everything seems to indicate that he will end up at Aprilia as a teammate of Marco Bezzecchi.
Although 2025 was a really tough season for Pecco, it seems from the preseason that he has regained his sensations with the 2026 bike which, by the way, many say is more 2024 than an evolution of a 2025 with which only Marc Márquez could go fast.
The fact is that according to Italian media such as InSella, Ducati did not want Bagnaia to leave but they did want him to have a salary reduction that the three-time champion did not view favorably. Without knowing the figures and considering those rumors, the proposal he had on the table was to continue being an official rider, but not in the Ducati team but in the VR46.
Seen from the outside there are two ways to interpret it. Either Ducati really wanted to continue keeping him, but no longer as a front man but as an effective rider but in the background, or they wanted to force Bagnaia to be the one who decided to leave.
Yamaha offered Bagnaia more money, but the Italian has opted for a more competitive project (a priori)
Either way, it seems that Bagnaia had two options on the table. One was going to go to Yamaha and, always according to the information, with a large sum of money. They would have proposed him to take the place of Fabio Quartararo who, if nothing changes, is running as the main candidate to ride a Honda in the official team. However, the lack of competitiveness that Iwata’s bike is showing made Pecco decide on the second option he had on the table: riding for Aprilia.
From what has been seen in the last season and also in this pre-season, the current Aprilia RS-GP works and is effective, so changing the regulations, it seems a safer option in terms of competitiveness. Now all that remains is for the official announcements to begin, a topic that they were even organizing among the teams so as not to “step on each other.”
It would be expected that Marc Márquez’s renewal would be announced first, which is taken for granted, and then, Pecco’s departure from Ducati, and then Aprilia would announce that he is arriving at Noale. Then it would be the turn to announce Pecco’s replacement, which everyone assumes will be Pedro Acosta. What does seem increasingly complicated is that the announcements, especially those regarding driver departures, begin to arrive before the Thai GP that is about to start, we will see.
