Francesco Bagnaia “happy” again after testing new Ducati MotoGP bike in Valencia

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.”