Factory Ducati team digs up its miserable MotoGP past in 2026

It’s been a tough start to the 2026 MotoGP season for the Ducati Lenovo Team, and after a brutal end to 2025 the team is putting up the kind of numbers it would rather stayed in the past.

Coming into the weekend, Ducati Lenovo Team was on an eight-race streak without a win or podium, going back to the Japanese Grand Prix of 2025.

That weekend, of course, was about as good as it gets for a MotoGP team: Marc Marquez won the riders’ title, and Francesco Bagnaia completed the pole-Sprint-grand prix treble.

A week later is when it started to fall apart, though, Bagnaia crashing out of last in the Indonesian Grand Prix only a few laps after Marquez had been taken out by Marco Bezzecchi on the first lap, breaking his collarbone and sustaining additional shoulder injuries.

Marquez missed the final five races of last season and Bagnaia retired from them all anyway, although he did win the Sprint at Sepang – even though his ride height device broke. So, no silverware for the factory team at the end of last year.

Beginning 2026, Marquez has won two Sprints, but has now retired from two of four grands prix. He was beaten straight-up by Fabio Di Giannantonio to third in Brazil, and cost himself a shot at the podium in Texas for his crash with Di Giannantonio in the Sprint.

For Bagnaia, the pace hasn’t been there to be on the podium at all, but he has also retired in two races: Spain and Brazil.

The four races at the start of this year add to the five races at the end of last year to leave Ducati Lenovo Team on a nine-race podium drought. It means an extension of the streak that was already the team’s longest since it went between Aragon 2012 and Qatar 2014 without a rostrum. Of course, the team is a long way off matching that 24-race run, but it is a statistic that is indicative of, firstly, the difficult moment the team is currently facing, but also the scale of its success in the intervening period.

Ducati – the manufacturer – also came into this weekend having not won in five races. A sixth race without a win in Jerez would have been the brand’s longest winless drought since it went eight races without a victory between 2020 and 2021.

Ironically it was Jack Miller who brought that victory drought to an end at Jerez in 2021, and this time it was Alex Marquez – of Gresini Racing – that ended the streak at the Andalusian circuit.

Heading to Le Mans in two weeks, Bagnaia’s title hopes aren’t even worth considering given his lack of pace this year. For Marquez, though, he’s now 44 points behind Bezzecchi at the top of the championship.