Ducati test rider Michele Pirro will be drafted in at VR46 for the final round of the 2024 MotoGP season at Barcelona, Motorsport.com has learned.

Pirro will be riding one of VR46’s GP23 bikes in the Barcelona GP on 15-17 November, with Fabio di Giannantonio again absent from racing after getting surgery done on his left shoulder last Wednesday.

Although Andrea Iannone impressed VR46 in the Malaysian GP last weekend after returning to MotoGP at the express wish of team owner Valentino Rossi, the one-time grand prix winner will not be racing in Spain next week.

The decision was taken by Ducati in conjunction with VR46 and will be formally communicated to the public next week.

Iannone, who had been out of action since his 2019 campaign with Aprilia after receiving a four-year doping ban, finished 17th less than a minute behind race winner Francesco Bagnaia‘s factory Ducati.

One of the conditions required for Iannone to compete again in the last race was not to look out of place at Sepang, a goal he more than achieved with his quick adaptation to the GP23.

Andrea Iannone, VR46 Racing Team

Photo by: Asif Zubairi

However, Ducati has decided to lean on the reliable Pirro in Barcelona after taking technical and development aspects into consideration.

Unlike this season where Ducati is fielding four GP24 bikes between its official team and Pramac, the Borgo Panigale marque will be down to just three factory-spec bikes in 2025. These will be raced by Bagnaia, new works team rider Marc Marquez and di Giannatonio at VR46.

The pre-season test in Barcelona, where Pirro will again be on duty at VR46, is therefore crucial for Ducati to get the final details for the 2025 bike right as MotoGP enters a two-year engine freeze phase.

Ducati’s current cushion over other manufacturers is so big that no one doubts the development freeze will be an advantage for them in the long-run.

However, the fact that Marquez does not have much experience on the current GP24 – having ridden a one-year-old bike at Gresini in 2024 – has led general manager Gigi Dall’Igna to conclude that Pirro’s presence at the test is vital for the marque.

At the moment, it is not certain whether three GP25 bikes will be shipped to Spain as is planned, or if only two will be available due to a production issue.

In any case, Ducati wants to have Pirro, who plays a major role in the development of the bike, at full capacity in Barcelona to help Bagnaia and Marquez fine-tune the bike by providing more data.

Pirro is already testing the GP25 on Wednesday and Thursday this week at Jerez. After these two days of running, the bike will be packed up and sent to Barcelona for the first official 2025 test on 19 November.

Lancia’s sporting director Eugenio Franzetti has explained why the brand is making its rally return in Rally4 and what is required to make a comeback to the World Rally Championship.

Lancia, the winner of a record 10 WRC constructors’ titles (1974-1976, 1983, 1987-1992), is set to return to the rally stages next year with its all-new Ypsilon Rally4 car. Officially launched last month, the car will compete in the Italian Rally Championship and the newly created one-make Lancia Rally Trophy.  

The creation of the two-wheel drive Ypsilon Rally4 marks a return to rally for Lancia, 50 years after it won its first WRC title with the legendary Stratos in 1974. 

While Lancia’s emergence has created much fanfare, there had been speculation it would consider a Rally2 programme. It ultimately confirmed a Rally4 project that will see the brand contest the 2026 European Rally Championship.

Lancia has not ruled out a future WRC comeback and would consider forming a business plan once the WRC has announced its 2027 technical regulations. The FIA is expected to reveal its new regulations in December this year.

According to Franzetti, the stability of the Rally4 regulations was among the considerations that swayed the car maker to make its return at the lower end of the rally pyramid.  

“What we need is to have the rules [2027 regulations], we need to know how the Rally2 of the future will be made and how the Rally1 of the future will be made. Once we understand this, in a few months we can also understand how much it costs to make them and how much. And then once we understand the rules, we can create a business plan,” Franzetti told Motorsport.com’s Italian edition. 

“Once the business plan has been created, we can put the costs on one side of the scale, and the value of visibility and the revenue on the other side, and understand if this scale is a scale that is positive. 

