During these last nine months the hunt for the Ducati truth \u2014 the mystic sacred stone of Borgo Panigale \u2014 has sometimes felt like an epic journey, like Harrison Ford searching for the temple of doom.<\/p>\n
This search for the truth was complicated by Ducati\u2019s failure to give anyone \u2014 us, the journalists, and you, the fans \u2014 the vaguest hint about what was happening. And then it further muddied the waters with equivocations and contradictions.<\/p>\n
In so doing, its PR department broke the two biggest rules of press and public relations\u2026<\/p>\n
![\"Chassis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Chassis-number-on-a-2025-Ducati-ridden-by-Marc-Marquez-800x450.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
What lies beneath? M\u00e1rquez\u2019s GP25, with which he won as many races as the rest of the grid combined<\/p>\n
\n Oxley\n <\/p>\n
PR rule number one: never create a vacuum of information<\/p>\n
Why? Because nature abhors a vacuum, so that vacuum of information will soon fill with something and that something is bullshit.<\/p>\n
PR rule number two: only lie when you absolutely have to<\/p>\n
Why? Because if you tell the truth nine times out of ten, people will most likely believe you when you finally tell them the lie you need to tell.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying what people are telling me to say\u201d<\/p>\n
During 2025, Ducati\u2019s PR crew didn\u2019t only create a massive vacuum of information, which created a storm of conspiracy theories \u2014 Ducati was trying to destroy its twice MotoGP king Pecco Bagnaia<\/a> in favour of its new superstar Marc M\u00e1rquez and so on. It was also too economical with the truth, so when it did maybe tell the truth we didn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n The same went for its riders.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just saying what people are telling me to say,\u201d said Bagnaia at Mandalika.<\/p>\n Of course, riders often don\u2019t tell the truth when discussing their technical matters, but when they admit to the media that they\u2019ve been told by their bosses what to say, it suggests they\u2019re fed up that they\u2019re not being allowed to explain the situation by telling the truth, so they can move on.<\/p>\n No wonder Ducati ended up in such a mess, miraculously shifting the global conversation from the factory team\u2019s dominance during most of the championship to its failures at the last few races.<\/p>\n The fact of the matter was this \u2014 the GP25 had a fundamental flaw that prevented Bagnaia and VR46<\/a> rider Fabio Di Giannantonio<\/a> from riding consistently fast. Both were up one weekend, down the next. Especially Bagnaia, who went from a start-to-finish double at Motegi<\/a> to finishing last in the Mandalika sprint the following weekend<\/a> and crashing out of last place in the main race.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always the same feeling, just the performance is different,\u201d said Bagnaia at the Valencia season finale<\/a>. \u201cWhen I\u2019m riding I always feel the same: no stopping, no turning, no braking. In Sepang<\/a> it was enough to lead the sprint [Bagnaia won the Sepang sprint], in Phillip Island<\/a> it was enough to be last and here it\u2019s enough to be 16th. It depends on the track and on the conditions \u2014 the feeling was never better\u2026 Once, in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n Bagnaia\u2019s GP25 during pre-season testing \u2013 it never improved due to a fundamental flaw<\/p>\n \n Oxley\n <\/p>\n Di Giannantonio confirmed Bagnaia\u2019s feelings.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always the front \u2014 the configuration of the 2025 bike doesn\u2019t give a sincere feeling from the front,\u201d he said at Valencia. \u201cWhen you are fast at a track in a natural way it\u2019s easier to get there and trust the bike. But when you need to work on the bike to find that trust and ride fast it\u2019s really difficult and you\u2019re just slower.\u201d<\/p>\n M\u00e1rquez may have romped to the 2025 championship \u2014 using his otherworldly talent to ride around the GP25\u2019s problems \u2014 but even he had his moments when the bike caught him out, most notably at Jerez<\/a> and Silverstone<\/a>, where he suffered Sunday crashes.<\/p>\n After Bagnaia\u2019s Mandalika sprint debrief I approached his team\u2019s PR department. I told them it was ridiculous that they hadn\u2019t given the media any indication of what was going on with the GP25, which had created this maelstrom of internet speculation, much of which cast Ducati in a bad light. If it had been honest with us from the start, none of this would\u2019ve happened \u2014 the problem would\u2019ve been identified and pretty soon the media and fans would\u2019ve moved on to another subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No other team in eight decades of MotoGP had performed quite like this. So, what did this tell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17197,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-310248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ducati","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ducati](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Ducati-GP25-of-Pecco-Baganaia-in-2025-pre-season-MotoGP-testing-800x450.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n