Gigi Dall’Igna, Ducati’s general manager and one of the main advocates for signing Marc Marquez, has praised the Spaniard’s vision in plotting his return to the MotoGP crown, which he secured this Sunday.
Any doubts surrounding Ducati’s choice of Marquez over Jorge Martin as Francesco Bagnaia’s team-mate for 2025 vanished at the season opener in Thailand.
There, according to Bagnaia himself, the Spaniard “played” with the rest of the field on his way to the first of 10 double wins he has achieved so far.
The decision to bet on Marquez came after discussions between Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali and Dall’Igna, whose role as general manager gives him virtually the same weight as Domenicali within the company.
Several parameters were considered, with speed being one of the most important. And in that respect, data from Marquez’s 2023 season on a year-old bike clearly worked in his favor. By then, the rider from Cervera had already accomplished half of his plan: to prove himself competitive again and secure a place in Ducati’s factory setup. This Sunday, he completed his mission in dominant fashion and made peace with himself.
A couple of hours after Marquez broke down in tears while riding through the final sector at Motegi, knowing he had just clinched his ninth world title, his seventh in MotoGP, Dall’Igna highlighted qualities beyond the Spaniard’s instinctive speed.
“I don’t even have adjectives to describe Marc. He has done something incredible. The clarity with which he mapped out his path to becoming world champion again is remarkable. He deserves even more praise for that than for his speed or his riding,” Dall’Igna told Motorsport.com while his team packed up for the trip to Lombok.
“I don’t think there are many athletes in history who have sacrificed as much as he has to win again,” added the engineer, who in Japan celebrated his third MotoGP title, following Bagnaia’s two crowns in 2022 and 2023.
Marc Marquez, Ducati Team
Photo by: Qian Jun / MB Media via Getty Images
Dall’Igna, who has worked with talents like Jorge Lorenzo and Bagnaia himself, also underlined Marquez’s humility, especially when it comes to admitting mistakes — few as they may have been this season.
“For someone who has won as much and has as many trophies as Marc, it’s probably easier to acknowledge errors than for someone with less success [and] who still has more to prove,” he reflected.
“We achieved a 1-2 in the race, a victory that gives us the championship, and we helped Pecco bounce back,” he said.
Dall’Igna avoided going into detail about the changes that suddenly restored Bagnaia’s competitiveness — whether the improvements are temporary or more permanent remains to be seen: “It wasn’t that it was impossible to help Pecco earlier — it’s that we had to know what to do.”
If Marquez’s weekend will be remembered as a milestone in the history of motorcycling, and of sport in general, the paddock is also hoping that Bagnaia’s breakthrough marks the turning point he has been seeking for months.
The Italian left Motegi with mixed feelings: happy to be back at his best, but frustrated that the solution to his problems hadn’t been found sooner.
Although Ducati won’t say so outright, it seems the double world champion rediscovered his lost sensations once the Borgo Panigale marque reintroduced elements from last year’s bike — the one with which he won 11 races and fought for the championship until the final round — into his GP25 bike.
“Explaining what happened matters little. What really counts is that Pecco was fast, that he took pole, won the sprint, and the race as well,” Dall’Igna said evasively.
When asked whether the fix could have been applied earlier, he insisted the process was necessary: “It’s not that it was impossible to help Pecco earlier, but we needed to know what to do. And to know what to do, sometimes you have to go through the whole journey. If you don’t go through it, you don’t reach the solution.»
Photos from Japanese GP — Race
Japanese GP — Sunday, in photos
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Japanese GP — Sunday, in photos
