Ducati is doing its best to rally around Pecco Bagnaia, which is a credit to him, but we still don't understand this. In fact, the Lenovo Ducati team also has its professionalism to protect, they are not runaways, and both the latest declarations and Bagnaia's results deserve a bit of commentary that is perhaps less affectionate but more professional.
We don't want to say that Pecco's words are equivalent to the blunt "this car is a truck" uttered by Alain Prost in 1991 at the Japanese GP and which earned him his immediate dismissal from Ferrari because it was interpreted as an attack on the brand and a damage to its image...but in short what is happening to the two-time MotoGP world champion must be explained. And in as much detail as possible.
Because while on the one hand it is completely understandable that one rider is entirely at ease with one bike and the other less, on the other what has happened in the last week is completely beyond any logic.
A rider of Bagnaia's calibre cannot and should not go from a pole, sprint, Grand Prix hat trick at Motegi, to being last (with a crash) in Indonesia. This is frankly inconceivable.
Such a total, absolute, lack of confidence, a rider of that calibre can only have because of a technical problem, identifiable and due to a gross error.
But not a few clicks, imperfect software tuning, or other details that may not make the bike and rider perform. Something huge. Something that is simply not working.
Which, frankly, brings to mind Luca Cadalora 's words spoken as soon as he returned to the pits when he first tested Wayne Rainey's world championship Yamaha 500: "Guys, there must be something wrong: the fork seems stuck!"
Of course, it was all about set-up back in the day. The Californian was forcefully riding an extremely stiff motorcycle, Luca wanted a bike that worked on the suspension.
Those who know the dynamics of a motorcycle understood what I mean, but here we are beyond that: we are talking about a motorcycle and a rider who got onto the podium, or close to it in the first five Grands Prix and then for eleven more did not see the light until Japan. Only to plummet back to the underworld at Mandalika.
You might be able to see some logic in that, but we can't, because we are no longer in the days when Cadalora would return to the pitlane and give his impressions - which were diametrically the opposite - of those of Rainey, who had won three world championships with that piece of iron.
Today we are in the world of electronics, telemetry and petabytes of data. Please don't even pretend to fool us by claiming that, even you friends of Ducati, don't understand.
Be that as it may, the GP25 may be more difficult to ride and even less performing (if at all) than the GP24, but not to run a Grand Prix in last place and behind, with all due respect, Somkiat Chantra. This is mocking the fans.
And, of course, it is also feeding the keyboard warriors who, in the face of this nonsense, speak of betrayal, plots and conspiracies, slandering Ducati on the basis of nothing.
No, wait a minute, let's wait: not on the basis of nothing, but on the basis instead of an absolute omertà that cannot be justified by the correct position to defend the rider. Because that is not how you protect a rider. This is not how you protect even a child; in fact it is diseducational.
Tardozzi rightly, in one of his heartfelt defenses, asked why this overkill in asking for information happens only for Ducati. "Ask Honda what chassis it is using," he said. But apart from the fact that HRC are asked, here we are not wondering if a throttle was left open, as happened to the unfortunate Kato at Suzuka, and also to Casey Stoner moreover. This is just a question of why the bike, according to the rider, seems to be absolutely unrideable.
In these cases, many times, you call in the test driver/rider and have him try the car/bike in question, just as the owner left it, and trust his answers. We would be really curious to know the impressions of Michele Pirro, who of things that don't work and even though he will have been forced to try, must have quite a bit of experience.
As usual these are our considerations, reflections aloud, as we would have done at the table with Claudio Domenicali or Gigi Dall'Igna in front of us, without of course having the pretension of getting an answer. Maybe it would have been enough for us to look them in the face, to understand.