After several months away, the old Francesco Bagnaia turned up at the Japanese Grand Prix. Following some of the most miserable races of his career, Ducati’s two-time MotoGP champion suddenly found his form, producing a dominant weekend at Motegi.
While it’s always dangerous to declare a rider is ‘back’ on the strength of one outing, there are strong indications that Ducati has managed to give Bagnaia the mysterious ‘feeling’ he has been missing throughout most of 2025. If so, this is the happy ending to MotoGP’s biggest technical story of the year.
