After being comprehensively overshadowed by Marc Marquez so far in 2025, the cloud surrounding Francesco Bagnaia’s future at Ducati has refused to blow over as he addresses speculation linking him to Yamaha.

Talking to the media on Friday, Bagnaia addressed the rumours of him joining the factory Yamaha squad to set the record straight.

“That I don’t understand why because when there is a contract, there is a contract signed,” said Bagnaia, who has Ducati contract until 2026. “I told you Thursday in Silverstone that I will never quit what I sign and this is something I never change in my life.

“I want to stay at Ducati, Ducati wants me to stay till they finish off this contract and the next one so I don’t know why I’m seeing a lot of [fake] posts of me in blue leathers! It’s true that a rider like me that is, not in crisis, but in some hard moment, people can start thinking ‘maybe he will go’ but it’s not what is happening right now to me.”

Perhaps crisis would be an overly harsh way of describing Bagnaia’s Friday in preparation for the Aragon Grand Prix, but there is no hiding that the MotoGP two-time world champion never looked comfortable out on track, even though he pursued various solutions.

“We are trying different things,” explained the 28-year-old. “It’s not an easy situation as the bike is the same one as in the previous races so we are trying to find different solutions. Today we decided to with the long forks and the feeling was the same so I didn’t feel anything better.”

When asked how he was adopting his riding style to the Ducati’s problems, Bagnaia described the issues he was experiencing with getting his bike stopped.

“The bike is not working so I need to try different solutions and the one of braking as much as I can like I was doing before is not working normally with this bike,” he said.

“But here I’m [even] losing the front while I’m straight so today I had some lock – 30 metres of locking so it’s unbelievable. I need to do different things.”

Photos from Aragon GP – Practice