“We do motorsport and there is a return on investment. The return on investment is given on one hand by the technical and logistical costs of doing it, on the other hand it is substantially the value of visibility, which has a great significance. This visibility also brings you sponsors, partners and so on. All this clearly must be extremely positive. 

“Today the only certain rule is Rally4. We know how it is made, how much it costs and everything. That’s why Lancia is back with a Rally4. The only certain thing we know is the regulation, it’s clear, it’s an extraordinary product, interesting from a racing point of view and from a commercial point of view.”

Lancia Ypsilon Rally4

Photo by: Lancia

Lowering costs and the introduction of a cost cap are factors that could interest Lancia to rejoin the WRC. 

Franzetti also admitted to be an admirer of the Rally2 class, which Lancia’s owner the Stellantis Group is already visible in through the Citroen C3 Rally2 programme.   

“Let’s try to create championships that cost a little less and that have a cost cap, after which, staying within it, you do what you want,” he added. 

“You have to make a championship with a finite number of millions, after which the engineers can unleash their imagination, knowing that motorsport is used as a promotional tool and therefore in any case everyone will bring what they know how to do also in terms and in the end it’s a show case. 

“Today we are all moving towards hybrid, electric, electrified. I imagine that everyone wants to demonstrate that they know how to do that thing there. But a cost cap would be enough and then leave space for the others.

“The Rally2 is a very interesting car because it’s fast, it lets you win [national] championships, obviously the European championship, which allows you to go very fast also in WRC. 

“Today, with few Rally1s [in WRC], if you have a Rally2 you can also get into the top 10, even get close to the top five and you have crazy visibility. And then it’s a commercial product, it’s a product that you sell and whoever buys it is happy, it [the car] runs well, has an acceptable cost per kilometre and so on. The Rally2 was an extremely clever specification.”

Last Saturday, after crashing out on the third lap of the sprint race at Sepang while fighting his rival for the win and the championship crown, Francesco Bagnaia was both hurt and bewildered. The reigning world champion was unable to find a rational explanation for the five zeroes he has accumulated so far in the sprint races which, as he himself pointed out, have been decisive in leaving Jorge Martin a step away from the title.

The Pramac rider will be celebrating in 10 days’ time if he is able to win the sprint, in which he has built a large part of his championship chances, at the Barcelona season finale that replaces the cancelled Valencia GP.

“I just need to improve my performance on Saturdays. I have to understand why I have failed so much, work on it. On Sundays, I was at a high level, but it was the sprint that made the difference,” lamented factory Ducati rider Bagnaia.

The results achieved by the two riders are frightening, and put them on a level unattainable for the rest. Paradoxically, Bagnaia is very close to losing a world championship which, numerically speaking, is his best season since he has been competing in MotoGP.

His performance in the Sunday races has been phenomenal, with 10 victories and 15 podiums out of a possible 19. In the longer races, Bagnaia has scored 345 of his 461 total points. Subtraction indicates that the Turin native has scored 116 points on Saturdays, 48 fewer than Martin’s tally of 164.

In the amount of sprint wins, they are more or less on a par (seven to Martin’s six), but the contrast between them is in the number of retirements. Bagnaia has five to his opponent’s two.

Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing, Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Statistics need to be interpreted and context needs to be added. In the era before the weekend format change introduced in 2023, only counting Sunday results, Bagnaia would lead the overall standings with a 24-point cushion and would be just one point away from becoming a three-time world champion in the premium class.

But that model of championship is now a thing of the past, and the current situation highlights one of Martin’s strengths.

“We already knew that one of Jorge’s strengths was his explosiveness, and now he has found a way to maximise that,” Pramac team manager Gino Borsoi tells Autosport. “To understand his form and the records he has set, I would point to that explosiveness and the mentality he has adopted this year.

It would be unfair to conclude that the reigning champion has failed if we consider that nobody has won more than him in a year in which he has broken all the individual records of any Ducati rider

“Now he goes out to race knowing that he is not obliged to always win, but that the important thing is to perform well, bring the bike back, and then let the standings be the judge.”

