It was the day before yesterday that the announcement was made of the unveiling of the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team scheduled for January 14 in Rome. The event will be held in the hometown of Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Di Giannantonio.
The setting that will host the launch of the new season will be Villa Miani, a neoclassical period residence built in 1837 for the Counts of the same name. A kind of small Versailles of upper-class Rome. A pomp, a glam, that at first glance might clash with the go-karts and piadas, the dust of the knobby tyres and the greasy embers of Team Gradella, with that down-to-earth provincialism that discards the formalities with which "the Doctor" has never ceased to identify himself.
The lines that accompanied the news of the presentation on Capitoline soil described the recently ended season as one loaded with "growth and successes," cladding the collected results in the garb of satisfaction and assessing the final balance in positive terms.
But can the team in yellow's 2025 really be considered a season of "growth and successes"?
Let's proceed in order.
At Valencia, the VR46 Racing Team sent the Championship into the archives with third place in the team standings, thus replicating its own best result of 2023. That year first place was achieved by the Prima Pramac team composed of Jorge Martin and Johann Zarco, ahead of the pair in red made up of Bagnaia (who became World Champion for the second time) and Enea Bastianini. 2023, with the fairings still Mooney liveried, was also the year of Marco Bezzecchi's three victories and 19 podiums overall, a figure to which Luca Marini's six top3 placements contributed.
Despite the same position in the ranking, the big differences between the season two years ago and 2025 are two. The first: although the top class experience of riders and staff was less, the 530 points obtained were more than the 493 of 2025. The second: this year, given Pramac's move to Yamaha, Ducati's customer teams went down from 4 to 3, and with the title of runner-up in Gresini's pockets, the VR46 team did indeed finish on the World Championship podium, but as the last of Ducati's three forces, despite now being the Borgo Panigale manufacturer's Factory Supported Team. The same thing happened in its debut season in 2022 (8th place) and was repeated last year (5th place), when Bezzecchi and the GP23 did not understand each other in the corner entry phase and di Giannantonio was never fast enough to put his boots on the podium.
VR46 team points and podium positions from 2022 to 2025:
2022 - 8th place, 231 points, 1 podium
2023 - 3rd place, 530 points, 19 podiums (3 wins)
2024 - 5th place, 318 points, 1 podium finish
2025 - 3rd place, 493 points, 13 podiums
If there was an improvement from 2024 to 2025, it is definitely in the scoring of points: 318 vs. 493. And also that of podiums: 1 vs. 13. 175 points and 12 podiums of increase that nevertheless did not allow VR46 to climb the hierarchies of the Ducati cosmos, confirming for the third year out of four to be the tail-ender of the Borgo Panigale-related teams. Team manager Pablo Nieto himself admitted, "We have to improve, we have to beat Gresini, and from time to time try to beat the factory team. With material very similar to ours in Gresini they have managed to be better."
That's a declaration that hurts even more considering the fact that in 2025 the team led by Alessio "Uccio" Salucci - unlike Team Gresini, a customer team in its own right - has become factory supported, thus being able to count on the supply of an identical Desmosedici bike to Marc Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia, to be entrusted to the wrist of Fabio Di Giannantonio and Ducati engineers sent to help out in the box. Considering it pointless to compare with the performance of the 'alien' #93, the yardstick for the Roman rider can only be the numbers of Bagnaia's GP25. Both men were condemned throughout the season to trying to interpret and find the right feeling with the cryptic and moody front end of the latest Desmosedici, and in the end the two Italians finished 5th and 6th in the Championship. Bagnaia prevailed over Di Giannantonio by 26 points, and although during a large part of the season he appeared to be the most 'lost' of the Ducati riders, on the same bike Pecco secured 15 total podiums (including 4 wins, two in GPs and two in Sprints) against Diggia's 9.
It's a completely different discourse to the one that must be made for Franco Morbidelli, around whom there were rather high expectations, since he was the only one of Borgo Panigale's riders to race in 2025 already boasting a year of experience on the GP24, which Alex Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer got to grips with for the first time at the Barcelona test in November 2024.
The Italian-Brazilian, ranked 7th in the standings, started the season with two third places in the first four long races, only to disappear completely from the top 3 radar, except for the Sprint at Balaton Park. Morbidelli's season was steady, but as it wore on it lost its sheen, and the rider became nervous, out of focus, almost deconcentrated, and too prone to trivial, avoidable mistakes. The latest of which came at the season-ending Grand Prix, when after the formation lap on the grid Morbidelli crashed into Aleix Espargaro, who had stopped in his grid slot. On that occasion Morbidelli also broke his hand, due to a crash at 20km/h.
On the same bike as Franco, Alex Marquez ended the season with the runner-up title, won 3 races and made another 9 podiums overall between GP and Sprint. Morbidelli managed to keep behind only rookie Fermin Aldeguer, who, however, in addition to podiums in the GPs of Le Mans and Austria, also had the satisfaction of winning a rookie race, the one at Mandalika, leaving VR46's two Desmosedicis the only ones to remain without a win. Another interesting fact is the following: as of the Sachsenring GP, the 11th round of the year out of the 22 total, Aldeguer had 41 more points than Morbidelli, who managed not to be overtaken by the rookie only thanks to the difference of 58 points stacked up during the first half of 2025.
In the end, amid some slight internal skirmishes, Di Giannantonio's and Morbidelli's championships traveled at two very similar speeds, having finished ahead of each other in seventh and eighth for a total gap of 31 points. Distinctions must be made, however. Having acknowledged the eclipse that overshadowed Morbidelli's silhouette since mid-season, credit must be given to Di Giannantonio that his podium performances, albeit intermittent, were spread out over the entire season, from March to November, from his first podium finish in Austin to his last one in Valencia, taking in his three consecutive ones in the Sprints of Hungary, Montmeló and Misano.
According to team manager Pablo Nieto, the real scourge of the season that just ended was inconsistency, the lack of ability to replicate over time those good performances that were seen in brief spurts. Probably saying that the performance lacked speed absolutely is not quite correct; it simply lacked the formula for holding on to it over the course of the entire championship, or even just an entire weekend. "We have to understand why," Nieto told our Sky Italia colleagues a few days ago," in this season we fought for the podium in one race and in the next it was difficult to finish in the top 10." Davide Tardozzi, too, after not failing to note the importance and satisfaction with the work done as a team by VR, dwelt on the fluctuating performance of the two riders: "Franky and Diggia didn't have good performances during the season - he told the microphones of the MotoGP website - they had ups and downs."
In short, reaching some conclusions, after a less-than-sparkling 2025, Rossi's team will again have to find the momentum in 2026 to leap out of the doldrums that gripped it this year. Having arrived at the fifth year of the project, in addition to finding more glam locations for season launches, the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team is also being called upon to determine its status on the MotoGP grid. Confidence on the part of Ducati is still strong, but next year Gresini will also have a factory-backed GP26 for Alex Marquez and Aldeguer with twice the amount of experience in the premier class. At that point the numbers will dictate the lines for the future.