#getting ducati to apologise to HIM at the start of 2022 still one of the funniest things any rider has done recently. like that's *ducati*

[batsplat]

a very much plausible scenario played out in my head, where acosta and works ktm are a potent mix contending for a title, and pecco would usually have his terrible season start with marc asserting himself as primary rider to fight acosta. that would, perhaps, mean ducati will team order their reigning world champion pecco. it would be preferable for ktm to still not quite be there and prepared to take on the challenge, as i’d like to see how marc and pecco match up when they have only the two of them to worry about, but, hey, i’ll take what the season will give me!

the thing about ducati and team orders, right, is that usually they have five existential crises and try to powerfully hint to riders that they would like them to team order themselves and then have another existential crisis or twelve and are so terrified of the whole thing becoming a discourse point that... they're actually really bad at issuing them. like, yes, in an ideal world they'd like everyone to back their preferred challenger, but in reality it was usually up to the individual riders in both 2017 and 2022 whether they played ball. there were definitely late 2022 races where ducati riders caused pecco some real trouble, and the ones who most clearly made way for him on-track were ones who actually wanted him to win the title (aka his fellow academy riders). in 2017, they tried team orders in three races, and it didn't really do much to help dovi in a single one of those. the great thing about team orders is that you can just... ignore them. also, and this part is key - they only really happen late in the season. pecco has been through some very crazy championship fights by this point and he won't believe he's out of it until he's mathematically out of it. so, yeah, this would really only be relevant at the end of the year

quite honestly, even if this scneario does pan out and you get marc taking on acosta for the title, I really struggle to see a world in which pecco helps out marc's championship bid. I mean, you'd have to have a close title fight at the end of the season between those two (or indeed marquez v martin), and if marc's so clear of pecco on that ducati then I kind of doubt it's going to come to that. also, ducati will do obscene amounts of hand wringing before they come close to issuing an explicit public-ish instruction to pecco beyond 'try not to crash into your teammate'. and even if it did come to that... I think at most pecco does a lorenzo and plays lip service to the idea that under very specific circumstances he'd help marc, but they're specific enough that they just won't happen. and even if they did, he wouldn't help marc anyway lol. it'd be funny if you got to a situation where ducati does feel they need to ask him but. yeah. no. pecco's not doing it