Apart from the points on offer, the main difference between Saturday and Sunday races is that the bikes are not as fine-tuned in the former as they are in the latter. In this sense, it is no coincidence that Bagnaia, one of the most methodical riders on the grid, tends to make a big jump in performance between Saturday and Sunday.

Combined with his enormous talent and his temperance, the two-time champion makes the most of the working method established at Ducati since the arrival of Gigi Dall’Igna in 2014. Based on the collection and analysis of the information provided by the eight Desmosedici at the Bolognese constructor, this protocol allows the performance of the bikes to be optimised much more quickly and efficiently throughout the weekend.

The most useful test bench for drawing conclusions is the sprint race. Until then, the technicians have ‘only’ three practice sessions to analyse and look for the best set-up.

Martin has regularly managed to find the limit quickly in sprints, where Bagnaia tends to take longer to come to the boil

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

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“Jorge adapts very well and very quickly to the bike from the moment he gets on the bike on Friday morning,” an authoritative voice from Ducati tells Autosport. “On the other hand, with Pecco we often see that he grows as the practices go by.

“It’s usually on Sundays that he makes the difference, because the people around him have been able to collate all the information available. With all those resources, he usually arrives at the most decisive moment with the bike completely to his liking.”

“From the outside, without knowing all the details, you get the feeling that Pecco arrives a little bit more precise at the sprint, but then, with all the information from the rest of the Ducati team, about tyre consumption, electronic set-up and so on, he makes that leap that is reflected on Sundays,” adds a track engineer from a rival team which works with one of the world champions on the grid.

In Malaysia, this feeling was once again evident, not so much because of Saturday’s slip-up, but because of the victory the following day. Bagnaia’s 10th win has sublimated Ducati’s method, despite the fact that it is practically impossible to retain the title in Barcelona.

Should that happen, it would be unfair to conclude that the reigning champion has failed if we consider that nobody has won more than him in a year in which he has broken all the individual records of any Ducati rider. In any case, it will be that Martin’s reading has been more accurate.

Bagnaia faces an uphill struggle to win his third world title despite winning 10 Grands Prix in 2024

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Francesco Bagnaia’s hopes of retaining the MotoGP title are hanging by a thread. The factory Ducati rider is facing a 24-point deficit to Pramac rival Jorge Martin heading into the final round of the season in Barcelona next week.

Although the odds have been against Bagnaia for some time, it was his crash from second place in the Malaysian Grand Prix sprint that has effectively sealed the deal in Martin’s favour.

From the early part of the year, Bagnaia had identified sprint races as being the main weakness in his title bid. After the first six rounds, he had accumulated just 14 points on Saturdays while his chief rival Martin had tallied up 56. By this stage, Bagnaia had actually outscored Martin by three points in Sunday races, but was left with a mammoth 39-point gap to overcome in the overall table.

To be fair to Bagnaia, he has upped his performance in half-distance races in the ensuing period. Since the Italian Grand Prix back in June, Bagnaia has picked up six sprint wins in 13 attempts, compared to four for Martin. Over the course of the full year, Martin is still ahead in the reckoning with seven wins to six thanks to his early-season form but clearly, the defending champion has shown that he can be rapid in the new format.

However, while Bagnaia knows how to score big on any given day, he has also hemorrhaged big points to the championship leader over the course of the season.

As early as the second round in Portugal, the two-time champion gave away a sprint win by outbraking himself at Turn 1 while leading the race. He later revealed that a mistake in miscalculating the impact of decreasing fuel load on braking led to him running off track.

A DNF in the Le Mans sprint was partly down to him, as the crash in qualifying left his primary bike with too much damage. The back-up GP24 that he ended up racing was described by him as “dangerous”, forcing him to pull into the pits after just three laps.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

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Then there was the biggest error of all in Barcelona, where he crashed on the final lap while circulating a second clear of his nearest rival.

