Alessio Salucci – better known as Uccio, long-time right-hand man of MotoGP Hall of Famer Valentino Rossi and now Team Director of Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team – confirmed in pitlane on Friday in Indonesia that yes, Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo Team) did test one of their GP24s on Monday in Misano.
GP24 – or the GP followed by the year – is the name used colloquially to refer to each spec or year of the Ducati Desmosedici MotoGP machine. The GP24, the 2024 version, is the bike Bagnaia fought for the title with last year and the one Alex Marquez (BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP) has won on this season. The #73, his teammate Fermin Aldeguer and Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team rider Franco Morbidelli are the riders on GP24s this season.
Bagnaia is racing the current spec GP25 this year and has had well-publicised a tougher time of it – until that very same Monday Test at Misano. There, beginnings of a breakthrough started to shine for the 2022 and 2023 World Champion.
“Ducati asked us for something,” Salucci confirms in pitlane. “We are a family, a Ducati family, a VR46 family. We tried to help him a little bit on Monday in Misano. We had our bike in our box and Ducati gave (him) another one.”
‘Uccio’ underlines it even more plainly as he continues: “On Monday in Misano, Pecco tried our bike. Morbidelli’s bike. After Monday, the bike came back into our box and after that, I don’t know.”
After that, we know what Bagnaia did: the double at Motegi, becoming the only rider after his teammate, Marc Marquez, to do a double this season.
What Bagnaia found in his extra test on the GP24 at Misano, or what may have been adapted since on his GP25, remains to be seen. It’s also unlikely to get officially corroborated by Ducati Lenovo Team either. But this is the first confirmation from any side that the #63 tried a GP24, right before that awesome return to form that saw him dominate the race weekend in Japan.