“The power delivery is very smooth, very precise,” said Bagnaia at the time. “The ’24 was pumping [the suspension] more in corner exits.”
So what happened to change their minds? Nothing! Bagnaia was lying when he praised the new engine. This is no surprise. Riders and engineers lie to each other and to the media all the time – racing is a game of cloak and daggers as much as it’s a game of metal and rubber.
It’s just very rare that a rider admits to being more than economical with the truth. But that’s Bagnaia, ever the gent.
“I was a bit of a liar, I couldn’t tell the truth – I was quite convinced from the start that the 2024 was better!” he said after testing ended. “We call this bike the 24.9 – it’s very close to the new one. To make a better engine than the ’24 is tough – I think all the other manufacturers would pay to have an engine like this.”
Ducati started testing its GP25 chassis much earlier than its 2025 engine. Bagnaia first evaluated the chassis at last September’s Misano tests. He loved it because it seemed to fix the rear-pushing-the-front problem caused by Michelin’s new-for-2024 and super-grippy rear slick.
However, when Bagnaia and Márquez tested the chassis in November’s Barcelona tests they weren’t so sure about its braking potential. And they felt the same when they got to Sepang.
“On the first day at Sepang, me and Marc had the same opinion,” Bagnaia added. “The ’24 chassis still a bit better – we tried to improve braking in the ’25 but could not. There’s still some margin in the ’24 bike.”
So both factory riders will race 2024 engines in 2024 chassis and they may even start the season with the GP24’s aero package.
Márquez tried new seat aero at Buriram, designed to smooth the airflow between the rider’s backside and the back of the bike. This is the prototype, tested earlier by Michele Pirro. The seat-side sections are 3D printed, using lasers that fuse powdered metal into solid objects
“We need to analyse this well, because today I did two runs with the ’25 aero and I was quite fast,” said Márquez. “But the new aero also changes the balance of the bike a bit, so we need to understand how it is in fast corners and slow corners and then check the first part of the calendar, to see which aero can give us the best advantage.”
Does all this mean Ducati’s domination of MotoGP is coming to an end? Unlikely. Dorna’s new concessions, introduced last year to help the struggling Japanese brands, have certainly helped Honda and Yamaha close the gap. And Aprilia and KTM seem to have a better handle on Michelin’s rear slick than last year, when tyre chatter and other issues made them less competitive than they’d been in 2023.
But the GP24 is a ridiculously good motorcycle, which would’ve won all but one of last year’s 20 MotoGP races, if it hadn’t been for Márquez winning a few on his GP23.
Testing can always flatter to deceive. Although some of Ducati’s rivals seem to be in less trouble than last year, the real test comes when everyone goes racing, when extracting maximum performance from a motorcycle over race distance is largely about tyre analysis and adapting the bike according to the findings of that analysis.
No one is better at this than Ducati, which still has MotoGP’s best engineering group.
And then there’s that mountain of Márquez talent. Ducati may have crushed its rivals over most of the past five seasons – five constructors’ championships and three riders’ titles – but this is the first time since Casey Stoner rode for the red team in 2010 that Ducati has had a 100% pure genius aboard its factory MotoGP bike.
MotoGP may not know what’s hit it, because this is also the first time that Márquez has been on the most competitive bike in the class of kings.
Bezzecchi was arguably the pleasant surprise of Buriram testing. He has gelled well with the Aprilia, which seems much improved. The bike features numerous aero updates, including these vortex-inducing vanes
Aprilia
The 32-year-old Spaniard did a stunningly fast race simulation on the last day at Buriram, averaging around a second a lap faster than the current race record, established in 2023 [last year’s Thai GP was wet]. Some of that will have come from Michelin’s latest rear slick, which last year had Ducati’s race winners lapping up to a second better than before.