Even with that patchy run in the first part of the season, Bagnaia had managed to pull himself to the top of the championship, incidentally after Martin dumped his bike while leading the German Grand Prix.

But when the championship resumed at Silverstone in early August after the summer break, Bagnaia failed to capitalise on the situation, hitting the deck in the sprint while having a podium in the bag.

That weekend clearly showed the 27-year-old’s tendency to make errors at the worst time possible. The 10-point lead he had inherited after Sachsenring was turned into a three-point deficit and the focus suddenly shifted to Martin’s mental strength in overturning a psychological and sporting disadvantage.

In that context, it is easy to explain why Bagnaia fumbled under pressure in Malaysia at Turn 9 – admittedly at one of the trickiest corners on the track, a complex uphill left-hander that comes at the end of a fairly long straight.

The retirement from Sepang marked his fourth non-score in a sprint event this year (compared to two for Martin). That goes to show why he has lost a whopping 48 points to his title rival on Saturdays alone.

Points scored by Martin and Bagnaia in sprints:

Of course, Bagnaia then responded with a bang on Sunday, outduelling Martin in the early stages of the grand prix before sprinting clear to win by 3.1s.

It was his 10th win of the year from 19 grands prix, which already puts his 2024 campaign as one of the best by any rider in the history of the premier class.

With that success, he is now tied with ex-Ducati and Honda star Casey Stoner in the list of riders with most wins in a season, albeit with a lower success ratio due to there being more races on the calendar now.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Another triumph in the Barcelona finale would mean he would have scored as many victories as Valentino Rossi did in 2001, ‘02 and ‘05, but again with the same caveat as before with Stoner.

In fact, 11 victories was the maximum motorcycling legend Giacomo Agostini achieved in his career in a single season – in 1972, back when there were just 13 races in the 500cc class.

Points scored by Martin and Bagnaia in grands prix

With those numbers, it would be easy to conclude that Bagnaia would have been champion if MotoGP had not overhauled its weekend format and added sprint races to the schedule. After all, if you take sprints out of the equation, it would be Bagnaia leading the championship by 24 points heading to Barelona and not Martin.

But that only explains part of the picture. Bagnaia is known to build his speed over the course of a weekend. He starts off slowly on Friday and gradually picks up the pace, making steady gains in both single-lap performance and long run speed.

A crucial part of that trajectory is the sprint, which gives him the opportunity to hone his speed in real-life racing conditions. It’s one of the reasons why he is able to win races on Sundays after being outperformed by Martin in the sprints.

Of course, it’s important to note that some of his dismal sprint results in sprints haven’t entirely been of his own making. At Jerez, for example, he was blameless when he scored a duck after being sandwiched by Brad Binder and Marco Bezzecchi. He also strongly hinted at a faulty Michelin tyre for his troubled run to ninth place in the Aragon sprint, a race in which Martin finished on the podium.

But those misses pale in comparison to the unforced errors committed by Bagnaia and it’s a key reason why he may have to surrender the crown to Martin in a little over a week’s time.

The rain-affected Brazilian Grand Prix delivered what was perhaps the biggest shock podium of the Formula 1 season so far.

Max Verstappen‘s charge from 17th on the grid to the front had been anticipated by very few people, and it marked his first triumph since the Spanish Grand Prix back in June.

Right behind the Dutchman were the two Alpine cars of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, who scored more points for the squad in a single afternoon than they have all season so far.

The joy of the top three was in contrast to the struggles that other teams faced in the wet conditions, with recent benchmark squads McLaren and Ferrari struggling with a lack of pace.

World championship contender Lando Norris was fighting front-locking problems, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc described his SF-24 as pretty horrendous to drive.

“We were just not fast enough,” declared the Monegasque after the race. “The car was extremely difficult to drive and very, very pointy, very digital, very oversteery.”

While Verstappen and the two Alpines were certainly given a helping hand to their result by the red flag that handed them a free tyre change, it would be wrong to say that this was a fluke result won by a roll of the dice.

Even after the red flag resumption, the trio were the fastest cars on track, showing that the end result was certainly more down to how the relative cars performed in the wet.

