Fabio Di Giannantonio will in 2026 head into a fifth year of a MotoGP career that once looked nailed on to end after two. In some sense, he's already won.

But Di Giannantonio's big opportunity of a factory Ducati contract covering 2025-26 (combined with a continued VR46 placement) didn't bring him a 'career year' this past season, and despite some flourishes - including a strong sign-off at Valencia to keep Ducati's podium streak going - was overall a disappointment.

The comments of factory Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi about the season to MotoGP.com underline a cause for some nervousness. Tardozzi stressed that he was "absolutely happy about the work" of the VR46 outfit, but felt that its two riders, Di Giannantonio and Franco Morbidelli, "for some reason didn't perform in the proper way during the season".

"They had some ups and downs, and that's something that doesn't give the team what they deserve - because, again, the team was working very, very good," Tardozzi said.

For what it's worth, Ducati general manager Gigi Dall'Igna was complementary of Di Giannantonio in his final official column for the season - but coming out of 2025 it's very difficult to feel like Di Giannantonio is in a strong position to keep his factory contract going forward, having also been comprehensively usurped in the Ducati satellite ranks by Alex Marquez and maybe Fermin Aldeguer.

But what exactly has gone wrong, and what are the issues for Di Giannantonio to focus on in what is shaping up to be another career-defining season?

The GP24/GP25 question

The elephant in the room for Di Giannantonio is that the season he's just had looks, in many aspects, a lot like the season Pecco Bagnaia has had.

Both blew hot and cold with a works-spec bike that Ducati insisted was not different enough to the predecessor to explain the uneven form. Both produced results that looked out of step with the previous year - when Bagnaia was just about the quickest of the Ducatis and Di Giannantonio was a match for the younger Marquez, who suddenly dominated both of them in 2025.

And, of course, both got absolutely demolished by Marc Marquez, joining a long list of riders who did not particularly care for being on the same spec of bike as the now seven-time MotoGP champion.

The Ducati position on this seems to have been summed up quite nicely by Morbidelli - a Ducati rider though not a Ducati employee - saying that there was "too much drama" over bike specs this past year.

Even Di Giannantonio seemed to largely agree with that, having also never tried the GP24 but instead gone from the year-old bike in 2024 straight to the newest stuff.

But he's certainly felt his bike hasn't been quite maximised.

"This year actually we changed the bike so, so many times," he insisted.

"And we are working with Ducati, with the team to get the maximum potential of the bike, but when you bet on trying new things, sometimes you lose that immediate effect, you are not able to set the fastest time of the bike of that moment. For sure when you're trying to reach the record lap of every race track you need to have the maximum confidence, the maximum feeling.

"So when you try so many things, the good thing is that you can improve fast but the bad thing is that you never extract the best potential from the bike.

"I think Diggia with a factory Ducati, with the best feeling that maybe I got in other years and races, can fight for podiums and wins every race - and we are not doing it."

He reiterated at a different point: "At the end, when you get the best feeling with the bike, it's better compared to having the newest parts on the market."

A lack of front confidence was the issue, and it manifested itself in a lack of day-to-day performance consistency, much less weekend-to-weekend. It should be taken for granted in a MotoGP season this long and this competitive in terms of venues that some riders will star one Sunday and flop the next - that's normal - but Di Giannantonio in particular seemed to struggle to nail three consecutive days, really until Valencia.

Is he aggressive enough?

But what specific area of performance let him down?

Qualifying was a recurring issue. Di Giannantonio went 8-13 against team-mate Morbidelli through the season, with an average relevant deficit of a tenth.

That's not horrible, but a Ducati factory contract implies Di Giannantonio really should be beating Morbidelli in every metric.

Coupled with this single-lap underdelivery was what felt like a pattern of timidity in the early action of races, something that Di Giannantonio seemed to implicitly acknowledge and that certainly felt like a contrast to Morbidelli's high-risk/high-reward (you could use other descriptors if you want) style. These clashed.

At one point there was a conversation within VR46 involving both riders over how to work better together, but this, according to Di Giannantonio, could not be put into action. The implication certainly wasn't that he was the unwilling party.

But when asked about whether he needed to be more forceful and aggressive against his rivals in the early laps, Di Giannantonio said: "Honestly, I don't have the balls to be that kamikaze, let's say, in the first lap. For sure I try to get the best position possible, to be more in front, but with the limit [emphasis] on surviving.

"At the end we are going 200-300km/h end of the straight for braking, and you have in front of you at the end a mix of 200kg more between bike and human. So if you divebomb someone, it hurts. And, honestly, I always prefer to do something clean."

The overall feeling from the season - the 'eye test', if you will - is that this approach didn't necessarily serve him the best. But the data suggests that he was maybe just getting unlucky.

In the opening five laps of the sprints across the season, Di Giannantonio actually gained positions worth 22 points. But he surrendered 21 points' worth of positions in those same five-lap stretches on Sunday.

Meanwwhile, Morbidelli gained 12 on Sundays - and lost 12 in the sprints.

However, the front-row opportunities are the ones that mattered most, and Di Giannantonio had six. He dropped out of the top three within the first five laps in four of the six, and stayed in the podium places just once. As for the remaining opportunity - the Hungarian Grand Prix - he was forced from the front row into the pitlane by a bike issue before the start.

What now?

Ducati needs more from Di Giannantonio if a renewal is to become at all logical. But he is not that far off, not fundamentally uncompetitive.

The Race's rankings tally through the season suggests he did not compare terribly to his fellow Ducati riders.

Average position in The Race's rankings, 2025

M Marquez - 3.7
A Marquez - 6.3
Di Giannantonio - 9.8
Aldeguer - 9.9
Bagnaia - 11.4
Morbidelli - 12.8

Read more: Every 2025 MotoGP rider ranked worst to best

But it is a coveted gig, and Di Giannantonio can't leave any room for doubt as to whether he can truly be the complete package Ducati needs.

Perhaps he is exactly as aggressive as he needs to be, but he has to be starting from better grid positions - and must also dedicate the winter to finding out why his performance would 'leak' from one day to another and limit his points potential.