Francesco Bagnaia ended the Valencia MotoGP test “happy” with all the parts he tested on his factory Ducati MotoGP bike, despite his outing being curtailed by a late crash.
After enduring what he described as “maybe the worst” year of his premier class career, Bagnaia kicked off his 2026 campaign with his first run on the new GP26.
Completing 50 laps around the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, the two-time MotoGP champion ended the day 10th on the timesheets, just 0.358s off the pace set by Raul Fernandez on the Trackhouse Aprilia.
While hesitant to issue a final verdict, given the Valencia track is not the best indicator of a bike’s overall performance, Bagnaia was positive about the new aerodynamic package he ran on Tuesday.
“Honestly, I’m quite surprised… Not surprised, but happy that the things were going well,” he said. “I started the day with the previous [bike] and it worked well. We managed to do a good job all day. The feeling on braking [and] entry was much better.
“So now we will check, understand, analyse everything to understand the situation. And to try to have this feeling like a constant. But I’m very happy about the things we tried.
“I’m happy with the new fairing that looks good, but we need to do more laps because this track is not very good to put a lot of laps in. So, we will try again in the future.
“[The circuit is] too tight; not very fast corners. So we need to test it better, maybe in Malaysia. But for the rest, happy.”
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images
Bagnaia was the only rider to suffer a crash in the Valencia test, as he hit the deck at Turn 2 in the final hour while attempting to improve his time of 1m29.731s.
However, the Italian shrugged off the accident, saying: “Nothing [major], I was pushing. It was my chance to set the time attack. A good lap time with the time attack, but I exaggerated a bit at corner two and went wide.”
Bagnaia ended up two spots behind Nicolo Bulega, who was substituting for world champion Marc Marquez on the other side of the factory Ducati garage. But the 26-year-old said ending the day slower than a test rider wouldn’t reflect badly on him.
“I don’t care what people think and say,” he said. “Honestly, I think Nicolo did a very good day. He was working well and the lap time he did in this run was very good.
“But honestly, I was focused on myself. And knowing that maybe the time attack could improve with the time attack was fantastic today. But I didn’t have the chance because I crashed.”
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