It is a well-known phenomenon that some cars are more suitable for wet conditions than dry, as multiple elements come together to help drivers overcome deficiencies that are exposed in the dry.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine

Photo by: Alpine

One factor that almost certainly helped Alpine was the fact that the wet masked one of its main weaknesses: engine performance. With the tricky conditions more about managing throttle input than simply having the most power, the squad was on a much more level playing field than it is in the dry.

But one other interesting element popped up as a factor that could explain the shuffling of the order in the wet – and that is the aero impact of wet-weather tyres.

The current generation of ground-effect cars are very sensitive to ride height, and just a couple of millimetres of difference in ground clearance can have a pretty big impact in terms of downforce levels, with all the juicy performance coming as close to the track as possible.

So with the diameter of the inter tyre that most teams use being 5mm greater with its tread pattern than the slick (725mm compared to 720mm), there is a direct impact on where the car platform is running compared to where it sits on a slick.

And it must be remembered that teams were already finding that they could not run as close to the ground as they would have liked in Brazil because of the Interlagos bumps, so those cars already falling out of the ideal window will have been further pushed away by running on inters.

But it is not just the minuscule ride-height impact that can make a difference when it comes to the aero impact of the tyres, because sidewall stiffness is perhaps an even more important element.

How the tyre deforms under cornering load, and when downforce is applied, has a big impact on the car’s aerodynamics, which is why teams put a lot of effort into ensuring that their cars are optimised to take the changing shape of tyres into account.

That is why wind tunnel tyres are designed to replicate in perfect scale the sidewall deformation that real-life tyres have.

A change of sidewall stiffness and a subtle impact on ride height is certainly more than enough to alter the aero map of a car, potentially shifting the balance and making what is a benign car in the dry quite pointy in the wet.

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu, whose own team seemed to be worse off on the inter than the slick, said it was not a new phenomenon for his squad – as Spa earlier this year had exposed problems of his car losing rear downforce when put on to rain-weather tyres.

Pirelli tyres on the car of Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“The amount of aero balance we need to take out just shows the rear of the car is weak on the intermediate tyres, which is a new problem this year,” he said.

“You design the car with your wind tunnel tyres for dry conditions, obviously. Then, I can’t remember when we first ran the inters or wet, but straight away we lost so much stability.”

On the flip side, the Red Bulls and Alpine certainly seemed to be a step ahead of the opposition in the wet.

What the data says

While teams do not yet have answers as to whether the aero influence of the tyres was decisive in Brazil, analysis of lap times definitely points to some shift in trends.

Most interesting is that the Brazilian GP weekend, with its dry sprint event and wet rain race, offered us a snapshot of performance differences across the two conditions.

And while qualifying comparisons are not totally indicative, because some cars did not show their full potential in the same conditions as others, they do at least show how some teams moved around in the pecking order – with Alpine and RB certainly looking relatively better in the wet and Ferrari dropping back.

The below results show the fastest car from each team in Q3.

Sprint qualifying result – Dry

Qualifying – Wet

But a more accurate gauge of the pace of the cars, and how things moved around from the dry to the wet, comes from race pace.

Looking at the fastest car from each team, based on clean racing laps – so not including pitstops nor restarts – we get the following data set.

Sprint – Dry

Race – Wet

Red Bull and Mercedes’ pace was certainly much improved in the wet relative to its rivals, while McLaren and Ferrari fell back.

And Ferrari’s was perhaps the biggest drop-off, as Alpine and RB proved to be quicker over the stints.

“They’ve turned that around quickly” an impressed colleague said to this writer on entering the media centre at the Jarama Circuit on Tuesday morning, as a banner reading “2024/25 Madrid Official Testing” was being erected.

While the sight of a banner might seem like one of the least impressive feats at a race track, the quick turnaround of the wording perfectly encapsulated the mighty effort and great lengths at which Formula E has gone to in order to ensure pre-season testing takes place this week and, at the time of writing at least, without issue.

