It was an arduous outing for the factory Ducati MotoGP team at Silverstone, scoring just 10 points - all of which came from Marc Marquez.

The Spaniard salvaged a single point in a difficult sprint on Saturday, before battling to seventh on Sunday. He was passed by Fabio Di Giannantonio late on to demote him to the third-best Ducati, with brother Alex narrowly off the podium in fourth after a mistake at Turn 1.

Team-mate Pecco Bagnaia struggled even more, limping to 17th on Saturday before crashing out of 15th on Sunday.

But why did the British Grand Prix prove so difficult for Ducati?

Its biggest problem was tyre wear.

Marquez suffered a severe drop of his rear tyre during the sprint race, which he put down to graining.

Having not been an issue in practice, the problem derailed the strong start Marquez had to his sprint, dropping him from fighting in the top four to finishing in the last points-paying place.

Speaking afterwards, he said: “I'm disappointed because we experienced a new feeling in the sprint race, that in the practice we never had that drop on the rear tyre.

“I was not the only one, many riders have it, but I was the one that suffered more because it started super early, already on the lap before I started to feel a massive drop and, yeah, then I just tried to survive and finish the race.

“Because when I was in that seventh-sixth-seventh position, I was suffering a lot, risking a lot to have a crash, and the difference in points between sixth or zero is only four points. "

Bagnaia, too, complained of a huge lack of rear grip as he struggled to finish the sprint, and said the team expected a drop in the tyre, just not to such a severe extent.

He was careful to clarify that the problem was not the tyre itself, but the effect the Ducati has on it, adding: “The factory team today struggled a lot. Me and Marc were the slowest riders in the last laps, so it's difficult to imagine what to do."

Aprilia’s relative strength made the situation look worse, with Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo speculating that the Noale factory’s bikes were able to keep the rear tyre temperature lower somehow.

Sunday’s race was better for Marquez - there was not the massive drop that he had experienced in the sprint, and he was able to “manage in a normal way.”

But in a rare showing, the nine-time world champion was still nowhere near the top Ducati - though he still retains that honour in the riders’ standings, where he is fourth after 12 rounds, albeit only one point ahead of Di Giannantonio.

Instead of tyres or the Desmosedici bike, Marquez said his biggest limitation on Sunday was himself.

While he continues to recover from another right arm surgery, Marquez said his physical condition is "what I have and I need to manage,” and conceded: “Endurance is where I need to try to improve.”

Marquez insists this is not a situation which concerns him, although he hinted this is because he's already won so much. Speaking about the championship, he said: “If not, it will not change my future life. So I keep saying that.

“Yesterday I had that big issue with the tyre ride that I didn't manage well, I finished ninth. Today I felt like it was not possible to fight with the others, I didn't fight, so it's like it is.

“I fought enough during my career, I will fight when I feel well, but if you don't feel well, I want to stay on the bike as well.”

For Bagnaia, Sunday’s race ended in the gravel - in the same spot at Luffield where his 2025 British Grand Prix finished.

It was a bizarre incident, with the circuit’s CCTV footage showing the two-time world champion losing the front and tipping off on corner exit.

He said it was “very strange, honestly. I never lose the front exiting from a corner, so very strange, and looking at the data, it's very difficult to see something”.

“The only thing is that the front steering completely closed. I completely lost the front in a matter of milliseconds, so, very strange, but it's what happened. Difficult also to accept because [even before the crash] it's already one of the hardest weekends of the season."

This, Bagnaia insisted, was due to a persistent issue with rear grip that has troubled him all through the year with the 2026-spec bike.

“I struggled to be fast, I struggled to be—no, not 'fast' because I never had been fast, but I struggled to be close to the top 10 on the weekend and today there was a little possibility of finishing in the top 10, but I struggled a lot.

“We need to rise from this situation because I don't want to do another weekend like this one.”

Save for Le Mans, where Marquez withdrew with injury, this marked the factory team's lowest-scoring weekend of the year.

Marquez is 40 points back from championship leader Jorge Martin, while Bagnaia is another 57 points behind his team-mate.