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Champ’s sad silver lining, Aussie’s ‘nostalgic’ return to scene of magical moment – MotoGP Japan form guide
It’s the four-part act of Francesco Bagnaia’s past two seasons in MotoGP, where Ducati’s golden boy came face-to-face in 2025 with a generation-shaping superstar on the other side of the factory team’s garage in Marc Marquez,Ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, Bagnaia – a Valentino Rossi protégé with two world championships to his name and whose stock was sky-high before Marquez arrived – is a shell of his former self, beaten badly by Marquez in their time together, and a rider whose time with the factory he fit with like a glove for so long is ticking down to a meek conclusion.
The remote Motegi circuit in the Japanese countryside is why, though, all hope isn’t lost for the career of a rider who is still just 29 years of age, and was signed by Aprilia for the next four years despite the past two suggesting he could be damaged goods. This time last year in Japan, Bagnaia – from nowhere, given his lack of form coming in – was utterly dominant.
First in practice, first on the grid,. A circuit record in qualifying, a lap record in the race. For 36 laps across two days, he never saw another bike’s rear wheel. For two days, it was 2022 all over again.
It was the same weekend where Marquez – on the verge of wrapping up a seventh MotoGP title, one that had evaded him for six years –, meaning Bagnaia had to play second fiddle in the attention stakes despite showing his teammate and everyone else the way. But it was a showing that pointed to the Italian having, perhaps, solved the front-end feeling issues that had plagued him with Ducati’s rapid but tricky GP25 machine, his metronomic pace and absence of mistakes reprising his championship-winning pomp.
It looked like the start of a turnaround, but it became more of a roundabout to head straight back to the abyss. In the final five rounds of last year after Japan, Bagnaia failed to score a single Grand Prix point, 12 of the remaining 14 points he scored for the rest of 2025 – after scoring 37 in one weekend at Motegi – coming.
It meant he slid to fifth in the standings, his worst result since his 2020 sophomore season when he was 16th. This year?
Bagnaia arrives in Japan as an afterthought, ninth in the championship without a single podium finish in either race format for six straight rounds, and as the fourth of Ducati’s six riders in the standings, inexplicably behind Alex Marquez, who has missed three rounds with injury and been compromised for many moreNo Ducati rider has won more than his 31 Grands Prix. None has more than his 28 pole positions.
The No. 63’s 63 podiums are 21 more than Australia’s Casey Stoner, the inaugural world champion for the factory in 2007, managed in Ducati red.for the first year of MotoGP’s 850cc regulation reset in 2027; that a rider with Bagnaia’s pedigree would sign for a factory that has only emerged as a serious player in the past 18 months was unthinkable when he finished inside the top two in the standings for four straight years from 2021-24.
PODCAST: Michael and Matt review a dominant weekend for George Russell at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, catch up with 2025 Bathurst 1000 winner Matt Payne, and assess the MotoGP championship picture with seven rounds remaining | After the psychological battering of the past two seasons, it’s also a sign of Bagnaia’s mindset that he opted for stability – committing for four years where most MotoGP contracts last for only two – in an attempt to rediscover that magic ingredient to recapture past glories. Glories that, not so long ago, came fortnightly rather than annually, as he returns this weekend to the scene of his most recent moment of relevance.
Motegi’s stop-go nature – the Honda-owned track is a one-of-one on the calendar with its long straights into brutal braking zones and 90-degree corners – rewards riders with trust in their machinery and confidence on the brakes, and is one of those layouts where riders either shine, or are left scratching their heads looking for answers. At a resurfaced track that’s likely to only exacerbate those characteristics, this weekend is a rare chance for Bagnaia to remind everyone – himself, Ducati, the fans – what he once was, and where his exit from a factory where he formed such a formidable partnership has its best remaining chance of one, final, feelgood act.
The form guide doesn’t suggest it, but it didn’t last year, either.
“It was a fantastic feeling,” Bagnaia reminisced of 2025 on Thursday. “I was riding in my way … like Frank Sinatra! But every season is different.
“I love the track, the people, the culture, so it’s something that is always giving me good vibes. But the reality is that we need to focus, and the , and we were just talking about coming here in 2011, the first time we came here together. Neither of us had ever been to Japan before. It’s pretty cool and s**ty to be dealing with that together, but we’re in the same boat.
But your mind starts wandering back to the old times because there’s not going to be another one.
“2011 was right at the start of my world championship career and these races that have been there all that time, it’s a strange feeling at the moment. It was half my life ago.
” Miller said his wife Ruby had shown him a Facebook post of his Japan 2022 win when he came home for three days between the Austrian GP and this weekend at Motegi, and it brought the memories of “a day where I could do no wrong” flooding back. Miller started seventh, was third after one lap, second after two, passed Martin for the lead on lap three and won by 3.409secs, having led by as many as 5.4secs on the penultimate lap when title-contending Ducati teammate Francesco Bagnaia crashed out, 12secs in arrears.
“I was pissed off with starting seventh because I’d been fast in Friday practice, but I was in the lead after three laps and I was so dialled in … I’ve never felt that way in my life,” he said. “I was riding around watching the video boards and I was trying to be gentle with the tyres, and even then the gap was still growing … it was the strangest feeling because it had never happened to me before and hasn’t happened since.
I didn’t know I could ride a motorbike like that, but I was in the flow.
“You spend the rest of your life trying to chase that, which isn’t ideal … but looking back, I’m grateful I got to experience it that one time. I’ve had some other great races, but nothing to that level. ” Miller celebrated in style when he led almost the entire race in Japan in 2022. Marc Marquez .
After an Austrian weekend where he had his nose bloodied – and salvaged a fifth place in the Grand Prix while managing a brake problem – the star Spaniard returns to the site of where he sealed his 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2025 titles with a 12-point deficit to Aprilia’s Jorge Martin, no shortage of motivation, and at a track where the last rider not on a Ducati to win was … Marquez himself, for Honda in 2019. , and at a circuit with similar stop-and-go characteristics to the Red Bull Ring and where he took pole as a rookie in 2024, Acosta is best placed to muscle in on the all-Italian Ducati/Aprilia duel up front.
Sitting 72 points from the top of the title race, he can take risks the likes of Marquez, Martin and Bezzecchi can’t. Francesco Bagnaia . Yes, really.
‘Pecco’s’ record at Motegi is strong – he’s finished no worse than second for three years – and while 2026 isn’t 2025 , Japan shapes as the one place he could offer a glimpse of his former self in a season that has largely bounced between bad and worse. If it’s not here, it’s unlikely to be anywhere else before he departs for Aprilia.
It’s the final time Miller comes to a circuit where he’s previously won in the premier class before he departs for World Superbikes at the end of the year, and while a reprisal of his 2022 domination for Ducati is no chance, it wouldn’t surprise if he’s the best of the four Yamahas this weekend. That’s not something that often amounts to much in 2026, but being in the mix for a top-10 result isn’t beyond the realms.
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