The plan drawn up by Gigi Dall’Igna, top technical manager and director of Ducati Corse, envisaged that the hiring of Fermin Aldeguer would lead him to debut in MotoGP next year in the Pramac team. There he would have the best material and maximum support from the factory. This was agreed on 19 January, when Dall’Igna, the Murcian and his manager, Hector Faubel, closed the agreement to move up to the premier class in 2025.
At that dinner in Bologna, everything seemed ready for Aldeguer to be a Ducati rider on a Pramac Racing team motorbike. However, the course of events in recent weeks will bring the Spaniard onto a bike from Valentino Rossi’s structure, the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team.
Pramac’s renunciation of still being a team associated with Ducati allows the Bologna manufacturer to offer Valentino Rossi’s structure the treatment that, until the end of the season, is reserved for Paolo Campinoti’s team. The Tavullia team will therefore become semi-official and the riders will have contracts, bikes and direct support from the factory starting from 2025.
This new status guarantees the team led by Uccio Salucci and Pablo Nieto two latest model bikes (GP25) for next season. Thus, Aldeguer will immediately have the best bike on the grid, the same one that Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez, the official Borgo Panigale riders, will have in 2025. Now everything suggests that Aldeguer will race with the Tavullia team.
Fabio Di Giannantonio, VR46 Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Already last year, when during the Malaysian GP Luca Marini reached an agreement to leave the VR46 team and go to Honda, Valentino Rossi’s team was very close to taking Aldeguer. But in the end Ducati got in the way to guarantee a two-year contract and official treatment for the Spaniard in his debut in the premier class.
Ducati, which this year has eight bikes on the grid (four new and the same number from 2023) will move to having six bikes in 2025, with VR46 and Gresini as satellite teams. Valentino Rossi’s team will have semi-official treatment, while the team led by Nadia Padovani will continue to have bikes from the previous year, which are more affordable. This made it possible to renew one of its riders, Alex Marquez.
The puzzle of the future of the riders for Ducati, with Bagnaia and Marquez in the official team, is slowly coming together. However, one of the VR46 team riders still needs to be decided, where as of now everything suggests that there will be Franco Morbidelli, who will leave Pramac at the end of the season. In Gresini they will have to cover the significant lack of Marc Marquez, and the first option is to bring back Fabio Di Giannantonio, who was already there in 2022 and 2023. This year he races with VR46, but the Roman also has contacts with Pramac .
Another possibility would be for Ducati to convince Gresini to make a more ambitious salary, but in this case he would have to run with the team’s expenses or a large part of it.
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