The all-electric championship’s announcement to cancel its pre-season test in Valencia last Thursday and move to another location inside just 72 hours was both ambitious but also completely the right decision.

With more than 200 killed, many still missing, and infrastructure ravaged by flash flooding, the championship had a moral obligation not to go ahead with four days of running at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit.

“The test was kind of a second thought. We were there to try to help the community, to try to serve them and trying to get back to normality as soon as possible. That was the top priority of Formula E,” championship co-founder, Alberto Longo, told Motorsport.com.

“There was no chance that [testing] could have happened. I believe that operationally, it was doable, but it was more on the sense of we couldn’t be taking resources out of that city, at that particular moment where there are still people missing.”

Decision to cancel made, attention immediately turned to whether an alternative could be found at such short notice and “how do we get approximately 100 tonnes of equipment from Valencia to any track in the south of Europe and within a time frame of 72 hours”, adds Longo.

Despite the events of the past week, Formula E has been able to deliver a pre-season test to schedule

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

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With its relatively close connections to Valencia, being only 350km (or an approximately four-hour drive) away, on-site infrastructure and a FIA Grade 2 homologation, Jarama was the first and realistically only choice, and an agreement was quickly reached with the circuit operators.

While teams had avoided getting equipment stuck in the Valencia region and able to relocate relatively easily, this was not the case for Formula E as its entire logistical base is situated at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit.

Questions arose over whether it would even be possible to get supplies out of the city given the battered road connections, let alone whether it would be feasible in the short time available given the trouble in sourcing transport. In the end, some eight trucks made nearly 40 trips ferrying equipment through Spain to the country’s capital, the first only arriving at 11pm on Friday and the last at 3pm on Monday.

“At some point, even [last] Thursday, I was telling Jeff [Dodds, CEO] that we might not even do the first race because we have all the equipment there in Valencia” Formula E co-founder Alberto Longo

“We have a very positive attitude in Formula E, we have a lot of people that are fully committed to the company and they have worked 24/7 for three days, and the spirit was always very positive,” says Longo.

“If you talk to the people in the ecosystem, they will all tell you that there is no chance that we will ever make it. Not because they don’t have trust in us, because I actually believe that they do, but because of the whole situation.

“You could just watch the TV and say how on earth are these guys going to get all the equipment to Madrid and have enough time to provide services to the level that we’re providing services today.”

Even with the infrastructure now in place at Jarama, another issue arose in the form of making sure the extra equipment which is needed to host a race was going to be available, without which the season-opener in Sao Paulo on 7 December would be at risk.

Championship co-founder Longo with Zane Maloney and Lucas Di Grassi at Jarama

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

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“We needed to bring absolutely every piece of equipment that we have in Valencia here in order to organise all the logistic for the races,” says Longo.

“At some point, even [last] Thursday, I was telling Jeff [Dodds, CEO] that we might not even do the first race because we have all the equipment there in Valencia and obviously that equipment is absolutely critical for Sao Paulo and Mexico.”

Formula E has been criticised over the last decade on its direction with regards to its racing and for various other aspects, some often warranted, but what has been achieved over the last few days has been nothing short of impressive, while at the same time not forgetting those who have suffered because of the floods in Valencia.

A minute’s silence was held before any running on Tuesday in honour of the victims, while a donation of €50,000 has been made by the championship to offer support, with a fundraising page created for others to make offerings.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, Formula E’s DNA of trying to put on world championship races in the heart of cities across the globe has prepared it for the events of last week, allowing it to be fluid in how it deals with crisis maybe unlike any other championship.

“Operationally speaking, we have [dealt with] worse things than this one, there have been miracles in many other places in the world,” adds Longo. “Normally we race in the heart of the biggest cities of the world, with a lot of impact politically. You have seen some cancellation of events, all that is because of a political issue or challenge.

“We have never seen an issue in terms of operation. Why? Because we have an amazing team that can really deliver and this is the perfect example again.”

As Formula E commences pre-season testing, it hasn’t forgotten the victims of the Valencia flooding

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images