Marco Bezzecchi
Marc Marquez is gearing up for his first season as a factory Ducati rider in MotoGP. The six-time champion comes off an impressive season with Gresini in 2024.
The Spaniard won three races on the year-old GP23 and finished third in the standings. Now, he will adorn the red colours of the factory Ducati team alongside Francesco Bagnaia.
Bagnaia says Marquez’s arrival is ‘very beautiful’ as the team boasts the strongest line-up on the MotoGP grid. Marquez admitted it was strange wearing red for the first time having been with Honda from 2013-2023.
The Bagnaia-Marquez partnership has drawn comparisons to Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost at McLaren in the late 1980s. Marquez admitted there are some similarities with the F1 legends – but he stressed the Italian is still the favourite for the title.
The 31-year-old proved to be tough competition for Bagnaia last season on year-old machinery. With the pair both on the GP25 in 2025, the intra-team battle for the championship could be a brilliant spectacle.
Ducati are flabbergasted Marc Marquez has not done one good practice start ‘at all’ in testing
Pre-season testing is nearing its end as MotoGP heads to Buriram – the home of the Thailand Grand Prix – for two days. The test follows three days of running in Sepang.
Bagnaia and Marquez reported the ‘same exact feeling’ on the GP25 in Malaysia. This is a first for the former, who has never seen such consensus in the Ducati garage.
However, there have been some issues for the team, particularly with Marquez. Speaking on MotoGP’s Midday Live in Buriram, Jack Appleyard shared that Ducati’s engineers felt the Spaniard has not done a good practice start ‘at all’ in testing.
He says the team are flabbergasted that the six-time champion is having this issue: “As I was saying, a couple of guys on the pit wall that I was speaking to have had the opportunity to watch all of them throughout Sepang.
“They’ve said Marc Marquez in particular, they don’t think they’ve seen him do a good start at all in pre-season testing. They were saying it is just flabbergasting how every single practice start that Marc Marquez has done, he just hasn’t been able to get dialled in.
“Which to me, you would have to assume that Ducati are just trying to find that extra bit of performance in the GP25 and at the moment just haven’t got those launch control settings fully dialled in”.
Ducati moving more towards the 2024 spec engine for 2025
Ducati are looking to fine-tune their GP25 ahead of the season opener in Thailand. But the performance of the GP24 has given the team a headache.
Gresini rider Alex Marquez topped the times on day three in Sepang, going just seven-thousandths of a second quicker than Bagnaia. Marquez was just a tenth off Bagnaia’s pole lap last year – a commendable effort from the 28-year-old.
This has left Ducati pondering whether to use the 2024 or 2025 spec engine for the upcoming season. They will have to run their chosen engine for the next two years under the concession system.
Ducati have a luxury over Aprilia and KTM in that they have two engines to choose from. It seems the team are moving more towards the 2024 spec as Ducati were seen only working with the GP24 in the garage in Buriram.
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