MotoGP’s 2027 rider market has officially stopped pretending to be normal. Francesco “Pecco” Bagnaia, the guy who dragged Ducati back to the top of the MotoGP universe and helped turn red bikes into weekly problems for everyone else, is leaving Borgo Panigale for Aprilia Racing from 2027. Not for a short little experiment, either. Aprilia says Bagnaia has signed a four-year deal, which tells us a whole lot about how serious Aprilia is getting.
He’ll line up alongside Marco Bezzecchi on the Aprilia RS-GP, giving the Noale factory an all-Italian rider pairing just in time for MotoGP’s huge 2027 regulation reset. That’s when the current 1,000cc engines get replaced by new 850cc units, which basically means everybody’s homework is getting thrown into the shredder and graded again from scratch. Great for fans. Less great for engineers who already look like they sleep inside data folders.
