Despite the dominance shown as long as Marc Marquez was on the track - 11 wins for him, 3 for Alex, 2 for Bagnaia and one for Aldeguer, which led to an impressive 15 Grand Prix wins out of 21 full spoils - the Portuguese GP confirmed how central the presence of the nine-time world champion is for Ducati.
Without it, in fact, the Borgo Panigale manufacturer is always the favorite - Alex won in Malaysia and in Portugal took home the Sprint and a second place in the Grand Prix - but it is not a bugbear for the other manufacturers: it is beatable, as Marco Bezzecchi proved today.
Marco's second win confirms the Noale-based manufacturer as the second force in the championship - with only one rider on the track, let's remember - and Aprilia Racing arithmetically secures second place in the Constructors' World Championship with 387 points, with one race to go in the season. With three wins (Marco Bezzecchi at Silverstone and Portimao and Raúl Fernández at Phillip Island) , this is the most successful season in Aprilia Racing's history in MotoGP.
Should Ducati worry, then, ahead of 2026? It would do well to do so because as things stand, what looked like a Dream Team, Marc Marquez along with Pecco Bagnaia, has proven to be a bit of a lame pair.
Come to think of it, both Ducati and Aprilia have raced, this year, with practically only one rider. With the difference being that Jorge Martin has been out of action for almost the entire championship due to physical problems (and quite a bit of bad luck); Bagnaia, on the other hand, has been there all along, but starting with the Spanish GP at Jerez he has been a shadow of his former self.
Apart from a few rare flashes - third places at Aragon, Assen and Sachsenring - no one has been able to understand what happened to him. And the lone victory at Motegi has thickened rather than dispelled the mystery.
It even seems that instead of adapting to a GP25 that he hasn't been satisfied with from the start, his chemistry with the bike has deteriorated, and to prove it there is not only the fact that he has been overtaken by Bezzecchi in the championship, but also the gradual approach of Acosta, who has come within range of him 3 points behind and could even steal fourth place from him.
Worse than fifth, however, he won't be able to do since Di Giannantonio, now 6th, is 49 points behind with only 37 points from the Valencia GP available.
On the subject, which has become a key aspect in the championship making people talk perhaps even more about Marc Marquez's winning comeback and casting heavy shadows on social media with more or less veiled accusations against Ducati, the manufacturer has maintained the strictest confidentiality. Never a negative word about the rider, never a negative word about the GP25's alleged flaws, helping to split the fans into two factions.
An anodyne attitude that did not convince us.
Indeed, while Gigi Dall'Igna kept repeating that there were only differences in detail between the two Desmosedicis, not such as to result in riding differences, the usually explosive CEO Claudio Domenicali remained mute. From the outside, the attitude was one of great gentleness toward the rider who gave him two world championships, yet this covering fire did not convince us. And the result is that to be tarred were both the rider, Bagnaia, taken for past it by a part of the fans, and the manufacturer, Ducati, accused of the most varied faults. From having boycotted the Italian rider, to having conceived a bike made only for Marquez, to the most dramatic of accusations: having lost the characteristic of an 'easy' bike in order to follow Marc. A mortal sin that some say contributed to the loss of competitiveness of Honda.
In short, in an objectively triumphant season for the Borgo Panigale manufacturer, we ended up talking only about the problems, in an unquestionably difficult climate; one that has been unsupported, from within the team, by a political figure capable of smoothing out the corners.
And to say that the competition, Aprilia, also had to deal with serious problems from the start - the clash with Martinez and manager Valera was no small matter - while choosing an almost total openness to the outside world that paid off.
Clear positions, always defended courageously by Massimo Rivola even at the worst time when the manager was accused of signing a contract with an unacceptable release clause.
Whatever, this is politics and we know that not everyone cares, but the championship ended when Marc Marquez got hurt in the accident with Bezzecchi.
Obviously, the questions left unanswered will remain unanswered. That's the way the season went. And between the fuss of KTM's near bankruptcy, the then-resolved divorce between Aprilia and Martin, the 'Bagnaia case,' and two riders of the calibre of Quartararo and Acosta biting the bullet without a proper bike, it's clear that it was more political cases than sporting ones that hit the headlines. Not least because from the standpoint of performance we witnessed - to give one example of a sport that has surpassed motorcycle racing - a tennis tournament with only Sinner and without Alcaraz to back him up.
And that was a big problem. Will it drag on next season as well? Who can say? but the big managers who run this championship better start asking themselves, because a sport that does not advance and progress, despite being a truly great sporting discipline, even in communication, can only go backwards.