The differences between Ducati's year-old bike and the newest version of its machine was one of the defining storylines of the 2025 MotoGP season - but was there "too much drama" made of it?

Such is the view of VR46 Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli, who spent the year riding a year-old Ducati GP24 but, from what he's seen in the results and in the data of his fellow Ducati riders on various specs, felt the matter of spec was a red herring through the campaign.

What is important to be mindful of is there was never a sharp GP24/GP25 distinction, especially following an off-season in which the very latest version of the Ducati engine was discarded.

So the differences between the set-in-stone, hand-me-down machine available to Morbidelli, Fermin Aldeguer and 2025 success story Alex Marquez and the works-spec bikes of Marc Marquez, Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio could be described, according to Ducati, as quite individual and even granular.

The 2025 engine was only slightly different, though combined with the new ride height device may have redressed the weight balance in a way that totally hamstrung Bagnaia. The 2025 aero designs spent the year going in and out of use. The chassis and swingarm specs, too, where not a consistent separator.

Those differences were not seen by Ducati as fundamental. And Morbidelli - a Ducati satellite rider but not an employee of the manufacturer, and also a good friend of Bagnaia's - seemed to feel the same way as Ducati.

"I think it doesn't really matter," he told media when asked what exact spec of hand-me-down bike he will ride at VR46 next year.

"Ducati is a great package, a great bike. If you really want to look at the things how they really went, everybody struggled [regardless of spec] - '24, '25, doesn't matter, everybody struggles sometimes, in some occasions. So it doesn't really matter."

Morbidelli acknowledged that he hadn't ridden the GP25. He was speaking during the final round at Valencia, so this could have changed in the subsequent post-season test - except he missed that through injury sustained in a daft grid collision with Aleix Espargaro.

"What happened this year, now it's the last race and we can talk more openly - but there has been too much drama between '24-'25-'26, twenty-whatever," Morbidelli continued.

"Ducati is a great package. It's a package that works very well. '24, '25', 26', '23, '21, it works really well since 2020. So...I am not in the position to say so because I didn't try the '25, but I have seen the performance of the riders that have been trying both of them, that have been going back and forth with this spec, because of some doubt or because of something.

"Sincerely, if I have to tell you this package is better...clearly better than the other...I cannot tell you. I just can tell you that both packages are really, really good when they work well. And if they don't work at their top, they struggle - like we've seen '24s struggling, like we've seen '25s struggling.

"Well, if I have to analyse clearly, '25 has been struggling much less than the '24 - because we've seen Marc P1-P2 basically all year long. He struggled much less than anybody else, just in Indonesia he was struggling. We've seen his '25 struggle just once.

"The other riders with the '25, yeah, have been struggling sometimes - like the other riders with the '24! To me, that's what happened, in simple terms."